YAPClassic: Donald Miller on How To Make Your First Million in Business

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0:01:22 Welcome back, Young and Profiters.
0:01:26 Have you ever wondered what separates successful small businesses from those that struggle
0:01:27 to gain traction?
0:01:32 Today on YAP Classic, we’re showcasing an interview I did with Donald Miller, the host
0:01:38 of the Business Made Simple podcast, as well as a bestselling author and CEO of Storybrand.
0:01:43 In this episode, we unpack the secrets of building a thriving entrepreneurial venture.
0:01:46 This conversation was back in 2023.
0:01:50 It was the third time that Donald came on the show, and he had so many incredible tips
0:01:52 for building out a small business.
0:01:57 We talked about everything from crafting the perfect mission statement, when to be financially
0:02:02 transparent with your team, and why most businesses fail today.
0:02:06 He also explained why you should think of your business as an airplane.
0:02:10 Okay, gang, make sure your seats are back and tray tables are in their full upright
0:02:17 position because this episode is about to take off.
0:02:21 So Donald, my team tells me your new book, How to Grow Your Small Business, has already
0:02:25 sold more copies in a pre-sale than any other book that you’ve ever written.
0:02:27 So that’s incredible.
0:02:29 And I think it’s a hot topic, right?
0:02:30 The economy is not doing so well.
0:02:32 I think a lot of businesses are struggling.
0:02:34 So let’s begin there.
0:02:36 Why are so many small businesses failing?
0:02:40 Well, I’ll tell you how it all started for me, and it started with failure.
0:02:44 So failure is only a bad thing if you let it take you down, but if you let yourself learn
0:02:46 from it, you can get somewhere.
0:02:52 I actually, 11 years ago, lost all of my money, my entire life savings, and a bad investment.
0:02:54 I had paid off my house.
0:02:55 I sold my house to buy another house.
0:02:59 The other house sold, so I was sitting on a pile of cash, put it into an investment,
0:03:04 woke up one Monday morning, and my entire life savings was gone, and it was devastating.
0:03:13 11 years later, I had a $17 million company with more than 50% profit, 30 employees, and
0:03:15 life was very, very different.
0:03:19 And one of the main reasons it was different, and one of the main reasons I think businesses
0:03:26 either succeed or fail, is I 100% took 100% ownership of my career and my life and my
0:03:27 business.
0:03:31 Everything that negative happened, I took ownership of, everything positive happened,
0:03:32 I took ownership of.
0:03:34 I didn’t trust other people to make me money anymore.
0:03:40 And by that, I mean agents and speaking managers and the market, none of that stuff.
0:03:42 I took ownership of it.
0:03:47 And so as you talk about the economy struggling, that’s the economy.
0:03:49 Your economy is different.
0:03:55 So the economy has factors like trade wars with China, the war in Ukraine, all those
0:03:57 kinds of things.
0:03:59 Your economy is hardly affected by any of that.
0:04:03 It might be slightly, but most of us is hardly affected by any of that.
0:04:05 It’s actually more affected by our attitude.
0:04:10 And if we take ownership of our economy, our economy can do incredibly well.
0:04:16 So as I went from $0 to $17 million, I did a rough count, Hala.
0:04:22 I think I did 572 things wrong, and I did six things right.
0:04:26 So the book, How to Grow Your Small Business, is about the six things I did right.
0:04:30 So the book really walks through, and I turn those six things into six steps that you need
0:04:35 to overhaul your business and optimize it for revenue and profit.
0:04:39 And I just laid it out so nobody has to make the 570 mistakes that I made.
0:04:40 Yeah.
0:04:44 And I love your work, Donald, because you always just tell things in a way that’s easy
0:04:45 to retain.
0:04:46 You write so clearly.
0:04:47 It’s no fluff.
0:04:48 So I was reading through this book, and I’m like, “This is great.
0:04:51 I want to align everything I do with my business for this book.”
0:04:55 Because I also have a small business, so I really relate it to it.
0:04:57 Let’s go back to this question of why businesses fail.
0:05:02 You talk about an S-curve in your book, and essentially it’s a growth pattern that a lot
0:05:03 of small businesses fall into.
0:05:07 So can you explain to us what an S-curve is and what we need to look out for?
0:05:11 Yeah, well, the S-curve explains why most businesses fail, and they actually fail because
0:05:13 they succeeded.
0:05:15 And here’s what I mean by that.
0:05:17 Nobody gets into business to run a business.
0:05:20 Nobody, not a single person in the history of the world has ever started a business because
0:05:22 they wanted to run a business.
0:05:24 They started a business because they loved their customers.
0:05:26 They loved a product.
0:05:28 They wanted to be financially free.
0:05:30 That’s why we start a business.
0:05:35 If that business takes off, the business owner then finds himself doing something that they
0:05:38 never thought or never even imagined or didn’t realize they were going to have to do, and
0:05:40 that’s run a business.
0:05:43 So the S-curve is you love this product.
0:05:46 It starts taking off, and you start going up and up and up.
0:05:48 And then all of a sudden, you’re hiring people.
0:05:49 You’re firing people.
0:05:51 You’re trying to figure out health care benefits.
0:05:53 You’re dealing with customer service.
0:05:58 All of a sudden, you’re taken out of the sweet spot you were in when the business grew, and
0:06:01 you’re put into a different role, and that role is running a business.
0:06:03 And almost none of us have any education.
0:06:08 Even if you got a master’s degree in business, you don’t know how to run a business.
0:06:11 Most master’s programs train you to be chairman of the federal treasury.
0:06:12 They don’t train you to run a business.
0:06:14 And so we don’t know what we’re doing.
0:06:17 And because we don’t know what we’re doing, customers realize it.
0:06:21 Our products aren’t as– the quality’s not as good as it used to be.
0:06:24 The relationships we used to have with customers are now strained because we’ve turned those
0:06:26 over to account executives.
0:06:30 We ended up falling on hard times a little bit, so we ended up giving 90-day terms to
0:06:33 a customer in order to get bigger profits.
0:06:37 Then we ran into a cash flow issue, and you know what happens after that.
0:06:39 You just kind of– you bomb.
0:06:41 So that’s the down part of the S-curve.
0:06:46 Now that’s where those 65% of businesses, that’s where they crash when they hit the ground.
0:06:49 The rest of us, though, we do something.
0:06:51 We figure out how to run a business.
0:06:56 We figure out how to install the systems and processes that are necessary in order for
0:07:01 a business to not hit the ground, but actually come back up and start climbing again.
0:07:05 Those are the 35% of businesses that actually make it and go on to make millions and millions
0:07:06 of dollars.
0:07:11 So those systems and processes are what this book is about.
0:07:15 It’s the six systems and processes that you need to install in your business in order to
0:07:17 avoid crashing your business.
0:07:22 It will teach you how to run a business so that it is a predictable, dependable revenue
0:07:23 machine.
0:07:24 I love that explanation.
0:07:27 Thank you so much for covering that.
0:07:31 Before we get into the six steps, I want to talk about your experience, because we see
0:07:32 you now.
0:07:35 You’re leading a $17 million company, like you were just saying.
0:07:37 You’re hosting one of the most popular business podcasts in the world.
0:07:38 You’re a business guru.
0:07:42 But when you first started your business, you were actually drowning in your day-to-day.
0:07:45 So I want to do a little bit of comparing contrast.
0:07:49 What was Donald like day one or year one of his business?
0:07:50 How did you spend your time?
0:07:55 And then let’s contrast to this to Donald now with his six steps, all the knowledge,
0:07:56 all these…
0:07:59 We’ve had so much experience since then, and you have a whole framework around running
0:08:00 a small business.
0:08:04 So what was your day-to-day like year one versus now?
0:08:10 Well, about six years ago is when my business really experienced a transformational moment.
0:08:12 It happened in my driveway.
0:08:16 Before then, I’ll get to the driveway in a second, but before then, I was what I call
0:08:18 diving for dollars.
0:08:20 We were just trying to find money anywhere I could get.
