Transcription

Hey guys. Welcome back to the Healthpreneur podcast. Yuri here, with you once again. None other than the man himself, because… I basically run this podcast, so who else would be here other than me?

Today’s guest is going to be a real treat. I want to just share a kind of preamble before we bring her onto the show.

Sarah Anne Stewart got into this space because her father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. At that time, her family made a choice to fight back with alternative medicine. Seven months later, he was declared cancer free and still is to this day. This is several years ago.

That was the spark that lit Sarah up, to really propel her forward and dedicate her life to wellness. She has since helped hundreds to live healthier, happier lives through a unique method of mindfulness that supports weight loss without crash dieting.

She initially started off in a kind of private one-on-one type of business. She has moved online over the last little while and she’s going to talk to us about that transition and how she’s been able to create holistic-based programs that really fill a gap in the marketplace with the women that she’s trying to serve. And then she’s also going to talk about the challenges of being who you are and really sharing your story to connect with your audience in a deep and meaningful way.

Nonetheless, there are some really, really cool nuggets of wisdom that you’re going to get from Sarah, when she talks about in her own journey with some of the challenges that she went through growing up.

This is going to be a great episode. It’s a great interview. Really inspiring. I think we’ll come out of this with some really cool perspectives on what you can consider with your business, but also really understanding from her perspective—How do you come online?

You’re really passionate about nutrition or health, but you have this fear of selling where you don’t want to come across as this slimy salesperson. So we’ll really look at how you get through that to really serve the people who need to hear from you. Sarah is going to share what worked for her and I think it will really inspire you as well.

So without any further adieu, let’s bring Sarah Anne Stewart onto the show

 

Yuri:                Hey Sarah, welcome to the Health Preneur podcast. How’s it going?

 Sarah:             Good. Thank you so much for having me. This is so exciting. I love talking about these things, so thank you again.

 Yuri:                Yes, you are very welcome. Thank you for taking the time to join us, and I have no doubt that our conversation will be very inspiring, illuminating and just a lot of fun. Why don’t we start off by sharing with our listeners the story of how you got into business for yourself. What did that journey look like?

Sarah’s journey through eating disorders, cancer, and her various transformations

 Sarah:             It’s really interesting. I grew up with entrepreneurs. My parents were both entrepreneurs. It was very different than today.

They had the brick and mortar. They decided to open restaurants. I grew up in this world of entrepreneurship. I knew deep within myself that I never really wanted to work for anyone else. I wanted to work for myself.

As my journey evolved, they were very holistic in their approach to life and my dad ended up curing cancer with alternative medicine. I gained all this knowledge about nutrition, which was really powerful for me. I was like, “I know, deep within myself, that I want to educate people about nutrition.”

During that time I was also modeling, which is a completely different world, and I ended up developing ten years of eating disorders and had to really refine my ways. Through all of this nutrition education—I went back to school for nutrition—it didn’t end up healing my own eating disorder.

I had to go on further self exploration and discovery and really find a mindfulness approach, and hire a meditation teacher, and really unlearn this programming that I had been taught.

Through that process, I realized, “Wow, I really want to educate individuals on this side of the healing process, versus the food.” I ended up opening my company today, which is Holistically Slim—it really empowers women to shed all areas of their life that aren’t serving them so that they can live in a body that they love.

Yuri:                That’s awesome. It’s so great having these conversations with people like yourself because we’re all coming from a place of, at some level, suffering. Either it’s our own suffering or a family member and we want to help solve that for them. Obviously, that just translated into helping more people, which is great.

We’re all coming from a place of service, which is awesome and that’s why I love HealthPreneur in the first place. Thank you for sharing that.

 Sarah:             Yeah.

 Yuri:                Just so that the listeners understand more about your business, what does your business model look like? How do you do what you do?

“Imposter Syndrome”

 Sarah:             It’s interesting. I originally had a company that was very similar. It was a private coaching practice where I educated people about food and nutrition and calories in vs. calories out, and losing weight.

During that process, I really fell in love with the private coaching aspect of being an entrepreneur and just helping women one on one. During that time I was still suffering from my own eating disorder, so there was this embarrassment aspect of like, “I’m teaching people about food, but yet, I feel so insecure about food. I know this food is healing, but what’s going on with the mind-body connection and myself?”

I ended up transitioning my company as I evolved and healed, to really resonate more with the process that helped me.

During that time, I had fallen in love with private coaching. I started that and now I continue to do it because it’s something I really find value in. I think it’s really powerful in changing people’s lives.

But then I also have an online program. It’s an eight week program called Mediate Slim Mastery—which is meditation for weight loss and reprogramming thinking around food. It’s 34 exercises that basically help you in that process. I’m working on a book and a front end product, which will just be a shorter meditation course.

Yuri:                Very cool.

 Sarah:             Yeah. So that’s how I support people individually.

I’ve also done group programs and workshops and events and retreats. I ran a retreat company for a while. Again, as I evolved as an entrepreneur and within my own life, I realized that I didn’t want to be running around the world and I could serve and impact on a greater scale by positioning my company in this way.

Yuri:                Very cool. I want to touch on this kind of notion of almost the “imposter syndrome” that you mentioned. It’s something that I’ve dealt with and I think a lot of people have dealt with that, too.

Were you open with your clients that you were still going through this challenge as you were working with them? Or is that something you held back?

Sarah:             My marketing and the way I advertise my company was really about the nutrition side. My dad had cured cancer with food and really was told he was going to die. Within seven months, he completely healed and is still healed today, 13 years later.

I knew deep within me the power of food. I knew that it could heal your body. What I didn’t connect with was that he was also meditating and doing affirmations and reprogramming his subconscious. The doctor said he was going to die. He was doing all these other things.

When I went back to the very basics, I knew that this disconnect was happening and I was embarrassed by it. I ended up taking time off of my practice and saying, “Okay, I have to figure this out because when I’m walking past a mirror, I’m insecure. This isn’t really fair to be teaching and educating about this but yet still feeling this insecurity.”

I have a lot of clients that come to me, like personal trainers and yoga instructors who actually are going through this very similar thing. I think it’s very common in our space to have the insecurity. For me, it was a healing process of opening up and speaking about this and saying, “Yes, the nutrition side is very important, but also the emotional side and the spiritual side of healing as well.”

Yuri:                How did you find the market where your audience responded when you started to open up about your own struggles and challenges?

Sarah:             It’s been really powerful actually. It’s kind of a niche that hasn’t been tapped yet. There are some people doing it, but as I started to just share my own story, there were dozens of women reaching out to me.

I ended up doing something really interesting where I posted that I wanted to speak to women all over the world that were healing their own eating disorders or who had successfully stopped yo-yo dieting.

And when I posted that on Instagram and when I was sharing with my audience, I was like, “I just want to speak to you. I want to hear your story. I want to know what you did.” That was part of my healing process but also part of my research and education of figuring out what will help women be able to heal from this side of it. And then using, so that when I go in and fill their fridge with greens they’re going to be able to stick to that diet.

Most of us know what’s good and what’s healthy to eat nowadays—we could do the research and get the books. There’s so much beautiful knowledge out there on these things, but yet there’s such a disconnect with actually continuously doing it.

For me, it was this beautiful research project of, “I just want to hear what women are doing.” It all came back to very simple tools and very simple mind shifts of, “I need to unlearn what I’ve been taught. I need to unlearn this process, which my coach calls ‘unlearning the process of which we were taught to suffer.’”

In that process, just getting back to intuitive eating, mindful eating, looking within. It was a really beautiful transition and I think a lot of people are scared of having their company evolve as they evolve because they’re going to have to go against what they’ve been taught.

I see this a lot with vegans turning paleo or all of a sudden eating meat—there’s this fear that they’re going to disappoint their audience. I think if you don’t speak that truth as you evolve, then everyday you go to work and you’re not in alignment, you feel that disconnect as well.

Yuri:                That’s such a big point. I can relate to that because I was raw vegan when I first came online, I think in 2006, for a couple of months. I was like, “This is amazing.” I still think it is, but it’s not 100% for me.

I kind of morphed and evolved and I remember feeling backlash because I never said I was raw vegan. I just said I believe these more plant based foods in the raw state is better. Everyone is like, “Oh my god. I can’t believe you’re eating meat. You’re such a sell out.” But you just have to own that.

You just have to be like, “Listen, I’m on this journey and this is where I’m at in this period of time.”  It becomes very suffocating, almost, if you try to box yourself as just paleo or just so and so. It doesn’t allow for that evolution that we all go through.

I’m glad you brought that up. There’s a lot of people in our space who I think are held back because they’re scared of what people are going to think.

Being open with your audience, telling your story, writing the copy

Sarah:             Yeah. I was also very fortunate that my fiance is a copywriter and he would tell me over and over, “You have to be a storyteller.” There’s a quote that says, “Storytelling remains basic. It’s just the campfire. It’s the human connection that says we’re not alone.” It’s Shonda Rhimes.

Although you might be losing part of your audience, you’re still gaining those people that feel alone in the space you’re evolving to. You’re not going to make everyone happy, but if you’re just willing and open and able to tell your story, it completely transforms your business because you will connect to the people that need you in the space that you’re in.

Yuri:                Totally. It’s almost like you kind of leave the high school friends behind. You had that period of time with them and you move on. You meet new people who are where you’re at at this point in life. It’s a good analogy.

In your journey, what would you say is one of the biggest challenges you faced within your business? What did you learn from that experience?

Sarah:             I would say one of the biggest challenges was the storytelling process and learning to write copy. I felt that if I learned to write like someone else, I was giving up my own authentic voice.

There’s this idea of studying the best copywriters and learning from them and learning how to be persuasive. That’s a huge part of being an entrepeneur online. For me, it was very challenging and I spent a long time resisting it.

Through the process, I learned that I can persuade and I can continue to have impact while still keeping my authentic voice and merging them together. For a very, very long time I was like, “This is how I want to write and this is what I want to say.”

I wasn’t using psychology and all these beautiful things that are offered through some of the top people—the Gary Halbert letters and Eben Pagan, I studied his work. I just started studying all of these people who were writing incredible copy and learning. And you, Yuri, have incredible copy on your site and your work is amazing.

But just looking at, “How do you use copy to educate, share and impact but also keep true to what you want to share with the world?” That was a huge resistance for me. Through education and learning I’m moving through that.

Yuri:                That’s great. How do you navigate that? The advice from the copywriting world is to study other copywriting letters, write them out word by word—so, by osmosis that style gets infused in your head.

How do you navigate that? Like, “Okay, here are the best practices or the principles of persuasion,” and then infusing your own style into that? What’s worked for you?

Sarah:             I started with just studying their work and doing bullet points and re-writing the letters and re-writing copy, then really learning how they position.

I will sit down and write, “How would I want someone to speak to me if I was in a place of pain or suffering—or, when I was in that space?” Looking back on my life and saying, “That was the place I was in. What would I have wanted someone to say to me, to speak to me, to give me hope?”

I think that we can do that in a very authentic way. I just re-write my copy here and there. Also, get support and have other people look it over. I think that there’s no fault in that as well. Just having great copywriters look it over and say, “Yeah, this is beautiful. It makes sense. It’s speaking to your audience. But maybe if you just change one or two things, you might actually have greater impact.”

For me, there’s been a beautiful space of saying, “I just really want to create an impact and I know my product is doing that and I’ve interviewed the women in my course and they love it.”

Because I feel really good about my product, I’m okay with changing aspects of my copy as well now. But, I had to really fall in love with my product. That was a process as well.

Yuri:                That’s really good. If you’re sitting down having coffee or green juice with a friend and they’re wanting to start their own business online, but they’re like, “Sarah, I really don’t want to write sales copy. I don’t like those long sales pages. I don’t want to be that person.”

What do you say to them?

Transitioning to the online space—the differences, the lessons learned

Sarah:             That was me. I was like, “Absolutely not. I will not do a VSL. I will not do a webinar. I will not pitch.”

You can really start it with just launching your product. For me, I sold it at a very low price. I had women go through it. Again, I just fell in love with the fact that these women, their lives were changing. And I was just so proud of the fact that their lives were changing. I was so excited to share more and share more with other people.

I think there is a fine balance and you don’t necessarily have to do a full-on, hour long VSL. I think that there is a fine balance of once you see the impact, you will want to share it with more people and through a sales letter that helps more people through that process.

There’s always ways to approach it with integrity in terms of 60-day money back guarantees. There’s that whole side of it, which you know well.

Once I realized that women were really having these changes, it meant more to me to be like, “Okay, I want to figure out how to speak to them in a way that will impact them down the road by them going through this.”

Yuri:                Yeah, totally. And it sucks to launch something with very few sales. You’re not willing to spend the time to learn how to write copy. For people that don’t like writing copy, the way I like to describe it is simply that, it’s just like if you’re having a conversation with someone in real life about what it is you’re doing and how you can help them. Maybe it starts with a story and then segues into what it is and all that other stuff.

It is such an important aspect of building a business online. That’s one of our main channels of communication.

Sarah:             Yeah. I was very embarrassed to sell. I was very embarrassed to tell my story for a while. As soon as I got rid of that shame and guilt … I think there’s an aspect of education through learning how to write copy.

I think there’s also this self development education and looking within that is really important to help move through those aspects as well. If you have the guilt and shame and fear, you’re never going to be able to sit down and write it and feel proud of the copy—because there’s that guilt or shame overlaying the end result anyway.

For me, it was sabotaging. I was sabotaging my business by using the excuse of the sales letter. That I didn’t want to sell and I didn’t want to use certain ways of writing. I learned that that was my own self sabotage of success.

Yuri:                Very cool. What lesson did you have to learn the hard way? How can you help others avoid that mistake?

 Sarah:             The hard way… I think because I grew up with parents who had brick and mortar businesses, I thought you just go to work from 9 to 5—or they would work 9 to 9—and I didn’t see them often because they were working a lot but truly believed in a space of an entrepreneur. Because of that, it was very scary for me to go online.

I didn’t even realize that this world existed for a long time because I saw things a certain way growing up. Just coming online for me was such a humbling experience.

I would say that was my biggest lesson—just transitioning my company from being in person where my clients would come and see me, I only had a certain number of hours in the week. From that to, “Okay, wow. I can actually scale a company.”

I didn’t even know this world existed and I shouldn’t be fearful of it or scared of being online or technology or these things that I really don’t have to be good at. I can hire these things out.

For me, it was really terrifying for a while.

I remember, I went to Traffic and Conversion for the first time and it was right when I had learned what a VSL was and what a funnel was. I remember going to my hotel room and just sobbing, “This is so overwhelming. I’m never going to understand this,” taking pages of notes and laying them out on the floor trying to figure it all out.

And then I was like, “I actually don’t have to be an expert on all of this. I just have to figure out a financial way to be able to pay out people to help me and support me in this process and then just be the expert.” At first, it was very overwhelming.

Yuri:                Sure. What lessons or what tips would you give to someone who is transitioning from an offline business practice to an online? What are some of the things they need to keep in mind that they might not be aware of?

The irony of burnt out health professionals

 Sarah:             What’s interesting is, I think we have to rethink this idea of education—and the traditional education model is great for certain things, but the best investment that you can make in yourself is letting go of the fears, the self patterns and our childhood traits that we learned.

And we’re constantly evolving as humans. As we do that, it actually impacts our business significantly. The self esteem and self worth are all really important aspects of being an entrepeneur.

I also find a lot of entrepreneurs that are putting all their time and effort into this business and it’s actually burning them out. I think it’s really important, even in a health space, to remind ourselves that our health is the most important thing.

Yuri:                How ironic, right?

Sarah:             Yeah. It’s so ironic. I’ll go to these conferences and we’re sitting at a table and everyone is talking about how they’re burnt out and stressed and I’m like, “We’re in the health space, guys. We have the most education and we’re consumed by this education. We have so much research.”

And yet, I think because we’re surrounded by it we’re like, “We know the best doctor who is going to take care of this and if do burn my adrenals out I know the girl to go to. If I do need to take a vacation, I can take a hiatus for three days because I am an entrepreneur. Or a week or a month.” Instead of just constantly staying balanced within our lives.

That’s something that I really worked on this year, is just finding balance and saying, “Yes, my company is going where it wants to go. There is no rush to get there. I’m going to stay healthy in the process and put things on my calendar to make sure that that is the number one most important thing.”

There is a certain point where you can’t buy your health back.

For me, the fear of failure was also something I just really had to move through. It’s interesting—when I closed my business, people weren’t judgemental about it because most people aren’t taking risks.

No one said to me, “Oh, you closed your business.” Hundreds of businesses open and close every day. It’s okay to fail and switch your business or open something new. That was a massive fear of mine.

Some people are judgmental in things, about the content you put out. I think in terms of being an entrepreneur, I was so fearful of closing my business and starting the next thing that I wasted a lot of time—instead of just saying, “Okay. I’ve evolved as a human, so let me start the next process of what looks like a different brand or company that is more in alignment with myself.”

That transition was much longer than it needed to be because I was fearful of the feedback or what people would say or that I failed with my first company or whatever.

Yuri:                You’re not alone, that’s for sure. It’s such a great spiritual journey, though. I think with entrepreneurship, you learn so much about yourself that you wouldn’t learn otherwise, being an employee. We’re forced to grow and really get out of our comfort zone.

The value of networking and meeting with other entrepreneurs

Sarah:             If you look at how many people launch products that fail and then just change the title and it becomes a success, or they reposition it or they do the research. They go out and say, “What do people really want, versus what I want to give them?” And then they can come to a balance in between of, “What’s in alignment with what I want to teach and what does the market want?”

Then they relaunch it and it becomes this massive success.

I think it’s really important to just realize that the first couple of products will probably fail at first or not have the sales that you want. The challenge is we’re seeing these numbers online. We’re seeing, “Oh, I did $100,000 during my launch.” But what people aren’t talking about is that they’ve probably put in years and years of work, or at least several years, and they probably have a great team behind them and they probably have done tons of work themselves.

We don’t see the back story often. We just see the numbers of, “I launched this and I’m making hundreds of thousands of dollars.” But there’s thousands of entrepreneurs who are in the developmental stage and not there yet as well.

Yuri:                Totally. Plus, no one is sharing on Facebook or Instagram, “Hey guys, just wanted to share an epic failure.” It’s like, “We just hit number one on iTunes,” or, “We just hit a million dollar launch.” That’s what we’re sharing.

Sarah:             Exactly.

 Yuri:                It’s so blurred. It’s not the truth. It’s part of the truth, but it’s not the full truth.

Sarah:             I think people get very discouraged by it, instead of being like, “Wow, that’s an incredible goal. I’m going to keep working towards it.” Instead, they get frustrated and are like, “Well, I guess I’m a failure because my first launch didn’t do a million dollars.”

Yuri:                For sure. So, knowing what you know now, if you were starting all over again, is there anything you would do differently starting today?

Sarah:             I don’t think so. Honestly, I’m really proud that I allowed myself to evolve as an entrepreneur. I’m really proud that I had the courage to be able to modify my company and open a new one.

I think the biggest thing, again, is just my willingness to share—and I think about, had I been sharing the struggles I was having during my modeling journey, or had I been sharing my struggles as an entrepreneur, my struggles with eating … I think I would have connected to a lot more people.

I think that idea of, “Don’t be scared to share your truth, tell stories, and talk about these things,” can really help you create connections with other people going through the same things. I think that’s the only thing that I would have started doing much earlier.

Recently, my fiance and I have been building an entrepreneur community here in LA. I think I would have started that earlier because the amount of impact that it’s had on my life has just been exponential in terms of my business and how I feel as an entrepreneur.

We sit down and we talk about our struggles and we have these mastermind dinners. We are like, “What are you struggling with?” “I’m just struggling with my morning routine.” These are top entrepreneurs.

“I’m struggling with getting my green juice every day.”

“I’m struggling with my relationship at home.”

“I’m struggling with having a relationship with my children.”

And you’re hearing that as an entrepreneur, we don’t have all of our shit together. That’s a very beautiful, nice connection that we’re making with other entrepreneurs as well. I think that would have been great to start. It’s easy to do—to start throwing dinners and mastermind events and things like that.

 Yuri:                That’s huge. We’re all just a bunch of looneys, right? No one gets us.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t really converse. I don’t really have a relationship other than the occasional get-together with most people I went to school with. It’s just because they went on a completely different journey. I have a very tough time having a conversation with someone who is not an entrepreneur. It’s just such a different mindset.

Sarah:             It’s a different mindset completely. Bringing them all together, and I also found the value of investing in conferences and experiences. Just in the last year, I went to Summit Series and Brilliant Minds and a bunch of others.

I’ve been going to all these conferences to connect with these individuals and seeing, “What are they doing? What are they doing well? How can I learn from them?” That has really been powerful as well.

The Rapid-Five Questions

Yuri:                It’s awesome. It’s good stuff. Sarah, are you ready for the rapid five?

Sarah:             Sure. Let’s do it.

Yuri:                You have no idea what these questions are. I’m just going to throw them at you. Whatever comes to your mind is the right answer. Number one, what is your biggest weakness?

Sarah:             My biggest weakness is over-committing. I over-commit and then I burn myself out and I don’t have enough time to really reconnect to myself. That’s something I’m working on.

Yuri:                Cool. Number two, what is your biggest strength?

Sarah:             It’s changed. Today, I think my biggest strength is compassion, because I’ve been through so much in my life. I just have a wavering compassion for what other people are going through. I think that that’s been very instrumental in my own coaching practice.

 Yuri:                That’s awesome. What’s one skill you’ve become dangerously good at in order to grow your business?

 Sarah:             I would say copy is something I’m working on that I am definitely getting better at.

 Yuri:                Nice.

Sarah:             Thanks to Craig.

Yuri:                Just for all the listeners, Craig is her fiance. He’s like one of the top copywriters in the world. It’s nice to have feedback …

Sarah:             Yeah, but it’s something that I’ve put in a lot of time with and it is getting much better.

Yuri:                That’s great. That’s awesome. What do you do first thing in the morning?

Sarah:             First thing in the morning, I meditate for 20 minutes before I get out of bed or check emails or my phone. Then I will have some tea or lemon water, workout and then get to work.

Yuri:                Finally, complete this sentence, “I know I’m being successful when _____.”

Sarah:             I’m impacting other people’s lives.

Yuri:                Very nice. There you have it guys. Sarah Anne Stewart. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us today, Sarah.

Sarah:             Thank you so much. This has been amazing. Thank you so much. I really appreciate this work you’re doing. I think it adds so much value to this space.

Yuri:                Thanks very much. What is the best place for people to follow you online and stay up to date with your work?

Sarah:             My website is sarahannestewart.com.

Yuri:                Perfect. Check it out. Sarah, once again, thank you so much for sharing your journey, being so open with us, and for impacting all the people that you continue to impact. Thank you so much.

Sarah:             Thank you.

***********************************************************

Yuri’s Take

There you have it guys. Thanks for joining us today. I hope you’ve enjoyed this interview with Sarah Anne Stewart. Again, really inspiring journey.

And as I mentioned before, what I love about our industry is that every single one of us, for the most part, is coming from a place of our own suffering or the suffering of someone we love. We want to help them and save them.

That really transpired into creating programs or writing books or building a business to truly serve those individuals or people like ourselves, like the ones we love. And that’s why I’m really passionate about Healthpreneur, because I really believe that every single one of us has a gift and a message that is so unique—a story that is obviously very unique that needs to be shared with people.

Because the more we share what we know, the more we share our story, the more we can connect with people. The more people who are suffering out there can connect with you, can connect with your message. Even though other people are doing the same thing you are, you have a very unique way of doing things. You have a unique story that is going to bond you with others.

As Sarah mentioned in this episode, give yourself permission to evolve as a person and be open with your audience about that. Because if you feel that where you are now is not where you were five years ago, that’s fine. That’s called personal and human evolution.

If we don’t openly evolve with our audience and we’re not open about our journey, we’re holding a lot back. We’re living a false life. I believe there’s an energy there that’s sensed by other people.

I think if we can be just who we are, no matter what that journey is, it allows people to be who they are. We give them permission to be themselves, just like we’re giving ourselves permission to be who we are and to really live that journey.

That’s one of the things I struggled with for a while—as I started building Healthpreneur—is that forever I’ve been this health and fitness guy and now I’m coming to market in a big way as being this business strategist and marketing guy.

That was an issue for me for a while. It’s like, “What are people going to think? Do I set up a new list? Do I set up a new YouTube channel? Do I do all this other stuff?” What I recognized is that I’m just going to let people know what the deal is.

For my own health and fitness list, I don’t really email them about Healthpreneur related stuff, but occasionally I will let them know about something we have going on. I’ll simply say, “Hey, you guys know we have this big Healthpreneur live event. It is awesome. If you are a health or fitness professional who wants to serve more people, we’re doing a cool workshop here. If you’re interested, just reply back and let me know.”

Doing things like that in a way that is really just natural and letting people know that this is what you’re doing as part of your evolution, I think it’s a lot more cool than trying to hide stuff. If they found out afterwards, then it’s like, “Why are you hiding this? What’s going on there?”

Anyway, just something to think about today. Again, if you want to learn more about what Sarah is up to, she’s got some really cool stuff over at her blog and her website. Again, we’ll link up to that at the show notes over at healthpreneurgroup.com/podcast, which is where you can get all of the episodes that we are releasing on a weekly basis.

***********************************************************

Follow Sarah Anne Stewart At:

 

https://sarahannestewart.com/

Facebook

Instagram

YouTube

Pinterest

Twitter

Transcription

Have you ever had the thought that it would be awesome to hire a high level athlete in your business? This is something that I’ve thought about quite a bit, especially after the conversation I’m about to have with JR. Well, I’ve already had the conversation, you’re about to listen to it.

But our conversation is gonna be, for me, very illuminating. And I think you’ll find it to be the same. Now, what does this have to do with pro athletes and JR and all this stuff?

Well, JR is really an amazing person because of some of the stuff that he’s done in the medical space. He’s actually the CEO of Rejuv Medical and MedFit, which is based out of Minnesota. So they operate a brick and mortar practice and they use the internet to amplify what it is that they’re doing.

He’s partnered with Dr. Joel Baumgartner with the purpose of changing the direction of the current healthcare crisis, and they offer a full suite of weight loss and corporal wellness programs, all sorts of cool stuff.

But what I really got out of our conversation is that they’re doing some really innovative stuff. They’re using stem cell and prolotherapy types of healing modalities to help people, where maybe nothing else had worked in the past.

They’re doing some really cool things with monthly packages, to serve their customers and clients better. A lot of really cool things that they’re doing, and as I’ve mentioned, they’ve built up this brick and mortar practice that’s 27,000 square feet. And they are just crushing it, and crushing it in a very positive manner. I’m not saying stealing-people’s-money type of crushing it.

The thing I loved about this interview is hearing JR’s story, which is super inspiring. Part of his story has to do with the fact that he used to play a couple different sports at a very high level. And we got to talking about what really makes a great team member. Really looking at how his business has exploded, and not just him, but the people on his team.

There’s something to be said for having that athlete’s mentality. That mindset that only athletes develop, I believe, from a young age, and working on their own or within a team. That’s something that never leaves you.

If you’re an athlete, if you’re someone who played college ball, or sports at a decent level, you know what I mean. It’s for life. It’s in you for life. The way you think, the way you work, the work ethic, all that stuff.

That is really, really awesome. That’s a great skillset to have, and when I think about the people that I want to bring on my team, these are the types of people that I want to be surrounded by.

So JR is doing some amazing things. We’re gonna bring him onto the show. We’re gonna jump right into it.

 

Yuri:                Jr, how’s it going? Welcome to the Healthpreneur Podcast!

JR:                  Thank you so much. It’s an absolute honor to be on here. I’m really excited to talk with you today.

Yuri:                Yeah, likewise, thanks for being here. I’m pumped, because you’re doing some pretty cool stuff, and you’ve got an amazing medical clinic/facility that has helped a lot of people. Can you quickly just tell our listeners about what you do, and then we’ll kind of dig a little bit deeper into your journey?

JR’s fascinating journey in life and business

 JR:                  Certainly. It all happened about eight years ago.

I played rugby for about six years, at that point, and I had a chronic achilles tendon injury that just wouldn’t heal. I’d already had five knee surgeries at that point, and one of my patients, when I was a personal trainer, told me about this guy named Dr. Baumgartner, who does prolotherapy, PRP, and stem cells.

I was like, “Well, I’ve never heard of that,” but I’d already had surgery on the other achilles, I took cortisone twice to limp and play through games, because I was a D-1 athlete, and I really just didn’t want to give up sports.

Due to my past, sports has always been my life, my outlet, my energy, the only thing that could completely shut off the rest of the world, in my head, and I wasn’t ready to give that up.

So I went and saw him, and he told me, “JR, because you’re healthy, you eat healthy and exercise, I’d still like to draw blood labs on you to see if you’re gonna get a better healing outcome. But I think PRP, based on your tear, would be ideal for you.”

So we had the process, and just through conversations, he asked me what I was gonna do when I was done with grad school, and I said how I loved the show The Biggest Loser (which had just come out at that time). The doctor tells them to lose weight, and they listen so much better.

He said, “Wow, that’s so interesting, my background is family practice, sports medicine. If somebody comes in with diabetes or metabolic syndrome, I feel like I’m just covering it up. If they come in with chronic degenerative disc disease, I feel like I’m just covering it up if I don’t get them strengthening, working on their lifestyle.”

So he asked me to join him on that point, and I had an amazing outcome. I was back to years of rugby, and that’s kind of where it all started for us.

But we have a cutting edge clinic that has three main forces of cutting edge medicine, all relatively new—which is PRP, stem cells, and regenerative medicine. It’s been around for years, but it’s kind of brand new in terms of traditional medicine. It’s outside the box.

And then functional medicine, which I’m sure you’re familiar with, which is lifestyle medicine, hormones, telomeres, detoxifying—we were looked at as outside the box for that, but now healthcare’s starting to catch up.

And then we started that medical fitness component, which nobody was doing inside of medicine, and when we started learning how to integrate these and have some of our patients come through, we were blown away with how people were seeking this model and the results they were getting when we learned how to integrate these services together.

Yuri:                That’s awesome. So I’ve got a selfish question for you. I’ve had this lingering shoulder issue from playing a lot of tennis. I think it’s like tights, posterior capsule, all sorts of stuff. Is prolotherapy good for that, or is it more like labral tears, and more kind of deep in type stuff.

