How To Become Millionaires At Make It Happen University With Spencer Lodge
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Episode Summary:
It’s not rocket science. The real reason people don’t buy from you has nothing to do with price or time; it’s because they don’t trust you. If you want some real insights on how to build up your confidence up to your first million, Spencer Lodge has some great tips on how to do that. He shares his expertise in selling at Make It Happen University. He’s also a leader in the international financial services and sales industry with over 24 years of experience although if you look at him, you would never know it. Spencer has personally trained thousands of people to build some of the largest and most successful financial consultancies. His university, “Make It Happen”, was born to give entrepreneurs and employees the tools they need to succeed, literally training people on how to become millionaires. Feeling skeptical? It’s your call. But just so you know, Spencer’s journey started with a working class kid from a working class environment. If that kid with limited resources made it, then with your current assets in business, so can you!
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Our guest on The Successful Pitch is Spencer Lodge, who’s an expert in selling. He has got a whole university called Make It Happen for a reason. He said, “When you write a book,” which he’s written a new one called, It’s Not Rocket Science, “you’re creating content that’s valuable to read versus creating something valuable that you want to share.” It’s all about not taking criticism personally. He has some real great tips on how to do that. He said, “The real reason people don’t buy from you has nothing to do with price or time. It’s because they don’t trust you.” He gives us insights into how to build up our confidence and more importantly, being aware of how people receive what you say when you say it.
Listen To The Episode Here
How To Become Millionaires At Make It Happen University With Spencer Lodge
I’m honored to have my guest, Spencer Lodge, who is a leader in the international financial services and sales industry with over 24 years of experience, although if you look at him, you would never know it. He looks like he’s just out of school. He’s personally trained thousands of people and help them build some of the largest and most successful financial consultancies. He delivers expert advice for clients and investors around the world. He’s dedicated his career to building and training people to achieve their full potential. In 2015, he decided it was time to spread his wealth with people who want to learn about the recipe to success. Make It Happen, his university, was born that give entrepreneurs and employees the tools they need to succeed. He’s done so many amazing things. He was the top regional director for seven years running, he’s a top wealth manager globally for multiple years, and he’s literally trained people on how to become millionaires. Spencer, welcome to the podcast.
John, thank you for that lovely introduction.
I had the pleasure of being on your Facebook Live show. I’ve had guests from Australia and Israel but never anybody from Dubai, so you’re the first. Would you take us back, Spencer, to your own story of origin? It can go back as far as you want in school. Did you always know you wanted to “make it happen?”
The journey starts with a working-class kid from a very average working-class environment. To be honest with you, I was bullied quite severely at school and suffered trauma but was very grateful in the end because the bullying taught me resilience and taught me that, “I’ll show you. I’ll prove it to you,” type of mindset. I wasn’t very good at school. I never missed a day. I wasn’t one of those kids that played or anything but I wasn’t very good at school. I left school. I wanted to become a ski instructor. I did that.
One August when there wasn’t any snow, my mother kicked me out of bed and said to me, “It’s time to get a proper job or proper career.” I was like, “I have one, mother. How dare you?” She said, “No, seriously, it’s time.” She ran a recruitment consultancy back in London and so I didn’t have much choice but to go for some interviews and find out what I wanted to do. I fell into selling and then going for a job interview with these two guys. I had no idea what to do or what to say. It was the first suit I ever bought and worn. Remembering back, it was something like dark green, a horrific color. God only knows what people must have thought of me. The guy took one from his pocket and said to me, “Sell me this pencil.” I was like, “Are you serious?” He was like, “Yes, sell me the pencil.” I don’t remember what happened but on the back of that, I was very lucky to get offered the job. I was the trainee photocopier, an office equipment salesperson.
Make It Happen University: Financial service is interesting because everybody wants to make money, so you could appeal to people’s sense of greed.
I worked in London. It was a competitive environment, but I didn’t know what competition was. I didn’t know what tough was. My life was knocking on the doors of 100 companies every morning and my patch said, “Easy 31 Postcard in London.” Every afternoon, I had to make 100 cold calls and 99 people would say no or they would swear at me. One person would say yes, and that one person was enough. I was taught to understand the 99 noes led always to a yes. That’s what happened. I then became okay. I wasn’t a massive success. I was young, in my early 20s. I was earning decent money, better than most of my friends were earning, so I was quite pleased with myself. Then the opportunity came to go and work in financial services in the Far East. Because I had some experience overseas as a kid, my dad worked in the oil industry overseas, so I’ve been to where he was living and spent time with him, it excited me to go and see a different country and work in a different country.
I then went to the Far East to Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong, across the Africa, Europe, South America and now the Middle East, so ten countries all through those years. What I found along the way is that first of all, financial service is interesting because everybody wants to make money, so you could appeal to people’s sense of greed. When you’re prospecting, when you get 99 noes and one yes in the photocopier industry, you would often get 50 noes and 50 yeses, because people were interested to learn more. Getting your foot through the door back in the early ‘90s wasn’t as difficult. Then I learned my craft. My boss said to me, “None is going to trust a 23-year-old kid looking like you. They are not going to trust their money with you, so you have to make sure that you’re a hotshot.” I went and studied and studied. He used to give me a book every couple of days and he said, “Unless you’ve the read and you can tell me about it, I don’t want to talk to you.” I was busy learning.
About six months into the role, I knew more about financial services than most people who have been doing it for ten years because I’ve taken time as part of my learning experience to study. I wasn’t given an option, so whether it’s was the equity market, the commodities market, it didn’t matter what it is, I knew about it. I was this youngster with limited life experience but a lot of essentially theoretical and academic experience and knowledge in financial services. Then I went on to be pretty successful at that. I then became successful at that and was one of the best in the industry that I was noted to be. I built various sales teams. What happened after all of that massive success, something else kicked in, which was the cause of the biggest change in my life, and that was my ego. My ego grew out of control. I became arrogant. I thought I was above others. That was an ugly thing. I remember I sat down with my boss one day and he said to me, “After sixteen years of working together, you’ve become too big for the company. You have to go.”
It was truly devastating when that experience happened to me. However, it was the first time in my life that I’ve got time to sit and reflect. Whilst I was recovering from my ego being bashed, I looked back at all of the things I’ve done and I worked out the things that I enjoyed and the things that I probably didn’t enjoy as much. I’ve been teaching people for years how to sell, “Is there a way that I can put it into some form of format and structure so that people can learn themselves?” Then I came up with this ridiculous idea of producing an online sales training university. That ridiculous idea was in a studio recording 400 videos about selling, literally everything from what you wear, how you wear it, all the way through to how you present yourself to how you prospect, how you market, how you use social media, how you close the prospect, how you look after your clients, everything in there, A to Z of selling. I launched it in December 2016.
What I find so interesting is you talk about learning through reading a book from your old boss and it’s one of the sales behaviors that is now in Make it Happen University where you were talking about where you’re talking about reading a book a week. You have a new book coming out. You went from reading a book to now writing a book, so that’s always an interesting journey.
Writing a book always sounds like a great idea until you start. There is a lot to it. You have to find out and think it through. It is not just a case of downloading your memoir. You have to put stuff together that’s valuable for people to read rather than valuable for you to share.
[Tweet “Create content people want to read versus what you want to share.”]
That’s true whether you’re writing a book or creating content for an online course or going out in a sales pitch or pitching to get your startup funded. Whatever it is, what you’re saying here, Spencer, is make it about who’s reading your book or what the audience is and not about what you think is important. Would that be accurate?
Spot on, absolutely. You’ve got to create something that people want to get engrossed with. When you pick up a book and you read a really good book, you are one chapter in and you cannot put the thing down. That’s a good book. It doesn’t matter what the subject matter. That, to me, is a good book. That, for me, is what I’m trying to create with the book that I’ve got coming out because I wanted it to be something that people would be drawn into as they start to read it. They could learn a bit about my story but how I accomplished what I accomplished and the basic principles that I’ve used along the way and essentially the skills that I’ve learned and how I apply them.
