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ACCELERATORSVOLUME 1

The

PROVEN INSIGHTS FROM REMARKABLE ENTREPRENEURS

Jeff Walker

Bo Eason

Dan Sullivan

Peter Diamandis Joel Weldon

Joe Polish Sally Hogshead Richard Rossi John Lee Dumas

Bo Eason Dr. Ned Hallowell Sandra Joesph Bob Danzig Dan Kuschell

Shannon Waller Jeff Walker Cathy Davis

Jimmy Harding John RuhlinAri Meisel Joey Coleman Mel Abraham

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Dear Fellow Entrepreneur,

Welcome to our inaugural issue of The Accelerators. Every quarter, we will select the gems of wisdom from some of your top podcast guests and share them with you here in one convenient compendium.

We invite you to read and be inspired by the stories of the exceptional entrepreneurs who appear on our podcasts. Explore their resources and put their key actions to work in your own business. And of course, please share The Accelerators with like-minded entrepre-neurs in your network.

In addition to our podcast, remember that we have a range of additional resources to help you accelerate your success:

• Our monthly live, interactive webinars co-hosted with Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach feature today’s top entrepreneurs. These are world-changing entrepre-neurs who have the insight to help transform your business.

• Our virtual conferences showcase business leaders and experts in elevating your success and your life. These one-day online events give you access to the in-depth presentations and interaction that you’d get at a live conference from the comfort of your office or home.

• The AESNation.com weekly newsletter will always keep you on top of the latest interviews and events. Sign up here.

Thanks for being part of the AES Nation community. We’ll see you online.

Best of success,

John BowenCo-founder, AES Nation

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Dan Sullivan ...........................................................................................4

Joe Polish ................................................................................................6

Sally Hogshead .......................................................................................8

Richard Rossi .......................................................................................10

John Lee Dumas ..................................................................................12

Bo Eason ...............................................................................................14

Ned Hallowell.......................................................................................16

Sandra Joseph .......................................................................................18

Bob Danzig ...........................................................................................20

Dan Kuschell ........................................................................................22

Peter Diamandis ..................................................................................24

Shannon Waller ...................................................................................26

Jeff Walker ............................................................................................28

Joel Weldon ..........................................................................................30

Cathy Davis ..........................................................................................32

Jimmy Harding ....................................................................................34

Ari Meisel .............................................................................................36

Joey Coleman .......................................................................................38

John Ruhlin ..........................................................................................40

Mel Abraham .......................................................................................42

CONTRIBUTING ENTREPRENEURS

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that successful entrepreneurs haven’t made mistakes. In fact, they’ve had 10X more mistakes because they take risks. But every time it doesn’t work the way that you want it to work, then of course there’s some pain, you’re frustrated. And then the whole question is: Do you actually learn something from that?

I always consider one of the most im-portant days of my life to be August 15, 1978, when I was both divorced and bankrupt on the same day. I was di-vorced in the morning and I was bank-rupt in the afternoon. These are official, like diplomas. You just graduated from a school and they gave you two diplo-mas and the two diplomas say, “You’re doing things really stupidly and you’ve got to change the way that you’re look-ing at it.”

Looking back at that now, I don’t see those as negative experiences at all. I see them as tremendous transformations of telling myself what I really wanted and what I didn’t really want. Every 90 days, you can tell yourself three things in your life that you have to eliminate be-cause it doesn’t belong to 10X growth. Every 90 days, you can add three things or reinforce three things that you’re al-ready doing.

Just by going back and forth between eliminating and increasing, getting rid of the negative, getting rid of the activ-ities that actually deprive you of energy and actually increase the activities that

DAN SULLIVAN is founder and president

of The Strategic Coach Inc. A visionary,

an innovator and a gifted conceptual

thinker, Dan has over 35 years’ experi-

ence as a highly regarded speaker, con-

sultant, strategic planner and coach to

entrepreneurial individuals and groups.

Dan’s strong belief in and commitment

to the power of the entrepreneur is ev-

ident in all areas of Strategic Coach®

and its successful coaching program,

which works to help entrepreneurs

reach their full potential in both their

business and personal lives.

He is author of over 30 publications,

including The Great Crossover, The 21st Century Agent, Creative Destruc-tion and How The Best Get Better®. He

is co-author of The Laws of Lifetime Growth and The Advisor Century.

The Back StoryWe live in a fundamentally different kind of world than 40 years ago. Forty years ago, I started paying attention to how the microchip was going to change the economy and change society. It’s based on a law called Moore’s Law, which says that the processing power of microchips doubles every 18 months. And that has just utterly changed our world. Forty years ago, there were no personal computers, no software appli-cations and no Internet so people were disconnected. So they thought in terms of incremental growth. You know, “If I can just grow five percent or ten per-

DAN SULLIVAN

cent,” because that’s the world that they were trained in actually allowed. Most industries are still fixated on that type of linear growth. The difference be-tween linear growth and exponential growth is that growth multiplies itself.

So I began taking a look at how entre-preneurs really thought about things. I asked, “What if you just had a mindset that you were going to look for every-thing that could help you grow 10X?” Pick your time period. If you do it for 10 years, it’s 26 percent per year. I know a lot of entrepreneurs who’ve had years that are 26 percent. If you come closer, it gets higher than 26 percent. Just by taking advantage of the opportunities, the capabilities and the resources that you already have, but looking at them from a standpoint of what contributes to 10X, what doesn’t contribute to 10X?

The Big Breakthrough You become purposeful through pain that you don’t want to repeat. It’s not

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“Any entrepreneur who’s got 10 years of experience is a hundred times more purposeful than when they started. Just multiply that purposefulness with technological capabilities and that’s where you get the incredible multiplier—that’s where you get your 10X.”increase your energy, you can actually make tremendous progress every 90 days. Then do that for four quarters a year, then do that for twelve quarters in three years, and you’re already operat-ing in many areas of your life at a 10X level performance and results.

The Key TakeawayFocus increasingly on your strengths and delegate all your weaknesses. The schooling system actually teaches peo-ple to work on their weaknesses so you’re a well-rounded person. You’re a well-rounded person but you’re not a purposeful person. You’re not a stra-

BEST BOOKIf you’re only going to read one book for this year, and if you’re only going to use one book as your foundation for the rest of your life, get Peter Diamandis’ book, Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think. Peter is probably the most connected individual on the planet right now as far as cutting-edge technologies. The book is about how virtually every part of life on the planet is just going to get better in ways that most people on the planet don’t believe right now.

VIDEO INTERVIEWWatch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/3

PODCASTDownload the podcast from iTunes.

RESOURCESWinStreakThe 80% Approach

tegic person. You can’t work on every-thing. Just think about the amount of effort and time it takes to work on your weaknesses, which in fact are never go-ing to become strengths. Instead, ask “Where am I really good?” and just fo-cus more and more on that.

Find people who are much better than you are. A world where you’re only

trading strengths and you’re not in-volving yourself in weaknesses is the way to go. This really cuts against the grain, but just go with it. That would open up the 10X mindset for a lot of entrepreneurs because the 10X mind-set is where you’ve gotten rid of all your weaknesses and you’re just focusing on your strengths.

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The Big Breakthrough I grew up incredibly shy, really intro-verted. Even when I think of myself today as “networking,” it’s literally in-teracting in significant ways with other individuals that end up creating a re-sult and preferably a real leverage and real win-win situation for everyone involved. If you cannot expand some-body, if they cannot expand you, if they cannot expand the business, you’re just spinning your wheels developing that relationship.

So I have a company called Genius Network that includes a very high-level mastermind group. I am always asking: Who has tremendous wisdom, knowl-edge, genius, skills in a particular area, and how can I interact with them? How can I work with them? How can I do business with them? How can I com-bine the capabilities and skills to actu-ally produce a really useful result? This kind of networking can be a total game changer. So networking is just connect-ing with other individuals but doing it with geniuses—with people that really are the most important to your goals that you’re aligned with.

I like networking with geniuses. I like having conversations with these peo-ple because not only am I able to help them, they’re able to help me. A ge-nius network is the ultimate network of great people that you can tap into, that can solve most, if not all of your problems, and help you to reach most,

JOE POLISH is the creator of Genius

Network® Interview Series, founder of

Genius Network® (also known as the

25K Group) and co-founder of 10XTalk.

com and ILoveMarketing.com, two

highly popular podcasts on iTunes.

President of Piranha Marketing Inc.,

his marketing expertise has been used

to build thousands of businesses and

have generated hundreds of millions

of dollars for his clients, ranging from

large corporations to small, family-

owned businesses.

Known for his entrepreneurial focus on

value creation, connection and contri-

bution, Joe’s leadership is the reason

he’s one of the most sought-after mar-

keters alive today.

The Back StoryI started my entrepreneurial career as a carpet cleaner—no skills, no college degree. We lived in trailers half my life growing up. We never had much mon-ey so I understand struggling for mon-ey because a good portion of my child-hood and my early adult life was spent just scraping by.

And so I learned marketing in the car-pet cleaning business doing hard phys-ical manual labor out of necessity. As the cliché goes, “Necessity is the moth-er of invention.”

Marketing is basically what you say and how you say it. It’s storytelling. Selling,

JOE POLISH

which is critical, is influence. If you im-prove your ability to influence, you’re going to get a better result. If you im-prove your ability to tell a story, if you can package your story up and replicate it in ways, you’re going to share it with more people.

It doesn’t matter if you’re just starting out or you’re an extraordinarily wealthy person. It’s packaging up those stories and sharing it with people so when they hear the story they get an un-derstanding. If you share a very lousy story, a lousy pitch, you’re not going to get much attention. You’re not going to compel people.

Networking is really the same sort of thing. First off, what’s the story that you want to tell? What’s the punch line? What’s the end result that you want? And how do you influentially and in a compelling way lead people not only into your world but how do you recruit them and enroll them into your belief?

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“You’re just 10 minutes away from a giant breakthrough. The question is, are you willingto sit down andfocus on it and get it done?”if not all your opportunities. If you go to the very top people, it saves you time. It saves you money. It saves you ener-gy. So if people are going to fish, they should fish for the most talented, most valuable, most capable fish that they could catch, but they better be well pre-pared to bait the hook with something that the fish really wants.

The Key TakeawayMy dear friend Mary Ellen Tribby says, “One thing done equals money. Five things undone equals no money.” In today’s day and age where there’s a continuous amount of things that you could do and should do. At the end of the day, you can work on a hundred things and think you’re making prog-ress, but if you’re not completing any of them or putting the ball in motion and you’re not. So one thing done equals money. Five things, ten things, a hun-dred things undone equals no money and no progress.

