Mental Fitness With Rob Roell
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Who says fitness is all about the physical? Rob Roell, Executive Coach at Equilibrium Coaching, believes we also need the mental stamina to unlock our true potential for professional success. In this episode, he joins John Livesay to talk about mental fitness, what it is, and why we need it. He dives deep into the imposter syndrome, the ways social media amplifies it, and how we can overcome that through mental fitness. Offering some great tools, Rob discusses the book Positive Intelligence, where he highlights how we can be more productive and fight off what is called mental saboteurs. Achieving success is not just about having the physical capacity to work towards our goals. It is also about having the mental part taken care of that helps us see through the challenges along the way, especially in this modern world. Join Rob in this conversation as he helps us become mentally fit.
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Listen to the podcast here
Mental Fitness With Rob Roell
Our guest is Rob Roell, who is an Executive Coach that helps clients unlock their true potential for professional success so they can increase their performance without all the anxiety and stress. He has created a wonderful book called Positive Intelligence, PQ if you will. It’s a simple yet powerful operating system that allows you to become mentally fit like with physical fitness require some practice. This Positive Intelligence is developed with coaching in mind. He has been able to improve clients’ progress with their goals.
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Rob, welcome to the show.
Thank you very much. I need to correct you. The book is not my book. The book was written by Shirzad Chamine, which is a great opportunity to give him credit for the foundation that I work from.
I have had some people do that with other people’s work. They give credit, whether it’s Simon Sinek’s Start With Why. It’s so wonderful when someone creates something so valuable that other people can be credited and make it a basis for a foundation and get the training directly from that.
This stuff is incredible work. It’s foundational for me. I use it as a foundation for all of my clients.
Tell us a little about your own story of origin. You can go back to childhood or school. How did you get involved or interested in coaching and helping people?
Years ago, I was at a Tony Robbins program. One of the trainers that I was working with saw something in me that can happen like a bubble went off in my head. This was something that I wanted to do. When it came together like one of those meant to be moments, I was talking to a friend of mine after the program. He’s like, “Rob, have you ever done this before?” Without even blinking or missing a note, I said off the top of my head, “It’s funny. I have been doing this all my life. I’ve never got paid for it.” It’s true. I have always been that person in every group of friends that people come, seek out advice, knowledge from and the shoulder to cry on like, “Rob, can you come over here? I need to talk to you about something.”
It fascinates me because of your background. You have a Master’s in Electrical Engineering. Nothing against engineers but as a species, you guys are exactly known for being right brain, warm and fuzzy. You toggle back and forth.
There is a reason that we use that term binary. Engineers tend to be left-brain cerebral thinkers. History-wise, my last run in the corporate world was what would be called a sales or a systems engineer, which is the person on the sales team that helps the customer to understand technology. That’s something you wouldn’t traditionally think of as an engineering role. It’s one of those places that I have always been in that unusual space between what traditionally I was trained for and what comes naturally to me.
[bctt tweet=”Celebrate your wins.” username=”John_Livesay”]
In a way, you are a translator of tech to something understandable. The same thing seems to be happening to me with this Equilibrium Coaching because a lot of people say, “I’m great at decision making. People like and respect me and yet in my personal life, I feel like I don’t have the same skills.” You can help them translate that.
I’m a little bit of that. What we tend to focus on are those things that aren’t working optimally in the business realm. The beauty is, call it stealth coaching, call it whatever you want, all of those things that they learn to use in the business world to make themselves feel more productive, happier, less stressed, translate over into the personal life, whether it’s a relationship with a partner, with kids or fitness. Whatever it is, it all translates.
Many people, no matter how successful they are, even celebrities, suffer from impostor syndrome. Let’s define what that is and what that looks like. I know I have certainly struggled with it when I was speaking at a Coca-Cola summit. I looked at all the other speakers who had MBAs from Harvard and New York Times bestsellers, I’m like, “That’s going to trigger any insecurities that would do it.” I’m a big proponent of not comparing myself to other people. I find we still all tend to do that sometimes, don’t we?
A lot of it is cultural. Nowadays, we like to bang on social media. Social media is the source of many issues. I’m a fan of the fact that social media is the accelerator. All of that stuff was there. Social media made it easier to put it all out into the public. Impostor syndrome, at the end of the day, it’s a part of what goes on with people. It’s that part of you that doubts, that judges yourself about, “Am I good enough? Have I done enough about this?” It’s that thing that keeps us up at night thinking, “Did I do everything? Did I check all the boxes to move me on powerfully?” Unfortunately, we are in a society that reinforces this idea, “You’ve got to get it done. You’ve got to get through. It’s going to be tough. It has to be tough to be worthwhile.” In some ways, that may be true. It doesn’t have to be tough on you emotionally, physically and mentally. It doesn’t have to be Pollyanna but you can do everything that you do from a positive perspective, rather than trying to attack it from the negative perspective. It’s going to get you there. It’s going to get you some success. Are you going to be happy? Are you going to be fulfilled? Likely, not.
I will never forget. I was friends with an actress when I was living in LA that had the Malibu summer house on the beach with all the other celebrities and was on a sitcom. She was miserable. She said, “No one wants to hear it,” because she’s living the dream of an actor. Getting on a show and having that lifestyle, then you are still miserable. She didn’t like the show, not well written and was embarrassed to do it. The stress of it is going to be canceled or not. Nobody wants to hear that. They want to hear you on Malibu and show. You must be happy. If you are not happy, don’t talk about it.
We could go down a deep rabbit hole about all of our societal issues with mental health. People don’t want to hear when their version of you, what they see of you is everything they think that they want.
You are busting the illusion. As soon as I had this concept, if I had that, I would be happy. I understand why I’m not happy. If you tell me that if I get that, I’m still not going to be happy, you are going to blow my circuits.
A Buddhist saying or wherever it comes from, you think about what comes first is, is success generates happiness or is it happiness that generates success?
Mental Fitness: People don’t want to hear when their version of you and what they see of you is everything they think they want.
We see all these famous people like Kate Spade or that amazing chef who committed suicide, Anthony Bourdain. I ask myself, “There it is again.” If you are not happy, all the money, fame and whatever in the world that you could want, what you are doing is crucially important. If we do this as soon as I get this, I will be a happy game. It’s a zero-some game. We have to be happy where we are, is what I’m hearing you say. Many of us are going to need some coaching to get there.
Honestly, I love it. There was some point in reading your book. There was this one saying that we are kindred spirits here. You talk about this internal voice that tries to protect us. I have the quote here, “The internal voice that tries to protect us by diminishing us and critiquing our performance.” The world I work from the positive intelligence mental fitness, we call those the saboteurs.
It’s valuable to label it. You are like, “Who’s speaking?” If I’m the thinker thinking these thoughts, “Who’s in my head telling me all these horrible mean things?” What I’m fascinated by with positive intelligence is that it’s so measurable. We know if we have worked out, we can measure our waist or our biceps. We go, “I’m getting results.” There are actual ways not to try to boost your mental fitness but measure it. Can you explain how that works?
The way that you can measure your mental fitness, Positive Intelligence gives us some great tools. If you already go to their website, they have several assessments. One is you can measure your PQ score like you can do an IQ test. Nowadays, emotional intelligence and EQ is a big thing, especially in the executive business world. You can also measure your PQ. It’s a ratio of how often you use positive reinforcement and positive perspectives to rule your life versus how much you use the negative. Where it becomes important is you get a score of 0 to 100. The target is you want to be above 75%. If you want, I can go into the science that goes behind it.
Let’s hear a little bit about Science. Here’s what a friend of mine who writes for Inc Magazine told me, anything that they write with a headline or an article about how our brain works get more clicks than anything else. Good to know. I get a chance to interview someone as knowledgeable as you that understands and can give us some valuable information on how our brain works or why something works for our brain. It seems to me that the data is there that people are interested in this. Let’s hear the highlights of it.
Look at that ratio. 75% to 25%, that’s a 3:1 ratio. The idea is that the saboteurs I mentioned live predominantly in that primitive part of your brain. The part that wants to see the leaves rustling out in the jungle just in case there’s a tiger there to come after you. It’s served a purpose at some point in our human development. Not so much now. Aside from Houston, there are not many suburban areas you are going to find a tiger rustling the tree. What that does is your brain is tuned on this 3:1 ratio to look more for something that’s going to go wrong than for something that’s going to go right. You want to be above a 3:1 ratio to be able to have an opportunity to override that tendency of your primitive brain.