JR:                  Muscles, ligaments, and tendons are perfect for prolotherapy. So it’s ideal.

It’s the most conservative treatment, because if you think about cortisone, there’s numerous studies that show the deterioration that can happen. When you have surgery, you are creating immediate scar tissue. You have the chances of it not getting better, versus when you use your body’s own ability to heal—which is what prolotherapy is—it’s very good for ligaments and tendons, to try that one to three times.

If you’re using your body’s own ability to heal and wanting kind of that prolotherapy on steroids—using your own platelets, separating out the white blood cells and using your body’s own blood to heal, which has growth factors in it—that is where PRP can be effective.

So for me—torn meniscus, torn rotator cuff and labrum, which I’ve had over the last recent years—these are better with PRP and stem cells.

But my achilles tendon, my hamstring, some glute issues that I’ve had in the past, all were resolved with prolotherapy. But elbow tendinitis, shoulder ligaments, them have all been treated very well with numerous studies with prolotherapy.

Yuri:                That’s awesome. And it’s basically just an injection, right?

JR:                  Yes. Well yeah, the prolotherapy is the use of dextrose, where PRP is the use of your own white or red blood cells. And then stem cells the process of harvesting from your bone marrow and using your body’s own stem cells that are most rich, dense, inside of your bone marrow.

Yuri:                Yeah, that’s awesome. Well, enough about me and my shoulder stuff, let’s talk about you. So you have this amazing 20,000 square foot facility with all these cool technologies in terms of healing modalities … In your journey of building this amazing practice, what’s been the biggest struggle or challenge that you guys have faced, and how did you overcome that? What was the lesson learned?

The innovative components of JR’s practice

 JR:                  Great question. So essentially, the biggest challenge was that these were three new areas of medicine.

When we initially started, when we had 1,000 square feet, it was learning how to market. I could get referrals—we were getting amazing results with those few people—but we weren’t growing fast.

So the immediate challenge in cash-based medicine was learning how to market appropriately. Not just newspaper, direct mail, telephone books, TV, radio, all that traditional stuff that you’ve seen work. It was really learning through masterminds, where we first connected with different mentors and learned that you’ve got to tell a story.

So that was the biggest challenge in cash based medicine. People want to learn why you do what you do, they want to know that you’re a real person, that you have real struggles. They want to identify with the personal brand or a voice behind cash based medicine, because all the surgeons and the traditional doctors don’t have to do that.

And they’re against this, on some levels, because they just don’t know about it yet, and think it’s outside their scope.

So that was the biggest challenge—learning how to do that. But once we learned how to do that, that’s when we went from 1,000 square feet to 6,000 to our 28,000 square foot facility. And four years ago, because of our great success of teaching other doctors how to do that, we started MedFit. Now we’ve been in 50 other clinics, worldwide.

I just signed a deal in China for 100 clinics that are gonna be replicating our license system to really impact healthcare worldwide, with these preventative and lifestyle conservative medical treatments.

Yuri:                That’s awesome. Good for you. So out of the different strategies for marketing, what was the most effective in getting people to know about your clinic and come in?

JR:                  The most effective was definitely the fact that we’ve always been a place of results. Anybody that I ever coach, if their skills aren’t enough to produce a result, I think their attention needs to go right back to the service they provide. Because if you want to have sustainability and long term outcomes, you have to be able to produce what you’re selling. Especially in cash based medicine, where a stem cell costs $6,000.

For personal training and functional medicine, we’re asking people for $1,000, $2,000 packages, and people are so used to using their insurance. So, we’ve always been good at socially connecting, telling stories, providing content—that was always our voice. But still, what some of the providers lacked was telling their story, being humble, learning to reveal their flaws, just like I heard you present at Dr. Osborne’s conference a couple years ago.

Their content is not epic, it’s informational. It’s science. You have to connect with their heart and their intellect.

Your story and the importance of a unique branded method

So, my biggest job and focus is teaching our other doctors how to tell their story, and how to connect and be real with people. This last year, I was in masterminds with Lisa Sasevich, and Mike Coynes. It’s all about telling stories. That’s what I’ve learned.

And for the two and a half years prior, we grew MedFit to 20 locations because we’d go speak at events. And we had a successful model, but it was interest. I would over-information. I’d over-deliver, and people would think they could do it on their own.

Versus this last year, with those two masterminds, I learned how to speak and sell from the stage. I was able to better tell my story. I more than tripled our business this year with no different business system or operation other than learning how to emotionally tie and connect stories together.

That has made the world of difference for our business model, hands down.

Yuri:                That’s awesome. And it’s so rare to do that as a medical professional, right?

You don’t see many doctors doing that and I think you’re doing a great job at really educating the people on your team to be aware of that. Because it doesn’t matter if you’re a doctor or a teacher, people want to connect with others.

And as you said, the power of stories is the best way to really transfer information and bond people. And you’re connecting with people at a heart level, as opposed to just a brain level. That’s awesome.

 JR:                  A hundred percent. And you need to do that with doctors, because if you think about doctors and their mindset and their psychographics—they hate to sell.

They want to provide care. They want to heal people. The last thing they want to do is market or sell. They don’t associate with that.

So it’s re-triggering and connecting, sharing your heart, attracting, in something that resonates deep within their core—otherwise it’s a disconnect. So marketing and salespeople get a bad rap until they can learn to just change on the delivering and how to connect and speak the way they would speak to their mother. Or convince their brother on why I can’t let you have surgery. Letting their heart show.

And doctors are analytical, they’re information based and science-driven. They’re so used to trying to say that, but it doesn’t connect with the human interest at home.

Yuri:                Yeah, and so again, so if you’re at a party with a bunch of doctors and they’re talking about their practice, how it’s struggling … What advice would you give them?

JR:                  I want to look and see if they have an attraction problem, especially in cash based medicine. Because a lot of them can get people through the door, but then they have a one-and-done system. They don’t have a unique branded system that says, “Over the course of a year, I’m going to take you from here to here.”

So that was another lesson. We had all these great services, but if there’s not an infographic or a treatment plan presentation that shows them how to close the gap of, “I’m not healthy” to “I’m healthy,” or “I’m in pain” to “not in pain,” then it doesn’t work. Because just like in business, nobody is gonna come and get one injection and be healed from 20 years of chronic pain. No business owner is gonna take one masterminding course and be a guru or change the world.

It’s a dedication—just like it took for them to learn how to gain the medical knowledge to treat patients—to treat business the same way. There’s no quick-fix solution to business or medicine in healing outcomes. So once they can start resonating with how that identifies to them, it’s much different for them to understand how important the learning curve of this really is.

 Yuri:                That’s awesome. You said “unique branded method.” I want to touch on that because that is huge for people to understand. Especially in this marketplace, which is extremely competitive, right?

 JR:                  Yes.

Yuri:                So how did you come across that idea? You mentioned that you’re licensing your methodology to 100 clinics in China, which is awesome. That is something you can’t do unless you have a unique method. So how did you come across all that?

JR:                  Correct, exactly. So structure equals freedom, as you know, from Craig Ballantyne, but it’s also a process.

Anybody can say they do medical fitness, right? Just like we had. I had all sorts of documents, organization, and we still have this. But when you are presenting something, it doesn’t show confidence if you can’t show the roadmap.

So when you say, “Here’s our five pillars of success to make a cash practice successful,” or “Here’s our medical fitness impact plan” … Then you can take that acronym, IMPACT. I is for integration, and it’s all about combining the medical services. M is the marketing, here’s our marketing strategy, A …

It’s a formal process which makes the receiver, the recipient see value in it. “If I don’t do the marketing, then I can’t have the full result.” So it’s a retention strategy, it’s an operating process, and it’s organized knowledge, which makes it sellable. It’s a system that, if you go through A, B, and C, you’ll get this outcome.

So our medical system is called C-FAN—which we are rebranding, because it really doesn’t say what the outcome is—but when you look at C-FAN, if somebody came in for knee pain today, it’s not that one injection is gonna remove knee arthritis of PRP.

Instead, we look at C-FAN, and the C is cell health—we’ve gotta optimize your testosterone, your vitamin D, your thyroid, to get the best outcome, otherwise it’s not gonna have the same success. Then F, we’ve gotta get you functionality, which is PT, get you moving, which is medical fitness, getting you in the right brace. And then our A, which is PRP, stem cells, or prolo, and N—now there’s a concentrated path where every provider, every employee in our system can see, this is how we go about business.

So you’re not relying on one person that has all this knowledge. It’s a system that can be replicated. And if you don’t have a system, you can’t replicate and scale.

Yuri:                That’s awesome.

JR:                  But it also shows how to get the best outcomes, so you don’t have those clients or consumers coming back to you and saying, “Well, your injection didn’t work.”

Well, can I see if you did X, Y, and Z? Well I see you haven’t. That’s part of what it takes to get this maximum outcome.

So what I do with our mastermind and our license program … I can’t promise them a profitable business just because they buy our system or because they join our mastermind. So instead it’s, “I will take you on this three year journey to a seven figure cash practice,” or “I will take you over this next year in our program to help you get off all of your medications, change your life, and give you the most confidence ever.”

So it’s a comprehensive system that is important for retention, for selling, and for scaling and growing. And to me, all of those elements are gonna be missed without a branded system.

Yuri:                That’s great. That’s really good advice.

And so, if someone is a practitioner or an online health expert, they do what they do, they produce results, but they don’t have any system. They don’t have a methodology. They haven’t really documented that.

How do you advise them on how to start really packaging that unique method?

JR:                  Great question, and this is where I tell our doctors the first step is gonna be.

I want you to look at your ideal perfect client that you got your best result with. Start right there and look. I want to look at somebody who came in, that had degenerative disc disease and chronic pain for 20 years. They came in, they did physical therapy, they did PRP, they actually worked out and started eating better.

How many visits did that equal to give this perfect, ideal client the best outcome, and what did they do?

Great. And then I’ll look at the history of all my clients that have had the best outcomes. What, secondarily, did they do? Well of course, they ate better, they did all these different parts of what this process is.

So then we just kind of look at, what did they all go through? Well they did all these things—and then we name each one of those and create a cute little acronym behind it. And we try to say, keep it under five acronym levels, or part of your system, so it doesn’t get too confusing.

But just start there, because that’s what you know, what your mom or your ideal client is gonna have to do to get the best outcome that you can deliver. And then, as you learn how to operate better, how do you get people better results in shorter and better times? And then your system changes and evolves over time.

But really, you’ve gotta look at your ideal customer, and I hope that’s good advice, for a starting point.

Yuri:                Yeah that’s awesome man, thank you for sharing that JR, that’s really good. So if you were to start all over again, what would you do differently, if anything, knowing what you know now?

JR:                  Oh man. Certainly, some of the things that I didn’t know was leadership and management.

I think I told stories from the beginning, just because I’m so passionate about what we do, but how to do it in the right structure and format, like I said—that’s what made the big change.

So content market, I’m so happy we got into that. I don’t think I knew enough about leadership and management. I made some bad decisions, I didn’t know how to react, I didn’t know how to build the deposits in the banks when we first started.

If you want to try to build a growing and scaling company, being an elite communicator, I think, is really important. And I made some mistakes along the way because of that. So that is what I would do, if I could do it differently.

Stories of drugs, alcohol and addiction

But what I’ve had to learn to do and what I’ve had to overcome is, in the sixth grade, I was teased really bad by a teacher. And I ended up having plastic surgery. My self confidence was absolutely shot. I got into drugs and alcohol really heavy in high school, and that was my only outlet. Sports, drugs, and alcohol was the only way I hid pain.

I had such low self confidence. And I knew I was called to change healthcare and partner with Dr. Baumgartner to do this, because there was such a gap in healthcare and nobody was doing this.

I knew I’d have to stand on stages, and speaking and communicating were some of biggest fears. I’ve learned to just overcome that and transfer my ability to sports. I looked at it the same way. When I had sports, I’d have to pee three or four times, but when I got on the field, I knew I was confident and good.

So, speaking became the same way. I knew I’d have to go speak, and so getting on stage was the same thing. I would not sleep a week before. I’d have to go pee four or five times, and it was just a mindset change where I realized I’m able to look at speaking as the same way as sports.

As soon as I get up there, I love it. I’m passionate about it. I’m always happy after, it’s just the nerves and anticipation. And now I long for speaking—I love it, it’s my favorite thing to do. So my failure was that my mindset wasn’t right—and you’ve heard that, it gets tossed around a lot.

But viewing everything right in terms of self responsibility, to own your journey, so that you can do whatever it takes, that you can be successful with the right mind. I feel the mentors helped me with this and helped me really overcome my weaknesses, to really have the dreams and purposes I wanted come to life.

Yuri:                That’s really cool. I mean it’s something I think a lot of people can relate to. We all have our own kind of issues and self doubts and self confidence issues … How did you bridge that gap?

You talked about mentors and them kind of helping you through that a little bit, but what advice would you give to someone who almost has imposter syndrome? They’re like, “Who’s gonna listen to me? I’m not good enough. Why should I do this?”

 JR:                  I get that. I lived that every day, and I still do at some times—because of my past and what I’ve gone through, from being teased. And I’m actually an introvert.

So even for me to go network and communicate is hard, because in my mind, I think people judge me. But what happened to me is that I knew I was a coach from day one. The minute that I was teased, I became an empath, and I always wanted to help people. I was the captain on the sports teams.

So there were areas in my life where I was strong, but I was always a good coach. Meaning I came and I was working really hard, going and building this business. Craig Ballantyne handed me a book called Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield, and he said to me, “JR, you’re always saying that you’re gonna change healthcare, and you’re confident, and there’s nothing you won’t do to make that happen, even though it’s uncomfortable. But I think how you drink…” which is to say that I was a problem drinker. I didn’t drink often because I was so dedicated to work, but every time I did I blacked out. And he said, “I think you’re an amateur in a few different areas.”

I read that book and five years ago that was the last drink I ever had, because I went to church and I found this was my calling. I never had that in life—this is another part of the story—and I knew this was my purpose and my calling. I would have to be real if I wanted this. I would have to turn pro to actually make it happen.

So there’s not one thing I will do through this mission to make it happen, but at the same time, this is also my curse. I’m just like everybody else. Everybody has a strength and a weakness. My absolute strength has always been my dedication, determination, and hard work.

From athletics, I was never the most talented, but I worked harder than people. In college, I studied harder than people. Any job I’ve always worked harder, even though I never had the most talent.

I use that to really just say how I made this happen, but also giving up addictions like the drinking, the food that I’ve had, the sex, the drugs in high school, I still have this addictive personality. And over the last eight years I’ve worked 100 hours a week.

I’m learning that I have to have some sort of balance, but I’m at peace that this is a healthier addiction.

I would rather work 70 hours a week because I love this. I don’t want to go bowling, because I’m too injured. I want to work because I’m so committed to what I do but still be able to shut off and be present for my family.

That was the balance that I’m having to overcome as an entrepreneur—how to turn my addictions to my strengths, but still have enough focus and putting down the phone, being so present with my family that my whole purpose of changing healthcare isn’t lost within my family, because I’m addicted.

I could go one way or another if I’m not careful.

Yuri:                That’s so good, man. Thank you so much for sharing that and really kind of opening up, because that’s not easy to do. I just want to commend you on your journey, because a lot of people might play the victim, right?

They just might say, “You know what? This is who I am, this is the way the cards have been dealt,” but you’ve used that to your strength, and you’ve really used that to shape a lot of people’s lives so I just want to commend you on that. That’s awesome.

 The championship mindset

JR:                  Thank you. It’s what I call the championship mindset—just like with the sports—versus the victim mindset. Anybody that’s saying, “My people won’t pay cash, it’s my market, it’s my employees, I’ve had bad partners before, I’ve had this and that.”

I tell them, until they can fully own every ounce of success—what it takes to learn, how they interact with their employees, what they expect, the relationships they have—until they can own it all, they’re gonna be a victim of circumstances versus what they can control and succeed. And again, that mindset has continued to propel me, that athletic background.

As the CEO, I’m responsible for every employee that I hire, I’m responsible for the happiness in my marriage, I’m responsible for our success. And when you look at it that way and then have self love and learn to say, “Okay, I made that mistake and didn’t learn,” that is where you can start to enjoy the process versus being on the horizon and always thinking, “Well, only when I get there.”

I’m now starting to enjoy the process, instead of only when I’m successful. So you have to own your own happiness in it too.

Yuri:                Well you’ve definitely inspired me. I just had an “a-ha” moment. I come from a background of very high level sport as well, and I look at a lot of really successful people in our space—whether they’re the face of the business or more of an integrator role—and I’m like, “Yeah, they were high level athletes.”

And there’s something that I’ve recognized, over the years. I call it the lifelong athlete, where you’re an athlete forever. You have the mindset, you have the work ethic. That’s something that will never go away, no matter what you do. And I just had an “a-ha,” as you were talking about this.

When I’m hiring people, now, I think I’m gonna have to look at their background. If they had an athletic background, at a high level, that’s gonna be a good check in their favor, because I think those are skills and leadership capabilities. There’s a work ethic, and just mindset traits that are so ingrained in how we live, that it’s a huge asset to bring to any business.

JR:                  I agree, 100%. And there’s always the outliers. I have a handful of employees that weren’t athletes that are exceptional, and that’s what I’ve come to learn about leadership management.

As long as I’m meeting with them 30/60/90 with their job descriptions and looking at the core values. If they’re the right fit, I will get the right team.

But certainly Dr. Baumgartner, my partner, was a D-1 gymnast and diver. My main operations guy was a D-1 diver, and almost at the Olympics. And these are warriors, within our practice, with a warrior heart to change healthcare, but they’re competitive! We’re competitive with each other! Who’s putting out good content, and bringing on deals, and getting amazing outcomes, and having advances in our group.

We compete, no different than when people join a challenge or a competition. You’re competing. There’s got to be that there, but not everybody is motivated by competition, but we all know it can certainly enhance a drive and an outcome.

Yuri:                Yeah, that’s wicked, man. JR, this has been tremendous. I want to thank you for sharing everything you’ve shared so far. Are you ready for the rapid five?

JR:                  Yeah, absolutely, thank you.

The Rapid-Five Questions

Yuri:                All right. Here we go. So you’ve got no idea what these questions are, like none of our guests do, when I ask them. So here we go, number one. What is your biggest weakness?

JR:                  My biggest weakness is technology. Without a shadow of a doubt.

But I knew that weakness, I was self aware. I think that’s so important to know about yourself. I knew I was terrible with technology. I’ve hired around that from the beginning.

Also, not very organized. I have a personal assistant, and my main operations people. With the Colby test, I know how to hire the right people around me for what my weaknesses are.

Yuri:                That’s awesome. What’s your Colby score, out of curiosity?

JR:                  I’m a 4-5-7-3.

Yuri:                Nice. I’m a 3-5-8-2, so not too far off.

JR:                  Yeah, absolutely.

 Yuri:                Yeah, that’s cool. But yeah, so for those of you guys listening, if you haven’t done your Colby or created a Colby profile for different job roles on your team, it’s a game changer. It is so awesome.

 JR:                  Absolutely.

Yuri:                For the longest time I couldn’t understand why people didn’t think like I did, and I’m like, “What do you mean we can’t have this thing done by tomorrow?”

So I did my Colby, then I had my team do their Colby, and I was like, “Oh, okay, that’s why.” It’s like I’m speaking Japanese, they’re speaking Arabic, and when I figured that out it was a day and night difference. So yeah, get the Colby done, it’s awesome.

 JR:                  Yes.

 Yuri:                All right. Number two, what is your biggest strength?

 JR:                  My biggest strength is one-on-one communication with inspiring action. So coaching. You know, helping people get past their fears. I understand, because I know I have empath abilities and I have no judgment.

I’ve been through it all, I’ve done everything imagined, I judge nobody. I only want them to take the first step, and I’m good at creating action and first steps with their limitations in mind.

 Yuri:                Wicked. Number three. One skill you’ve become dangerously good at in order to grow your business.

 JR:                  I don’t know that I’m good at it, but the numbers and conversions is definitely speaking from the stage. That changed from a fear to something I’m getting pretty darn good at.

 Yuri:                Awesome. What do you do first thing in the morning?

 JR:                  What do I do first thing in the morning? I get up, I pray, then I start my ten minute morning routine where I’m thinking about the top priority of the day, the three people that I’m grateful for, and the one person that I’m going to acknowledge today in our practice.

 Yuri:                Beautiful. And complete this sentence: I know I’m being successful when ____.

 JR:                  I know I’m being successful when I walk off of a stage and I get the affirmations. Not having that as a young kid, affirmations are my love language. So when I get that feedback, even though I haven’t had 500 locations and I’m not making 50 million dollars and helping the ten communities—the way I think big is when I know people come and tell me I helped them. I get emotional very easily that keeps me on the right path.

Yuri:                Beautiful. JR, this has been such a great, great conversation. I want to thank you so much for being open and transparent and taking the time to share your journey, your wisdom with our listeners. What is the best place for people to check out what you guys are up to?

 JR:                  Rejuv Medical is our clinic and MyMedFit—but we’re changing that name so that it’s more encompassing of what we’re doing with our mastermind program now. But if anybody ever wants to email me, [email protected], which is my assistant.

I have a free book that I give anybody called The Medical Fitness Impact Plan, which kind of explains what we’re doing in healthcare with fitness and lifestyle medicine. But if they want to look at our clinic website, how we’ve integrated all three of those things together, it would be a good place to search a few edges of cutting edge medicine.

Yuri:                Beautiful. JR, once again, thank you so much for taking the time.

JR:                  Thank you for all that you’re doing in the industry. Your presentation, it was awesome. Even learning your epic contact and seeing what you’re doing in the industry. Keep plowing ahead, because you’re an inspiration to so many. Thank you so much.

Yuri:                Awesome, thank you so much, JR.

 

******************************************************

Yuri’s take

I hope you enjoyed that one, guys. That was a lot of fun. I had a great conversation with JR after we finished recording—we just went a little bit deeper on some of the topics like hiring team members.

He asked me what was one of the challenges or areas that I need help with in my business, and I’ll be very honest with you, I think one of my weaknesses is asking for help.

I rarely ask others for help, and that’s a weakness of mine. I think what that means is that I’m not willing to be vulnerable, as much as I think I am. Because when you ask somebody for help, you’re basically saying that you don’t know something and you need assistance with it.

And I think there’s a lot to be said for that, for being open and vulnerable enough to ask somebody else for help. That’s something I’m working on.

And I know for a fact that I definitely don’t know it all. I’m not gonna pretend that I do.

I’ve spent a lot of money on coaches, masterminds, mentoring, and so forth. So I’m always very conscious of the fact that, for me, growth is really important.

But if you’re like myself, and you like giving advice as opposed to asking for help, you’re probably in the same mindset as I am. You don’t want to be seen as a little bit weaker, less stoic—and that’s okay, right?

Because here’s the thing—people want to help you. People don’t ask because they think you have your shit together. I think when you ask for help in a way that’s genuine it really breaks down a lot of barriers and allows people to come in closer to you. You can really just open up a cool dialog and take that relationship to a much deeper level.

So that’s just one of the little insights that I got out of our conversation. I hope you enjoyed the interview, ’cause I had a lot of fun talking with JR. He’s doing some really cool stuff. You can tell he’s amped up.

He’s just on fire with this stuff, and that’s why I love bringing these amazing guests on the show. Highlight the journey. Highlight the highs and lows, the crappy points and the good points, the lessons learned along the way. So I hope you’re enjoying these episodes and enjoying the lessons and the inspiration.

If you have not done so already, I’d greatly appreciate if you left a rating or review on iTunes—and while you’re there, be sure to subscribe to the podcast, if you still haven’t done that for whatever reason.

And I want to thank you, once again, for taking the time out of your busy life to be with me and for tuning in for another fun conversation. Hopefully it’s lifted you up, it’s given you some cool ideas.

So, that’s all for today. Thank you once again for being with me. Keep up the amazing work, because what you’re doing does make a difference in people’s lives. Even if it’s one person, it matters, okay?

So go out there, and continue to be great, do great, and I look forward to seeing you in our next episode.

***********************************************************

Follow JR Burgess At:

https://rejuvmedical.com/

https://rejuvmedfit.com/

Transcription

Hello, and welcome back to the Healthpreneur podcast. Yuri here with you. Apparently I’m losing my voice. It’s all good. I’ve got some water with apple cider vinegar.

Today, we’re talking about how to stand out in a very competitive marketplace using what I call a Proprietary Process™. We’re going to look at how you can discover your secret sauce, the thing that really helps your methodology produce results for your clients and customers. This is actually a process that we work with our clients in more depth on, within our Health Business Accelerator workshop.

The basics behind the Proprietary Process

Essentially, what we do is look at, “Okay, how do you create a result for someone?” If you help someone lose 30 pounds in 30 days, how do you do that? If you help someone have a lot more energy, how do you do that?

A lot of times, we’re really not conscious of how we create change for someone because we just do it naturally. We’ve been doing it for so long that it becomes the unconscious competence. So what I want to walk you through here is, how to extract that and be able to communicate it in a much more tangible manner for people to grasp.

I want to use an example from our Health Business Accelerator workshop.

Before I give you that example, let’s look at the framework first. The proprietary process, first and foremost, is your secret sauce. Think about what steps you go through or what steps you take your clients through, your customers through, to achieve a specific result.

Now, you’re probably not going to be able to answer them right now, but I want you just to write down how you actually do this. “If I help someone go from overweight to thin, how do I do that?”

So, in this case it might be … First we go through some basic dietary changes, or we have them cut out bread and dairy, or we start off with body weight workouts, or whatever your process is, whatever that first step is.

You want to just jot down those steps—in a sequential manner, if possible. So that’s step one.

For step two, you want to take each of those steps and condense them into one or two words. An example would be “proprietary process.” Let’s use the example of helping people make a dietary change as part of their first step to losing weight. We’re going to help them improve their diet.

Well, can that be broken down at all, or do we want to keep it broad?

It depends on how you want to build this out. Let’s say we want to keep it broad, so instead of saying, “We’re going to help you change your diets,” you would give it an interesting name, something along the lines of “food freedom,” perhaps.

Step one is now called food freedom. This is how we help you develop a better relationship with food so you can eat in a way that you don’t feel guilty and shameful, and you actually get great results.

You can see what I’ve done there. It’s a lot more appealing. It’s very different than, “We’re going to help you change your diet,” because no one wants to change anything, but they do want food freedom.

So, if you think about the names of each of these steps, think about them from a benefit perspective, if possible. “Food freedom” is a benefit. It doesn’t always have to be a benefit, but if you can tie a benefit in, then that’s always cool.

So, we’ve identified the steps. We’re going to give each step a name, and maybe there’s ten steps, three steps, four steps. It doesn’t really matter—however many steps you need to go through to get results for that person.

Now, we are going to look at that entire process and give it a name. We’ve got step one, step two, step three, however many steps. Each step has its own name that’s clean and condensed, and it really shows what you’re accomplishing in that specific step, or what benefits you’re getting.

We’re going to give your whole process a name, and we’ll throw a little ™ on the end of it because it’s a proprietary process. No one else has this besides you. Even if the steps are similar to someone else’s, this is your own unique spin on it.

Some examples from Yuri

So, I’ll give you a couple examples. On the content side, we have a process called the Teach to Sell Method. Teach to sell is our process. We show clients how to attract ideal clients that pay premium prices, pretty much whenever they want, through a four-step process we call the Perfect Client Pipeline.

That’s the name of the process, and then the four steps in the process have their own names as well.

Let me give you an example from our Health Business Accelerator workshop. We walk people through a three-phase system, so three phases: attract, convert and deliver.

Each of those three phases has three sub-phases, what we call business accelerators. So there are three little steps under each of those three phases. Under attract, the outcome of that phase is that we help you create the “apple effect,” where we help you clarify your vision, help you position yourself to stand out, and create great value for your audience so that people are lined up to do business with you—kind of like standing outside an Apple store for the new iPhone release.

How do we do that? We go through three steps: vivid vision, power positioning and value vehicle. Those are the three steps we go through to get to the outcome that I just described.

Second phase in our workshop is called convert. Nothing crazy with that word. It’s convert.

It’s pretty self-explanatory. Converting prospects into clients. We walk people through a four-step system called the Perfect Client Pipeline, and specifically within that, we walk people through how to acquire, activate and ascend people from not paying you to enrolling with you and being a great client. As a result, you’re able to make a lot more money with better quality clients, and so forth.

Finally, we go into the third phase, which is deliver. This is what we call the Dream Come True System, which focuses on taking your expertise and turning it into intellectual property in a systemized fashion. So we go through three business accelerators in this phase called Painful Problem, Powerful Promise, Proprietary Process.

See how that all works? So, I’ve given each step a name and it defines what we’re going through, or a specific outcome of that little step.

When you communicate what you do, it’s simple for people to see the roadmap. But this is not enough. You have to focus on the outcome and the benefit that your customers or clients are receiving as a result of your solution—whether it’s coaching or a product or anything else.

That’s how you develop a proprietary process. It’s a really, really cool methodology, and if you want to see it work, actually check out our most recent online workshop. It’s free. It’s called The Seven-Figure Health Business Blueprints.

See what I’ve done there?

I’ve given that a name, so behind all that is a proprietary process which I will walk you through inside the webinar. You can register for free over at healthpreneurgroup.com/9. I’m going to walk you through five secrets to building a hassle-free seven-figure online health and fitness business, and I’ll walk you through those nine business accelerators in a little bit more detail.

It’s a lot of fun. At the very minimum, you’ll learn a lot from this webinar. So that’s all for today. Hope you’ve enjoyed this solo round.

Come in on Wednesday. We’ve got a great interview with JR Burgess who runs an amazing medical center in the states. He’s going to share with you some really, really big stuff that they’re doing.

Then, we’ll be talking with Sarah Anne Stewart on how to find your voice and sell more effectively on Friday, so don’t go anywhere.

Remember to subscribe to the Healthpreneur podcast. We’ve got great episodes coming out every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. For now, I bid you farewell.

Have an amazing day, and I hope to see you on our Seven-Figure Health Business Blueprints online workshop. I’ll see you there.

Transcription

Hey guys, what’s up? Yuri here. Welcome to the Healthpreneur Podcast. In the last episode, we talked with Tony DiLorenzo about the power of having a strong marriage and how that can tie over into the business. He also talked about his life-transforming 60-day sex challenge. If you missed that episode, be sure and check it out after this one.