FAVORITE APPI love the voice memo and video apps on smartphones. There are things that you can do with a video or voice that you simply can never convey in text. And so I like getting as close to in person when communicating with someone and it’s a lot easier and fast-er just to record a video or a voice memo and text it or email it.

VIDEO INTERVIEWWatch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/6

PODCASTDownload the podcast from iTunes.

RESOURCESI Love MarketingThe Genius Network10XTalk.com

APP

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action that you’re able to raise your fees for your products and services? That you’re the most desirable go-to option in your market?

And what I found is that there are very specific patterns that high-perform-ers follow. People who make the most money, scale their businesses the most quickly and create the most profit are able to do that because they understand how the world sees them.

They understand that they need to specialize their personality in some particular way. They stand out by find-ing something they already have with-in them, some sort of built-in com-petitive advantage that they can use to make sure that they don’t become a commodity.

And so I took my decade of research with companies and combined it with a decade of research on personality to develop the first system to be able to measure exactly how your personality adds value so that every time you com-municate, you can be seen at your best. People are more likely to focus on you and take action on what you say.

The Key TakeawayYour personality has key differentiating qualities and the more that you can fo-cus on the qualities that make you dif-ferent, the more likely your ideal client is likely to seek you out, find you, pay

SALLY HOGSHEAD rose to the top of the

advertising profession in her early 20s,

writing ads that fascinated millions

of consumers. Over the course of her

ad career, Sally was one of the most

awarded advertising copywriters, in-

cluding almost every major internation-

al advertising award.

Her internationally-acclaimed book,

Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persua-sion and Captivation, has been trans-

lated into 12 languages. The science

of fascination is based on her decade

of research with 500,000 participants,

including dozens of Fortune 500 teams,

hundreds of small businesses and more

than a thousand C-level executives. Her

newest book, How the World Sees You,

is already a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller.

The Back StoryEvery time you communicate, every time you get in front of your prospect, you’re going to do one of two things. You’re either going to add value or you’re going to take up space. If you add value when you communicate—if you give them something that’s infor-mational, inspirational or insightful—they’re going to be more likely to come back to you. They’re going to refer you, they’re going to stay loyal to you and they’re going to buy more from you.

But if you don’t add value then you’re taking up space. And if you’re only

SALLY HOGSHEAD

taking up space, you’re at risk of be-ing perceived as human spam. When you’re human spam, people delete your messages, don’t answer your calls, avoid talking to you and screen you out. And at that point, you’re vulnerable and you have to begin competing on price.

The reality is that you can add value no matter what your personality, no mat-ter what your product or your service. You can stand out and be perceived as intensely valuable if you know what is within you that your customer desires.

The Big Breakthrough I just spent a round of research to find out exactly what makes one entrepre-neur more valuable than the others. In other words, why can certain entrepre-neurs charge more even though they’re selling the exact same product? Even if what you’re selling is a commodity, how can you make sure that your personali-ty is adding so much value to the trans-

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“You don’t have to change who you are. You have to become more of who you are.”

you more money, refer you and stay loyal to you.

If you don’t know your own value, don’t expect anyone else to. It’s not your cli-ents’ job to figure out what makes you valuable. It’s not your prospects’ job to figure out why they should care. It’s your job. It’s your job to earn and hold your listeners’ attention. Make sure that you make it really easy for them to say yes. If you have a clear snapshot of how you add value, if you can explain it in just a few words, people are far more likely to listen to you, buy from you, champion for you, join you, hire you and pay more for what you do.

BEST BOOKHow the World Sees You: Discover Your Highest Value Through the Science of Fascination.

VIDEO INTERVIEWWatch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/4

PODCASTDownload the podcast from iTunes.

RESOURCESTake the Fascination Advantage assessment. Visit How to Fasci-nate and enter the code “jbowen” for your free assessment.

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and you will change your tune. They have the most amazing focus. They are committed, lovely, intelligent, young people and they’re not just a few of them. There are hundreds of thousands of them around the country. And that’s the audience I decided I wanted to con-tinue to serve.

But how? I wanted to reinvent the mod-el that I had previously used in the old company and I decided I wanted to make it bigger, shorter, cheaper and better. I settled on, for lack of a better description, a large-scale TED confer-ence for high-achieving young people that all focuses on one area.

The first area was medicine. When I had started thinking about that, all I got was negative feedback. “Oh, no, Richard, you’ve got this all wrong. Kids won’t come for just two days. They won’t bring their parents. The sessions are too long. The breaks are too long. The material is too difficult. And you’re putting 3,000 kids in a room? Nobody’s going to feel special. This is like a meat market.”

And I was worried because they could well have been right. But they were completely wrong. In the first event, we had 3,500 high school students and 3,000 of their parents—a stadium-sized event. Young people often are awkward because they’re so smart and not under-stood and appreciated by their teachers and their counselors, and sometimes by

RICHARD ROSSI has devoted his life

to educating, motivating and inspiring

high-achieving young people.

He is a founder of several nationally

recognized educational organizations

dedicated to teaching leadership, life

success skills and career prepara-

tion to exceptional K-12 and college

students. More over 670,000 students

have completed Richard’s educational

programs throughout the world.

Richard currently serves as president

and executive director of The Nation-

al Academy of Future Physicians and

Medical Scientists.

The Back StoryI worked for nine years in the United States Senate and during that time, I was asked to run the summer intern-ship program for my senator and that exposed me to young people learning about democracy and civics in Wash-ington. I got very interested in that so after I left the senator’s office, I got to thinking, “Could we do this as a busi-ness? Could we bring young people from all around the country to Wash-ington and teach them what it means to be a good citizen?” We wanted to teach them what it means to be an Ameri-can—that you have to not only take but you have to be part of the process.

And that’s what got me thinking about starting my very first organization. I’ve never actually had a job. I don’t consid-

RICHARD ROSSI

er working for the United States Senate to be your typical job. After that, at age 25, I became an entrepreneur, started this little venture. I put $2,500 in. My partner put $2,500 in. We took one gamble. If we were wrong, we would have to go back and find another job, but we were right. And from that little beginning, we built this amazing com-pany over 26 years.

The Big Breakthrough We sold the first business and I left with a good reputation. You’re just recover-ing for a couple of months after sell-ing a business and then you suddenly realize, “Well, I’ve got to start thinking about what the next thing is.” And that’s where fear sets in because you think, “What if I fail? What will my friends say? What will my family say?” And that’s huge.

If you think that the future is in trouble, just spend a couple of days in my shoes with the young leaders of tomorrow

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“You need three things to make a sale. The person has got to want what you’re selling. Number two, they’ve got be able to pay for it. Number three, they’ve got to believe you. In the 21st century, number three is by far the biggest challenge.”their peers, and they look around and they said, “Oh, my God, I found my tribe. I found my family, I found people who get me.” And that’s what happened over those two and a half days. There was a magical experience that actually could not have happened if not for the volume of kids that were there.

The Key TakeawayI ask entrepreneurs, “Do you ever wake up at two o’clock in the morn-ing worried that you cannot provide excellent service?” Ninety-nine times out of a hundred that’s not why they’re

to classes, taking webinars, reading books and devoting at least a couple hours a week to learning how to market and sell well, then you’re doing yourself a huge disservice. Because in one shape or form, that’s why you’re awake at two o’clock in the morning—either directly or indirectly because of lack of cash flow.

awake. They have no doubt that when they have a client they’re going do a great job.

If that’s you, then you should be spend-ing most of your time doing marketing and sales and studying the art and sci-ence of marketing. If you’re not going

BEST BOOKBoost Your Brain by Majid Fotuhi. The author describes the whole process by which you can not only maintain the edge of youth mentally but increase it to a level that perhaps you didn’t even have in your 20s and 30s.

FAVORITE APPWorkFlowy.com is absolutely free and is one of those deceptive-ly simple apps where when you start using it you think, “This is nothing but a way for me to create lists.” And it is. You create a list and you can indent and indent and add notes to it and so on. But when you start using it, you realize “Oh, my, gosh! This is the most powerful, little, free-form database in the world.”

VIDEO INTERVIEWWatch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/1

PODCASTDownload the podcast from iTunes.

RESOURCESNational Academy of Future Physicians and Medical Scientists

APP

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a podcast mastermind and for three months I learned everything there was to know. I knew nothing about this side of the world. I had no web site, no Twitter account, no Facebook fan page. I needed to build up everything from scratch. That’s what I did over that three-month period, just head down—did all the platform building, locked in 40 guests, interviewed those 40 guests, got them recorded and then I launched in September of 2012.

I quickly grew the podcast to where it was generating over 100,000 unique downloads per month. And because of that fast growth, I was asked to speak at New Media Expo, which is a confer-ence in Las Vegas every year for the top bloggers, podcasters and video. That was really my tipping point: getting to that conference, stepping up on stage in front of an audience and sharing the fact that I was now an authority figure in podcasting.

And just a couple months later we had our first month that we actually gener-ated five figures in income. And so at that point, I said “Okay, this is a busi-ness. I’m generating five figures a month in income.” This podcast business has a run rate of a six-figure business right now. This is really exciting. And it took me about four to six months to get to that point. It wasn’t that immediate but I got there. And that’s just when it got growing exponentially.

JOHN LEE DUMAS is the founder and

host of EntrepreneurOnFire, a business

podcast that interviews today’s most

inspiring and successful entrepre-

neurs five days a week.

EntrepreneurOnFire is a top-10 busi-

ness podcast generating more than

150,000 unique downloads a month in

more than 140 countries. His lineup in-

cludes Barbara Corcoran, Seth Godin,

Tim Ferriss, Gary Vaynerchuk, Guy Ka-

wasaki and hundreds more.

The Back StoryI knew I had this passion. I knew I had this enthusiasm to pour into some proj-ects, some career, some journey, but for the first 32 years of my life it just eluded me. I wasn’t able to really put my fin-ger on what it was. I was an officer in the U.S. Army for eight years. I went to law school in corporate finance. I tried residential and commercial real estate. That kind of gave me the entre-preneurial bug. I was always in the car driving to real estate appointments and listening to different radio shows and getting tired of those and then getting into podcasts. Because they were free. They were targeted. They were on de-mand. I fell in love with the podcasting medium.