It’s a survival mechanism. I heard something similar when I interviewed Steve Rohr, who wrote Scared Speechless talking about you and I are both speakers. Our brain is wired to never be separate from the tribe. When you are standing in front of people, your fight or flight response is kicked in and says, “What are you doing? The tribe is out there. You are all alone. You are going to get picked off.” I think there are some interesting things there. This concept that we are always looking for what’s wrong or could go wrong is part of the pre-wiring. He talks about when you are standing on stage in front of people, your brain is wired to say, “The tribe is out there. You are up here by yourself. You are in danger. You could get picked off by a predator.” We have to override that. That’s why people get so scared to speak. The same thing is true in our everyday life about what is going on that feels like we are not enough. We think hard to try to do this.
Going back to social media as an amplifier, you almost get this badge for being in that negative space. You post something negative on social media and everybody goes, “That’s so cool.” There are a lot of positive voices. It would be interesting to see. Is there a 3:1 ratio in that sense on social media?
[bctt tweet=”Treat mental fitness like it was physical fitness.” username=”John_Livesay”]
In journalism, if it bleeds, it leads. All of that click-through. I wrote something about this whole process of moving. I have done this a few times. Every time, I’m like, “By the time I move in, all the joy has been sucked out.” With the endless requests for the loan, problems with this, delays and you have your house inspected. Your whole focus is on everything that needs to be fixed.
It starts with that 3-inch stack of paperwork you have to sign to finalize the house.
You are thinking, “I am determined.” Ten things need to be fixed in the house, even a new house. That’s part of the process. We always have a choice toggling back and forth of, “Am I going to complain or am I going to be grateful? I have a roof over my head.” It is challenging when you keep getting knocked down or it’s one thing after another. The movers break something. There’s a leak in your roof. The laundry list is huge of what you can focus on to be upset about or you take a breath and go, “You broke something. Take a picture. I will claim, next.”
In the positive intelligence contacts, what you are talking about there is switching. We mentioned these saboteurs. Saboteurs are all within us. Let’s start there. To counter that is another part of us that’s also within us is the sage. It’s that part of us that wants to operate from the good. The sage starts with a sage perspective that everything in life that every challenge brings with it a gift and an opportunity. That resonates where you are now.
I always think this is going to make a great story, even it’s horrible. I can turn this into a story. I have heard people who write for movies go, “They are always looking for all. This is going to make a great script.” With that sage advice for me, I would love your opinion on this about zooming out. I do the 555 thing I made up, which is will this matter in 5 minutes, 5 days, 5 weeks, keep going. You realize, “Five days, zoom out. I’m so upset because this happened.” You are like, “This ability to have a sage perspective.” Ideally, the longer we live, the more of a sage we become. I have lived through this. That’s some good times and bump times. I have seen them all. I’m still here. That philosophy is sometimes difficult if you are younger. I see people get so obsessed with, “I thought I would be more successful by the time I hit this age. I probably making the 30 under 30 Forbes lists,” whatever their mindset is. How do you help people who, even if they are not “older,” are still so unhappy with where they are? You think, “As soon as I’ve got this, I would be happy.” You get that and you are not happy.
When we get there, we tend to focus on the thing we miss. In reality, we haven’t taken account of all the things that we gained along the way. There’s a famous speaker and one of his quotes is, “Shoot for the moon and the worst thing that happens is you land amongst the stars.”
That’s from an old Bette Davis movie.
Realistically, that’s true, especially when you talk about high-achiever mentality people. We look at the goal. If we don’t reach the goal, it’s a total failure. We don’t celebrate our wins along the way. Quite often, we don’t even define clearly what that goal is.
Positive Intelligence: Why Only 20% of Teams and Individuals Achieve Their True Potential and How You Can Achieve Yours
It’s always elusive. I remember when I was ten years old, I thought my dentist was so great. I thought maybe I will be a dentist. I was talking to him about it. He goes, “I settled on dentistry. I wanted to be a plastic surgeon.” I was like, “What? You settled on being a dentist.” Everyone has got this, “I’m still not happy. It’s not my dream.” From the outside looking in, you think it is. As you said, we have similar philosophies. This concept of perfectionism is a curse. I would say we need to reinvent and come up with a new word progressionist. You and I are progressionist to help other people to celebrate their progress.
The human brain and existence are geared around progress like a core coaching tenant are helping clients create progress. We also know it was one of the big personal development quotes. It’s like progress over perfection. You will hear me quote Tony a lot, I volunteer in his environment. I hear his stuff continually in my head. Tony says, “Perfection is the worst goal of attainment because it’s unattainable.”
It creates a barrier. If you come across perfect, no one can relate to you. There’s no connection. I know you pride yourself as a speaker on having this bond with the audience. Talk a little bit about how you do that.
I know you are a fan of the story. For me, my story was speaking. I was speaking in the corporate world. I was very powerful as a systems engineer or sales engineer however, I never felt like I was connected to my audience. I could spew the data, tell good stories and do well in that sales environment. When I first hired my speaking coach, that was the one thing I wanted to tackle more than anything. He’s like, “Rob, it’s very simple.” Throw away all that BS garbage that speaking coaches tell you about looking over everybody’s head. He’s like, “Find one person in the room and have a conversation with them and then find another person and have a conversation with them.” I know you have spoken from stage. Anybody that’s ever spoken from stage, you get the fact that when you speak to that one person, you get that radius effect. 10 to 20 feet out, everybody thinks you are speaking to them and then you feel connected. They feel that. It builds on itself.
Even if you go to a concert where you listen, sometimes the singer will say, “I want to tell you.” You feel like they are talking to you. There are thousands of people that are in the dark. That is fascinating, whether it’s 300 people in a ballroom or how many people Staples Center holds. That successful banter in between the songs creates that emotional connection. The other thing that I’m fascinated to ask you about. I have noticed that people who stay curious are the ones that seem to live long, healthy lives. People who are bored easily seem to be miserable all the time and tend to have unhealthy lives and not live so long. It’s the people who are like, “I decided I learned another language.” You are 80 years old. They are like, “I want to learn something new.” You are constantly up-to-date on what’s going on in the world and staying curious. What are your thoughts on being curious? I know it’s a big outcome of what mental fitness looks like. Are there things that people can do to increase their curiosity if they are not naturally curious?
One is bringing attention to it. Creating intent, when you create intent around wanting to be curious, part of it is like anything else. Creating that mental muscle to be curious takes practice. You have to remind yourself consciously from time to time, it’s being intentional about being curious. I mentioned the sage earlier. The sage has five powers. One of those sage powers is explored. The power game we play around sage explore is the fascinated explorer. Think of yourself as Indiana Jones. You notice how I’m leaning in. It’s having that posture of leaning in, listening closely and intently. Being curious has all of that around it. I get goosebumps talking about that.
The outcome besides being happier is this increase in productivity. Can you speak to how mental fitness helps us be more productive?
We were talking about these negative voices that go on inside of our heads. If you were to sit down and journal about how much of your time you are spending combating that. If you were to minimize those voices in your head, how much more productive would you be? At the end of the day, the studies show us that average people are over 30% more productive when they are coming from a positive mindset rather than a negative mindset in everything they do.
[bctt tweet=”Social media is the source of so many issues.” username=”John_Livesay”]
That’s huge. I didn’t know it would be that high. That’s a very surprising statistic. I would think maybe 10%, but 30%. Imagine, if you decided, “I can start work 30%.” I don’t have to work five days a week if I’m hitting my goals if I’m thinking more positively.
The high achievers out there going, “I still work five more days.”
I would keep Elon Musk. I would go to the moon. I would take us here.
The thing that’s nice about that extra productivity, you are not only more productive, but you are also happier while you are doing it. One of the metaphors that I love that Shirzad loves to talk about. He used to be an instructor at Stanford. He would talk about these concepts at Stanford. His students nicknamed this Jedi Mind training. I remember when I watch Return of the Jedi, Luke training with Yoda out on that planet Dagobah. It’s like, “I want to train with Yoda.” That’s what it was all about. How could Luke be calm, clear and focused in the middle of all the chaos of battle and everyday life?
That reminds me of what I watched in the documentary about Tiger Woods and how his father would constantly distract him while he’s practicing so that he had to get into the zone. When all the pressure was on, he could tune it all out. If athletes have to do that, when we are called on to perform as a speaker, in a business situation, you are pitching to win new business or whatever it is, if you are distracted by the hum or a look someone gave you, 101 things can distract us. Your phone going off and all that. Maybe you turn the distractions off that way. As you talk about laser focus, your ability is so important to mental fitness. That requires some work, doesn’t it? It’s got to get cleaning away some stuff.
Let’s put some foundation around this idea of mental fitness. To state the obvious, it’s based on the idea of physical fitness. When you are physically fit, you can climb a steep hill. You can jog down the street without losing your breath and without having physical stress. The same thing with mental fitness. When you are mentally fit, you can deal with life’s challenges without all the stress, anxiety, doubt and frustration that can come up all of the negative emotions from being in life. To be mentally fit, it’s not something that you can turn on just like that for the average person. To be physically fit, you have to train regularly to be there. Michael Phelps didn’t become a world-class swimmer by going to the pool once a week.
