Ep 031: Selling Sessions vs Programs

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In this episode Brett shares the following:

  • What to avoid when it comes to sessions vs programs.
  • How to create a predictable weekly income.
  • A NEW initiative he will be bringing out for YOU to help you grow your business to 6 figures plus a year.

and more…

 

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Enjoy.

We would love to hear what you thought of this episode? so be so kind and leave a message below.

 

Ep 030: Why do you do it?

In this short episode Brett asks a very important question that he believes EVERY successful person MUST ASK themselves.

Find out what it is along with his personal experience.

 

DO YOU USE FACEBOOK IN YOUR BUSINESS?


Here is how you can listen to this podcast on your iPod or iPhone. Follow these steps:

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– Every time a new podcast is ready it will now automatically load to your device.

Enjoy.

We would love to hear what you thought of this episode? so be so kind and leave a message below.

Ep 029: Bali Business Lessons

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bali business lessons

(9min) In this episode Brett shares a VERY valuable business lesson he experienced whilst away on holiday. You will also discover:

  • Where and how you can implement this into your own business.
  • How this one thing transformed into a life time customer.

and so much more…

 

DO YOU USE FACEBOOK IN YOUR BUSINESS?


Here is how you can listen to this podcast on your iPod or iPhone. Follow these steps:

– Once this is downloaded on your device, click podcasts then search for FiiT Professional.
– Every time a new podcast is ready it will now automatically load to your device.

Enjoy.

We would love to hear what you thought of this episode? so be so kind and leave a message below.

Episode 28: 7 Figure Business Owner…

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In this episode Brett interviews 7 figure fitness business owner and good friend Adam Mackenzie.

Listen in as the two discuss:

  • Online marketing.
  • How to generate an abundance of new clients.
  • What you NEED to start doing before you miss out.

and so much more…

 

DO YOU USE FACEBOOK IN YOUR BUSINESS?

 

Here is how you can listen to this podcast on your iPod or iPhone.

Follow these steps:

– Once this is downloaded on your device, click podcasts then search for FiiT Professional.
– Every time a new podcast is ready it will now automatically load to your device.

Enjoy.

We would love to hear what you thought of this episode? so be so kind and leave a message below.

Episode 27: From Being a Gym Trainer To Owning Your Own Facility

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In this episode Brett talks to Fitness Expert Shannan Maciejewski.

We discuss:

  • How Shannon went from a standard gym trainer to now owning his very own successful facility
  • Shannon’s #1 way he is currently getting new members
  • How he made the move from 1 on 1 PT to semi private and group training models

and much more…

 

DO YOU USE FACEBOOK IN YOUR BUSINESS?

 

Here is how you can listen to this podcast on your iPod or iPhone.

Follow these steps:

– Once this is downloaded on your device, click podcasts then search for FiiT Professional.
– Every time a new podcast is ready it will now automatically load to your device.

Enjoy.

We would love to hear what you thought of this episode? so be so kind and leave a message below.

Episode 26: Getting Your Tax DONE!

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Tax

In this episode Brett talks about getting your taxes in order to avoid the tax man knocking at your door.

DISCLAIMER: Brett is not a tax accountant and nor would he ever want to be one. He does love counting money, but only if it is his 🙂

 

DO YOU USE FACEBOOK IN YOUR BUSINESS?

 

Here is how you can listen to this podcast on your iPod or iPhone.
Follow these steps:


– Once this is downloaded on your device, click podcasts then search for
FiiT Professional.
– Every time a new podcast is ready it will now automatically load to your device.

Enjoy.

We would love to hear what you thought of this episode? so be so kind and leave a message below.

(Below is a transcription of this show)

Hello Brett Campbell Speaking welcome to the professional podcast today is going to be short episode. However, it is going to be very, very important for you if you are actively involved in the fitness industry, and you are generating income. Okay, so this is a must persist session. First of all, by saying that the information I’m about to share with you I do recommend you seek professional advice in this area and we’re talking about accounting and taxes and so forth.

Now, as this podcast timely this now is recording the 2nd of July so it’s a brand new start for a new financial year so if you don’t know, yes the financial year doesn’t end on December 31st. Does and on June the 30th what that means is it the time of the year were you need to get your taxes inline and there’s a few things that I just want to give you bit of a, from my experience on how you can handle that and really eliminate the stress that can come with sorting out your taxes and so forth. Now, in no particular order I am really just going to be briefing about this particular subject so, it may go a little bit from here to there, but at the end of these shows, we’ll make sure that this is a take on message. First of all I do want to say that there has been of a gap in these particular episodes and the reasons for the gap are that I’ve had some personal issues pop up. I’ve had a very close friends passed away in the last month it was really taking my time to focus to them and family, so forth as well so I have been left behind.

I’m moving forward from here we’re going to make sure to get regular episodes coming on and what I would also say, if you have a particular topic or subject that you would like to discuss or you’d like some information on, send us thru , let us know ifiitprofessional.com.au simply leave us a comment on any of the episodes. If you’d like anything a library further let us know, because I really want to make this show dedicated for you. So let’s get stuck back into the boring and then also because a lot of people and hundreds of person trying to set up coach mentor over the years to definitely say this spectacular topic is boring. However, I would actually say this probably one of the exciting components of business because this is we’re talking about the dollars. This is we’re you’re talking about the income that you have produced, and of course on the flip side of that, the money you have spent. Now I hope that the money you have spent has been wisely spent and spent in fashioned that is currently build your business and I’ll give you bit of an overview on how we operate without business and how we manage out taxes and finance, this is and so forth. Now, first of all a few just a single operator and you’re needed to do 101 personal training sessions, then you could basically keep excel spreadsheet of your income and of course your expenses that you do utilize. However, if someone and you got multiple streams of income like me we’ve got 16 different income strengths from different areas.

Become a little bit harder to manage in Excel’s spreadsheet. So I really recommend you getting accounting software. I highly recommend “zero so it’s xazero.com.au I believe. Now at this accounting software is super awesome it does allows you to track and consult all of your accounts, and what I mean about consult it allows you to see your bank fades straight into the software, you can login, it’s a very user-friendly piece of software and the end of an each week and the each month depending on how you locked to it, you go in and you can consult all of your expenses and income and the good thing is that you can put them on a certain categories. So for example we have a sheet of category for all the individual information products. So for example, we know that you’re last financial year, we made a xyzed on the bikini body shape up. We know that we made xyzed on the circle protocol system, and so forth. We know we made xyzed on our barely locations. So we have different setup in all categories and that allows you the power in this as well. It allows you to keep track on how each individual process and of your business on exactly how it’s operating. So definitely recommend zero. If you don’t have a good account, get a good account and if you stuck with the good account, send me an email and I’ll be more than happy to pass you unto my accounts and if he’s available of course, he’s barely busy, but were more than happy to help you out there. So let’s get back to basic fundamentals, now you need to make sure that you’re tracking all of your expenses. Now the majority of people don’t track expenses because they don’t really want to know what they’re actually spending. So for example, for someone like me we’ve got multiple subscriptions to different software’s and so forth. It’s extremely vital that we know what our predicted expenses are for the month because then of course on the flip side of the thing we need to know that we need to generate it a certain amount of income to be able to pay for that.

It allows you to go thru and talked about in the positive certainty on the end of the file extra page, it allows you to identify certain areas in your business that you maybe ham merging money so there maybe things that you’re subscribe to or you’re actually paying that I am giving you the return that you really want, and those could be certain software’s out there that you just like because they really quote, “trust me” and being there and done that and sign up for subscription of signed up for membership sites and haven’t you lost membership site or you’re just really signing up just to be a part of it within the same prices, it really was just a waste of time, energy and money because I wasn’t doing anything about it. So here’s the task I really want you to do or start thinking about this now because now is the time to make sure you can get your finances in order. You need to create a list of every single expense that you have; and when I say expense. Let’s categorize from business expense to personal expense. As fitness personal and again I must say this, you need to talk to your accountant about this but things such as few for your car, these certain trips that you can take, that you could certainly utilize business expense. But again, I don’t mind because I don’t want any accounting bodies out there, trying to say,” I’ll break your free advice that’s incorrect”. Check it with your accountant. But if you’re not sure of it just write it down anyway and then you can get the core of your accountant discuss it. So write down all of your business expenses on one column and create the title.

Also on the other side, make sure you create your personal expenses as well, so that could be few have signed up to the gym, you’ve got a gym membership post top of the things, and personal expenses. If you get a massaging joy like me, that’s a personal expense. Now, what I want to mention now is something that I see a lot of people get wrong, okay, it’s because most people program to work in on a weekly by weekly basis. Now a lot of subscriptions you’ll find are a monthly subscription. So, let’s say for example, you’re paying $2,000 for a month for a service or you’re paying $2,000 a month for particular service. That doesn’t mean its $500 dollars a week because this is how you can really throw out your numbers. So what you do, is you got $2,000 a month x 12 months actually, it goes $24, 000, divided by 52 weeks and you’ve actually got $461 per week. So you’re weekly pay if you choose to work that out weekly is $461, it’s not 500. So you’ve got an extra $40 there per week that couldn’t go towards something.

Another thing that you really want to do as well and why I am a big fan of working at your expenses each month because you might be able to count some of them. However you might also be able to increase some of them and what I mean by that is advertising expenses. So for every dollar we spent on Facebook, that is marketing dollars and advertising dollar. Every dollar we spent on Google is and advertising dollar. But this is an expense that is generating a return on investment. Now the $700 that we spend a month on email software now that is not specifically creating a return on investment walls the tools that we utilize is fantastic.

They do generate income per se, but they’re not direct co-relation. So when you every dollar that we spent on Facebook or advertising in any area, were going to get a return of xyzed on that. So for us it’s really important that we’re able to free up as much as expenses we can so that we can put expenses into another area. Really in essence of freeing up some expenses so that we can create small, but the difference is, categorizing each of those expenses as a return or not. So you will be able to go through to your business expenses and get, and ask yourself this question, “Do I have to have this expense?” Like thousands of business made this expense to operate and if it’s yes or no, just put a yes or no next to it. Then what you’ll find once you gone thru the categories of all of your expenses, with your gym trainer, whether you’re paying rent that is an expense that you currently have to have.

However, once you go thru that and you do your yes or no’s, you soon will be able to find that actually maybe 50 or 60% of my expenses are don’t actually have to have, but they are just a choice, but then you’re also need to understand with that actually sitting in regards to order important for your business. Moving forward so, that’s just me referring on some expenses and some accounting process that are really highly recommend, better give you a kick after butt to get your taxes in order and also to find a great accountant and look what you don’t have an accounting software, I highly recommend the zero. Now you may get all the years and have to complete blank there. So zero is far more superior than other website. It’s much more user- friendly for people like me, that’s for sure.

So have a fantastic day, evening, morning, whenever were your listening to this. But be sure to make sure that you get your taxes onboard and if you want to hear any more of this top of episodes, please be sure to comment and let us know what you want to hear.

 

Have a Good Day

 

Episode 25: America’s Angriest Trainer on Writing your own book!

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In this episode Brett interviews Vinnie Tortorich. Also known as America’s Angriest Trainer.

Vinnie runs a podcast show that receives over 350k downloads a month. He was a runner up in Audible.com audio book of the year.

He is also a personal trainer to the stars. QUOTE “I keep chicks on the red carpet”

We discuss:

  • How to start your very own book
  • How Vinnie became a success without even knowing it
  • How publishing companies didn’t want to know about him until NOW

Listen in and make sure you take immediate action.

 

DO YOU USE FACEBOOK IN YOUR BUSINESS?

 

Here is how you can listen to this podcast on your iPod or iPhone.
Follow these steps:


– Once this is downloaded on your device, click podcasts then search for
FiiT Professional.
– Every time a new podcast is ready it will now automatically load to your device.