And then one day, I said, “Wow! There’s just this huge void right now.” Because I’m in the car every five days a week, for hours and hours and hours. And these

JOHN LEE DUMAS

great shows are producing one 30-min-ute to an hour episode a week. Where’s that seven-day-a-week podcast that’s interviewing and inspiring and suc-cessful entrepreneurs?

I had no broadcasting experience what-soever, but I said “You know what, to heck with it. I’m going to be that person that brings a seven-day-a-week busi-ness podcast to the world.” So a cou-ple of years ago, EntrepreneurOnFire launched. And here we are over 600 ep-isodes later, having been awarded Best of iTunes 2013, generating six figures every single month straight from the podcast. And it has been an amazing journey.

The Big Breakthrough I had the idea for the show in June of 2012. I knew that it was going to take timing and a lot of back-planning so I hired a mentor, Jaime Tardy, the Even-tual Millionaire. I immediately joined

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“Podcasting may sound a little bit daunting tech-wise but it’s so simple once you see it one time with your eyes. And it’s a great platform. The barrier is just not that high.”

The Key TakeawayThe number one thing that you need to do when you think about creating any-thing that’s going to be a business that represents you—whether it’s a podcast or video blog series or just a typical blog, whatever that might be—is to define your avatar. Your avatar is that one perfect listener. It’s not that target demographic. You can go there after-wards but you first need to sit down and just write out who your perfect lis-tener is. Who is that perfect avatar for your brand?

When you’re creating your business, you’re going to come to one thousand forks in the road. And if you don’t have your avatar drilled down to one person that you can picture in your mind ex-

FAVORITE APPI was struggling with Google Calendar on my phone. It was really just not doing what I needed it to do. Sunrise is an app for phones that syncs flawlessly with any calendar. It’s been a game changer for me. I love my phone calendar again, which is huge.

VIDEO INTERVIEWWatch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/20

PODCASTDownload the podcast from iTunes.

RESOURCESEOFire.comPodcastersParadise.comPodcast Launch: A Complete Guide to Launching Your Podcast

APP

actly, you’re going to spend so much time, energy and effort at each of those forks on the road. But if you have that avatar drilled down, you won’t have to spend any excess energy because you’re going to know without a doubt what your avatar will want.

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“That’s impossible. You cannot do it. It’s Al Pacino.”

Well, within three days, I was at Al Pa-cino’s house. I spent three hours with him and we played pool. And the whole time, I grilled him on what it takes to be the best and to express myself on the stage. He said, “You know what, Bo, I’m going to tell you what to do, but you’re looking at 15 years.” And I said, “Cool! I work great in those kind of timelines. I’m going to do it, Al.”

And as I left him, I shook his hand, I said, “Thank you, Al... so much for breaking down my next 15 years. I bet this happens to you every day. I bet actors come up to you every day who want to be famous or want to be you.” He said, “No, actually, you’re the first. People come to me and they want me to get them an agent or they want me to get them a part in the movie. But no one ever said they wanted to be the best performer on stage.”

So 15 years passes, and I’m on a Broad-way stage with a play that I wrote. It’s opening night and I’m back behind the curtain and I’m so nervous I’m about to wet my pants. I began the play and about ten minutes in, I started to get my footing and the nervousness start-ed to dissipate and I made eye contact with somebody on the fifth row, right on the aisle. It’s Al Pacino. And I hadn’t seen him for 15 years but I had done exactly what he said. We made eye con-

BO EASON is a former NFL standout,

playing with the Houston Oilers and

San Francisco 49ers. He wrote and per-

formed his one-man play, Runt of the Litter, which opened in New York to rave

reviews in 2001. He toured with the play

in more than 50 cities and it is now be-

ing adapted as a major motion picture.

He has trained with some of the world’s

best performance and movement

coaches and now draws on their wis-

dom and techniques to coach others to

be excellent presenters and storytellers.

The Back StoryI was in the NFL. I was playing football for the Houston Oilers and it’s a young man’s game. I had played five years and had seven knee surgeries up to that point and then the last one came. This particular play happened. My knee ex-ploded—I broke my ankle, my knee, my leg, all in one play.

I’ll never forget it. It was in Miami, Florida and I’m being wheeled off the field. These two medics are taking me off the field and the first thought I had was prison. Because I thought, “Man, what I’m great at, what I’ve trained to be the best in the world at, is to throw my body, and this head, into other bod-ies. If I can’t find another occupation where that is valued, I’m in big trouble.” And so I thought I’d go to prison.

And in the very next moment, to keep myself from going to prison, I said,

BO EASON

“You know what I’m going to do? I’ve got to find a platform, a stage, some kind of way to get this expression out of this body like I used to do in football and get paid for it and be cheered for it. I’ve got to find another way to express this thing so that I don’t have to go to prison. I’m moving to New York City.” That’s where it all started.

The Big Breakthrough I found a mentor. I don’t think he want-ed to be my mentor initially because his name is Al Pacino.

I asked all the other students in my acting classes, “Who is the best stage performer of our time?” And they’d all say, “Well, that’s Al Pacino.” And I said, “Cool! Where is he?” And they said, “We don’t know. He’s Al Pacino—he’s probably on a movie set somewhere.” I said, “Okay, I want what he has so I need to talk to him about taking what he’s got and teaching me.” They said,

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BEST BOOKThe War of Art by Stephen Pressfield. It’s all about resistance to your creativity, to whatever you’re building or creating. Our big-gest nemesis is our own resistance. Not a day goes by that I don’t just open that book up and read a paragraph or a page.

VIDEO INTERVIEWWatch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/5

PODCASTDownload the podcast from iTunes.

RESOURCESBoEason.com

“You’ve spent a lifetime mastering your life. Wouldn’t it be a shame if you didn’t master the telling of that life?”

tact during the play. He just nodded his head. I never saw him again. That was the best review I ever had and that was when I said to myself, “This is who I am. I’ve got to create my own voice. I’ve got to create my own story so that I own the property.”

Just like any entrepreneur, you own your property. You own it—your face, your mouth, your brand—it’s you. So the better I am at telling me and sharing me, the more successful I’ll be. I wrote that play in 1998 and I have never had to wait for the phone to ring again be-cause of one darn story.

The Key TakeawayPractice and training to be great is ev-erything. Being great is gravy. You don’t have to worry about being great. You have to prepare to be great. You have to train to be the best. Hard work beats talent every time. If you’re going to be the best, you’re looking at 12 or 15 years and you’re going to work your tail off.

16

that the entrepreneur needs to do to maximize productivity is strengthen the brakes to take full advantage of that Ferrari brain.

So I started off as a specialist in ADD and then I realized through Dan Sulli-van, Joe Polish and others that there’s this great overlap between adult ADD and the mind of the entrepreneur and then I said, “Guess what? This is not a disorder, this is the American edge. This is our great gift to civilization. We do this better than anyone else in the world.”

But if you don’t harness it, that’s the prison population. That’s what’s so in-teresting about ADD—it can go one ex-treme way or the other. Imagine a Fer-rari with no brakes. It’s going to crash and burn. That’s what happens in the prison population. These people can’t control their passions. They can’t con-trol their actions. It can ruin your life. But if you learn how to control it, it can take you to the absolute top. I can name you Nobel Prize winners, Academy Award winners, Pulitzer Prize winners, self-made millionaires, billionaires—you name the top of any profession, any field, and I can name you someone who has this trait. But I can take you to Rik-ers Island and show you to a lot of peo-ple who have it too. So it’s important to learn how to strengthen your brakes if you’ve got a Ferrari for a brain.

NED HALLOWELL, M.D. is a child and

adult psychiatrist, a New York Times

bestselling author, world-renowned

speaker and leading authority in the

field of ADHD. He is a graduate of

Harvard College and Tulane Medical

School, and the founder of The Hallow-

ell Centers in Sudbury, Massachusetts

and New York City.

He was a member of the Harvard Med-

ical School faculty from 1983 until he

retired from academics in 2004 to de-

vote his full professional attention to

his clinical practice, lectures and writ-

ing books. He has authored 18 books

on various psychological topics, includ-

ing attention deficit disorder, the power

of the human connection, the childhood

roots of happiness in life, methods of

forgiving others, dealing with worry

and managing excessive busyness.

The Back StoryIt was a zigzag, not a straight line. I came out of medical school thinking I was going to be an orthopedic surgeon and then at the last minute changed my mind and became a psychiatrist instead. By accident, I became a child psychiatrist and that’s when I learned about this thing called Attention Defi-cit Disorder. I realized I had it myself. The first part of my career was spent diagnosed and treating ADD. I wrote a book about it that became pretty well-known called Driven to Distraction.

NED HALLOWELL

As I was working with folks with ADD, I realized over and over again, that the adults tended to be entrepreneurial. Then I met this wonderful man named Dan Sullivan who ran something called Strategic Coach, where he brings en-trepreneurs in through his marvelous, magical kingdom up in Toronto and trains them. And I went up and vis-ited and I realized, “Boy! This is the best out-patient treatment program for ADD going!”

The Big Breakthrough This term, Attention Deficit Disorder, I never liked it anyway. It’s not a disorder, it’s a trait. And it’s not a deficit, it’s an abundance. Why don’t we just call it the mind of the entrepreneur?”

The model that I use to explain ADD really fits the entrepreneur. Namely, you’ve got a Ferrari engine for a brain with bicycle brakes. Usually the work

17

“Connection is one of the very few things in life that’s really good for you that’s also fun, free and infinite in supply. If you take it seriously, you’ll be amazed at not only how much more productive you’ll be but how much happier you’ll be.”

The Key TakeawayThe number one takeaway is never wor-ry alone. People get into trouble when they worry alone because when you worry alone, you globalize, you “awf-ulize,” you activate your worst self, you tend to self-sabotage, you forget your power, you heighten your vulnerability. A lot of that’s going on these days—a lot of people are worrying alone. Get on the phone. Talk to somebody. You don’t even have to talk to them about the problem. You can just say, “What are you up to?” Get input. Connect. That’s really my solution to so many things.

spot—the overlap of what you love to do, what you’re good at doing and what someone will pay you to do or what advances the machine. Delegate the rest. Hire it out. That’s working smart. There’s a difference between working smart and working hard, and that’s one of the crucial differences.