What’s the title?
Because I’m well -known for saying this and have been known for saying this for 25 years, the title is It’s Not Rocket Science.
I love it but there is a science to it. You don’t have to be a genius to understand is the takeaway I get.
Everything I know is literally skills-based. I’ve learned skills; there are soft skills, technical skills, the process-driven skills, the stuff that everybody can learn, which I did. I hear a lot of times, and you would have heard this, John, people say, “I can’t be a sales person. I’d never make a sale person. I don’t have the gift of the gab. I’m not an extrovert character like you.” When I look at successful salespeople that I’ve been inspired by over the years, some of them have been incredible introverts. A lot of salespeople are like standup comedians. A standup comedian is an entertainer on stage when he is performing and then when they come off stage, they become somewhat withdrawn and into themselves. They are not so gregarious when they are not digging with their clients. When I look at brilliant salespeople, it is not about what they say, it’s about what they learn. Invariably, if you are going to see people for the first time, your job is to try and find a solution for people’s problems. Your job is not to come in with your briefcase full of products and try to sell you product. That’s what the stereotype is, isn’t it?
Like the Fuller Brush man here in America back in the day, or the knives or whatever it is, people selling jewelry on the street with their coat. It’s that mindset that turns so many people off. You’re changing the perception of what it’s like to think of yourself as a professional salesperson.
At the end of the day, it’s a profession when you think about it. If all of us salespeople resigned at every company across the world, the economy would collapse overnight. The stock market would collapse. Wars would end because nobody would be selling guns. The automotive industry would stop. The oil industry would come to a stop. When you think about it, people would not be able to travel because flights wouldn’t be sold, and so it’s such an important skill to learn, yet where does people go to learn it? That is the reason for putting the university together. It came from that. We need to learn how to do this. In this modern age where we don’t want to go and sit in a classroom or we don’t want to go to a seminar, people want to be on their mobile phone and they want to do it in their own time, on the subway or in the car or wherever it is they’re going and want to be able to learn on the go, and so the university was put together to enable people to learn on the go through their phones or whatever device they want to use.
Make It Happen University: Some things that people say to you aren’t meant in the way that you are defensively receiving it.
You also mentioned that after a certain point, you’ve got a little arrogant and one of the things that you have on your course is the ability to accept criticism and they’re tied together. Can you explain a little bit about what’s in the course under that topic, accepting criticism?
The problem with people in many respects, whether that’s constructive, destructive or conflictional criticism, people don’t break it down. They look at it as an attack on them before anything else, so regardless of how it is positioned, a lot of the times, they take it personally. What I try to teach people to understand is that criticism is good, that someone who is taking the time to say, “You are not as good as you should be or maybe you could improve this area,” when actually they don’t need to, they can let you be. They can let you wallow in whatever environment you’re in but they are taking time to say, “You could be better by doing this or by doing that.” To me, that is a positive thing, “I don’t like the way you X or I don’t like the way you Y.” Think about what they are actually saying. They’ve taken 30 seconds, one minute or five minutes out of their time to try and add some value to you. It may be their own way. We all have to remember is it is not what we say to people, it is how people receive what we say. If you remember that, sometimes you will then remember that some things that people say to you aren’t meant in the way that you are defensively receiving it. It may have been meant in a more positive manner.
That’s everything, especially when you’re getting objections from the client. It’s one thing if you’re getting feedback from a co-worker or your boss of some criticism on how you can improve, but when you start getting feedback where the client is criticizing you or your product. Any tips on how to not take that personally?
At the end of the day, if someone is criticizing your product or you’re selling an external product, then you didn’t make it. It’s not your product, if you’ve invented something. It’s just that a lot of people would have taken it personally. Why would you take something personally if someone is taking the time? If people are saying nothing to you and you know nothing about your product that is negative or could be improved, and then you don’t make any sales because there is an obvious flaw in your product or your presentation or your ability to communicate, then you’re going to run out of steam pretty quick. It’s almost like a little bit of indirect tough love.
What causes a lot of burnout is taking all that rejection personally. You learned how to not do that back in the day, cold calling.
When you’re nineteen years old and you’re told by your boss, “You’re going to get 99 noes, but in there somewhere is going to be a yes, so look out for it,” You are conditioned as a nineteen-year-old kid. That’s it, you’re such a sponge, you go, “Fair enough.” Every time somebody who says no or swears at you, which many times happen, you’d be like, “That’s one of my 99 noes, I will move on.”
[Tweet “Selling is not rocket science.”]
One of the things you have in Make It Happen University that I find fascinating is this concept of, “Dominate, don’t compete.” Can you explain what that is?
A lot of the time, you hear people talking about their competition. What’s that all about? If you’re in a market, if you’re in an industry, surely the best way to be in that industry is to be the dominating business within that industry. It doesn’t matter what you’re selling. If you think about it, who dominates the space for us to watch movies online?
Netflix.
That’s right. Who are they competing with? No one. They don’t have any because they’ve nailed it. They’ve dominated their market. If you and I want to park down and get some fried chicken, where will we go to get fried chicken from?
Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Right, so that dominates that market, that industry. There are examples everywhere of people dominating their marketplace. We don’t even call something by the name of the service. Sometimes we call it by the brand.
Kleenex is a great example of that.
We Google something. We clean it, we get some Kleenex. We Xerox it. That’s what’s being said over the years. There are a million different examples of that. You have to be careful to say dominating. Blackberry is a great example. When Blackberry first came out with emails on mobile phones, they completely wiped the floor with everybody else. Nokia was the go-to mobile phone before then, but again Nokia didn’t keep up with their research and somebody came in and knocked them off. Dominating isn’t something that once you get there, you just sit there and say, “Fine, we are here now. We are the champions.” Netflix will have somebody to challenge them. What’s my point about this? If you’re going to be in business, you should want to dominate the market that you’re in. You should want to be the market leader and dominate, and not looking at what anybody else is up to. Just focus on being the best you can possibly be at what you do. If you do that, then you’ll find that you don’t get sucked in to using energy, negatively and positively, worried about what’s going on over your shoulder.
I’m all about focusing on your own progress and you win. I have a whole story around that in my keynote from swimming, instead of turning my head to the side and staying focused on the wall and the competitor looked to see if he was ahead or not, that little extra half a second of looking, taking the eye off the prize caused me to beat him, so it’s a fascinating.
I want to ask about your insights into why people don’t buy. The most common ones are no time or no money, and you go into how to handle all of those. Do you want to give us a few tips that will intrigue us enough to say, “I’ve got to sign up for Make It Happen University now because that’s my biggest challenge?”
Why don’t people buy? The reason they don’t buy is they don’t trust you. It’s not that they don’t have a need. I will give you an example, you walk into a car showroom, a car dealership in the States or UK. Tell me what percentage of interest do you have in buying a car? You either have 0% or you have between 1% and 100% interest? If you have 0% interest in cars or buying a car, why would you go to a car showroom? There must be 1% of you that says, “I’m interested.” It may not be a big interest but it’s interest. That’s the first thing to consider. Why do people take the time to meet somebody who is selling something if they have no interest?
A simple fact is they do have interest. Do they have an interest in buying the product or service from you? Maybe not. That’s down to your skills. The reason invariably that people don’t buy is that they do not have a good level of rapport with you. They haven’t built up a sufficient level of trust that you know your subject and they don’t believe that you care enough to look after whether it’s a financial investment or an emotional investment in them. It’s as simple as that. It’s about mastering your craft. Let’s say you and I are in business together and we say, “We need to shop for an accountant,” so we go and find an accountant and we go and meet three accountants. How do we choose the best one?
Make It Happen University: The reason invariably that people don’t buy is that they do not have a good level of rapport with you.
Usually by reference or who we like the best.