Enjoy.

We would love to hear what you thought of this episode? so be so kind and leave a message below.

For more on Vinnie visit his website here.

(Below is the transcript of the show. Our transcriber has done their best to piece our words together)

 

Brett:

Hello and welcome to the professional podcast, Brett Campbell here and today I have a very special guest hailing all the way of the other side of the planet, of the world, not the planet but you get the paycheck to another fantastic Vinnie Tortorich, I hope I got the last name right buddy! but you be able to correct me in a moment if I was wrong stressing about that a little bit but Vinnie say being in a fitness industry for a little over 30 years, he’s made his first self-publish book called, Fitness confidential” and that was actually just up for one of the major awards in the audible audio books then it will out and tell us all about that in a moment. He also runs an extremely popular podcast called “America’s angriesttrainer”. So certainly asking about that and the podcast gets a 350,000 downloads per month so he’s got his finger on the post and then also Vinnie in his own words says he keeps sheets on the red carpet. So we’ll talk about that as well So Vinnie thank you very much and welcome to the Fiit professional podcast.

Vinnie:

Brett the one place when everyone asks me whenever I give interviews. How to pronounce Tortorich I think your search having before we went on, and that’s the one place till we got away from and you didn’t ask but I mean it’s kind of odd but it is Tortorich.

Brett:

Excellent! Fantastic and I guess there’s few key points that I like to ask you myself. To give the listener a bit of a background about yourself. All handle the fan of you and give us a little bit of a background on may I know your time in the industry and to what’s happening for Vinnie.

Vinnie:

Okay just to give you, just a brief overview I literally into a gym when I was 8 years old we talk about that and that was confident and I’ve been in the gym my entire life about time when I was 16 I was running that gym from my buddy Jill Barmejon whose started the gym. By the time I got to college on football scholarship I was holding into just a whole Hoffman steel. So I got my degree and I was going for a degree than the therapy and ended up getting a degree and exercise physiology and I have P.E degree and I started working with people long before the term trainer and I’m doing air quote trade now. What was the thing back in 1981 or 82 there were couple of trainers around the country I was once of them and would be talk to Bob because there was so few of us that’s sounds crazy but magazines and newspapers will call up , ” What do you do for a living?” and would the term “Trainer” wasn’t even really a thing yet but that’s my background and 1991 I moved out to Los Angeles and as you said Brett I got him for Hollywood crowd, I can’t even explain how that happened, I don’t know how it happened but when I got in I was able to do some good work right away and I started getting known as the “Quick Race of the sky” which I never lied to a title  but it’s a vile so I must be hired of 3 [inaudible 0:03:33.6] and here I am 2014 we take a soft published book and it’s a big publishes out there in the game it is “fitness confidential” in amazon since came out last July 2nd and yeah I just got back t New York from a [inaudible 0:03:53:0] were my book was up for autobook.com book of the year we won 5 we do not win when I was very honored that for self-start book that had no dollar behind it, no advertising dollars or whatsoever. So it an audible copy to actually be considered book of the year but that’s my entire story I am going to handle my bag…

Brett:

Okay! So excellent Vinnie I know you said your book was 1 of the top 5 [inaudible 04:26] and how I heard about that was another gold [inaudible 0:04:29.6] Thomas’s book was out there as well and I’m sure you both have fantastic books but the great thing about that is a bit of your wave of magic wand a couple of years ago and when you first started writing this book. You probably never, you could have made it to that particular level like you talking about that best books in the world so let’s talk about fitness confidential because I know you’re telling me a little bit about it before the show, it’s really intriguing. So give us a bit of a background on what is fitness confidential about and why did you write it?

Vinnie

Why I wrote it was I didn’t want to write a book. I know everyone wants to write a book I’d written a chunks of book years ago that was started since I was small and the [inaudible 0:05:16:4] and I know the answer now in writing a book then when my buddy Dean Lorie. Dean Lorrie is a Hollywood writer which is who written 6 or 7 books in his life but he is more or less to TV and movie writings. Probably the most honorable thing he gone on has been arrested the [inaudible 0:05:38:8] he heard my wife and kids. He wrote me due pain, he wrote one of the Friday the 13th movie. The guys knows what’s wrong when writing in and he kept telling me you really need to write down your story because I almost died in 2007 from leukemia and Dean said you can’t Dean knows about my work in the Hollywood community from these years and he said you can’t die and not let this stuff out there, and Dean and I have a scotch very Friday night and he would talk to me every week and you really have to start writing and he was the empathy set me writing. He did agree to sit down with me. We sat in the same room every day for 6 months 3 hours a day come up with the best that would come up with.

Brett:

Yeah! That’s fantastic so to give us a little bit of background about what the books about and who does it really appealed to because I know it’s making some waves and getting some people’s feelings [inaudible 0:06:40:5] so…

Vinnie:

Yeah! You know well first of all the book and the script didn’t want to touch it because they said they never seen a fitness book like this before because it doesn’t teach how to lose 10 lbs. in 10 days or get wash for that and all the other stuff that all the other books guaranteed. There is no guarantee on this book and I literally caught to the matter for people… I say cards and [inaudible 0:07:08:8] but that’s… I’m so old that [inaudible 0:07:12:0] say I get emails by hundreds everyday in you would be shock in how many of them come from other trainers from around the world are gym’s… Guys do not own big box gym, but they own like Johnnies golf club or the kind of gym that trainer goes to and what not and they appreciate the book because they’re all saying, ” Is the book everyone’s you read?” because I really do poem of [inaudible 0:07:38:0] I know you’re in Australia and we have a big audience in Australia and Australians love me because I don’t know how to pull a pot, I just say, “Here are the facts, here’s what’s going on, here’s how we can fix it”. It’s the only book that tells you how to negotiate when you go to the health’s club because I liken those things to use car locks. When you got to use car locks at least if you put your money at, you get to live with a car. When you go to a gym, you put your money up, you still have nothing, and you still have to go to the gym to make it work. So we explain that to the crowd and so many people appreciate that approach. We trying to give them tools to… we thought them with the best fits of fitness equipment in the world is… In my opinion, it’s a jump rope because you get everything done with one piece of equipment and you can make it yourself. But when you build those kinds of stories it makes you kind of, “Oh Yeah!” this is a real thing and this is something that I can get behind.

Brett:

Yeah, I couldn’t agree more with you there it’s the unknown words of the gym and those types of things because there’s so many… I guess you’d look at the majority of the made your gym change I actually bank on over 30% members not turning up to the gym because they couldn’t hold the capacity of members going in there so it’s good refreshing tonight that these more information are there for people to be able to look at and I guess get another yes perspective on how this things work. So let’s stay on the book for a moment and what made your number 1 calling it fitness confidential. Where did that come from?

Vinnie:

We thought of it. There was great book out there called “fitness confidential” Anthony Barbane and when we finish the book Dean and I we did all the editing and everything else. We Hired another girl at the end, we took my notes, I’ve written 40,000 words of notes and we flies it up to make maybe a hundred and ten thousand words and then we [ inaudible 0:09:54:3] That’s why people love the book, it’s a page turner we withered it down to like a 70 or 71 thousand words and we didn’t leave any flaws in there and you get exactly what you need to get and by the way when you hear page turner and set it up could usually doesn’t go hand in hand. I was telling you that now… I lost control of the question, can you give me the…

Brett:

Yeah sure! No problem! I was just talking about where did the name come from? So you’re saying the book…

Vinnie:

Oh yeah..So the name, when we wrote this kind of book and we read through it, it reminds us of Anthony Barbane’s book. We decided, “Hey this book is getting confidential” it did great for that name. When I got to fitness confidential because it’s the same kind of book were we talk about the nasty under valley of the fitness world in how the in consumer can do better because of it? So it kind of came out of that name, and by the way that was something else to publish here’s what you take. They said even if they took the book, they would never call it fitness confidential because it was too close to Anthony Barbane’s getting confidential.

Brett:

hmm… But… That’s interesting isn’t it? because… let’s just talk about that from a minute… and I guess for the personal… for the fitness professional the majority of our listeners here in this show and what would you say to them, what’s your piece of advice to them initially say [0:11:22:8] I’ve got a book that I want to write but I don’t know which path do I need to take with or even start when it comes to writing your own book.

Vinnie:

That’s a good question and you are Brett, I wish more people would ask that question. No one asked that question but the first thing you do is to know if you have a book… It’s one thing to be sitting over with a beer, “Hey I can write about this”, “Hey I can write about that”. The first thing you have to talk about something that you intimately know everything about and it has to be people want knowledge. The 2nd thing you have to do is write a crazy amount of notes. You can sit there and go “Hey I can write a book and I could talk about you” just exercise or I can talk about how to use staffs, and I could talk about ball exercises but can you really fill the entire book with this stuff? But if you start writing notes and you have enough notes to where you can formulate it into a conversation that you will. Especially if you know everything about that subject. If you know everything about using scraps or everything about high density edible training. Start with the basic, write the notes and this starts of flashing of notes are. Never think about the book, never think of the end product just get the information first. You can always look at the end product later.

Brett:

So in regards to that, would you… because I mean all of heard from several different people of obviously have written books before and the spices this many different ways to go about it so, what you’re saying is just get ruthless on note taking and before you’ve even create it… i guess the structure of the book, would you meant about the contents of what type of things you’d want in the book first or would you just kick crazy on those notes?

Vinnie:

You could map that out and from mapping it out you will start coming up with notes so you’ll literally 2 things going on at once. You have to start your book which is great. We kind of took my notes and created a structural of the notes so that could be like backwards and but it’s what we did. I just decided to write the notes just to get everything down, just put it on a paper and I literally wrote it on a paper by the way and then I would punched it in to my computer. I always have something to write on I tell to everyone, “If you’re going to write a book, always, always, always have something to write on” I’ve save all of my pieces of paper that I wrote on and I literally have hold and leaved that on the ground. I have labeled on wine bottles that I wrote notes on and I have toilet paper. I’m telling you just go on by some 5 size of cards and just carry it with you. When this thoughts comes in your head, write it down, and then get it to them into your structure.

Brett:

Excellent… So in regards to writing a book, now there’s always going to be times were It’s not go on smooth sailing and with that you would’ve went if you big lessons and producing your book so what are the biggest lessons  that you could save us time for the person out there whose looking to write their own book. What can you suggest for us there?

Vinnie:

Well if you got to go on self-publish route with it, I  would suggest that everyone because you get to control everything and I would say if you got to self-publish route you’re okay if not, I wouldn’t write the entire book if you’re going to publish it because they’re going to rewrite the book anyway. They’re got too wanted to be their book but if you go with synopsis, so you don’t really have to write the whole book you can do the outline [inaudible 0:15:20:3] and then go to those guys. You have a much better chance if you write the whole book and it’s something that like and they would just move on to the next book. Get some point when we were in New York, Dean and I took meeting with probably 3 or 4 publishers we’ve figured they wanted me… and we just went to the idea of 2nd book and funny enough, they came back to us that 2 of the 3 already come back with the May 6 figure offers we’ve turned both offers down they didn’t quite understand that we really made way more than they will offer to us. So on the 1st book I have sell, that’s why I would suggest that anyone [inaudible0:16:03:2] publish. The other thing if you got to self-publishis, you have to get some kind of web presence on. I had 0 web presence, even after the book was present. So I took a whole year before the book came out and so the angriest fan of podcast and those [inaudible 0:16:25:01] when a book came out I guess between a 125 and a 150,000 downloads from us, which is enough to get to those people to gone buy the book and then started the train and now you have the book which is in the podcast, the podcast questioning book and it just became the times fo perfect for us, but go back when I said beginning, always, always, always had you going to publishers, don’t worry about writing the whole book, just get the poems , get the poems, they will decide whether they want it or not.

