Christian Work From Home Business Opportunity

January 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Are you looking for a real Christian work from home business?  For Christians looking to supplement or increase their income from home should take a hard look into our Christian Work From Home Business Opportunity.

Hi, my name is Kyle Clouse and what I’m about to share with you can absolutely change your life.

Let me just start by saying, that if you decide to join our team and Christian Work From Home Business Opportunity, and work with us, you will be working with real people with high integrity who want you to succeed in your Christian Work From Home Business Opportunity.  We pay out 100% commissions….you heard that right 100% commissions.  The way we see it; you deserve the money that you work so hard to earn.  

Christian Work From Home Business Opportunity

We also have weekly webinar trainings and teach principles in marketing, mind set, running a business and many more topics.

Christian Work From Home Business Opportunity that Works

To find out more, and also hear how a good friend of mine, Kelly Williams, lost a son that then changed the direction of his life go to www.empoweringchristians.com

 

Social Media - Video Local Search Marketing
10061 N Sage Rd W Cedar Hills, UT, 84062 USA 
 • 480-200-4222
Filed Under: Entrepreneurship

Methods To Find The Preferred Office Space

January 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment

There are plenty of matters that small businesses need to keep in mind when renting office space especially when considering local search marketing. Together with the size and affordability of the units that are being considered, those who are relocating to a new office should also think about whether or not the area is quickly accessible and space for entertaining these rooms offer. Careful consideration of factors like repairs and maintenance contracts and on-site provisions makes sure that businesses make the best selection which will accomplish their requirements, now and as the business grows.

Access for Both Customers and Associates

The ideal office space for your small business needs is one which is very easy to locate and easy to travel to. Although it’s true that repeated visits from customer isn’t normal in certain market sectors, several smaller workplaces have to have the capacity to accommodate recurrent visits from business associates, contractors, and from potential and returning clients. The best of these places are normally next to expressways exit ramps or bustling principal streets that provide for easy regular commutes for workers and company guests.

Conference Rooms

A helpful asset is availability of bigger areas, for example, meeting areas, where the company owner may hold training seminars, seat visitors, or hold extended staff gatherings. For those who have a sizeable budget when choosing your future office space, it could be a good idea to research the benefits of getting a unit that has a number of conference areas.

While these additions may be costly to procure in a commercial rental unit, the added costs often negate the need for renting special halls or other venues to host important meetings or events. If your business does sufficient volume to justify this cost, and has a real need for conference room-style meeting places, this prerequisite should be made known to the real estate team or rental professionals with whom you are working with when choosing your office space.

Sales History of the Location

It’s essential to be aware of sales history of the location, in particular if the site will be for retail either in whole or in part. You’ll find several methods by which to look at the sales information for individual regional locations, a few of which are accessible over the Internet.

It would benefit the small-business owner in particular to contemplate businesses similar to their own when doing these reviews. By acquiring a presence over the Internet, small business owners may know more about the kind of competition in an area and take that into account in determining whether to locate in the area.

Other Features to Consider

When considering office space, there’s a range of other variables a small business proprietor will need to think about. An all-inclusive office space may feature a functional kitchen and eating area for workers. These may include such features as special nooks for employee seating, hot and cold water access, and built-in microwave units.

As these kinds of benefits can be expensive. to preserve the budget, companies may also consider larger buildings that are fitted with completely functional cafeterias or eateries in their interiors, that all building tenants can access for cost-effective and convenient meals.

Renting a suite in a larger sized complex can often be costlier as opposed to opting to rent a compact, separate unit. Yet, building maintenance expenses are a common inclusion in the rental fees, and residents can enjoy designated auto parking spaces, food services, landscaping services as well as in some instances, usage of on-site exercise facilities.

The right office space for the needs of a typical small company will possess all of the features and functions that are essential for daily normal operations plus hosting special conferences or activities. Various property specialists specialize in aiding commercial clients to find their best spaces. Frequently, picking the right experts to do business with is crucial to finding the right office space.

Filed Under: Entrepreneurship Tagged With: , , , , ,

Empowering Christians

January 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Empowering Christians

Listen to his story in his own words:

After losing his son to an accident this Christian was Empowered in a direction to do something greater with his life.

Don’t you love empowering stories?

Stories of people who went from nothing to something….

Triumphant stories of overcoming the most horrible accidents and then sharing that story with us.