Second, don’t waste your time trying to get good at what you’re bad at. Delegate that. Do what you’re good at. It sounds so obvious but I can’t tell you how many entrepreneurs I see that take it upon themselves to get good at what they’re bad at. Once you get out of school, don’t do that anymore. Go with what you’re good at. Work in your sweet

FAVORITE APPI designed an app called Crazy Busy after I wrote my book, Crazy Busy. It manages the multiple inputs and schedules of modern life. It includes one feature that I particularly like. By inputting three variables, you can calculate a “worth it” factor. So if there’s something you’re contemplating doing, you enter three variables and it’ll spit out a “worth it” factor. These days, there are so many things that are worth it you need to grade them, “How worth it is it?” It’s got a bunch of other features, too.

VIDEO INTERVIEWWatch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/2

PODCASTDownload the podcast from iTunes.

RESOURCESDriven to DistractionCrazy Busy

APP

18

way I’m going to freeze this time. I’m going to show them that I can be in my body and I can move.

I went in there with pre-planned move-ments and choreography, and dramatic steps and gestures. But I knew it just wasn’t working. When I finished, the assistant director pulled me aside and said, “What was that?” I really couldn’t believe I blew it the second time. Once again, I just wanted it so desperately that I showed my desperation; I came across as phony and trying too hard, so I blew it again.

That was a huge lesson for me. At that point I really thought, “Well, that’s it. It’s over. I’m never going to play this part. I’ve proven to them that I’m not capable of it, that I’m a failure. I have to hang it up and go back to the chorus.” I was really disappointed in myself, beat myself up, hating myself for screwing up like that.

I wrote a thank-you letter to that assis-tant director and I let go of it. I wrote down everything I had to be thankful for, and I really felt myself release it. No sooner did I do that then I got a call from my agent, saying, “They still have not found a Christine, and they want to bring you back one more time and give you one more chance.”

That third audition, I walked in there and I really had surrendered my attach-ment to getting the role. I said, “Okay,

SANDRA JOSEPH is a singer, actress,

author and speaker who holds the

distinction of being the longest-run-

ning leading lady in Broadway’s lon-

gest-running show. For ten years and

more than 1,300 performances, she

starred in one of the best-known roles

in Broadway history: Christine Daae in

The Phantom of the Opera.

Sandra is now a motivational speaker

and co-author of the audio book, Your Creative Soul: Expressing Your Authen-tic Voice. She speaks about what it is

like to follow your passions and to find

success through whatever hardships

life has to offer.

The Back StoryI don’t think I ever woke up and said, “I want to be on Broadway,” but I did have a moment when I was 8 years old. It was on a family trip to see the musical An-nie, and I was about the same age as the little girl up there playing the role. As soon as I saw her onstage, it was like be-ing struck by lightning. I actually wear a necklace with little lightning bolts to re-mind me of what that feels like. I’m sure many of us have experienced something like that when you just felt something come alive inside of you.

Without even realizing it, I just felt, “I want to do that.” Whatever that is—I didn’t have a name for it—I just fell in love with that art form. But it was the last thing in the world I thought I would ever be able to do, because I was

SANDRA JOSEPH

terribly shy, introverted, insecure, hid-ing behind mom. I was not the kind of kid who wanted to be in the spotlight at all, so it was a huge struggle.

The Big Breakthrough In my first audition for The Phantom, I was so intimidated and so nervous, and I wanted it so badly, that I kind of choked. I got in my own way. I was frozen. I couldn’t move. I was like a singing head with no body. I was numb from the neck down. I did not land the leading role after that first audition, and I was crushed. But they saw something in me that had potential, so they put me in the chorus on the national tour. Off I went. I was suddenly a part of the show, I was a working performer and I was thrilled.

After a year, the leading lady left to do another show, so they flew me back to New York to audition for a second time. There I am again, on the stage un-der the chandelier, deciding theirs is no

19

“You fail, you fail, you fail, and then you find something that works, and you build on that.”my only goal is to be myself, to be pres-ent, to be in my heart, and to sing that song as honestly as I possibly can.” My goal was just to be authentic and pres-ent. And because I didn’t carry all of that angst in there with me, I was much more real, and that’s what every client, audience member, director, customer, is looking for—they want authenticity.

We’re always looking for the ring of truth in people that we want to work with. It’s that know, like and trust fac-tor. It’s no different on stage than it is interacting with clients or when you’re going to hire someone for a job—you want to work with people that are au-thentic and real. That was the critical key to my success and I went on to play that part on Broadway for ten years.

The Key TakeawayTake a moment to reflect and think about how far you’ve come. We all still have another level that we’re looking to achieve, or things we want to do with our lives. It’s such a gift when someone gives you that perspective on where you have come from, and how much there is right here, right now, to be thankful for.

FAVORITE APPThe Intention Reminder app really helps me to stay grounded and come back to center. It allows you to choose a beautiful back-ground and to type in whatever little message you think you need for that day, or if you have something coming up that’s important and you know you need to stay grounded. It’s a way to remind yourself to be grateful, to be present, to be yourself, to take a risk.

VIDEO INTERVIEWWatch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/41

PODCASTDownload the podcast from iTunes.

RESOURCESSandraJoseph.com

APP

20

those moments. I call them angel threads in the tapestry of our life. She was an angel thread of my life. I never, never ever after that felt that I was un-worthy.

The Big Breakthrough When I took over the Hearst Newspa-pers, we had a bunch of broken proper-ties all over the country, mostly big city losers, all unionized, afternoon papers. They’re kind of drifting along, feeding off the profits of our magazines and television. So at my first board meet-ing—Randy Hearst was alive at that time—he said, “Bob, what’s your first priority?” I said, “To get off welfare. We’re on corporate welfare.” That be-came my theme with our folks: “We’re going to get off welfare. We’re going to develop strategies together to confront this and we’re going to identify the tal-ent that can get us there.” So we empha-sized talent. We emphasized strategy. We emphasized risk taking. And we celebrated success.

It’s amazing what happened. I went from being a ward of the state in our company to being the leading cash cre-ator by the time I stepped away. That wasn’t just me. There were all these fac-tors: You start that with transparency, candor, and you engage people to join you in the journey. I never felt I was equipped to mandate what we should do. I’m just not that good or smart. But I was equipped well enough to know what reasonable strategy was and what

BOB DANZIG spent his childhood shuf-

fling from one foster home to another,

never quite belonging. When he got his

first job as an office boy at the Albany Times Union, the newspaper became

his family. Encouraged by a caring

boss, he spent three years in the navy,

went to college at night for five years

and was awarded a journalism fellow-

ship to Stanford University. Nineteen

years after walking in the door as an

office boy, he became publisher of the

Times Union.

Seven years later, he was named CEO of

Hearst Newspapers. In the next two de-

cades, he led the 6,000 employee com-

pany to a renaissance of talent, strate-

gic purpose and 100-fold profit growth,

earning him industry-wide respect for

his innovative marketing leadership.

The Back StoryI recall this very vividly and it’s about being open to the good people who cross your path. They reach out and of-fer you a chance to sip at their stream of life. The first one that I remember was my social worker who was mov-ing me to another foster home. She reached over, took my hand, looked me in the eyes and said, “Never forget you are worthwhile.” And that lady, May Morris, made me feel like a person for the first time. I never forgot her words. They were tattooed on my mind. So I believe that these things start by being open to the people who cross your path and offer you that twig of possibility.

BOB DANZIG

The second most important one also came from another woman who was accidentally on my path. She was the office manager at the newspaper in Albany, New York and hired me as the office boy. I had worked there for about six months. I did not know that she had been a foster parent. She later told me that when she found out I came from the foster care system, it incented her to take an interest in me. One Saturday morning she said she wanted to see me. I was scared to death; I was afraid that I was going to get fired.

She sat me down and said, “I’ve been the office manager for 15 years and I have been observing you.” Then she leaned across her desk and said to me, “I believe you are full of promise.” And that moment—I was 17 years old—at that moment, she gave me permission for ambition. I never forgot her words.

We have those moments in our lives. Everyone can shut their eyes and see

21

“Management is about today. Leadership is about tomorrow. Management is about the process. Leadership isabout purpose.”

unreasonable strategy was. And that’s how we become strategic rather than operational. Operational is managing a place. Strategic is leading a place. There’s a real difference between the two.

The Key TakeawayFind where to celebrate the talent of the organization. The starting point for an entrepreneur is be aware of what it means to celebrate the shared talent who are really helping create that busi-ness with them. When we do that, the folks who are engage with us have their talents flow more robustly. You can’t manage that. You invite that by effective leadership and you lead by celebrating the colleagues. You’ve got to feed the body. But leadership is about nurturing the spirit. When you nurture the spirit of a person, you invite excellence.

BEST BOOKWhen I was in the navy, they had a book sale and I picked up a book for 10 cents. The name was Today Is Here by a vagabond poet named Don Blanding. That book has been such a source of inspiration because he writes his homilies, not difficult poetry, and draws beautiful stuff. I have found that book over all these years to be such a comfort.

VIDEO INTERVIEWWatch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/11

PODCASTDownload the podcast from iTunes.

RESOURCESConversations with Bobby by Bob DanzigThe Leader Within You by Bob DanzigBobDanzig.com

22

And what I did was I actually got the book published. Then I went on radio and created a 30-minute value-oriented event. Then we sent it out to multiple stations all over the country and drove the audience to an 800 number. People were inquiring, they were calling us, because of the attraction mechanism, the attraction factor.

And now we had that lead. Now we put them into a value-added sequence where we could follow up with them with education-based marketing. Then we drove them to an application to see if they wanted to engage further on a higher level relationship. And we were able to enroll people into different types of coaching, different types of services, different types of products using that simple mechanism that started with something as simple as a couple hun-dred page book. Then a simple radio thing that essentially you just write a check for. Write a check to buy the ra-dio time in different markets across the country to generate ultimately what be-came thousands of leads a week at one time to then enroll them into a higher level of programs and services.

The Key TakeawayFor years, I built structures and hierar-chies and I’ve seen a lot of hierarchies in companies. Here is a simple struc-ture to keep in mind in running the company.

DAN KUSCHELL is a sales and market-

ing expert who teaches people how to

maximize profits, transforming busi-

ness ideas through successful sales

and profit strategies.

Through his radio show on NBC, on-

going seminars, books and teaching

resources, he empowers people to

achieve the success they desire. His

strategy involves three stages to iden-

tify and overcome obstacles hindering

growth, establish and build a founda-

tion for success, and magnify sales to

create large profits.

The Back StoryThere’s the quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes that goes, “I wouldn’t give a fig to be on this side of complexity, but I’d give my life to be on the other side of simplicity.” And so what I feel I have the ability to do is take big, complex ideas and really simplify them down overall.