Brett:

Excellent. So question with self-publishing, let’s say you’ve got your notes together and would you suggest that if  you self-publishing you always see, you want to write  the book at and full and then… who you go in and see for yourself of publishing?… What’s the scenario around that? What generally happens?

Vinnie:

That’s a really good question. We really get it, we get it all ourselves, hiring all these people… I know there’s something they called him “Vanity presses”. You kind of and them of grip and they’ll go and literally if you’re selling the book for 10 and 12 bucks they will literally take the cost of the money,you’re going to get a dollar or 2 per book. We didn’t go to that route. We decided to rewrote the book and we’re book writers so we can lot of… we made the book exactly the way we wanted it and they we started hiring people and this is the important thing, we literally hire one of the editors that edits for [inaudible 0:18:02:6] and the sign of excuse these people work a lot of their company and we let that guy added the book. The one thing that people gets stood out Brett is they feel like “Oh… I know how to spell, I know how to do sentence structure, and I don’t need to spend that $1500 – $2000 to get someone to add it. Yes you do… Trust me you do… The other thing we did we went to a company calls, tele markets price and anyone could go to this company, as a matter of fact we learned about the company from reading a book written by John Locke, sold I ,think a million books in 5 months. Now of course he was telling 1500 bucks but whose also signed for 99c, and we saw the full price book, but we took a lot of advice from him we saw the name tele markets in his book. We went there, we talk to those people and this is so important. Our book came out on every form of electronics that is available anytime meaning, note, kindle or nowords.com, every type of e-book you can do. Also a current on demand and of course I read the audio book myself, now take that most people would go, “Okay! That’s 6 grand, maybe we spent 4500 I can’t remember, we spent maybe 4500 to 6 grand. I’m getting that book format for every given type of electronics that exist including current on demand. Now why is that important, it’s important because people want to get it the way they want to get it and we don’t want to have anyone say, “hate us and do barnsandnobles.com” So i won’t do that. You have to get your book formatted every which way it could be formatted and that cost a lot of money. But do it, so the 2nd piece of advice. The 3rd thing if you really believe in your product, do an audible.com now they tell you that most people would go on and sell a lot of audible books so that could take since we have a podcast and people want to hear the voice he will buy the book.

Brett:

So when it comes to audible.com, so let’s say you got your book, how do you go about did they just go to audible and yes submit an audio? or how was that work?

Vinnie:

The way we get it was I found the guy who literally records for audible.com. Now this is kind of hardy tardy because I live in that land, you could find those guys. But you can find someone, somewhere who have a sound studio and you keep going and record your own book. We use me as the voice because it was telling my voice to would’ve been odd if we have someone else… my voice… especially people we’re used to the podcast. I think we only spent like 1500 bucks on that guy to do the audio and then audible.com has a grouping under its system called “ACX” ACX is for the none publisher, or the soft publisher guys, guys like me, which is kind of cute and funny because ACX would beat all the other books this year w/c came from publishers. So that’s the other piece of good information there is a place for you to go at audible.com it’s called ACX and its covers everything that audible covers, you’d like any of the book, you don’t look any difference. The other thing I would tell people besides the audible thing, just skipping back a little bit. We get the cover of the book I don’t know if you’ve seen the cover of the book but that cover would not ever been approve by anyone. I am a 51 year old [inaudible0:22:10.4] on the cover of my own book screaming and I’ll make it and what of the world could you get away with that?

Brett:

Yeah! Yeah! Those books generally come with plastic where in presence.

Vinnie:

we see that you ask, we don’t say that in pieces but yeah there’s a naked old tag in there on the cover of the book, it’s not one book company who would put that cover from the book.

Brett:

Now you’ve certainly grab the attention which again with it comes to the whole psychology behind the title of the book and the cover of the book so, it’s certainly wonder people just buying it. Just because of the cover. Is it about the concept or it’s you?

Vinnie:

I think some people might look at it, it will certainly when you look at that fitness book can you see that cover? It will catch your eye because the picture is really close up, it’s kind of a dark background, you don’t know where this guys is and then the title right there, fitness confidential and get there and people love that.

Brett:

Excellent… Look I just want to take a moment for our listeners out there who are listening because fitness just really drops in them, some amazing knowledge here that can really end up taking notes myself and also be certainly following up with you Vinnie on another call because I’m actually going to the process of creating my first book as well but something you did say there that popped out and there’s just something that I am a big candidate on regardless with you’re looking to create a book or an online product or service even running your business… and you said that you need to have a web presence, now I couldn’t agree to you more on that because at the end of the day, your book could be the best book ever but on one’s ever going to read it if there’s no presence. So let’s talk about that for a moment and go… You’ve created a podcast in America’s English. How have you been able to get so many downloads? What’s the scenario, secret surrounds that?

Vinnie:

That’s probably the biggest place that I get. Now I literally do more business podcast and I actually do… I probably do 10, 12 podcast a week, maybe even 15 of other people show, not my show… Shows like this and literally most of them know business podcast and the one text craze I will hand out then I’ll tell you every speaker that I know… The biggest thing that I threw out there is there nothing passive about passive income at all. People that read the book will see that I’m the craftiest and when you’re not craftily, your guy who doesn’t know how to stop. Literally that’s what it takes… I’ll take it back a bit when Dean’s age at first [inaudible 0:25:17-0:25:19.0] The reason why it didn’t take it on was because we google Vinnie and absolutely no one knows Vinnie yet, his name doesn’t even appear in Google as a matter of fact it appeared that if you want to google, it will take you to a hack site of a blog that I used to do and it said hacked by the Diablo, the big cartoon picture of a Diablo… So you can only imagine that I have no presence of then that I was attacked by a devil and Dean said to me, you need to go back to the internet and start blogging again, and I had no… I just didn’t want to do it, there’s no way I was going to do it, and I setup a new site, a simple WordPress site, I didn’t do anything fancy write to WordPress, just the blank thing and started writing again, in about 3 or 4 blogs and I was talking to my nephew and I said Dean wants to do it again, it’s the only way we’ll saw these prob. These could take eyons, I don’t want to do it, and he said, “Why didn’t you do a podcast?” and I said great! What’s a podcast, and he said “Well when I was a kid you we’re in [inaudible 0:26:31:8] and you have a radio show called talking sickness, you can do that in the internet” and I was like, “Really?! You mean people like are going to listen?” because I don’t know I said we’ll how will you advertise this, he goes, “I don’t know”, he goes, “I know, I listen to him and I love him” So literally [0:26:50.0] every hearing a podcast, I called my friends and Lavatino and I said, “Ana , do you know anything about podcast?”, I don’t know a lot my husband and I did one , we did like 10 shows ,they’re up there, I said, “Can you help me do a couple?”, and she said “Sure!” She’s has a voice of professional, my co-host has improbable voice. I went over to her studio and she said, “Do you knowwhat to talk about, and I say, “Yes, that’s what I do every day” and we literally sat there day1 and get 5 shows all back to back to back and so we did 5 hours of podcast and she said, How did you come up with all these information? you don’t have a sheet of paper from up here I said, “Listen honey, I’m dancing from my gender right now because [inaudible 27:41] and the way I feel this is someone wants to listen to one of my shows I don’t want to wait again for another 3 weeks to hear another show, so I gave them 5 all at once and then I went on to do real week for almost a year to were [inaudible 27:57] 2 year mark right now and we’ve done close to 300 or 280 shows, I think 275 of them are up, but that’s me that’s what I do, I just take something and just keep running form it.

Brett:

Excellent! and congratulation to your 290 shows because I know that’s…. majority of podcast I can’t’ remember like 70% of podcast that make it pass your first 5 shows, so you are up to 290, let’s look at that then, and I know you’ve mentioned you have a co-host and that you talk fitness. What is some of the things you talked about on your show, like give us some few examples and some ideas that you might share about?

Vinnie:

You know at first there was this me talking to Anna and the cool thing about that was Anna knows nothing about fitness so she would ask the general question and by the way this wasn’t planned I was using Anna because she had a great voice and she have a studio but she also interested in learning how to get into shape. So the show became organic at first and people we’re buying into that and then some people figure that I wasn’t all [inaudible 29:14] so try athletes like paying attention and it’s started talking within their community, “Hey have you heard the sky started go long”, and you should listened to him that he’s talking about the wacky deity uses to beat while he’s on the bike. So that really help, but then that’s somewhere around the 1st year. Even before that in the 8 of 9th month, Gary Thompson the good calorie, the bad calorie and the why we get fat, what would do about it. He came on the show so that’s started the genemizing show that if people like Gary talk in a New York times best seller writer would come on, and then we had celebrities, Howie Mandel came on. Many driver came on show and that’s started giving us more litigiously and from that, we’ve had Dorothy timothy synopsis that on twice and he’ll come on at any time that rest of them has been on, Peter Atiya, Dr. Pro-mother of brain brand has been on, Dr. Kate Shanahan, now we have literally we’re literally with doctors all of this [inaudible 30:29] from around the world. Dr. Terry Walls from the walls protocol is coming on. I think we probably got eyes coming on at some point. Literally, we can beg these people come on in the 2st year and now they’re just lined up to be able on the show because they figure out that my show sell book. So they all show up…

Brett:

Fantastic and just want really have my couple of key points their because you don’t get the 280 episodes without like you said a lot of hard work and you said you just started with 5 episodes in your going three episode per week, it’s a definitely commitment there… so what stage did you really feel that the podcast was the committed of getting out to… to the world for yourself like when did you like that love by gulf and bay yup, this is definitely the mode elevated that we going to keep assuring?

Vinnie:

Wow that’s an interesting question, you know Anna was sitting there working for free and she does it for a living and I’m looking at this woman every week on she is literally working for free. I don’t have a dime to give her I can start pulling one out of my pocket but she wouldn’t have that and we didn’t know what to do and one day I got a phone call from this woman who told me, “Do you know whose Adam Coroley is? In your country?”

Brett:

No… Doesn’t ring a bell to me…

Vinne:

Okay… Adam Coroley probably the top podcast, one of the top podcast he was the big deal in this country. He and Jimmy Kimble he’s still have a show. He was a radio here for Dr. Drew for years and have this show called ” Love Line” So he have probably the biggest podcast in the world and a women from his show called the “Up and Day”, he said, “Were paying attention to you, what are your numbers?”, and they said, “We have an idea what’s the numbers are because iTunes won’t give us the numbers we keep asking”, she goes, “No Eddie you have to go to [inaudible 32:42] and someone else and they got the host to bought them the nail county. That’s how backward we work by the way Brett, we don’t even know about lifting and I went okay and she goes, for getting like 10,000 downloads a day that’s a big deal, and okay… so we called Lipton and we got to setup a Lipton and the medium they would find out that we we’re getting 50 or 60,000 downloads a month and we look to that move, “Wait a minute” People actually listening like we have no idea by the way, do you know how many downloads you get? Do you subtract that?

Brett:

Yes… So out of any recently to luipsum but we used blueberry and another like another WordPress plugin that comes into the backend of our system… So yeah… that was something that I guess I got them to fill it quickly… I guess some top of a guy here want to know… I guess for me it’s there was that and then the reason why I asked you that question of, at what time throughout your podcast. Did you really have that light bulb go off because what can happen if and I’m sure it’s happened to you as well but my podcast was speak to is.. Sometimes it can get quite tiring in regards… I want to make sure that my podcast is getting listened to by as many people as you as you possibly can. So when we first started our podcast, around 2 podcast one of them was from the fitness professionals and the other 2 are consumer who would call out Fitrix a female base and because my female base much larger than my professional base. The Fitchick podcast was getting listened to by thousands and thousands of people a month versus the personal trainer, this particular podcast now which guess listened to 5,000 trainers a month so it takes a lot less in regards to my viewership that of course the colony of people listening to this hour right now… will be people that they guarantee they ‘go and take your information and wouldn’t be surprise if I get emails next week when we publish this to forward to you as well that’s for sure but yeah… I guess the sure answer to that is yes, we certainly track and measure else statistics because obviously that’s for keep us doing the podcast that make sense.