I have a story. When he was young, his coach said to him, “Michael, are you willing to work out on Sundays?” He said, “Yes.” He goes, “We’ve got 52 more workouts from the competition.” People go, “It’s not his physique. It’s not he got lucky genetically. In the end, he put in that extra work.” That’s important for people to realize you don’t suddenly get into shape overnight physically. Why would you think you could mentally with a few affirmations?
At the end of the day, mental fitness is a concept of being more positive than negative. It’s creating a practice around that. It’s something you do regularly. For me, knowing that I was nervous coming in here, I did somewhat we call them PQ reps, positive intelligence reps. There are about ten seconds a piece that help you to become more body-centric and centered. To put it, it helps the part that minimizes those saboteur voices in your head nice. When you are there, that gives you that opportunity to choose to take on the sage perspective.
Mental Fitness: When you are mentally fit, you can deal with life’s challenges without all the stress, anxiety, doubt, and frustration that can come up from all of the negative emotions in life.
I call it stacking your moments of certainty. 2 or 3 times, when you knew you had a good interview, you are like, “I know John likes me. He’s going to make me look good. Whatever saboteur voices I have in my head, this is not one of those gotcha interviews. This is going to be fun. I’m going to be of service. People are going to love what I say. There’s a technical glitch here and there. Who cares? We will figure it out. It’s not the end of the world.” We have the perspective so we can zoom out.
One of the other things I love about your work and what you do is, as you mentioned at the beginning, go from, “I’ve got to get this out and white knuckle it almost,” to the concept of, “I can take action. I move through life with grace and ease. Things always work out for me.” Many people are presenting the concept. I have watched people have visceral, angry reactions. “That’s not true. It’s not about working smarter. You’ve got to work hard. Everything has to be hard.” There’s no such thing about being in the flow. That’s why I love teaching people how to become storytellers. When you tell a story, you are in the flow. You are pulling people in. The action they want to take is like landing a plane. It’s not this surprise push at the end. Speak to how you help people get in the flow.
Let me back up again, add a little bit of science to this. Realistic as to where Shirzad came up with all of this in his studies, he’s worked with hundreds of CEOs around the world. We talked about the Stanford students that he’s worked with. He’s worked with world-class athletes. At this point, hundreds of thousands of people that are participated in his Positive Intelligence program. In working with them, what they did is they work from this idea of what’s called factor analysis, specifically root factor analysis where you are trying to find the root of why things are. What root factor analysis gives us is a radical simplification of why things are and why. That’s what resulted in the nine saboteurs. There are ten. There’s the judge saboteurs, the principal, and nine accomplices and the sage with the five sage powers.
To give you an idea of what root factor analysis is, we all know that of all of the thousands of colors that exist in our beautiful world, three colors exist at the root of all of that, red, green and blue. That’s when you look at a monitor. Those of us that are old enough to remember used to refer to monitors as RGB monitors. It’s a similar thing here with mental fitness. The root factor analysis with all of these people resulted in these ten saboteurs. Be very clear about the 1 sage and 5 sage powers. Also, what we learned from the root factor analysis, three main muscles create mental fitness. The saboteur interceptor muscle. It’s the idea of understanding when a saboteur is in your presence and acting on your mentality. To put it very simply, the saboteur interceptor muscle is a negative emotion. When you recognize your negative emotion, you equate that with the existence of a saboteur.
Labeling that helps take some of the chaos in our head and rip above it, doesn’t it?
It does. Having that interceptor muscle be strong, whether it’s personal development or coaching. The difference between having that a-ha moment and acting on that a-ha moment is like, “What are those things? What are the saboteurs that are keeping me acting powerfully on this?” That comes from, “I’m scared of this or I’m getting stressed. I’m getting anxious about it.” Noticing that you have the opportunity to do something about it. That brings up the second muscle. It’s the sage muscle. Knowing that the sage operates from everything as a gift and an opportunity, you have these five powers of the sage with the power games that go along with them. You can leverage those to help you make that shift as well.
The third muscle is where these PQ reps come from. The idea of the PQ reps is to exercise that third muscle so that you recognize you are in saboteur mode. You can do PQ reps to bring that voice down in your head. Now, you can powerfully bring the sage up. All of these things are all ready, just like your physical muscles are part of you. All of these three mental fitness muscles are already a part of you. You have to exercise them. You have to create a practice around it to strengthen them so that when the saboteurs come up, you can go, “That’s a saboteur.” If you want to identify this saboteur, “That’s the controller or stickler. The stickler wants to get everything right.” You could identify it to that level. The idea of knowing that saboteur is powerful in and of itself, and choosing the sage perspective and making the shift.
If someone wants to get ahold of you, what’s the best way to do that?
[bctt tweet=”Creating that mental muscle to be curious takes practice. You have to remind yourself consciously from time to time.” username=”John_Livesay”]
The best way to get ahold of me is very simply my name [email protected].
Rob, any last thought or quote you want to leave us with?
I would love to offer to anybody that’s reading, if they want to have a conversation with me, schedule 30 minutes with me. You can go to my website, EquilibriumCoach.us/contact. If you go there, it will give you a website/contact/connect. You get access to my calendar. You can schedule a 30-minute. We can sit down and talk about how mental fitness might work for you.
Thank you. It has been fun hearing about how we can all get a little more mentally fit from you, Rob. Thanks again.
Thank you, John. I appreciate you.
Important Links
- Equilibrium Coaching
- Positive Intelligence
- Start With Why
- Steve Rohr – Past Episode
- Scared Speechless
- [email protected]
- EquilibriumCoach.us/contact
- Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course
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Pitch Investors Live With Jonathan Foltz
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Finding the right people to invest in your company, particularly start-up ones, is a pretty tedious and time-consuming endeavor to accomplish. But thanks to Pitch Investors Live, every business can take advantage of this online platform that’s very much like Shark Tank combined with Tinder. John Livesay interviews Pitch Investors Live Co-founder, Jonathan Foltz, to share how he and his friends started this groundbreaking project. He also looks back on his childhood and how his falling short of being a basketball player pushed him to pursue a career in entrepreneurship.
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Listen to the podcast here
Pitch Investors Live With Jonathan Foltz
Jonathan Foltz is a Co-Founder of Pitch Investors Live. What they do is they help match up investors with founders looking for money, much like dating app meets Shark Tank. He talks about his career as an entrepreneur and how he had to overcome the fear of not being good enough after his dream of being a basketball star did not happen. That was his first pivot in life. He’s now gone on to do many other successful businesses and has life lessons of having a passion for what you do.
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Our guest is Jonathan Foltz, who is the Co-Founder and visionary of Pitch Investors Live. He is a futurist, a philosopher and an avid knowledge seeker. He started multiple companies in technology, education, eCommerce and the digital space. He’s built $4 million brands in completely four different industries. He’s also the Owner of an international marketing agency, Digital Age Business, which has worked with some of the biggest brands in the world. He also owns multiple eCommerce brands. He was able to take a business to seven figures a month within its first year. Welcome to the show, Jonathan.
I’m happy to be here.
Before we dive into everything you’re doing and this whole concept of your own story of origin around the PitchInvestorsLive.com, I want to invite you to tell us your own story of origin. You can go back to childhood school. Where did you get this urge to be an entrepreneur? Did you always have a passion for multiple things? Start the story wherever you want.
Like many entrepreneurs, a lot of my entrepreneurial skills came from a necessity as a young kid growing up with my father and everything like that. He was in the oil industry and we traveled a lot. I was born in Canada, then we moved to New York, to Miami, to Argentina, to Columbia and then back to Miami. In between was Venezuela, Peru and the UK. I went to a few different schools when I was in Columbia as a kid. I got used to having to make new friends. That started to build a little of my social skills. As a kid, you want to be liked. I had to go and find brand new friends because I was moving from place to place. It was rough as a kid and you have to figure out the skillsets to make new kids, new teachers and new people in your realm like you. You’re like, “Now I’m in a brand-new environment.” It made me a little bit more confident having to go through so much of that. As time went on, my parents got divorced when I was 12, 13 years old.
Pitch Investors Live: A lot of our entrepreneurial skills came from a necessity.
I was obsessed with basketball. Basketball was my life. I thought I was going to be in the NBA. I had that belief system. I was obsessed. I watch ESPN and played all day. As time went on, I remember when my parents got divorced, I know that my mom had gone through a rough time during the divorce. She started hustling. She started working and doing some stuff with flea markets and stuff like that. The interesting thing about this is that my mom was a hustler. She was good, social, likable and had such a good personality that everyone loves her. She’s a social butterfly. That’s one of the skills that I got from her. That’s where I learned that type of skillset around that time.