I’ve been able to do that not only for my companies over the years—and I learned a lot of this by making a lot of mistakes—I’ve run about eight differ-ent companies and in my early years, I made a bunch mistakes. At one time, I had over 5,000 independent sales reps working for or with me and then I had a big large series of companies work-ing together—five different companies where we had about 200 employees. And I found myself, maybe like a lot of entrepreneurs, saying, “Oh, my, gosh!

DAN KUSCHELL

I don’t have time. What am I doing?” And dealing with overwhelm.

And so I went back and started study-ing and putting practices in place that allowed me to simplify the manage-ment structure, the operations struc-ture, the finance structure, the market-ing, the sales. I guess what pops up is a book from Michael Gerber. I was in-troduced to it years ago in my 20’s and I lean back on it. Michael teaches this idea that systems run your business, so find good people to run those systems.

The Big Breakthrough One of the things that transformed my entire business career years ago is a dif-ferentiator that worked extremely well for me and that I see can work for a lot of people is simply writing a book. It positions you as a preeminent expert. To be able to get a book published like this—a couple of hundred page book—it’s just a few bucks per book.

23

“Maximum performance = execution x ideas x confidence.”

Number one at the top, usually it’s the entrepreneur/owner, which we call the visionary or the driver of the busi-ness. And then below or next to that person—however you want to look at it—you have someone that is the facili-tator or executor of the visionary ideas or driving ideas that are being shared. Then compartmentalize the business into four main areas: sales, number one. Marketing, number two. Oper-ations, number three. And finance, number four.

Putting someone in charge of those four areas is where I’ve seen a lot of companies struggle. I’ve seen a lot of entrepreneurs’ companies struggle as they try to be up here as the visionary and down here driving the sales piece of it or the marketing piece of it, or the operations or the finance. The better strategy is to put someone in charge to handle that and then you can just have huddles with these people who ideally are experts. They are the best at what they do at that moment in your partic-ular company.

VIDEO INTERVIEWWatch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/14

PODCASTDownload the podcast from iTunes.

RESOURCESDanKuschell.comThe E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber

24

anything big and bold in the world is hard. You could be lucky and you could be using the cutting-edge technology. The rate at which we’re going from “I’ve got an idea” to “I run a billion-dollar company” is faster than ever before, right? But for the majority of people, even though the rate is getting faster, it still takes a good amount of time to build your business. If you don’t love it, you’ll give up before you get that criti-cal break that you need.

The Big Breakthrough The year was 1994. I had been given a copy of The Spirit of St. Louis by a good friend of mine to inspire me to finish my pilot’s lessons. It’s an amazing book; it won a Pulitzer Prize in 1954. And back in 1994, I said, “Okay, I had no idea Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic in 1927 to win a $25,000 prize. And that $25,000 prize had inspired nine dif-ferent teams who spent $400,000. I’m going to create a prize for private space flight.” And I believed that $10 million was enough money to inspire the entre-preneurs, but not the governments.

And so in 1996, I went on stage under the arch in St. Louis with the head of NASA, 20 astronauts, the Lindbergh family—everybody I could gather. I had spent two years getting enough interest in this idea to announce this prize. I didn’t have $10 million but I was so certain that it would be easy to raise $10 million that I took the risk. And so on May 18, 1996, I announced

PETER DIAMANDIS is chairman and CEO

of the X PRIZE Foundation, which leads

the world in designing and operating

large incentive prizes to drive radical

breakthroughs for the benefit of hu-

manity.

He is also an international leader in the

commercial space arena, having found-

ed and run many of the leading entre-

preneurial companies in this sector

including Zero Gravity Corporation, the

Rocket Racing League and Space Ad-

ventures. As co-founder and chairman

of the Singularity University, he coun-

sels the world’s top enterprises on how

to utilize exponential technologies and

incentivized innovation to dramatically

accelerate their business objectives.

Peter is the New York Times bestsell-

ing author of Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think. His next book,

Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World, will be released in

early 2015.

The Back StoryMy story is one of a serial entrepreneur. I grew up passionate about space flight and the majority of my companies are in in the space arena. I’ve started two universities, International Space Uni-versity, and most recently, Singularity University.

I started a company called Zero Gravi-ty that does parabolic flights. We train NASA’s astronauts. Another company

PETER DIAMANDIS

called Space Adventures takes people to the space station. And those were great. And because they were driven by my inner passion, and they were big, bold concepts, they were things I didn’t let go of easily. They each took a decade to get built, but I didn’t give up. I realized that you can do things at huge scale. It just takes some time and dedication, but that time is being reduced because of the ability of this massively intercon-nected, hyper-connected world and ex-ponential technologies. But at the same time, it does take really finding things that you’re passionate about to make a big difference in the world.

The first thing I say to entrepreneurs is do not do something just for the money. You really need to be doing something because in your heart and your soul, it’s your purpose and mission in life. And if you don’t know what your purpose and mission is, go and find it. Because ultimately, you would give up before you get to the final point because doing

25

“The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself.”

this to the worldwide press. I go out to try and raise the money. First person, no. Second person, no. Tenth person, no. Thirtieth person, no. A hundred and fifty people in. I’d gone to every major philanthropist and people were just like, “Yeah, private space flight?” Because for the $10 million, you would have to build a private spaceship with no government involvement, carry three people up 10 kilometers, land safely, and do it again within two weeks. It was incredibly challenging and peo-ple said, “Isn’t somebody going to die trying?” No one wanted to take the risk. I was shocked by how risk-adverse we had become.

Finally, after the better part of six years, I found the Ansari family, who put up the cash. All my friends and family had been saying, “Give it up. It isn’t going to happen.” And it was really just re-fusing to stop that got me to the finish line. The Ansari X PRIZE and Virgin Galactic came out of it. We re-wrote the regulations. We have driven billions of dollars of investment into this field. And it really was the beginning of the private space flight industry.

The day before something is truly a breakthrough, it’s a crazy idea. So even if you think it’s a crazy idea, set that stake and go after it. Because most times, it’s not 100 times harder to go 10 times bigger compared to 10 percent bigger. And there’s no one there com-peting with you and you’re have an in-credible opportunity that inspires peo-ple. just focusing on your strengths.

The Key TakeawayThe majority of entrepreneurs are try-ing to get 10 percent bigger. That’s a very linear mindset. If you’re trying to grow your company in a linear fash-ion, like 20 percent bigger, you’re in a smartness competition with everybody else who’s trying to grow 10 or 20 per-cent. Instead, look at 10 times bigger, not 10 percent bigger.

FAVORITE APPI love the TED Talk app because if I have 15 minutes available in a cab or on the runway or whatever, I might listen to a TED Talk. Constant education is absolutely critical.

VIDEO INTERVIEWWatch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/7

PODCASTDownload the podcast from iTunes.

RESOURCESAbuncanceHub.comHeroX

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26

preneurs really need to appreciate that. I’ve heard so many times where people keep it a secret and they’re reluctant to share their goals or reluctant to share their vision because they’re afraid that people may think that they’re too big for their britches. They may not sup-port the idea. They might not like it or something.

First of all, if your team members do think that, frankly, they may not be the right team for you. But your best team members are going to be so excited. They are salivating. They’re hungry to know what you’re up to and what’s in your head—all the good things, that is. They want to know where you’re going because that means that’s where they’re going. So if you’re mysterious to them, it doesn’t actually give them any con-fidence. So by sharing your goals and how great you can be together, that’s in-credibly inspiring and motivating and confidence-building for a team.

So one of the breakthroughs that is re-ally important for people to recognize is that their goals should not be a secret. And actually the goals get richer. They get better. They get more fulfilled when you embrace other people’s unique abilities to make them happen.

The Key TakeawayKnow what your unique ability is. Know what your passion is. Know what you’re best at. And how you can be a hero at

SHANNON WALLER is passionate about

the power of entrepreneurial team-

work, which is clear in all she does. The

creator and lead coach of the Strategic

Coach® Team Programs, Shannon also

designs and coaches customized on-

site workshops, along with webinars,

speeches, and entrepreneurial tools.

She is the author or co-author of sever-

al books on teambuilding, including The Team Success Handbook: 12 Strategies for Highly Productive Entrepreneurial Teams and the soon-to-be published

Multiplication by Subtraction.

The Back StoryMy passion for helping teams began when I was selling Strategic Coach. My job was to attract people to the pro-gram and have them sign up and keep them in the program. And what that meant at that time because we were re-ally small, is that I would coach our cli-ents in between the sessions. A number of times, they would call me up and say, “Shannon, can you please explain this to my team? Because I’m not doing a very good job.” Or the other phone calls I got, which were completely fascinat-ing, was a team member would call me up and say, “What have you done to my entrepreneur?” Because all of a sudden, they were doing things differently and they had no idea why.

So I realized that there was a really im-portant connection needed between

SHANNON WALLER

what entrepreneurs are doing at Strate-gic Coach and I knew these tools would be incredibly useful for team members because they’re good for people. And my job is to create a bridge between that. So that’s really been the genesis of all of the programs and all the intellec-tual capital we created is really because entrepreneurs talking to their teams and vice versa is not something that happens automatically or even every day. And then fortunately we don’t yet have the chip called Entrepreneur 101 that we can install into team members’ heads. So until that time, they have me.?

The Big Breakthrough My breakthrough moment was realiz-ing that without communication and without clarity on the direction that entrepreneurs are going, the team has no chance of helping. And that’s the biggest breakthrough that I endeavor to create in everyone I coach. Entre-

27

“You can’t play a very big game if you insist on doing every aspect of it yourself.”

doing that to your audiences. And re-ally, do only that. For everything else, surround yourself with people who are unique at everything that you’re not.

When we go outside of our area of unique ability, we create messes. We create stuff. We lose energy. It’s a mess. So we can stay really tight on our unique ability with our best audience and sur-round ourselves with people who are complementary to that. And make sure that they have an entrepreneurial atti-tude. Make sure they share your values. Make sure they think a little bit like you do and then it will be easy.

BEST BOOKTribal Leadership by Dave Logan, John King and Halee Fischer-Wright. For entrepreneurs who are interested in building self-managing companies, this is a go-to book for looking at how to create the conversations that create a higher level of teamwork.

VIDEO INTERVIEWWatch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/27

PODCASTDownload the podcast from iTunes.

RESOURCESStrategic CoachThe Team Success Handbook

28

The Big Breakthrough I started a process where I just delivered a lot of value and I kept on giving more and more and more value. And eventu-ally it led up to asking for the first order. I didn’t know it at that time but what I was creating was really the basics of the foundation of Product Launch For-mula, because that’s what my formula is all about. The product was just an en-hanced version of my free newsletter. I just added more stuff to it and made it come out more often.