Vinnie:

Yeah…You know the funny thing is that we know what the numbers are, we don’t track who they are, but my shoes is exceeds that they started… I’ve seen on the internet all the time the comedy of Howard Sterenov fitness podcast which is kind of a long title and we weren’t shooting that but Anna and I early on, we didn’t think anyone was listening and I was simply talk about her boob all time, time and because they’re huge at some point and she through out the sea board because she is a chicken, she could do that and people had quald it’s like a dirty fitness podcast it just came this thing that we…. once we became popular and we found out at that time we had 50,000 people, literally a month later we had 62,000 of them , and we would like to think we’ll never get to 100, and then we had a 100,000 and we couldn’t stop doing that kind of humor because everyone was expecting it and it’s kind of, so we still do it… as a matter of fact when finding having a vagina way competition right now, I’m having trouble women to come in to competition but I have spoken to a comedian who knows a bunch of pornstar who is [inaudible36:40] of those girls…

Brett:

That would be hilarious… but good point there because if you knew that you’re getting 100,000 listeners from day 1, would you have continued in that… Would you started in fashion or…?

Vinnie:

I don’t know that’s a good question, I don’t think if I will be really honest with myself I might even have put on like a radio porn for everybody… So I was [inaudible 37:08] we didn’t even use pop notes if there is any chance of getting in and yes smacking into the mic and the whole thing we just steal cash, we’ve steal car and sneeze and fart in this studio, we didn’t think anyone was listening. Sometimes people get annoyed by am I tapping the keyboard while we give a show, because you will write the show notes as I will go and then that became the thing when people like complaining about it when more and more people came on, when we we’re turn Anna’s mic off whenever I’m speaking, people got upset because they couldn’t hear tapping anymore so it’s amazing what people will hang on too….

Brett:

So good listens to take… That was totally be yourself, being naked and don’t…. for you I guess it was all my slack here, it was a lucky, lucky thing allowed you to be is unique as you are and obviously you’ve going to create that culture, followers, and clearly you’re doing something right over there was 350,000 downloads a month, I’m sure you’ll be a half million very shortly, but look Vinnie take your moment now and just thank you very much for taking your time and day to get on. I’ll show and cheers so much valuable information because I’ve taken a lot from myself now we really excited to get some of this things cranking… Now we’re can our listeners find out, give us with a [inaudible 38:40] about your book and also were I can start listening to your podcast faraway.

Vinnie

Okay… I have a website vinnietortorich.com, you’ll see the fitness confidential there, or you keep straight to amazon and buy the book there for audible.com, you could do that. The podcast if you go thru the iTunes install the “Angriest trainer podcast” once again you can put my name in there, what else… Oh by the way if Brett yeah… contact me off the air, I’ll give you every bit of information we have literally mail all to you said you can get your book on, and if we can help you in any way [inaudible 39:34] I will help anyone solve problem solve… I went to publish you were they take the line share of the money and you take nothing

Brett:

I’ll repay you as scotch how’s that?

Vinnie:

You know if you could do that [inaudible 39:50 – 39:52] podcast… When I’m done talking to you I could be talking to the chick…

Brett:

You’ll be a men, you’ll be a men next….

Vinnie:

Please I am begging on you,

Brett:

Yeah! Mr. Love is still rocking!

Vinnie:

I need to do that chick podcast…

Brett:

He is scoping for vagina weight lifting… So what are the… to all our listener’s out there have you enjoyed the show today? All the show in nights and links to Vinnie’s book and so forth will be on the blog, so hit over the two fiitprofessional.com.au and you’ll be able to find it all there, but Vinnie’s once again thank you so much and that’s correct, if you’re going to need famous last words for us…

Vinnie:

No listen the only thing I got to say, “If you have a dream, don’t just dream, wake up and do it”…

Brett:

There you go! I love it! Thanks mate!

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Episode 22: Jeff Moore and his $42 million seafood empire

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In this episode Brett talks to Jeff Moore for Wild Things Seafood.

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Episode 22: Jeff Moore and his $42 million seafood empire

Transcript of EPISODE 22:

(With background music) Hello and welcome to Fiit professional podcast, the number one podcast for fitness professionals looking to build its fitness business. If you have low clients, more income and more free time, then you have come to the right place. Visit podcast.fiitprofessional.com today.

Brad Campbell: Hello Fiit Professionals, Brad Campbell here today, and I am back with another fantastic episode for you. I have a very good friend of mine. His name is Jeff Moore. We actually have never met in person actually. But with the relationship that we have wired around social medium Facebook it almost feels like we’re good mates already. Umm, so that’s really exciting to have Jeff on-board now. This is little bit of a different episode today. Now, Jeff is actually not even involved in the fitness industry, umm, other than his personal fitness of course. Umm, but, Jeff actually owns a rather unique business which I am gonna be probing Jeff today on some, some really good techniques, marketing strategies, those type of things that you could sit there and listen to, and find out how you can incorporate that into your own fitness business. So Jeff, a good friend from Facebook, how you doing my buddy? And thanks for coming along today.

Jeff Moore: Thank you very much it’s an honour to be here. I feel the same way and I think we’ve interacted for over a year now on Facebook and you know social media and big respect for you and what you do and actually was talking to my wife about you earlier tonight because it’s a business model that we really respect and something we are working our way into with her business, so

Brad Campbell: Yeah excellent. Really appreciate and I guess Jeff to give our listeners abit of an overview on who you are. So to tell us a little bit about Jeff Moore, what does he do, and why are you so cool?

Jeff Moore: (Laughs) Well, I guess it depends on who you’re talking to. But, yeah, I am a lifetime food guy. My family and fourth generation food and food service out here in California in the United States. And have really been in, pretty much, every position in the supply chain for food on the food service side of the business and that is the restaurants and the hotels, resorts, distributors, suppliers, sales agencies, the whole, the whole gamut. And I am presently president of two companies – International Pacific Sea Foods, is a company that sells primarily to food service in the sea food obviously but we sell to distributors and we also contract with major restaurant chain across the country. Your folks might have heard of cheesecake factory. The Cheese cake factory out here, VJs restaurants, it’s all in the states, is where we operate, I do have the coolest job in the world and that means I get to travel around the world sourcing sea foods and then come back and tell stories about. And that’s umm, I am a big story teller, and then I am also a president of another company called Lie Out Things sea food which is a direct to consumer clay, where we sell online and then we also have warehouse sales in our building. Once, about once a quarter used to be once a month and now once a quarter. Got a list of couple thousand rating fans and continuing to grow that business and absolutely love it. And then I am also the founder of a mastermind group that you are involved in, called the Thursday night boardroom. Started with four people in August of 2010. Just watching some videos of some seminars that I went to. And it has grown now to I think just at three hundred and forty members in twenty three countries. So I am a husband a proud father of four great children. Three girls and a boy. And just really feel blessed to have tremendous network of friends and you know people such as yourself that I interact with on a daily basis.

Brad Campbell: Excellent. And who would have thought, you know, probably yourself a few years ago thinking you may have such a rich and with people in so many different countries really is. I need to pinch myself quite frequently actually to be able to realize the opportunities that we all have as individuals to be able to make a larger impact on such a fast scale as well. Well, let’s just put it into context little bit here for our listeners. I know the scale of your business is quite large we are not just talking average fish and chip shop hunter here, we are talking quite a large establishment. So give our listeners just a little bit of overview of, you know, the size of the corporation that you actually do run so we can gain a bit more perspective on that.

Jeff Moore: Yeah, umm, the International Pacific Sea Foods which is the parent company, the mother ship if you will, is 35 million dollars in a year in sales. And we are on a trajectory to, by end of this calendar year, to be almost 45 million dollars in sales. So, pretty big trajectory. It’s kind of scary to get to that volume. But we started off, we bought the company back in 1999 from a gentleman who founded it back in 1975 and, excuse me, it was 10 million dollars in sales, so we have almost tripled business, in, well, we have tripled the business in about 11, well, now 15 years I guess.

Brad Campbell: Excellent. So in regards to that and I know you said it can be quite scary and most people go what’s another 10 million a year but that’s exactly it’s another 10 million a year. So let’s look at this from where I am gonna go. You bought the business back 15 years ago. What are the, what would you say are some of the key concepts that has helped you grow it from where it was when you first purchased it to now almost reaching 45 million a year.

Jeff Moore: I would say that the biggest factor for us as a company has been that regardless of whether are in our B2B or business to business space, or we’re in the B2C space, the business to consumer space, everything is P2P. We treat everything as person to person. We don’t spend a lot of time fortifying our brand in the traditional sense of trying to, you know, fix our logos, or make prettier fliers, or plan a sale pieces, or fancier videos, it’s really about optimizing and maximizing our relationships with those key individuals, that we end up being business friends and partners. And we have really been great at the type of partner, the partner is so overused, but the type of partner where if somebody, if one our customers is a distributor customers looking to go out and blitz the market and really make an impact in sea food. We ride along their side and you know where other companies will say Oh yeah we’ll go out and we’ll support you and they send them some fliers or a plan of sale pieces or maybe some samples and they go here you go, go out and sell it yourself. For me, you know, we get an opportunity like that just and they go what do you need from us and I go just get me tube sock and a roll of quarters because I am gonna be kicking your competitor’s ass with ya. You know, so we’re aggressive. But we’re, I don’t know, we’re just that type of guy you know. That type of company that they can always count on to be at their side. And the same thing with restaurant customers. They really look to us as trusted advisors. So they’ll call me and they’ll ask me about a piece of sea food that isn’t mine, that I am not selling. And they will, they’ll say, you know, hey tell me about swhypinkKC (this word wasn’t clear) and all and explain it to them like OK well how could we get a sample well it’s not mine but can certainly have their process, the customers not using the best available option and over the last six years since we have started doing this we saved the restaurant operator three and half million dollars in annual food cost. So I guess, that’s a, that’s probably our biggest USP is these five questions that we go through. And by the way, those are all on the back of our card, the business card. (Yeah). So everybody knows exactly what we’re looking to do. And we get there and it’s not about necessarily just trying to sell him something. It’s about trying to create, find and reveal the best available option for them.

Brad Campbell: Excellent. So I guess if were to recap on that is what you’re doing in essence you’re coaching your clients or your prospects into making the right choices and also on that if your company can’t deliver on that you send them to the right place, you know, leaving a good taste in their mouth time to time. So let’s look at those five questions. I have heard you talk about the five questions before but I think it’d be good for the listeners out there to look at and while, Jeff, going through these questions, look at how you can relate this to your own business model.