Here is a story that you don’t want to miss…trust me.  It could change your life.

http://empoweringchristians.com

Filed Under: Entrepreneurship

Pyramid Schemes, Multi Level Marketing MLM's and Affiliate Marketing Exposed

December 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Original post can be found here.

Understanding the difference between Pyramid Schemes, Muli-Level Marketing or MLM’s, and Affiliate Marketing is crucial for anyone wanting to add an additional income stream or starting their own business.

In this weeks show we cover:

  1. The Alternative Business Model

  2. Starting a Business

      1. How to start a business without large investment capitol or grow new revenue streams for your existing business.

  3. Pyramid Schemes

      1. We’re covering this first so you can recognize them, stay clear of them, or make sure you are not creating one.
      2. What is a Pyramid Scheme?
      3. Why are they illegal?
      4. Warning signs to stay clear and questions to ask.

  4. MLM, Multi Level Marketing

      1. What is the difference between a Pyramid Scheme and an MLM organization?
      2. The idea behind MLMs
      3. How bad MLMs are run
      4. The problem no personal reputation control
      5. How good MLMs are run
      6. What to watch out for if you start you’re own MLM
      7. The principle I disagree agree

  5. Affiliate Marketing

      1. What is the difference between Affiliate Marketing and an MLM organization?
      2. What really is Affiliate Marketing?
      3. What to watch out for.
      4. What to look for.
      5. The best service to market
      6. How to establish and grow your portfolio.

  6. New York Shop Exchange Affiliate Program

      1. We  just launched our affiliate marketing program.  We want to give our listeners an edge to build recurring revenue streams for the New Year.
      2. Payouts
      3. Material
      4. Signup at: nysepromo.com

Male:   Preparing Business for Business is on the air.  Join hosts Marcia Hawkins, President of the New York Shop Exchange and Kyle Clouse, Vice President for insightful and creative strategies to prepare your business for business.  Listen in for great guests and great offers from our guests and sponsors, as well as thought-provoking dialogue.  Preparing Business for Business offers usable content, insightful ideas and resources to jumpstart your business in an effective, economical manner and to prepare your business for growth and challenges. And now, your hosts for Preparing Business for Business, Marcia Hawkins and Kyle Clouse.

Marcia Hawkins:  Good evening, everybody. Welcome to the Business Preparing for Business program on the Preparedness Radio Network. I’m Marcia Hawkins along with my co-host, Kyle Clouse. Today is Wednesday, December 21, 2011 heading in to the last weeks of December and rounding the corner into the final weeks of 2011. On this week of holiday celebration, lots going on this week for sure.

I want to welcome you to the Business Preparing for Business radio program tonight. The theme of our show is to provide you tools, contacts, products and services to best prepare your business for more business or to assist you in challenging times.

Now we invite hosts on our program that through experience, problem-solving, they can share with you their methods or ideas and their strategies that have worked for them and allow you to apply them in your business. Now, many preparedness listers tune in to hear helpful tips on natural disasters and so forth and information on Preparedness products. We essentially do the same thing, the difference is we apply ours to business. Whether you’re starting a business or trying to expand and grow your business. Our needs – are helpful needs during challenging times with running the business.

So Kyle and I do welcome you to our program and invite you to e-mail us at info@newyorkshopexchange.com if you have any questions or comments or if you want to share some ideas with us, we’d love to hear from you. Again,  info@newyorkshopexchange.com. Now, without further ado, let’s bring in Mr. Clouse. Hi, Mr. Clouse. How are you?

Kyle Clouse:   Hi. I’m doing great, Marcia. How about yourself?

Marcia Hawkins:  I’m pretty good. Now, I’m going to have you tell the listeners about our guest tonight, would you like to introduce…?

Kyle Clouse:    Well, first I want to start off by saying that you did not mention and probably don’t want to be the star on a tree  but you did not mention that your son is home for the holidays, he’s been away for a couple of years. And I just want to recognize you as a military mom, you did serve a couple of tours in Iraq, and how is that having him home?

Marcia Hawkins:  Oh, unbelievable! I was so excited, I was squealing. And yes, I was very, very excited. It’s been too long and he looks great and yes it is, it is wonderful to have him home so thank you for mentioning it.

Steve Mistretta:   Marcia?

Marcia Hawkins:  Yes?

Steve Mistretta:  This is Steve. I’m just checking in on the show and I would also like to say thank you to your son. I did fours years active duty army and it’s people like your son that give us – well, quite frankly, that protect us and allow us to have the freedoms that we have. So a warm welcome home to him and safe travels.