I did my first product launch on Jan-uary 1, 1997. I built up through No-vember and December to delivering tremendous value and then I set up a sales letter sent via email. When I got my first order, I jumped so high. I could not believe it that someone would pay me. And then within a week, I had a few more orders come in. And then it ended up being $1,650. That was huge for me at that point.

The next launch did get better. I did $1,650 and then I did $8,000. And it just kept on ramping up. My list grew and my skills grew. In June 1998, I did $34,000. That was more than I ever made in an entire year. In 2000, I did a launch that did $106,000 in seven days. And it just kept getting better and bet-ter and better. And then in 2003, I went to a seminar, a marketing seminar, and I’ve realized that what I was doing was

JEFF WALKER is the creator of the Prod-

uct Launch Formula and author of the

New York Times bestseller Launch: An Internet Millionaire’s Secret Formula To Sell Almost Anything Online, Build A Business You Love, And Live The Life Of Your Dreams.

Over the last 20 years, he has trans-

formed the way products are sold on-

line. Along the way, he’s become one

of the top entrepreneurial and market-

ing trainers in the world.

The Back StoryI was a corporate failure. I just did not know how to do the whole corpo-rate thing. I got out of school, went to work at Motorola, worked there for a few years and bounced to a couple of other corporate jobs. Then my wife be-came pregnant with our first child and I could not stand my corporate job so I quit and became a stay-at-home dad.

And this went on for four or five years. Then one day, my wife came home in the middle of the day from her job. I’m in the living room taking care of our two kids and my wife walked in the door in tears. And she’s said “Jeff, I just need you to try to help support a fam-ily in some way. I’m getting up in the dark, I’m coming home in the dark. I want to be a mom or at least a part-time mom. Is there some way you can help support the family?” It was like a knife in my gut.

JEFF WALKER

At that point $10,000 in a year would make a huge difference for us. We were just surviving on one salary and it was not a lot of money to go around. And I just felt like I was in a complete box. I don’t have anything on my resume so my idea was to start publishing a news-letter. So on August 30, 1996, I pub-lished the first Walker Market Letter and sent it out to 19 email addresses. That list it grew through the mouth. Eventually, by 2000-2001, that list to 80,000 subscribers.

Intuitively, I knew that’s the one thing I was getting right. I knew that if I get this list of subscribers, then I’m going to have some kind of influence, some kind of power. It’s worth more than zero dollars. I had this thought that maybe I could sell them something. And I had no sales experience. I had no marketing experience. But I was desperate.

29

“If you’re just out there advertising, no one cares. No one’s watching. But if you put together content and you do it in a fashion that leads down the garden path to your product, you win.”

unusual. Up till then, I figured every-one must be doing this stuff, but I start-ed teaching a few friends that I met at that seminar. One of them did a launch that did a $1 million in 24 hours.

The Key TakeawayThere are a lot of great salespeople in the world and they’re always selling. That’s working, in my experience, less and less nowadays than it used to. We all know that business success is based on repeat sales and if you’re not a great closer, often you’re not making that re-peat sale. So they’re not providing value upfront.

On the other hand, you see a lot of peo-ple who just provide value. They’re put-ting out blog posts and YouTube videos

and they are value, value, value, but they’re not actually closing sales. You have to provide that value but also have that grease. Be seen as the authority and the service provider or the product provider but also close on the sale. You need both. You need to provide that value upfront and you need to have that lead in to the sale.

FAVORITE APPThere’s an app called Relax Melodies that is a white noise gen-erator that lets you layer in all kinds of sounds. When I get in that creative mode, I’ll close the door and put that on. It will just help me focus and just completely turn the world off.

VIDEO INTERVIEWWatch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/8

PODCASTDownload the podcast from iTunes.

RESOURCESLaunch: An Internet Millionaire’s Secret Formula To Sell Almost Anything Online, Build A Business You Love, And Live The Life Of Your DreamsJeffWalker.com

APP

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And that’s it. And once I understood that years ago, that’s what I practiced doing. And that’s what I help other people do. It’s all about your message. It’s what you’re saying that should be so important to your listeners that they hang on every word.

Think of your career as an entrepreneur. How many meetings have you gone to where you’re listening to the speaker and you turn to the person next to you and say, “Hey, what’s he talking about?” Or, “Where is this going?” You don’t have a clue.

So clarity of message is so important, but the content is the king. It’s not your delivery. It’s not your style of presenta-tion or your visuals. It’s your message. And if you spend time focusing on the needs of your audience and organize your ideas in a way that they can fol-low and make it impossible for them to misunderstand you, then you’ll be effective in your presentation.

The Key TakeawayIt’s not about you, it’s about your au-dience. You can use a personal story or talk about your experiences in pre-sentations, but only if it helps them do what they should be doing. It’s not bragging if you’ve done it, it’s a fact. But make sure you tell that story with the audience in mind, not you. Look at how many times you say “you” and how many times you say “I.” If you record one of your presentations and

For more than 40 years, JOEL WEL-

DON has been one of the most highly

respected and sought-after keynote

speakers and sales trainers in North

America, as well as an idea consultant

and executive speech coach for some

of the world’s leading businesses.

Joel is the only speaker to have earned

all four of the highest honors in the

speaking profession: The Golden Gavel,

the coveted Communication & Leader-

ship Award, induction into the Speaker

Hall of Fame and naming as Legend of

the Speaking Profession.

The Back StoryI’m a professional speaker and for the last 40 plus years, I’ve been hired by major corporations in all kinds of in-dustries to speak to their people, sales groups and leadership groups for all employees of a company. And most of these companies are made up of highly successful individuals. And our busi-ness has been word of mouth for 40 years. And if you do a great job, people will tell somebody else about it. And that experience has gotten me paid to speak over 2,950 different times. Over these 40 years, I’ve watched at least 10,000 speakers speak at business meetings. And it became very clear in the beginning that some people are amazing at what they do and some peo-ple could use some help.

One of the things I learned early in my career as a Toastmaster. I joined the

JOEL WELDON

Toastmasters Club to overcome my fear of speaking. I was a terrible speaker—didn’t know what to do. But at Toast-masters, you get feedback. Everybody critiques you. So I used that every time I was paid to speak. I would ask my au-dience what they liked and what they didn’t like. And all I kept doing for 40 years is keep doing what they like and stop doing what they didn’t like. You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that’s a pretty good way to keep im-proving.

The Big Breakthrough The breakthrough was in the very be-ginning. It occurred to me that the rea-son most people aren’t that effective is that they’re not prepared. They don’t know their audience and they’re fo-cused on themselves. If I had to sum up everything I’ve learned in 40 years, in 22 words this is it: Speak to your audi-ence about what they need in an orga-nized way that they can follow and get yourself out of the way.

31

“Speak to your audience about what they need in an organized way that they can follow and get yourself out of the way.”

BEST BOOKYounger Next Year: How to Live to 80 and Feel Like 50 by Henry Lodge and Chris Crowley. This was featured as the book of the month by Fortune magazine some years back. It’s fascinating, amazing. I recommend it to all my clients.

FAVORITE APPGoogle. In the past, when I would have to prepare for a company meeting, like years ago in the late 70’s, I was doing a bunch of IBM meetings, I had to go to the library to find out things about IBM. I had to look up things and try to find copies of their annual reports. There was no Internet. And there certainly wasn’t Google. Now you can find out anything. Everything is available.

VIDEO INTERVIEWWatch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/19

PODCASTDownload the podcast from iTunes.

RESOURCESExecutive Speech Coaching

APP

hear that all you’re talking about is “I, me and mine,” it’s pretty obvious you’re not talking about the audience which would be “you, your and yours.” And every time you use those words, it’s like plugging into your audience. And they know that you’re talking to them.

32

supposed to. I wasn’t happy with the way they were happening and that is when Dan said to me, “Okay, if this is going to work between us, then you need to tell me when it’s too much, you need to push back and I need to let you do that. I need to give you permission.”

I think that’s the big thing for the entre-preneurs, is you really do need to com-municate that it’s okay for the team to push back. That’s not our natural ability because we want to do great things for you, we want to show up, we want to be heroes. So you actually have to be explicit about the push back that you’re willing to let your team give you.

The Key TakeawayStay on your side of the line. When you are making things up—when you’re in that visionary role—stay in that role. You started your businesses, you can do everything, you have those capabilities, but to get to that next level of capability and growth in your organization, you need to focus in on the things that are going to have that big multiplier effect. And you can’t do that when you’re do-ing everything.

So figure out what’s most important and stay on that side. Have your team members figure out and organize them-selves. That includes process managers and project managers, wherever they fall within those roles, because that’s where you’re going to have the most passion. That’s where you’re going to

CATHY DAVIS is a project manager and

program designer for Strategic Coach®

as well as a coach for The Unique

EDGE®, a Strategic Coach® program for

young adults.

The Back StoryI absolutely did not even know that project management was a thing that I could do when I went to school. It wasn’t something I actually studied. Fast for-ward a little bit to Strategic Coach, which I’ve been with for 13 years now. There’s such a wonderful example of a unique ability organization. They real-ly look at their team’s strengths and try to organize them into those strengths. When I started at Strategic Coach, I was actually in an administrative role and I was successful. I did what I needed to do but what they noticed—the things I really excelled at, the things I really did well—were actually organizing projects and getting things done and doing new and different things.

Over the years, I moved into more and more positions where I was able to do that on a daily basis. About seven years ago, I started working specifically with Dan Sullivan on the creation of the Strategic Coach program and project managing all of his projects.

But it really was because they recog-nized that that was something that I had, a natural ability in leveraging my strengths. My Kolbe profile, a profile we

CATHY DAVIS

use at Strategic Coach, is really geared around organizing projects. I’m very responsive and I think that’s something that’s really important in an organiza-tion, especially with entrepreneurs. And with entrepreneurs, there are lots of ideas, lots of things on the go and having someone that can jump in and take action on the things that are most important is a really important compo-nent.

The Big Breakthrough It was in the push back. Early on, I was working with Dan, owner of the com-pany, visionary, and really excited to be in that role. I’m very responsive and I would just respond to absolutely every-thing. You can get yourself into trouble that way because you can’t do every-thing—you can’t be everywhere all the time.