Little by little, I started learning. I was able to get a computer. One of the things that I learned quickly when having a computer and a CD burner, which not a lot of my friends had them at the time, I was making CDs for friends. This was in the beginning stages. I was a little kid and people didn’t know about Napster. Every kid in the school was burning CDs. I happened to burn CDs for music stuff that they’d never heard of. I’ll put a cover on it and sell it. I’d made a little $5 here and there. One day, there was a CD coming out. It was called The Marshall Mathers LP, it’s an Eminem CD. Before it was coming out, I got access somehow to the internet as a little kid. This is when the internet was new. I was probably 14, 13 years old or something around the time. This was the early stages of when all this was coming out.
No one knew about Napster and how Napster would take down the entire entertainment business. It was crazy what was happening. We didn’t know what was going to happen from it. I knew that I’m like, “This is a popular CD.” I have early access to it. As a little kid, I have no idea what I’m doing here. I brought that CD to school and this was my first glimpse. I don’t know if they were giving fines for people at the time that were burning CDs and such. I don’t even think that time had come yet. Later down the road, people start getting fines. Their parents were getting $5,000 fines from the entertainment business. I don’t know if you remember that. They were sending out checks like lawsuits against a bunch of people, but little kids didn’t know. None of them knew what was going on. They’re little kids with power of the internet.
That’s what was exciting to me. Nowadays, people call me the Digital Frontiersman. I got my first sample of the power of the internet when you could do these things that were never possible before. When I got my hands on the internet as a little kid, my whole world had unfolded into something that I could never imagine. My first case study of great success. I tried all kinds of stuff. I try some baseball cards. I would open up all the cards and I would never be able to sell them all. That was a failed venture. I sold a little CDs here and there for $5. I was entrepreneurial because of my mom. When I did this The Marshall Mathers LP CD, I knew it was going to be a hit for some intuitive reason. I empty my book bag. I filled the entire book bag with these CDs. I went to school and sold them for $10 apiece. I sold every single one and my mind was blown. I was like, “What just happened?” The next day, every kid in school was selling them too. I saw what happened. It was like I was the first mover in that direction. Every kid in school went and copied the same model that I did and it blew up through the entire school, even so much so that the principals and everyone said, “You guys got to stop selling CDs in the hallways.”
[bctt tweet=”Our values and purpose are built out of voids.” username=”John_Livesay”]
That’s how big it became in our school, Palmetto High School, which is the same high school that Jeff Bezos went to. That was one of the things, but what put me into the entrepreneurial realm was in the 9th grade. I tried out for the basketball team and I got cut in the first round. For me, basketball was life. When I got cut from the basketball team and I knew that there were people on the team that made the cut that I was way better in, what it meant for me as a kid was I’m not good enough. I went home that night, went to my bed and I’m thinking to myself like, “If I’m not good at basketball, what am I good at?” Honestly, I have no clue what I’m good at. That was deteriorating to me. I had to go through a shift.
This is another reason I got into philosophy. Aristotle had something that he called upon Axiology. It’s a study that he developed and he called something the Telos, which was the purpose. All being the medium in mind and where you’re going in life. One of the biggest things that he talks about is that our values and purpose are built out of voids. Voids are things missing. What was missing to me was I’m not good enough. That started to build a mentality out of me that I wanted to be good enough. When I started to find out a little bit about the entrepreneurial realm, I started making money with these little side hustles selling whether it was sneakers, selling baseball cards or selling the CDs. Early out of high school, I had a pet shop. I started figuring out all these ways. I was like, “I’m good at something.” To me, it was inspiring because that wasn’t my mentality. I thought I wasn’t good at anything at that point when I got cut from the team. That was where the spark and the power came from. It was from me being cut from that team. It became one of my greatest driving forces.
What an inspirational story. That concept of not feeling good enough is something that people struggle with most of their life on a subconscious level sometimes. That’s why people fear rejection. That’s why we get into the imposter syndrome. We’re comparing ourselves to other people and coming up short, “I didn’t go to that Ivy League school. My book didn’t sell as much as theirs.” It’s an insane route. The fact that you were able to pivot at a young age like entrepreneurs learn to do and go, “Basketball is not it. I’ll figure something else out.” Even that earlier story you were telling about the people started copying you. That’s another big takeaway for everyone reading, which is investors are always going to ask you, “What’s your secret sauce?” “What’s your barrier to entry from a big competitor.” You had all that in that story. The awareness of, “Other people are going to think of this too, so I need to get something here that’s going to prevent other people from doing that.” Let’s talk about what void you saw in the marketplace that made you and your team start Pitch Investors Live?
I’ve started many companies. I’m going on maybe 25, 26 companies. I am one of those crazy serial entrepreneurs. I know well how hard it is first and foremost. Secondly, I started learning more about the investment space. I wanted to learn more. I remember reading many magazines and books. I’m like, “One day, I want to have my own venture capital fund. I want to be a venture capitalist. I want to work on multiple projects.” I’m much on the go. I’m a visionary, but I like to go and do it. I love the building process and that’s why I’ve done many different things.
Pitch Investors Live: You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if you don’t position it correctly, shift it, and adapt it, it’s not going to get anywhere.
My business partner was the founding founder, if you want to call him that, from the 2UP app itself. 2UP app was a debate app when it first started. That’s how Pitch Investors Live came in and that’s the time that I came in. 2UP itself was an app before Facebook Live existed. It was even before Periscope existed. Before all that stuff came out, 2UP came out. I had met Matt at a startup conference. He was launching 2UP. I was going to help him with marketing. We threw some ideas back and forth together. I was going to join him, but I was doing so many other things. I never joined 2UP. It got traction but it was missing some key components. Later down the road, when I and Matt came together to build Pitch Investors Live, we realized he’s the technical backend innovator and I’m the business dev marketing visionary. I know what can go to market the right way and how to position it. You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if you don’t position it correctly, shift it and adapt it, it’s not going to get anywhere.
Knowing all these different things and being a huge fan of Shark Tank, when Matt was developing Pitch Investors Live and it was like an older UI, I honestly did not like it at all. I was like, “This needs some major work.” He was trying to hire us to launch Pitch Investors Live. When we started talking about this, I invited them to a house that we were staying at called the Marketer’s Mansion. We rented a huge mansion on the top of a mountain in Arizona. It was five of us internet marketers, e-commerce experts. What we did is we created an accelerator. We had probably over 1,000 people come through those doors. We had a mastermind where there were two giant mansions and there was a jet involved where we went to Las Vegas. It was one of those fun things to do.
As time went on, we had different people come through the door. I remember Matt, he had a significant exit in the tech space. I’m like, “We need to get some high-end people here. We want to have some people that we can learn from and they can learn from us.” I called Matt, “We’re looking for another person. We have an open spot. One of our roommates has gone. What we do here is we collaborate. I’m looking to create some new apps. I know you know how to develop them. I know what’s going to make a whole bunch of money in the marketplace. That’s one of my expertise. Let’s get together and let’s build something.” When he came over, he started telling us about Pitch Investors Live and how he turned 2UP into pitch. He wants to take it to the next level. He wants branding.
There was also cryptocurrency and blockchain involved. To me, that was a massive space that is going to be monumental in the future. Every single big company now in the world is implementing some type of blockchain technology, especially in the financial space. Even the federal reserve and the Chinese are implementing full blockchain into their finance, but that’s a whole different story. That was exciting to me. I was getting the hang of it. I was like, “Let me see what he has available. I am busy but let me see what he wants.” I’m not trying to take clients on. We used to take clients because I had an agency. I stopped doing it and I listened. I was excited with what he had envisioned, but I knew there was more of what it could be and I knew what it took. I went back to him and I said, “I’m not going to take on this project. I’m not going to help you with the marketing. The only thing that I’ll do is I’ll come on as a co-founder to help you build this because this is bad-ass and I know what needs to get done.”
[bctt tweet=”It’s lovely to see people get success from a new technology that has come out that has changed how things used to be.” username=”John_Livesay”]
It needs some complete revamp on the branding side. The app needs to have all kinds of stuff. I was like, “I will come in. I’ll bring my entire team because this is an amazing idea.” It is amazing that I was like, “This has to come to market.” When I saw it, what I thought of and I gave it this interpretation, it was like you make Shark Tank together with Kickstarter, together with Tinder or Bumble, or one of the swipe dating apps together with live streaming technology. That right there is monumental. No one’s ever done that in the startup space or the funding landscape. No one’s done anything like that. We’re going to be the first people to be able to pull this off.