Jeff Moore: Yeah, it’s really important to realize that none of these questions had anything to do with sea food. Okay? They have everything to do with the customer. So when I was showing my business card, I gave my business card to David Bock who was New York Times best seller for 11 or 12 books now that he’s put out that are New York Times bestsellers. He looks at my card, he turns the card over and he goes what are these? And I go those are the five questions we ask every customer to turn them to best available option and make sure they’re using them. And he’s like Whoa! He’s like I have seven questions that I ask every prospective client. Can I put those at the back of my card? I am like Yeah, I guess you can, you know, and so these questions are simple, people are expecting these wonderful, you know, symphony to come out. I call it the blinding flash of the obvious. And so , umm, the first thing is What do you using now, you know, kind of get to the point of foundation where the person is right now, put this customer and we’re going out to see him what are you using now, what is the brand of sea food you’re using, the origin of the sea food, the label, we even take a picture of the labels, you know, we’re not fair, we have somebody else take the pictures and send them to us so at least we know we’re doing, umm, what are you doing with it. And it’s probably the most important question we can ask. In sea food, if we’re cutting portions or customers taking and buying a portion and then doing extra work with that is their particular portion that they can be using that fits their needs the best and so what are you doing with it, how are you preparing it, how are you menuing it, how do you pricing it, we’re really kind of identifying not just where they are now and what they’re using now, but what they’re actually doing the physical act of doing it what is that process and so we get to uncover that and discover that, what is their, for us, what their potential weekly or monthly volume that they use and that’s not really kind of to ask for our purposes, you know, if we care or not, you know, is this big enough for his team to continue the conversation. For us, sea food is the last hunt of food of man. And so  if all of a sudden there is scarcity, like right now there’s a world-wide scarcity of mokhi mokhi, frozen mokhi mokhi whether it’s out of South America or Taiwan or wherever. And so all of a sudden we’re talking to testimonies like yeah I goes I want to use 20,000 pounds a week at this particular kind of mokhi mokhi. Chances are that that’s probably not gonna happen. So, you know, we need to be able to help them recognize options before they get to a point where they run out and they fall short of a customer’s expectations coming in for something in particular like that. And then where are you getting the product now, you know, we know who the suppliers are, we know who the distributors are, and we know their threshold for quality, we know, you know, how they do their business, so that’s very important for us knowing who they’re working with now. What are you paying for, and that’s kind of an obvious like oh gosh you know maybe they’re not gonna tell you, they’re gonna lie or whatever, that’s fine. But in fact now they are talking about a certain species of sea food and let’s say  they’re talking about a pacific rockfish, and that pacific rockfish they say, but I am paying you know a dollar ten a pound for it. Since we know there is some adulteration or there’s some specie substitution or something that’s going on because those things don’t match so we have an angel to look at that and make that determination is what are they really selling, what are they really doing because we’ll ask these questions and we’ll go through these five questions and we’ll go back to the freezer or the refrigerator and look at that product again, and lot of times it’s not the product they think it is. So that’s a big reveal for us and that helps us understand and by the way we do this with our customer it’s not with our particular item or any particular agenda or particular item that we wanna sell them that day. And I think that’s where a lot of suppliers or providers of the service or product or even the deliverer of the message. They’re so hooked on their own agenda when they’re going into this that they forget that meeting the customer where they are is gonna help you guide the customer to a decision that them to their better self, to their better business and you’re going to be their guy, you’re going to be their trusted advisor, if you help them understand that they are the primary agenda when it comes to this particular interaction.

Brad Campbell: Yeah, and I guess, you know, the key takeaway point that I certainly get that to reiterate the fact is the questions, the better you questions the better the answers you’re gonna get and it all comes down to investigating, like you said, you’re gonna meet the client or the prospect where they are currently out on their journey, so change gear little bit there and let’s talk about marketing a little bit and let’s look at how do you go about getting client, what are your best strategies or best practices that you’ve used in regards to generating new business?

Jeff Moore: You know, that’s a good question and it’s always evolving for us. And I would say that our best avenue for us has always been word of mouth. It’s you know whether it’s a distributor or a restaurant operator. Just move from place to place and they evolve and they grow in their career and first thing managers and those people they move around and we build our business that way, but we’ve also built our business penetrating at our distributor so a distributor isn’t just a distributor they’re actually a sales and marketing agency and we have helped them pull through business, go out and paid new business and working through the distributor and using our sales agencies across the country but mostly it is really really truly been our relationship with the distributor and the large chain accounts. And you know to say all what we ran or add or we did anything like that we did something about 12 years ago. That brought people to food show and it was we had I mean it was a direct mail piece that had surplus response I have to tell you that story because that was amazing. And the most amazing is that we never did it again but the stupidest part I should say we brought, you know, several hundred people to the food show and you know kicked ourselves off and things which we were doing but for us it’s been the long relationships that have and the word of mouth that has carried us forward. There are some things that we’re doing now that are gonna develop some greater pre-eminence on a more broad scale. Market reporting, certain marketing reporting that I am doing, but beyond that it’s been good old fashion word of mouth orchestrating referrals.

Brad Campbell: So let’s talk about that and let’s talk about the word of mouth you know in the fitness industry what a lot of people will say is well, is majority of their business is bought on by providing your clients with good results and in your case, obviously delivering good sea food. So let’s talk about how you can orchestrate referrals, how do you go about in your businesses.

Jeff Moore: I think that what we’ve done we’ve got better at it and we are able to be so helpful when we get to, you know, we work with the customer that people are always looking to us to do more of that with them whether it’s a distributor sales rep, or a chain account. They’re always bringing opportunity to us. And when it’s when they’re talking about a lead or when they’re talking about a customer that they want us to go see we tell them this is what we’re gonna do, we’re gonna go through this five-step process or gonna reveal this process and reveal the great, the best available options for them. And we help the sales reps that are working with us to give us these leads, we help them understand the ultimate strategic position in your relationships is to be the go-to guy for education of the information and Czech Home said that couple of years ago but Czech Home is a master salesmen, the ultimate strategic position is to be the go-to guy for education of the information. And in the sales world, if you’re selling a product like sea food, or any type of food or anything, your customer is looking to you to be the, and you’re the go-to guy for any education of the information for them you’re in control of that count 24 hours a day 7 days a week whether you’re in the account or not. Because anybody if comes and says hey I’ve got a better widget, I’ve got a better piece of sea food or I got something cheaper or I got this I got that. You’re the go-to guy, then the next phone call’s to be to you. And they’ll say what do I, you know, somebody just showed me this and it’s a dollar a pound cheaper than yours, what am I not seeing? And now all of a sudden you could put back to power position whether you’re in the account or not. The customer’s calling you saying hey I am looking at this, what is this, what is different in your product versus what I am doing.

Brad Campbell: Hmm, excellent, and let’s look at that a little bit deeper there and go into how do you become that person, how do you become that person that your current customer actually rings you up to let you know that someone else has offered them something of cheaper value and you get that call, how do you become that guy?

Jeff Moore: I think it is from the very beginning, Brad. I think that it’s when you establish that initial contact you make such great impact when you’re able to articulate the needs, desires, challenges, fears and aspirations of your customer better than they can do themselves. As you look and see what they’re challenges are, for me whether it has to do with sea food or not I am so learned in the industry that I can see and hear the challenges that they’re facing right now and have a conversation, so from the very beginning, we establish a relationship with people that they look at us and even you know how this goes when somebody is talking to you and you’re talking to them and they start articulate it back and you’re like yes you get me you understand me and that to me is really where we started. I think we’ve been that powerful presence. But we’re also not doing it the same way. That we walk in and even with our competitors. My competitors are looking and saying this is I am doing how can we do it better. And, you know, they’re asking us questions like that because we’ve established ourselves as an authority and a trusted advisors. My good friend Jay Abraham says pre-eminence, you know, so when we’re able to establish that from the very beginning, and be able to articulate that and there’s an exercise, there a process to that. And we do that in the boardroom, we really need to identify that one customer, you know, the ideal client that you really understand better than anybody on the world, in the world and that’s what we’ve done we’ve been able to articulate the needs, desires, challenges, fears and aspirations of our customers better than they can do themselves, which sounds like a hard thing to do, it’s really not if you focus that way.

Brad Campbell: And the power in that is, you know, unbelievable, as you can imagine, so our tragic transformation franchise we have an avatar, a target market,a particular one client. We’ve got a list of questions, comments, a list of information about this person. So a name Sara, she is mid-20a, brown hair, etc etc etc, until you can really know and narrow down to the psychological side of things as well like what do they do at night, where do they hang out, who are their friends, those type of things, so I’ve seen the similarities and it’s you know a real big eye opener to everyone listening there that the same fundamentals whether you are a fitness business or on a multi-million dollar, you know, mothership, of sea food, like you put Jeff is. You know the fundaments are the same and you know business rules apply. So let’s look at, I always like to, to try and learn some lessons and get people around the world, listeners the opportunity to take away something, lesson of sorts that they don’t need to go through the hardships. Now, I know for example that you talked about, couple of minutes ago, that story about your best and probably worst ever marketing campaign, so tell us that story because I know there’s a good lesson behind that.

Jeff Moore: Yeah, there is, and I worked through the professional marketing agency, that was a directory marketing agency, that I don’t know if they’re well known I mean I did know directories spots from hallo peens when we were working with them. But we started out invite, we identified who were gonna invite for this particular show and we had mailers, series of mailers, that was going out to this group of people and there was 200 and there was 200 decision makers at major restaurants chains and distributors in the western United States. 200 is all it was. But they were major players, I mean the collective decision for sea food with these 200 is in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and so we figured hey you know not a bad deal so we sent out the 1st mailer, the mailer was like a tube that when you opened it up, it had that kind of sensor that played the sounds of a crashing waves and seagulls and things and it was tied to a border that was you know had this note in there it was letter that cam e a fishing boat captain and talking about how it’s morning and sun’s just coming up, the fog is thick. But you know we’re catching sea food maybe glovagla for the restaurant. And it was really well written but because it was the only thing it made it so special and beyond that letter, was the fact that when you opened that up, it made noise, made a sound, and people were really impressed by this right, this was by in, you know, 2000. It was back like 1990 does. And so maybe more than 12 years ago but thefunny thing was as we sent out 200 of those set, we got 300 responses. (Laughs). And we’re like 298 responses, and so the next letter that went out, now we’re inviting people to come to this show because we are giving away 3 days of 3 days show, each day we’re giving away a shark fishing trip. So the next mailer goes out and it’s in this kind of Manila on blow account wannabe male thing and it’s a little plastic box with a pad on it, and inside this plastic box was a bleached chicken bone that had an evidence tag tied to it and the story goes that our friend was fishing off the coast of California and a great whale came and tumbled out his boat and took him down and we’ve been dragging the ocean for days and all we could find was this bone and now we’d want your help, we want the hunter to become the hunted and now we’re feeling this picture about this fishing trip and the shark fishing trips that we’re giving away we got like over 400 responses to that and then the final one we sent out and we’re almost, we sent out 200 and we got total 500 sign-ups to attend the show and we’re giving them free passes to the show, on the whole deal. We had almost 500 sign-ups for the free passes from this mailing sequence. And it was extraordinary and we never did it again.

Brad Campbell: Let’s speak to that so, what was the one results from it that you found and secondly, the second part to this question is why haven’t you done it again?

Jeff Moore: Well, I’ll tell you what were the results. The results were that we were starting our own sales agency at that time as well as being an importer, a processor and a trader of sea food. We ended up building a sales agency was generating about 50,000$ a month in commissions, we generated an additional or probably nine million dollars in annual business from this, from this event and from what we did. And we never did it again because the show was so impressed with the quality and it just brought the show back out, it was a skull of the sea fair, they just brought it back to Los Angeles. And they were so impressed with themselves on all these high value customers that showed up, that we brought (laughs).They doubled the rate of the show next year and so we did it the next year and that was the year that we attacked Afghanistan. And so nobody is at the show and they said no, we’re not gonna, we’re not gonna give you any kind of refund, credit, you know, you’re in tough luck type thing. So we never did the show again, but we have list of people we interacting with and in the sea food business it’s not like a digital product, you know, if all of a sudden, Brad, you have your business and as a trainer and not you because you are the you show trainers and you’re obviously are the expert in creating the training business a part of it as well as being a trainer. But all of a sudden you got 50 new clients, you know, in a course of few days, that’s a totally different business. You know, you can’t do 50 more clients, add 50 more clients to your business or a 100 more clients. And just be the same person that you were before that 100 clients and so we really for several years were chasing our own infrastructure, were building our own infrastructure, to be able to support adding 9 million worth of new business and a 50,000 dollar a month agency. The business was coming in faster than we could really you know conceptualize it or scale it and so we were always chasing it and so (laughs), doing another part of those mailers! Now you’re gonna hear same kind of response, hear the crap part of us. And so it just and we’re still you know growing like we gotta grow right now like we are growing right now. It’s like where is putting together another direct mail and something that’s gonna explode you know like that. You’re afraid it’s like it was a great, it was great. But you don’t wanna, you never get a second chance to make a first impression and so all of sudden your marketing exceeds your capacity to serve. I can’t think of anything in business that’s more anxiety people working, because if you can’t, your capacity is served, is not up with your marketing capacity, then you’re kind of a little bit fraudulent in what you’re doing, you kind of hit the grabber, you’re making promises that you can’t keep, and how word of mouth goes the other way.