Today we’re speaking with Kelly Bejelly, who is the CEO and co-founder of 20 Dishes—which is a really cool meal planning recipe app. She’s also a recipe developer, writer, and photographer behind the popular grain-free food blog called “A Girl Worth Saving”. She’s also the author of The Paleo Eats Cookbook: 111 Comforting Gluten-Free, Grain-Free, and Dairy-Free Recipes for the Foodie in You.

What’s cool about Kelly is that she actually has no background in nutrition. If you’ve ever been limited by the belief that you have to have a degree and a bunch of certifications, all sorts of stuff before you actually get started—I think you’ll find this interview rather inspiring.

Kelly has simply taken her own asset, her own journey, and shared what she’s gone through, what’s worked for her. I think you’ll really find some golden nuggets out of this interview.

If you want to learn more about what she’s up to, you can head over to her website at 20Dishes.com. Without any further ado, let’s bring Kelly onto the show.

Yuri:                Hey, Kelly! Welcome to the Healthpreneur Podcast. How’s it going?

 Kelly:              Great. Thank you so much for having me on and letting me share my story.

 Yuri:                Absolutely. I’m excited to chat with you because you’re doing some pretty cool stuff in the recipe, food blogging space.

That’s a space that’s kind of near and dear to my heart, because we built a lot of our health and fitness business off amazing recipes and nutrition stuff. I’m always fascinated by the world of food blogging because there’s some amazing bloggers like yourself out there building some great things, building awesome recipes, lots of traffic, lots of followers.

It’s always been something that I have found inspiring and just pretty awesome. With that said, what’s new and exciting in the world of Kelly these days?

Kelly’s journey through 30 years of cooking and the start of 20 Dishes

 Kelly:              Well, I am still cooking up recipes. I kind of do two things. I started my journey with my site “A Girl Worth Saving”. I started sharing my journey going paleo.

At the time I went paleo, I had some severe health issues. I was morbidly obese. I had anxiety, depression, and I was pre-diabetic.

Then I just started. I cleaned up my diet. I really feel in alignment with the grain-free lifestyle. I just started sharing recipes.

I had no idea how something that that, to me seems so natural and so fun and so simple, really changed people’s lives.

I’m not Celiac, but a lot of my readers are coming to me with health issues like that. I think it really hit home for me when a mom left a comment on my pretzel recipe, which is egg-free and grain-free, all that stuff.

She was so excited because her daughter could finally take something to school and be like the other kids. I was like, “Wow.” I had no idea. Again, that’s something to me that’s like, “Oh. I just love to cook.”

I’ve been cooking for 30 years now, and it’s something that goes into people’s homes and becomes part of their lives and helps them.

I was like, “This is amazing.” It’s another reason why I love what I do and why I also started a meal planning site, but it’s not just meal planning. 20 Dishes is sort of like that saying, “If you teach a man to fish, he can feed himself forever.”

From recipes, to cookbooks, to a full on meal planning software

With 20 Dishes, we actually make it super simple for people to prep a week of meals really quickly. If you’ve ever gotten a recipe book and you try to meal plan in there … It can be overwhelming, especially when you’re new.

Even if you’re not new, if you’re a busy mom like me, you’re looking at 10 recipes and you create the shopping list and then cook all the recipes. The way that people typically think is, “Oh, I’m going to cook a recipe, so I’m going to chop everything for this recipe this day, and the next day I’ll chop the ingredients for the next recipe.”

With 20 Dishes, we actually tell you how to prep your entire meal. We tell you, “Do this, do this, do this,” so you don’t have to think. You just follow instructions.

Again, I love creating, I love helping people. When you’re in the hustle, when you’re doing it, you’re going through all the highs and lows of being a business owner, it’s always like, “Wow, I’m really helping people.”

One of our clients, she went from spending 20 hours a week—which is like a part-time job—prepping and cooking and shopping and all that stuff for her family of four, to 2 hours.

We were like, “Whoa. This is amazing. I didn’t realize that we were doing this.” Even though we do it, it’s like I didn’t realize we were doing this.

Yuri:                That’s great. So you were creating recipes and you had the cookbook. What was the moment in time where you said, “You know what? Let’s build a software, a meal planner, that is just going to make things a lot easier?”

What was the moment in time, and why did you think that was a great idea?

 Kelly:              Honestly, I ask people what they want. I don’t ever assume, because usually when I assume stuff it’s wrong.

Yuri:                It always goes wrong, doesn’t it?

Kelly:              I have an amazing business partner, Orleatha, and she had actually come up with this system. She’s a busy mom and she realized people are cooking the way they cooked when their great grandma cooked.

People don’t have the same amount of time anymore. This is a way to streamline it.

She talked to chefs. Actually Orleatha came to me with the idea and I was like, “Let me see if my audience needs help with this, with meal planning, and getting in and out of the kitchen.”

They said yes, and we said, “Okay. Let’s do it.” That’s how it happened. I’m like, “Is there a need for this?” If there isn’t, I don’t have the time to invest in trying to build something that no one wants.

Yuri:                Sure. Did you have a developer build this platform out? Was that a lengthy process?

Kelly:              Yes. We’ve been working with an amazing developer for three years. We totally lucked out. We started off just like anyone green. We went to Upwork and found a company on there first.

It was kind of a nightmare to be honest with you. We gave them some examples of how we wanted it to look, and then we realized later they actually were using the source code from another site in our work.

We’re like, “What is this?” We looked around. We’re like, “Okay. We’re not ever using Upwork. We’re never going to work with anyone else overseas.” Someone in the states. Then I’m totally a believer in the idea that the universe, that God, is one of our owners.

We’re like, “Help.” It always happens that way. We need help, we’re looking for this, and then the right person shows up. I’m eternally grateful for that.

Yuri:                That’s awesome. I think part of it is just getting clear on what you want. When you have that clarity and you ask for help, it just ends up presenting itself.

 Kelly:              Exactly. That is the wonderful thing about our team. We’ve built an amazing small team of people who help us—because there’s no way you can ever do these things alone. You start thinking, “Oh. I can do this alone,” and it’s like, “No. Not if you want a life, if you plan to have life back.”

 Limiting beliefs and some tips for bloggers

Yuri:                I want to talk about the blog for a second. Just so everyone knows, you don’t have a professional background as a nutritionist or a dietician, correct?

 Kelly:              Correct. I do not.

 Yuri:                Was that ever a limiting belief? I know a lot of people get hung up on, “Oh my God. I need to get my degree and my Master’s and my PhD in order to share stuff with people.”

Was that ever something that was a roadblock for you?

Kelly:              It hasn’t been. When I started blogging, I was a newly stay-at-home mom. We were single income, and I was in this mode of, “I must create something to help the family. I must build this.”

I had actually started my blog five years ago. I forgot about it, and then I picked it back up. I was like, “Oh. I can actually make money doing this, and I can help.” There have been so many times, so many things have come up where if I had to just be like, “No. I have to do anything and everything to get this done.”

And if I hadn’t done that, those mindset traps that people fall into would’ve presented themselves. I was in this mode of, “I am a train. I am a steamroller. I’m going to do whatever I have to do.”

I’ve always been very honest with my audience. I’m like, “Hey, I’m not a nutritionist. I’m not an NTP or whatever. I’m just a woman who loves to cook and is blessed to know how to throw together ingredients that taste wonderful without a lot of work.”

Yuri:                I call people like you health crusaders. I don’t even like saying “people like you.” That’s a terrible word.

Health crusaders. You don’t need accreditations, right? I think people, and obviously your business is a great example, they just want to relate to other people. It’s like, “Hey, here’s Kelly who’s gone through a journey. I can relate to that. I’m kind of like her, I love her recipes.”

That’s all that matters. You’ve built a great following and a great blog just on delivering value from what’s been working for you. That’s awesome.

Kelly:              I know. It’s a blessing. One thing I always think of is that I started my blog a little bit after the economy was in the pits. I was like, “I built this business. I’m making income. I’m helping support the family, and I don’t see that. I don’t see that.” Obviously everyone’s going through their own journey, and I’m not saying anything about their journey, but for me it was like, “No. This is amazing.”

The internet is really, to me, like the old west. Stake your claim. You can create whatever you put the effort to online.

 Yuri:                As you said, you kind of create your own economy. You’re not going to get fired unless somehow everyone loses their ability to earn money and thus pay you money.

When a lot of the stuff goes south, you’re continuing to add value, you’re continuing to serve your customers, there’s always going to be a market for what it is you’re doing and who you’re serving. That’s why it’s such an amazing opportunity we have, nowadays, to be able to do this stuff.

Talk to me about when you got started. One of the biggest things people get hung up on when it comes to blogging and content creation is seeing the traction from their work. It’s like, “I put in this time to write this article. I’m getting no traffic to my website. I’m not making money.”

What realistic expectation can you give people in terms of advice? From the time you started, what type of frequency were you posting with? When did traction start to pick up? Were there other things that you did to help with all that?

The value of a support group, especially for bloggers

Kelly:              I was kind of blessed when I started. I’m always blessed, I’m going to say that, I’m going to put that out to the universe.

I found a blogger support group. If you’re serious about blogging, you have to learn to network with other bloggers and work with other bloggers. You have to get rid of that mindset that helping other people hurts your success, because it’s the total opposite.

So I was posting about three times a week, and I was just putting anything on there. I think at first everyone is just like, “Oh. I want viral stuff,” but you have no idea how to create viral stuff when you first start. If you do, then it’s total luck or you have a mentor or something.

I started realizing that the content that people interacted with most was my recipes, so it made sense to just solely focus on that because that was what was the most shareable, the most commented on. Again, I was part of a really amazing blogger community where we did reciprocal sharing. Reciprocal likes, tweets, comments, etc.

The internet has changed, obviously, quite a bit, and you rarely get comments anymore on blogs. Well, you do on recipes if it’s terrible or if they absolutely love it. There’s never any, “This was good.”

It probably took … Let me think … Within a year, I was making money. I was really maximizing.

First, I was just doing ad work—like ads on your website—and doing some brand work that I would manage to get by pitching myself. Honestly, it was like six months after I went to full recipes that my traffic started growing quite a bit, and I got approached by a publisher to do my cookbook “Paleo Eats”.

That’s when I was like, “Oh. I’m totally in alignment with this.”

Now, one of the things that I’ve found that I have to really work on as an entrepreneur, as someone who doesn’t have a “boss”, is focus.

Yuri:                I don’t think anyone can relate to that. NOT!

Kelly:              I create these rabbit holes. I’m like, “Why did I spend my time on this?” It’s not, necessarily, that there’s no return on it, but I should have just focused. My word for the next 10 years is focus.

 Yuri:                That’s a good one.

 Kelly:              But really, networking. There’s tons of groups on Facebook where you can reach out and do reciprocal sharing. If you know how to take really good photos—I taught myself how to take the photos that I take—then that’s going to really help tremendously.

Yuri:                That’s huge. Do you repost those photos on Pinterest or Instagram?

Kelly:              Yes, definitely. Pinterest. Facebook. I don’t actually do a ton on Facebook anymore, but Pinterest.

SEO is really important. There’s different websites like Food Gawker that you can share your photos on, but your photo quality has to be really … They’re really, really picky, so your photo quality has to be really up there to get selected.

 Yuri:                It’s funny because, for us, we found that Pinterest is the second biggest source of traffic to our blog. That won’t happen if you have crappy looking photos.

If you’re going to do the recipe thing, do it properly. If someone doesn’t know how to take good pictures, either hire a food photographer, or are there any resources that you’d recommend to help people learn how to do proper photos?

Kelly:              Yeah. The book that I love was Plate to Pickle. It just really changed how looked at photography. I have before and afters, and I’m like, “Whoa.”

It’s pretty significant. Pinch of Yum has a course as well.

Yuri:                Yeah. Actually that’s one of the ones I bought for my wife way back in the day.

 Kelly:              That one’s really good.

 Yuri:                It is good. We’ll be sure to link up to that in the show notes for you guys so you can check those out if you’re interested in the food blogging route. In your journey building out the blog, doing the cookbook, what’s been one of the biggest challenges that you’ve faced? How you have overcome it, and what’s a lesson you learned from it?

Getting through the ups and downs of entrepreneurship

Kelly:              I think for me it’s, again, focus. That has been the thing for me. I get ideas all the time and learning to say, “No. That’s a great idea. Let’s write it down, and let’s not touch that for 10 years” is hard.

When I look at my journey, there’s been a ton of ups, there’s been a ton of downs. It’s so hard, especially when you’re in a down, to go, “What’s the long view? This is just this moment, but what is it going to be like in two years? It’s not going to be like this.”

Yuri:                Let me jump in there for a second. I want to ask you about this, because this is interesting. During the down moments, did you ever find yourself making a decision that was a very quick fix, that may have been incongruent with the bigger vision or your core values?

Was there a bad move that you made where you were like, “Well, shit. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that?”

 Kelly:              I haven’t. Usually when I get to those moments, I just want to give up.

 Yuri:                How do you stop yourself from giving up?

 Kelly:              Well, I usually take a break. I take a moment.

Usually that means I’m working too much. I need to look at my work-life balance a little bit better, and I need to change my focus and just step away for a second. Just take a breath and realize that this is just one moment in time, and it’s not forever.

Then I come back. I do something fun. I do something to change my energy, and then I go, “Okay. I can fix anything. I’m not doing this by myself, so what’s the answer?”

I’m very much a woman who’s always talking to the universe.

Yuri:                Love the universe. Such a good place.

Kelly:              Very, very good information and help too.

Yuri:                You’re looking for outside guidance, taking that time to change your state, get in a better mental place, and coming back and looking for guidance to help you tackle that problem and keep on going forward. Nice.

Kelly:              Yeah. Interesting, it’s usually more not outside guidance from a person. Inner guidance.

Yuri:                For sure. Do you believe that your intuition is your best compass?

Kelly:              Yes. 100%. Even if I don’t like what it says, it’s best to just do it.

Yuri:                Do you find that you feel it? You’re like, “Okay. This is the right answer,” but then you override with your brain thinking, “Well, maybe I’ll just kind of push that aside”?

You have that intuitive thought or that feeling, you’re like, “This is what I should do,” but then you do something opposite? Or are you pretty congruent with that feeling and being led by that?

 Kelly:              It’s so funny. That’s something that I’ve made a big change for. In the past, it was like, “Oh no. No, no, no. I’m not going to do that.”

I’ve realized that while there might be, I’ll say, contrast when you follow your intuition at first, in the long run it’s always for the best. It’s always what makes you happy.

Instead of just listening to my intuition, now I choose to follow my intuition and just say, “I might be afraid. I might not like this, but I know that in the long run it’s going to be amazing.”

Yuri:                I couldn’t agree more. We all have that, and I think it’s the ability to just eventually get to the point where you just listen to it.

 Kelly:              Right. You have to fall on your face a lot to get there.

 Yuri:                What’s worked for you to help you do that?

 Kelly:              Honestly, I just look at the past decisions that I’ve made. And most people just don’t learn. At least not me. I’m one of those people that has to bang my head in the wall like 20 times before I figure it out.

 Yuri:                Me too. It’s frustrating.

 Kelly:              Right! So, I started working with an amazing healer who I do counseling with. You have to work on your mindset stuff.

There’s so much you learn when you’re a kid that just creates big walls that you think you can never jump over unless you work on it. And I realized, “Dude! My life could be so much easier if I just followed my intuition instead of thinking something bad was going to happen.”

That took me two years. It wasn’t overnight. It wasn’t a quick fix, a pill. It was constant, “I know that there’s so much more out there for me, and I’m not willing to settle for these limiting things that I learned when I was younger.”

Yuri:                That’s awesome. What do you think is an important mindset for entrepreneurs to have for lasting success? 

Loving what you do

Kelly:              God, that’s a hard one because there’s so many different things.

So, I love what I do. It’s not always easy, but I love it. I think you have to love what you do, and realize that just because it’s something that you love, doesn’t mean that it’s always going to be easy. And I love easy stuff.

If you love it, if you feel it in your heart and it’s like, “God. I’m changing lives. I’m doing amazing things that I never thought I would do, but it’s really hard and a lot of times I’m banging my head against the wall,” you have to remember that you love it.

And you have to be willing to be told “no” a million times.

 Yuri:                That’s true.

 Kelly:              That’s just all part of it. You wouldn’t get the same “juice” out of something that’s boring, right? Sure, you could go get a job where you know you’re always going to get paid the same amount every month. It’s really safe.

But if you’ve ever built something and made something and gone through that, the feeling that you get when you achieve what you want is amazing.

 Yuri:                Couldn’t agree more. That’s why entrepreneurship is the best. I think it’s the ultimate spiritual journey because you learn so much about yourself. You have to grow in order to continue growing your business, because you have so many challenges and obstacles en route.

It’s not something I think a lot of nine-to-fivers deal with as much as we do, so we really are blessed for what we’re able to create out of thin air, for the most part.

 Kelly:              Exactly. I agree with you.

 Yuri:                Also, you talked about the journey—you have to love it because it’s not easy—and it’s very true.

I’ve got three kids. I love them, but they’re not easy. That doesn’t mean I’m going to throw them away. It’s the same thing with your business. You have to do something you love, otherwise it’s going to be a long road.

Nice. Well, Kelly, this has been a lot of fun. Are you ready for the rapid five?

 Kelly:              I am.

 The Rapid-Five questions

Yuri:                Alight, you’ve got no knowledge of these questions. I’m just going to fire them at you. Whatever comes to mind is basically the right answer. Number one, what is your biggest weakness?

 Kelly:              Distraction, for sure. I get so many ideas. I can be talking to my husband and be like, “I should do this, I should make this, and I should create this.” I’m like, “No, no, no, no, no, no.”

 Yuri:                Is your business partner more of an implementer? Or a visionary like you are?

 Kelly:              Oh. She’s definitely like me.

 Yuri:                That’s got to be interesting.

 Kelly:              We’ve gone down so many rabbit holes together.

 Yuri:                Second question, what is your biggest strength?

 Kelly:              I am really good at creating communities.

 Yuri:                I think that’s a female thing. I find that’s more female than a guy thing for sure. There’s a lot of amazing women that I know who do such a good job at that, and the guys are like, “Whatever. I never go on Facebook. I never communicate with my audience.”

That’s too bad, because it’s such a great asset. It really is all about community.

Kelly:              Yeah. It is. It really is.

Yuri:                Number three, what’s one skill you’ve become dangerously good at in order to grow your business?

Kelly:              You know what? I’m going to have to say learning. I am always learning. Always learning code, learning how to share on social media … I am a total introvert, so how to network. Just my ability to be like, “Okay, I don’t know how to do this. I’m going to learn how to do it,” and I do.

 Yuri:                That’s awesome. What do you do first thing in the morning?

 Kelly:              I meditate.

 Yuri:                Do you do guided or your own?

 Kelly:              I do my own. I usually do self Reiki since I am a Reiki master, and I meditate for seriously two minutes because I have two kids, and I have to take my little one to school. It doesn’t have to be forever just as long as I get it in.

Yuri:                Good for you. Finally, complete this sentence. I know I’m being successful when ____.

Kelly:              When I am present 

Yuri:                That’s a good one.

Kelly:              I am not thinking about all these other things. I am completely present with whatever is going on in my life.

Yuri:                Kelly, this has been a lot of fun. Thank you so much for opening up and sharing your journey, your wisdom, with us on the podcast. What is the best place for our listeners to check out what you’re up to online and follow your work?

Kelly:              I’m going to say you can find me at 20Dishes.com, because there’s a lot of fun stuff we’re doing over there showing people to fish.

Yuri:                Great. Kelly, once again thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to join us. It’s been a lot of fun. Hope you guys enjoyed this one.

***********************************************************

Yuri’s Take

Hope you’ve enjoyed our interview today. Kelly’s got some pretty cool stuff going on. Again, if you’re interested in checking out how she’s doing her whole meal planning thing in a really cool app type of way, check out 20Dishes.com. Looks like some pretty cool stuff.

Just a couple things that I want to remind you of. Next week, we’ve got a great solo round where I’m going to be talking to you about something. I’m not even sure what I’m going to be talking to you about, and I’m going to keep it as a surprise—mostly because I’m not quite sure what I’ll be speaking about until we get closer to that release date on Monday.

Normally, I’m pretty ahead of schedule. I’m really bang on with our calendar, and I’ve got a good idea what I want to talk about and the types of people we’re going to bring onto the show, but next week is a surprise. Tune in for the surprise. It’ll be worth it, as it always is.

I want to thank you, once again, for taking the time to join me, and again I’m going to continue to say this over and over and over. You’re going to get sick and tired of my saying this, but the reason this podcast exists, the reason you’re listening to this, is because you have, I believe, an amazing message or gift that people need to know about. My goal—my why, the reason for what I do—is really to empower people like yourself, empower entrepreneurs like you, to help you shine your light on more people.

That’s what this is all about. So go out there and continue shining your light. There’s a lot of darkness in the world, and by you shining your light brighter and brighter, we can illuminate what’s possible on this amazing planet.

I want to thank you once again for taking the time today to join me. Remember to subscribe to the podcast over on iTunes. If you haven’t yet done so, grab my book Health Profit Secrets. It’s not my book. It’s my thoughts that I put onto paper that are really going to serve you in your business.

Inside this book, you’re going to discover four fundamental secrets that all successful online health businesses have in common and how you can deploy them in your business for lasting success. Again, the book is free. Just cover a minimal cost of shipping, and it will be sent to your front door.

With that said, that is all for today. Again, thank you for joining me. I hope you have an amazing day.

Go out, be great, do great, and I’ll see you in our surprise solo round in the next episode.

***********************************************************

Follow Kelly Bejelly At:

https://20dishes.com/

Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

YouTube

Instagram

***********************************************************

Free Healthpreneur Health Profit Secrets Book

Transcription

What’s up guys? Yuri here. Welcome to the Healthpreneur podcast. Hope your day is going great. I’m excited to be with you back today, we’ve got a really cool interview. Actually, it’s a little bit of a tangent from our typical discussions where we’re talking to entrepreneurs in the specific health wellness fitness space.

Today we’re talking with the co-host of the number one marriage podcast on iTunes. It’s called the ONE Extraordinary Marriage show. This man, Tony DiLorenzo, speaks to a worldwide audience about sex, love, commitments and challenges every listener to make their relationships a priority.

As a husband and business owner whose marriage has dealt with the issues of pornography, financial crisis and child loss, Tony speaks from the heart to those issues that impact relationships with a mixture of tough love and candor. He works with couples around the world, equipping them with the tools and strategies they need to create an extraordinary marriage.

Now, you might be thinking to yourself, “What on earth does this have to do with business, Yuri? Am I really going to spend the next 25, 30 minutes to listen to this?”

The answer to that question is, “Yes, you’re going to continue listening to this episode.” And I’m going to tell you why.

First and foremost, as you may have heard from a couple of different episodes so far, the underlying tone for some of the discussions is that nothing is more important than relationships, and there is no more important relationship than the one with your spouse and your kids.

If you’re doing all the stuff in your business at the expense of them, then you’re never going to be wealthy. You’re never going to achieve the fulfillment you want because you’ve compromised the most important things in your life.

In this episode, Tony’s going to walk through some really important perspectives and distinctions that I think will make a big difference for you—including his 60-day sex challenge that changed his marriage. If you want to see exactly how things transformed for him and his wife, just stay tuned for a couple of minutes to hear that.

Also, there’s a spinoff here. There’s a strategic byproduct of this conversation where we’re not just talking about marriage, but about relationships. A lot of the stuff we’re talking about also applies to the people you work with, the team members you have, the business partners you work with.

Because a lot of these principles are the same whether we’re talking about a marriage or a business partnership. If you care about embracing the people you work with, the people you serve, and most importantly, your significant others or your kids this is going to be a very, very important episode to tune into.

If you want to learn more about what he’s up to and more about their podcast, you can go to oneextraordinarymarriage.com. Without any further ado, let’s welcome Tony on to the show.

Yuri:                Tony, welcome to the Healthpreneur Podcast. How’s it going?

Tony:              Great, Yuri. Thanks for having me, man.

Yuri:                Yeah, I’m excited to talk with you because this is a little bit of a deviation from our typical guests who are health fitness entrepreneurs. You’ve got the number one marriage podcast on iTunes, you’re really focused on relationships, and I think that’s such an integral part of life in general. I think there’s a really close connection with health and wellness in general.

That’s why I wanted to have you on, and I’m excited to dive into where we can go with this.

Tony:              I’m excited.

Yuri:                Yeah. So, what jazzes you up? When you think about relationships, marriage, when you consider what other people talk about, what’s your stance in the marketplace? How do you state your claim and say, “This is what we believe in. This is the thing that we believe to be true as it pertains to your relationships,” and all that good stuff?

 Tony:              Yeah, so we’ve had the ONE Extraordinary Marriage show for seven-and-a-half years now and, like you said, it’s the number one marriage podcast on iTunes. Our tagline has always been, from the beginning, “sex, love, and commitment.” I really like the first word in our tagline, sex. Because we need to talk about it and it really is what fires me up on a day-to-day basis.

 Yuri:                Not just because you’re a man, but just in general.

 Tony:              No, not at all. No, no. And it’s changed over the years, too, Yuri. I’m seven-and-a-half years older. I’ve been married almost 21 years.

 Yuri:                That’s awesome.

The ups and downs of Tony’s 21 year marriage

Tony:              Sex has changed in my relationship from when I was married to when we first had kids to where we now have a high schooler and a junior higher. Life has changed and I still love it because I believe that our society, our media, has over sexualized it. Turned it into something that really doesn’t happen.

So I get jazzed up in just talking truthfully and honestly to couples about what we deal with and how they can enhance their sex life.

 Yuri:                I’d love to go down this path because I think it’s going to make some people feel uncomfortable, which is good. But I want to talk about it at a relationship level first, and then I want to talk about it with respect to the kids.

When you look at a relationship, every relationship is different, but how does sex play a role in a happy, loving relationship?

 Tony:              Let’s just take away all the preconceived notions that we believe about male and female, because I think that really ties people up a lot, where it’s like, “Oh, well, the guy’s the one who always wants sex,” or “She doesn’t initiate.” Those are two that I hear often.

One of the things that we try to share with folks all the time is that that’s not the truth.

We know many women who do love to initiate, and we know a number of men who are not the high desire spouse. Helping people to understand that allows them to break free and go, “Wow, okay, I’m not the only one like this.” And then gives them the ability to wrap their heads, minds and bodies around what sex really is for them.

Yuri:                I guess every couple is different, so having sex three times a day might be okay for one, having once a week is okay for others.

How do people kind of find their sweet spot? How do they know they’re on the right path? Or if they feel that they’re not normal, how do people make sense of all that?

 Tony:              Right. I’m going to share a little bit of our story real quick to help the listener understand where Alisa and I are coming from. 

Yuri:                Yeah, for sure.

The 60 day sex challenge

 Tony:              I shared that we were married 21 years. The first 11 years really weren’t great. They were honestly crappy.

We almost got divorced twice, and at the 11 year mark, we engaged in a challenge that I brought up to Alisa. It was the 60 Days of Sex challenge.

I’m the high desire spouse, she’s the low desire spouse.  I’d been rejected multiple times, and when I brought this up she had rejected me once again. The next day she was in the laundry room doing some stuff and she just heard God speaking to her, saying, “If this is your attitude, if this is where you’re going to be, then it’s pretty much over.” That night she came to me and she’s like, “Let’s do the 60 Days of Sex challenge.”

Yuri:                And you’re like, “Yes.”

Tony:              Here’s the funny thing, she came up to me and I’m like, “What are you talking about?” Because my mind was always at the point of like, “Let’s go to the next thing.” 

Yuri:                Yeah.

Tony:              Sometimes as an entrepreneur, something fails and you can’t just sit and wallow in that too long. You’ve got to move forward, you’ve got to look for that next avenue, that next journey you’re going to jump on.

So I was already there. And she goes, “Yes.”

I’m like, “Yes to what?” She goes, “Let’s do the challenge.”

I was like a deer in headlights going, “Are you kidding?” All the thoughts in my mind were like, “Oh, my gosh. I’m really going to have to perform for 60 days. What’s going to happen here?” This, that and the other in a flash of a minute or a second there.

Then I was like, “Okay, let’s do this.” Over the course of 60 days, we completed 40 out of 60 days because we had some rules that we set up, some guardrails that we set up. Travel, we can miss on that. Time of the month, we can miss on that. And then if somebody was sick.

Yuri:                Sure.

Tony:              40 out of 60 days. Awesome. We were excited.

It honestly transformed our lives and there are many folks and couples in the ONE family that have had it transform their lives as well. We have people in the ONE family who’ve done it more than we have. I love it when they come to us and tell us that.

 Yuri:                Yeah, I bet. What’s the big learning? What was the big epiphany or transformation that came out of that for you guys?

 Tony:              Yeah, so the big transformation for us was that the emotional part of our intimacy is more important than the physical.

That mental connection, that emotional connection of us being able to talk to each other, know what’s going on, sometimes even our deep desires when it comes to what sex looks like for us—that’s what transformed our physical intimacy.

Because physical intimacy no longer became just this sort of thing where we hopped in bed between the sheets, had sex, and were done. Because we were emotionally connected throughout the day, and even prior to sex, that got us excited for what was ahead.

 Yuri:                Sure, that’s awesome.

Let’s just use the stereotypical example, the woman is the low desire, the man is the high desire. Is that something that changes based on the dynamic of the relationship? Or is that set in stone?

 Tony:              No, it changes over the course of the relationship if you’re willing to take action and be intentional about it. What came out of that 60 Days of Sex challenge and how we’ve been able to sustain that physical intimacy—and many folks in the ONE family have done this as well—we have the intimacy lifestyle.

And that changed everything, in terms of thinking, “Oh, it’s just set in stone now.”

 Yuri:                That’s awesome.  So, you started working in this arena after this transformation? Or during the whole process as well

Tony:              After.

Yuri:                Cool.

Tony:              Yeah, so we had done it. We were like, “Oh, my gosh, this is awesome.” We had spoken at a couple of events. People were asking for more. We were like, “Yeah, that’s what we’ve done.”