0:08:21 If you paid me to speak, I’d go speak.
0:08:24 If I could get a book contract, I’d get a book contract.
0:08:27 I put out an online course and people would buy the online course.
0:08:29 Anything I could do, I would do.
0:08:33 And that started getting very successful, true to the S-curve, the initial rise in the
0:08:34 S-curve.
0:08:38 And we got to about three and a half million dollars or something like that.
0:08:42 People were loving my marketing framework, the StoryBrand framework.
0:08:48 We were consulting with giant brands, Procter and Gamble, Ford Lincoln, even the NSA in
0:08:49 the government.
0:08:51 We began consulting with.
0:08:52 Everything was going really well.
0:08:55 I had a mentor who is still a very good friend.
0:08:57 His name is Bill.
0:09:01 And Bill scaled up his company, his father’s company, into the billions and then took some
0:09:04 of that money and bought other small companies and was mentoring some of those CEOs.
0:09:07 He didn’t buy my company, but he was mentoring me nonetheless.
0:09:08 And I mentioned him.
0:09:10 I’d love for my business to get to 100 million.
0:09:13 We were standing in my driveway after having met for a couple hours.
0:09:17 And for the first time in my relationship with Bill, he just kind of looked at me a little
0:09:18 bit puzzled.
0:09:23 He knew that the $100 million number was really big and he didn’t think I was going to hit
0:09:24 it.
0:09:26 That’s the first time I’d ever seen that expression in him as he looked back at me.
0:09:29 And I said, Bill, what’s going on?
0:09:35 He said, Don, in order to hit $100 million, you are going to have to quote, professionalize
0:09:36 your operation.
0:09:37 That’s what he said to me.
0:09:42 Now, I’d never heard the phrase professionalize your operation before, but it rang absolutely
0:09:46 true as it’s ringing true to almost all of your listeners right now.
0:09:50 What it said to me was what Bill said to me basically was you’re making it up.
0:09:51 You’re making it up as you go along.
0:09:52 And he also said this.
0:09:57 He said, Don, if you leave this company, the company’s going to go down because you haven’t
0:10:03 installed the systems and processes necessary for somebody else to come and buy this company
0:10:05 and run it, right?
0:10:10 And that rang so true to me that I spent the next about three to four years figuring out
0:10:15 what the systems and processes needed to be and how the company needed to run.
0:10:20 And the framework that I came up with is actually really simple.
0:10:22 And that’s kind of what was missing in the market.
0:10:23 Everything was very complicated.
0:10:28 It took more time to sort of professionalize your operations through other systems than
0:10:29 it did to actually build your company.
0:10:33 You spent more time working on your company than you did catering to clients, which doesn’t
0:10:34 work.
0:10:35 You lose money that way.
0:10:37 I wanted it to be really simple.
0:10:41 And the metaphor that I came up with after I did all this stuff, when I was trying to
0:10:46 sort of have a controlling idea to bring it all together was the metaphor of the airplane.
0:10:51 And every airplane has, every commercial airplane has six very important parts to it, and they
0:10:53 have to work together.
0:10:54 The leadership is your cockpit.
0:10:58 The people in that cockpit need to enter data into the flight computer that says where
0:11:00 this airplane is going.
0:11:02 Everything is reverse engineered from that leadership in the cockpit.
0:11:08 The right engine is your marketing, and that marketing needs to produce thrust to get the
0:11:09 plane moving.
0:11:10 Left engine is your sales.
0:11:12 It needs to produce more thrust to get the plane moving.
0:11:15 Your products are your wings of the airplane.
0:11:17 Those need to be in demand and profitable.
0:11:21 The wings need to be big, light, and strong in order to get lift.
0:11:24 The body of your airplane is your most expensive, heavy part.
0:11:27 That’s your overhead, and your overhead needs to stay lean.
0:11:31 That’s why when you get into a smaller commuter plane, you’re ducking your head because they
0:11:35 need that thing to be small, and they’re squeezing you into those tiny seats.
0:11:40 And then the fuel tanks of your airplane are your cash flow.
0:11:45 And if you can actually keep the six areas of your airplane in proportion to each other,
0:11:46 you’re going to do just fine.
0:11:48 And it’s the same with business.
0:11:52 In order to get a business off the ground and keep it from crashing, you’ve got to enter
0:11:54 the right coordinates into your flight computer.
0:11:55 Those are going to be economic coordinates.
0:11:58 You got to clarify your marketing message and run a really good sales funnel.
0:12:00 That’s going to get your ride engine humming.
0:12:03 You’ve got to be able to invite customers into a story and close deals, and I’ve got
0:12:06 a formula for you to be able to do that in your sales.
0:12:11 You’ve got to have products that are extremely profitable and in demand.
0:12:12 Those are going to be your wings.
0:12:16 You’ve got to manage your team so it’s lean, efficient, and productive, which is an incredibly
0:12:18 hard thing to do.
0:12:20 That keeps your body of the airplane small.
0:12:24 And you’ve got to get very clear optics on your cash flow so you never run out of cash
0:12:28 or get surprised by a tax bill or can’t make payroll.
0:12:31 If you can do those six things, your business is going to do just fine.
0:12:35 Holly, you’ve interacted with as many business owners as I have.
0:12:40 I’m sure there’s times when you’ve walked into a business and they have a really nice
0:12:45 facility and they’re handing you all sorts of swag and 20 minutes into visiting their
0:12:46 business.
0:12:50 You have no idea what they do because they can’t state it clearly and you’re asking yourself
0:12:54 how in the world are these people making money and you realize they’re not making money.
0:12:58 They’re actually just living off private equity or venture capital money and all they’re
0:13:02 doing is living off somebody else’s dollars and this plane is going down.
0:13:06 It looks successful but it isn’t successful.
0:13:11 I have zero interest in helping anybody listening to the sound of my voice look successful.
0:13:13 I have no interest in that.
0:13:18 I have enormous interest in you opening up your bank account and seeing a ton of money.
0:13:19 That’s what I’m interested in.
0:13:24 And so these are the basics of how to actually run a successful business without lying to
0:13:25 ourselves.
0:13:26 This is how it has to be done.
0:13:27 Yeah.
0:13:31 And so back to my original question, I guess when you first started your business before
0:13:34 you had the six step framework, the business really revolved around you.
0:13:37 That’s why you were drowning every day.
0:13:38 Too much.
0:13:42 So what’s the problem when you can’t actually be pulled out of your own business and the
0:13:44 business revolves too much around the owner?
0:13:47 Well the problem is your business isn’t worth anything.
0:13:51 You know, if somebody comes to buy your business, one of the first questions they ask is what
0:13:52 happens when you leave?
0:13:59 What somebody wants to see if you want to value your business at 45678X EBITDA is they
0:14:04 want to know that you can go to Turks and Caicos and lay on a beach for two months and
0:14:07 never answer your phone and the business gets stronger.
0:14:08 That’s what they want to know.
0:14:14 So the problem in my life at that time was this business depended completely and totally
0:14:15 on me.
0:14:20 I was the guy who was actually necessary for this business to go and grow.
0:14:26 Today we have close to 800 certified facilitators, coaches and guides who go out and teach these
0:14:27 frameworks.
0:14:34 Now if I left, we would need a new host for our podcast and that’s about it.
0:14:37 We would need a new host for the podcast and quite honestly I think we could find a better
0:14:40 one pretty easily but I’m not willing to give up the job at this point.
0:14:46 So we’re way further along than we were about four or five years ago.
0:14:51 So with this analogy of the plane, I’d love for you to explain the rule of proportions.
0:14:55 Why is it that we sort of have to look at everything at the same time and make sure
0:15:00 we’re being balanced and not just focus on one area and another area at a time?
0:15:04 Let’s look at the airplane and talk about the airplane analogy as a decision-making
0:15:05 filter.
0:15:09 We know that we’ve got a good sales team, there’s a couple of people who are selling
0:15:10 a lot of stuff for us.
0:15:15 It’s really great but we’ve got this product and we’re getting many calls.