I may sound a little bit naïve, but I don’t know much about accountancy, but we will go and sit down with three accountants. Let’s say we’ve never met any of them and we haven’t been referred to them and each one of them charges exactly the same amount of money. How do we decipher? We will go with the one that you and I connect with the best. That invariably is the person probably who asked the most questions, probably the person that found a way of creating some common ground with us, and probably the one that has taken time to make us a decent cup of coffee. We come out of that meeting and we walk back to our car together and we go, “I like him. Do you like him?” “He is good, isn’t he?” There you go, we’ve made the decision. That’s because that person has been trained well enough to understand us or to try and understand us.
A lot of it has to do with asking good questions about what’s our criteria but a lot of people don’t even start with that. They just start talking. This concept of trying to figure out whether someone’s going to buy from you or not and you get those objections, “I need to think about it. I trust you, but there’re other people who have to decide,” all the delay tactics that we hear, whether it’s selling a car or signing up for anything, do you find there’s any tactic that people should avoid because you’ve written a whole blog on that?
What we’ve got to understand is that selling is exactly the same as being a lawyer, an accountant, an engineer, a pilot, whatever it may be. It is a skill, an industry, and it is something that you’re supposed to learn properly. The reason that most people get it wrong is because they haven’t studied selling. They haven’t taken the time to learn. They got into selling by mistake or they got into it because they heard instant cash. They’ve had some random innocuous training, they’ve had someone leaning over their shoulder giving them a few tips and tricks. Lawyers have to pass the bar exam to go and defend someone in court. Accountants have to become CPAs. They have to be qualified to do it. Most salespeople are unqualified to sell because they have not taken a professional course in learning to sell, and so that’s a lot of the time the problem.
You can sell anything to anyone, but everything has to be aligned. When everything is aligned by you knowing everything you need to know, that is when the decision-making process becomes very easy for the person that you’re dealing with. You’re not just selling a product or service, you are the best product that you can sell. How on earth do you get a job when you go for a job interview if you can’t sell yourself?
Many people get so uncomfortable and talk about the lack of preparation. You know you’re going to be asked about yourself and you don’t have something ready to go. That’s crazy, isn’t it?
Even when you and I were younger and we would go to the bank to get a mortgage, we sit down with bank manager at his big desk, and he would sit there looking down at you on chairs that are lower than his, and he says, “How can I help you?” You are like, “I would like to borrow some money to get a mortgage,” and he would be like, “Let me think about it,” and he would ask you questions. You’re selling yourself to do business with the bank where they make money from you, which is nuts, but that’s how it used to be. How do you present yourself when you walk into the bank covered in paint and in a pair of ripped jeans? Would you have a better chance or worse chance than if you were dressed in a suit and became more appealing to that person? For me, you’ve got to understand that selling is a prerequisite for everything you do. Dominate your market is important. Understand that sales is a skill that you need to learn and if you learn it and you use it well, then it can be applied in all aspects of your life. I promise you, every single person in the audience, if you think you’re good at sales, great at sales or rubbish at sales, like everything, always start by learning. Nobody has monopoly on good ideas.
[Tweet “Don’t take criticism personally.”]
Compare it to someone like Tiger Woods or Meryl Streep. They’re still rehearsing, they’re still practicing, they’re still being coached. You have something in your eBook, How To Win, that talks about how to improve your confidence. I know from everything you’ve said that preparation is definitely one of the techniques to improve your confidence. Do you have anything else you want to leave us with around confidence?
Where does confidence come from when you think about it? We get confidence from people feeding us information that is positive and from having little successes. A lot of people lose confidence because they give themselves something that is too big to achieve, so they lose their will and they lose their way. Winning is all about little wins, small wins, because if you have small wins, it will enable you to build small amounts of confidence and you can have small wins consistently. The winning is giving yourself three things to do tomorrow. You go out and you do all three of them. They don’t have to be massive things, but if you get all three, there’s a win. A little win, back in the car, go and do something else. The next day, “I will do four things today. What are they going to be?” Small things, “I’m going to make sure I see this prospect and I get this referral from this prospect. I’m going to make sure that I book two appointments. I’m going to make sure that I spend an hour learning my presentation.” Whatever it may be, give yourself the opportunity to feel good about what you’re doing. Give yourself an opportunity to take small wins, enjoy and relish it just for a few minutes because it will do so much for your psychology, you wouldn’t believe.
That’s all about having integrity with yourself. The more we do what we tell ourselves we’re going to do, the more confident we have. That’s my big takeaway from what you said. I love it. The book is called, It’s Not Rocket Science. The university is MakeItHappen.University. I highly recommend both. Spencer, any other tips on how people can follow you on social media or buy your book?
On YouTube, there are over 100 videos you can go to see me doing various interviews, doing sales training, and different stuffs. If you go to Make It Happen Spencer Lodge, you will be able to find me on YouTube. It’s training stuff that you will make it happen. Spending a lot. If you go to my Facebook page, which is @MakeItHappenSpencerLodge, you will be able to find a bunch of videos and stuff there for you to get an idea of what I do and how I do it. If you want to follow me on Instagram, you can, which is @MakeItHappenSL. By all means go to the website, have a look, go on YouTube, comment, engage with me, ask me questions, go and find me on LinkedIn, go and ask me questions and I promise you I will answer questions for you. I will give you as much value as I possibly can to demonstrate to you what I’m all about and hopefully show you the kind of willing that I’m prepared to make for you as you should make for the people that you live with.
Spencer, you’re walking your talk. I love it. Thanks so much for being a guest.
My pleasure.
Links Mentioned:
- Spencer Lodge
- Make It Happen
- Facebook Live show – John Livesay interview with Spencer Lodge on Facebook Live
- MakeItHappen.University
- Make It Happen Spencer Lodge – YouTube
- @MakeItHappenSpencerLodge – Facebook
- @MakeItHappenSL – Instagram
- Make It Happen on LinkedIn
- https://www.makeithappen.university/
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Where The Magic Happens With Kevin Corcoran Jr.
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Episode Summary:
People say that the magic happens when we step out of our comfort zone. You’ve done it once or twice, and it clearly works. But what if you could step out of your comfort zone daily? Award-winning college professor Kevin Corcoran Jr. tells us how in his stunning new book, “Where the Magic Happens! The Science & Stories Behind Challenging Your Comfort Zone”. Blending the latest research, personal interviews and his own anecdotal experiences, Corcoran reveals how you can gain lasting confidence through confronting challenges big and small.
Kevin Corcoran Jr. holds an M.A. in Communication, teaches for National University, San Diego State University, and recently published his first book. With topics ranging from communication and leadership to mindfulness and teamwork, Kevin has worked closely with Apple, Sony, TEDx, Red Bull, Coldwell Banker, American Red Cross, and various startups in Southern California.
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Our guest on The Successful Pitch is Kevin Corcoran, who is the author of Where The Magic Happens! He has some great tips about curiosity, comfort zones, kindness and secrets into the science behind yes. He said, “Yes is all about having an open mind and figuring out what your intentional choice is in life. Saying no to new things can keep you in your comfort zone. If you want to get into the place where magic happens, you have to be willing to step out of your comfort zone.” He has a great story about doing that in the cold waters of Iceland. Enjoy the episode.
Listen To The Episode Here
Where The Magic Happens With Kevin Corcoran Jr.
I have as my guest, Kevin Corcoran, Jr., who is an award-winning college professor and a professional speaker. Over the years he has worked closely with Apple, Sony, gave a TEDx Talk that I saw that I highly recommend, Red Bull, Coldwell Banker, American Red Cross, and several other startups. He owns an MA in Communication and teaches for the National University in San Diego State. When he’s not teaching, he’s speaking or writing. You’ll find him walking barefoot, wearing swim trunks and he lives life as an adventurer. Kevin, welcome to the show.
Thanks, John. I’m so happy to be on.
You’re the author of this wonderful new book called Where The Magic Happens!: The Science And Stories Behind Challenging Your Comfort Zone. I’m a big believer that there’s no such thing as a comfort zone anymore with change happening fast. I loved this book and want to take a deep dive into it. Before we get to the book, would you mind taking us back to your own story of origin as far back as you want? You can go back before college, in college. How did that you wanted to start being passionate about communication?