That’s how we got into podcasting. A friend of ours mentioned it to us and we just fell in love with that medium and being open … It’s a place where we can just be open, honest and transparent with folks, and that’s what we’ve done for seven-and-a-half years.

Owning a business with your significant other

 Yuri:                That’s awesome. How have you enjoyed working with your wife in the business?

 Tony:              The correct answer, because every couple wants to hear it, is like, “Oh, it’s just sunshine and rainbows every day.” It’s tough. It’s difficult.

It’s rewarding, and yet there are definitely times when the line between who Alisa and I are as husband and wife gets blurred between owners of a business that’s growing … and how do you manage that with VAs around the country, assistants, people pulling at our time?

It can be tough, and we have to almost call a timeout every now and then on business because it tends to go more towards that. Sometimes we have to go, “This is just us time. This is Tony and Alisa spending time together as a couple.”

Yuri:                That’s great. Is there one of you who is more of the visionary, the other one’s more of the implementer? Or do you guys complement each other nicely?

I ask this because my wife and I could not work together because we’re both the same type of visionary, high quick start, no attention to detail type of person. Do you guys complement each other or is it like my wife and I?

Tony:              We complement each other, but we had to learn that.

Yuri:                Yeah.

Tony:              I’m the visionary and I’m thinking a year ahead or trying to think of how we’re moving and shifting.

She’s our content creator. She’s the coach in the business. She does an amazing job working with those who come to us for that need. She just takes care of that area.

We’ve had to learn that ebb and flow over the years and how that looks, because that can also transfer over into your relationship and cause that same dynamic in the relationship which we don’t want at all. It’s not like I’m the visionary for our marriage, saying “this is what we’re going to do.” No, because that would stifle her.

 Yuri:                Yeah.

Tony:              We tried to work towards that. Actually, last year was our 20th anniversary and we were trying to figure out a place to go for this monumental anniversary, for us.

We were picking all these places—let’s go to the Caribbean, let’s do this, and I’m like, “I just don’t want to sit on a beach for 10 days,” whatever we were going to go.

 Yuri:                Sure.

 Tony:              Her, being the visionary in our marriage, goes, “Let’s go to Peru. We’re going to Machu Picchu.”

 Yuri:                Nice.

 Tony:              It’s a place that we had talked about, probably in our third, fourth, fifth year of marriage, and I was like, “That’s it. It’s game on.” We found a travel agency that hooked us all up and it was great. But she was able to be the visionary in our marriage.

 Yuri:                That’s cool. It’s nice that you’ve found that working balance that works well for you guys, because I think it’s important. From my experience, a lot of couples aren’t clear on that and they’re expecting something of the other person. Then that doesn’t happen and they get pissed off and they’re like, “Why aren’t you like this?”

 Tony:              Right.

 Yuri:                How do you deal with couples?

For instance, I tell people I’m completely not the stereotypical man. The only thing I do in the house is change a light bulb. That’s all I do. I don’t even cut the lawn. I don’t want to do any of that stuff… the typical man stuff. Whatever the stereotype might be, whatever those preconceived notions might be, how do you advise couples on just being like, “This is who you are, this is who your spouse is, work together, deal with it, figure it out.”

How do you navigate people through that?

The ONE Extraordinary Marriage Show

Tony:              We share our story. We share it from the heart.

“Hey, this is who Tony and Alisa are on a day-to-day, weekly basis. This is where we’re at, this is how we deal with this. Take what we’re sharing with you, take the action steps and put it to your own marriage. Ask the questions that we’re asking each other right now on the podcast. Get real with each other, get honest with each other. Pick up some of our free resources that will allow you to open up and talk. Or pick up one of our books like Connect Like You Did When You First Met. Do those things.”

What we really share with couples all the time, we’re like, “You’re uniquely made. Each of you are uniquely made, just like Alisa and I are. Your marriage is unique from us and yet we still deal with the same things.” It’s just, are you willing to open up and be vulnerable with your spouse and take down the walls, be loved more for who you are than not showing them that?

 Yuri:                That’s great.

 Tony:              Because, they can only love you so much if you have a wall up. Are you really willing to let down that wall and allow them to love you for who you really are?

That’s when we see the breakthrough. Couples who are willing to do that and accept who their spouse is … That’s the other piece. We get these notions of, “Oh, my spouse is supposed to be this and this and this.” Well, that’s what you’ve built up in your own mind of who they are.

Who they really are is this and they’re sharing that with you. Are you going to accept that? Or are you always going to look at them as somebody who they’re not?

That’s going to be a struggle for a long time. If you’re trying to put your husband or your wife in a place that they’re not … Your wife is just going, “Yuri, my expectation of you is that you mow the lawn every week and you’re taking out the garbage each and every day.” Gosh, man, that’s going to be tough and you’re not going to live up to that.

Yuri:                It’s interesting because everything you’re talking about with respect to a marriage is very similar with business partnerships and with people in your company. I’m sure you’ve seen some type of crossover with these types of principles, discussions and vulnerabilities with team members and companies, even yours probably.

 Tony:              Yeah. Totally. When we talk to business folks it really hits home from two places.

We share it from that place as a team, we even talk to folks. We say, “You’re on the same team together. If an issue arises, work together against the problem. You guys are not the problem, right?”

When you’re talking to team members in a business setting it’s the same thing. We’re here to work together. We’re here to achieve the same goal. You’re not the problem, I’m not the problem. The problem is that we’re not able to ship our product to the customer quick enough so they’re mad. How do we work together from a shipping and a marketing standpoint?

 Yuri:                Communication’s obviously very important. Emotional intimacy is the number one intimacy that people need to work on and it needs to be worked on constantly.

 

Tony:              Key, key, key. Emotional intimacy is the number one intimacy that people need to work on and it needs to be worked on constantly.

You don’t know your spouse … You may have had those long conversations that first time you met or that first year you met and you know everything about your spouse, but guess what? Times change. Things happen. Parents pass away. Kids do stupid things—I’m going to say it, I’ve got two of them and sometimes that happens.

It can take us into a tailspin, there can be some trauma—and if we’re not willing to dive back into that emotional intimacy we’re going to miss out because we’re going to think of our spouse as “that person that we married five, 10, 20 years ago.”

They’re not that person anymore. I’m not the same person … I met Alisa when I was 21. That was 23 years ago. I’m not the same person. I’m different.

Yuri:                That’s great. That’s a good perspective, for sure. I think it’s good because you guys are very committed to growth—which, I’m not going to say all people are because I don’t think they are, in the same way that a lot of people that I interview on the show are.

It’s great that you’ve grown so much since you were 21, and not just age-wise, but I think also maturation, perspective, wisdom, which has brought a lot to your relationship, which is great.

How do you know when it’s just not right? Whether it’s the relationship, a divorce, or maybe even in business too—the partnership—it’s like, “You’re just not the right person to be on our team anymore.” How do you know when it’s enough?

Tony:              Yeah, that’s always tough, right? When do you know when to say, enough is enough?

Because I think a lot of us want to see the good, we want to see it work out. We want to have the fairytale at the end of that story. What I’ve told a number of my buddies who have been in that situation where they’re looking down the barrel of divorce … I tell them, “Hey, all you can do is put your best foot forward and do everything that you possibly can.” So in the event that divorce does happen, you can walk away with your head held high going, “I did everything I possibly could.”

I can’t sit here and change Alisa, just like she can’t be where she is and change me right now. But I can do everything I possibly can in this moment to love her, to romance her, to be the husband that I said I’m going to be to her. At the end of the day, though, if she chooses to go down and file divorce, that’s her choice.

Yuri:                Sure.

Tony:              I’m going to walk through this, though, and I’m going to make sure I can do everything that I can.

It’s similar in the business world, right? If you’re a manager and you’re looking at that guy—have you put everything in you knew you could? Did you do the proper training? Because I hear a lot of managers go, “Well, he’s not good.” Well, did you train him? Or did you just hire him and throw him in a seat and expect him to do everything and just get assimilated into the culture?

Did you honestly train him? Were you leading him or her to be successful?

Because if you weren’t, then you’re cutting yourself short and that person short. But if you can hold your head up high and go, “I did this, I did this, I did this. It just didn’t work out.” Okay, then it’s time to cut the cord. Maybe with our businesses, too.

There have been times over the years with businesses that I’ve had where you’re sitting there and you’re holding on—you’re holding on and you’re like, “I’ve done everything, I’ve done everything.” It’s time to cut the cord.

Sometimes you hold on a little bit even longer than you should and then you’re like, “Man, I should’ve cut the cord three months ago.”

Kids, and how they change the dynamic. Instantly

Yuri:                I want to go back to kids for a second. You’ve got two kids, I’ve got three. I know our listeners have kids as well—if they’re married or even if they’re not.

Let’s talk about the important role of being parents, in terms of role models and also how the relationship impacts the kids. In terms of what they’re observing and how their parents co-exist together.

 Tony:              That is huge because kids definitely, as you know, change the dynamic.

 Yuri:                Yeah. Just a little bit.

 Tony:              Those years before kids, man, I sometimes look back and go, “Holy crud, Alisa, we had so much time on our hands and we thought we were busy then.”

 Yuri:                I wish there was Rent-a-Kid where you could rent a kid for a weekend, just to experience it, and then give him back.

 Tony:              Just experience it. Yeah, “What is this like?” Oh, they throw a dynamic in from the pregnancy phase to giving birth to those early years. There’s all different phases that we’re going to go through.

The big thing that Alisa and I committed to is that our marriage is first. Our core values are God, our marriage, our kids, work and other things.

 Yuri:                Nice.

 Tony:              That’s the way it goes. And you know what? It took us a while to get there because our kids were the focus for awhile and it really devalued who we were in our marriage.

This was in one of those points in time where we almost got divorced. It was actually in the second time there, right prior to the 60 Days of Sex challenge, and that’s where we lost ourselves.

We lost who we were as a married couple and what we were striving for. Once we got that back in place and got those core values in order, things began to change. Our kids knew that we loved them and they know that we love them—and yet when it’s date night, it’s date night. It’s about mom and dad, because mom and dad need to be healthy for you guys to be healthy.

They need to see a healthy relationship. They need to know that we still date each other. They need to know that we still love each other and we kiss each other and hug each other around them.

We’re open with our kids, and they know we have sex, they get it, they understand it. We’re very much into the, “Hey, this is what it is, it’s great inside of a committed relationship, when you’re married to your spouse because you know they’re there.”

We share, “Hey, we had sex before marriage. We get it. We’ve been there.” We share those things with them. But they get to see healthy, right? They get to see that it’s not perfect, there’s still arguments, there’s still tears, there’s still frustrations.

Yet, at the end of the day, Alisa and I know that we’re going to be here and they know we’re going to be here well after they leave the house. That was one of our big things. We saw too many friends who are older than us—and friends even in our age group—whose parents were getting divorced.

Or they were getting divorced once the kids left because they’re like, “What do we have to do? We’ve been doing sports, we’ve been doing this with the kids. Now I’m looking at you and who are you? I don’t know who you are anymore.”

We were like, “No, no, no. That’s not going to happen here.”

Yuri:                Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s so common, too. I remember when I was a personal trainer way back in the day and I had this older couple—they were amazing—and the wife had devoted close to 30 years of her life just as a mom.

That was her job. Look after the kids, make sure they’re okay. All that stuff. Then they were married and did their own thing and she’s like, “Who am I?” She had no identity.

I see this all the time, even where I live. I walk my kids to school—I’m one of the very few fathers that’s able to pick them up and drop them off, which is great. But I see a lot of the moms, they drop the kids off in the morning, they walk home. They walk back to school at lunch, pick the kids up, back home, back to school.

I’m like, “What do you do outside of just your kids?” Right?

I totally get that you guys are number one because I always say, “You have to take care of yourself first.” It’s the same thing with a relationship. I think it’s actually a really good thing for the kids to see, too, because if you guys are being the fullest version of yourselves, a great marriage, contributing to the world, that’s a great example for them to emulate.

I think that’s awesome.

Tony:              For those of you who have younger kids, just FYI, as they begin hitting high school and stuff, believe me, you’re going to have a ton of stuff on your plate.

You think you’re busy now? If your kids are in sports and they begin to hit high school and they’re playing sports and stuff, get ready. You better have your foundation between you and your spouse solid because you are going to be stretched. And we’re in that phase.

 Yuri:                Sure.

 Tony:              We’re right there. I got a boy who plays football and he’s a big kid, he’s a freshman and he’s 6’1″, 205, and dreams to play D one ball.

 Yuri:                Nice.

 Tony:              You get stretched. So a lot of dads and even moms, they’ll get lost in their kids’ sports. It’s not the end all be all. A lot of kids aren’t going to make it to the next level.

I don’t know if my son will make it to the next level but I do know I can love him and in that process Alisa and I are still a team, right? She and I are the team that still looks at our situation, what we’re doing, and how we’re going to play this out on the field or on the court together with my kids.

 Yuri:                That’s great. When you look at the marriage, the family, the kids, the business—juggling all that and making time for everything. What been the biggest challenge for you guys?

Let’s say like post-60 day sex challenge, as you’ve built out this business, what’s been the biggest challenge that you guys have faced, how did you overcome it, and what was maybe a lesson that you learned from that whole experience?

Tony:              Biggest challenge I still face is day-to-day activities. It’s something that gets better but, again, we work out of our home as well, so I don’t have an office outside of the house. My youngest is now home-schooled, so she’s here with us at times. These are challenges that we’re facing right now, even.

 Yuri:                Sure.

 Tony and Alisa’s all important coffee breaks

Tony:              One if our solutions is really dialing down onto the calendar, figuring out what needs to happen and sticking to that as best as we can. Calendars rule our lives, so if it’s not on the calendar then we’re not going to do it.

One of the big things that we do as a couple that has helped is called our coffee breaks, and that is a time for Alisa and I—an hour, typically on a Saturday or Sunday—where we just look at our week. This has been a huge help and I want to say, full transparency, we did great at the beginning of the year—it was on our calendar—and then as the end of March came around, April, it wasn’t on our calendar.

And guess what? It didn’t happen. We started going into a little bit of a tailspin. In that time-frame, my father passed away.

Yuri:                Sorry to hear that.

Tony:              Thanks, man. That was huge. And had we been doing those coffee breaks, I think even leading up to my dad’s passing, would’ve been so helpful.

Then my dad passed and it felt like the month after was just a blur. Just an absolute blur. The month after that it started getting better and I started getting my head above water again. We got back to it just recently and, I’m telling you, we’re going to make sure that that coffee break is on our calendar for us, to really go, “Okay, what’s happening this week with us? With the kids?”

This coffee break isn’t much of a business deal. Some business stuff comes in, but it’s really about our family and about Alisa and I and what’s going … When are we getting date night in this week? Are we just going to go jump into a coffee shop and get a drink and sit down for half and hour? Are we going out Friday night?

That is huge. I’m looking to end the year strong with that. Honestly, every week let’s just do it and make it happen because it’s vital.

Yuri:                Yeah, I can definitely relate to that because we’ve got three boys, three, four and six, and sometimes my wife and I, we’re just happy to sit in a car in the driveway.

Tony:              Oh, yes.

Yuri:                Just having that space. That’s such a good practice to sit down, plan out the week. I think a lot of our listeners can appreciate that because we’re people that talk about planning your meals and your workouts, plan your life.

I would say entrepreneurs are maybe a bit more guilty of this. We put so much focus on the business that we take care of the relationship afterwards. I think that’s a great practice—just a business meeting, but for the relationship and the family almost.

Tony:              Yeah, it’s nice. If you have younger kids and you can’t do it, then make something special around the house.

Can you do it early one morning when the kids are still asleep, if your kids sleep in a bit? Can one of you run to the coffee shop and go get something, then you guys just sit out on the front porch or on the patio, depending on where you are?

When our kids were younger like your age—and we were still newer in our business, so it wasn’t doing as well—instead of getting out, because we didn’t have the money to afford a babysitter at the time, we would get our kids to bed.

So whoever got the kid to sleep first, that would be the spouse who would run out to grab something to eat, which we had already pre-determined.

Go out, get something to eat, bring it back, set up a blanket, set up some candles in the living room. By the time one of us would get back the other kid was asleep, we’d come in, we’d just sit down on that blanket and pretend that we were miles and miles away and have a meal together.

Yuri:                That’s cool.

 Tony:              It honestly could’ve been 9:00, 9:30 at night sometimes, Yuri, but it was just enough to be able to like, “Alright, let’s refresh our souls here and get connected again.”

 Yuri:                That’s awesome. So what you’re saying is that we shouldn’t leave our kids by themselves while we go out?

 Tony:              Well, I do now because they’re older-

Yuri:                Apparently, I didn’t know that

Tony:              For you, three, four and six, probably not the best idea.

 Yuri:                Yeah. Thankfully my mom lives close by so she’s been a great help for us. But yeah, it definitely takes a village to raise kids.

Tony:              Yeah, especially your ages and as close as they are, I give you guys credit, so … Wow.

Yuri:                Yeah, thank you. It’s fun. I love having kids because I think we come on to this planet with a very specific purpose. For me, I think part of my purpose is growth and contribution, so I tell people having kids is like a personal development seminar every single day.

They just continue learning and learning and learning, and say, “Okay, yesterday wasn’t the best day, let’s make today a little bit better.” You just really have to be the best version of yourself and it’s a lot of fun.

Tony:              Yeah. I love it.

The Rapid-Five Questions

 Yuri:                Well, Tony, this has been a lot of fun. I thank you so much for being so open and candid with everything you shared. Are you ready for the rapid five?

Tony:              I am. Let’s go for it.

Yuri:                Alright, so here we go. You have no prior knowledge of these questions, just for everyone listening. This hasn’t been scripted. Alright, so first question. What is your biggest weakness?

Tony:              Oh, my biggest weakness in business, I think, I overestimate the goodness that’s going to happen.

Yuri:                I can relate to that.

Tony:              You know what I mean?

Yuri:                Oh, yeah.

Tony:              I think we’re going to get our new book out and we’re going to do a thousand copies… I’m always like, “Yes, this is totally doable,” and then you get half of that or less and you’re like, “Oh, shoot.” I overestimate. That would be a weakness of mine.

Yuri:                That’s why I never understood, on Shark Tank, when they’re like, “What are your projections for the next year?” I would be the worst person to answer that question. How can you even project what’s going to happen a year from now?

Tony:              Yeah, I’d be like, “I’m going to sell five million of those.” Sure, let’s go. Okay.

Yuri:                Okay, sounds good. Cool. What is your biggest strength?

Tony:              Oh, my biggest strength, I think … This is something I’ve grown into, but I think it’s just building strong and real relationships.

I just believe that I have the ability to speak to people, even if I’ve just met them for the first time—and speak some life into them and build that relationship quickly. I’m very personable, that’s just part of who I am.

I have empathy. That’s a strength as well. Especially in the world we live in. Being able to just let people know you love them and that there may be some hurt going on, that you’re there for them. I think that’s a huge strength of mine.

Yuri:                I would agree. Especially in a world where there’s a lot of superficial conversations and very surface relationships. I think that’s a big skill. That’s awesome.

Okay, one skill you’ve become dangerously good at in order to grow your business.

Tony:              Oh, man, I can use ONTRAPORT pretty well.

Yuri:                Awesome.

Tony:              Yeah, dangerously good? Yeah, there are definitely times when I’m in an ONTRAPORT group and I’m hearing some people say this and that. I’m like, “Oh, I know how to do that,” and I’m thinking, “Oh, wow. Oh, yeah. Alright, that’s cool.”

Yuri:                That’s a good one. What do you do first thing in the morning?

Tony:              Oh, man, unfortunately more times than not I grab my phone.

Yuri:                Oh, yeah?

Tony:              After that, I’m into my bible.

Yuri:                Cool. The phone before the bible. Interesting. How times have changed.

Tony:              Yeah, and I’m trying to break that habit. It’s crazy how, even after you read all those studies and know the addictive nature of our phones, just don’t go to it. So, yep.

Yuri:                Cool. Thank you for being honest about that. Then finally, complete this sentence: I know I’m being successful when ____.

Tony:              Hmm, wow. That’s always a moving target—you know that, Yuri. I know I’m successful when I am sitting down on the beach with Alisa and there’s no other care in the world other than being in that moment with her.

Yuri:                Awesome. That’s great, man. Tony, this has been a lot of fun.

I want to just acknowledge the amazing work that you’ve done with Alisa, your podcast, the journey that you guys have been on and how you’ve used that to touch a lot of people’s lives. I just want to acknowledge you for that. I know a lot of people listening to your podcast who maybe have never even reached out to you, who are touched at a very deep level as well.

Tony:              Well, I appreciate it, Yuri. I really do. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity.

I loved your questions, man, they really got me. There were a couple times, I’m going to say, for the listeners as well, man, there’s nothing bad in showing emotion. You almost got me on a couple of them, so great job. Thank you.

Yuri:                That’s cool. I’m happy that you’re so vulnerable and open about everything, it really makes for a better interview and just a better conversation in general, whether it’s an interview like this or in person. I think having that ability to just be yourself, be deep and true, is really remarkable. Thank you for showing up, for being here.

So Tony, where is the best place for people to follow your work online, maybe even check out your podcasts?

Tony:              Yeah, so the best place, everyone, just go to oneextraordinarymarriage.com. You’ll find everything there from the podcast to articles to our books and the like.

Yuri:                Awesome. Beautiful. Once again, Tony, thank you so much for taking the time to be with me.

Tony:              Thanks Yuri.

***********************************************************

Yuri’s Take

I don’t know about you, but I really had a great time during our conversation with Tony DiLorenzo because, as I mentioned before, relationships are where it’s at.

Whether we’re talking about the business relationships that I continue to come back to time and time again—the most impactful way, the most accelerated way to grow your business is to build relationships with people that can support you.

Whether that’s people you bring onto your team, potential joint venture partners, collaborators, becoming part of a mastermind, going to live events, it’s the people. It always will be about the people.

No matter what technologies come down the road, no matter what becomes automated, people will never replace people. I’m telling you, until the end of time that will be the same thing for human beings.

It’s going to become even more valuable, as we become more disconnected technologically, to really connect at a deeper level with humans, right? And especially your spouse. If you’re married or if you’re in a relationship, taking the time to be with that person.

I’ll fully admit that I’m guilty of not necessarily being that person all the time. Both my wife and I have our own businesses. She’s busy doing hers, I’m busy doing mine, but we do our best to really make sure that we have time for each other. We hang out with the kids quite a bit. It really just makes everything a lot more enjoyable when you have things in perspective.

I’ve built this entire business around my desire to want to walk my kids to school and pick them up every single day. To be able to hang out with my family when they’re at home and not having to constantly work. For me, that was a big priority.

As we’ve talked about a few times with different people in the podcast so far, is really just keeping the main thing. Yes, it’s important to make money. Yes, it’s important to touch a lot of people’s live, but let me ask you a question. Is it more noble to impact thousands or even millions of other people who you will never meet, or spend the time and impacting those who are closest to you?

We all talk about wanting to impact a lot of people, transforming the world. And I’m leading the tribe for sure, saying, “We want to touch a billion people’s lives.” That’s great.

But, I will never do that if it means compromising the relationship I have with my family.

That’s why I wanted to bring Tony onto this episode, onto this podcast, because I think it’s an important reminder that we always keep that front and center. Anyway, I hope you agree with me. If you don’t, you think I’m crazy, you’re like, “Yuri, you should just get off your soapbox and stop,” that’s fine as well.

Either way, we’ve got great, great interviews coming up. Obviously, some great solo rounds as well, so be sure to subscribe to the Healthpreneur podcast if you haven’t already. Leave a rating or review if you haven’t done so.

That’s all for today. Remember, if you haven’t grabbed your copy of Health Profit Secrets, you can do so over at healthpreneurbook.com. My gift to you. Just cover the minimal cost of shipping and it’s yours. I will send it right to your door. It’s really what I’ve been able to unearth over the past 12 years of what makes a successful business. I guarantee it will make a big difference in your business. Grab it today.

Until our next episode, go out there, continue to be great, do great, and have an awesome day.

***********************************************************

Follow Tony DiLorenzo At:

https://oneextraordinarymarriage.com/

Facebook

Instagram

Twitter

***********************************************************

 

Transcription

Hey. It’s Yuri, welcome back to the podcast! Hope you’re doing great.

Today we are talking about the death of the sales letter. Do you really need to be spending all your time learning how to write sales copy in order to have a thriving online business in 2018 and beyond?

Before we get into this, we’ve had a few episodes talking about the importance of learning how to write compelling copy. We’ve talked with Jon Benson and Pat Flynn, as well as a few others, about how writing effective copy really makes a difference online. I still maintain that being able to communicate in an effective and influential manner is a very, very important skill to develop.

What you need to accomplish before you start your communication

So I would still recommend you own your craft. Sharpen the saw, if you will, sharpen the ax. I don’t know if you can sharpen a saw. Can you? Or kind of like, remove all the ridges.

Anyway, you want to sharpen the ax and continue to refine your ability to communicate, but here’s the thing. You don’t need to do that just by writing sales pages.

You can do that in the form of writing emails, Facebook ad copy, any kind of communication you’re making to help move someone to a desired outcome that is beneficial for them, and for you as a result of that.

I want to share with you a simple way that you can enroll new clients and customers without having to go through writing sales pages and worrying about these funnels and upsell flows, because, as you know and as you’ve probably dealt with, it’s very overwhelming. And quite honestly, most of us don’t enjoy doing it.

I think I speak for a lot of Healthpreneurs when I say most of us just want to teach, coach, and serve our clients. So if you can relate to that, don’t worry. I got you.

This is coming from someone who spent 10+ years writing sales pages. I don’t even know how many I’ve written. Dozens upon dozens of sales pages. Some have tanked, some have done well, but it’s not an activity that I enjoy doing—especially in the old format of spending all of your time hurting your brain and trying to come up with the right words and all that.

What I’m about to share with you is really, really helpful if you have any kind of higher end service—specifically coaching or a higher end program. If you’re selling $10 e-books … First of all, I would strongly recommend you stop doing so.

And if you want help with that, be sure to attend our most recent online workshop, called The 7-Figure Health Business Blueprint. It’s free. You can join us over at healthpreneurgroup.com/9 for that. I’ll walk you through why that’s a dying model and what to do instead in 2018 and beyond.

Now, if you’re offering any type of coaching—whether it’s virtual, in person, group coaching, whatever you want—what I’m about to share with you will make a big difference. Especially if you have any kind of following.

If you’ve got an email list or a social following that you can communicate with, here’s what I’d recommend you do. And there are two things you have to know before you deploy this.

Number one: You have to have a program or a service that actually helps people.

If you don’t have anything created, do that first. Or at least have a very clear outline of what you’re going to be delivering, but that has to be preceded by the promise. Any time you ask anybody to do anything—whether it’s click on this link, click on this ad, go visit this, buy here, buy this—it needs to be accompanied by a promise. Because we’re saying, “If you click on this, I promise you this benefit.” Right?

What is the benefit? What is the promise of the solution you’re offering? Is it, “I’m going to walk you through a four step system to lose 30 pounds in 30 days”? Be very clear and very singularly focused on that promise.

If you start diluting your promise like, “I’m going to help you lose weight, have more energy, overcome psoriasis” and all this other stuff, it becomes too diluted. It’s almost like walking by one of those restaurants in some dodgy areas of the city that say, “We are the Mexican-Canadian-Italian-Jamaican restaurant.” Okay…

As the famous saying goes, “You can’t please everyone.” Or, if you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one, right?

So make sure there is a very specific promise you can make for your audience and your target with respect to that solution. So, now you have the promise.

Number two: Clearly articulate how you are delivering this.

How are you delivering this outcome for your potential clients and customers? Break that down. Step one, we’re going to do this. Step two, we’re going to do this. As a benefit, you’re going to experience this.”

Really break that down so people get a very clear understanding of what they’re in for. For the customer, this process is almost like putting your hand in a black box that you can’t see inside. Who knows what’s in there?

There might be some piranhas inside the black box, maybe there are some mice. They’re a little bit apprehensive to jump into things when they don’t have enough information to make a informed decision, especially if it’s something in the higher price point.

You want to give people enough information where it’s not overwhelming, but you’re still able to give them a clear path. You’re going to show them, “Here’s how we’re going to go from where you are to where you want to be, here are the steps involved, and now that you have that, here’s what you’re going to deploy.”

The PEAR email process

I call this a PEAR email, P-E-A-R. This stands for Personal, Personalized, Expecting A Response. You can do this via social media. You can do this if you have an email list.

So let’s just use the example of an email list. Subject line is first name, so it’d be Yuri. The body copy of the email would be something along the lines of this: “Hey, Yuri. I am starting up a new program that is going to help women or people like yourself lose 30 pounds in 30 days. Would you like to join us?” Sign off with your name. Let’s break that down for a second, okay?

We talked about getting very clear on your promise, right? Because the promise is what you’re putting into that first sentence. So, “Hey, Yuri. I’m putting together,” or “I’m running,” or “we’re opening up our program.” Whatever it may be.

Now we insert the promise. “That helps women who are over 40 feel like they did in their 20s,” or whatever the promise is.

You have that promise in there, and then it’s simply, “Would you like to join us?” That’s it.

This email is going to get responded to.

If you send it out to an email list of 1,000 people or 100,000, you’re going to have a lot of responses. This is where you need to have the deliverables—how you’re delivering this program—ready to go because when people respond. You’re going to individually respond to them via Gmail or whatever service you’re using to give them the details.

You would say, “Here’s what we’re going to do. Here’s how we’re going to do it. Here’s the price. Would you like us to save you a spot?” What we’re doing here is creating a one-on-one conversation. You’ll always have greater conversions where there are conversations. Conversations lead to greater conversions.

So what we’re doing is, we’re taking people out of your broadcast and just having them individually respond to you, to whatever customer service email you have. We run everything out of Gmail, so we’ll send a broadcast email through a Maropost list, which is our email service that we use. If you use Aweber or ActiveCampaign, whatever it is you use, you send out the broadcast with that email.

The responses would come back to your customer service email. For instance, maybe that’s hosted within Gmail. Then you’re going to individually respond to those people.

Give them the details of the program—and you can have an assistant do this—and all you’re going to do is move people into the next step, so they have all the details.

“Would you like to join us?” They say, “Sure.”

You send them the payment link, and we’re done. You don’t even need a sales page for this.