0:15:18 Customers can’t figure out how to log in or something like that and the sales team is
0:15:19 answering those calls.
0:15:22 That’s a common problem in a small business.
0:15:25 So we decide, okay, we need a customer service representative.
0:15:28 The customer service representative is for a really good one, you’re going to pay between
0:15:31 $60,000 and $80,000, you’re going to be right in there.
0:15:35 You want somebody who can grow and manage a customer service team so you’re going to
0:15:38 go ahead and spend a little more money on that.
0:15:43 That money, you’ve got to say, “Okay, is that money going to the right engine, the left
0:15:44 engine?
0:15:48 Is that money going to the wings or is that money going to the body of the airplane?”
0:15:51 A normal customer service, they’re going to save you some sales, they’re certainly going
0:15:56 to save you some negative chatter but it’s pretty hard to put that money on the wings
0:15:58 or the right engine, the left engine.
0:16:02 So what we’re going to do is we’re going to say, “Well, we’re going to pay you a base
0:16:09 salary of $50,000 but we’re going to give you some incentives for every retainer purchase
0:16:15 that is a subscription service that sticks around, who we know calls you and talks to
0:16:20 you or emails you or chats you, we’re going to give you 10% of that and we think you can
0:16:27 save X number of sales a year, which is going to get you to between $65,000 and $85,000.
0:16:28 What did we just do?
0:16:33 We just put a big chunk of that person’s salary out of the body of the airplane and
0:16:38 out onto the right and left engine and we can spend a lot more money on the right and
0:16:41 left engine than we can on the body of the airplane.
0:16:45 Whenever you go into a business and they’ve got this great facility with really beautiful
0:16:51 furniture and all sorts of great swag, everything that I just mentioned is the body of the airplane.
0:16:55 Really what you’re looking at, and you can see it within about 10 minutes of a conversation
0:16:59 with a business owner, what you’re looking at, imagine, “Hala, let’s say that you and
0:17:04 your friends are going to do a great week in Hawaii and you buy the plane ticket and you’re
0:17:10 at the airport, you walk out on the tarmac and that plane has a giant body, two tiny
0:17:19 little wings, some little rubber band propellers on each of the wings and fuel is pouring out
0:17:21 of the fuel tanks onto the tarmac.
0:17:22 Are you getting on that airplane?
0:17:23 No.
0:17:24 No.
0:17:28 That’s what so many businesses look like and people don’t realize it’s happening.
0:17:32 The way I hired my uncle, well, we clearly need a new logo and some swag.
0:17:36 Well, let’s create this website that isn’t very clear and doesn’t actually close sales
0:17:38 and is kind of passive aggressive.
0:17:42 All those decisions are how you engineer a really horrible, horrible airplane.
0:17:47 If you look at every single business in history that has crashed, what you’re looking at is
0:17:49 an airplane that wasn’t engineered very well.
0:17:50 I love this analogy.
0:17:55 It really does help you give a framework to kind of think of it intuitively and I’m sure
0:17:59 that as you’re making decisions, if you learn this framework, you’ll start to remember these
0:18:02 things and not try to make your plane crash.
0:18:04 Do everything you can to keep it flying.
0:18:05 That’s right.
0:18:06 I agree with you.
0:18:07 That’s how we got there.
0:18:10 In 17 million, there’s a lot of people listening who have a bigger company than that.
0:18:14 We’re still very, very committed to growing this one to try to get to that 100 million,
0:18:18 but the way that we will get there is we’ll continue to engineer a really great airplane.
0:18:22 If you’re on my sales team or my marketing team, you’re probably going to be paid a little
0:18:24 bit more than if you’re in the body of the airplane.
0:18:27 Even anybody in the body of the airplane, we’re trying to figure out how to incentivize
0:18:32 you to actually have you participate in the profitability of this business so that you
0:18:34 can make more money.
0:18:37 Let’s hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors.
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0:21:54 that I’ve ever made for my business, and I didn’t have to figure out all the nuts and
0:21:57 bolts of creating a website for my course.
0:22:02 I needed a monthly subscription option, I needed chat capabilities, I needed a laundry
0:22:07 list of features to enable what I was envisioning with my course.
0:22:12 But here’s the thing, all I had to do was literally lift a finger to get it all done.
0:22:17 And that’s because I used Shopify.
0:22:24 Shopify is the easiest way to sell anything, to sell online or in person, it’s the home
0:22:26 of the number one checkout on the planet.
0:22:32 And Shopify is not so secret secret as Shoppay, which boosts conversions up to 50%.
0:22:37 That means way fewer cards get abandoned and way more sales get done.
0:22:41 If you’re into growing your business, your commerce platform better be ready to sell
0:22:45 wherever your customers are scrolling and strolling.
0:22:49 On the web, in your store, in the feed, and everywhere in between.
0:22:54 Put simply, businesses that sell more sell with Shopify.
0:22:58 Upgrade your business and get the same checkout we use at YAP Media with Shopify.
0:23:03 Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/profiting.
0:23:09 And that’s all lowercase young and profitors, that’s shopify.com/profiting.
0:23:22 Go to shopify.com/profiting to upgrade your selling today, shopify.com/profiting.
0:23:23 So let’s dive in.
0:23:26 You gave a great overview of the six steps.
0:23:30 Leadership, marketing, sales, products, overhead, and operations.
0:23:32 And the last step is cashflow.
0:23:33 So let’s dive into some of these steps.
0:23:38 I want to dive into leadership, which you say is the cockpit of the airplane.
0:23:42 And leadership is basically in charge of getting everybody to an end destination.
0:23:45 Your business needs to have a clear mission.
0:23:49 And so a lot of people, they don’t have a clear mission, right?
0:23:50 That’s something that they’re missing.
0:23:52 When they first started, like I’ll give myself for an example.
0:23:56 I have a company, Yap Media, we scaled to $7 million in three years.
0:24:01 And this year, we’re on track to do $8 million, which is amazing.
0:24:03 And so my company is doing great.
0:24:08 And when I first started, it was a team of volunteers, and we were so tight, and everybody
0:24:12 had a mission, and I was hand training everyone, and everything was great.
0:24:17 And then year one, it was like, boom, we blew up to 60 employees, and it’s like all of a
0:24:19 sudden, like things weren’t as smooth anymore.
0:24:22 Like we’re still running a great business, but it just wasn’t like before, like things
0:24:26 used to just like happen like magic, because we were so aligned.
0:24:28 Everybody had the same values, all that kind of stuff.
0:24:31 And so now I’m actually resetting my organization.
0:24:36 I just went through a whole workshop where we set up new core values.
0:24:39 We’re having a new mission, all these things that you talked about in your books.
0:24:43 I’m like, oh my gosh, this is just so relevant to everything that I’m doing right now.
0:24:45 So let’s talk about mission statements first.
0:24:49 You say there’s three components that make up an effective mission statement.
0:24:53 I love this ’cause I’m literally developing my new mission statement now.
0:24:58 And the first component you say is containing three economic objectives that you can actually
0:24:59 measure.
0:25:03 So I’d love to understand why three, is it only three, can it be more than three?
0:25:07 Why three, and why do we need to have some measurable objectives in our mission?
0:25:13 I think the best formula for a mission statement is we will accomplish X by Y because of Z.
0:25:16 We will accomplish X by Y because of Z.
0:25:21 If you can, write that down ’cause it really will align your entire team.
0:25:25 The X, we will accomplish X, are three economic objectives.
0:25:30 And the challenge is, we’ve gotta figure out the three ways that we make money the most.
0:25:33 What are the three ways that we make the most money?
0:25:39 Most businesses somewhere fall in line in that Pareta principle of 80% of their money
0:25:41 comes from 20% of their products.
0:25:44 80% of the money comes from 20% of their audience.
0:25:46 It’s almost true for every business out there.
0:25:50 Almost 20% can usually be defined with three economic objectives.
0:25:56 Now, I only give you three, not because you only have three or because I only want you
0:25:57 to have three.
0:26:02 I give you three because the human brain has a limitation and it’s usually three priorities.