Brad Campbell:You bring up really valuable points there, Jeff, and first of all there’s that 9 million dollar lesson but I mean it’s that question right you got to flip the coin and go it’s not a bad problem to have I suggest but you hit the nail on the head there right the invite saying  that’s where the word of mouth can go the opposite way if people are trying to relate to that to the fitness industry what can happen is that there are, you would have heard of Group On, and all of those type of daily deal sites. Now, what happened is a lot, I guess I should say untrained business people so personal trainers who want extra clients who don’t about the business side of it, they don’t how to set up the backend technology side. You know, they go to a Group On place and get 150 people willing to join their boot camp for 1$ and then all of a sudden they don’t know how to funnel the clients through. And then, like you said, ends up in a big mess. At this day and age, with social media, you do one thing wrong, and the whole world knows about it. So let’s go back to that for a moment, Jeff, I know you touched upon there and coz what’s happening to me right now is I am going well, there was a 9 million dollar addition to your total revenue. What have you put in place since then and when do you plan to run it again or something similar?

Jeff Moore: Right now and I just have this conversation, I caught up little bit with Dean Jackson and Jaw Kwalish on marketing about, you know, the opportunity of exceeding our capacity. I don’t know what I am gonna do, something like that, that is so just significant and almost over-whelming, I don’t know if am gonna do that like that but I am going to do and I am publishing something called as the deep dive report and it is talking about the top 30 species of sea food. It’s literally though instead of these reports that come out from the sea food companies, and nobody can really make heads or tails what the hell they’re even talking about and the perspective or the context which they’re talking about, like if somebody says we’re having a strong year, that means what? That means hey business is good for us, right. But the person that’s reading it, so if the sea food supplier that in particular specie is having a strong year, that means that they’re I guess that’s a good year. It’s been a good year for Salmon, let’s say. So it’s a good year for Salmon, Salmon suppliers, does that mean it’s a bad year for the guy that’s actually got to buy it? Does that mean he’s paying more this year? So there is a lot of confusion when these reports come out. So what I did is I am able to repurpose these reports in what we call the deep dive report, story beneath the surface. And to be able to bring these reports to the actual user, the person that needs to know what’s going on in the industry the most and that’s the end user of the product or the restaurant owner of the chef, the buyer, and be able to provide a report that says what is going on, what does this mean to you and what should you do right now, soon or eventually, using absolutely no jargon totally unspoken and being able to explain what is going on, why is all this stuff happening, what does that mean to you as a restaurant owner and what should you do right now, soon or eventually. And it’s gonna, that will drive a ton of business our way. It will drive pre-eminence, it will well establish ourselves, continue to establish ourselves, is that kinda if you will celebrity trusted advisor and that will be a tool that we use going forward. But as far as the big demonstrative play of bringing 500 people to a show, buying them tickets, doing shark fishing trips, I think that literally filled the funnel way too fast

Brad Campbell:And I think if we look at that for a moment and we go, and there’s no shortage I am sure you’d agree with me there’s no shortage on strategies on how to generate business. But there are shortage of clever strategies that require less work from the business side, so for example, you talk about, going to set up the trade show, you know, all of those type of things and we’ve set up a trade show before we’ve done it, spent three days at a fitness convention you know we paid for the boat we paid for the flights, a combination all of those type of things and was quite a stressful exercise in itself and so now the results were great what we discovered was hey no matter what we can actually get similar or if not the same or ever a better at times results for doing a easier strategy and what you’re guess out of prospect out there is, when I use the word easier, guess is probably the wrong word. I am looking for more of a tactful strategy where now you’re goingback to the relationship building perspective where you’re gonna implement education-based marketing to get them onto your list and then once I receive what’s the next steps, what do you do, do you just pitch them some products or do you put them in a funnel is there any follow-ups to this, what’s your process around that

Jeff Moore: Yeah, well, at that point, there will be phone call. There is a funnel by the way, the funnel is such that this report comes out it’s like, it’s, you know Gary Harbor, it’s Steve like the Gary Harbor letter. So it’s not just a gorgeous saying but it’s always supporting by a website called the deep dive report on the website. And so there’s updates, there’s going to be offers, there’s stories that we’re telling and you were talking earlier about branding. That for me is going to be our greatest purport to be able to share stories of other people’s successes. And in that, as we build our list and we start to tell our stories about how restaurants were successful about our product, because that’s what I believe branding is anyway. Brand is a stories starring our customer using your product or a service. And the brand identity is the more about the story where the two – you and the customer/client live happily ever after by then consuming, continuing to consume your product or service. And so, to us, that’s how we’re gonna continue to build our brand is to be able to celebrate and share the successes of our customers and to be able to show what they’ve done. That is an ongoing funnel and we know how these if there’s consistency in the process, we know how this creates and will orchestrate leads for us and we will guide those leads by the way. You know when we’re going to say what is going on what is this mean to you and what should you do now, sooner or eventually. It is certainly gonna be that call or action, right down there. And that will be you know the we can help you with this, you know, we have a this or we have a connection with a particular supplier and Peru or wherever that is able to provide this particular product for you. So you could sell about you know you could continue to sell with confidence.

Brad Campbell:Excellent, so I guess for everyone listening there, you know, Jeff just just struck some bombs in regards to not just having a basic and online talk in a newsletter. You’re talking about sending out a, an actual, something in the mails, is that correct?

Jeff Moore: Yes

Brad Campbell:Yeah, so what’s happening there is that your customer is gonna receive something tangible and if we’ll understand that whenever we receive anything in the mail that is isn’t a bill or a speeding ticket. Then you feel like being given something of quality. Now, like you said, it’s not gonna be a beautifully printed kind of glossy newsletter, but what it is gonna be is, it’s gonna be quality that is going to be able help the end consumer who’s gonna be reading it. So, I guess Jeff, we’re looking here and I know time’s ticking out little bit. I just want to finish off with a couple of, I guess you should say quick five questions. Just want to put you to the test.

Jeff Moore: All right.

Brad Campbell: In case, whatever comes to you first here, ok?

Jeff Moore: Okay

Brad Campbell: Alright, so. Who is the best marketer of all time? Come on I hear you thinking, I hear your brain thinking.

Jeff Moore: Jesus Christ

Brad Campbell: Okay, what is the best business of all time?

Jeff Moore: The food business

Brad Campbell: The food business?

Jeff Moore: Everybody’s gotta eat, everybody’s gotta eat

Brad Campbell: So what’s in store for wealth in sea food and Jeff Moore over the coming 12 months?

Jeff Moore: While I think sea food is going to continue to expand in the healthy tracy arena and start to work with a lot of, dieticians and people in the fitness world, connecting with them, nutritionists, and we’re gonna develop a lot of fitness centres, and work with them, but do more on the healthy aspects of why sea food as well as grass-fed beef, I got a lunch tomorrow with the New York Times best-selling author and just a wonderful person, guru. That is in on TVC and PBS and everything so we’re gonna talk about developing a market place of organic and wild and grass-fed products. So that’s where lot of things is going continuing to evolve as a local go-to place for them. For me, Jeff Moore, I am gonna also, I am working with my wife and that’s something but a different conversation I’d like to have with you is my wife is a high-school counsellor, and she has a business where she helps kids get into college and she believes her mission is pure. Her mission is – anybody that supplied any student, any student that supplied them enough in high school to be able to get into college, deserves expert guidance regardless of their financial position. And right now if you wanna hire a private high-school counsellor, college counsellor, you’re gonna pay anywhere on the low end of 4000 dollars to 14,000 dollars a year to have a private counsellor help you through and be your guidance counsellor and we’re gonna, she’s doing that, my wife’s doing that for far less and it’s had such a tremendous success I couldn’t be more proud of anybody on this planet. And so I am gonna commit all my network and all my marketing acumen towards really helping her and that’s gonna be a business that will definitely yield a significant resources for us moving forward.

Brad Campbell: Excellent. Also exciting and look definitely open to helping you guys out. So, last question, Jeff. What is the best fish species around, what’s the best tasting fish species you’ve ever had?

Jeff Moore: Well, you’re asking Jeff Moore what his favourite type of sea food is? I am gonna tell you it’s the sea food that makes me the most amount of money. (Both laugh). But you know I have so many favorites. I am gonna tell you a little story though. You’re familiar with Cosco. Is Cosco in Australia?
Brad Campbell:No, I don’t think it is but I am familiar.

Jeff Moore: Ok, cool. So Cosco big box warehouse type store. And they did a, they conducted a study and they took all the wild salmon, fresh wild salmon, foreign salmon from around the world, king salmon, all the different species of salmon. And they did a test. A taste test with these global panel of experts. And the test revealed that the frozen Atlantic salmon from Norway, with a 4% salt solution, was the most flavourful salmon in the world. And it’s it’s as the taste goes and I would tell you that some of my favourite sea food I love is a good wild salmon. I really really love salmon. I like Chilean sea bass if it’s gone properly or padygony and two fishes people know around the world. And those, those are probably my two favorites. And I really can’t steer away, or shy away the stakes and big toolads and falaeds, and while I think we sell stakes and sea food and all sorts of fun stuff and have a good time and there’s a last one you know people will show up to a party and they’ll have cocktail strip and there’s like hey it’s a great cocktail strip, it’s my favourite, I don’t show up with cocktail strip. I show with a laskin snowcrab cocktail claws. And there are literally snowcrab claws that are fringed, so the meat’s coming up, still have the claw on one side and then I serve it with a worm drawn certified organic butter, churned with a fresh sea salt. And I think that one is probably. That’s the one that’s people remember.

Brad Campbell: You’ve got my mouth watering right now and I am gonna have to work out how we get you over for Barbeque (both laugh).

Jeff Moore: Yeah, great. Yeah.

Brad Campbell: Lot of nice sea food around the world but look Jeff, once again really appreciate you taking your time out in your evening now to get on the call and share your wisdom and your thoughts with our listeners. I am sure these are really good takeaways here and I certainly got some myself. So where can people find out more about Jeff Moore if they wanna investigate you little bit furthermore?

Jeff Moore: Well, you know, wildthingsseafood.com is probably the best way to get hold of me be at sea food side of it. But we talked a bit about our global mastermind that we’re members in. if you wanna connect to me through the mastermind and really engage and interact with some world-class marketers that can really help take your business to a new level. And nothing, we don’t charge for for doing anything, it’s something that’s just run by the members and such as yourself. And that is at thursdaynightboardroom.com, thursdaynightboardroom.com and we’ll start engaging you, just register there and you’ll get a little email from me, you can join our Facebook group and that’s probably the best way or my email is jmoore@internationalpacific.com

Brad Campbell: Excellent. There you have a team, thanks again Jeff, I will be speaking to you online no doubt very shortly, do reach out to me regarding your wife’s new project, really look forward to that, providing any assistance there possible. So until then you have a fantastic day and everyone out there remember go take action and make it happen.