We did this for our YouTube masterclass that we ran in December. I simply sent an email to my list and I said, “Hey, guys. We’re looking to start a new masterclass on YouTube, which is going to show you how to build a great YouTube channel that actually generates revenue for your business. Would you like to join us?”

We had hundreds of responses.

Now, the program was priced at $997, so not everyone joined, obviously, but we had a really good response from those who did enroll. We had about 35 people enroll, which was awesome.

We didn’t have a sales page! There was no funnel, no upsells, nothing. All we did from the get-go was have that promise. We knew exactly what that program or was going to deliver. We were able to break down the steps of, “Here’s what we’re going to do. Step one, step two, step three, step four. Here’s how it’s going to be delivered to you,” so they can see the journey, if you will. The process.

Then it was simply, “Well, let us know if you want to join because we’re starting in a week. We need to know as soon as possible, and we’re limiting this to X number of people.” That is always going to convert better than sending people to a sales page to buy something for $1,000.

When you engage people in conversation, you will always have greater response, you’ll have greater conversions, and now you start to build an intimacy with your audience that really starts to extract the best clients out of a bigger list.

Now you’re starting to speak to them in a more individual manner based on where they’re at and where they want to go.

I don’t know if the sales page is truly dying. There’s always going to be a need to communicate what it is we offer, and you can think of it as a sales page or a video sales letter, but quite honestly, all that matters is that you’re able to understand where people are at and show them the promised land. Show them how they’re going to get there and whether that’s done by email or a simple Facebook message. I forgot to mention, you can also do this same thing on Facebook.

You can reach out to people you know who might be an ideal prospect or client for this specific program, and you can say, “Hey, John. Just thought I’d let you know we’re running one of our bestselling programs. It’s going to help you achieve X.” The desired outcome or the promise.

“Would you like to join us?” They’ll be like, “Sure. Cool. Send me some more information.”

Right away, you respond with how you’re going to do it. “Would you like me to save you a spot?” They do.

You send them the payment link. Done.

That’s how cool this is. You can start to tap into your existing network of people who already know, like, and trust you, build a better relationship with them, and move them to the next step to better serve them.

Once again, I wouldn’t recommend this if you’re selling a $10 eBook because it’s probably not worth your time, but if you’re doing anything that is upwards of about $500 or more, this is a great strategy that can work very, very well. It’s a great way to acquire new coaching clients, selling courses, anything like that.

It works like gangbusters. We’ve been using this for four or five years to fill our masterminds and workshops.

So give it a shot today, and if you enjoyed this, then be sure to subscribe to the podcast. We have great episodes coming your way Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Every Monday, I do a solo round like today. Wednesday and Friday, we interview awesome guests. This week, we’ve got an awesome interview with Tony DiLorenzo on Wednesday where we’ll talk about how to have an amazing marriage for life and business, which is kind of an offshoot of our typical stuff, but it’s a really, really good episode.

On Friday, we’re going to be talking about the secrets of launching products that people actually want with Kelly Bejelly, so stay tuned for that. And once again, thanks so much for joining me. I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode.

Most importantly, take action on what we’ve talked about, and I’ll see you on Wednesday.

 

***********************************************************

Transcription

Healthpreneurs, what’s up? Yuri here. Welcome back to another great episode of the Healthpreneur Podcast.

I’m pumped. It’s a cold January day, but it’s all good. You know why? Because I’m here with you, you’re here with me, and we’ve got another great guest on today’s show.

Now, if you missed the last episode, be sure to listen to that afterwards. We had a great conversation with nutritionist extraordinaire Brett Hawes, and he shared how he merged his offline clinic with his online practice and all that cool stuff. So be sure to check that out, if you haven’t already.

Today, we are speaking with Erin Palinski, who is a dietitian and diabetes educator. She has authored four books, served as a consultant to multiple global brands and is a sought-after media source and keynote speaker.

She currently juggles her time between her private practice and media work, writing, speaking and being a mom of two young boys. She’s written several bestselling books, including The 2-Day Diabetes Diet, which was published with Reader’s Digest, and she’s also working on a new book with Prevention Magazine which will be released a little bit later this coming year. She’s been on The CBS Early Show, The Doctors, and the Dr. Oz Show.

What we’re going to talk about in this episode is going to be extremely valuable, in the sense of really garnering and capturing as much credibility from the media as possible without using a publicist. Now, a little while ago, we had my previous publicist Nicole Dunn on, and she showed us how we can approach the media with or without a publicist, in terms of what to think about and putting ourselves in the producer’s shoes.

Today, we’re going to just further that conversation, and what’s cool about Erin is that she’s done all of this without a PR firm. She’s going to show you exactly what she did to manually outreach—how you find these people, how you can act with them, how you get them excited to have them on your show or publish your stuff in their magazines.

This is going to be extremely valuable for you—so, again, grab a piece of paper, a pen. As long as you’re not driving obviously, get ready to take some notes. With that said, let’s bring Erin on to the show and let’s just get in, all right? Let’s get in to it.

Yuri:                Erin, welcome to the Healthpreneur Podcast! How’s it going?

Erin:                Great! Thank you so much for having me. I’m thrilled to be here

Yuri:                Yeah, it’s a lot fun. I always love speaking with other entrepreneurs. That’s one of the reasons that I started the podcast, because I’ve always been happy to pay for better friends. And that’s why I join different masterminds and groups, and I think that’s why I’ve started this podcast is just to connect with people like yourself who are doing great things, have cool conversations and inspire our listeners to what’s possible with their expertise with health, fitness and wellness, so I’m pumped to dive in.

Erin:                Me, too, and I love that mission. I’m so excited.

Yuri:                Yeah. Thank you very much.

So, you’ve been at this for a while, and recently you’ve become pretty well-known for helping other health experts leverage the media. You’ve been on Dr. Oz, you’ve been on some big shows.

Talk to us about that journey—how did that even happen? How did you get so much exposure with your work?

Erin’s journey through her practice, writing books, and getting into the media

Erin:                Sure. It’s really an interesting journey. I had started out, and I knew I always wanted to go into business for myself.

So, when I first became a dietitian, I started a private practice. And I really started to reach out to the media with the sole focus of bringing more clients in the door—just establishing myself as an expert in my area of nutrition and getting more people to come in.

I really didn’t understand the media world at all. I just started to reach out locally and then on a regional scale to drive more clients, and it just started to snowball a bit. Once I was doing a little bit of local news, then more national reporters were reaching out and, before I knew it, I had opportunities to do some national broadcasts. It helped that I’m in New Jersey, so I’m close to the New York metropolitan area.

It was more putting my name out there, getting noticed, being quoted on topics that were timely and having those people identify me and ask me to be interviewed on these larger stages and these bigger media outlets.

What happened for me was that, once I started to do this media work, I really had no idea in my head. I was just thinking, “Oh, a few more people will see my name. They’ll think I’m credible, and they’ll come in the door.”

I really didn’t expect it to have this profound impact on my business, and it really opened up so many more opportunities, so many more revenue streams. And it really helped me with my mission, which was to put my message of nutrition and health promotion out there to a larger audiences versus just in my own practice.

Seeing the value in that, I really have made it my mission now to help other healthcare professionals break into the media so that they can have that same benefit and help a wider audience as well.

 Yuri:                That’s pretty cool. Because a lot of people might use the excuse of, “Oh, I don’t know so-and-so. I’m never going to get on that show,” or never get featured on this website or magazine.

You mentioned giving them timely news and really kind of approaching things intelligently. How did you figure this game out? Were there any kind of trial and error or were there any kind of mentors or books you read? How did you figure this media thing out?

 Media coverage: starting out on your own

Erin:                Yeah, so a lot of trial and error, which is why I now have made it my mission to help others, so they don’t have to go through that whole crazy path.

But a lot of it was consistency. I’m a list person, so I’d be making lists. These are my top media outlets I want to connect with, and I would try to find the reporter that works there, the producer, what type of stories they typically run, where I can fold in my expertise and how I can hook it to something that’s happening in the news today.

I will do that and reach out and be consistent about it. It didn’t always pan out. I would say a lot of times I was pitching and pitching, and if they even got back to me to say, “No, we’re not interested,” I considered that a win because they opened my email.

 Yuri:                That’s great.

 Erin:                I’m like, “Yes, they at least rejected me versus ignored me!”

It was just trying to build that credibility. And what I really found was, sometimes it would be kind of convoluted. Like, you would get a placement in a print magazine and you’d be pitching to producers and nothing was happening … But, all of a sudden, they would see your name in an article.

For instance, I was interviewed for Consumer Reports and when I landed my first national broadcast, which was with the CBS Early Show, they had seen my interview in Consumer Reports. That’s how they got my name and asked me to be on the show.

A lot of times, it was just kind of a backwards way of entry, but anywhere you got your name out, you never knew who exactly was going to see that and connect with you.

Yuri:                Yeah, that is so awesome, and I just want to rewind for a second. You said, “I did the research. I found the editors, the writers, the producers, figured out what the kind of stuff they’re already talking about and written about and spoken about,” and then you kind of took your secret sauce, tied it in with some timely news bits and some stuff that might be more current.

Anyone can do that.

There’s nothing proprietary about that, that would stop someone from doing it, but very few people do that and that’s amazing. So, I just want to thank you for being awesome, for actually doing the work …

Erin:                Thank you.

Yuri:                … Because people are always saying, “Hey, I need a PR person or a publicist.” You can go that route, but sometimes it’s just a matter of being resourceful, and I think you’re a great example of doing that.

Erin:                Thank you, and it’s so true. I mean, yes, a PR firm can be helpful, but for me, as a solo entrepreneur first and in the nutrition practice, I wasn’t making a ton of money.

I didn’t have thousands and thousands of dollars to put out for PR that may or may not land anything, but I did have the ability to stay up a little bit later, craft some emails and really be persistent.

Yuri:                That’s awesome. You had your practice. You’re seeing patients in the clinic on the nutrition side. What was the thinking of like, “Yeah, I want to get on shows,” or get featured in different magazines and publications, as opposed to spending your energy doing YouTube or creating a big blog or podcast or different avenues?

Was there like a light bulb moment for you that you just said, “This is the way to do it?”

Erin:                This was 10 years ago, so I think the biggest thing was that social media wasn’t as relevant as it is today. I think that’s why. Because I was seeing more of the push towards the traditional media.

I will say my view has shifted a bit in the last few years, so I absolutely have been focusing a lot of my time now to build up those social media platforms and to build up the blog and the traffic because I see a big value in that. And even from a consumer audience, many of them are turning online for their information and prefer that versus the face-to-face or the traditional media, so I definitely think it’s important to build up that area, too.

Yuri:                Yeah, that’s great.

Knowing what you know now and having experienced this whole journey, if you were to start all over again, would you do anything differently or would you still go after the media in the way that you did—without … let’s say with today’s technology at your fingertips?

Erin:                Yeah, I think I would have started earlier.

There was a few years where I was just plugging away at the private practice, working one-on-one with people and just putting in long, long days and long hours. It’s a missed opportunity. I didn’t start to focus on the social media and the traditional media sooner, so I definitely think, if I was doing it from day one, I would have started that outreach right away.

Knowing what’s available today, the other thing I would say is, I think it’s so important to really build that audience, build your credibility and that trust factor. And the only way to do that is to share more about you and give away free content via all these amazing social media platforms.

I’m always sharing recipes on Instagram. I’m trying to do more Facebook live and really engage with the audience that way, because that’s the only way you’re going to stand out from the crowd and build trust with the audience, too.

Yuri:                That’s awesome. For everyone listening—I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but like every single guest had said the same thing—it’s just to provide value, add value, do what you do and just put it out there and be consistent with it.

I’ve had this conversation with so many different entrepreneurs. There’s no magic pill. There’s no overnight success. You’d just have to do it day in and day out, and that’s how you stand out, and that’s so cool.

 Erin:                Exactly. Yeah.

Books, books, books

Yuri:                You’ve written four books. This is during the time where, obviously, you were working in the clinic. Why did you want to write a book? What was the impetus for doing that?

 Erin:                I think one of my bucket list things was always to be a published author. I just always had that goal. I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to write, but I always knew that would be a goal.

Once I started to build my practice and I was working with clients one-on-one, it kind of starts to be like a broken record. Everybody has a similar problem. It’s just presented in a bit of a different way, so you’re giving them the same information over and over.

In my head, I was like, “Man, you know, if I could just write this down and point them as a reference, I could give them this education in person but then provide them with something they can take home or a resource that they can reference to have those ideas repeated and help them be more successful, that would be phenomenal.”

When the opportunity came about to write a book, I took it. And my very first book was Belly Fat Diet For Dummies. So, with belly fat, we all think about that as something we want to get rid of for vanity reasons, but it’s really a huge deficit.

When we look at too much belly fat, it increases diabetes risk and heart disease risk—and that’s the population I work with, pre-diabetes and diabetes. So, having the opportunity to write on that topic was huge because it was the same thing I was telling my clients, but I was able to give them this resource and also give it out to more people who couldn’t necessarily work with me one-on-one.

Yuri:                That’s smart. How did writing the book or the books change your business?

The credibility factor

Erin:                I think there’s a big credibility factor when you’re a published author. I didn’t necessarily become smarter because I wrote a book, but I find that looking at other health professionals who might be referring to me, there was an added layer of credibility.

Event planners, businesses that wanted to work with me or bring me on as a speaker—they were looking for someone who was a published author because they could give out that book to their audience and have that takeaway message that could go home with them.

I found that as soon as that book was published, the additional revenue stream and that additional exposure really took off. Because even producers and journalists, they wanted to have that byline when they were interviewing me to say not just, “Here’s Erin, who’s a generic dietitian,” like, “Here’s Erin, a published author. This is her book. This is where you can get it.”

I think it made it easier for me to continue to break into the media and grow my business as a whole from publishing that first book.

Yuri:                Yeah, that’s smart. There’s a lot of dietitians. Not all of them are authors and not even a few of them are published authors, so it’s just another kind of credibility factor that helps you stand out above a lot of the noise, which is pretty cool.

If you were to sit down with a dietitian or someone who wants to write a book in the field of nutrition, what advice would you give them? Let’s just say they want to write a published book.

What advice would you give them based on your experience—some of the mistakes to avoid, some of the things to look out for and maybe some words of encouragement?

Erin’s advice for other entrepreneurs

Erin:                Yeah, I think you really have to have two things clear.

You have to know who the ideal audience is. Who’s going to read that book? Keep that person in mind when you do everything because, if you want to publish a book and you want to go through a publishing house and have a literary agent take notice and sell your book idea, you have to have a platform.

You have to have some form of either traditional media presence or a big social media following. Or, you’re doing a lot of speaking on a large circuit where they know that they’re going to get sales.

So, you really have to think about, “Who’s my audience? How can I reach out to them, whether it be social media or traditional media, and get them behind me so that when I do make this book, I know automatically they’re going to want it, they’re going to want to buy it, and it’s going to be helping them.”

Yuri:                That’s important. It’s funny, because a lot of people I’ve spoken to in our space are like, “I’ve got this amazing book,” and I’m like, “That’s great. Well, what is your platform? Do you have an email list? Do you have a social following?” because, the publishers, that’s all they care about really.

They want to see that you can sell books. So I think it’s smart what you’re saying.

You’re just going back to day one, kind of building up all that media exposure and really building that snowball, so, by the time you can approach a publisher or they approach you, you have stuff to bring to the table. That gives you a bit more bargaining power with what you want, so that’s pretty cool.

So, over the next year, what are you excited about? What are you bringing to fruition?

Erin:                Yeah, so, this year seems like it’s going to be an exciting year.

I’m working on a project that’s coming out with the editors of Prevention Magazine that’s called Love Your Age. It’s a push, in general, to get away from that diet mentality or focusing on the number, and instead really embracing your body, nourishing it, focusing on health and being your best self versus defining yourself by the number on the scale.

I’m really excited about that project, and that’s my consumer focus for the next year.

Then, I’ve been working with my business partner, Amy Gorin, on building out our E-course for healthcare professionals to really guide them in their journey and get them to understand how to break into the news and leverage that to increase those revenue streams in their platform. So, I’m really excited about both of those things in the coming year.

 Yuri:                That’s awesome, and do you have a URL for that right now, because I want to be sure we linked up to that in the show notes?

Erin:                Yes, thank you so much. It’s masterthemedia.co

Yuri:                That’s a good name, masterthemedia. So, masterthemedia.co. Guys, we’ll be sure to link up to that in the show notes as well.

Were you going to say something there, Erin? I just cut you off a little bit.

Erin:                Oh, no. No. I just wanted to say thank you so much for sharing that. I’m so excited about that project.

It’s funny, because I’ve always been passionate about helping the consumer audience, but now, with the healthcare professionals and seeing how it can add value to their business and help them to spread their own messages wider … It’s like my newfound passion, so I’m really excited.

 Yuri:                Yeah, it’s awesome. It’s a lot of fun.

When you look at these healthcare practitioners and professionals coming into the Master  The Media world and if you were to just look through some of the stuff they’re doing or if they’re asking you questions about ideas that they had—what would be some alarms?

Like, “This person is totally off the path here. Let’s kind of give them advice to come back on a path to actually get booked on a show.” What are some mistakes that you see people make when they’re approaching the media for something they’re pitching?

Erin:                Yeah, so that’s a great question, and I see this a lot when I do things. When I’m writing a story as a journalist myself and connecting with the sources and even from the students in our course as they transition, one of the biggest things I think is just being too generic.

In any field, but especially in the nutrition field, you can’t be great at everything. There’s so many various areas of nutrition that you can’t just be this general vanilla nutritionist that covers everything.

You really have to be specific. The more specific you can be, the better it is when you’re reaching out to the media because it makes you unique. It makes you stand out from the crowd.

A lot of people are scared to do that because they think, “If I’m too specific, it’s really limiting my ability to reach out and not many people are going to want to connect with me,” but, instead, you can really master that niche and really be the person that owns that particular area of the nutrition space or any healthcare space.

You’ll find that the media is just really knocking down your door because there’s no one else that has that same level of expertise.

Yuri:                Yeah, that’s really good advice. I think just for business in general, you’re better off going niche than going broad.

But also, with the media, they like soundbites. Right? If you call yourself the weight loss wizard, that’s easy for them to grasp, instead of saying like, “I help people lose weight,” and do this and that. So it’s really good advice. It’s great.

What might be something else? Let’s say they have their niche narrowed down and they’re approaching the media with a specific idea. What are some common pitfalls that people make when they’re reaching out?

Erin:    Yeah, whoever you’re reaching out to, whether it’s a journalist, whether it’s a producer, you have to put yourself in their shoes. What are they trying to do? How are you going to add value to their day?

A producer is getting bombarded with pitches. They’re incredibly busy. They’re trying to figure out what’s going to work for their audience, what their audience is going to tune into, so you can’t just throw out this random pitch that might sound good to ten shows.

You really have to do your research.

If it’s a TV show, DVR it. Watch it. See what kind of segments they run. Are they tabletop segments with props? Are they sit-down interviews? Are they controversial? Make sure when you’re crafting your pitch that it is very specific to that show.

I think some people make these generic pitches and then they just send them out like a press release to everybody and hope they land, and nobody responds because it’s not specific enough to one show where it’s really helpful.

Yuri:                That’s really good. Smart.

I think, at the end of the day, it’s just human to human relationship. If you sent a broadcast email to a thousand people, you’re not going to get the same responses as if you personally sent an email saying, “Hey, Erin, hope the kids are doing well. What’s new?”

That’s always going to get a better response, and I think the same thing is going to happen with the media as you mentioned.

 Erin:                Right, and I know myself, and I’m sure you see it, too—if it’s somebody who doesn’t know anything about you, you don’t really feel like they’re going to add value and it might even annoy you a bit.

So, if you do your research, see what stories they’ve run, maybe you present it with, “Hey, I love the story you recently did, and I can see myself being a good fit in X, Y and Z,” it’s a great way to start that conversation.

Yuri:                Yeah. That’s really good. Speaking of that, I actually had an email a little while ago from somebody—and this is so good, I had to repost it on Facebook.

It was, “Hey, you know, I really love your work,” and then it was like “[insert thing here].”

Erin:                Oh my God.

 Yuri:                I was like, “This is so classic. I’m going to put it up on Facebook.”

I’m like, “This is the problem. This is the problem, guys.” You cannot … I don’t know. It was just hilarious, so please avoid making that mistake.

Erin:                Yes. I know. I get emails all the time like, “Hey, Eric.” I’m like, “Yeah? I’m not a boy.” That’s not my name.

Yuri:                So, looking back over your last 10 year or so in business, what would you say is a lesson you had learned the hard way, and how can you help others avoid that mistake?

Erin:                Yeah, I think the biggest lesson is that—and this probably goes for any entrepreneur—we always have these great ideas and we’re always thinking, “Oh, this would be amazing,” or, “That would be amazing,” and you can really start to be like a pinball where you’re going from idea to idea and not really accomplishing anything…

I think you just have to take a step back and set specific goals for yourself. Work on one project at a time and have that end vision in sight, but don’t let yourself get side-railed to every new opportunity or every new idea because then you’re just spinning your wheels and you’re constantly sort of creating something, but you’re never creating something great. You’re never making progress.

 Yuri:                What’s worked for you to stay focused on one thing at a time?

Lists

Erin:                I’m a list person, so I have this Word doc that I keep every day and I kind of make today’s list of all the things I need to get accomplished—which never actually all gets accomplished, but at least I get to cut a few things down. And then I just tack on the rest to the next day.

But then I have my short term goals, “What do I want to accomplish at the end of this month? At the end of the quarter? What does my long term goal and outreach for the year look like?” so that I’m always keeping those end goals in sight.

Even when I started with the media, I knew long term it was going to lead to a bigger platform, book opportunities, increased revenue potential, bigger clients and a bigger practice … But doing it, it’s a lot of grunt work that you don’t get paid for.

And I know my husband would think I was absolutely insane leaving the house at 4:00 a.m. with all my food props, walking through the Port Authority with this giant Tupperware. He’s like, “What are you doing?”

It’s valuable because you’d have to pay so much for that same exposure when you’re asked on as an expert, so you have to have the end goal in sight because otherwise, you might not want to put in that unpaid work up front. But it definitely pays off in the end.

So, I like to look at the goals and just do it list-by-list each day.

 Yuri:                Sweet. Yeah, lists are good. They’re good.

 Erin:                Yep.

 Yuri:                It’s amazing how everyone has their own system. Right?

I like writing stuff down. Other people like using the digital stuff. You’ve just got to find your thing. I think that’s what matters most, but, yeah, that’s great advice.

What do you think is the number one skill entrepreneurs need to have for lasting success?

Erin:                That’s a great question. I honestly think you have to be a really good communicator on numerous levels.

You have to be a really good communicator to your ideal audience. So, when you’re doing anything, whether you’re selling a new product, putting together your website, you really have to be clear in what that call to action is to the person you’re ultimately hoping is going to buy from you or do business with you.

I think it’s also really important that you’re communicating with those around you and that you network. And not just to another person specifically in the healthcare field, but look at people that are selling in various areas of business you want to be better at.

In the beginning, I always tried to do everything myself and just thought that was the way to do it, but when I really started to branch out and network with others and learn from other people, it made a world of difference.

Because I’m not going to know everything and I’m never going to be able to fine tune everything if I don’t have any help and learn from others , so I think that’s a really important benefit.

Yuri:                Yeah, that’s awesome. What advice would you give to other dietitians or maybe even practitioners in an office, as they’re starting to build more of their presence online?

Maybe they’re writing a book. Maybe they’re trying to do a little bit of virtual, a little bit of offline. For you, what are some of the initial things you outsourced to give yourself more freedom to pursue the book writing, to do the other things?

Erin:                Yes, so that’s a great question, because that’s something you really struggle with and I think a lot of us are the same especially in business for yourself. Like, I’m a type A personality, so I feel like if I give something to someone else, it’s not going to be done the exact same way I need it done.

 Yuri:                Never.

 Erin:                Yes, so I have to let go of that perfectionism thing, and just feel like it’s good enough.

Especially with the social media, obviously you want to craft your own messaging, but it’s so important to be consistent with social media and be posting consistently. Even if you did a media placement, sharing it and letting people know what you’re doing.

I find that, if I can outsource, I create the actual content. The outsourcing is someone who’s going to help schedule or post it or organize it or blog-post format it—those are all the little things that you don’t have to be doing yourself. That’s not really a unique skill.

The unique skill is you forming the copy or you writing the piece. I try to do the things that I know only I can do correctly, and then the other things, really find the person to hook up with that I can trust, that I can outsource it with.

 Yuri:                It’s great. Great advice.

What would you say your superpower is, when you look at it? What are the one or two things that you do best that no one else can touch, and everything else you’d be happy to get off your plate?

Outsourcing and kids (but not outsourcing your kids!)

 Erin:                I think knowing my audience and speaking to them, I don’t think I could give that to somebody else.

If I’m crafting a blog post or I’m working on a pitch, I want to have my hands in it because I know how I want that message to translate and I know who I’m trying to speak to. It would be really hard to translate that to someone else.

But I’m terrible at the proofreading part of it. I can get the message down there, but it’s really good to have a second set of eyes or someone that can help me out in the proofreading part to make sure that I didn’t miss anything.

I’m more of a person that is very productive. I can work fast, but I also am not the person that likes to go back and nitpick my own work. I can get it done, but I need to have somebody on my team that’s going to oversee it and just fine-tune it so I’m not making little grammatical mistakes and whatnot.

Yuri:                Cool. I’m the same way.

It’s funny, I actually have an article that’s supposed to be published on a huge site, and it’s been seven months in the editing process, and I don’t even want to touch it. I don’t even want to touch it anymore.

And it’s the type of article that I can’t have an editor do because there’s a lot of things I need to have input in from my business. I’m like, “Oh, man, I’ve just got to bite the bullet to get it done,” but, for me, I would rather do anything else than that. So, I completely understand where you’re coming from on that.

I want to ask you a question because you’ve got two young kids. What has having kids taught you about business and/or marketing? Before you answer, I want to share why I’m asking this question.

I’ve got, as I mentioned, three boys. What I’ve learned is that I’ve become a much better negotiator, like really learning how to appeal and influence kids, so I’m also interested to talk to parents and see what lessons they’ve learned from having kids with respect to their business.

What’s that been for you?

Erin:                Yeah, definitely a lot, and I think negotiating with the three-year-old … I have a three-year-old and a nine-month-old, so I get that. One, I’ve learned that I can function on very little sleep I guess.

But, in general, I think what having kids really opened my eyes to was just the value of our own time.

Before having kids, I didn’t outsource as much as I could have. I would just stay up late and do silly things that I could’ve been paying someone else to do. It didn’t make sense for me to do it, and I think having children, seeing the value of my time and understanding that life isn’t only about work, that you really want to embrace your children … They’re only young once.

You want to be a parent and spend time with them. And that really made me look and say, “Okay, what are the things that I truly need to do?”

I’m still helping the individuals I want to help, but what are the things I can take off my plate and how can I get more members on my team? It really helped me to grow a team, but it also taught me a lot with patience.

I mean, I think I’ve been a slightly patient person, but, in general, seeing how my older son learns and how you talk to him and then explain things … When it was just me, I’d understand something, but trying to translate that to a member of my team if they weren’t getting it right away, I would get impatient and get frustrated.

Now that I’m dealing with this everyday 24/7, I am getting more patient and getting better at communicating and explaining things, so I think that’s translated into the business as well.

Yuri:                That’s awesome. I can relate to that as well because I’m very much like you, type A.

I want things done a certain way, and, with my kids, I’m like, “Why don’t you understand this?” but then I’m like, “Oh, you’re only three. Okay. That’s why.” It’s like a personal development seminar every day, which is awesome.

 Erin:                Exactly.

 Yuri:                It’s a lot of fun. Erin, this has been tremendous. I’m so grateful for having you on and for sharing all this stuff you’ve been able to share. Are you ready for the rapid five?

 The Rapid-Five Questions

Erin:                Let’s go. Yeah, I’m ready. 

Yuri:                All right, you’ve got no prior knowledge to these questions. I’m just going to fire them at you. Here we go. Number one, what is your biggest weakness?

Erin:                My biggest weakness is definitely just being a perfectionist. I think it holds you back, because you want to do things and make them perfect, and sometimes you just have to get it out there and know that things don’t have to be perfect all the time.

I definitely think that’s my biggest weakness.

Yuri:                Nice. Number two, what is your biggest strength 

Erin:                I think that I am pretty good at trying to put myself in other people’s shoes. Whenever I’m working with somebody, whether it’s a business to business or the consumer, I think I’m pretty good at understanding their pain points and putting myself in their situation so that I can really craft what I’m doing to help them to reach their own goals.

Yuri:                That’s great. It’s kind of like emotional intelligence, right? That’s what 

Erin:                Yeah. Yeah, that’s what I was trying to say.

Yuri:                No, that’s fine. Having interviewed so many people and knowing so many entrepreneurs, I think emotional intelligence is one of the biggest strengths that we all have in common, and there’s a reason for that. I think that’s awesome.

Alright, number three, the one skill you’ve become dangerously good at in order to grow your business?

Erin:                Oh, that’s a tough one. Man, I think time management.

I mean, right now, I have the three-year-old, I have the nine-month-old, neither one sleep. They’re only daycare part time. I just feel like there’s a lot of balls in the air. I feel like I’ve been very blessed to be much better at time management and being effective with my time and getting a lot done without having a lot of time to get it done—so I think that’s been the big one.

Yuri:                That’s good. Yeah, so I think if you want to be more productive with your time, guys, just have kids. It’s the best. It forces you.

All right, number four, what do you do first thing in the morning?

Erin:                First thing in the morning? Right now, first thing in the morning is I get up. I change the diaper. But, in general, I think the first thing I do—and it’s probably a bad habit, but it’s like the only time I get five minutes for myself—is I just go and I love to just check the news of the day.

See what’s happening, and in my head it kind of gets the wheels spinning for the day. Is there a way I can tie in what I’m doing with what’s happening in the news and really craft that for some kind of media outreach or something that’s relevant to my consumer audience?

Yuri:                Nice. That’s actually a good way of looking at it. That’s very smart, very cool.

Okay, the final one, complete this sentence. I know I’m being successful when ____.

Erin:                When I know that I am achieving the work balance, the work-life balance that I’ve always dreamed of, and that really is much more valuable than a return on investment in a monetary way.