0:26:06 It’s very hard for a brain to prioritize more than three things.
0:26:08 It can do four, it cannot do five.
0:26:13 So three is very important, not because any other reason other than your brain’s just
0:26:15 not gonna focus on any more than three things.
0:26:19 So you want to figure out one of the top three ways you make money, then you want to have
0:26:21 numeric goals.
0:26:25 So when I say we will accomplish, here’s my, here’s our actual mission statement if business
0:26:26 made simple.
0:26:32 We will have 500 certified coaches, 900 certified marketing guides, and 18,000 people inside
0:26:34 of our online platform.
0:26:35 That’s it.
0:26:41 Buy January 1 of 2024 because every small business owner deserves an education in growing
0:26:42 their business.
0:26:46 So here’s what’s really cool about the three economic objectives.
0:26:49 The second we stated and wrote in our mission statement the three economic objectives, we
0:26:50 had a filter.
0:26:54 It was the next day we were in a meeting and we were about five minutes into talking about
0:26:58 an initiative when somebody raised their hand and said, “Hey guys, this doesn’t have anything
0:27:00 to do with our three economic objectives.
0:27:01 Do we still want to do it?”
0:27:04 And everybody in the room just went, “Actually, no.
0:27:08 We’re wasting our time because those are the three ways that we make the most money.
0:27:10 We’re talking about something that’s actually not going to make us much money at all.
0:27:13 We just had a customer bring it up and we’re trying to answer the customer question.
0:27:16 We need to just answer the customer’s question saying, “Actually, we’ve decided not to do
0:27:17 that.”
0:27:18 So you get a filter.
0:27:24 That alone will cause a massive forward thrust in your organization because now everybody
0:27:27 in the organization is trying to support three things.
0:27:30 Then the Y, we will accomplish X by Y because of Z.
0:27:32 The Y is actually your deadline.
0:27:35 I recommend setting a two-year deadline.
0:27:36 You can go three years.
0:27:39 Anything beyond three years is not going to motivate anybody.
0:27:46 So we set our goal over a year ago and now we’re about 10 months away from hitting it
0:27:48 and we’re on track to hit it.
0:27:52 So what a deadline does inside of a mission statement creates a sense of urgency.
0:27:54 You say, “Don, mission statements don’t have deadlines.”
0:27:55 You’re right.
0:27:59 Most large corporations don’t put deadlines in mission statements because those corporations
0:28:03 have mission statements written by lawyers on behalf of shareholders.
0:28:05 You don’t have a team of lawyers and you don’t have shareholders.
0:28:10 You have the luxury and it is a crazy luxury that you should take advantage of of writing
0:28:12 a new mission statement every two or three years.
0:28:15 And usually in your mission statement, all you’re going to do is adjust X and Y and that’s
0:28:16 really it.
0:28:19 If you don’t like it as a mission statement, just call it a goal statement and let these
0:28:22 two statements be parallel to each other.
0:28:23 Finally the Z.
0:28:25 We will accomplish X by Y because of Z.
0:28:26 Z is the Y.
0:28:31 It’s the reason that you’re in business and it’s usually customer-centric.
0:28:32 We are doing this.
0:28:37 You’re going to accomplish these three things by January of 2024 because and then you want
0:28:41 to state the problem that your customer has and how you’re going to solve it.
0:28:45 That mission statement aligns your team and first of all, it’s memorable.
0:28:49 Every single member of my team knows that mission statement where most people write
0:28:51 a mission statement and nobody remembers their mission statement.
0:28:53 Even the person who wrote it can’t remember it.
0:28:56 If you’ve forgotten the mission statement, you’ve forgotten the mission.
0:29:02 So that mission statement is really, really key and it’s the first part of your leadership
0:29:03 statement.
0:29:05 Those would be the economic coordinates that you’re entering into the flight computer.
0:29:06 Yeah.
0:29:10 I really like this framework because I think giving some measurable things that people
0:29:13 can align to, it helps people understand their progress.
0:29:17 Like, guys, we are way off our target and we have only this amount of time to get there
0:29:19 and we better hustle and step on the gas.
0:29:25 So I feel like it gives people a measuring stick in terms of how they’re doing towards
0:29:26 the mission.
0:29:29 We’re usually, like you said, missions are usually like vague and fluffy.
0:29:31 They’re just sort of like directional.
0:29:35 This is like very specific, which I think anything more specific is going to get people
0:29:37 closer to an actual goal.
0:29:38 That’s right.
0:29:42 And then you align your team around those objectives and people know whether or not
0:29:43 they are winning or losing.
0:29:49 When you actually state three economic objectives, your whole team knows in real time whether
0:29:52 or not you’re hitting them, whether you’re behind them, whether you’re ahead of them.
0:29:56 And by the way, if you’re behind them, it bothers everybody, which is exactly what
0:29:57 you want.
0:29:58 You want this bothering everybody.
0:30:02 So they’re going to come to you and say, “Hey, can we either adjust the economic objectives
0:30:04 or what’s our plan to fix them?”
0:30:08 Or if you didn’t have economic objectives, nobody would even know that there’s anything
0:30:09 wrong with the business.
0:30:14 And you wouldn’t have those, the instrument data on your dashboard to be able to know
0:30:17 that you’re actually flying upside down and heading straight toward the ground.
0:30:21 So those three economic objectives are, you’re not always doing well with them, but if you’re
0:30:25 not doing well, they still serve you because you know you’re not doing well and you’re
0:30:26 not confused.
0:30:27 Yeah.
0:30:29 So this is really good advice.
0:30:32 How about getting this mission statement to stick within the organization?
0:30:38 Let’s say you’ve got over 20 employees, you’re not able to one-on-one explain it to everyone.
0:30:43 What are the ways that you can distill this information to get it to stick with your workers?
0:30:49 Well, one of the absolute hardest things to do is to get a team aligned around the economic
0:30:51 objectives of the organization.
0:30:53 And we have a framework.
0:30:57 It’s actually on chapter five of the book to help you do that.
0:31:01 And the framework is five meetings that you want to have with your team.
0:31:04 And some of the meetings will happen every week, some of the meetings happen almost every
0:31:06 day, some of the meetings happen once a quarter.
0:31:11 But those five meetings are the all staff meeting, the department stand-up, the personal priority
0:31:18 stand-up, the quarterly performance review, and then you will have an occasional revenue
0:31:19 meeting also.
0:31:23 The three economic objectives and the mission statement need to be talked at about during
0:31:25 every all staff meeting.
0:31:29 You actually open up the all staff meeting with those three economic objectives.
0:31:32 That happens on Monday, once a week.
0:31:34 Then the next meeting is your department stand-up.
0:31:38 The three economic objectives get repeated at the department stand-up.
0:31:43 So you are instilling these economic objectives in every single team member.
0:31:47 Then also at the department stand-up, the five priorities of that department which have to
0:31:52 serve the economic objectives are also discussed and the team in about 15 minutes discusses
0:31:55 whether or not they’re hitting their five priorities so that we can hit these economic
0:31:56 objectives.
0:32:00 Not only that, but in the personal stand-up that every single employee has with their
0:32:05 department leader for about 15 minutes, they discuss their five priorities that serve the
0:32:09 department’s five priorities that serve the three economic objectives.
0:32:15 So you are constantly, constantly, constantly meeting, talking about what the economic objectives
0:32:19 are, what your department is doing to hit those objectives, and what every person is
0:32:21 doing to hit those objectives.
0:32:26 And if you actually install those meetings into your organization, it’s impossible to
0:32:30 forget where we’re going and why you’re so important to actually help us achieve where
0:32:31 we’re going.
0:32:34 What about the business owners who are scared of being like transparent?
0:32:37 Because I could imagine that there’s a lot of business owners that are like, “I don’t
0:32:42 want to talk about our financial goals or what we’re making, especially with like maybe
0:32:45 the lowest level employees and things like that.
0:32:46 What would you say to them?”
0:32:52 I personally am a fan of not hiding the numbers, not hiding how much money we’re making, not
0:32:54 hiding how many orders came in.