Marcia Hawkins:  Oh, Steve, thank you so much. I’m glad that you came on to the program to say that, that means a lot to me. I thank you and I will make sure I pass it along to him. Quite an exciting hour, he showed up about an hour before the show. It’s been emotional to see him so thank you, thank you both.

So Kyle, let’s move on to tonight’s guest, we have Paul Koenig who’s been on our show before. Would you like to give the listeners a little background about Paul?

Kyle Clouse:    Paul Koenig, he is a co-founder of GoMarketer, one of the co-owners and on the last show that we had him on it was back on November 9. We went over exposure Marketing, self management and coaching. And you know, people are also welcome to look at our past shows, I mean, if you will go to PreparingBusinessforBusiness.com, we have an archive of our past shows. He was on November 9, we went over exposure Marketing, self management and coaching. Paul, he has a very keen understanding of branding and you know, that’s powerful impact on a plants customer base. And especially in today’s business environment, every company needs to drive more customers to their business and Paul is very proficient at attraction Marketing, driving new – sales to new customers and making sure that businesses succeed in what they do.

Marcia Hawkins:  That’s so important to – you know, people do need many avenues in which to grow their business and you know, just service a business. And I think Paul, after we had him on our show last time, I was just so impressed with the level of tools that he was able to download for listeners and things that they – just useful, useful tools.

So let’s bring him on. Hi, Paul! How are you tonight?

Paul Koenig:    Oh yeah, I’m doing great. How are you guys? And thank you again, Marcia and Kyle for having me on the show again.

Marcia Hawkins: Absolutely, absolutely. So I know Kyle’s got a laundry list of questions that we prepared for you so I’m going to let Kyle take his first crack.

Kyle Clouse:    Well, tonight’s show you know, we’re going to be talking about alternative business models that I think that especially today in economic times and we’re seeing kind of the crunch of the economic market right now, it’s important that we recognize – that people recognize the alternative business models but more so, you know, when the economy is in a slump like it is, people start looking for additional ways to earn additional income or to supplement their income.  Maybe they’re only able to work a part-time job at this point so they have to supplement that. And they start – you know, they hit the path on looking for other means of income and how to generate additional income and kind of fill in those gaps. And along with that comes you know, there’s people out there and companies out there that kind of don’t practice – don’t have the best ethical business practices and they prey on the weak and so it’s important that we expose some of that and talk about what people should ask or looking for to increase their income and to supplement their income, that they understand the different models, the negative of some of the models and can really make an educated decision as they look for ways to  which they can supplement their income. And that’s what we’re going to be talking about with Paul.

So Paul, if you’d like to first off, let’s get into the first area of topic that we have down which is pyramid schemes.

Paul Koenig:  Oh yeah, absolutely. Now, pyramid schemes as everyone know is a very negative way for a business, it’s also very a big thorn of almost every single country in the world and it’s something especially economic times like this, you know, they tend to crop up and one other thing that we’re going to do is find that for you so you can look to stay clear of it.

Now the definition of a pyramid scheme is a business that’s based off of recruiting other people for that business. So by definition, what it means is say, you got a ABC pyramid scheme and you’re showed to talk about oh, you got a great business opportunity, you can make a lot of money and you came on it to join up in the promise that you can eventually get a lot of money promoting it. But filing a claim with them in the – what actually is a kind of self-destructive is business model itself and what a pyramid scheme is a business that is set up where the only way to make money or the primary method is to recruit other people to promote the business rather than an actual product or service.

Marcia Hawkins:  It’s so funny because I’ve been approached many times, people wanting me to get involved in these types of programs and what has struck me about it and I think that most people really don’t – really identify with is when they’re pitching it to you. What I find interesting and I’m sure you can expand upon this, is the fact that they want you to pay them to sell their products.

Paul Koenig:  Exactly. And what’s even worse with the pyramid scheme is usually they’ll try to mask exactly what it is you’re doing. You know, they’ll try to make it into like oh yeah, you’ll be selling this product or this service, it’s just so much to sign up, so much a month and then you can end up making a lot of money and they try to really get around the fact that you’re paying money, a, to be able to sell the service or product, b, you’re paying it every month and then c, the only real way to make money in it is to recruit other people and of course the big problem with that is eventually, you run out of people and then it collapses upon itself. And the unfortunate thing for people that realized that when they get in to one of those or involved in one of those is that everybody ends up really getting hurt by it. Even the people that is running it almost everytime that happens, they get caught. There’s a collaborative effort with all the countries or the majority of the countries around the world where one of those is identified, they will go after the people who were running it, whatever country they were from.