The fact that I can be the mom that I want to be, the fact that I can run the business I want to be and have a balance where I’m enjoying both, to me, has been the epitome of success.

 Yuri:                Awesome. Good for you. That’s terrific. Erin, thank you so much. What is the best place for people to follow your work online and learn more about your awesome stuff?

 Erin:                Thank you. Yes, you can come to my website. It’s erinpalinski.com, and you can follow me on my social channels at erinpalanski and, if you’re interested in the E-course, it’s masterthemedia.co.

Yuri:                Perfect. Erin, thank you so much, once again, for taking the time out of your day to share your wisdom with us. And I know our listeners will get a ton of value.

If you guys haven’t, just go back and rewind and repeat this again because there’s a lot of really, really good nuggets that I’ve written down from this episode. Thank you so much, Erin.

Erin:                Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. It’s been a pleasure.

******************************************************

Yuri’s take

If you’re like me, you probably took a ton of notes in this episode and hopefully you got some really good actionable bits of advice to put into play because, at the end of the day,this podcast is all about inspiring you to just raise your inner drive.

But, at the same time, we do touch on some how-tos, as you know. So you want to be jotting down some things, and not like a ton of pages of notes.

What I usually suggest to people that I work with or even if you’re going to live events and stuff is to listen. Right? Take a couple of notes and, from all the stuff that you just kind of got in—what’s the one thing, what’s the one big “a-ha” for you? What’s the one big insight where you can foresee putting it to action for you in your business based on what you have access to in your current setup?

Now, the reason I say this is because it’s very easy. And this is the dilemma of information, right? It’s kind of ironic that we’ve got a podcast where we publish three episodes per week, and the name of game nowadays is to be prolific everywhere, yet the irony is that the only education you need is to become truly aware of who you really are.

You don’t need to listen to more podcasts. You don’t need to read more books. Obviously, I do appreciate your listening to this and these conversations. Hopefully, they really muster up your self-esteem and confidence and inspire you about what’s possible, but you are the only one to know what is right for you.

So, if you listen to this interview and you’re thinking to yourself, “You know what? I don’t want to reach out to the media. I’d rather have someone else do that,” then that’s cool. That’s fine. Be honest about that.

I’m the same way. I mean, I commend Erin on what she’s done. It’s amazing. I’m not the person who has ever wanted to reach out to the media en masse like she has. It’s amazing what she’s done, and I give her full credit for doing so, but I know myself. I am not the guy who’s going to do that. You have to be honest with who you are, what you love to do and what you have time for with what you have going on.

That’s with anything. That’s with any idea, not just this—with anything you ever come across. We had two of our Luminary Mastermind members recently ask me, “Hey, Yuri, do I need to get the certification on copywriting?” I’m like, “No, you don’t. You don’t need to take other courses. What you do need to do is actually implement what you already know, and then we can course correct.”

See, copywriting is one of those skills that, sure, you can grab a course and work on it, but unless you’re going full in immersion, it’s really not worth it.

I mean, you’re better off just taking what you know about your audience, moving them from a place of where they are to where they want to be. You don’t need to be a fancy copywriter to do that. You simply have to understand what people are going through, what their pain is and how you can solve that for them.

The same thing with media, right? Understand where the producers are at. What’s the pain point? What’s the thing that they’re trying to solve? And you have content to help solve that and then basically make their life as easy as possible.

Life doesn’t have to be more complicated than figuring out a problem and solving it for people. That’s how we get paid. Okay?

That’s all for today’s episode. I just want to drop some little thought bombs on you as we finish off here. As always, if you haven’t subscribed to the podcast, be sure to do so now over in iTunes—Healthpreneur Podcast—and leave a rating or a review if you’ve enjoyed these interviews. I’ve really enjoyed bringing them to you. It’s a lot fun, at least for me.

If you haven’t yet grabbed a copy of the Health Profits Secrets book, you can do so over at healthpreneurbook.com. I’m covering the cost of the book. You can just cover the minimal cost of shipping, and I will send it right to your front door within the next five or seven days.

Inside that book, I’m unveiling the four big secrets that all successful online health businesses have in common and how you can use them to your advantage.

If you want to impact a lot of people, if you want to make more money, if you want to enjoy more free time—these four secrets are really, really important to know and master. That’s what I’m going to show you how to do inside that book, so grab it today, if you haven’t already.

That’s all for me. Continue to be awesome. Go out. Be great. Do great, and I will see you in our next episode, which is a solo round coming up your way on Monday.

***********************************************************

Follow Erin Palinski At:

https://erinpalinski.com/

https://masterthemedia.co/

Facebook

Instagram

Pintrest

YouTube

Twitter

***********************************************************

Free Healthpreneur Health Profit Secrets Book

Transcription

How’s it going? Yuri here. Welcome to the Healthpreneur Podcast. Hope your day is going great, and it’s about to get better, as it always does when you listen to this awesome show, right?

So, today we’ve got a really cool interview with Brett Hawes, who is a long-standing faculty member of the Institute of Holistic Nutrition, which is one of North America’s premiere educational schools in the natural healing field. He’s been teaching there for the past 10 years, and he’s constantly being ranked as one of the top instructors.

He’s also got a private practice where he has successfully reversed many chronic diseases using natural medicine. His specialty is really focused around clinical detoxification, Ayurveda, energy medicine, body talk and iridology—which is actually pretty cool, it’s looking at the whole iris, around the eye and looking at how that correlates to different health issues or health parameters inside the body. It’s actually very, very fascinating.

Actually, funny story—Brett lives very close to where I used to live, just outside of Toronto, and when I found out that he lives there, I was like, “Hey, that’s crazy. That’s 10 minutes down the road from where I used to live!” Because we used to live outside the city.

So, I grew up in Toronto, lived here my whole life, and then when my wife Amy and I decided to have kids, we moved out of the city to a small town called Port Perry, which is actually the birthplace of the head of chiropractic, Dr. Palmer, and I used to take my kids to the park, and go to Palmer Park. So, when I talk to chiropractors, they’re like, “Oh, my God, that’s where Dr. Palmer’s from.”

Long story short: we lived out there for five years, a small town of 9,000 people, and then we decided, “You know what? This is a little bit too slow for us,” and we decided to move back to the city.

We found our dream home in a beautiful neighborhood.

Anyway, so we used to live literally 10 minutes away from where Brett Hawes lives now, and I’m always fascinated by how many amazing people in our space live in Toronto. So, if you’re not in Toronto, you should come up and visit! It’s a great city, lots of amazing entrepreneurs and health practitioners up here. And it is the fourth-largest city in North America, just so you know.

So, back to Brett. Brett’s been featured on some of the top shows in Canadian media, so it would be synonymous to, like, CNN and Fox and stuff in the States. He’s been on all those shows and media in Canada as well. And he’s also the founder of The Holistic Health Masterclass, which is a practitioner-focused education hub that aims to empower practitioners and help them excel at their craft and in their business.

So, we’re going to have a lot of fun on this episode. What’s cool about this interview too, is that Brett has a lot of wisdom. He’s been doing this for a while, more than a decade now, and with that time comes perspective and insight.

You’re going to pick up some really good nuggets in this conversation.

So, if you have a pen and paper—if you’re not driving, obviously—you may want to jot some stuff down here, as you would usually want to do for most of these interviews.

If you want to learn more about Brett, you can head over to bretthawes.com. Without any further ado, let’s bring Brett onto the show, and let’s go deep.

Yuri:                Hey, Brett. How’s it going? Welcome to the Healthpreneur Podcast.

Brett:              Thanks so much, Yuri, and really great to be here.

Yuri:                Yeah. I’m excited! So, talk to me about what is exciting in the world of Brett Hawes. What are you working on these days? How are you transforming people’s lives? What’s the world domination strategy for you?

Brett’s journey through teaching and his practice

Brett:              World domination, huh. Sounds like Pinky and the Brain, if you remember that.

So, what’s interesting for me … The journey has been a really long time. It’s been 13 years in practice, 10 years of training professionals and teaching at a professional education institute. We’ll talk about highs and lows and ups and downs all that, but right now, I really have, in the last three or four years, accelerated my clinical practice.

So, I have a clinical practice where I do one-on-one consulting with clients to help them with health issues. And I see extremely complex cases who have often gone through the medical system, gone through naturopaths, specialists and whatnot … and just to cut the story short, in my practice I’m now at the point where I’m incorporating functional medicine, holistic nutrition, and clinical iridology. And then based on the labs and all of the data and analysis that comes back, I’m now actually doing custom-formulated supplements.

I’m actually compounding a lot of supplements for my clients, which I feel is really sort of pushing the boundaries and the envelope as far as personalized medicine goes, and personalized healthcare.

Yuri:                That’s the future, for sure.

Brett:              Yeah. I really do believe it’s the future because one-size-fits-all and cookie-cutter nutrition and healthcare has proven to work for some people but not for others. So, that’s a pretty big thing that’s happening right now, and I’ve got a lot of clinical stuff that I’m really ramping up and launching in the coming months.

And then on the other side of things, as well, is an educational platform called Holistic Health Masterclass. I started working on it about three, three and a half years ago, and Holistic Health Masterclass is actually geared more towards practitioners—so, holistic nutritionists, health coaches, naturopaths to some degree, and those really looking to get into clinical practice.

So, I have a flagship, sort of, mentorship program which essentially takes you from the ground up. Literally, from the ground up—this is how to build your solo practice, whether you’re working in a clinic, whether you’re working from your home, whether you’re renting space … And really showing practitioners how to be extremely efficient in their jobs.

Because I think one of the challenges that a lot of practitioners have is that you work as a consultant, and as a consultant time is money. The more time that you spend on the back-end stuff—administrative tasks, writing stuff, developing programs and whatnot—your clients are actually only paying you for facetime. And then the rest of the work is actually done on your time.

So, what I’ve realized over 10 years of teaching and speaking to a lot of practitioners is that you come out of school, you start a practice, and then you realize how difficult it really is. You realize how much time it eats up, and ultimately you don’t make the money that you’re looking for, and you kind of burn out.

That’s what sort of spawned the birth of Holistic Health Masterclass, and we’ve got a couple of awesome programs coming out this fall.

One is incorporating functional medicine and holistic nutrition into a digestion and GI masterclass. And then we’ve also got an advanced herbal program, which is hopefully coming in the fall, but possibly more towards the end of the year. So, that’s really the two big things that are happening for me right now.

And we also have a podcast launching this fall as well, so as I said, fall is a very busy time for me, but I can’t really complain at all.

Yuri:                That’s awesome. Good for you.

Brett:              I’ve been very blessed.

Yuri:                Yeah, totally.

So, you’re a faculty member of the Institute of Holistic Nutrition, which is one of the leading schools for holistic nutrition. And I went to the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition, and what I noticed was that a lot of people graduated and then had no clue how to build a business.

Is that something you continue to see, or are the curriculums evolving a little bit to really support the business side of things?

What school does and doesn’t prepare you for when creating your own practice

Brett:              No, I think they’re not. And some people might not like me for saying that.

Some people might argue with me or debate that, but the reality is that the landscape of business in the healthcare field—especially if you’re a practitioner—is changing all the time. And when you’re being taught models that are outdated, that are long-winded, in this day and age they actually just don’t apply.

So, that’s one side of things—actually putting programs together for people. And the way that we’re taught, I can tell you right now, you’re looking at anywhere from five to 20 hours to do that per person.

 Yuri:                Wow.

 Brett:              Now … I mean, there you go. Crunch the numbers and you’ll see that you’re working for less than 10 bucks an hour.

But the other side of it all is that, I think nowadays, when people talk—especially in my space and at schools—about business, and when we have these business development programs, a lot of it is actually geared toward social media, which I find very interesting.

I do believe that social media is a powerful marketing avenue, but it’s also not the only avenue.

Yuri:                Yeah.

 Brett:              And the issue that I’m seeing now is that everyone is getting trained purely in social media as their business platform, but not really getting schooled in how to run your business, in how to set it up, how to come up with an actual business model, and so on and so on. So it’s a little bit short sighted, even though it is valid.

Yuri:                That’s a great distinction. Because there’s a very big difference between, “Okay, we’ll just do some Facebook Live videos, and get some clients,” versus actually having a business model that is well thought out, understanding messaging, and all this kind of stuff.

So, it’s good that you’re doing stuff like the masterclass to really help people through that, because I think it’s just so necessary. And it’s one of the reasons I started Healthpreneur, because it almost pained me to see such amazing technicians, people who can transform other’s health, who just don’t know how to get out there to more people.

So that’s why I’m pumped about this and pumped about the work that you’re doing as well.

Now, I know you kind of merged online the last little while. Going from clinical practice, 10 years or so, to online, what was one of the biggest obstacles as you were trying to venture into that new territory?

The business side of owning a practice and going online

Brett:              Well, let me perhaps roll that back a little bit because starting out in practice, in the last 10 years technology has just come on in leaps and bounds. So, in and of itself that’s a challenge, where every week there’s a new app, new service, web-based platform, or something that you can use, and so there’s all these shiny objects that are appealing.

But keeping up with it and actually finding things that work and that work together, I think that’s been a challenge. And it’s taken me a good few years to sort of invest thousands of dollars, and actually I’ll say “waste” thousands of dollars, too.

I run a paperless practice now and I service an international group of clients. What’s been interesting in the transition is, first of all, having templates and having your office set up where you have filing cabinets and all this sort of stuff—the most daunting thing at first was, “How am I going to take the paper side of things and merge it with the online side of things?”

Because when you start getting into things like record keeping and whatnot, well, all of a sudden I’ve got records that are offline and I’ve got records that are online … and that can create some problems.

But to be honest with you, I think that because I didn’t jump in with both feet right away, I actually sort of strategically set myself up over the course of about a year and a half, where I slowly started gravitating towards online, and I think that was probably a really good thing for me to do.

Because what I see now is, a lot of people are trying to build their practice online right from the get-go. And you can do it. I’m not going to say you can’t do it. It’s just that you need to really, really have the right tools. It’s not as simple as having a filing cabinet and pen and paper with your intake forms. That would be the office system.

 But when you try and move that online, you have to have the right software, you have to have everything working together seamlessly so that you, A) can be more efficient, B) don’t lose your sanity.

And more importantly, though, you create a very, very professional-looking and streamlined appearance and feel for your clients that are coming into the practice.

Yuri:                Sure. And there’s also, I think … And you can probably speak to this a little bit better than I can because I’ve been online for the past 12 years, and it’s been a while since I’ve been working with clients in person.

But, it’s a lot easier to build trust when someone walks into your clinic versus trying to get that person online to trust you and actually do business with you.

So, there’s a lot more of that. You really have to push the boulder up the hill a lot more online than you do offline, which is something I don’t think a lot of people recognize. And so, you mentioned people trying to go right online from the get-go. It’s a tough journey to think through and attract clients right off the bat doing that.

Is that something you see, or what’s your take on that?

Building physical relationships, referrals, and personalized care

Brett:              Yeah. Well, I think that we can’t also be foolish and think that you’re going to walk out of school and set yourself up with an online business, sit in your living room, and all of a sudden clients are just going to come and start emailing you.

There’s so much noise out there. And I say noise in a very nice way. There’s just a lot of activity, and there’s a lot of market saturation online, and everyone’s on there.

If you look at Facebook advertising, that’s doubled in the last three years. There were three million businesses, now there’s six million businesses advertising. So the way that I’ve approached this, and I feel is actually working, is you actually need to do certain things in person.

So, a lot of the speaking events that I do … I’ll speak at conferences and I teach as well, so I think that having a platform like that, and doing workshops and stuff like that that’s a little bit more physical and in-person really helps you to establish those connections and build the relationships, and then, of course, by extension, get a lot of referrals.

 Yuri:                Absolutely.

Brett:              So, the way that I’ve approached it with my business now is, I would say, about 90% referral-based, to the point where I haven’t really had to market too much, except for speaking. And now I’m actually rolling out a bit more of a strategic marketing plan as I look to scale up, and that’s been happening over the last six months or so.

 Yuri:                That’s great. That’s a really good point because I think people get kind of caught up in the fact of, “Oh, I can only be online,” or “I can only be offline,” or whatever it may be. The internet is a medium just like television is, like the newspaper is.

But you bring up a really good point because you’re going to connect with people at such a deeper level by speaking, by doing a workshop, and that’s a much better qualified lead or potential client than hopefully getting a lead from a Facebook ad.

And not to say you can’t do Facebook ads, but I think you’ve been really smart about consciously deciding to do that, so that’s awesome.

Brett:              Yeah. One thing I just want to say on that; what’s been very interesting is actually looking at the metrics and measuring Facebook ads. So, running Facebook ads, running other types of ads, and actually looking at what they’re doing.

And it’s quite interesting, I’ve got to say, because if we were having this conversation five years ago, where Facebook advertising wasn’t nearly where it is today, I think your conversion rates and your metrics were way better.

 Yuri:                Yup.

 Brett:              But now, you’re looking at getting thousands of people watching videos on the front end, but that’s not really converting into sales on the back end. Whereas if you are doing live events, and you’re doing in-person, you’re going to find that if you get 150 people in a room, or 100 people in a room, you might get 25 or 50% of those people actually coming to see you.

 Yuri:                Yup, absolutely.

 Brett:              And it’s the same thing as getting someone in front of you and speaking to them, instilling that confidence, the trust. They can see that you’re an expert, they can see that you know what you’re talking about, and that gives them the confidence to say, “Hey, you know what? You’re the guy. I want to work with you.”

Whereas trying to do that online, I mean, holy smokes. As you say, it is like trying to push a boulder up a hill.

 Yuri:                Yeah, it is. And it’s funny. I tell my clients—I tell anyone really—that the best way to build an online business is to spend more of your time offline, whether that’s just thinking through the strategy or actually connecting with people in person, be it speaking from stage, or attending an event … It makes all the difference. Yeah.

It’s cool that you’ve recognized that as well because I think the more technologically advanced we get, the more human-to-human interaction people are going to be craving. And I think for those, like yourself, who are really utilizing that, it will help them stand above what everyone else is doing.

Brett:              Yeah. Well, one of the things which I found interesting, that we’ve sort of dialed into—and don’t take my words out of context here. But just looking at people that are doing a lot of online group programs, a lot of automated programs, and having that as the backbone of their business and their clinic—it’s good from a financial perspective now, but as the market gets more saturated, what we’ve started to see is that people aren’t looking for cookie cutter, one-size-fits-all, cheap group programs.

They’re actually not looking for that. What they’re looking for is almost like concierge, boutique-style medicine where they want someone to listen to them. They’re willing to pay top dollar, they want someone to pay attention and do the research and the work because, let’s face it—if you look around, we’re not talking about people coming to see practitioners for minor ailments anymore. There’s so much information online, I can just go onto someone’s blog, and I can probably figure some stuff out for myself.

Yuri:                Yup.

 Brett:              So, a lot of people who are seeking clinical help where they want to pay for it, have slightly more complex conditions that they’ve already tried to self-medicate. They’ve already tried to fix it, and now they need a professional to actually sit down and really look at it with a fine tooth comb.

And that’s sort of the direction that I’ve always been in, but I’m finding that that’s becoming more and more relevant. I think you’re looking now at building a practice that has longevity, rather than climbing into the ring with 10,000 other practitioners, all with their 21-day juice cleanse for 50 bucks.

Yuri:                Yup.

 Brett:              And that’s what I’m seeing out there in the markets.

 Yuri:                Absolutely. And I’m guilty. Actually, we have something called The Green 14 Smoothie and Juice Challenge. It’s funny because there is so much of that, and you bring up a really good insight, which is this whole notion of personalization. You touched upon this with the personalized supplementation, which I think is going to really disrupt the supplementation industry in the coming years.

But also, when you look at a lot of the technologies online, there’s been a real big surge in the sense of conversions, when it comes to people using surveys and quizzes. And when you think about that, the reason they work so well is because people are getting a more personalized recommendation based on what they just went through.

And whether it’s people coming to see you or anything else, people just want to feel heard. They want to know that they have an issue that you can personally attend to, and I think it’s just such a great insight that you shared, so I’m just kind of connecting the dots there.

Brett:              Yeah, thank you.

Yuri:                Yeah. That’s awesome. So, from your experience and the people you know, the different entrepreneurs that you may have come across and admired or whatnot, what do you think is one really important skill entrepreneurs must have for lasting success?

Don’t put the blinders on!

 Brett:              I think if you want to have lasting success, I don’t think there’s any one skill. I think that the two things that I would probably want to impart and share with people is … In the beginning you are going to have to do it all, but at some point you’re going to have to start to realize that you can not do it all if you want to grow.

 Yuri:                Yeah.

 Brett:              And that is something for all entrepreneurs, not even in the health and wellness space. I think all entrepreneurs across the board, we work for ourselves, you figure everything out for yourself, and then to take to take that next leap of bringing in other people or outsourcing … That can be quite daunting because maybe we don’t trust people, we don’t think that they’re going to do it the way that we want it done or whatever.

But ultimately, that line of thinking will stunt your growth, 100%. It’s well documented. So, I think that that’s one.

The other thing that I would say is being open-minded and flexible. Because the other side of things is that oftentimes we will read something or invest in a program or have a mentor that just really resonates with us so strongly—and we implement that system or whatever it is, the tools, the systems that they have taught us.

And we might realize at six months, or two years, or whatever, that those systems are not really working for us anymore.

Maybe they’ve never really worked for you, but we stayed locked into those systems because of the resonance with that mentor, or program, or whatever. And I find this happens a lot, where people just become so, almost dogmatic in their beliefs. Where it’s like, “No, no, I heard this, and this is what I was told, so I’m just going to beat this path down until I get it right.”

And what you need to realize is that there’s so many different ways of doing things.

I always tell people, there’s many roads up the mountain. And what worked for one person, even if they’re really, really successful, maybe that’s not going to work for you. Maybe you’re the wrong personality type, maybe you have a slightly different business model.

And so, I think that being flexible is really, really important. Because I see that a lot as well, where you’ve got the blinders on and off you go, with no real clear direction.

Yuri:                Yeah, that’s such a good tip.

And Brett, it seems like you have a good amount of self awareness, because to be aware of that is very rare. Unless you, obviously, have been doing this for a while—which you have.

Because it is very common where people will go, “Okay, I’m going to follow what this person’s doing, and now I have to do affiliate marketing,” or “I have to have a big YouTube channel,” or do this or that. And it takes a level of stepping back and thinking, like, “First of all, is this even my personality? Do I enjoy doing this?”

And recognizing that, as you said, there are a number of different ways up the mountain, and really figuring out what is the best business model for you.

Because that’s something I personally dealt with when I first started my business online. I was part of a coaching group where they said, “This is the way to build your business,” and I did that for a bit. I was like, “You know what, I don’t really feel good sleeping at night doing this. I know there’s another way to serve my market,” and I think it’s a dangerous path to go down if you only have blinders on for that one dogmatic approach.

That’s a really good tip.

Brett:              And that’s something that I actually teach when it comes to marketing. By no means, don’t get me wrong, I’m no marketing expert at all. I’m all self-taught, a lot of trial and error, and whatnot.

But I see a lot of people that all of a sudden are saying, “I should have a YouTube channel,” as one example. And if you’re not comfortable on video or you’re not the best person to do video, then maybe that’s not your platform. Maybe you’re better suited to blogging.

And likewise, if you don’t like writing and you’re not very good at it, well, why blog? Do video, or do something else instead.

And another point on this, which I think is really, really important in the health and wellness space is figuring out where your clients actually are. The example that I use in a lot of my teachings is, if your target market is dealing with osteoporosis, well, osteoporosis affects mostly elderly women. So, are they the kind of people that are going to be hanging out on Snapchat or Instagram? Probably not.

You might find them on Facebook, but you might actually find them by publishing articles in a magazine because they’re a lot more likely to read magazines.

So, I think this idea that everyone’s got to do the Facebook Live, everyone’s got to get on YouTube, everyone’s got to do it all … I actually strongly discourage that because I think you need to really zoom in on where your clients are hanging out and then focus on that or those channels.

Master those, and that ultimately is going to be way more efficient, and you’re actually going to reach the right people.

 Yuri:                Yeah, it’s great advice. And I think, again, what Brett’s talking about is coming from wisdom. And if you’re just starting off in business, hopefully you’re getting that the whole idea here is to just take these conversations and give it to you, the listener, as kind of an accelerated learning. So you can avoid of the mistakes that we had to make.

But this is just really, really good stuff, so thanks for sharing that, Brett. That’s really good.

Brett:              Yeah, no problem at all.

Yuri:                What’s a lesson that you’ve had to learn the hard way, and how can you help others avoid that mistake?

Brett:              Let me think. I’m trying to think where to start, actually.

Yuri:                Get out the list.

Brett:              Yeah, exactly. I mean, there’s no such thing as failure, there’s only learning, right?

I think that the most successful people have probably failed more than most, and that would definitely be me. I’ve done a lot of spiritual work, I’ve done a lot of inner work on myself, a lot of soul searching and all of that, and I know that what I’m doing is what I’m supposed to be doing.

But in the beginning, what I found was that I started seeing people, literally, out of my living room with minor health issues and I started getting those results. I foolishly thought, “This is what I’m supposed to do, I have natural talent, I’m really good, everyone tells me that I’m really good at what I do, I can just sit back and clients are going to come. My clients are just going to keep referring, and referring, and referring.”

And, in large part, that did happen to me, but if I had to speak to myself 13 years ago, I wouldn’t have done it that way.

And the only reason I say that is, I can look back on it now and sort of celebrate and say, “Hey, great, referral-based marketing is the best kind of marketing you can get,” but how long did it take me to do that?

And if I was starting out now, I wouldn’t have the luxury of being able to take two years or three years to build that up because I have a family to support and whatnot.

And so, I think that that’s probably one of the biggest things and I think a lot of people still think that way. A lot of people still think that way because healers and practitioners are not necessarily business-minded.

We’re sort of, kind of thinking, if we put that energy out, we’re just going to attract those people, and in reality it just doesn’t work that way.

 Yuri:                Yeah. And, I mean, it’s one thing if you live in a relatively small town, it’s one thing if you have a physical location. People walk by and they’re like, “Oh, cool. There it is. I can check it out.”

Versus if you have a website and you have an online presence exclusively, that’s never going to happen. No one’s just going to stumble upon your website. It’s very, very rare for that to happen.

So, lots of good stuff, lots of good stuff. Brett, this has been really cool. I’ve enjoyed our conversation. You’ve had some really cool insights, lots of great self awareness, which I appreciate.

Are you ready for the rapid five, our rapid-fire questions?

The Rapid-Five Questions

Brett:              I am. I’m not sure if I’m ready, but let’s go for it.

Yuri:                Alright, so you’ve got no prior knowledge of what these bad boys are, but you will be fine. Here we go. What is your number one weakness?

 Brett:              Obsessiveness.

 Yuri:                Obsessiveness. What’s your biggest strength?

 Brett:              Ooh. I would say, communication.

 Yuri:                Cool. That’s, actually, probably the most common answer from everyone I’ve interviewed, which is pretty cool. And there’s a reason that all these remarkable entrepreneurs have communication and emotional intelligence as the big thing. One skill you’ve become dangerously good at in order to grow your business?

Brett:              Speaking.

Yuri:                Nice. What do you do first thing in the morning?

Brett:              First thing in the morning, I wake up before everyone else, I sit for 10 minutes and I write out a list of everything I need to do for the day, and then I start preparing things for the family.

Yuri:                Awesome. Complete this sentence: I know I’m being successful when …

Brett:              I know I’m being successful when I feel like everything is in the flow.

Yuri:                Nice. Awesome. I would agree with you on that one. That’s great, man.

Well, Brett, this has been a lot of fun. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. What’s the best place for people to stay up to date with what you’re working on, and perhaps inquire about your services?

Brett:              So, people can go onto my website, which is just my name, www.bretthawes.com. To be quite frank, I haven’t paid as much attention to that website as my clinic website. I do blog postings fairly regularly and whatnot.

I’ve actually been a lot more focused on my Holistic Health Masterclass website, which is holistic-health-masterclass.com. So, that’s where there’s a lot more recent blog posts, a lot of the upcoming programs and courses, stuff like that.

And I actually do have, for practitioners, a five-day Practitioner Empowerment Boot Camp. It’s totally free. You can log in there, sign up for that, and over five days I’ll walk you through a lot of the vision, mission, purpose, and then a little bit more of the pragmatic and practical stuff as well. So, yeah, that’s really the place to catch up.

I am on Facebook as well, so just look me up, Brett Hawes Holistic Health Practitioner. I’ve got a few people following me there. And I do have a Facebook Group which, I think, some people might be interested in, which is called The Practitioner Empowerment Network.

Very, very new, literally just started that a few weeks ago. So, a small group, but the idea with that is to actually get practitioners from multiple disciplines, not just holistic practitioner but functional medicine doctors, chiropractors, and whatnot all in one group with the maybe utopian vision of us all learning and bouncing things off one another.

So, those are the places where people can find me, and you’ll easily be able to connect with me.

Yuri:                Beautiful. That’s a great idea for the group, for sure. Once again, Brett, thank you so much for taking the time to join us. It’s been a lot of fun chatting with you, and I know our listeners will probably get a lot of value out of this episode.

******************************************************

Yuri’s take

Alright. So, there it is, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, Healthpreneurs. So, that was Brett, and hopefully you got some great stuff out of this interview. I know that I was jotting down some really cool nuggets of wisdom.

If you want to follow me on social, I guess it’s taken me almost a year to let you know about the fact that I’m on social. You can follow Healthpreneur1 on Facebook and Instagram and stay up to date with all the latest and greatest from the podcast, as well as what we’re up to with the business.

And again, we’re here to support you and take your business to the next level. And not to the next level in the sense of, you have to scale to a million people. Your business is your business. I’m not here to tell you you have to do this and this, and this is the only way to build your business because that’s not true.

As you know, there’s a lot of different ways to Mecca, there’s a lot of different ways to scale a mountain. There’s a lot of different ways to drive from New York to Los Angeles if you wanted to spend several weeks doing so. Business is the same, and business is philosophy.

We talked about with Brett, his approach is his approach. It’s unique to him. Yes, he’s learned a lot of stuff along the way, he’s made a lot of mistakes just like Michael Jordan, right? Michael Jordan kept throwing, practicing, missing shots, and failing, failing, failing. That’s why he’s successful.