I was like, “That’s what I want to do. I want to come as a co-founder. I will not come in as anything else. You can’t hire me. He was happy. He was like, “Someone wants to join on board. All right, let’s do this.” We were friends also. That was one of the beneficial parts of the whole thing. As soon as I came on, I enrolled my business partner, Umer, into it. I enrolled my other roommates from the Marketer’s Mansion, Damien Coughlan, Lawrence Aponte, and there was this other guy, Odie, an amazing camera guy. We started enrolling all these people and everyone wants to join because it was a cool project. This is going to be monumental with what we could do not just with the blockchain components but also simultaneously, with the faction that what we want it to do is allowing people to invest in companies live. Imagine if you’re able to invest into companies as there’s a live pitch happening. This is a game-changer for me.
You also have Kevin Harrington on your advisory board. He’s also been a guest on this show. What I love about this story is that your dream and part of your pitch is to imagine Shark Tank meeting Kickstarter, meeting a dating app and live streaming. That is no longer like, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have that as an analogy?” One of the original Shark is part of this. The credibility factor goes soaring up. The first of many takeaways for people who are reading is who’s on your advisory board is as important as who’s on your team, especially if they’re active. When investors are looking at what kind of credibility and experience like, who you’re going to when you have questions and get stuck? Imagine all the years and all the deals that Kevin has heard so that he can say, “If I put myself in the shoes of an investor, this is what I’d want to hear and what’s missing from this pitch.”
You and I have discussed why I’m excited about joining with you and promoting this to people is investors I’ve interviewed on this show have told me, “We hear about 2,500 pitches in a year and funded about 25, 1%.” What you’re doing is allowing people to get in that 1% club. The old way of doing this is you had to get an introduction, you physically get in the room, you have ten minutes, and you hope you did a good enough job that you get invited back. I’ve seen that happen successfully multiple times in multiple levels from seed to series A, and all the other stuff that you’re talking about. Investors need to hear pitches. If you streamline this even before the pandemic and people weren’t traveling, think how much more productive it is. I’m only hearing pitches from people who are in Silicon Valley, for the most part. There’s got to be some other ideas out there. You’re allowing people to get heard without them having to move to Silicon Valley to build their network. It’s not that a network isn’t important, but I think this premise is so important. You have no shortage of investors that want to be part of this.
Pitch Investors Live: Every single big company now in the world is implementing some type of blockchain technology, especially in the financial space.
We have a good decent amount of all kinds of investors from VCs, Angels, regular credit investors and institutional.
One of the things I say when I’ve worked with people is don’t talk to an investor who only invests in AI if you’re not AI. You need to do a little homework on the investor’s portfolio and see if they have a competitor or they don’t fund the thing you’re pitching. You’re in the wrong room. You need to get in the right room with the right pitch, which is why this combination of what you’re doing is so smart. I’m guessing there’s some kind of vetting that’s going on so that an investor can see what’s coming up to see if he wants to watch those live pitches.
For anyone that wants to download Pitch Investors Live on both iOS, Android and PWA. We had a lot of people and some older investors that are like, “I want to be on my computer.” We’re like, “Let’s do PWA,” so we created that.
For those people who don’t know, what is PWA?
It’s a Progressive Web App, which means it’s like a website, except it loads much faster. You could use it on a website and you could get on it live like what you do on Zoom. That will be on a web browser. We added some very light artificial intelligence. It’s more like machine learning to allow people to connect. It’s already rolled out, but we’re going to roll it out and implement it in a cool manner. When the investor comes in, we’re going to find out all their information. What kind of projects they like? What’s the funding? What’s their sweet spot? How much money they’re looking to invest?
[bctt tweet=”If there’s something that’s truly inspiring to you, no matter what it is, go after that.” username=”John_Livesay”]
We’ve had some investors that are like, “Our sweet spot has been in the few hundred thousand dollars.” We have a lot of investors that are in the $2 million to $5 million range. They will put the ranges inside there. What kind of companies they’re looking for, if it’s pre-revenue or post-revenue? Some are willing to go into those companies that are early stage. Some are like, “No, I need to make sure that they’re making money.” We vet them in all that type of information. We then have the entrepreneurs answer similar questions. How the AI comes into place is it has a matchmaking service that pulls them like, “You guys are a good link because you’re looking for $2 million, he likes companies from $2 to $5 million. You’re an eCommerce, he likes to get eCommerce entrepreneurs.”
That was exactly the answer I was looking for on how we take the concept of a dating app and apply it to Shark Tank that it screened. The other thing that you are doing brilliantly is your pitch is saved in a library. Any potential investors can see it at any time. That alone is worth so much because if you’re a founder pitching and you figured, “This is my one shot.” If the right person is not there or they’re sick, I don’t get to come back because we’ve already passed on that. We’re looking at new pitches. This fear of, what if somebody doesn’t see it live? It completely goes away. For everyone reading who is trying to figure out how to get people to join their team, having good people, you got to be attractive to them. Once you’ve got that good team, you need to pitch the investors. You also need to pitch to get business clients, the marketing is part of that. There are three different buckets that the storytelling aspect that I teach helps solve that whole thing from start to finish.
The problem is a lot of people think, “If the right person doesn’t hear my pitch, then it’s lost forever.” Now you’ve solved that problem. The big takeaway here is think like Jonathan and his team. Anticipate an objection, whether it’s from an investor or a potential customer, which in this case it would be like, “If I’m going to pay money to put my pitch on live streaming, what if the perfect investor isn’t listening to me at that moment?” You’ve anticipated that problem and you have an answer and a solution for them that creates value. What I’m trying to do is use your model for people to not only say, “I need to get on Pitch Investors Live to get my startup funded,” but also for those people who are reading that aren’t necessarily looking for funding, they can still learn so much from you. They can learn from anticipating objections and answering them in advance, as opposed to being a deer in headlights when you get them from a customer or an investor.
One of the things that we’ve been very excited about is when you do come on to Pitch, you’re not pitching that one investor. It goes live in the app, on Facebook and YouTube. In the future, we plan on pushing that into other genres, stuff and potentially podcasts too. We have a story of a guy named Efren who had a company called Gemini Cyber Securities, it was something similar. He pitched Kevin. Kevin didn’t like the deal but he was like, “This is a good project. I might talk to Robert about it.” I don’t know the backstory on that, but what I do know is that it was saved on YouTube. Efren put on his own LinkedIn. Someone hit him up on LinkedIn because of the video that was online. They didn’t watch it live. They’ve watched a rerun of it. They contacted him. He got fully invested, found two new partners from that live that was prerecorded on the internet. Several months later, we come to find that Efren got acquired. He got the Pitch helped him find his investor, gets two partners and then get acquired several months later. None of that would have been possible or at least in that timeline if he had it on his homepage and then had it on there. It’s lovely to see people get success from a new technology that has come out that has changed things how they used to be.
Pitch Investors Live: Imagine if you’re able to invest in companies as there’s a live pitch happening. It’s a game-changer.
It’s a philosophical perspective on life. It goes back to a metaphysical way we’re talking about in your childhood, which is either you feel like you’re good enough or you don’t. You have to compare yourself to other people or you don’t. Einstein said, “One of the biggest decisions we ever make is if we feel that the world is a safe and friendly place or it’s not.” From that one decision, we then go looking for evidence to support that decision. The same thing is true in the startup world or entrepreneurship. You either believe that you’re going to get good people. It doesn’t mean you don’t do your due diligence, but it’s your mindset. If you have the belief that, “I never know who’s going to be listening to this live pitch on what platform, that could change my life.” If I believe and I’m open to those possibilities as opposed to, “I must know how it’s going to happen, when it’s going to happen, and who’s listening.”
The structure is great but you might want to be an accountant versus an entrepreneur if that’s the way you’d like to think and work. That’s why I love that story you share because the goal is we want other people to see themselves in that story of someone who used your platform and say, “If that happened for that founder, it could happen for me.” That’s what you are creating. You’re walking your talk on many levels. I don’t even know if you realized it. You’re inspiring people with your own passion and your own unlimited thinking of possibilities while also helping other people and making money. That’s the dream.
The social impact aspect of it is the factor that is going to continue to get more and more important. People feel that energetically when they talk to you, when they tuned-in to this show, and when they go to your website. All of that is what I want to leave everybody with. Your brand and your messaging need to be consistent. It is constantly sending out some kind of vibration and energy. It’s up to you to define what your culture is, and define who fits and who doesn’t. When that happens, then you trust and allow the rest to fall into place. You have a good story. You’re in the right room. You’re embracing new technologies and new ways of doing things so you’re not dependent on who your network is at any given time. That’s what I see is your big impact on the world.