0:32:55 I don’t want to hide any of that.
0:33:00 The reason that small business owners don’t like exposing the numbers to their team members
0:33:04 is because it exposes the fact that the company is making millions and the team member is
0:33:09 making $40,000, and all they see is that disparity.
0:33:14 But the way you actually get around that or get over that is you actually give the entire
0:33:16 team a really great economic education.
0:33:21 So you actually say, “Look, we’re making $2 million this year.
0:33:24 Our overhead is about $1.2 million.”
0:33:29 That means there’s $800,000 left, and we’re going to give half of that to the government.
0:33:32 So that’s $400,000 that’s left.
0:33:35 We have to put X amount in our rainy day fund.
0:33:40 So at the end of the day, this is about what I make, and this is about what you make.
0:33:45 But if you can help us make more, and if you have ideas to help us make more, your salary
0:33:47 will go up as well.
0:33:53 And I just love teaching all 30 of my employees how a small business really, really works.
0:33:55 They by the way, know.
0:33:58 They pretty much know exactly what I’m making, which is a lot of money.
0:34:01 They also know that we are incredibly generous with that money.
0:34:05 They know that we bought a building that houses the business.
0:34:06 That building is incredibly expensive.
0:34:11 Yes, it’s an asset that my family will be able to own 50 and 60 years from now, but
0:34:12 I don’t get that cash.
0:34:16 I bought that building so that we could all live inside of this building.
0:34:18 I just don’t hide the numbers.
0:34:22 And then if somebody gets upset about that and resents that, they don’t belong on my
0:34:23 team.
0:34:27 Or if they get upset about that and resent that, I sit them down and I say, “Would you
0:34:29 like to run a business?”
0:34:33 Because if you leave me and you run a business, I will do everything I can to help you, because
0:34:35 I want you to experience this too.
0:34:37 Let me tell you what also happens.
0:34:39 Everything stops with you.
0:34:41 If that business fails, it’s your fault.
0:34:43 The government doesn’t come for my employees.
0:34:46 They come for me if I don’t pay taxes.
0:34:48 Somebody slips on a banana peel in my parking lot.
0:34:49 They don’t sue you.
0:34:50 They sue me.
0:34:55 And I just want you to know there’s an enormous amount of risk in starting a business, but
0:34:59 if you can make it work, it’s worth it and I will help you do it.
0:35:03 But at this point, you work for me and I need you to produce more.
0:35:06 With that conversation, why not just tell them the truth?
0:35:11 I think one of the reasons that Americans feel like victims, especially the generation
0:35:15 behind me and the generation behind them, are not going to make as much money as their
0:35:19 parents is because they don’t actually understand how money works.
0:35:21 And I want to teach everybody I can.
0:35:26 This is how money works and I don’t want anybody excluded from being able to participate.
0:35:30 It’s high risk, it’s high stress, but if you want to go for it, I’m all for you.
0:35:31 Let’s go for it.
0:35:32 I’ll help you.
0:35:33 I’m Donald Preach.
0:35:34 That was great.
0:35:37 So let’s talk about core values, sticking on leadership.
0:35:40 So like I said, I’m doing a lot of core values work.
0:35:42 We just came up with our new values at Yep Media.
0:35:46 So we’re scrappy hustlers, we’re obsessive with excellence, we step on the gas.
0:35:47 Together we win.
0:35:50 We have all these different headlines that we created for our core values and we did
0:35:53 a lot of work around it and I’m really excited to roll it out.
0:35:57 And you talk about similar things in your book related to core values and how everybody
0:36:01 needs key characteristics defined for your team members.
0:36:05 So why do you think core values can help you unite a team and how can they help leaders
0:36:08 actually make decisions more quickly as well?
0:36:12 One of the great things about core values I think is it helps you define an aspirational
0:36:13 identity.
0:36:15 This is who we’re going to be.
0:36:19 We’re going to be people who love our jobs, we’re going to be people who care about each
0:36:21 other, have each other’s backs.
0:36:24 Those are core values and so when you point to core values, you’re basically pointing
0:36:27 to what’s expected if you were going to work here.
0:36:31 Now one of the downfalls of core values is they’re always vague and if somebody says
0:36:33 our core value is integrity.
0:36:40 If you caught a bank robber in mid bank robbery and you said, explain to me why you’re doing
0:36:41 this.
0:36:43 I promise you they’re going to defend their integrity.
0:36:46 These rich people have all the money and I’m taking it to whatever.
0:36:49 They’re robbing a freaking bank and they think they have integrity.
0:36:50 So it’s just too vague.
0:36:55 So I like core values but more than that, I like two other things.
0:36:58 Key characteristics and critical actions.
0:37:03 Key characteristics are the characteristics that you need to have in order for us to hit
0:37:05 our economic objectives.
0:37:08 If I run a pet store, I need you to love pets.
0:37:15 If we run a software company, I need you to obsess about the easy, simple user interfaces.
0:37:17 And so now I know who to hire.
0:37:19 I’m not just hiring somebody with integrity.
0:37:21 I’m hiring somebody with integrity who loves animals.
0:37:28 So those key characteristics are more true to your team than they are to anybody else.
0:37:32 It’s where you actually dial down into the uniqueness of your culture.
0:37:35 Now critical actions go even further.
0:37:39 Critical actions are the things that we are all going to do together to hit our economic
0:37:40 objectives.
0:37:48 If I have a restaurant and one of my economic objectives is we’re going to sell 35% for
0:37:52 every client for our customers to come to the restaurant, 35% of them are going to get
0:37:53 a dessert.
0:37:54 Well, we’re at 15%.
0:37:58 So what we’re going to do is we’re going to say our critical action is we ask every
0:38:02 single person eating have you tried our world famous brownie.
0:38:06 We’re going to ask every and so as soon as you make that a critical action, guess what’s
0:38:08 going to happen to your brownie sales?
0:38:09 They’re going to go way up.
0:38:14 So if you have three core values, three critical actions and three key characteristics, your
0:38:16 entire culture changes.
0:38:21 If you go to Chick-fil-A, a fast food place in the American South and they’re spreading
0:38:24 all over and you say thank you, they say my pleasure.
0:38:25 That’s a critical action.
0:38:30 When somebody says thank you, a critical action is you say my pleasure and you position yourself
0:38:35 as the servant of the person that you’re actually talking to in a humble way.
0:38:39 Those are the sorts of things that create a culture and you need at least three critical
0:38:45 actions that one, stimulate your bottom line and help you achieve your economic objectives
0:38:51 and two, actually support and empower your culture to be defined.
0:38:55 You say there’s three kinds of leaders that you normally find at the top of successful
0:38:58 small businesses, the artist, the operator and the entrepreneur.
0:39:02 I thought this was fun because I have three main executives on my team and I thought we
0:39:05 each fit in those buckets and I thought that was exciting.
0:39:07 So tell us what those mean.
0:39:09 That’s why you’re doing so well.
0:39:14 Normally if your business gets past four or five million, you need to have three people,
0:39:18 three personalities and they’re very different, helping you run the team.
0:39:23 So once your business gets past, again, three or four million, these three personalities
0:39:27 are necessary in order for the business to actually grow.
0:39:31 And this is what, if there’s three people on your leadership team, I hope you have one
0:39:34 of each and one is the artist.
0:39:37 And by artist, I’m not talking about like a poet or a painter.
0:39:40 I’m talking about somebody who obsesses about products.
0:39:41 They love the products.
0:39:42 They love making them.
0:39:43 They love supporting them.
0:39:45 They love marketing them.
0:39:46 They love talking to customers about them.
0:39:47 They love improving them.
0:39:51 That the artist, my guess is, Hala, that you are an artist.
0:39:53 I am also an artist.
0:39:56 Now the other personality that you need is actually the operator.
0:39:59 The operator is not going to help you make any products.
0:40:00 They’re just not.
0:40:02 What they’re going to help you do is manage the team.