For me, it started a long time ago during a play in third grade. We were supposed to do a play on dinosaurs and I was given a monologue because the teacher thought that I was a pretty competent young child. I stood on stage before the curtain opens and I remember being absolutely terrified to the point where I couldn’t do it. As a third grader, you don’t have resilience yet. I ran off the stage, ended up collapsing, laying on my side, throwing up, and crying. That stuck with me for longer than I would’ve ever realized. In the moment I was traumatized. It was something terrible. As I progressed and fast forward to different parts of my life, it constantly was something that was holding me back, this idea of public speaking or basically just being public, being in front of people, being in front of an audience.
Where The Magic Happens Book: Where the Magic Happens!: The Science & Stories Behind Challenging Your Comfort Zone
When I became a musician and I wanted to play live music, that was obviously a huge hurdle and definitely an obstacle from the desire that I had. I remember constantly being uncomfortable and hating it. It wasn’t until I finally, as a musician, pushed myself to the other extreme of it by doing things on stage that I never thought I could do. At one point I pushed it a little too far extreme and I stepped out on the front of the stage and I put my foot on someone’s head. I played a guitar riff while I was basically floating on the audience. It took doing that for me to realize that there was nothing to worry about all along except for having the resilience and having the courage to go into that unfamiliar space. How I knew I had an interest in communication is that I started to crave and I started to desire that discomfort as a thrill. I started to become an adrenaline junkie for things like jumping off cliffs into water or going skydiving or something like that, but that same rush kept coming when I was public speaking or when I was in front of people. I reframed how I looked at it. Instead of it being something to hold me back or something that I’d never be able to do, I saw it as a challenge for me to learn things about myself that I never thought I could do and to find out what’s truly possible despite our mindset of limitations.
How did you go from being a musician to being a college professor of communication?
I played music and I ended up playing music professionally at one point but never as a full-time career. I worked in the tech industry for a number of years with companies like Apple and Linux Foundation. At one point I remember I was working at a conference and I used to travel the country for these companies. I would basically work on the technology aspect behind big conferences. I remember at one point I was laying cable on the floor and I was taping it and that was my job, taping cable to the floor so that people wouldn’t trip over it and setting up wireless internet networks for the audiences. At one point one of my jobs was to film all of the speakers at a conference and then run a remote workstation. At any point I had eight to sixteen cameras in a bunch of different rooms and I was running it all remotely. I remember watching the videos and thinking to myself, “I want to be up there, I don’t want to be back here.” It was that moment that I decided, “I’m going to go to grad school and I’m going to get a higher education in communication so that I can be the person on the stage as opposed to the person behind the scenes.”
You literally started from the ground up with your taping down cords.
I taped cable to the floor. We use the term tech support, but really what I did during that time is I sat out front of the rooms with a little walkie-talkie. Basically, if a power strip went out, I had to go into the room, flip the little switch and turn the power surge back on. That was my glorified position as a tech industry expert. I knew I wanted to be on this stage, didn’t know how to get there, and decided that grad school would be a good option. With a Master’s in Communication, I figured they would teach us practical communication skills that I could then transfer straight into consulting and straight onto the stage. What ended up happening is as a result of that degree, I had a chance to teach. The first day teaching I was like, “This is it, this is great.” Remove the idea of the stage and it’s still the same thing. I was standing in front of a group of people having a chance to influence and I loved it. Hands down, teaching is my favorite thing in the world. I see training, I see speaking and I see teaching as all brothers and sisters to the same family.
You talk about this in your book Where the Magic Happens! about what it was like to give a TEDx talk. It’s a different talk than to lecture to a class, isn’t it?
Yes, absolutely. It’s very different.
Tell us the story of what it felt like even with all your training and preparation to get on that stage.
At the point that I gave the TED Talk, I was a public speaking teacher for already three or four years. I had spoken professionally, been paid to speak, and gone through all different kinds of public speaking coaching and public speaking training courses. As much as I had experience, there was nothing that could compare to the gravity of something like a TED Talk. One of the things I do before any talk that I give is I like to walk around and put headphones in. I forget that our phones can track our steps and later on when I looked at my phone and I saw the health activity app, I had actually paced four miles before I gave a talk.
[Tweet “Saying no to new things keeps you in your comfort zone.”]
The nerves were high, the energy was high, the adrenaline was high. I walked around, I paced, I listened to music, I practiced breathing exercises, I did everything I could. The moment when I was behind the stage and the speaker before me was getting to their final sentences, you can always tell when someone’s ending and I could tell they were getting to their closure, in that moment it was like the most terrifying and most exciting experience I’ve ever had. That’s the thing; the whole point of the book that I wrote Where the Magic Happens! is the idea that the most terrifying things and the most exciting things aren’t that different from each other except for how we frame it. It’s all about the high levels of adrenaline and the high levels of chemicals that are going on in the body. I recognized that and instead of having fear and running away like I did in third grade, I saw it as an opportunity.
When I started to look at that way, it was an amazing experience to be living it right then, right there. I remember looking at the lights and trying to take in as much of my senses as I could. Even with that, it was still way too stimulating. There was way too much going on to take it all in. It felt like a rush. That’s the rush that I chase as a speaker because as a child, the little things bring us rushes. The first time that we talked to someone we’re attracted to, that brings a huge rush, or the moment when we try to get a phone number. All those different situations bring us that state of pure excitement, unfiltered, uncensored excitement. It was that moment before the TED Talk where I felt that. That’s the thing that I chase. I ran up onto the stage and I was super excited and I know right off the bat I was talking a little too fast. I checked in, I slowed down a little bit.
You only get one shot. It’s like live TV. You don’t get to say, “Let me start over again,” at a TEDx Talk. You’re talking too fast, you’re talking too fast.
With a TED Talk, the scariest part was the idea that everything I was going to be doing was going to be filmed and then broadcast to an unlimited audience. I wasn’t sure how many audience members I would have, but the potential is that it could go viral and there could be millions of people. That’s pretty scary place to be. I remember checking in and being like, “You’re going too fast, slow it down a little bit.” Another difference about TED Talks versus regular speeches is that there’s a little red carpet that you have to stay on. In trainings or in the classroom, I’m used to being able to run around the room, jump up on the tables, use the entire stage, and use the entire room. I was excited but there was nowhere for me to go, so I went up and down a lot. If you watch the video, you’ll see me bending my knees a lot. That’s honestly pure excitement. It’s my way of still showing animation to the audience even though I was limited with a side by side movement.
I have to say the weirdest part for me or the strangest part was that you couldn’t see the audience. The lights were so bright because the whole point of the TED Talk is for the audience to see you very well and then mostly for the video to be made. For that to happen, the lights have to be really bright. I remember the lights were shining in my eyes. I looked out to the audience and I couldn’t see anybody. I’m used to eye contact, used to small group trainings, used to classrooms where I can interact and see people. It was a very one to many approach that I wasn’t used to, but it was exhilarating. It was a blast and it was unforgettable. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
You talk about in your book that there is that space between our comfort zone and where the magic happens. It sounds like you’re almost like a tornado chaser. You’re addicted. You love the adrenaline. One of the things in your book that I do to get out of our comfort zones is take a cold shower. I started hearing people talk about this as a way to reframe and reset your mind of, “I’m not constantly seeking comfort. I’m purposely seeking getting out of my comfort zone,” in this case, a cold shower. What I tell myself is I can tolerate something that’s not comfortable. I feel exhilarated after the cold shower, but every time you have to push yourself to do it. Can you talk a little bit about that comfort zone and magic zone?
The funniest part is where I discovered the entire idea about cold showers or cold water are really about comfort challenges. I was sitting in a hostel in Iceland during a snow storm. It was one of the coldest places I had ever been. It was this remote hostel that wasn’t well-insulated. The heater didn’t work that well. I was bundled up in all my snowboarding clothes, my big snow jacket. I was bundled up and I remember I was writing. Before I even had the book idea, this is years ago, I was writing and having a good time. I looked out the window and I swear to you, I saw two elderly women, I would have to guess somewhere in their 70s or 80s. They were in their swimsuits with swim caps on and they were walking down this little boat launch. They walked down it, they got into the water and they started swimming.