I do this because I love it. That’s why even starting Pitch was something that I believed in and I knew how much entrepreneurs needed the support. In the funding landscape, you hit it on the nail how we explained it to people in the beginning stages. We don’t want the entrepreneurs to have to go to Silicon Valley or have to go to New York. The best thing for them is why can’t they be at home and be able to pitch an investor instantaneously from anywhere that they’re at.
Pitch Investors Live: Entrepreneurs don’t have to go to Silicon Valley or New York. They can be at home and be able to pitch to an investor instantaneously from anywhere they’re at.
With the pandemic, your timing is perfect. You’ve been doing this for years. We’ve got it all the kinks ironed up. You’ve got proof of concept. The timing in the synergy of now more than ever, no one’s going and pitching people in person. Any last thoughts or inspirational quotes that you want to leave us with?
One of my beliefs in life is that you have to do something that is truly inspiring to you. If you’re doing things for the money, you’re doing things because of the judgment that you had, what your parents thought or whatever it is, the biggest thing that has been proven even scientifically, to give you more energy and longer life span is being inspired about something. If there’s something that’s truly inspiring to you no matter what it is, if you go after that, it changes the dynamic. You go to sleep with energy. You wake up with energy. Your true genius and potential come out in forms that you can’t even imagine. Any time that you can tap into that flow, that is where your true potential comes from and where you’ll make a great impact in the world. Usually, it’s of service like what you’re doing right here on this show.
I can support what you said because I was hired as a speaker once. My agent said to me, “It was between you and another speaker, they loved your energy and they want to hire you.” We can never underestimate how much passion and our energy is what people are buying. We’ve heard this line a hundred times, “Investors invest in the jockey, not the horse.” The person is the jockey. Jonathan, thanks for your passion, energy, insights, and for creating Pitch Investors Live as a place for both investors and founders to find each other like a dating app while still having a little technology to make sure those matches are good. We all need innovation now more than ever to solve all these big problems we have. You’re the catalyst in making that happen.
I appreciate that. It was great coming on here and being able to speak to you and everyone.
Important Links
- Digital Age Business
- https://PitchInvestorsLive.com/
- Kevin Harrington – Past episode
- Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course
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Engage People On Social Media To Bring In New Clients with Sean Hyde
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Episode Summary:
Building a successful business is one of the most challenging yet rewarding things you’ll ever do in your life. The path can be rocky, to say the least, and you’ll encounter numerous learning experiences along the way. Sean Hyde, Founder of Ideation Digital, is no different. He’s made a lot of mistakes when he was starting out. He learned how to transform those mistakes into learning opportunities in order to develop the tools he needs to grow his business. One of the key nuggets Sean shares is the importance of getting the right team to engage people on social media to tell their story to win the clients.
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Our guest on The Successful Pitch is Sean Hyde who is the Founder of a company called Ideation Digital. His real expertise is helping people use social media to tell their story to pull in new clients. I always love to hear the story of how somebody were struggling to raise money with a Kickstarter campaign that didn’t have social media and he gives some really great insights on engaging people with social media. He said, “When you’re looking to get the right team, you want to hire slow and fire fast and don’t ignore the red flags when you’re interviewing people.” He also said that his expertise is having his staff give him what he calls an end of day report. That’s the culture fit to work for him is, “What did you do every day? You have to give a short report on what went right, what went wrong, and what you’re going to do to fix it. He said, “When you make your clients the hero instead of you being the hero, then your business takes off.”
Listen To The Episode Here
Engage People On Social Media To Bring In New Clients with Sean Hyde
Our guest is Sean Hyde. He’s a lifelong entrepreneur at heart. He’s been involved in establishing businesses in real estate, automotive and marketing. He also has in-depth experience and has held designation is in the financial and equity market investing sectors. He’s the owner of Five Day Solution and Ideation Digital, which are two marketing strategy companies that serve businesses at different levels depending on where they are in their development. His company has worked with entrepreneurs and business organizations to help them grow their businesses through innovative digital marketing solutions that include social media, branding, website development, and even search engine optimization. He started three successful businesses with no traditional startup capital and has grown them by reinvesting in himself and his people without the use of traditional small business funding or even angel investors. That’s going to be interesting to hear about. Sean, welcome to the show.
Thanks, John. That was a heck of an introduction. I appreciate it.
You say you’re an entrepreneur at heart. How young were you? Take us back to when you realized that you wanted to be an entrepreneur.
Rich Dad Poor Dad: What The Rich Teach Their Kids About Money – That The Poor And Middle Class Do Not!
To be honest with you, this was a total fluke. It’s the funniest thing. I was doing the traditional thing. I went to school. I was a pretty smart kid. I had skipped some grades and I read a lot when I was nerdy. I was on that straight path and I was about halfway through college and had to go on a flight. I went to the bookstore because I like to read, and I picked up Rich Dad Poor Dad, the Robert Kiyosaki book. I started reading through it. That’s an easy read, but it has a lot of impactful points. One of the things that stuck with me was Robert Kiyosaki discussed how most people’s biggest expense is taxes. He was like, “If you own your own business, if you have your own investments, you can save that 35% right off the top.” I was like, “That makes a lot of sense that I can make 35% extra money or give myself a raise. I can make less and pursue my passions if I do this. If I learn the tax system and I learn real estate investments, I learned how to invest in a company.
After reading that book, I finished college anyway, but I went right to work for a real estate developer who owned his own business thinking that I could learn from him. He had heard about me through his kids who had said, “Sean’s doing all this stuff and he’s learning investing. That’s a guy I need to work for me.” I worked for him for about a year and learned a lot of what I did do. He was a very traditional real estate developer. He was more about cutting corners and playing games with finance, a really smart guy. I didn’t want a business where people were showing up on my door because they need to get paid and they had it or where you are constantly scrounging for financing to that next construction loan. As I decided I was going to leave that company, I went online and I was like, “Let me try and find businesses that have low startup capital.” I was a year out of college, still paying off student loans and I didn’t have a ton of money. I’ve had good profit margins and I found a windshield repair company and I literally, on a credit card, spent less than a thousand dollars at the time to fly out to Las Vegas. They taught me how to fix the windshields for a week. They put me up, sent me back with a kit, and out of the trunk or my BMW because I had started making money and I thought that’s what you do, and you make money is go buy a fancy car. I went to a car dealership on a Saturday morning and start fixing their windshields.
That was a Toyota dealership. We’ve got a Mercedes dealership because I grew up in the New York City area, so we had a lot of big car dealerships. It was a good area for that. They started saying to me things like, “Usually a windshield guy can fix leather tears or paint chips or bumpers.” I was like, “I don’t know how to do that, but I bet you I could figure it out.” I went online again and I started researching companies. I found a company in Michigan that did all of that. I moved to Michigan for two months and I learned how to do everything from fix dents to paint bumpers. I got a van and hired a couple of people. I already had a Jeep that we had bought with the money I started making as part of the company, and basically built a business from there. I had an uncle who had an advertising firm, so he worked with me on some marketing. We went in and made sure we were the best at what we did. Then I developed skill sets from there as far as making sure we were placed well for tax advantages. We had a hard time with sales, so I took a cold calling class and I started learning how to do a pitch and get in there so that we could get into these competitive markets and deal with these car dealers.
[Tweet “Have your staff give you a daily status on what they did to drive revenue.”]
I quickly learned that working on cars was not my passion. That’s how I got into the equity markets and real estate because investing is my passion, like helping other people grow things. I enjoyed going to seminars and meeting other people and mentoring people and saying the same things I learned, “Taxes are costing you money. Real estate’s a great long-term investment. Having your own business is an important thing.” I tried to hand off that business probably a little too quickly and sat back and said, “I’m pretty young and I’ve got some money and I’d had some success. What do you do?”I was like, “You do what everyone says they did when they were older. You travel. You try new things and meet people.” I started traveling the world. Long story short, I spent a few years traveling the world, trusted the wrong people, and made some mistakes as a young person. I lost most of what I had. I learned a lot of lessons on how not to manage your business, especially for around the country.
When you’re talking about growing your business from windshields to fixing bumpers, to me, the big lesson that stands out there is if your customers that are buying from you say, “We would also buy the following five other things,” that’s a great way to figure out that you have something that people are willing to pay for without you having to do a lot of expensive research, as opposed to trying to figure out what to sell people. If they tell you they’ll buy it and they want these other services, that’s valuable whether you’re selling windshield wipers or anything in business.
The other hand on that is customer acquisition for most of us is our biggest expense. If we can sell more of the customers we already have, why wouldn’t you try and do that? In real estate, they’re the same thing where I worked with a guy for awhile that said, “If you have a family renting your house and they’re growing, they’re going to move because they needed more room. Look into the cost of expanding that house because in a lot of cases, it will be worth it to you to have the equity of your home and keep a good tenant in your house rather than having to start all over trying to find a good tenant.” A lot of businesses use that concept where if you have a client or a customer that you love and they’re asking for things that you can give them in addition to what you’re doing, why wouldn’t you?