I got to the point where projects were falling through the cracks, things weren’t happening the way they were

33

“You started your businesses, you can do everything, you have those capabilities, but to get to that next level of capability and growth in your organization, you need to focus in on the things that are going to have that big multiplier effect.” see the greatest results and that’s were the best teamwork happens because you know who the people are you can pass things off to. So definitely, stay on your side of the line.

BEST BOOKContagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger. Berger talks about the psychology of talk and social transmission—the whole idea of how ideas catch on. It’s a world of social: social media, socialness, happening out there right now. Getting clear on this is just a good thing for anybody.

FAVORITE APPAn app that I use religiously every day is called Trello, which is a really flexible project management software. I can organize all my projects like a dashboard so I can see things really quickly, I can move things around, and I can change priorities. It keeps me on top of things because I can add things in easily. So if a new idea comes in on the fly, I can shuffle things around. It’s just an easy, quick, visual way to organize what’s most important.

VIDEO INTERVIEWWatch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/13

PODCASTDownload the podcast from iTunes.

RESOURCESStrategic Coach®

The Unique EDGE®

The Multiplier Mindset

APP

34

buying time on the billboard at the Su-perdome during the Saints games and all of this fancy stuff that was beautiful, but nothing that ever worked. The only responses I got were from other adver-tisers trying to sell me more advertis-ing. So out of necessity I started to learn digital marketing because I needed to market for my business.

The Big Breakthrough A light bulb went off. Going through all of those struggles after having been a success, I kept thinking, “Oh, no, not again.” One time, instead of saying “Not again,” I said, “How can I use this expe-rience as a situation that I could turn into massive value not only for myself but for others?” And I thought, “Here I am, a guy who’s been a contractor for over 20 years, had these businesses, have gone through struggles, just like every other entrepreneur and business owner does.”

And all of a sudden I find myself in a boardroom to sign a million dollar contract with some executives. How did I get in front of them? By using some direct response digital marketing techniques. And I said, “This is a valu-able skill and craft that I’ve learned, so maybe instead of doing this for myself, I can start doing this for others.” And that was the breakthrough.

The Key TakeawayThis sounds so simple but it’s true: Don’t major in minor details. When

JIMMY HARDING is an author, advisor,

speaker, consultant and entrepreneur.

He is CEO and founder of Jimmy Hard-

ing Consulting and the creator of Game

Changer Talks, a podcast dedicated to

bringing you high-level strategies to

take your business to the next level.

In 2013, Jimmy’s proprietary marketing

programs helped his clients increase

their profits by $20 million. He is an ex-

pert in creating marketing strategies and

systems that combine traditional adver-

tising with direct response marketing

and the most up-to-date and effective

digital media and social technologies.

The Back StoryI’m a lifelong entrepreneur, so I’ve al-ways been in business for myself. I’m the type of guy who go get a job for two weeks to figure out a business so I could start my own every time I needed to learn a new skill.

I had a really successful construction business where we built both residen-tial and high-end custom homes for over 20 years and we literally got wiped out in Hurricane Katrina in New Or-leans. But we were really blessed and fortunate to be able to help so many people recover in the initial rebuilding phase which lasted about 18 months. We helped so many people and did more business than we ever imagined that we could do in that short time. And then the business all dried up and the only things that were available were

JIMMY HARDING

big, multimillion dollar, hundreds of millions and billion dollar, government programs that were going on.

But I had noticed something about six months earlier when lots of compa-nies were coming in from out of town and spending all of this money doing this marketing. I had always kind of laughed at marketing. I’m like, “Why do that? I mean, I do such a great job for everyone, everyone always comes to me. I’m positioned perfectly in this market. I’m not going to spend all that money in marketing.”

And what happened to me is after that 18-month initial phase, the other com-panies were getting all the business and I had no business because I was doing no marketing and I didn’t know how to market. So as things were going down for me, I tapped this last slush fund of money to make it happen. I went out and spent money on a bunch of mar-keting that didn’t work. I ended up

35

“This is a valuable skill and craft that I’ve learned, so maybe instead of doing this for myself, I can start doing this for others.”

I first started this digital business and went on this learning curve, I was spending my time on things I shouldn’t have. I heard a guy at a mastermind group say, “Take an inventory of your day and see what you’re spending time on that someone else could be doing.” And that’s what I did. I realized that 50 percent of my day was spent on mun-dane tasks that someone else could be doing. And I corrected that problem and put my team on it and things really just transformed for me.

BEST BOOKGetting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got: 21 Ways You Can Out-Think, Out-Perform and Out-Earn the Competition by Jay Abraham.

FAVORITE APPOne of the apps that I use the most is Dropbox. So everyone has heard of Dropbox but not everyone has it on their phone. It gives me access to all of my stuff that I need on my phone so I can literally manage a project on the road. If I’m creating something with my team, I can see what’s going on and do what I need to keep it moving.

VIDEO INTERVIEWWatch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/18

PODCASTDownload the podcast from iTunes.

RESOURCESJimmyHarding.comGameChanger Talks™

APP

36

The Big Breakthrough You really have to start with optimiz-ing. Optimizing is where you’re actu-ally identifying the process that you’re going through that is inefficient, that you can try to make inherently more efficient before you do anything else.

The second step is automation. This honestly is where I live; it’s where I really love to dig in and just come up with new stuff because there are so many things now that you can do. It’s settling it and forgetting it—that’s what automation is. And automation could use people sometimes, but more often it’s systems or processes or web apps or other services that will just run for you and that you don’t have to think about.

Then if there’s anything left over—and a lot of times there isn’t, but if there is anything left over—that’s when you look at outsourcing to a specialist or a generalist.

These three steps can be applied to any-thing in your life from paying bills to hiring people to how you make dinner for your family.

The Key TakeawayMy personal definition of success is that if I’m better today, in any way that I was yesterday, then I’m successful. And I really do believe that. It could be as a better father, as a better entrepreneur, as a better writer, better at speaking a foreign language, better at keeping

ARI MEISELIn 2006, ARI MEISEL was diagnosed

with Crohn’s disease, an incurable

disease of the digestive tract. His case

was severe, requiring more than a doz-

en daily medications and several hos-

pital visits. After reaching a personal

low point in the hospital, Ari decided

he would do everything in his power to

strengthen his by-then weak body.

Through a combination of yoga, nutri-

tion, natural supplements and rigorous

exercise, he was able to fight back the

symptoms of Crohn’s until he was fi-

nally able to suspend his medication.

Eventually he was declared free of all

traces of the ‘incurable’ disease, and

competed in Ironman France in 2011.

Ari has since spoken at seminars and at

a regional TED Talk about his struggle

against a seemingly insurmountable

opponent. Through the process of data

collection, self-tracking and analysis,

Ari helped develop Less Doing.

The Back StoryThrough the process of overcoming Crohn’s disease I realized that the fit-ness and supplements and nutritional aspects were actually the easy part in a lot of ways. The hard part was over-coming the stress. My response to the stress aspect was to create this system of productivity which I would end up calling “Less Doing,” as in “Less Doing, More Living.” All I cared about in the beginning was helping people free up

as much time as possible with the goal of helping them to reclaim their minds and do the things they want to do. So I set out this framework to optimize, automate and outsource everything in life, including your health, in order to be more effective. But really, I’m just trying to mitigate people’s stress.

I have a geeky obsession with having things more efficient. The fortunate thing is I would never recommend anybody else do it the way that I do it because a lot of times I go through a lot of painstaking inefficiencies to find and create those processes so that other people don’t have to. So my passion is about helping people save time. That’s really what I want to do: I want to make people save time so they can do better things. I have this very idealistic belief that everybody has this awesomeness in them that is usually being obscured by something stupid like having to run errands or scheduling meetings.

37

“You don’t need technology to be more efficient. You need to get more efficient before you start adding on more technology or it will only add to the problems you already have.”

my cool in situations that make me stressed, and trying to always strive to be better in some way and always op-timizing myself in one way or another. And I think that’s a journey that every one of us can be on.

FAVORITE APPThe number one place that I like people to start is with their email. It’s amazing to me how you find really high-performing individuals with 4,000 emails in their inbox. I understand that but it’s almost a travesty to me because email is the single greatest productivity tool that you can find on the planet, if you use it right. There is no other system that can carry on 14 conversations with different people, in different languages, in different countries, in different time zones all at the same time and keep track of it. It can help you remember every conversation you’ve had for years and make sure that things are followed up on, deal with corrections and documents and collaborate on work.

Email is amazing. And if we use it properly, you can be so much more productive, get so much more done and be much more suc-cessful. I know that might sound silly because I’m talking about email but that is the truth. Email is so, so powerful if you just own it.

VIDEO INTERVIEWWatch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/10

PODCASTDownload the podcast from iTunes.

RESOURCESLess Doing, More Living: Make Everything in Life EasierLessDoing.com

APP

38

tic. It has to have zero defects. It has to be beautiful. Thanks to the commoditi-zation and the Wal-Martification of the world, your price has to be super low.

So the last way that we are really able to differentiate in any meaningful way that it isn’t a race to the bottom—and really the death knell for your business—is to create fantastic customer experiences that keep your customers in the door and keep them coming back for more.

In the typical business across all indus-tries across the globe, 20 to 60 percent of your customers are leaving within the first 100 days. These are people that you’ve gotten in the door, have given you money, have raised their hand and said, “I’m all in.” After they’ve entered the fold and become a customer, they bolt and they go somewhere else in the first 100 days. The main reason for that is because we spent so much time and effort prospecting and acquiring and sales pitching and driving people to our door. But we spend little to no time ac-tually keeping them in the door.

The Key TakeawayThe most dramatic thing you can do to improve the bottom line of your busi-ness is to focus on keeping the people you’ve already brought in the door. Fo-cus on those first 100 days. There are a lot of ways to do it. Take advantage of great technology like video. What about sending someone a video thank-ing them for purchasing your product?

JOEY COLEMAN is the Chief Experience

Composer at Design Symphony, a cus-

tomer experience branding firm that

specializes in creating unique, atten-

tion-grabbing customer experiences.

His clients include individual entre-

preneurs, start-ups, small businesses,

nonprofits, government entities and

Fortune 500 companies.

He is a recognized expert in customer

experience design, an award-winning

speaker at national and international

conferences, and has taught business

and creativity courses at both the col-

lege and graduate school level.

The Back StoryI have an extremely eclectic background and it’s been a wonderful career. I was educated as a criminal defense attorney who also had an expertise in national security law. I’ve done stints with the Secret Service, the CIA and the White House. I was a criminal defense lawyer. I then taught at the executive education collegiate level. And I eventually end-ed up running a marketing and design firm and I’ve done that for over a de-cade now.