Episode 21: 185K per month from a Podcast

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rsz_john_studio_400x400In this episode Brett interviews 7 day a week podcaster John Lee Dumas.
John is a leader in his field with his popular podcast Entrepreneur on Fire reaching over 450,000 unique downloads a month.
Last month his business grossed $185k.
Find out how he does it here…

 

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Episode 21: John Lee Dumas talks Podcasts

Transcript of EPISODE 21:

Hello and welcome to the fifth official podcast – the number one podcast for fitness professionals looking to build their fitness business. If you’re after more clients, more income and more free time then you’ve come to the right place.

Visit: podcast.fitprofessional.com.au today

Hello, Brett Campbell here, now before we get into this amazing episode that we have in stall for you I just want to make you aware that the fitness business blueprint is going to be coming to a town near you. So if you’re in Brisbane, Sydney or Melbourne then head over to fiitacademy.com.au/events.

Now this one-day business building intensive is especially for the person who wants to run a super successful six-figure group fitness business. Now we are going to be pulling apart the fit international business model showing you exactly what it takes to run a successful business. Not only that, we are going to be talking about the most up-to-date and most relevant marketing strategies to help fill your boot camps. So go over to fiitacademy.com.au/events.

Now let’s transition into today’s interview.

Brett: Hello fit professionals I am your host, Brett Campbell, and today I am back with a super exciting interview for you. This particular man has actually been that long in the making, this man’s schedules booked out months in advance, so it is now 5am, for me sitting here in front of my computer, on a Sunday morning as I record this. But you know sometimes in life you have to do these things and then take those chances when they are available. This particular gentleman’s name is John Lee Dumas. He is the founder and host of Entrepreneur on Fire, a top ranked business podcast that interviews today’s most inspiring and successful entrepreneurs seven days a week. John has been featured in both Time and Ink magazine and is the founder of Podcaster’s Paradise, a community where podcasters can create, grow and monetise their podcasts. Entrepreneur on Fire generates over 450,000 unique downloads a month, he has had past guests such as Seth Cohen, Tim Ferris, Gary Bailechuck and yours truly. There’s a recap of over 500 episodes, I believe he is at the 538 episodes as of today, and you can find out more about that at eofire.com. But John, I’ve got you for a few moments here today so we’re going to extract as much as we can from that brain of yours. How’re you going? Welcome to the show, John.

John: No Brett, thank you for having me and I don’t want you to try and get pity from me waking up at 5am this morning – I’m up at 5am every day my friend. Why? Because we as entrepreneurs get more stuff done before 9am than the rest of the world does all day!

Brett: I hear you, buddy, I hear you. I’ll preface it with it’s Sunday.

John: It’s Saturday for me.

Brett: Nice, excellent. And it was my birthday yesterday – so it was a tough one!

John: Ah, so you win!

Brett: I’ve got the pity streak out now. Alright, for the people who don’t care about what time it is for me or what’s going on right now because it could be lunchtime for you and you could be on the treadmill. John I want to talk to you, you run one of the most successful podcasts out there, like I’ve said, just mentioned you’ve had 538 episodes. Give us a little bit of background about yourself. I know I’ve talked a little bit there about some amazing stats but give us a little bit of background so our audience can get to know who John Lee Dumas is.

John: Sure, well, Brett thanks for the opportunity and I am just a country boy from the state of Maine, that’s a state a couple of hours north of Boston here on the east coast of the US. I went to college on an army RTTC scholarship so post college I spent four years as an active duty officer with 13 months of a tour of duty in Iraq. After my army experience, Brett, I tried my hand at a bunch of different fields. I tried law school, hated it, dropped out. I tried corporate finance, liked it for a hot minute and then quit. I tried commercial real estate, residential real estate, neither one really jived with me but, you know, I spent a lot of time, in the car with both of those professions and I hated the radio and talk radio was so boring with so many commercials. I fell in love with podcasts and I started listening to podcasts at every opportunity, just like your listeners are right now. My problem was that I ran out of podcasts. There were only podcast hosts submitting a show once a week and that just wasn’t enough foe me so I said ‘where’s that podcaster that’s doing a show seven days a week with a fresh episode waiting for me every single day?’ and I decided to be that change Brett, that I wanted to see in the world so I created Entrepreneur on Fire. You know, that was 538 days ago which is pretty easy to pinpoint because that’s an episode a day and ever since then, Brett, we have just been releasing an episode with inspiring entrepreneurs, like you’ve mentioned, and sharing their journey and here we are, you know, in 2014 still having a blast.

Brett: Excellent! And there’s just something there I really want to speak to, something you said and I hope all listeners could pick it up. You said ‘be the change you want to see in this world’. Now, that is so important on so many levels because what we can find is we can get stuck in our own ‘ah, why isn’t this great, why isn’t this happening for me’ and you just got off your ass John and, pardon the entrepreneurial fire pun, you ignited the fire mate and you got that party started. Tell me this, 538 episodes, how do you do it, like come on, like 538 episodes, I don’t know anyone who could 538 days consecutively ensure that there is a podcast up there. I mentioned, if there was not to be an episode turn up tomorrow for some reason or another there would be a meltdown with hundreds and thousands of listeners

John: People would freak out, Brett. So I do have a secret. Do I have to share it?

Brett: I’d love you to share it.

John: Ok, I’m going to share it. So, every single Monday, Brett, I do eight interviews for Entrepreneur on Fire. I call it the batching method. There is a great law, it’s called the Parkinson’s Law, that tasks will expand into the time that you allot them. So everybody that told me and said that doing an episode seven days a week couldn’t be done didn’t really understand or appreciate this law but I knew from my time in the military that if I scheduled eight interviews in one day on the hour every hour it would be long day, it would be exhausting and very trying, because I try to bring a lot of enthusiasm to each interview, Brett, but guess what, at the end of that day I would have finished eight interviews. It’s pretty magical how that happens. So, I since, basically week three or four because it took me a little while to figure it out just the perfect formula for it but I have been doing eight interviews every single Monday. Again, Brett, they’re very long days but I wake up Tuesday morning and the week is my oyster and it allows me to focus on other aspects of my business, the marketing, the monetisation, the growth, etc. that allows Entrepreneur on Fire to be not just a successful podcast but a viable business that brings in over six figures of income every single month. So, you know, it’s not easy and it took a lot of planning and it took a lot of discipline but again I run a seven-day a week podcast one day a week.

Brett: Mmm, I love that. I love the batching, the batching method. And what can happen, again, is many people, funnily enough when I first stumbled across your podcast I was like ‘jeez he must’, my initial thought was, and what most people I believe would think, ‘gee, yes, he must interview someone everyday.’ Of course the batching method is perfect. So at the end of the day you’re an entrepreneur and you wan to go on holidays, you’ve got to go away to places, go to events and if you have to be on a phone call every single day to then get it recorded, uploaded to your website it’s a long way around, isn’t it.

John: So true.

Brett: So over 538 podcasts, John, there must have been some big lessons you’ve learnt along the way. So what’s one of the biggest lessons that you’d be able to share with our listeners today?

John: Wow, so Brett, there are countless, countless lessons and there are themes that develop within Entrepreneur on Fire that seem to come up time and time again and one of the most powerful ones, that I would like to share today with your listeners, is listen to your intuition. Follow your gut, because Brett at Entrepreneur on Fire we start every episode off with a failure. I make my guest tell Entrepreneur on Fire listeners a story of a time that they failed and then I follow that up with them telling a story of a time that they had an ‘a-ha moment’ when they had a great idea that turned into a success. Brett, so often those failure stories come from entrepreneurs not following their intuition, not following their gut instincts. And it’s so many times those successes and those ‘a-ha moments’ and those ‘light bulb moments’ happen when the entrepreneurs follow their intuition and follow their gut. So, it goes way back to the beginning of time, Brett, we have this innate sense of a survivalist instinct, it’s very powerful, it’s subconscious on a lot of levels but believe me you’re intuition, your gut, is always trying to steer you in the right direction. It might not always, it’s not 100%, but it is honestly trying to, it has your best intentions at its core, your own intuition. So follow it.

Brett: Mmm, very good point you make there and what can happen and I put my hand up to this to testify as well I feel being an entrepreneur I definitely have a very strong intuition and, you know, at times what can happen is I can almost see myself wanting to roadblock myself because I don’t know if I should do that, I don’t feel right about it, it’s almost as entrepreneurs we have a six sense isn’t it, you know, and it’s many a time if you just look back at the track record, an this is for everyone whose listening now, look back at times when you’ve made decisions based off your intuition versus just looking at the pure logic of it and actually see what your results are like. Definitely agree with that one mate, excellent! So in regards to, we’re going to keep the theme here and by the end of this episode 538’s going to be the magical number for everyone. Over 538 episodes, now you, like you said, you start off your podcasts, I know, with a success quote. Now a success quote you must have heard thousands of them by now but I know you definitely have 538 good ones so share with me what’s your favourite success quote and why.

John: Ahh – I have so many success quotes that I’ve heard and I’ve loved throughout the eighteen plus months of interviewing successful entrepreneurs with their favourites but one that I love, Brett, because I feel that it is so powerful for entrepreneurs, for small business owners, and I’ve personally applied it to Entrepreneurs on Fire’s mentality as how we run our business so I know that it is a great success quote to follow and it’s by Albert Einstein: ‘Try not to become a man of success but rather become a man of value’. That quote to me, Brett, is so powerful because so many people look at life, at business, as a sprint where they’re trying to sprint after the money, passions be damned, like let’s go after the money, let’s sprint, let’s do this, let’s do that, let’s try to get to that end goal as soon as possible. And you see those people time and time again and have been in this camp, I’ve sprinted myself. Fail. They’re not passionate about it, they don’t have excitement, it’s not genuine and it’s transparent that they’re just going after that one thing. Then you have the people who look at life like it’s a marathon, something that they’re looking at for the long haul, that are passionate about what they are doing and truly want to make a valuable impact in this world and those are the people I find that really have that attitude of giving back value first not going after success but being a person of value and then a funny thing is both success and money follow. I mean Entrepreneur on Fire for the first nine months didn’t generate a single cent, in fact we were well in the red because I was investing in equipment and mentors and masterminds and courses. But by month nine we turned a corner and we had our first successful month because we had provided so much value that now the success started to come and when it came, Brett, it started coming in droves to were now we publish a monthly income report, and just last month Entrepreneur on Fire grossed $185,000 in the month of March, netting $155,000, and that all came from, first and foremost, proving value.

Brett: Couldn’t agree with you more there and something that I did want to ask you on that is when you first started the podcast, right now, lets take yourself back eighteen months ago and I’m sure you’re a big believer in ‘begin with the end in mind’.

John: Yeah, sure!

Brett: So, what was going through John Lee Dumas’s head when he was like I want to create a podcast and then in eighteen months we’re going to gross $185,000, I’m sure that probably wasn’t going through your head, so what was your game plan back, in the almost seems like yesteryear, when you started this successful podcast?

John: I mean it really was just that mentality, Brett, I was tired of doing things I wasn’t passionate about, that didn’t light my fire, and I just wanted to, for once in my life, try to do something that I was excited about that I could see myself doing happily three, four, five years in the future – and that was Entrepreneur on Fire. That was interviewing entrepreneurs, sharing their journey, their failures, their lessons learned, the steps they took to turn those moments into success, what they were successful at right now. Those were the conversations I wanted to have. Those are the conversations I wanted to share with the world to inspire millions to take their leap. That was my first and foremost focus. That was my end goal and I still work at that every single day.