You also alluded to making some bad decisions in your youth and losing everything. Doing due diligence on people before you hire them, before you take their money as an investor, who you have on your team, even due diligence on who you take on as a client is a valuable thing for people to understand. A lot of people are so happy to have an investor or have a new client or get somebody to fill this job, they don’t take the time. What would you say are things you’ve learned so you don’t repeat that mistake of getting involved in business with the wrong people?
If I can steal a quote from Eben Pagan, it’s to, “Hire slowly, fire quickly.” I was too attached to people. I grew up around people. I was social and I was loyal. Loyalty’s very important and I got too attached. If I hire somebody, I can make it work. Even when I saw red flags, I tried to work through it and that was a mistake. The other big mistake I made was I didn’t put systems in place. I didn’t understand even that concept at that age. I would hire somebody that had worked for an autobody shop and think painting bumpers at a car dealership is going to be no issue. It actually was very different for them and the independence was a challenge for them because nobody’s looking over their shoulder. Those were things I did not take into consideration. One of the biggest lessons I learned was hiring the right people and then giving them the tools and the support they need and how important that is if you really want to grow a business that’s not dependent on you.
[Tweet “Hire slowly, fire quickly.”]
Do you have one cultural fit that you’ve decided for your company, Ideation Digital, that is a filter you use on whether somebody is a good fit for your company so you’re hiring the right people?
For me it, everything else aside, I have to work with results-oriented people, so they can have different approaches. At the end of the day, what did you work on today? What results did you get? What challenges were there and what questions do you have? Whatever you’re doing every day, you need to get some result. Sometimes that results we learned what not to do. You can learn from that and you can apply that. The biggest thing is your team has to be working on growing your business and it’s me gathering information. Especially if you’re building a new business, you’re not going to do everything right the first time, but you need people to understand they have to get out there and make things happen even if they’re the wrong things so that we know what the wrong things are.
Have your staff give you an end of day report. It’s measurable. If somebody is not willing to do that, then they’re probably not a fit for you. That’s micro-managing to be asking me what I did every day. Law firms, they have to say what they did every fifteen minutes for billable hours. There are all kinds of variation on that. Some people are like, “How about once a week?” You’re like, “No, every day. I need to know what the end of the day report is.” How did you come up with the name Five Day Solution?
When I stopped traveling, I did a brief stint in corporate America for two and a half years just to see what it was like. I got promoted out of existence. During that time, I had a girl that worked for me. I was running first class airline. I had 80 bartenders and 100-something cleaning people working for me. One of the bartenders was going through a bad divorce and she was going to lose all the equity in her car because they were literally going to repossess it. She had, let’s say, $8,000. I said, “In real estate, there’s something called a five-day sale, which is how you sell a house in five days from market value.” I was like, “Let’s try this on your car,” and it works. Believe it or not, a car dealer bought it from market value. She got all her equity out of it, sold it in five days, didn’t get it repossessed, and didn’t have to take any more credit hits. I tried this again and it worked. I was like, “I’m going to write an eBook, How to Sell Any Car in Five Days.”
When I moved to Charleston to start working with my uncle who had the advertising firm to develop this new business brand, I’m like, “I know a lot of things that you can do in five days. They’ll have a big impact on your life that I can make these little books about.” I had started studying digital marketing and online marketing strategies when they were still new-ish. I moved here, and I started meeting small business owners that needed help with their websites, their online marketing, and marketing in general with smaller budgets. I was like, “There’s a real need for that. There’s nobody addressing this small business marketing niche out there. These traditional advertising firms want $10,000 to $20,000. No one’s out there on that smaller budget range. Let me look into that.” We kept the name even though we took a shift, but we stuck with it because we do fast turnarounds. One of our things with that first business model was we’re a small business marketing model. Small businesses need quicker turnaround, smaller budgets, more ROI. We’re provable ROI so that’s what we focused on and we kept that name.
You’ve been able to grow your businesses without taking either angel investing or bank financing. What is the secret sauce you have there?
I don’t know if it’s secret sauce. A lot of people will probably tell you that’s a mistake because I’m sure you could grow it faster if you did it the other way in some circumstances. For me, it was like an eat what you kill theory. You want this realistically. I got out there and I said, “We’ve got to make money and we’ve got to be smart with his money if we want to keep growing,” and I do want to keep growing. I want the schedule I want, I want the lifestyle I want, and I want to be able to talk to people. I mentor kids or other adults in business and say, “I did start a business with a small credit card purchase. Five Day Solution, I started with a Groupon. I spent $15 at Groupon. I bought a digital marketing education course. It was this huge comprehensive course and that’s how I started that business. I spent two months working through this certification course and implementing all the strategies. We’ve grown from growing that business to now building a second brand off of that.
Engage People On Social Media: Small businesses need quicker turnaround, smaller budgets, more ROI.
I don’t know that everyone would agree with me. Robert Kiyosaki, who I love would not agree with me because he’s all about leveraging other people’s money. For me, it’s worked very well to be able to keep that motivation and keep control of my finances. One of the problems I ran into with my first business was when the banking markets went crazy. Some of my line of credits were like credit cards so I had a lot of credits. They went from 7% to 23% overnight when the banking crisis happened. You can imagine what quadrupling your overhead looks like when you’re running a business. When we did try that out for a little bit, it wasn’t worth it. I backed away pretty quickly from even using like credit lines in some cases.
You continue to be a good student even though you’ve been out of school for several years to continue to grow your skills. Would that be something you would encourage other people to do as well?
Absolutely. You read in the papers, you see all these memes that every successful person is constantly reading and educating themselves, especially in my industry, digital marketing changes daily. Facebook puts out a new platform or product or new algorithm. It’s the same thing with Google, with Snapchat, good this week or bad? Is Twitter going to implode? These are real questions. Some of the people that I try to follow, the smartest marketers I know, say they get up every morning to read every article that’s out there on what’s going on. What the new abilities are because these platforms, in order to compete, are constantly adding new features and new functions. Some of them are useful and some of them are time wasters. Part of our business success is knowing the difference.
Do you have a story of someone you’ve helped using social media to get them more sales?
We’ve done some interesting things. My uncle runs a traditional but very successful advertising firm. When I started this, he was like, “Social media, that’s all fad. It’s a tool. It will be okay but it’s not going to be a thing.” There was a local woman here who’s trying to publish a book. She got a newspaper column and she got these cooking classes and she even had a local TV show. She was putting out a cooking book and she did a crowdfunding. About three or four days out, she’d only raised about 15% of what she was looking for.
I went to her because I knew her. When I saw what she was doing. I sent her a message. I was like, “April, why don’t you let me help you? I can go to Facebook and find people that have used your specific crowdfunding platform that liked cookbooks and like supporting these events and put your thing in front of just them, and let’s see if we can get someone engaged.” By the end of her campaign, she’d raised 10% more than she was looking for. It took her from not even coming close to being able to publish her book to having more money than she needed. She added in features and gave people bonuses and was able to start her business and her book from there. We’ve done a lot of interesting things like that. I got mentioned in that book. It’s one of my favorite things. I’m like, “If you look into this book, in the credits it says, “Thank you, Sean Hyde, for stepping in and saving the day.” It’s silly but to me that was a big thing. I spent maybe an hour helping somebody out and but now I’m in a book.
You’ve got not just the right people, but you’ve got the right people engaged on social media. What are your suggestions and techniques on how to get people engaged when you make a social media post?
With most business owners, their biggest problem is specificity. I could go to so many business owners and ask them what their offer is. What are you actually offering? Exactly work on that pitch. What is the specific value that you’re offering in exchange for their value and their money? Most business owners cannot define that. You run into that with so many clients where I’m like, “I can just beat people over the head with the name of your business, but that’s not going to get us anywhere. That’s like that old school marketing where maybe if someone sees a Whirlpool ad 3,000 times, when they go to buy a washer, they’ll think Whirlpool. We’re in a place where we can be so much better than that.
[Tweet “With most business owners, their biggest problem is specificity.”]
The one thing that everyone needs to concentrate on whether it’s your strategies, or like recently Donald Miller, he’s like, “Keep it short.” He said, “One of the brain’s main purpose is to conserve energy, so don’t waste people’s energy and making them think. Get right to the point.” Don’t try to be the hero. That’s the other thing that I see a lot of people make a mistake of is they constantly is talking about the products when people want a guide. Everyone wants to be their own hero, but they want someone that says, “I can help you be that hero,” and not someone that’s like, “I’m the hero.” Rather than saying, “Here are the 4,000 products we offer,” we try to work with people on saying, “Here are the results you will get that you want from working with us.” Those are the two easiest things that people can do to create a lot of impact when they’re posting on social media.