Where The Magic Happens Book: People who do acts of kindness tend to report higher levels of gratitude.
It blew my mind. I was watching as what I thought would be the worst thing you could possibly do. These two women looked completely at peace. They looked happy, they looked content, they looked satisfied, they don’t look excited. It wasn’t a rush for them. That was something they did. I found out later that every single day at the same time, these two women meet up together and then went for their daily swim. They do it all year, whether they’re sick, whether they’re healthy, whether it’s cold, whether it’s hot. I found out also later that they do it as a form of reminding themselves that the earth, world, and the universe is bigger than them. Whether it’s extreme or not, depending on the season, depending on the weather, they are just humans that are temporary living on this earth in this universe.
For me, that mindset helps let go of the need to try and control everything all the time. A lot of people who are in startups as a business, a lot of us can fall into this trap of control freak. “I need to control everything and things have to happen in my timeframe, and the outcome has to happen the way I need it to happen.” When you get out of that mindset and if you jolt yourself by jumping into cold shower, a cold ocean or whatever it is, you realize, “There are a lot of things I don’t control and it’s not always about me.” Would that be an accurate summary of what you said?
Yes, absolutely. That’s a lesson that I learned from surfing. The Iceland story involves the ocean as well. I grew up pretty close to the ocean. I was complaining about getting held under water and I was like, “I don’t like to be held under water. It feels I’m dying or stuff.” He looked at me and he was like, “Kev, think about it as a meditation,” and I was like, “You’re crazy. What do you mean? Meditating when you’re about to die? That doesn’t make any sense. You’re held under water and you’re peaceful?” He’s like, “Just try it.”
It took me awhile to get to the point where I understood what he was saying. After a couple of times, when I would fall and be held under water, I started to let go. It’s exactly what you’re talking about. I let go of the control. I let go of trying to fix things. I let go of trying to control my environment. Instead I let go, and I was like, “Cool. The ocean is bigger than me. The earth is bigger than me. The environment, the weather, everything in life is bigger than me and I’m going to let whatever happens happen.” In that peaceful place, I was able to make responsive choices about what I would do while I was underwater. It was an easy choice then to simply swim up to the surface and then breathe versus when I would panic and I would flail my arms. Sometimes I’d end up further away from the surface and deeper because I was in a state of trying to control everything and I was confused, I was lost, I was flailing, and not making sense of the actual situation. That’s true of a lot of startups and a lot of big businesses.
As leaders, as managers, and as thought influencers, we try to control the market. We try to control consumers. We try to control the outcome of certain things. If you look at an awesome principle called Chaos Theory, the idea is when we believe and have faith in the chaos of things, then we find a natural state of calm among that chaos. I love that. I live by that and the ocean taught me that in a lot of ways just like it taught those Icelandic women.
[Tweet “Yes is about having an open mind.”]
I want to tap into what you have in your book here about the science behind yes. I give a keynote talk myself on getting to yes through storytelling for brands who have sales teams, so I am all about getting to yes. Please expand upon what you wrote about the science behind yes.
There’s so much interesting content around the word yes, especially with popular movies like Yes Man. There was a recent book, Year Of Yes. There’s a lot of content surrounding this idea of yes. What yes is, is having an open mind. If you break it down, it’s not truly about the word yes, it’s about the outcomes that it brings versus no. I do want to clarify that it’s not even about the word yes or no, it’s about our intentional choices in the moment. The reason I encourage people to say yes more often is because the majority of people tend to say no in order to remain in their familiar or their comfort spaces.
Saying no keeps us in our comfort zone. Is that accurate?
Most of the time, yes. We say no, it’s a natural limiting word because if the request is anything new or different and we say no, then it’s safe. We’re staying where we are, we’re staying in a familiar zone, we’re staying in the comfort space. We’re keeping what we know to be, to be. We’re not expanding ourselves. We’re not opening ourselves up to change.
That’ll be the tweet, saying no to new things can keep you in your comfort zone. Of course anytime you’re asking someone to hire you, to buy something, to invest, you’re asking someone to get out of their comfort zone because they haven’t done it before, which is great. Obviously, changing behavior is what we people are requesting when you’re trying to sell them something.
I want to point out as well that saying no can also take you out of your comfort zone because some people are yes people. They passively say yes because they take on too much and they’re passive so they let a lot of things pile up and stack up and people are like, “Can you do this?” You’re like, “Yes, I can do that.” “Can you do this?” “Yes, I can do that.” “Can you do this project?” “Yes, I’ll do it.” For those situations, no would be the word that would get you out of the comfort zone.
If someone invites you to a party and you go to every party you ever been invited to because you don’t want to offend anybody, saying no to a party invitation could be a big thing out of your comfort zone.
That’s where my TED Talk and the chapter in the book about yes. It’s framed around the word yes because most people say no too often. However, I do make that distinction that the whole talk, the whole chapter; it’s not just about one word. It’s about momentary decisions and acting out of a place of intention as opposed to a place of expectation or a place of familiarity. I did a yes challenge where for a month I said yes to everything and it was wild. It was a captivating, it was fascinating but it was also stressful and it was tiring.
What’s the craziest thing you’ve said yes to during that month?
The craziest thing that I said yes to was going into the ocean without any clothes on at night while it was cold out and then staying in for a total of ten minutes. The ocean is scary at night in itself and then doing it when it’s cold out and then without clothes on, for me that was a huge challenge. I was so uncomfortable on many different levels, but someone found out and they didn’t tell me this until later. Someone found out I was doing the yes challenge. They’re like, “What if you did this?” I was like, “I’ll do it.”
Where The Magic Happens Book: Start to see compassion toward other people and start to seek acts of kindness.
I want to talk about the science behind kindness. That’s such an important philosophy part of the culture and the way we talk to ourselves. What have you found is the science behind kindness?
Kindness is fascinating for so many reasons. The other word that gets used for it is compassion, having compassion for other people, doing kind acts. There’s a ton of research that suggests that doing acts of kindness, whether they’re random or whether they’re intentional, can increase your perception of life satisfaction as well as increase your reporting of gratitude for everyday life or for small things. People who do acts of kindness tend to report higher levels of gratitude. It makes sense, but it’s so interesting because a lot of us are trying to figure out how do we be more grateful for the things we do have? Especially in startups, a lot of times we have more flexible time. We can be at the office when we want to be at the office, we can be autonomous, we can work on one thing one day, work on another thing another day. We know that it’s great, but how do we be more grateful?
One of the ways to do that is to start to see compassion toward other people and start to seek acts of kindness. The most fascinating part of the research that I found was the positive side of natural disasters. I know it sounds like a headline that belongs in a newspaper, but the positive side of natural disasters is that it brings out the genuine human goodness in people, it brings out acts of compassion and acts of kindness. If you look at the greatest disasters that have happened in history, you also see upticks, spikes, and peaks in people reporting generosity, kind behaviors, compassion, and empathy from other people. During a hurricane, the people who did have power, they opened up their front door, put a sign out and said, “Come use my house, come in.”
He let strangers into their house and he ended up having 30 people in his house all wired up to his electricity because he happened to have electricity while no one else did. I love that there’s this inherent part of being human that is compassionate. One of my favorite things that I learned from, it’s a friend and mentor of mine who started a business all about compassion and compassion cultivation. She told me that we are wired for compassion from the moment we’re born. I was like, “Explain that.” She was like, “Humans are one of the few species where when a baby is born, it literally takes a group of people being compassionate toward the baby to keep the baby alive.” A mother can’t pop out a baby, leave, and the baby has to be self-sufficient. It takes a number of people giving to the baby to be able to have the baby survive it. She goes on to talk a lot about how we’re basically hard wired for compassion and I love that idea.