So, there’s no magic pill, as we continue to say. It’s about the journey, it’s about enjoying the journey, it’s about learning in the process, and becoming the best version of yourself so that you continue to shine your light on more and more people. To really touch their lives at a deep or maybe a superficial level, whatever is best for your business.

But at the end of the day, it’s all about just transforming people’s lives, whatever that means for them, right? Whether that’s losing weight, helping them have an insight or something much more dramatic.

Anyways, that’s all for today. For the next episode, we’ve got a great conversation with Erin Palinski who is a published author, a dietitian out of New Jersey, and she’s got some really cool things to share with us about how she’s used the media with no publicist and how she has secured spots on Dr. Oz and The Doctors, as well as some very, very big publications.

So, she’s going to share her strategy in that interview. That’s coming up on Friday, be sure to tune in for that.

And as always, if you haven’t done so already, please subscribe to the Healthpreneur Podcast. That way, you’re not going to miss a single episode. All these good conversations will be automatically downloaded to your phone, and that’s all you need to do.

So, do that today. Subscribe, if you haven’t already. Leave a rating or review. That would be awesome.

And finally, if you haven’t picked up your copy of Health Profits Secrets, do so now. I’m covering the cost of the book, you just cover the minimal cost of shipping, and I will send it off to your front door in the next couple days.

Inside that book you’re going to discover four secrets that all successful online health businesses have in common and how you can steal those secrets and implement them into your business. So, that’s over at healthpreneurbook.com.

And that is all for today, guys. Thank you so much for tuning in. It’s been a pleasure. Go out there and continue to be great, do great, and I’ll see you in our next episode.

***********************************************************

Follow Brett Hawes At:

https://www.bretthawes.com/

https://www.holistic-health-masterclass.com/

Facebook

Facebook Group

***********************************************************

Free Healthpreneur Health Profit Secrets Book

Transcription

Hey guys, welcome to the Healthpreneur Podcast, Yuri here. Today, we’ve got a special episode—it’s actually a rehash. So, let me explain…

A couple of years ago I had another podcast called “The Smarter Marketer Project.” Now, this is at a time where I was at a crossroads between Healthpreneur and this other idea, The Smarter Marketer Project. And I’m like, “You know what? Let’s go with the Smarter Marketer Project and teach business to all businesses.”

I did that for a little bit, and then I was sitting in a hot tub one day and I was like, “Wow, Healthpreneur is such a better name, it’s a better brand. I actually only want to help people in the health and fitness base, so let’s shut this down.

And that’s what I did.

So, along with that were a lot of amazing podcast episodes, including this one with my buddy Jon Benson, who is the creator of the video sales letter. You’ve probably seen these online—you know, the ugly powerpoints, videos where a lot of people now use doodle characters and drawings.

Well, Jon is the guy who created that whole video sales letter thing, and his VSL, as it’s known, has been collectively responsible for billions upon billions of dollars in online purchasing. Jon is amazing at really understanding the underlying psychology of what makes people do what they do, and how we can move them into a bigger future. He’s one of the most sought after copywriters in the world.

I’ve known him for a number of years, because we both started off in the fitness space. He’s just such a great guy. We’ve hung out a bunch and he’s a lot of fun to be around. So, what I want to do in this episode is actually bring you that interview—which is about two years old, but it’s still extremely valuable in terms of its content.

Jon is going to talk about the importance of copywriting, but not just the importance of it. We’ll be talking about how to do it properly, how to come up with the big idea or the hook for your product, how to help it stand out in a very crowded marketplace.

There’s a lot of really great wisdom here. You’re literally going to be listening to one of the highest paid, most sought-after copywriters on the planet.

So, sit tight, grab a green juice, let’s bring Jon into the Healthpreneur Podcast, which is essentially just taking the recording from the previous podcast and merging it with this one. Either way, let’s have some fun, let’s get right into the interview.

 

Yuri:                All right, Mr. Jon Benson, welcome to the “Smarter Marketer” show.

 Jon:                Hey, Yuri, thanks a lot. Great to be here.

Yuri:                Absolutely. So, not only do you have arguably the coolest voice for audio, but you’re probably at the top of the list in terms of people who have really shifted this industry over the past decade, decade and a half. There’s kind of a handful of people that have done that and you’re at the top.

I mean, not only are you a cool guy and you come up with some amazing products, but you’ve actually invented the “Video Sales Letter” which has gone on to sell, what? Billion of dollars’ worth of products amongst all the people that have used it?

I mean, it’s incredible.

Jon:                Yeah. Thanks.

 Yuri:                Yeah, absolutely, thank you for your contributions. So, we’re gonna talk about publishing and the power of digital publishing, all the elements that are required in that. But before we get into that, I want to start off by asking you, what’s the biggest mistake you’ve seen online marketers and online businesses make as it pertains to either their marketing or their publishing? Or any aspect of their business?

 The most common initial mistakes

Jon:                It seems the biggest mistake has to be the lack of awareness of the need for a sales page that kicks butt. Everybody is so caught up in social media, in perfecting their product before they sell it—which I can say is a close second.

We all know on some level that perfection is the enemy of progress, but very few people apply it when it comes down to their own stuff. They’re afraid to release something that they don’t think is just right, right?

 So, I think even above that, people are caught up in trying to get the product perfect, the social media blitz brigade, buying traffic to a page that doesn’t convert … Because they underestimate the power of words on a page. In my case, video sales letters, it’s words on a video. Something to sell their product, and I think that comes from an aversion to the word “selling.”

 Yuri:                Sure. Yeah.

 Jon:                One of the greatest salesman and nicest guy in the world had a quote that lingers with me, “selling is helping.” That’s essentially what you’re doing as a salesperson—you’re helping someone discover a new, better, or even just a different way.

It can be the same exact thing, just worded differently. And I liken that back to Anthony Robbins, who has been a hero of mine since I started business in my 20s. Believe it or not, “Personal Power” was the thing I listened to that made me quit my job—the only job I ever had—and start a business with no experience, no money, nothing. I didn’t even know what a designer did, it just sounded cool.

He worded things in different ways, there are distinctions. You may have a distinction that’s unique to you—the way that you describe your product or service. It’s just the way that you talk, the way that you describe it, the one unique mechanism that makes your stuff different.

Those are the things that people need to latch onto and that is what your sales page needs to convey—I have something that’s slightly different, I have something that’s slightly better, or just a different way of going about it.

Getting that across to the public, you need to understand that it’s just the way that people are. There is a way to sell a product via word of mouth only. Believe me, there is a way to do that, and it starts with spending a lot of money.

So, I can give you a one-minute synopsis of this—P90X is a great example. I know the owners of Beach Body and this is one of the things that they said. They said, “Yeah, it’s one of the largest word of mouth products in the world, P90X.” And that’s not where they make their money. They make their money off the back end.

But here’s what’s interesting; it took them $250 million to get it to be word of mouth, and epic failure after epic failure after epic failure.

Yuri:                They weren’t just testing sales pages, they were testing infomercials as well, which is not the cheapest thing to do, but it’s an amazing lesson to continually be testing the message.

Jon:                Exactly. That’s another mistake that I think entrepreneurs, especially marketers make, is they don’t test. They give up.

They take a video sales letter, for example, they go through a course that I teach or whatever and they put their very first video sales letter out and they go, “Ah, man, it didn’t work.” I’m like, “Yeah, I’m a professional copywriter. I’ve written stuff that doesn’t work.” Name one person that hasn’t. Name one copywriter, even Gary Bencivenga has failed, right?

So, if guys like Gary and Gary Halbert and John Carlton and Chris Dodd and me can go down the line, can write a bomb (and we all have), your odds of writing a bomb are exponentially higher because this is not what you do for a living. But, having the right tools to help you along, to see why it might have been a bomb and tweak it, that’s the secret.

Yuri, I think you know one of the guys in the fitness industry, Wesley Virgin—with his new product he’s now seeing an amazing surge in income, to say the least. And he’s been posting all over my “Sellerator” forum because he’s been a client for a year and a half.

He just basically told me a year and a half ago, “Dude, I’m gonna follow you everywhere you go. Whatever you say, I’m just gonna do.” He just picked a mentor, and he failed epically. I think his first three video sales letters were just complete bombs.

His fourth one, though, he’s already made half a million dollars in two months? Three months?

So, it just took tweaking. I want to just emphasize to people that, yeah, the mechanisms work, sales pages work, but video sales letters work even better. You just have to work at it.

Yuri:                And I completely agree. The way I see copy is almost like a combination lock to a safe and you’re just continually trying to find the right combination because when you do it’s like, overnight the floodgates can open.

What do you say to somebody who doesn’t understand or does not want to put the effort into revising and testing and writing the copy?

 Jon:                I’d say that I admire your stance on poverty. In some way it’s noble. I hope that you enjoy being a monk or working at McDonald’s or taking a day job. That’s awesome.

I came from an extremely blue collar family. My dad was a manual laborer. He worked on a railroad for 36 years, in inclement weather, in Texas and New York. So you just put those weather combinations together.

So, I grew up around a lot of blisters and a lot of hard work, and that stuff, as a work ethic. There’s nothing wrong with going into the real world and being a carpenter or going into the world and being an insurance salesman. That’s great.

That’s what you’re gonna have to do if you don’t wanna test your landing pages, if you don’t want to test your opt-in pages. If you think that you can just write something—even if you take a course like mine. Not to brag, but it’s done $1.3 billion in revenue for my customers.

And that’s what we know of. It’s probably more like 6 or $7 billion, but I don’t know for sure so I can’t say. Just the ones that we know of, which is a fraction of the numbers.

Even those guys. I know a few notable exceptions. One guy I know, his name is Ryan, he said, “I went through the course, I spit out my first video sales letter, and it made $50 million.” That is the exception, okay?

My first video sales letter did awesome, too, because it was the very first one. I kind of got cheated, right? But I’ve had major hits that did the very first draft of “Old School New Body.” That never even went through one revision. Not one edit. That’s one of the top converting offers still in fitness.

Those are rare, even for a professional copywriter. So, if you’re not willing to task, go back, and just look at “Wow, where did I miss the mark? Where did I miss the hook? Is it just not engaging enough?” Then you’re going to fail.

It’s not a question of if, it’s a matter of when, so be prepared to go into the real world and be okay with that. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

I want to go back to say this. Of course, most people have seen “Good Will Hunting.” And Will’s argument throughout the movie was like, “What’s wrong with laying brick? My father was a bricklayer.” There’s nothing wrong with it.

If you wanna lay brick that’s awesome. I mean, my dad was a blue collar worker. They’re the backbone of society in many ways. You’ll just never be an internet millionaire, you’ll never be an internet entrepreneur.

What else can you say to that? That’s what I say to people. I’m just brutally honest with them, and hopefully in a somewhat loving way, but that is the brutal truth. You just gotta roll your sleeves up.

I know I can sell more copies of “Sellerator,” and some more copies of fill in the blank product if I just said, “Yeah, man, you can literally push a button and out comes profit.” But that would be a lie.

 Yuri:                Yeah.

 Jon:                So I’m not gonna do that.

 Yuri:                So, copy is king. Really important, whether it’s emails or sales pages.

For those listening who are not “copy chiefs” yet, how do people get started? Other than taking a copywriting course or reading copywriting books or looking at swipe files and rewriting sales pages? Is there one element of a pitch that you feel is really important for people to nail down? Is it the big idea? Is it the USP? Is it identifying the market? What is the one thing people need to start at?

The big idea

Jon:     Do a survey, and you don’t need a list to do this. You can do this on a Facebook page. You can survey random people and say, “Hey, I’m considering writing a book on blank. What’s the most pressing concern you have when it comes to blank? When it comes to weight loss? When it comes to training your dog? When it comes to making more money online?”

It can be anything, right?

What’s the most pressing concern? What’s the one thing you would want to have addressed the most? And you’ll end up with about four or five things that are pretty consistent. Pick one that you’re really good at. You don’t even have to be an expert at it, you can just be proficient at it.

You can actually be someone who’s in the process of discovering how to do this. You can say, “Join me as I discover, because I’m going to make it my life’s mission to become the best blank I can so you don’t have to do that work and I’ll just keep filling you in. I’ll keep updating the book.”

So, that’s a great way to do this if you’re not an expert, by the way. I talk to people all the time about how you don’t need to be an expert to write a book, you just need to have a passion for it.

So you already know that what you’re writing or creating is exactly what they want to hear. Then the very next thing that you have to do is that big idea. The really big idea … I just had a podcast yesterday with the Sales Whisperer about this very topic.

Do you ever watch “Mad Men?”

Yuri:                Mm-hmm, love the show.

Jon:                Yeah, me too. When that show first came out a lot of my clients would refer to me as the main character. I don’t smoke, I’m not as good-looking as Jon Hamm, but I do spell my name the same way, so, I’m close, man.

So, I’m sitting around in the office and I do kind of have his demeanor sometimes or I’m sitting back and I’m listening and I go, “No, no, no, what about this?” Everybody goes, “Yeah, that’s it!”

I remember the very first time I watched an episode of that. He would just sit down and he had this one punchline, right? And everybody was like, “Oh, that’s awesome!” and they go away, they pour a drink. He smokes a cigarette and he goes out and sleeps with women.

I go, “Man, Madison Avenue guys, they have it so easy.” I mean, if that’s all we had to do that would just be an awesome world, but we have to write the rest of the 7,000 words!

And the copywriters in “Mad Men,” they were always the low end of the spectrum, and obviously that’s coming from writers that know that copywriters are the low end of the spectrum. But unfortunately, and here in the real world, they kept referencing David Ogilvy throughout that series because Ogilvy understood the power of direct response copywriting.

That’s why he was kicking everyone’s ass on Madison Avenue. Everyone. So, all these guys on Madison Avenue, they couldn’t hang with this guy. But still, the concept here, the concept is still quite valid that you need the really big idea.

But, here’s what’s really interesting about it, the big idea does not have to be something that you create. It’s just a different way of looking at something.

For example, in my second book, Every Other Day Diet, changing caloric intake throughout the week is not a new concept, it’s been around a long time. Back in the ’70s, Arnold Schwarzenegger, when he was training for bodybuilding shows, would diet really severely for four, five days and then eat a tub of ice cream at night, right?

This is nothing new. All I did was take that concept that I knew about, but that 95% of my audience has never heard of, and came up with a name for it. I called it “Caloric Staggering.”

So, if you if you were to google “Caloric Staggering” before “Every Other Day Diet” came out, you would have not found it, not that I’m aware of. You would not have found the term. It’s a trademarked term now, and now it’s all over the web.

So, all I did was name something—because that’s what you’re doing, you’re staggering your calories. That did not take a Jon Hamm moment of brilliance to come up with. It doesn’t have to be really pithy. I’ve come up with really awesome hooks before, I think. Caloric staggering is not one of them, but it stuck with people and it became the caloric staggering principle, and so that became the one mechanism inside this book, “The reason why you have failed at dieting is because you don’t understand caloric staggering,” and that’s where you want to go.

Once your customers give you what you want to hear, then you can say, “Do you know the one reason why you haven’t seen the success that you want when it comes to blank is because of blank?”

And that is your golden thread, man. That is the one idea that you’re going to use throughout your entire pitch. Everything you say, every testimonial you give, every bit of advice that you give, everything relates right back to that one big idea.

I call it the “Oh, that’s why,” moment. What that is, is, “Oh, that’s why I haven’t been able to lose weight, I didn’t know about this caloric staggering thing. That makes total sense to me.” So, understand that caloric staggering for anyone that is a nutritionist, who has been in this field for years, we’ve known about this since we’ve be doing it.

I just called it something different, I made it the focal point, and that’s all I did.

Yuri:                It’s almost like P90X with muscle confusion.

Jon:                Exactly, muscle confusion. That’s exactly what they did, muscle confusion. You think that’s a new principle? That is exactly the words that Joe Weider used in the ’80s.

 Yuri:                Yeah.

 Jon:                Don’t plagiarize. I’m not saying they plagiarized, by the way, but don’t go off and steal somebody’s idea.

You can take an idea that’s in existence, rename it into something that makes a very crystal clear concept, and then that’s the big idea.

The last thing I want to say on that topic is, the big idea needs to be something that will make your customer or potential customer go, “Oh, that’s why I haven’t been able to succeed.” Not just, “Oh, that’s a cool idea.” That’s not strong enough.

A great hook is defined by this. A great hook is defined by, “Oh, that’s why I failed.”

Yuri:                That’s a beautiful distinction. Just that alone, if you’re listening to this.”Oh, that’s why.” Just ask that after you’ve written a sentence, or as you’re writing your copy.

It’s such a small but powerful distinction. I think it’s really important for the listeners to understand this, especially if you’re in a market that has a very sophisticated level of awareness. Like, in the fitness market how many weight loss products are there out there?

We both had conversations with numerous people that have a new product coming out, and it’s like, well, what is it? Oh, it’s a workout program. Awesome. Like, what’s the big idea? And I don’t think enough people pay attention to that.

A lot of people don’t think about, first of all what does their market want? They’re thinking about, “Okay, I have an idea, I want to create it.” And I’m guilty of doing that as well, when I started. So I think the advice you gave, “what’s the most pressing issue you have with blank,” is a great place to start.

And then obviously the big idea formula you went through is huge. It’s terrific. So, if you had just stopped listening now you would have an amazing breakthrough in your business, if you took action on it.

I want to shift gears a little bit because you started off in the fitness industry, kind of in your online lifetime, and you transitioned into teaching how to build out your business with the 3X VSL formula and all the amazing stuff you’ve done. Now, you’re transitioning into more of a publishing platform or a digital publishing platform where you’re teaching people how to create this digital empire.

Now that we’ve talked about the big idea, more of the copy, the pitch … How does somebody create an amazing product?

The product

Jon:                That’s the very first thing that you need after you get your idea. So, here’s what’s interesting, is that people will create their product and then try to create their sales page and then try to create a big idea as they’re writing their copy. It’s exactly backwards.

You need to create your big idea before you ever put a pen to the paper. It’s okay if you’ve already written your book. It’s totally fine.

Just create your big idea right now, go through there, and if you have it, great. You might have it. If you don’t have it, make it the central theme of every single freaking chapter, or just do a tieback. Just always go back to the end of the chapter, that’s why the blank principle, the blank technique, is so important.

By the time they finish the book, no one can possibly say, “So, what’s the big idea that came out of the book?” And no one’s going to go, “Jeez, I can’t remember, there was like so many of them.” You want people to go, “Oh, the blank principle, it was on every freaking page.”

So you have to go back and do a little book editing, no big deal. Then you create your marketing. Okay?

Now, I actually like to do it completely backwards from that. I prefer to do the big idea, create the sales letter for it, then create the product, because once you create a sales letter with everything that you know as a marketer, that will sell people on taking action. You have to actually go back and make the product do that.

I can’t tell you how many sales pages I’ve written where the product didn’t exist. And the customer just said, “Look, whatever you write we’ll create.” And guess what? The best products I’ve ever seen came out of the sales pages like that.

I’m not saying that you have to do that. I’m saying that’s ideal.

So, let’s say that you have a product right now. Go back, get your big idea, get it really clear, then you’re gonna sit down and talk about the pitch. The pitch is extremely important. You gotta get the pitch down. But, ideally you want to create the big idea and then create the pitch, then the product.

But let’s skip to the product since that was your question. Creating the product, first of all, with that big idea in mind, is huge.

Second of all, I teach a course called “The 28-Product Creation Forum” and I have a product called that, that walks people through how to do this in 28 days sequentially. I created it pretty much retrofitting going back and kind of reverse engineering how I created eBooks.

I think an eBook is your best first product because there’s so many different ways you can use it. You can sell it, you can low-end sell it, you can give it away for free as an opt-in, so many different applications.

I talk about how to take that eBook and turn it into three products, automatically. So, it’s kind of cool, you’re doing a lot of work, you don’t have to repeat a lot of work. But, the best way to create a product, first of all, is sit around the big idea and then follow a proven system of what comes first in chapters, what comes next.

Let me show you this, it’s too long of a process to go into. I actually have like nine podcasts dedicated to nothing but product creation so-

Yuri:                That’s all? Just nine?

 Jon:                Yeah, that’s all, only nine, and a whole product. It’s all about product creation, so a little bit lengthy to go into but suffice it to say that when you’re creating your product, number of pages is irrelevant. Some of the best books I have ever read are very short. My latest book I wrote … I’m not making this up … I wrote the book, designed the cover because I came from a graphic design background, and I did that all in less than eight hours.

 Yuri:                That’s awesome.

 Jon:                Start to finish.

 Yuri:                Some people just need the answer. They just want the solution. You don’t need 300 pages of filler, right?

 Jon:                No, in fact that’s part of the … I narrowed my ultimate diet book, it’s called “The Four Day Diet.” I’ve got the best diet formula that I’ve ever used and I created it and it’s in 23 pages.

 Yuri:                Nice.

 Jon:                There’s no recipes, because you don’t need recipes. It’s so baby simple.

Let me just share this really quickly, the reason why books are 300 pages … Well, some books need to be. If you have some big conceptual book on heart disease and you need to explain all this kind of stuff, that’s understandable.

But, a book on dog training, on dieting, on making money online, does not need to be. You can have it be 10, 20 pages, and people will thank you for it. And you can use that as a selling point. “I made a book that you can read easily on your lunch break, and by the end of lunch you’ll be able to be burning fat,” or whatever the case may be.

That’s so much more appealing than a 300 page book that will take you a week and a half to read. And be sure that you use big words so that you will need a dictionary, possibly a thesaurus.

Yuri:                That’s a great value proposition, right?

Jon:                Yeah.

Yuri:                Because a lot of people think, “Oh, if it’s only one page people won’t see the value in it, but I think the way you worded it there is beautiful.”

Jon:                Yeah. My friend Karim, one of his top selling products is literally a page, it’s one page. It’s a one-page book. Two pages, I think, because he added a chart.

And that’s not him being cheap. That’s literally him saying, “This is all you need to do, to do what I’m talking about. I’ve narrowed it down to this, just do this one thing.”

So, here’s the way I want you to think about this, folks. If I had a treasure map, a bonafide real treasure map and I said, “This treasure map will take you to a hidden treasure chest of gold.” I’m gonna sell it to you for $47, typical cost of an eBook, right?

But here’s the problem, it’s only one page. Do you think you would care?

 Yuri:                No, not at all.

 Jon:                Not at all. So, think of your book as a treasure map. So, think of your product as a treasure map . It can be 10 pages, it can be 20 pages, it can be 30 pages. Make it very concise.

And let me just say this, a couple of pro tips on creating a product, don’t forget that people who bought your book are still skeptical.  So your introduction, if you have an intro audio, if you have an intro video, should be all about “Man, let me tell you why this is the best decision you’ve ever made. Susie got this, Bill got this, here’s what you’re going to expect. This is gonna rock your world.” You’re still selling.

Yuri:                Yeah.

Jon:                You’re still selling, and “selling” is not a dirty word. If you believe selling is a dirty word look around wherever you’re at—in your den, apartment, car, whatever, and tell me you didn’t buy it. Did you steal it? You bought it from someone, which means someone sold it to you, okay?

People love to buy things, they just hate to be sold.  They hate to be pressured. So, all you’re wanting to do as a marketer—it’s not pressuring, it’s compelling. You’re just wanting to create a state of compelling. Here’s some great information and here’s why I think I can help you.

That’s a very short introduction into product creation, but hopefully it takes some of the burden off you because you’d be like, “Oh, gosh, I gotta create an outline, I’ve got 97 points under point number one.”

Think about it, would you want to read that book?

Yuri:                It’s amazing. I know, I just finished writing my second published book, and it’s 300 pages. I told Rodeo who’s publishing it, I’m like, “Listen, I’m not a huge fan of writing these big books, but I understand that they need a bit more volume, kind of thickness for a perceived value in the stores.” Honestly, I would have enjoyed writing this in 10 pages, if it was all up to me.

 Jon:                Exactly. And there’s a technical reason. I talk about it in one of my podcasts, a lot of people don’t know this but, the reason why they want thick books in stores, is so they can set them upright.

Try to set a 10-page book upright. Watch what happens, it’ll fall on his face. So, there’s a marketing reason behind that, can you believe that? There’s a marketing reason behind why books are thick. It is also perceived value, which is a joke.

Because a book on a bookshelf has no sales page. You’re walking by and the cover has to do all the work or word of mouth. That’s why there’s the old saying, and this is the truth, “if you want to get rich, digitally publish your book. If you want to get famous go to a book publisher.”

Because you’re not gonna get rich that way, unless you get really, really, really lucky. Ask Tim Ferriss, you know?

Book titles

Yuri:                Actually, speaking of that, let’s quickly talk about product titles. How do you come up with a good title for your eBook, your book, your course? What is your formula for coming up with a really good title?

 Jon:                I had a whole podcast on that as well. Think of a title for a book as the briefest way to describe exactly what the book is. If you come up with something kind of catchy like “The Four Day Diet” … That’s catchy, right? You’re intrigued, right?

What is it? Is it a diet that lasts for four days? Well, you know sort of what it is right now, right? Yuri, what do you think it is?

 Yuri:                It’s some type of diet that revolves around a sequence of four different days, perhaps.

 Jon:                Right, so you’re really close. Just by glancing at the title you know what it is. Would you think that book was a book on finance?

Yuri:                No.

 Jon:                Okay. So, if I wrote a book and I use this as an example because a potential customer came over and she wanted me to write a video sales letter for her. She had the money, and she had this book, she says, “I’m just having a really hard time selling this book.” The book was called Ascending the Mountain.

I went, “Oh, okay, so you’re a mountain climber.” She said, “No, no, I’m an Olympic swimmer.”

Oh, got it. Got it. No one knows what the hell you’re talking about!

It’s like, what does that mean? You don’t have to be clever. You can literally … and this is a trick that Hollis Carter talked to me about and uses when they do Amazon and Kindle books. They actually turn the book cover into a JPEG ad and the title of the book can be like, “Lose Weight Fast in Four Days Guaranteed.”

That’s the worst title ever! Except, it’s not.

Yuri:                And that’s the winning one.

Jon:                Exactly, except it’s not the worst title ever. I wouldn’t go that way because I kind of like branding, I kind of like the fact that my first book was called Fit Over 40. Okay, what is that about?

Yuri:                It’s about being fit over 40, or getting to it.

Jon:                Right. So, here’s my catch, I want you to describe exactly what your book is about in the fewest words possible, and if you happen to come up with something that has a cool alliteration like “Fit Over 40,” “The Seven Minute Body,” just has a good rhythm to it, do that.

What’s “Seven Minute Body,” about?

Yuri:                Getting the body you want in seven minutes?

Jon:                Yeah, okay, so this is not rocket science, right? On the other hand, the worst product I ever created was called “Empower.”

Yuri:                I remember back in the day we were talking about this. I thought it was an amazing program.

 Jon:                Oh, it is!

 Yuri:                I guess the name is obviously not very fitting for it.

 Jon:                Terrible! Let me share this really quick if I can.

This is how I met Eben Pagan, who ended up standing in my wedding and we’re good friends now … So, this is really weird. I met Eben six years ago, he was at one of his conferences … And I’m in the audience with Luke Lowery, a buddy of mine, and Luke’s got a box of my books, I don’t know why we had it there, I can’t remember.

Eben’s having a hot seat, and at the time I think there’s like 100 people in the audience. So he’s like, “Okay, who wants to come up here on the hot seat?” I just dove up there because I’m really aggressive.

I’m going, “I’ll come up,” and the whole hot seat was about book titling and branding. He goes, “Okay, great, glad that you came up here. So, you’re having troubles with branding?”

I said, “Yeah, I am, one product in particular.” It was “Empower.”

I said, “I can’t think of what to call it,” and he goes, “Well, it’s okay, different people have different skills. Do you have other products?” And Luke comes running up there with a box of books, goes, “Yeah, here’s his other products.” Eben’s going, “Oh, cool, okay, well, let me look at your first book.”

“Fit Over 40.” He turns the book over and goes, “That’s one of the best titles of a book I’ve ever seen. This is an awesome title. That’s a great brand.”

“Oh, thanks man.” He says, “Let me pick up the next one. The Every Other Day Diet. You’re like a branding guru, what the hell? Why are you up here?”

And he went through like four, five of my books, Every Other Day Diet, Seven Minute Body, he’s like, “Dude, these are all not only great titles, these are great brands.” I go, “Yeah, but wait until you get to the shitty one.” That was the thing—wait until you get to the one that doesn’t work, right?

And the one that didn’t work was “Empower.” He’s like, “That’s terrible.”

It is terrible, and the reason why it was called “Empower,” just to defend myself a little bit, is there are four Ms, mind, meals, muscle, and motion. And even that doesn’t really tell you what it is.

And it happened to be the product that I was the most proud of. 48 weeks straight of audio—all proprietary. It was very good. People who went through it, it changed their lives, but I could have sold 10 times more of that product.

I discontinued it. I took it offline. I’m gonna redo it but I’d have to redo all 48 audios, because I start off with, “Hey, it’s Jon Benson with “Empower.” So, that was a terrible name because it did not tell what they did.

Here’s the funny part, the other conclusion is, so, for the next 30 minutes Eben and I are brainstorming on stage and we still couldn’t name the damned thing. Even Eben and I couldn’t come up with it.

If you have a product that’s really tough to brand then probably your product is trying to cover too many facets. That is what we came up with. I was trying to say, “Here’s how you improve your body, your mind, your soul, your spirit, your …”

It’s everything. It’s like throwing the kitchen sink at improvement.

So, “Personal Power” is a much better name. Anthony Robbins stuff, right? So, there you go. That’s my take on branding and my funny Eben story.

Yuri:                Beautiful stuff, buddy. This has been awesome. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your wisdom and years of expertise in helping countless entrepreneurs just kick butt online.

So, at this point in time, where is the best place for people to stay up to date with what you are doing with digital publishing and all your latest creations and awesomeness?

Jon:                Oh, man, what I decided to do is take everything from the email stuff that we’re doing. Open, Click, Buy just got released, which is the email book. Sellerator, which of course is the video sales letter course, which everyone and their mother has or should have.

And we’ve put all of this under one website and it’s called digitalpublisher.com. So the best way to find me is digitalpublisher.com. We’re gonna be producing tons and tons of free content.