People ask, “What does a criminal de-fense lawyer know about making logos or about creating customer experienc-es?” The fact of the matter is, we all want to buy products that fill a need or a want. At the end of the day, it’s got to deliver a certain result or a certain ex-pectation that we have. And when I was

JOEY COLEMAN

criminal defense lawyer, my job was to stand up to a group of people, a jury, and convince them to take a course of action that weren’t otherwise predis-posed to take. In other words, find my client innocent.

Now my job is to help companies stand up in front of their customers, their audience, and convince them to take a course of action that they’re not oth-erwise predisposed to take, which is spend their hard-earned money on my product.

The Big Breakthrough I thought I was in the marketing and design business—designing logos, ad campaigns, helping people to experi-ence brands visually. And what I real-ized is I was actually in the experience business. Because the experience you create for your customers is the last great differentiator. Thanks to total quality management in the 80’s, the quality of your product has to be fantas-

39

“If you can get customers to stay to Day 101, the typical customer will stay for five years. If you can just focus for three months, you’ve got five years of revenue. It’s a no-brainer.”

Shoot a quick handheld video. Send it to them. Let them know. These are things that are not happening right now. There are great ways to set your-self apart.

I would just encourage people to fo-cus on having multiple interactions in those first 100 days that aren’t about upsells. Stop making it about how you can get them into their next purchase mode. Instead, make it about how you can deliver value. How you can serve them. How you can make sure that the results they sought when they pur-chased your product or my service have been achieved. And if they haven’t been achieved, pile on more to make sure that they are.

BEST BOOKThe Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman. It talks about how all human beings are divided into five languages that they speak flu-ently. They feel and react best depending on what language you speak. You take a test and it lets you know which language you’re best at speaking and which language you’re best at hearing. You can run your clients through this. It’s absolutely revolutionary and it will make your relationships exponentially better. I guarantee it.

FAVORITE APPI use Nozbe every day and I absolutely love it. It’s a task manage-ment system for creating enhanced to-do lists that you can share with other people. It allows you to check things off as you go so you know you’ve got them. I can share it with my team and assign tasks and know when they’re doing them. Fantastic interface. It’s available on both iOS and Android platforms as well as a web app.

VIDEO INTERVIEWWatch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/37

PODCASTDownload the podcast from iTunes.

RESOURCESJoeyColeman.com

APP

40

want to check a box once a year and send a Harry and David’s box or some wine of the month or something.

And I’ve realized that we kind of fell into the trap of just helping people with whatever they were willing to spend on gifting and not really redirecting their travel, entertainment and marketing budgets and getting them to think ho-listically 365 about a real plan. And so we’re getting our clients to think more year round about appreciation.

I always encourage people to think about the current value of a relation-ship and what it could be in a perfect world. And I think a lot of times we’ve been successful in spite of ourselves and we may have gotten 10 or 20 percent of the value of the relationship because we didn’t pour more back into it. I view it as that 10X principle of what you reap, you sow.

If you’re profiting $100,000 on a client, why would you reinvest 2 to 5 percent back into that relationship? One, just to solidify that your current business with them but also to inspire them to do more business with you and to refer you. What would that do to your busi-ness? We’re not trying to get people just to spend money just to be cool. It really is an investment in that relationship.

The Key TakeawayA common thread that goes through all of our strategies is to do the exact

JOHN RUHLIN is ranked #1 in sales in

the 65-year history of Cutco, the largest

cutlery manufacturer in North America

and one of the largest direct sales com-

panies in the world. His records still

stand among the more than one million

Cutco distributors.

He is regularly sought out to teach to

executives and sales leaders in the pro

sports, business and nonprofit world

the strategies and impact intention-

al appreciation can have on sales and

culture. In addition to his speaking and

teaching, John is the founder of The

Ruhlin Group, a company that special-

izes in helping companies develop and

execute year-round strategic gifting

and appreciation programs for pros-

pects, employees, clients, investors and

other key stakeholders.

The Back StoryAny entrepreneur who’s been doing things for a while has multiple scars. My first was when I started a business so I could go afford med school. Un-fortunately, it was a blue-collar type position making $40 an hour, climbing poles and ladders and I fell off the lad-der two times. I got lucky that I didn’t kill myself both times. I was scrambling to just make ends meet in college. I was at a low point because I was like, “I’m not going to be able to afford school. I have to drop out.” I grew up a poor farmer’s kid, got straight A’s but I had to pay for school on my own. But for-

JOHN RUHLIN

tunately I ended up interning with a company called Cutco.

That tenacity to find a way led me to go sell knives door to door for this direct sales company and led me to the idea of inventing a corporate gifting program for them. I sought advice from my girl-friend’s dad at that time who was an attorney and I was able to build a rela-tionship with him. Even though he was an attorney, he made all of his money off of non-attorney related things be-cause he was always giving away and everybody always took his phone call because Paul was such a giver. And so a lot of what I teach was modeled 14 years ago for me, this poor farmer’s kid in college just trying to make ends meet.

The Big Breakthrough One of the things I’ve realized in work-ing with all these different industries is just how little strategy is being put into appreciation. A lot of times people

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“At the very end of the day, gifts without strategies don’t really make a huge impact.”

opposite of whatever everybody else is doing. It’s such a simple thing, but most of the time when we work with a cli-ent, they’re not spending more money, they’re actually spending less. It’s easy. Nobody gets fired for hiring IBM and nobody gets fired for spending a mil-lion dollars on a trade show, but imag-ine if you’re able to redirect that million dollars to your most important rela-tionships. What would that look like? And how would that change your busi-ness? Or even half of it.

A lot of times we say, “Cut whatever your budget is in half and let’s redirect the portion towards the people you want to have key relationships with.” And it’s amazing what takes place when you do the opposite or whatever in your industry is doing.

BEST BOOKOne of my favorite books is called Give and Take by Adam Grant. Adam essentially has broken people down into givers, takers or matchers. He talks about givers either at the top of their class or the bottom. And a few minor details of how you interact with the world determine whether you’re a winner as a giver or whether you’re a loser as a giver. And it gives multiple case studies. It was one of those books you can’t put down.

VIDEO INTERVIEWWatch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/21

PODCASTDownload the podcast from iTunes.

RESOURCESRuhlinGroup.comJohnRuhlin.com

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drawing of me standing in front of two computer screens, a phone in one ear, a phone in the other ear and another one ringing. It was a shot to the heart to sit back and say, “Wow, this is how he sees me. It isn’t about us playing ball. It isn’t about us in Disneyland.” He saw me in an office doing work and that’s the de-scription he had of his dad. Kids are just brutally truthful but very insightful.

That’s when I started to think about how we shift. How can I create my busi-ness and have other people create their businesses without separating things? Can our dreams and our life co-exist at the same time? As entrepreneurs, we see it. We have what I call the “hum-mingbird syndrome.” We see these op-portunities and we start chasing them and we go full force into it. And then all of a sudden, we look back and say, “Alright, I got this ball, call this oppor-tunity and then I’m going to stuff my life in the cracks.” And that’s a mistake. And I learned that from a six year old.

The Key TakeawayA lot of times when I first get involved with businesses, they want to talk about the mechanics of business. How do I make money? What systems do I have to have in place? What products? But I think one of the things to do first is to get real clear on who you want to be. How are you going to show up individ-ually and as a business? Because until we understand those concepts of busi-ness identity—what our values are in

MEL ABRAHAM is the founder of Busi-

ness Breakthrough Academy and

Thoughtpreneur Academy where he

helps entrepreneurs bring their busi-

nesses to the world and build the

lifestyle that they want. He is a highly

sought-after entrepreneurial mentor

and strategic thinkers.

He has built, bought and sold numerous

multimillion-dollar businesses for him-

self as well as his clients. As the au-

thor of The Entrepreneur’s Solution: The Modern Millionaire’s Path to More Prof-it, Fans & Freedom Entrepreneur, his

strategies have helped build thousands

of businesses and have generated hun-

dreds of millions of dollars for his cli-

ents, ranging from large corporations

to startups and small family-owned

businesses.

The Back StoryI ended up as CPA primarily because I didn’t know what else I was going to do in college. And someone told me it was a great profession to go into—if I could only remember who told me that, I’d strangle him. But it gave me the inroads to understanding business.

I went to one of the large local firms and I was on a fast track to partner-ship. A number of years into it, I was working late one night, which I did a lot, and I looked into the partner’s of-fice and there I saw my future of being overweight, having high blood pressure and diabetes, being stressed out and

MEL ABRAHAM

wondering whether I’m going to make it to 46.

So literally that night, I walked in and quit. And then I took off and left and went to Japan for a number of months, which is a whole another story. But I came back knowing that I wanted to do something more—that I didn’t want to just be a little cog in the wheel. I wanted to build something. I wanted to have a greater impact. I wanted to know that I could make a difference in people’s businesses and lives and that’s how this journey started.

The Big Breakthrough The biggest knock down that I got was shortly after that, as I was building, I was getting momentum and growing. My son came home from school one day and looked at me and says, “Hey, Daddy, I drew a picture of you at school today.” And I bent down, looked at this picture and there I was, a felt-tip pen

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“Wealth doesn’t necessarily equate to peace of mind. You think it does, but peace of mind depends on how you’re chasing wealth and how you’re building your success.”our business, what our vision is of what we’re going to stand for—we can’t make the proper decisions on the mechanics of business.

The one thing that has shifted every-thing about the way I do business and many of the folks that I am mentor-ing do business is to realize that there is such a thing as a business decision. Every decision we make is a life de-cision. The context may be business, but we need to realize that the choices we make affect lives—whether it’s our lives, our teams, our significant others, our children—we need to make those decisions in the context of a life deci-sion. And when we do, we give it the proper weight. We give it the proper attention. We give it the proper focus. And we typically make the better deci-sion for the grand scheme of life versus just a profit motive.

BEST BOOKOne of the books that I love right now is Simon Sinek’s book Leaders Eat Last. It’s a great book about leadership from a differ-ent perspective and understanding the why and resonating with your team. And the author does it in such a way that he brings in a little bit of the science but also the psychology behind it and the performance behind it. It’s a wonderfully put together book on the topic.

VIDEO INTERVIEWWatch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/39

PODCASTDownload the podcast from iTunes.

RESOURCESMelAbraham.com Mel Abraham TV

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