0:40:05 They’re going to help you manage the priorities and manage the people and make sure everybody’s
0:40:09 working really hard because the artist normally doesn’t like to do that.
0:40:11 They want to obsess about the product.
0:40:14 And then the third personality is the entrepreneur.
0:40:19 And the entrepreneur looks at what the artist did and looks at what the team is capable of
0:40:22 doing and says, “How can this machine make more money?”
0:40:23 Period.
0:40:27 If we segment an audience and send them this sales funnel, then we can make more money
0:40:28 with this.
0:40:33 If we actually run a live webinar, we’ll collect more leads and we’ll do this.
0:40:35 The entrepreneur is thinking of that way.
0:40:40 If you have an artist, an operator, and an entrepreneur on your leadership team, you
0:40:41 are going to win.
0:40:43 And here’s what’s actually very interesting.
0:40:48 It doesn’t matter if the artist, the entrepreneur, or the operator is actually the CEO.
0:40:50 It doesn’t matter.
0:40:53 Any of those, if you look at somebody like Tim Cook, he’s an operator.
0:40:56 Somebody like Steve Jobs would be an artist.
0:40:59 The company has done extremely well under both of those.
0:41:08 But I guarantee you, surrounding Tim Cook are really good entrepreneurs and really
0:41:09 good artists.
0:41:14 So you need those three personalities in the cockpit of your airplane using the metaphor
0:41:16 of an airplane to run your small business.
0:41:20 You need those three personalities in order to really scale the company and reach its
0:41:21 full potential.
0:41:22 I really like that analogy.
0:41:23 It’s really cool.
0:41:26 So the second step is about marketing.
0:41:27 We’re not going to cover that, guys.
0:41:32 If you listen to episode 120, which I’m going to replay on this podcast, me and Donald cover
0:41:35 the seven step story brand framework in detail.
0:41:37 So it’ll be right on the feed for you guys.
0:41:40 Way to find episode 120 will be a Yap classic.
0:41:41 So check that out.
0:41:45 And we’re going to move on to sales because offline, Donald told me that, “Hey, we got
0:41:46 to talk about sales.”
0:41:50 He said, “I can really help your audience if we talk about sales.”
0:41:55 So you said step three, left engine of the plane is the sales step.
0:42:00 And in this step, you have to make the customers a hero during the sales pitch.
0:42:04 And so, from my understanding, you actually didn’t like selling when you first started
0:42:05 your business.
0:42:09 So why didn’t you like selling and then how did you learn how to sell more effectively?
0:42:14 Well, I didn’t like selling and I’ve learned to like it because I basically stopped selling
0:42:18 and I started inviting customers into a story and I realized I didn’t have to sell anything.
0:42:24 All I had to do is make my offer extremely clear and I sold a lot more of whatever it
0:42:25 was that I was selling.
0:42:30 The problem with sales training and sales education is you don’t get adoption.
0:42:34 Big companies play millions and millions of dollars to bring in sales trainers and up
0:42:37 to 70% of their sales force will ignore it.
0:42:40 They’re only getting 30% adoption if that.
0:42:43 And so, I don’t love the idea of sales training.
0:42:48 What I love though is to teach all sorts of sales account executives, all sorts of small
0:42:49 business owners.
0:42:57 I love teaching them a formula to do one specific thing and that is this, write a follow-up
0:43:00 email to a customer that will close the deal.
0:43:05 So let’s say you spend a day with a customer, maybe you were at a workshop and there were
0:43:10 5,000 people in the audience and a bunch of them gave you your email address.
0:43:14 Whatever it is, what you want to do is you actually want to go back to your hotel room
0:43:19 or go back home, open up your computer and you want to email whoever you just had a conversation
0:43:24 with an email and this is what the email needs to do in order to close the sale.
0:43:26 First, start with the problem.
0:43:32 Here today, we talked about how we all struggle with X and I know that can be very painful.
0:43:33 Start with the problem.
0:43:37 Step two, position your product as the solution to the problem.
0:43:43 Nobody has to deal with this anymore because we have created X and if you buy X, your problem
0:43:44 will be solved.
0:43:45 That’s step two.
0:43:47 Step one, define the problem.
0:43:49 Step two, position your product as the solution to the problem.
0:43:53 Step three, give them a three-step plan to buy it.
0:43:55 A three-step plan, don’t overthink it.
0:44:00 In order for you to engage this, all you need to do is have an intake session with me where
0:44:01 we talk about it.
0:44:05 Second, I’ll give you a custom strategy on what I think you should do and three, if
0:44:07 you want to move forward, you and I can move forward.
0:44:11 You want to remove the cognitive dissonance by giving people baby steps.
0:44:15 Then step four is actually to paint the negative stakes.
0:44:19 I don’t want to see you struggle with this anymore and I know if you don’t buy my product,
0:44:23 you’re going to keep struggling with it and a month from now, a year from now, this is
0:44:24 going to be even more painful.
0:44:26 Let’s deal with it now.
0:44:28 Step four are negative stakes.
0:44:30 Step five is positive stakes.
0:44:34 However, with my product, this is the life that you’re going to experience and here’s
0:44:36 how great your life will be.
0:44:39 Then finally, step six, ask for the sale.
0:44:42 I think you should buy this product today.
0:44:43 It’s the right product for you.
0:44:46 Click here and enjoy this special offer.
0:44:47 Let me just summarize it.
0:44:51 Start with the problem, position your product as a solution, give them a three-step plan,
0:44:55 paint the negative stakes, paint the positive stakes and call the customer to action.
0:45:00 If you write that follow-up email, you will close way more sales.
0:45:04 Not only will you close more sales, but you will have just learned how to sell.
0:45:08 And the way you learn how to sell is you find out what the customer’s problem is and you
0:45:10 position your product as a solution.
0:45:14 If you do it five times in an email, you will never have a sales conversation again.
0:45:15 That’s the same.
0:45:19 For instance, if you work at a mattress store, because we work with Tim Persily to train
0:45:22 some of their salespeople, you don’t want to go up and say, “What brought you in today?”
0:45:23 You know what brought them in today.
0:45:25 They’re looking for a mattress.
0:45:27 You want to go up and you say, “Hey, welcome into the store.
0:45:28 Let me just ask you.
0:45:30 What do you hate about your current mattress?”
0:45:32 If you say, “What do you hate about your current mattress?”
0:45:35 They’re going to say, “Well, it’s too soft in the middle or it’s hurting my back or
0:45:37 it’s too warm at night.”
0:45:38 And whatever.
0:45:39 And you say, “Great.
0:45:41 I’ve got three things, three mattresses here that will solve that.
0:45:44 Let’s take a look at them because they’re at different price points and they have some
0:45:45 different things.”
0:45:50 That’s a mile into the sales conversation and when you ask what brings you in today,
0:45:51 you’re nowhere.
0:45:52 You’re absolutely nowhere.
0:45:53 They’re going to try to avoid you.
0:45:55 That’s how you sell and it’s all you need to know.
0:45:59 We’ll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors.
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0:47:06 You know, it’s interesting, Hala.
0:47:12 I just spoke to 250 sales reps for a big, probably $1.4 billion company, 250 sales
0:47:13 reps in the room.
0:47:19 And I said, “Hey, raise your hand if there’s a customer that hasn’t made a decision yet.
0:47:21 You’ve been interacting with them, but they’re sitting the fence.
0:47:23 250 hands go up.
0:47:24 That’s a sales rep’s job.”
0:47:26 So everybody in the room had that.
0:47:27 I said, “Open your computer.
0:47:31 We are literally going to write them an email right now.”
0:47:34 And we spent the next hour formulating 250 emails.
0:47:38 I said, “Hit send,” and then I needed to get off the stage because I had a flight.
0:47:41 So the Chief Revenue Officer got up and said, “Don, thanks,” and I rolled my bag out of
0:47:42 the back of the door.
0:47:45 Got a call two days later to my staff.
0:47:47 Chief Revenue Officer said, “I’ve never seen anything like it.
0:47:50 We closed $2.4 million worth of sales in the room.”
0:47:52 Wow.