But not only that, if you’re in business, if you’re a marketer and you start promoting your scheme and then it ends up being exposed as such, it’s really, really detrimental to your own reputation as a business professional. And on top of that, all the lives that they can hurt and that’s one of the reasons why it’s really important to stay clear on those and I would not ever recommend getting involved. And again the main thing is if you’re looking at a business model and somebody approaches you with this, hey, you can make a lot of money doing this, you know, costs money upfront and if you look at it, the only way to make money is really by recruiting other people, chances are it’s a pyramid scheme and I would stay clear of it.

Marcia Hawkins:  Right. And I do know that there are several companies out there that their business model may mimic these types of organizations and I do want to stress and I’m sure you’ll chime in and let me know if I’m off base here but I really do believe that there are some bonafide businesses that are set up very similar but the difference is in my opinion, and I’m sure you can clarify this, that most of those businesses that we’re referencing are the ones that are looking for a rags-to-riches type thing where they’re telling you you’re going to go from making nothing to making $10,000 a day or whatever and they always say that they’re not supposed to talk about how much money they make but they’re quick to photocopy checks and show you them. As opposed to a slow growth company where it may be modeled that way but they’re actually pushing the products, not the people.

Paul Koenig:  Yes, exactly and yet – the difference is that, and similar – and this brings me to the second alternative business model. And this one is a legal business model, would be MLM which stands for Multi Level Marketing. Now with this business model, it is similar in the fact that you can recruit people and if you recruit people, those people can sell the product, you get a percentage of what they make, if they recruit more, you get a small cut on that. And the idea behind it, with that structure is set up like – a sales structure that you may see in some organizations like in the cellular industry and other types of marketing we have like a regional manager, district manager, you know, manager of the territory and it kind of filters down to the levels. But you know, again, it is based in a pyramid type of build which is why sometimes those are mistaken for – but sometimes they also disguise them as well. But with the MLM, you still are going to be paying money upfront to build a product or service unlike a pyramid scheme though, you can make money and build a living by selling the product or service exclusively and not recruiting other people.

Now one of the things I wanted to mention is the idea behind Multi Level Marketing is a good, genuine idea and we’ll get into this more a little bit, but the main idea behind it is that say I’m subscribed to a service or maybe this is a product that I get and maybe I have an honorship that come in or something, you know, every month. A lot of times it could be like a health product, you know, vitamins, something like that or maybe an interesting service or something to help with like financial stability, something like that.

Now the idea is that – okay, I’m a customer, I’m really happy with it and you know, I’ve talked to other people by word of mouth but wouldn’t it be nice if I could make a little bit of money by referring my friends and family to it? And that’s the idea. What I’ve seen happen a lot with those types of organizations though, and don’t get me wrong, there are good ones but a lot of them still focus on the recruiting and not actually the product selling. They’ll say, oh yeah, you can sell this product but you know, the real way to really make it big in this is to grow a team, recruit other people – and they try to you know, instead of saying recruit, they usually paraphrase that with, you know, team building and team growth but what it really – what a lot of them really try to teach is growing a team. And I’m sure, Kyle and Marcia, you’ve had experiences with that. Somebody coming to try to recruit you to one of those in the past.

Marcia Hawkins:  Oh, yes.

Kyle Clouse:  I wanted to jump back really quick, Paul. And you know, we’re going into Multi Level Marketing right now but I wanted to step back and one of the questions that I had on pyramid schemes and maybe this will help differentiate the two between a pyramid scheme and an MLM. But what, specifically, what are some key indicators or some warning signs that people should watch for and what makes a pyramid scheme illegal?

Paul Koenig:  The precise thing that makes a pyramid scheme illegal is that you can only make money by recruiting other people. And in the United States – in the U.S., there actually is a doctrine where – and this is applicable to an MLM but it relates as that at MLM, you have to have more customers sales that sales from recruits. And if you don’t meet that then you could be classified as a pyramid scheme. And the warning signs with a pyramid schemer, if it’s an offer that seems too good to be true or if there’s really outrageous bonuses for recruiting people like if you recruit five people, you get $1,000, stuff like that are usually a red flag.

It doesn’t always necessarily mean that that in fact is a pyramid scheme but if you hear something like that, chances are you want to stay away from it especially if it’s based on recruiting other people to sell it. And that’s the main distinguishing factor.