Talk about going from stumbling through your pitch to soaring from boring your audience, to inspiring them, and from confusing them to giving them clarity as the outcomes of having a good elevator pitch, for example. What are some of those outcomes and journeys you take people on?
As our brand or when we’re working with customers?
Customers. How about somebody who is compliant?
I don’t even know that we have any of those, to be honest with you. I’m trying to think we work hard with that. I would say some of the clients that let us just handle that are pretty good. A lot of them, they have a difficult time stepping outside themselves and seeing that. We worked with some restaurants and we put together some restaurant posts that were all about what it’s like having the perfect birthday dinner with your friends and then ran that ad on Facebook at people having birthdays coming up in the next seven to fourteen days. Rather than saying, “We have the best menu or we have the best sushi, or we have the best burgers,” it’s pictures of fun-looking birthday dishes with people having a good time and saying, “This is what it’s going to feel like on your birthday when you come here. Don’t risk going to a restaurant that might have bad service or bad food and ruin it. You want to feel like these people that are having fun over here,” and then putting it in front of people probably right around the time they’re trying to decide where they’re going to go to dinner for their birthday or what they’re going to do.
It’s not about you and the quality of your food. It’s the emotional connection because that’s the difference between right brain-left brain engagement. If you’re just giving people information about how good your food is from a nutritional standpoint of view as opposed to how you’re going to feel having the experience at that restaurant, that’s much more engaging. That needs to translate into social media is what I’m hearing you saying.
Engage People On Social Media: One of the brain’s main purpose is to conserve energy, so don’t waste people’s energy and making them think. Get right to the point.
With food in particular, you can do that because we all connect to that. Feeding someone is taking care of them. That’s part of nurturing. Restaurants in particular, if they spent more time with engagement on that level of the experience and the nourishing and the nurturing potential they have as a good restaurant, rather than saying, “We have $4.99 appetizers or we have the biggest menu around,” and then putting it in front of the right audience, which we have a lot of opportunity to do these days with all these different platforms, finding those exactly who we want to find, that’s a great way to do it. You can show them like, “Afterwards, this is how you’re going to feel more important and you’re going to feel more special. You’re going to feel less stressed.” I’ve seen a couple of restaurants adopt these order-ahead-of-time platforms that busy parents love. If you market that to say, “You’re frazzled enough, let us handle dinner,” as opposed to, “Here’s our new little gadget that we have where you can order takeout from an app on your phone. Download our app right now.” You can find some good results with those messages.
You’re also experts at creating websites for people. What’s the biggest mistake you see people have on their business websites?
Usually, they don’t understand basic search engine optimization and their content. A lot of people, the first thing we ask them is, “Is your website showing up when people search for you?”They’ll be like, “Yeah.” When people search for Joel Murphy’s Tractor Company, it comes up first. My first question is, “If I search for tractors in Chicago and Illinois, do you come up first?” They’re like, “No. We don’t come up at all. What’s the point?” I’m like, “If somebody already knows Joel Murphy Tractor Company, there are about 7,000 different ways they could find you. If I’m new in town or I need a new tractor and my old store went down or I don’t want to go to Lowe’s, the first thing most people do is they’re going to go on the internet and look for tractors stores near me. They’re going to look up your reviews and they’re going to look for you, especially on mobile now. The statistics say 54% of people that searched for your business on mobile enter your store the same day.
People that aren’t adopting mobile-friendly websites are considering the mobile experience as another big one. People tend to talk about themselves and talk about their product. One thing we see a lot is they missed talking about their actual product though. We’ll find business managers that get in and they talk about taxes, talking about accounting, and talk about who their clients are. They never actually say, “We’re business managers.” When you type business managers into Google, they don’t show up and that’s something a lot of people miss, what are the fundamental keywords that you need to have on your website as part of your content.
[Tweet “People tend to talk about themselves and talk about their product.”]
What I’ve found interesting for me is coming up with a brand identity, when you can have a tagline that is memorable and tells people what you do. For example, mine is I’m the Pitch Whisperer and I’ve done enough content and been on enough interviews where people say that. If you Google Pitch Whisperer, that gives you all kinds of stuff about me. It’s much easier for people to remember than my personal name. Those kinds of things have some value in creating content that can drive traffic to your site as well.
The other side of that is if I go look for the pitch whisperer and you’re one of ten websites, and there are different Google business pages and images there, that you’re okay. If I have to Google the pitch whisperer and it’s seven different pages on your website plus your video plus ten of your images plus I’m listening to your podcast, you are the pitch whisperer. I’m not looking for that anymore and that’s another thing we work with people on is and especially in smaller markets, you have the ability. One of our clients is a national franchise that does auto work and they were missing some segments. We went into keyword research on custom paint jobs. It’s a huge search market here. You have your franchise site. We could create some YouTube videos, build your own easy small site and do a couple of posts, and literally dominate every search for custom paint jobs in this entire metropolitan market. That’s exactly what we did, hundred searches a month just for that term and maybe another 200 for related terms.
All of a sudden, they’re getting all these extra leads off of that just on doing a couple little tweaks. That’s exactly what you’re talking about that to be of such a multimedia world now, it’s not just the website, it’s who’s pointing at your website that’s saying, “These people are legitimate,” because the search engines want to see that. On top of that, on your website is text and images and videos and audio. Search engine to read that, that’s the other side. Are your images numbered 3561243? That can’t be seen. Is your image called Dinner Special at Charleston’s Best Restaurant? That’s the other side that people forget sometimes.
The importance of video content helps your search engine optimization. That is something that people can even just Facebook Live or Snapchat. What’s your thought on all of that? Will Facebook Live take over or Snapchat? My observation from my little world of people I know who have teenagers is they’re not even on Facebook. They love Snapchat because it doesn’t stay around, their parents aren’t there. There are a lot of psychological reasons why people use certain platforms and I wonder how that fits into your branding and marketing strategy for your clients?
We always look at a product market mix first. We definitely want to look at what you’re offering, who your market is, and then figuring out where your market is and that changes. There are a lot of Snapchat now that they’re facing challenges because there’s competition. Their biggest challenge is that their parents are getting on there because they like the filters now. Twitter used to be the hide out from Facebook, and then Instagram was the hide out from Facebook, and now Snapchat is the hide out from it. Their parents are following that world little by little and they’re trying to hide deeper and deeper in the internet somewhere. To answer your question, I don’t know that Snapchat will last forever. I don’t think they’re going to make the money, but Twitter hasn’t made money yet and they’re still around. That’s not always a great indication, but as newer outlets for the younger generation come out, they will run to those because their parents and their uncles and their grandparents don’t know about it yet, but also because we live in a society where everyone wants to be that early adopter. Everyone wants to be the first one with the new iPhone, even though it’s going to have bugs and be overpriced. Everyone wants to be the first on that social platform even if nobody’s using it because they were the first one there. We’ll always have that attraction and part of the challenge is monitoring them.
Engage People On Social Media: Everyone wants to be the first on that social platform even if nobody’s using it because they were the first one there.
Any final thoughts you want to leave everyone with, Sean?
I agree with a lot of what you say so I’ll keep listening to your show. The clarity of message, it’s a big thing. Everyone needs to work on being able to explain your business very quickly and be able to explain that from the perspective of how you’re going to help the person you’re talking to. What’s in it for them is what everyone tends to overlook. I see this with so many clients when they have their marketing message, and they tell you, “Talk about our products or talk about this or show this.” They’ve got a million-people trying to do that to them. They want to know what’s in it for them. Everyone wants to know that these days. Make sure that when you do it, it’s concise because people don’t have attention spans. Make sure that you’re taking that, “We’re the guide, not the hero perspective,” or “We can help you and here’s what’s in it for you,” perspective. Those are the big things that we see a lot of people having challenges.
How can people follow you? What’s your Twitter handle? What’s your website?
I’m pretty much @SeanPHyde almost everywhere, that’s Twitter. You can find me on Facebook pretty easily. Those are the ones I stick to. I do have an Instagram but honestly, I’m not active, the same thing with Snapchat. I spend so much time on other people’s social media, stick to the ones that I’m good at. Our website for our new brand, which is where we would focus, www.ideation-digital.com. Anyone can go out there. They can reach me at [email protected] with their questions and I’m always happy top help.
Thanks, Sean. You’ve been a great guest. I appreciate your sharing your insights on what it takes to have a successful pitch using social media and making your clients the hero, not yourself.
Thank you, John. I appreciate the opportunity.
Links Mentioned:
- Ideation Digital
- Five Day Solution
- Rich Dad Poor Dad
- Groupon
- @SeanPHyde Twitter
- [email protected]
- Sean’s Facebook
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