0:47:55 And it’s not because we coerced the audience into buying anything.
0:47:57 It’s not because we manipulated anybody.
0:48:01 What those customers were doing, we’re sitting the fence because they didn’t fully understand
0:48:03 why they needed that product.
0:48:06 And every sales rep in that room made it clear.
0:48:08 And now, they tasted that success.
0:48:11 I’m sure they’ve made tens of millions now because that was over a month ago.
0:48:16 And they’re starting to have very different sales conversations and sending out very different
0:48:19 proposals and giving very different presentations.
0:48:24 That formula works for follow-up emails, works for in-person conversations, works for keynote
0:48:27 presentations, works for elevator pitches, works for proposals.
0:48:30 That’s the formula you want to use to close sales.
0:48:32 This reminds me of something that Erica Dewan came on my show.
0:48:35 She’s a workplace productivity expert.
0:48:37 And so much of our communications are digital now.
0:48:43 So much of what we do in our work is reading screens, reading Slack, reading email.
0:48:46 And she says that writing clearly is the new empathy.
0:48:49 It used to be that speaking clearly was the new empathy and listening was the new empathy.
0:48:53 Now, it’s writing clearly is the new empathy.
0:48:56 You can’t write, especially a response email.
0:49:00 If you’ve already started a conversation with somebody, you can’t write a good email without
0:49:02 having done a very good job listening.
0:49:07 If I said, “Hala, you and I had a great conversation, congratulations on your $8 million.
0:49:08 I think that’s incredible.
0:49:13 I heard you when you said you have 60 employees and things have gotten more chaotic.
0:49:15 I felt your pain.”
0:49:19 Chapter five of my new book will walk you through five meetings that will completely revolutionize
0:49:20 your staff.
0:49:23 And when in about three months, you won’t feel that pain anymore if you run these five
0:49:24 meetings.
0:49:28 That’s me listening and saying, “Well, here’s the part of my product that would solve Hala’s
0:49:29 problem.”
0:49:30 You start doing that.
0:49:35 You have a lot more books and a lot more leashes for dogs and a lot more nutritional supplements
0:49:36 or whatever it is that you sell.
0:49:37 You’re going to sell a lot more of them.
0:49:38 Yeah.
0:49:40 So let’s talk about the language of sales a little bit.
0:49:45 Why do we need to think in story and how do we speak in story when we’re trying to sell
0:49:47 to potential customers?
0:49:50 Well, story is the universal language.
0:49:54 And when you’re having any kind of conversation, whether it’s getting together with a friend
0:49:59 to catch up or it’s a sales conversation or even if it’s a conversation with your therapist,
0:50:04 what your brain is doing the entire time is trying to organize events into the structure
0:50:05 of story.
0:50:09 Your brain is subconsciously figuring out who the hero is, what the problem they’re
0:50:13 up against is, how they’re going to get out of that problem, what the happy ever life will
0:50:15 look like if they do get out of that problem.
0:50:21 So because most people are not actually very good communicators, it’s very hard to figure
0:50:23 out what the story is actually about.
0:50:29 But if we actually lay out our communication in the form of story, the person that we’re
0:50:33 talking to doesn’t have to use any mental bandwidth in order to understand what we’re
0:50:34 talking about.
0:50:38 And that gives the brain a really pleasant feeling because the brain doesn’t have to
0:50:40 work hard to organize the information.
0:50:43 We tend to follow leaders who are able to do that.
0:50:47 And we tend to buy products from account executives who are able to do that.
0:50:52 Can you give us an example in terms of speaking in story versus not?
0:50:56 Like just, I don’t know if this is too hard to do, but like if you were to sell something,
0:51:01 trying to sell it in a way that’s not with a story versus one that is.
0:51:06 Well, we’ve worked with a number of politicians on the Republican and Democratic side.
0:51:07 I’m not a Republican or Democrat.
0:51:11 I find myself pretty much squarely in the middle and don’t really like either party because
0:51:13 I think they’re destroying the country.
0:51:16 But I’ve gone in and I’ve helped some folks.
0:51:22 And a few elections ago, Hillary Clinton’s tagline was, “I’m with her.”
0:51:26 Okay, well, if I’m with her, the story is about her, it’s not about me.
0:51:27 I don’t know where we’re going.
0:51:29 I’m with her, but I don’t know where we’re going.
0:51:31 I don’t know what we’re trying to accomplish.
0:51:33 I don’t know what’s in it for me if we get there.
0:51:35 In fact, I don’t even know where there is.
0:51:38 She did not effectively invite people into a story.
0:51:41 And so it’s not that people liked Donald Trump more.
0:51:44 It’s just that they didn’t show up in the polls to vote for her.
0:51:47 She had an incredibly low turnout.
0:51:48 Donald Trump also wasn’t all that much better.
0:51:52 He also had an incredibly low turnout, but he just had more people than she did.
0:51:57 And then you have Joe Biden later on who’s running against January 6th.
0:52:00 He’s running, he’s running, not against January 6th, he’s running against the spirit that
0:52:02 led to January 6th.
0:52:05 He’s running against, you know, he had all sorts of villainous things that he could
0:52:07 point out that he’s running against.
0:52:09 It was a clearer narrative.
0:52:14 And so it’s very important that we understand unless we’re inviting people into a very clear
0:52:21 story in which they, they, they, they get to be the good character winning the day to
0:52:25 experience a better life, people are going to tune you out.
0:52:28 You will see examples of that everywhere now that I just said it.
0:52:29 Yeah.
0:52:35 So then the main principle of this step, Donald, is to make the person that you’re selling
0:52:37 to the hero of the story.
0:52:41 Can you just talk to us about that a little bit of like how you position somebody as a
0:52:43 hero when you’re selling?
0:52:44 Yeah.
0:52:48 Well, you know, the reality is you probably talked to people, Hala, and I may have been
0:52:51 one of them at some point because I’m not perfect, but you probably talked to people
0:52:58 and you felt like the story was all about them and it really wasn’t about you.
0:53:01 And we might call that person a narcissist or something like that.
0:53:06 That’s because they see life through a prism and the prism is they are the hero trying to
0:53:07 win.
0:53:10 But the reason that that rubs us wrong, because it really shouldn’t rub us wrong, but the
0:53:15 reason that it rubs us wrong is because them winning is not helping you win.
0:53:19 In order to sit here and listen to this person who’s all about them winning means that you
0:53:22 don’t get to win and it’s not a win-win scenario.
0:53:24 It’s not a mutual thing.
0:53:29 What we’re actually looking for is somebody who enters into our story and helps us win.
0:53:31 So let me give you an example.
0:53:35 Let’s say you’re at a cocktail party and you meet two people who do the exact same thing.
0:53:37 The first person you meet, you say, “What do you do for a living?”
0:53:39 And they say, “Well, I’m an at-home chef.
0:53:40 I come to your house and cook.”
0:53:43 You’d probably say something like, “Really, where did you go to school?
0:53:44 Where did you learn to cook?
0:53:46 Have you ever cooked for anybody famous?
0:53:48 What are your favorite restaurants?”
0:53:49 You’d make casual conversation.
0:53:52 And at the end of the day, you’d think, “Well, that’s a really kind person.”
0:53:57 Two hours later, you meet somebody and they do the exact same thing, charge the exact
0:54:00 same amount of money, and have the exact same quality food.
0:54:01 And you say, “What do you do?”
0:54:04 And they say, “Well, you know how most families don’t eat together anymore because they don’t
0:54:05 have time?
0:54:08 And whenever they do eat together, they don’t eat healthy?
0:54:09 I’m an at-home chef.
0:54:13 I come to your house and cook so your family can sit around the table, look each other
0:54:15 in the eye, actually connect.
0:54:19 And at the end of the meal, you don’t have to clean anything up, and you don’t have to
0:54:23 feel bad because what you ate was actually really good for you, and it also tasted good.”
0:54:25 Who’s going to do more business, chef one or chef two?
0:54:27 Chef two, of course.
0:54:29 Chef one told their story.