Kyle Clouse:  Right. So one of the things that you mentioned on that as well, I guess on that same vein is that you know, as it grows, it eventually ends up collapsing or falling apart and so it sounds like it has some of the appearance of a Ponzi scheme as well.

Paul Koenig:  Yes, exactly. It can very well have and there – many times they are very similar as well or can be one and the same depending on the definition. But yeah, that is the main thing, the main thing with the pyramid scheme is usually, you’re really not selling a product at all and/or it’s a product or service that’s really useless and it’s – everything is really about recruiting to make money and that’s it. And you know, as you stated, that business model isn’t going to last, once it gets recognized it just falls apart from the bottom up.

Kyle Clouse:  Well, I think that’s very important information to get out to the people as they’re looking to supplement their income, you know, scaling any loose gaps or – that they might have on their income portfolio that they’re aware of these types of danger that are definitely out there.

Let’s go back a little bit to Multi Level Marketing and the MLM. Now, what is it necessarily behind the idea of MLM?

Paul Koenig:  The idea behind an MLM is that say, if I’m subscribed or have been buying a product for a while rather than just promoting from word of mouth, I can get an incentive to encourage friends of mine, encourage relatives you know, word of mouth people, to purchase or subscribe to a product based off of my recommendation from having used it and being satisfied as a customer. And so that’s what the idea is. The idea is an incentive-based Marketing, cater to the word of mouth to people that you know, people that you’re kind of in league of and that sort of thing.

Unfortunately, a lot of people miss MLM’s tend to kind of disguise what it is exactly you’re doing. And that’s why things look for in a bad Multi Level Marketing organization if that’s somthing that you’re looking to pursue is that a lot of bad ones, they’re still going to focus on like a team building and the recruiting other people, you can still make money selling the product but they’re not going to really tell you that you’re in sales. Multi Level Marketing is always 100% about sales and Marketing but a lot of them will say, oh yeah, you don’t have to do any cold calling you know, you don’t have to do any prospecting or any Marketing, all you have to do is tell some friends and family, get them to sign up and then kind of filter them. They try to make it sound so easy to make a lot of money and they also try to promote to people that they’re kind of lazy and not really aggressive in Marketing. They’ll say, hey, you know, you sign up a couple of people and then if one person signed up a thousand, you’ll make a lot of money which can very well happen but the thing is if you’re signing somebody up on the idea that you’re not going to have to do a lot of work to get a lot of sales – well, sales as everyone knows, you know, sales and Marketing is a ton of work and you’re not going to get those results, those are really very unheard of and very rare expectations.

Kyle Clouse:   Now, this is too funny that we’re talking about this because Marcia and myself, we were actually looking at a company that’s an MLM company or a network Marketing company and they offer a Marketing product. So it’s a product that markets that’s supposed to market businesses. But what we’ve noticed is that their – I want to say the members of that network Marketing company, from what we’ve been able to gather, all of them are more focused on recruiting other people versus selling the actual product or service. And as I look at that, I have to ask myself, okay, so these members of this company, if they actually sign on a business, that’s their reputation.

Whenever I help someone with Marketing, I’m putting my personal reputation on the line and I want to make sure that I’m fulfilling what I said to that client that we were going to fulfill. Though as I look at this other model, their focused on simply recruiting other people to do the same thing that they’re doing  and they happen to bring on business for the products and services in the interim, how easily that business can get lost or pushed to the wayside and the fulfillment never really happens.

Paul Koenig:   Oh, absolutely and that is a problem with those types of organizations that run quarterlies that people focus so much on recruiting they put the actual sale of the product or service on the wayside. And that has a detrimental effect because a, your customer base isn’t going to be happy if they’re not getting support that they believe they should be getting and b, it’s also not good for the MLM organization as a whole because if you do have more people recruiting, then you have actual customers. Again, you can be classified as a pyramid.

And I want to dig in into a little bit on what to watch out for with someone that’s actually interested in starting an MLM organization. I’ve had people asking about that sometime and what I find is a lot of people that want to start an organization like that thinks it’s really good because a, other people will sell my product who could recruit other people to sell my products so it’s really good way to really push it out really fast and make a lot of money really fast. Well here’s the big three problems with that. The first problem is that everybody can smell and just has like a sense that you know that this person is recruiting just to make money or to recruit as a people if that’s the setup. Sales and Marketing it’s a very difficult thing and it’s really, really rare to have somebody that’s experienced in sales and Marketing joining an organization and really exploding a lot of sales growth. You’re not going to have the same level of benefit as you would if you hired a professional or a career salesman. And the second thing that a lot of people don’t realize is that because of how close MLM can be sometimes to pyramid schemes and pyramid schemes is disguising themselves as MLM’s especially in the U.S., the Federal Government will actually do multiple audits throughout the year and usually once or at least once every other year, they’ll actually send the Feds to the headquarters of the organization to investigate and make sure that everything is done the legal way. And I believe a lot of people aren’t aware of that when they go in.