We already have season one of the podcast up, 10 episodes per season, and you hear from me once a week. When I did the podcast, last time I did it, which was last year, I hit number 42 on all of iTunes, in my third podcast. So, I think that people will get a lot of value out of that, and that’s just the best place to find me.

******************************************************

Yuri’s take

So, I hope you enjoyed that episode. A lot of great nuggets of insight there from Mr. Jon Benson. So, this is a special one because the initial schedule that we had mapped out for 2018, one of the guests that was supposed to be on this time slot today live, that interview just got rescheduled later on and I’m like, “Oh, my god! We gotta fill this spot.”

So, that’s how you repurpose content. Take some awesome stuff from the past, you bring it into the present, and it allows people to benefit into the future. There we go.

So, that’s all for today’s episode. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. A couple of housekeeping things, if you haven’t subscribed to the podcast please do so today. Healthpreneur podcast on iTunes, and if you want to leave a rating or a view that would be awesome.

The other thing I’ll mention, that I mentioned earlier this week is that we’ve got a brand new online training called The Nine Business Accelerators. I’m gonna walk you through what these are and how they will help you get more clarity, more customers and more profit into your business.

This is a training that’s not going to be Evergreen, it’s literally going to be online for the next week or two, and then it’s coming down. And I’ll tell you exactly why in that webinar.

So, if you want to register for that it’s completely free. You can go to healthpreneurgroup.com/9. Grab your spot today. It is awesome. It’s basically a framework for giving you a blueprint, a roadmap, a proven way to build your business no matter what type of business model you have and get it to where you want it to be.

The reason I’m sharing this is because I’ve noticed a lot of similarities and commonalities between different types of business models in this space, and I’ve brought these down to nine power moves. Nine things that you can do in your business that, if done right, make a big difference.

Small hinges move big doors, that’s kind of the idea. But, these are also not just small hinges, these are big hinges, and if you’re missing a few of them your business is going to suffer. So, I strongly recommend you attend. healthpreneurgroup.com/9.

That is all for today. I hope you have an amazing day. I hope you have an amazing weekend. I’ll be back with you on Monday for a solo round, which is gonna be a great one. So, enjoy the weekend. Thank you so much for joining me.

Continue to get out there and be great, do great, and I’ll see you on Monday.

***********************************************************

Follow Jon Benson At:

https://www.digitalpublisher.com/

https://www.jonbenson.com/

https://sellerator.com/

https://www.jonbensonfitness.com/

https://www.facebook.com/sellerator

Transcription

Hey guys, how’s it going? Yuri here. Hope the new year’s off to a great start, hopefully 2018 is going to be your best year yet.

I’m excited to bring you a great interview with my good buddy, Scott Rewick. You probably don’t know Scott, because he’s really behind the scenes, running operations for one of the fastest growing companies in the digital health space. The company was originally called Lexicon DMG, but they’ve actually renamed it Native Path.

Scott is one of the early pioneers of affiliate marketing, online direct response and high volume media buying. He’s been a prolific company builder over the last 20 years, and he is currently the president and co-founder of Lexicon Digital Media—which, again, has been renamed Native Path.

They are a leading online publisher in the natural health and wellness space. He actually has a background in the B2B space, generating monstrous numbers of leads for companies like Netflix and Blockbuster, and he actually co-founded and sold an early affiliate network, Metareward, for $30 million. He then scaled his next company, called Netblue, to $130 million in revenue.

Now, with their current company—Native Path, or formerly Lexicon—they were recently given the accolade of 80th fastest growing company on the Inc. 5000 List. Pretty impressive stuff that they’re doing.

And again, we’ve actually done business together. They’re great partners of ours and they do amazing work—specifically a little more in the Paleo space. And what we’re going to talk about in this episode is how to scale a business using Facebook ads, how to think about approaching that—but also looking at how to bring on expert people into your business and into your team, specifically around the areas of marketing.

If you want to learn more about what they’re up to, you can check out their website at www.thepaleosecret.com. So with that said, let’s bring Scott into the show.

Scott, welcome to the Healthpreneur Podcast, how’s it going my friend?

Scott:              It’s going great, thank you so much for having me, I appreciate it.

Yuri:                Yeah, for sure, it’s been too long since we’ve connected, at least via this format, so I’m happy to reconnect with you.

Obviously, we’ve done business quite a bit over the past couple of years with what you guys are doing with the Paleo Secrets and your business partners Chris and Chad have done some awesome work.

What is new and exciting? What are you guys focusing on these days? What has really just kind of got you jazzed up?

Scott:              Well, gosh, I mean, so much, right? I think that we dipped our toe in this water three years ago and we are more excited today than we were back then—and we were awfully excited then.

I think we get excited just because we feel like there’s so many more people to touch. There’s so much more media to buy. There are so many more ways we can go deeper with the customer, in terms of our relationship with them. I’m excited about new technologies that seem to pop up every so often that we’re able to avail ourselves of.

Gosh, I mean it’s hard to say one thing, but we wake up every morning just super jazzed and psyched to go after it. A lot of stuff going on.

How Native Path became #88 on the Inc. 5000 fastest growing companies list

Yuri:                That’s awesome, and I mean you’ve got a superpower because you have really taken some serious companies to big revenue numbers—as I alluded to in the introduction. But recently you guys were ranked number 88 on the Inc. 5000 fastest growing companies. How does that happen?

Scott:              Practically speaking, you apply. You just fill out the application.

But you know, I’ve always been a big proponent of media buying. I’ve always been a big proponent of advertising. Once you have something that catches fire, you can apply it over these huge media channels and get scale.

I would say that both Chris and I have had some practice in terms of scaling companies, but it’s really just a blocking and tackling affair. It’s really just going after it every single day and doing the things that you gotta do to grow your business.

I would say that in our mind is the biggest thing that we’ve done. We have just attacked this business. We’re proud of that, and I think there’s a ways to go, which we’re excited about. Yeah, that’s it.

I’m thinking of using paid traffic—what should I do?

Yuri:                That’s awesome. So, I know a lot of listeners are not professional media buyers—they likely don’t even want to consider spending a dollar on Facebook ads. Maybe some of them do, which is great.

Let’s say you’re sitting down with someone who has a product, a business idea, something that they want to amplify, and they’re thinking of using paid traffic. You’re sitting down with them, having a coffee. What type of advice would you give them?

Scott:              Well, the simplest thing to do is just start. And what I mean by that is that this can oftentimes be a pretty daunting proposition—to go out and spend your own money buying traffic.

And so, what I find that a lot of people do is, they over analyze. They sit in their fear. They will contemplate these massively complex funnels, and I think a lot of that stuff gets in the way of just doing it.

I think you’ve gotta get on the bike and just ride it, right? To someone who’s just starting out I would say that it’s important to just get out there and place a first buy. Put your best foot forward with the ad creative, with the landing page, with the funnel. Spend the money, go back the next day, analyze it, look at it and say, “Boy, we spent 100 bucks and we made 12. What happened?”

And then get back on the bike the next day and do it again.

I think a lot of people will sit in this fear-based mentality of wanting it to be perfect—and it’s never perfect. And that is getting in the way of them actually doing it.

So I would say keep it simple. There’s N number of complexities that can occur down the road, once you scale, but the first thing is just actually doing it. I find most people talk themselves into not doing it and I think that’s problematic.

Yuri:                Yeah, and would you recommend people start on Facebook in terms of ease of use or is there another platform you really like?

 Scott:              Yeah, Facebook is the easiest by far. We’ve tried them all. Maybe outside of just putting out a Google adverts campaign, Facebook allows you to test very, very small—which is super important for any direct marketer. Put a high level of targeting, if that’s what you want to start with, and that allows you to get going very, very quickly.

So yeah, Facebook has been for us the platform by which we’ve scaled the most. And it also happens to be one of the easiest ones as well. So that’s, yeah. It’s the easiest one to start with and one that allows you to scale massively if you can get it right.

Yuri:                Nice, nice. I think Facebook is the most popular platform online out of anything, so why not go where the fish are? And it’s a very easy user interface. It’s not very complex, like Google ads is—or was, at least back in the day when my ad accounts were not blocked.

But you guys have a million plus fans on the Paleo Secret page. What’s been the secret sauce of growing that? Has it been buying likes? Has it been running campaigns to specific offers, and as a by product you’ve had those? And was there a strategic intent to growing the fan page as an asset that you could later turn to for more direct response stuff?

Facebook likes, offers, and community groups

Scott:              It’s funny, because we definitely played with the ‘like’ game for a while. In our head we felt as though a ‘like’ had some value. We weren’t sure exactly how to value it, but we knew that a like meant something, we just didn’t know what it meant.

But no, we realized early on that we needed to drive users and visitors to specific offers that we have, just through paid media. Our game was really just about engaging them as quickly as we could. And engaging them in different manners.

You obviously want to get the sale, right? But there’s many roads to get that sale. I think we were one of the first—and I hate saying that, because it sounds pompous—but we were one of the first to engage in high volume lead gen.

Chris and I come from the lead gen background, where you don’t necessarily have to sell someone right away. We can engage in a lead generation component. We were happy to acquire an email address that would give us the right to market to that user down the road.

And we didn’t see a lot of that going on early on. That was really our bread and butter, out of the gate—engage someone in a lead gen relationship, give away something of high value, continue to load the value over the first three days, seven days, and then at that point ask for the sale.

That was something that we found pretty effective, and as a result of that the fan page grew and continues to grow. Now, our reach allows us to kind of grow that as well.

Yuri:                Awesome. So, the typical discussion is that Facebook doesn’t really like health and fitness, because they don’t like claims and people obviously transforming their health.

Scott:              Yeah.

 Yuri:                What have you found to work well, from an advertising channel or funnel perspective, from Facebook?

Scott:              You’re right, you really have to dance carefully with Facebook, because you’re exactly right. I think that they—along with any other new media that has come along—have been overrun with health and wellness marketers. And a lot of these people have no problem making egregious claims—and getting high conversions as a result, but doing a ton of damage to the industry down the road with chargebacks, FTC and FDA issues, and so on and so forth.

Facebook is not alone in that. I think that from our perspective, we really focused on high quality content. We don’t necessarily attack the diet issue head on. We try to look at it in different ways, like free reports, free recipe books.

Things that circle the health and wellness space, but don’t necessarily attack diet head on. I think Facebook likes that.

They don’t like the idea of talking about diet directly. I think, from their perspective, it makes people feel bad. There’s guilt marketing that makes people have not great days, because they realize they might have a few pounds to lose.

We attack it from more of a positive perspective.

Our approach has been giving away free recipe books—so we work really, really hard on the quality of our free reports. We really spend a lot of time and money on these free reports. Giving them away for free, giving free plus shipping.

That’s been probably most effective to us, when we don’t necessarily talk about diet. We talk about everything around diet that might make you healthier, and certainly cooking is one of them.

Chad, Brenda, Scott and Chris—why are they such a good team?

 Yuri:                Sure, and I love what you guys have done, because you have Chad. And for those of you listening, Chad Walding is kind of the face of the brand, right?

Scott:              That’s right. We just say, “Chad, take your shirt off more, please.” People like him. 

Yuri:                He seems to just take his shoes off, he seems to be barefoot all the time.

Scott:              He’s barefoot a lot.

Yuri:                But Chad is a doctor of physical therapy. Really well spoken, very knowledgeable, very likable person. And I think it adds a huge amount of credibility to what you guys are doing. And again, this is from an outsider’s perspective—it’s like you guys have the lead gen marketing genius of you and Chris, and then Chad—who is obviously very smart as well—is more of the content generator and is more forward facing.

Was that intentional from the beginning? Or did it just kind of morph into that over time?

Scott:              It was intentional. We are so blessed and we were so grateful to have Chad and Brenda come into our lives at the beginning of the business.

We knew that having a forward facing face to the business was really important—and it’s interesting, because most of our customers are women. Having both Chad and Brenda is really important, because some people really, really connect with Chad—just his aura, the way he goes about it, the way he does things—and many other people connect with Brenda, maybe because she’s a woman or they understand the plight that she’s gone through.

So, it was important for us to find a husband and wife team. Both with equally compelling credentials. They’re both doctors in physical therapy and so that was really, really important for us to put out there. And like you said, we prefer to stay kind of behind the scenes and do what we do, so having them forward facing is great.

And actually, they love that. They love the idea of being teachers, and so for them it was a natural fit to be the facing part of the company. But yeah, it was definitely intentional to have them as the face of the company and allow Chris and I to stay behind the scenes and do the work that we do. We were very blessed.

Yuri:                I think it really is a dream scenario for both of you guys and a lot of health and fitness practitioners, because they just wanna do their thing, right? Not everyone, but a lot of them are in that mode of, “I just wanna teach. I just wanna help people. ”

They don’t want to figure out the marketing, they don’t want to figure out the nitty-gritties of the funnels and the ad campaigns. It’s important, but it’s nice when you have a setup like yours where you and Chris can really work out the logistical stuff, marketing-wise, and just allow Chad and Brenda to do their thing, which is pretty cool.

Let’s say you guys are thinking of a new thing to launch via Facebook, are you all sitting down collectively? Or is it you and Chris kind of coming up with a strategy and saying, “Okay, Chad, we need this from you.” How does that look?

Scott:              It’s interesting, it used to be a lot more like that. We’ve actually flipped it, so that we are more of the ears and eyes of our customer base.

The interesting thing is that if you listen long enough to what your customers tell you, in terms of what things scare them, what things bother them, what things are curious to them, what things they’ve heard about … They will often give you the entire playbook. Just by listening to what their fears, desires, and wishes are.

I think when we started, we were much more like, “Hey, let’s get in a room and think about what people might like. We think anti-inflammatory is a big issue now, so lets create a guide around that.” I would say more recently, since we have such a big group of people, that oftentimes just doing surveys and listening to what they say will give you the playbook in terms of what we actually should be building.

We do surveys, we listen, we’ve got very, very active Facebook fan pages—both for people who just heard about us and people that are customers. And by doing surveys and listening to what they say, we now have nearly 1,000 testimonials of people that have gone through the process.

They’ve written these very long, sometimes five, six, 10 paragraph testimonials of how we’ve helped them, and if you listen closely to what they’re telling you … Oftentimes, it gives you rise to potential new products.

They can tell you what it is they’re interested in and what’s working for them, what’s not working for them. I think it’s kind of a combination of us looking out there and seeing, “What is it that our users are reacting to? What do we see that is hot in the market?

But more often than not, and more so than ever, we’re just listening to what they’re telling us. We’re building it and giving them exactly what they want. So yeah.

 Yuri:                Super smart.

 Scott:              Yeah.

 Yuri:                That’s awesome. So, what does the team look like? For those of 80 fastest growing company on the Inc. 5000, people might be thinking, “Okay, this has got to be a company of 100 people.” What does the team look like?

Scott:              We have a core of about 10 people. Chris and I had come from businesses that we scaled pretty big. We were sickened by the idea of tons of people in an office every day, under fluorescent lights …

Yuri:                That sounds amazing.

Scott:              Yeah right, doesn’t it sound like a good time?

We were intentional about building a company that was lightweight in nature, that allowed us to really, really care about our employees. We just kept it lightweight, kept it virtual, just hired the best—so we have a very small team.

We have different areas that we focus on. We’ve got the operational piece—myself, which is what I primarily focus on. And a couple people that help us keep the lights on, pay the bills, pay the taxes, pay our partners, collect money, that kind of thing. The operational stuff that just needs to go on in a business. We’ve got content creators—we’ve got Andy, who’s spectacular, works with Chad and Brenda and they’re out creating content, new videos, thinking about new ideas.

We’ve got some marketing people. Chris, amongst his many roles that he does, sits in the marketing team and looks at the data and figures out, “Boy, should we be adding an up sale here? Should we change the wording here?” Along with John and a few other people who work on the marketing piece.

We have an outsource tech team that we work with that make sure our servers stay up and we can push out new tests. We have an outsource customer service team that will answer your email within 30 minutes and take a call from you 24/7.

It’s a very distributed lightweight team where we just find the best people that we can. We put them in positions to win and we create a fun and exciting place to work. It’s a very lightweight team and we hope to keep it that way.

Yuri:                That’s awesome, that’s great, you guys have done amazingly well. Keep it up.

Two of the big problems I see working with a lot of people in our space is, 1) there’s a gap in the integration role, so the operations. You’ve got the vision, “Okay, I wanna do this stuff.” But then it’s like, “I don’t wanna have to implement all this stuff myself.” And then 2) “It would just be great if I had someone to do the marketing for me.”

So, I wanted to ask you, if someone is looking for a marketing person—someone like Chris, who can kind of run that show. What should they be looking for?

What types of traits, qualities, attention to detail, different skill sets? What are the things that they should be considering in finding someone who is not just good, but really great at that role?

Key qualities to look for in a marketing employee

Scott:              Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll tell you, it’s one of the most important things that a business can do. I’m such a marketing freak, and it’s such an important role in the business because it is so difficult to get somebody who ticks off all the boxes on being great.

First and foremost, you’ve got to have a good relationship with numbers. You have to be able to read the data as it presents itself to you.

The beauty is in the data, and it’s really hard for people who are more creative to understand that you have to be willing and able to read data and make decisions based on what the data is telling you. First and foremost, you’ve gotta be data driven, which can be hard for people.

To add to that, to make it even more difficult, you’ve got to have kind of a creative sense to it, because simply being data driven won’t give you the next steps. If, for example, you find that you have click through rates but you’re falling apart on the landing page, great! That’s great data.

What do you do with that?

You’ve got to have someone who’s creative enough to say, “Look, I think what’s happening here is as follows. People are not reacting to this in such a way. We need to change the headline copy. We’ve got to move up the testimonials from the bottom of the page to the top.”

It really, truly engages both sides of your brain in the sense that the numbers will paint the picture for you, but you’ve got to have a creative side to say, “Look, I think what we should do next time is test this.”

Set up the test properly, run the test, get the data and you know what? The beauty of it is, you’ll know whether you’re right or wrong almost immediately.

It’s one of the few things that we are not interested in outsourcing in our business, because it is the heartbeat of the business. We outsource many, many things in our business. Call center, a lot of the tech functions, customer service. Those types of things that we think people do better than us.

But marketing is one of the things that we hold near and dear to our heart. It’s a unique person that can kind of dance around both sides of the equation, both technically, numbers-wise and also creative-wise.

Yuri:                Yeah, that’s really good. With you bringing somebody on in this capacity, do you recommend people start off with one project for a certain amount of time and see how that goes, before engaging them more fully after that?

 Scott:              Yeah. I want someone to be proficient at the nuts and bolts of this game. The direct marketing nuts and bolts. I want someone who understands how to run a spreadsheet, how to run Google docs, how to look at numbers first.

I think that my sense is I can teach the other piece of it, but it’s more difficult for me to teach proficiency in looking at data. We put them on training wheels. We give them very, very simple assignments and grow from there.

This business can be overwhelming when you’re speaking about multiple distribution channels. Within each of those channels, you’ve got multiple ad campaigns, within each of those multiple ad campaigns, you’ve got dozens of different ad creative.

Each of those are getting traffic. Each of those are generating clicks and conversions and costs and revenue, so if you’re not careful, you can bury someone in data and before they’ll know it they’ll have no clue what there looking for.

It’s important to start very, very small and very, very simple. Look at one ad campaign, one creative, one lander, walk them through it. Soup to nuts, what that look like from a click, a cost, at revenue day zero, at revenue day seven, at revenue day 30. Look at the ROI, factor in things like cost and console, if you’re selling physical products.

It’s a whole litany of things that go into understanding these campaigns, but certainly starting very, very simply and graduating from there, I would say, is definitely job one.

Yuri:                Yeah, that’s great, that’s really good advice. Everyone listening, go back, rewind, and just listen to this again at .5 speed. Take some notes, because I sure did.

We’re listening to the guy who has built a massive business with this type of stuff, so this is really, really great stuff. Thank you for sharing that, Scott.

With Lexicon specifically, what’s been one of the biggest challenges you guys have faced over the last couple of years, and how did you overcome that? What was the earning from that experience?

The problem with ego and the benefits of customer feedback

Scott:              I think, honestly Yuri, it’s been our own ego.

And what I mean by that is that Chris and I, we had success in different businesses. And when you have that I think you begin to develop a sense of, “I’m pretty damn good at this.” And when we attacked this health and wellness space, we thought to ourselves, “Man, look at these guys. These guys are a bunch of personal trainers that are putting up websites, that are making all this money. With our level of professionalism, we can actually compete with these guys.”

And we fell flat on our face for the first year. We had no idea what was going on.

We had to swallow our own ego and realize that what these people were doing was actually quite incredible, because you were dealing with an actual person. A Mary Smith out of Plano, Texas, who is 53 years old, 20 pounds overweight, her husband just left her. She is a real person with real needs, real desires, real goals—and that was new to us.

We didn’t understand that. I would call us more of B2B guys. I was doing lead generation for Netflix, Blockbuster and Columbia House, where I’d be sitting in the middle between these two corporate entities and exchanging cash. We really had to understand that this was far more complex, because you were actually dealing with a human being on the other side.

So, I’ll be honest, we really fell flat on our face the first year. We couldn’t understand the power of copywriting, we didn’t understand the value of customer service and taking care of a customer. I would say it’s our own ego, because going into it, we thought to ourselves, “Boy, we’re kinda marketing bad asses, we got this.”

But for the first year, just walking into this space, walking into this collection of people who were already doing well … Leaving our egos at the door was super, super difficult. Like anything that taught us a lesson, we got our butts handed to us the first year. We began to kind of figure it out in year two, year three and I’d say we’re still figuring it out.

We’re still at the early stage in this game, but that was the biggest challenge we had to overcome—just putting that aside and being willing to learn this space from people who would pave their way before us.

Yuri:                Awesome. That’s great. So, with all the experience you’ve had with different companies, different niches, different spaces, if you were to start in a new market today—maybe within health and fitness if you want, or something different—what’s the first thing you would start doing?

 Scott:              Let’s see … We love health and wellness space, so for me, I would say staying there is the most important thing that we can think of right now.

But I would begin to think about where this space is going to be 10 years from now. We are big believers, we’re riding the wave of what we call the natural health alumnus movement—from Whole Foods doing its journey and then the consumer packaged goods catching fire …

And we believe in the natural health and wellness space. People going back to a more sensible way of eating for a long time. The numbers are all there, in terms of where this market is going, how big it’s getting—but I would say that for someone who is just starting out, consider what you might be passionate about and begin to formulate an idea of who else out there might be passionate along with you.

Take that and attack a market that you think is growing, attack a market that’s exciting.

I’ll tell you, Yuri, in the darkest hours of trying to build this business, what really fueled us was getting thee testimonials from our customers, where we changed their lives. You’ve helped them change their life and it gives you goosebumps. It gives me goosebumps just thinking about it.

Having that to keep going was really important, because building a business is never this beautiful nice line going forward—it’s this jagged up and down line that takes turns that you can’t even contemplate. So, sometimes having customers telling you that what you’re doing matters to them is important.

But I think finding something—some niche within this space. We happened upon Paleo, we don’t know if Paleo is going to last the next ten years or not. We were intentional in building a natural health alumnus platform that allowed us to easily move in other markets as they rose, and you know, ride them out as they fall.

It’s important not just to think about one product, but thinking about building systems that allow you to do that, to kind of move in and out markets when they change.

Yuri:                Yeah, that’s great. And I think you really hit the nail on the head with the customer feedback. I tell people all the time, we are very blessed to work in this space because I don’t know of any other industry where you can impact someone’s life to the degree that we do.

And that’s one of the reasons why I’ve started this podcast—to bring these great conversations to help others grow their business, because if you can grow a more impactful business, you’re going to transform more people’s lives and that’s what this is all about.

We’ve had so many people on the show that have talked about how they feel successful when they’re receiving feedback from their audience, that they’re doing something to positively impact their lives.

And it comes up over and over and over again, so that’s a really share.

Scott:              It’s honestly the fuel that drives us, Yuri, and it hurts us to hear the haters.

“You guys are advertising and advertising is horrible” and blah, blah, blah and—know that hurts us just as much, but when you back that up with literally the thousands of people that we’ve helped create a meaningful change in their lives, it just gives you the fuel to keep going.

It transcends any of my own personal goals and aspirations of what I want to do with the business. It really just becomes about them. Sure, everybody wants to make money. Everybody wants to be successful—but fueling and feeding off of the meaningful changes you’ve helped create in people really gives you that extra push forward, that extra pat on the back.

So, it’s huge. It’s totally huge.

The Rapid Five Questions

Yuri:                Yeah, totally, man, that’s awesome. All right Scott, are you ready for the rapid five?

Scott:              I am ready, Yuri.

Yuri:                All right, you’ve got no prior knowledge of these questions. I haven’t sent them to you ahead of time. You have no clue, whatever comes to mind, just shout it out and we’ll have some fun with this. Number one, what is your biggest weakness?

Scott:              My ego.

Yuri:                Number two, your biggest strength?

Scott:              My relentless nature.

Yuri:                Awesome. Number three, one skill you’ve become dangerously good at in order to grow your business?

Scott:              Bee keeping.

Yuri:                Bee keeping?

Scott:              Let me explain. Bees are this fascinating tribe of animals that all get along, all move together, all have common goals and through being a bee keeper, many of the tendencies that exist in bees also exist in small teams. So, creating small teams of highly effective people that all have specific jobs to do, you can really move the ball forward very, very far if you can become a great bee keeper.

Yuri:                That’s cool, I never heard that analogy, that’s really cool. That’s awesome. Alright, number four, what do you do first thing in the morning?

 Scott:              I like to walk upstairs to my child’s room and look at him sleep and marvel at what a beautiful creature he is.

Yuri:                Yeah, they’re always really precious when they’re sleeping and then always refer back to them when they go crazy.

Scott:              And then they wake up, right?

Yuri:                Exactly. Just keep a picture of them sleeping in your wallet, right? All right and finally, complete this sentence, “I know I’m being successful, when.”

Scott:              I know I’m being successful, when the world smiles upon me.

Yuri:                Awesome. That’s great, man. Scott, this has been a tremendous interview, thank you so much for candidly sharing what you guys are up to, part of the journey. I know our listeners will find this hugely inspiring and very actionable as well.

What is the best place for people to follow what you guys are up to online?

Scott:              We run LexiconDMG.com, and we’re about to rename ourselves, so I think by the time that this podcast goes live, we’ll actually be Native Path—NativePath.com. They can catch up with us there. I’m happy to give my email address if people have questions or if there’s any way I can help them—it’s [email protected], so they can follow me there or ask questions.

We do a lot of talk in our Facebook community group and in the private group, so if you’re a customer, I pop in there from time to time and also in the public group, which you’ll see me there from time to time. We’re out there, we’re doing stuff, we’re meeting people, we’re going to events, masterminds, we try to stay as active as we can in the space. By all means, any way I can help I am happy to do it.

Yuri:                Awesome, thanks so much for taking time out of your day, Scott. It’s been great to reconnect, and I just wanted to express my gratitude for all the amazing work that you guys are doing in transforming people’s lives and really pushing businesses forward, raising the standard for our industry. You guys are doing such a great job, so thank you so much for that.

Scott:              Its been my pleasure Yuri, thank you so much for having me, I’m very grateful to you and your audience and again, thank you so much.

 Yuri:                Absolutely, thank you.

***********************************************************

Yuri’s Take

If you’ve ever thought about advertising on Facebook or thought about, “How do I spend a dollar and make two?” I hope this episode has really found you, because Scott and what they’ve done with their offers through their companies has been phenomenal. Again, he is one of the guys that we turn to for a lot of our partner promotions.

They’ve been great to us, we’ve been great to them—just lots of really, really good stuff. And as he mentioned, as much as it is about building the business and making money, for them it’s really all about touching people’s lives and always coming back to that.

I never want you to forget that.

As much as we talk about building a profitable business, making money, and really scaling your business so you have more free time … At the end of the day, the only reason we’re in business is to solve people’s problems. It’s to transform their lives.

And as I mentioned in the interview, and as I’ve said a thousand times before, I firmly believe you have the ability to make a dent in this universe—whatever that dent means to you. Whether that’s working closely with people or writing books and impacting millions, it doesn’t really matter.

But what does matter is that you have a gift and a message that can really make a difference in people’s lives. My sole purpose with Healthpreneur and this podcast is to let you know that you can make a difference, that you are making a difference, that you deserve to make a difference.

People need to hear about you, they need to hear from you. They need to read your books, they need to hear your voice. They need your products. Never forget that. And yes, all of that is covered in sales and marketing, because if you don’t have that stuff, you don’t have a business and you can’t touch those people’s lives.

Never forget that. Whether or not you’re buying paid traffic or you want to grow your business organically, it really doesn’t matter. The choice is yours, because business is philosophy, but I hope that if advertising has been something you want do, you’ll put some of the golden nuggets from this episode into use.

With that said, I wanted to let you know that we’ve got a great interview coming up in just a few days with my man Sean Croxton, formerly the founder/owner of UndergroundWellness.com. He kind of morphed more into the personal development side of things over the last year and a half, he’s got a great podcast and he was really the person who brought summits to live.

He was the guy doing summits, before summits even became a thing.

We’re gonna have a great conversation about some stuff, about his journey, about lessons, about ups and downs, so be sure to tune in for that one coming up in just a few days—and the easiest way to do that is to subscribe to the podcast. Head on over to iTunes, hit the subscribe button and while you’re there, if you could leave a rating or review, that would be awesome.

With that said, it’s the beginning of the year—let’s grow, let’s make a difference, let’s get your stuff out there, let’s keep working smarter, not necessarily harder, and let’s keep touching people’s lives.

One more note. All the show notes are over at the blog, Healthpreneurgroup.com/podcast, just find the one with Scott Rewick and while you’re there, grab a copy of the Health Profits Secrets book if you haven’t already yet.

You’re going to discover four awesome secrets that you need to know, that all successful online health businesses have in common and how you can tap into those in a big way in your business.

Once again, thank you so much for joining me, it’s been a pleasure bringing this episode to you. Go out, be great, do great and I’ll see you in our next episode.

***********************************************************

Follow Scott Rewick At:

https://www.thepaleosecret.com/

https://www.facebook.com/PaleoSecret/

https://www.nativepath.com/

https://www.lexicondmg.com/

***********************************************************

Free Healthpreneur Health Profit Secrets Book