0:54:33 Chef two invited the customer into a story in which they could play the hero, buying
0:54:37 their product in order to experience a climactic scene.
0:54:39 That is always going to win.
0:54:42 So one last question on sales, and then we’re going to close this out.
0:54:46 So something that I read in your book that I thought was really interesting, and it reminded
0:54:51 me of something that Jay Samet taught me a long time ago, or Jay Abraham actually is
0:54:52 the one who taught me about it.
0:54:53 He’s like a big marketing guru.
0:54:59 And you actually turned down customers whose products and services they want to buy them
0:55:03 from you, but you actually feel like it’s not a good fit for them.
0:55:07 You’ll actually not sell something even though you can sell it.
0:55:08 Why do you do that?
0:55:10 I do that to protect my reputation.
0:55:12 And also, that’s the selfish reason I do it.
0:55:15 The other reason I do it is because they’re not going to get any value out of this.
0:55:19 To bring me in for a day, we do these things called strategy sessions where I either come
0:55:23 to you for a day or you come here to Nashville for a day.
0:55:27 They’re really expensive, and they’re expensive because for me to take a day and not write
0:55:30 a book, the opportunity cost on that is very high.
0:55:36 So what we promise people is that, “Look, I will only do this if we really believe that
0:55:41 easily, easily, easily, easily, you can make a 10x return on your investment.
0:55:46 So if you’re going to pay me X amount of dollars to be here, we need to talk on the phone and
0:55:48 make sure you can make a 10x return on your investment.”
0:55:52 So that means do you have a list of emails that we can email?
0:55:55 Is your website pretty messed up so that we can fix it in a day?
0:55:57 Can we write some emails?
0:55:59 Can we come up with the three economic objectives?
0:56:01 We need to get a massive, massive return.
0:56:06 Well, I’ve never had to write anybody a check, but I do guarantee you’re going to get this
0:56:09 10x return or I’m going to give you your money back.
0:56:10 So there’s two things that I do.
0:56:14 One is if we have that call and I don’t think I can make you a pretty enormous amount of
0:56:17 money, I just say, “Listen, I’m not your guy.
0:56:19 I just don’t think we can do it.”
0:56:21 Sometimes the reason I don’t think we can do it is because you’re already doing so incredibly
0:56:22 well.
0:56:23 It’s like, “I can’t improve on what you’re doing.
0:56:24 You’re doing well.”
0:56:28 Or you haven’t released the product yet or it sounds like you’ve got dysfunction
0:56:31 on your team or whatever.
0:56:34 But if I look at it and go, “Yeah, you’ve got a great email list.
0:56:35 Your website is very unclear.
0:56:37 We’re going to make a ton of money when we clean that up.
0:56:38 We’re going to write five emails.
0:56:40 They’re going to make you a truckload of cash.
0:56:41 Let’s go.”
0:56:43 Then we do it.
0:56:45 So there’s people who I say, “I can’t do it for you.”
0:56:47 And people who I say, “Look, I’m going to do it.
0:56:49 You’ve got an honor system here.
0:56:51 All you got to do is call me and say, “Don, we didn’t make our money and I’m writing
0:56:52 you a check.”
0:56:54 And I’m going to write you a check for whatever you paid me.
0:56:57 And the main reason I’m writing is I never, ever want anybody to say, “I lost money on
0:56:58 Don Miller.”
0:56:59 I just don’t want them saying it.
0:57:01 So I’ll give you your money back so you can never say that.
0:57:06 I think that’s one of the ways I’ve built a little bit of trust in the business community
0:57:09 because the bottom line is the bottom line.
0:57:12 And we’ve got to make you money and I’m in the business of making you money.
0:57:14 I think you do that to protect your reputation.
0:57:17 And also, I just think there’s plenty of money out there and there’s plenty of people who
0:57:18 have the problem you solve.
0:57:24 So your job is to find the people who have the problem you solve and sell them something.
0:57:27 And if you find somebody who does not have the problem you solve and they want to buy
0:57:31 something from you, I think it’s our responsibility to sit down and say, “I don’t think this is
0:57:36 going to work for you and I never, ever, ever want anybody to buy my product and not have
0:57:37 it work.”
0:57:38 Yeah.
0:57:39 It’s all about integrity.
0:57:42 And by the way, when you have clients that are unhappy…
0:57:43 They talk.
0:57:47 Yeah, they talk and it’s just, it’s a drain for everyone.
0:57:51 But then on the other hand, if you have a perfect fit client where you solve all their problems,
0:57:52 they’re so happy.
0:57:53 They’re telling all their friends.
0:57:54 They’re referring.
0:57:57 It’s such a more positive experience also for everybody on the team.
0:58:00 So I really think it’s a great point that you made.
0:58:02 So Donald, thank you so much for coming on the show.
0:58:03 It’s always wonderful.
0:58:04 Yeah.
0:58:05 It’s always such a good time.
0:58:09 Where can everybody get how to grow your small business?
0:58:10 Well get it wherever you buy books.
0:58:12 If that’s on Amazon, grab it on Amazon.
0:58:14 If that’s at Barnes & Noble, grab it at Barnes & Noble.
0:58:15 Keep your receipt.
0:58:21 They email you a receipt and if you just copy that number, that receipt number, and go to
0:58:25 growyoursmallbusiness.com and enter your receipt number.
0:58:28 We have a bunch of free bonuses that we’re giving away.
0:58:34 One of them is a pass to the online sales script where we will actually, you can type
0:58:39 in your sales follow-up email and I will color code it for you so that you can see where
0:58:43 you’re talking about the problem, where you’re talking about the product as the solution
0:58:47 to the problem, where you’re talking about the three-step plan, negative positive stakes
0:58:48 and call to action.
0:58:53 We’ll actually look at it in four color to see where you’re talking about all these parts
0:58:56 to make sure it’s a perfect email that’s going to close the deal.
0:58:58 That’s free when you buy the book.
0:59:02 Just grab the book and then go to growyoursmallbusiness.com and give me your receipt.
0:59:05 I think this is going to be one of those classic business books.
0:59:07 I highly recommend that you go get it.
0:59:09 I’m going to be digging in way deeper than I have.
0:59:14 I’ve really only read it like high level, so I can’t wait to really go deep on this
0:59:16 book because I know it’s going to be filled with so many gems.
0:59:21 Donald, what is one actionable thing our young and profitors can do today to become more
0:59:23 profiting tomorrow?
0:59:24 Set three economic objectives.
0:59:27 We talked about it at the beginning of the podcast.
0:59:30 What are the three ways that you’re going to make money this year?
0:59:31 Give me numbers.
0:59:35 We’re going to sell 400 of this, we’re going to sell 80 of this, we’re going to sell 25
0:59:36 of these.
0:59:41 Whatever it is, give me three economic objectives and then reverse engineer your entire strategy
0:59:42 to hit those.
0:59:43 Awesome.
0:59:46 What is your secret to profiting in life?
0:59:49 profiting in life, five o’clock, actually more like four o’clock.
0:59:54 I go home and I spend time with my daughter and my wife and I don’t think about work.
1:00:00 My wife and I talk about work for probably an hour a week and that’s it.
1:00:02 I have a life outside of work and I love it.
1:00:05 I know you put family number one by far.
1:00:08 It’s one of the things that I respect most about you, Donald.
1:00:11 Where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?
1:00:17 If you want to see pictures of my daughter who’s incredibly cute and my wife who’s incredibly
1:00:22 beautiful and my dog who is a feisty pain in the rear end who keeps us humble, Donald
1:00:24 Miller is my Instagram handle.
1:00:25 I’d love to see you guys there.
1:00:26 Awesome.
1:00:27 Well, thank you so much, Donald.
1:00:28 Always a pleasure.
1:00:29 Thank you so much, Hala.
1:00:30 Wonderful to talk to you.
1:00:31 Thanks.
1:00:32 Bye.
1:00:33 Bye.
1:00:33 Bye.
1:00:40 Bye.
1:00:42 Bye.
1:00:51 [BLANK_AUDIO]