You are all those things. You are kind, you’re curious, you are out of your comfort zone and you’re living a magical life for anyone who gets to hear you speak or anyone fortunate enough to be in your classroom. The book again is Where The Magic Happens!, the author, Kevin Corcoran, Jr. Kevin, how else can people follow you on social media and your website and all that good stuff?
My website is probably the best place for people to start, KevinCorcoranJr.com.
[Tweet “Doing acts of kindness, whether they’re random or whether they’re intentional, can increase your perception of life satisfaction”]
Any last thoughts or words you want to leave us with?
I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to be on your show. You complimented me here at the end and I was going to compliment you. I wanted to say that through your podcasts, through your book and through your work, I feel a genuine sense of authenticity and I love that. In an industry that’s full of professional development books and people trying to be something that they’re not, I feel that you truly are who you are and I’m thankful for that.
That’s a great compliment. I love when people see that I’m being real and authentic because that’s how we connect to other people. Literally, into me I see is the definition behind intimacy. Thank you, Kevin. Thanks for being a great guest.
I love it. Thank you so much
Links Mentioned:
- Kevin Corcoran, Jr.
- Where The Magic Happens!: The Science And Stories Behind Challenging Your Comfort Zone
- Kevin Corcoran Jr.’s TEDx Talk
- Year Of Yes
- KevinCorcoranJr.com
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Ownership Is The Ultimate Loyalty Program with Melinda Moore
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Episode Summary:
Melinda Moore has always wanted to change the world and be in technology, and so every step of her professional career was a step towards understanding how much human information processing and technology was going to impact everything that we do. As a social entrepreneur and a seasoned digital marketer, Melinda likes to create companies that solve real problems. She has a new company out called iConsumer that not only allows people to save money when they shop online, but to become part of the company through consumer stock. She says that ownership is the ultimate loyalty program. She has a new book out, How to Raise Money: The Ultimate Guide to Crowdfunding, where she talks about all the resources and everything you need to know to launch a successful crowdfunding campaign.
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On this episode on The Successful Pitch, our guest is Melinda Moore. She’s got an amazing story of how she has a successful exit with John Paul DeJoria of John Paul Mitchell Hair Care Systems. She has a new company out now called IConsumer.com that not only allows people to save money when they shop online but become part of the company. She says that ownership is the ultimate loyalty program and she has a new book out on how to demystify equity crowdfunding. You’re going to love her journey, her book and her new equity crowdfunding platform.
Listen To The Episode Here
Ownership Is The Ultimate Loyalty Program with Melinda Moore
My guest is Melinda Moore, who’s a social entrepreneur, a seasoned digital marketer, and a frequent speaker at leading technology conferences with over fifteen years as a startup leader, two successful exits, and a Fortune 500 experience. Melinda combines her passion and experience in health and sustainability, female empowerment, Yahoo! tech and digital media. Her work’s been widely recognized by Digital LA as one of the Top 50 Digital Women in 2015, the Green Business Bureau and the National Association of Women Business Owners. She’s also written a book called How to Raise Money: The Ultimate Guide to Crowdfunding. Melinda, welcome to the show.
Hi, John. Thank you so much for being here. It’s such a pleasure.
We were introduced by a mutual friend, Laura Wagner, at Digitzs, and that’s always the best way to meet people. I find that’s how I get my best guests. That’s how people get their network to grow and you’re a classic example of that with your expertise. Before we get into that, would you mind taking us back? You can start back as far as you want. You can take us back to high school, to college. When did you start saying, “I’m going to be an entrepreneur.”
It’s in somebody’s DNA. I’ve always been very adventurous and curious. When I was at UCLA, I was very fortunate that Peter Guber was running Sony Studios at the time and he had classes on entrepreneurship, motion picture marketing and technology. While I was at UCLA, I took his classes and it absolutely opened me up to how the future was going to be greatly impacted through technology. I decided back at that time I wanted to change the world and be in technology. My very first job out of college was producing educational software for Davidson & Associates, which then sold for $1 billion to the Ascendant Corporation. That was my very first job and it was understanding how much human information processing and technology was going to impact everything that we do.
That was like, “This is easy. I’ll do another company and sell that one.”
Unfortunately for that, when it was my very first job, so I was a producer, it was started by Joanne Davidson and her husband and so she was a teacher, but I essentially got an MBA, got the bug, and then after that I went on to my next company, which I had an exit in. It definitely got me excited and opened up the world of opportunity around entrepreneurship and making a difference.
I want to know about your successful eCommerce site, LovingEco to John Paul Dejoria in 2002. I met him several times. I used to call him in the John Paul Mitchell Haircare for advertising when I was at Condé Nast. He is quite the entrepreneur himself. How did you come up with the idea? How did you get the feeling enough to make him want to buy it?
I was born in Santa Monica, California, so I grew up surfing and hiking. I’m a little bit of a flower child and appreciate the planet. I was working at Rogers & Cowan running the convergence division. I thought to myself, “It’s time for me to get back into entrepreneurship.” I came up with the idea of LovingEco, which I knew women wanted to be healthier but they’re not going to sacrifice on style and they’re not going to sacrifice on price. I saw how successful the Gilt Groupe was at the time and flash sales. I created a green flash sale site called LovingEco. We guarantee that it had the lowest price on the Internet. We curated all the best natural products in beauty, health, fashion, accessories.
Loyalty Program: Most of us don’t fit into the profile, but it doesn’t mean that we can’t be fantastic business owners and create jobs and opportunities for others.
At the time John Paul Dejoria had started a company called JP Selects. LovingEco was started by myself and Justine Lassoff and we now have another company called LOVE GOODLY, which is based in Los Angeles. It’s like The Honest Company meets Bert’s Box. It’s a lifestyle company that gives back to charity and it curates all the best natural products. I’m an advisor to the company. Justine co-founded that company with Katie, who is another person who is on our team at LovingEco. What ended up happening and we were so successful that we got an offer to purchase the company about a year after we started it. We’re live by John Paul Dejoria. He folded LovingEco into JP Selects.
Did you have to pitch to get him to buy it? Did you have to pitch to get a co-founder? Did you have to pitch to get customers? Any pitching stories you have to share along that route?
I’m not Jessica Alba and not The Honest Company, but this was a little bit before that time. I’m always seeing what’s happening next, that’s just a talent that I had. It’s all about protecting the environment, so I thought the fastest growing segment of the beauty division was natural products and organic products and products that didn’t have chemicals because your skin is your largest organ. I knew that women didn’t want to pay extra, so I said, “I’m going to curate, do all the work for them and make it easy and I’m in to guarantee the lowest price.” That worked our cohort analysis, our lifetime value, all of the core metrics were very strong. In the combination of hardcore business metrics with the fact that natural beauty is the fastest growing category, that was the pitch.
When I pitched it to people on Sand Hill Road and as a woman, they’re like, “What do you mean natural products? What do you mean organic jeans and what do you mean you need to use dye?” It was almost as if I was speaking Chinese or a different language, which is partially why I went into crowdfunding and then wrote the book, How to Raise Money: The Ultimate Guide to Crowdfunding. Being an entrepreneur and recognizing that I’m not a male that went to Stanford or Harvard and wears a hoodie and a computer geek, then I wasn’t going to fit into the VC model. In fact, I’ve been a strong advocate for entrepreneurship, but leveraging crowdfunding and other methods to raise money. Because most of us don’t fit into that profile, but it doesn’t mean that we can’t be fantastic business owners and create jobs and opportunities for others.
That’s a nice transition. Usually, whether you’re starting a company or getting inspired to write a book, that’s because you see a problem that needs to be solved. Let’s take a deep dive into your book. How to Raise Money: The Ultimate Guide to Crowdfunding. We’re talking equity crowdfunding versus Kickstarter crowdfunding.