Brett: So, let’s move onto advice. Now there’s always, there’s no shortage of advice these days. You know, a lot of people always happy to give you their thoughts but what’s the best advice, best business advice, that you have ever been given and how have you implemented that into the success of Entrepreneur on Fire?

John: You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. This is from Jim Rone. It is amazing advice that I have applied to my life, Brett. So I have joined a mastermind, I have a mentor, you know, I make sure I surround myself with successful and inspiring awesome people who think positively, who have a great outlook on life. I don’t surround myself with ‘Debbie-downers’ or Dawn-do-nothings’, like I just don’t let them into my life because they don’t add anything to me. They can go off and they can be downers somewhere else, but not on my turf, not on my circle of influence, not in my friends. And so who are you surrounding yourself with, that’s who the listeners should be asking themselves right now. Who are you spending the most time with right now? What would happen if you took the two or three people that you’re averaging out with right now who you know are dragging down your average and if you usher them out the back door and brought in the front door two or three unbelievably inspiring passionate people to add to your life, what would that do?

Brett: I love how you put it. You can usher them out the back door, so elegant. But on the flipside, John, just as important as the question who are you hanging around with you could even ask yourself who do I need to stop hanging around with.

John: Usher them out the back door!

Brett: Yea! Just usher them out the backdoor quickly or just make sure if you have stairs just make sure you don’t usher them down too fast! And again, I couldn’t agree more there because we’re always, I’m really big on who you hang around with and in all areas of life as well. You know, it’s always good to keep a balance and I have this conversation quite frequently in regards to ‘yes, I want to be successful in business and in life and so forth’ and it doesn’t necessarily mean that every person I hang around with needs to be a successful business person, so I’ve got a really good friend of mine, that you know, we’ve grown up together and he brings another part to my life that, you know, we’re not going to sit down and we’re not going to talk about deep business or marketing or those types of topics because it’s just not his area of , he just doesn’t care about it to be honest, we’re better, we’ll sit down and we’ll talk about life, we’ll talk about other things and it’s about I guess if we, I guest, pull it all together it’s about balance. So, talk to me about your balance, John, so, what do you do, what are some of your, I guess if we want to use the secret strategies, in you life to keep you balanced to keep you sane and to keep you working at your optimum, what do you do?

John: Well, you know, this is one area that I am not going to be a huge help on because I am still battling without myself. I mean, Balance is always something I strive for but when you truly do love, and have a passion, for what you are doing day-to-day sometimes it’s hard to turn it off. I mean, here we are, Brett, you know, it’s Saturday and I have eight of these interviews scheduled, I’m giving my Saturday to these interviews, I’m so happy to do it because I enjoy it, I’m looking at the beach right now it’s right outside my window, I don’t want to be laying on the beach right now getting a suntan, reading a book. I’d rather be here talking with you. But you know at the same time, you know, it’s not shutting off, it’s still working and business and their needs to be some kind of balance. So, you know, it’s a great point, it’s a great struggle that all entrepreneurs who have really found their niche do struggle with, it’s a good problem to have because at least it means you’re passionate and you like what you’re doing. I can’t, you know I’ve never, in the last, ever since I started Entrepreneur on Fire I’ve never looked at the clock and said ‘Oh my God, it’s only 2pm, I can’t wait ‘till it’s 5’, I’m always ‘how the heck is it already 2pm, I can’t believe I only have so many more hours I can work today before I got to shut it down, like this is crazy’. And then head back down working away. So, you know, I exercise every day. I make sure I get out on these nice runs along the beautiful beach here in San Diego, listening to podcasts, listening to audiobooks, you know, still consuming audio while taking that break and getting some fresh air. But, you know, it’s an uneven science and I do always really share the importance of trying to find that balance but it’s one thing I still am struggling with.

Brett: You talk, you make a very good point there in regards to maybe what we need to do is redefine the word of what balance means because, like myself, and you there saying you can see the beach through your window and you know whilst most peoples idea about balance is to go down and read a book and sit on the beach you’re actually more passionate right now about doing what you’re doing. I think balance, If we were trying to look at redefine that, we could look at it as long as you’re searching or understanding where you’re spending your time and energy then I think that’s starting to create balance in itself because you’re keeping a balanced mind and there’s nothing worse than the person who’s doing a seventy hour work week and, you know, they’re doing it not out of passion they’re doing it out of need, so, definitely love that. So John, let’s talk a little about podcasting here, seeing you’re the expert in this industry. Now, most people probably get a few light bulbs going off when you said ‘Entrepreneur on Fire grosses a $185,000 last month’ through a 30 minute podcast each day tell us a little about that and what’s, what advice would you have for anyone out there thinking of trying to create a podcast and trying to monetise it?

John: Sure, so it’s really a simple process to talk about. It’s a much more difficult process to implement. What’s really powerful about podcasting, Brett, you know, and really online entrepreneurship in general, is the ability it gives you to build an audience. So, Entrepreneur on Fire, the podcast, has allowed me to build an audience and that audience then tells me, Brett, what they need. My audience told me: ‘John, we want to learn how to podcast, we want to learn how to get guests for a podcast we want to learn how to rank well on iTunes, we want know all these different things.’ And I was like ‘Oh, I guess I should create a course on podcasting!’ so, usher in Podcasters Paradise, which is the number one ranked community in the world now on how to create, grow and monetise your podcast. We have over 800 members. We have over 140 video tutorials on every part of that process, creating, growing and monetising. We have a Facebook group. We do monthly Q&A sessions via webinars. It’s an unbelievable community but, Brett, I had no idea I was going to create that, my audience told me they wanted me to create that. I did and now since October of 2013 we’ve done over $500,000 in sales for Podcaster’s Paradise and where did 86% of those sales come from – online webinars – because every single week, Brett, I do live webinars about podcasting. We call it the Podcaster’s Workshop, where I just deliver pure value for 45 minutes on the world of podcasting. Then I do a deep-dive and do Podcaster’s Paradise and I pull back the curtains and show people everything about Podcaster’s Paradise and people love that event, they love knowing what they’re going to get before they buy because it’s not cheap, Brett, it’s a $1200 investment to join Podcaster’s Paradise. But we do bring in people every single week on that live webinar, typically to the tune of between $20,000 to $30,000 every single webinar. People started asking us: ‘John, how do you do these webinars? How are you creating, presenting and converting your webinar?’ and another light bulb went off and we just launched Webinar on Fire, which is exactly that – how to create and do a webinar and now that’s another product that’s bringing in legitimate income on a monthly basis for us. So, the real defining factor, Brett, is building your audience. To me, there is no better way to build an audience, no better medium to do so than a podcast. We’ve done it with Entrepreneur on Fire. We’ve listened to that podcast, created products and services that answer I audiences needs when they tell us what they are struggling with, what their pain points are and then we create a product or service that answers those problems and solves those pain points. You have a money maker on your hands so anybody listening right now that has a niche, that has a passion, can create a podcast around that, or can create a blog around that or create a video series on YouTube around that, build an audience and then answer that audience’s needs.

Brett: Fantastic. And, I guess it’s one of those things, I always, and am a big fan of dissecting and looking at different business models and marketing funnels. I like to go deep on that kind if stuff. I look at, for our business for example, we talk about lead generation being very important because without having leads you cant offer anything to them but more importantly you can’t get feedback from them. So, we’ve been able to generate over, in the last three years, over 330,000 leads into our email lists, which now makes it very, very, easy whenever there is a new product or something that we want it bring out or we want to ask our clients or prospects emails questions about what they would like to see and that’s exactly what you’ve done there, John, and I guess it was, you know, if we look at your model its you bringing people in on a free podcast. So, people get free amazing information every single day and then now you’re just being the vehicle to be able to help them do that so that’s fantastic.

John: Thanks.

Brett: Now, when you first started Entrepreneur on Fire, now, what was your thought process, did you think in your head, okay, we’re going to have coaching programmes, we’ll do this, we’ll do that, or did you just think you’d be pumping out a podcast each day?

John: I truly had no idea how I was going to monetise the products of services I was going to create. You know, we’ve also launched Fire Nation Elite, which is a 100 person paid membership mastermind that generates over $15,000 a month with its 100 paid members. I had no idea that these things were going to exist before I launched. I just have the sole focus of providing value, growing an audience, and then serving that audience.

Brett: Great. So what’s next for Entrepreneur on Fire now you’ve got Podcaster’s Paradise, Webinar on Fire, these are products, I’ve been watching your journey along the way as well, I must say, a very, it’s excellent to see someone like yourself really taking names and numbers.

John: Thank you.

Brett: What’s next on Entrepreneur on Fire because I know this is only the beginning?

John: So, we’re really focussed on our three flagship products right now, Podcasters Paradise, you know, which is a community to create, grown and monetise your podcast. That is a $1200 product, Brett, so we know that that’s out of reach for some people. There are some people out there that just want to create and launch a podcast and they don’t need all the bells and whistles and the communities and the monthly webinars that Podcaster’s Paradise creates so we just launched Podcast on Fire, which is a $397 solution that just comes with 14 tutorials, Brett, that walk you step-by-step through launching your podcast. So, that’s our second product. Then of course, as you just said, there’s Webinar on Fire, which is how to create, present and convert your webinar. So those are the three things we are really excited about. Now is all about focussing on marketing those because we know they work, we know we want to focus on them so we’re going to start marketing then using Facebook ads and Twitter promoted tweets and YouTube and Google retargeting. There are so many ways out there to get in front of the right people to drive them to our live webinars, where we an then get people on, answer some questions, provide incredible value and convert sales on that live webinar.

Brett: Excellent! Well, we’ll certainty be keeping a close watch on that. Now, John, I know we’re nearing the end of the interview here but before we get to off I want to ask you what parting advice you would have for any listeners out there who, you know, have a dream or have a vision or an have an idea that they really want to get kick-started just like when you first started Entrepreneur on Fire, what advice would you have for them?

John: Brett, I want to keep it simple – Just start! Wake up fifteen minutes earlier, go to bed fifteen minutes later, spend that extra time learning something that you’re passionate about. See were you are in six months. You will be prepared to ignite.

Brett: Love it! Now we’re going to end on a little segment here called ‘shoot, shag or marry’, okay John? So, shoot, shag or marry. I’m going to say a name of certain females and you’re going to say what first pops into your head, okay?

John: Okay, let’s roll.

Brett: Okay, Oprah Winfrey.

John: Ahh, shoot.

Brett: Myley Cyrus.

John: Ahh, Shag.

Brett: Kim Kardashian.

John: Shag.

Brett: Ellen Degeneres.

John: Er, shoot.

Brett: Kate Winslet.

John: Shag.

Brett: Oh right, there you go. Well done.

John: I don’t really believe in marriage and if I don’t want to shag the person I’m obviously going to say shoot, so that was kind of my philosophy. But, Brett, man, this has been awesome. I do a bit of jump as you know and just appreciate you having me on.

Brett: Thank you. Where can our listeners find out more about you, John?

John: EoFire.com

Brett: There you go, so, thank you very much John. It’s been a pleasure. Mate, you have a fantastic day and we’ll be speaking soon and to all our listeners out there head over to EoFire.com and check out John, subscribe to his podcasts and listen to it. Go and listen to episode 512, that’s where, probably his best ever episode there, I think, he had a guy Brett Campbell. Go check it out. Have a fantastic day whatever you’re doing. And remember – Just Start!

So there you have it another fantastic episode of the fitness professional podcast.
Now if you haven’t listened to any of the past episodes head over to fiitprofessional.com.au now and check them out. We’d love to hear what you think so please leaves a comment below the particular episode that you’ve listened to. And if you have a particular topic that you’d like discussed or have heard about on this podcast please let us know.