My book, it’s called How to Raise Money: The Ultimate Guide to Crowdfunding, which is available on Amazon for under $10. The book covers what is crowdfunding, what’s the history of it. It covers equity crowdfunding and it covers rewards-based crowdfunding, which is Kickstarter. Kickstarter has raised over $3 billion to date. It’s a huge industry and its surpassed venture capital. It also covers hybrid models. It’s a very comprehensive guide to my book that is available on Amazon, but ultimately, I am very passionate about entrepreneurship and ideas that can change the world. Whether somebody creates a hearing aid that allows somebody to hear for the first time. There’s so many innovations or they’re passionate about, electric bikes or a microbrewery or, in my case right now, I launched a company called iConsumer and I have a live campaign for crowdfunding. I’m very passionate about that, so I wanted to put that into a handbook. At the very end of my book, which is chapter ten, I put a guide of all of the leading platforms, their contacts, the marketing firms, lawyers, accountants so you can just literally, like I say, “Nike, just do it.” After reading my book, all the resources and everything are there to launch a successful crowdfunding campaign.
I’m interested in chapter nine about what works, what’s challenging, and what’s next. Can you give us a sneak peek on that?
What’s always challenging is people think it’s the field of dreams scenario. If I build it and if I take all the time to put a video in my deck and traction points to my business and great rewards, then the people will come. You have to understand that that does work. If you have a big database of existing customers that you can tap into that you can market it to, but you have to come up with an integrated marketing campaign almost as if you’re launching a new company to have a successful crowdfunding campaign, whether that’s rewards or equity. If you are not in a position to do that yourself, then you need to hire a firm, somebody like myself, someone like Darren Marble at CrowdfundX, so that you’re successful with the raise.
What services do you offer? You’ve given us a hint of the problem is. It’s not enough just to build it and expect people to come to it. Are you offering a service of, “Here’s exactly the five things you need to do to get people to want to fund this and share it in their network and make it a viral experience?”
What you need to do is think of it from an integrated marketing perspective. You have to have all the touch points. You have to have the right that you’re selling with the why you’re doing this. You have to have paid and earned media influencers. It goes down to having a fully integrated successful campaign. It’s all of those things.
Can you give us a story? I know that on your website, you have past work with some of your clients you’ve worked for. If you could walk us through what it’s like to have an integrated marketing concept, I think it would very much help people understand, “Don’t try to go this alone,” and that they need someone like you.
For instance, we raised a couple million dollars for Yao Ming, the basketball player. When he came to the states to play, he fell in love with a Cabernet from California and so he created Yao Family Wines. He put up a raise on Crowdfunder and at the time, I was the Chief Marketing Officer. What we did was created a fully integrated campaign. There was a lot of press and got into the Wall Street Journal. We did private dinners, investor dinners. We did a traditional marketing. We had him do marketing on his website. We marketed from the Crowdfunder website. It goes down to the experience and what are the assets that you have. In that case, we had Yao Ming, so to be able to have like a private dinner with the Yao Ming because you’re a shareholder, that has some very unique value. We were raising money for a tasting room, so you would be able to cheers and taste directly with Yao Ming if you put in the minimum of $5,000 into the deal. It comes down to unique experiential marketing.
[Tweet “Ownership is the ultimate loyalty program”]
It goes full circle from you being inspired by Peter Guber running Sony at the time. I believe that’s when that man seems to making these people their own star through crowdfunding. Let’s double click on IConsumer.com. What gave you the idea for that?
After writing the book, How to Raise Money: The Ultimate Guide to Crowdfunding, you have to then prove the model. I had met Rob Grosshandler because I was doing a lot of speaking. He’s the CEO of iConsumer and he approached me to co-found the company with him and be head of marketing to take it to the next level. It’s a massive B2C play. It’s essentially like Ebates or RetailMeNot where you’re getting discounts and cash back for shopping online. Who doesn’t shop online? By 2020, it’s going to be a $500 billion industry. Crowdfunding, there’s still a lot of mysteriousness around it and so you have to demystify it. A big B2C play where, as you’re shopping online, you’re getting cash back, but I’m giving you shares, actual ownership in iConsumer for just shopping online. When you sign up, I’ll give you 50 shares of iConsumer stock. Every time you shop, you’re getting cash back and you’re getting shares in the company.
What we wanted to do is essentially democratize the way companies are created, so we did a regulation tethered raise using equity crowdfunding to fund the company. That is what allows us to use actual equity as an acquisition and a retention tool so that we’re building and owning the company together. I always liked to create companies that solve real problems. What is a problem in the United States? There’s such income inequality. So much of the wealth is concentrated in the 1%. What about the 99%? When I looked at like what Blake did with Tom Shoes in the One for One movement, I said, “Why can’t we do the same thing with equity crowdfunding and prove in a big B2C model that people can be successful if you own the company together and then have people write another book and people copy what we’re doing with equity crowdfunding and what we’re doing with iConsumer so that you’re essentially voting with your wallet and you’re owning a piece of the company?”
It’s almost like saying to someone, “You’re going to be buying things on Amazon or wherever else you go online to buy something.” You might as well get compensated for it, not just like a coupon, but actually own part of a company that’s going to reward you for sharing this and using this. Is that accurate?
That’s exactly right. Our thesis is that ownership is the ultimate loyalty program. You’re already doing something, which is shopping online. You might as well shop smarter and get your share.
Ownership is the ultimate loyalty program. Everybody’s looking for that sticky factor when they get a new customer and it’s certainly investors are looking at that. What is it that keeps people loyal? I see this starting to happen a little bit in the cryptocurrency world that’s evolved out of the crowdfunding world. My guess is you’re going to write a book on that topic.
You now see the ICOs and people are creating platforms and they are rewarding people with cryptocurrency, blockchain. I know that Todd Chief raised like $1.5 billion to do these types of things. You’re seeing a lot of big business leaders moving into blockchain cryptocurrency for exactly what you’re talking about. It’s almost like Wild, Wild West.
If we take a look at IConsumer.com and you finish your round with this equity crowdfunding platform, do you anticipate that that’ll be all the money you need, or do you think, “I’m going to get a series from a traditional venture capitalist eventually?”
We launched the campaign on Crowdfunder, so it’s Crowdfunder.com/IConsumer and within the first 24 hours of the race, we had reached over 50% of our goal to get to a million. We have 50,000 members right now. We need another 200,000 to be cashflow positive, so most likely I will not do another round and most likely I will not include any venture capital. If I do anything else, I would open up another regulation a round. The current minimum investment is $1,000, but I could lower that to $50 or $100, so that our members could get more shares by opening up and allowing them to be investors. The whole goal here is to democratize access to people, being on Wall Street and in owning shares and understanding what that means. Rob, who is the CEO of the company, he also created another property called Shareholder Academy and that’s essentially a blog and a website for startups and for people understanding what equity crowdfunding is, what it means to be a shareholder. He was smart to basically help guide an education platform around shareholders in Shareholder Academy
Traditionally, if I understand Crowdfunder properly, you have to be an accredited investor to invest in that equity crowdfunding. Is that right?
That is correct. With the current raise that we’re doing on Crowdfunder, it is to accredited investors only.
However, if you go to IConsumer.com and sign up via Facebook or however you want to do it, you can start shopping and get 100 shares without being an accredited investor, which is the whole democratization that you’re talking about.
When you sign up, I give you 50 shares just for signing up and then the first time that you shop, because we want you to shop so that you’re using this site and that we’re making money, you’re making money, we give you another 50 shares just for the first time that you shop. If you refer somebody who shops, then we’d give you another 100 shares. I have about 1,700 shares just from shopping.
This earned impressions that’s part of this integrated marketing that makes it crowdfunding campaign successful is that whole sharing. Once you start getting brand ambassadors to promote, “This is the site.” If you’re going to spend the money anyway, you might as well own a little bit of it for that loyalty factor, but that earned impressions, brand ambassadors, word of mouth is the secret sauce.
The numbers are between 30% and 40% a week of our members are coming through referrals. People discover the site, they want to share with their friends, and they also benefit when they share. Definitely through referrals is a very strong way and an efficient way to grow a company and to grow brand awareness.
Loyalty Program: Definitely through referrals is a very strong way and an efficient way to grow a company and to grow brand awareness.
I’m on iConsumer and I see that you have Today’s Hot Deals on Amazon and certain things are for sale that you can buy and get credit for buying it on your site as opposed to the Amazon site, how does someone who is an Amazon vendor get to be considered part of your hot deal? Is it something Amazon decides or can people approach you to be a hot deal?
What we want is we want more small businesses to make sure that they are an affiliate and they’re signed up through iConsumer. That way, we can market the vendors directly. We have 1,700 stores and we’re adding new stores all the time. Amazon is the 800-pound gorilla in this space. I feel like we need to help smaller businesses and local businesses. Once they’re aware of iConsumer, they can sign up to be a vendor and promote their products. One of my girlfriends started Prelise, which is like a smaller skincare makeup line. Prelise is on iConsumer and we did a beauty newsletter and I was able to feature Prelise alongside Ultra Beauty and much larger brands. It’s really important for us to have an array of the big players but also the small players as well.
You’ve hit on something there that you probably take for granted because you’re such an expert at this, which is the co-branding effect. If you’re a small brand and you’re seen with other well-known brands that are much larger than you are, then there’s a little bit of a rub off effect that happens, “If they’re being featured this way, they must be at least as good a quality and maybe they might even be slightly less money. I might try them.”
The beauty of shopping is like discovery. If you do see bareMinerals next to Prelise, or sporting good company next to smaller electronics, people do associate credibility when they see one vendor on the same page or next to somebody else. It’s important too that we vote with our wallet, not for just the big companies out there, like the Amazons of the world, but also just smaller companies that are creating great products as well. They need the exposure.
I also see that you’ve got the hotel on here, which surprises me because I don’t think people normally think of e-commerce and travel as being that connected unless you’re on Expedia. How did that evolve?
Travel is a big vertical for us because the price points are high. If you’re going to go to Hawaii or Europe or New York and you’re spending somewhere between $300 to $1,000, why not get cash back and then earn shares for your ticket? We have Expedia and Priceline on iConsumer. You might as well shop through iConsumer because if you shop direct, you’re not going to get the same benefit as shopping through iConsumer. Part of that is an education process. Ebates is such a large company in that regard, so there are people familiar with Ebates but essentially, we’re Ebates but we give you shares in iConsumer as well.
It’s a double win, not just win-win. It’s getting that message out and you’re certainly incentivizing people to share it with their friends.
Whether you’re booking a hotel or you’re going to book Alamo or Hertz or Priceline, you might as well book it directly through iConsumer. We have Expedia. We make it easy because there’s departments and there’s different categories, so you can go directly to our travel and you can do that either on a mobile phone because we have an iOS as well as an android version and then desktop, so we try to make it as easy as possible for you to shop smarter and earn shares and cash back as you’re just doing what you do normally every day and every week.
I was impressed to see that you have a pet vertical on here because I know that’s a huge market, just like travel.
Pets are huge. It’s a multibillion dollar business. A lot of people don’t have kids and so they treat their pets like they’re kids, buying them toys, beds, clothes, food, and organic food. Pets is a very big area for us. Most people use PetSmart. You might as well use PetSmart or Petco through iConsumer. You go direct to Petco or Petsmart, you’re not going to get the cash back or the shares. You go shop through our mobile app or desktop, our buttoned browser, then you’re going to get 9.6% from PetSmart. You’re saving them as 10%.
[Tweet “There’s nothing more exciting than having an idea and wanting to bring that idea to life.”]
Any final thoughts or words that you want to leave our audience with? If someone’s thinking of starting a campaign, they should read your book. They should consider hiring you to help them so that it doesn’t just get up there and nobody uses it. Are there any life lessons you’ve learned along the way that you would say, “If I could say something to myself ten years ago, here’s the message I give.”
What I would say is there’s nothing more exciting than having an idea and wanting to bring that idea to life. When you’re doing that though, you have to be very methodical, very strategic. It does take planning and it takes money because if you don’t have that database or that existing customer database to market the campaign too. Then you have to figure out how you’re going to get influencers, how you’re going to get marketing to ultimately drive people to the marketing funnel of your deal. What you don’t want to do is just press go on a campaign because you’ve done all the work. It’s better to put a pause on that, either hire a firm that can help you. It goes down to having the right team and the right people and it’s about execution.
I was speaking to Darren Marble from CrowdfundX and he’s done getting Elio motors and big raises. We were saying sometimes people don’t understand how much work it is to be an entrepreneur. You have to make a choice. As an entrepreneur, it’s not a merry go round where you show up and you just attend meetings. It’s much more like a roller coaster. One day, you could have the highest high and you think you’re going to become a multimillionaire and the next day, you literally think you’re going to be broke. Things can swing so quickly. In order to be an entrepreneur, you have to be comfortable with being on a rollercoaster ride. If you’re the type of person that wants consistency and safety, then you need to get yourself onto a Merry-Go-Round and not the rollercoaster route of entrepreneurship. It’s hard work. The hours, the commitment, it’s not to be underestimated in terms of how much work it is. It’s fantastic and I wouldn’t have it any other way, but sometimes you just want to have a breakdown,
That’s so valuable and wonderful of you to let people in because from the outside looking in, it looks like you’ve never had a bad day in your life or even a bad hair day.
Entrepreneurship is sexy. Jessica Alba’s an entrepreneur. Gwyneth Paltrow’s an entrepreneur. Many top people are investing. There are celebrities and stuff, so it’s got this, “This is the next celebrities and stuff,” but what I want to say is it can be painful.
My big takeaway is that hope is not a strategy. If you just hope that people are going to find your equity crowdfunding platform, it’s not going to work. Melinda, how can people follow you? Would you give us your Twitter handle and everything else?
My Twitter handle is @Melinda_Moore. I have a website, which is MelindaMoore.com. That’s an easy way that you can follow me on Instagram. You can find me on Instagram and Facebook. It’s a great way to get more information. It’s been such a pleasure, John. Thank you so much for having me on your show.
You’re a fascinating person and a fascinating guest. I appreciate you sharing all those wonderful stories.
Thank you.
Links Mentioned:
- Melinda Moore
- John Paul Mitchell Hair Care Systems
- IConsumer.com
- How to Raise Money: The Ultimate Guide to Crowdfunding
- Davidson & Associates
- LovingEco
- JP Selects
- Justine Lassoff
- LOVE GOODLY
- CrowdfundX
- Yao Family Wines
- Rob Grosshandler
- Crowdfunder.com/IConsumer
- Shareholder Academy
- Prelise
- bareMinerals
- @Melinda_Moore – Twitter
- MelindaMoore.com
- Melinda Moore’s Instagram
- Melinda Moore’s Facebook
- https://www.amazon.com/How-Raise-Money-Ultimate-Crowdfunding-ebook/dp/B01F7O926G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1506641434&sr=8-1&keywords=melinda+moore
About Melinda Moore
Melinda Moore is a social entrepreneur, a seasoned digital marketer and a frequent speaker at leading technology conferences.With over 15 years as a start-up leader (two exits) and Fortune 500 experience, Melinda combines her passion and experience in health & sustainability, female empowerment, tech & digital media. Her work has been widely recognized by Digital LA (Top 50 Digital Women in 2015), the Green Business Bureau and the National Association of Women Business Owners’ Hall of Fame.
Her marketing campaigns have been featured by global brands including Ford, LIVESTRONG, Netflix, Obama for America, Orbitz, Sony, USA Networks, and YouTube. She has forgedstrategic partnerships with leading business, media, and entertainment figures including Jimmy Fallon, Laird Hamilton, Dr. OZ, Dr. Phil, Ryan Seacrest and Yao Ming. After co-founding and selling the successful e-commerce site LovingEco to John Paul Dejoria in 2012, she co-founded Tuesdaynights, a hosted invite-only networking organization of female executives andentrepreneurs.
Her growing list of event sponsors include Google, Lifetime and Silicon Valley Bank. While continuing to establish Tuesdaynights as a preeminent network event, Melinda is growing hermarketing and content creation technology practice. Melinda graduated from UCLA with a BA in psychology.
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