And I – you know, how I ended up learning about that is a good friend of mine, his cousin owns the MLM organization, a financial destination and he was telling me about that. He used to work for them for a time and they’re actually an example of a good one and then because they help, they had some useful services, useful products, generally they do things the right way. But even if you’re doing everything by the book, you’re still going to have to deal with unnecessary audit. I mean typically, a regular business, you might get audited once every three years, once every seven years. If your doing an MLM organization, you can expect that at least once a year if not more frequently and you get checked out by the Feds too, which is quite a lot of pressure for a business.

Kyle Clouse:  So one thing that people can look for is to make sure that they’ve passed through some type of FTC audit?

Marcia Hawkins:  Why don’t we actually take our quick break and then we’ll get back to that question? As I said we’re going to take a quick break from our fine sponsors. This is the Business Preparing for Business radio show on the Preparedness Radio Network. I’m Marcia Hawkins along with Kyle Clouse. Please stop by and visit us at newyorkshopexchange.com and we’ll be right back.

Alright, everybody. Welcome back. We have Paul Koenig of GoMarketers and we’re talking about Multi Level Marketing tonight as well as pyramid schemes and we’re going to be segueing into a couple of different aspects of a business. Before the break Paul, you were answering a question, we had to take a quick break. Would you like to follow up with that?

Paul Koenig:  Yes, absolutely. And mainly with the question in audit is the main thing with Multi Level Marketing if you’re starting a business is it’s generally not a good idea to start one that way because you’re going to end up with a lot of extra work. If you are starting a business, your financial situation might be a little bit tight in terms of your budget for the business and you may not have the resources necessary to have a really good accountant and that sort of thing, which is a very big necessity when starting a Multi Level Marketing organization because a, you’re going to have that audit at least once a year if not more often than that and you will be periodically investigated by the Feds just to make sure everything’s running legally.

Now to segue from this to our next topic, one thing that I find that people are drawn into with Multi Level Marketing is that a, you can start a business or start a business selling, making sales to make money usually for a pretty low cost compared to actually starting a franchise, starting a retail center or starting your own business and developing your own products from scratch. Now there is the idea that is the one thing that I really disagree with with those types of organizations and again there are good ones like Financial Destination, Market America and others and I’m sure everyone’s heard of MYMOS. But my main problem is the principle behind it. If you’re Marketing somebody else’s product, you shouldn’t have to pay to market their product. They should either be paying you if you’re an employee on salary or you should work out a deal with the commission structure where you get a percentage or so much money for every sale that’s generated. And I think you might agree.

Marcia Hawkins:  Can I just ask you a quick question before I forget? I’m really – and I know you’re going to be able to really jump on this. What I find interesting about it and it really kind of just rubs me the wrong way is that you have to order a minimum amount every month in order to get your check and that’s what makes me step back and say, wait a minute because I do know that there are very reputable companies that are set up to be paid on word-of-mouth distribution by you Marketing them and you receive a check from that for that. But can you just talk a little bit about that? And to me that’s the fundamental difference, it’s paying them to sell their products and then having to pay and buy their products in order to get paid by them.

Paul Koenig:  Yeah, absolutely and with almost every single Multi Level Marketing organization, what really builds the foundation of it is what Marcia just mentioned is that in order to be able to sell it, in addition to a one-time fee, which is sometimes yearly, you also had to either subscribe to the service and pay so much a month or you have to be ordering auto shipment of the product every month. And the problem with that is if you don’t have a lot of money and you’re looking to add another revenue stream, this is an immediate deficit for you and especially with the auto shipment of products. You know, if you Google on the Internet, you can find videos of people that have full rooms and warehouses of products that they weren’t able to push. And you shouldn’t have too get in my opinion, if you’re selling a product yes, it’s great to have samples of it if it’s a physical product. But you’re not going to want to have samples to that, so to speak. You shouldn’t be forced to have to get them every single month. It should be something that can be ordered when it’s needed. You go to – say you’re selling to a retail store or a gas station, you’re trying to market a new widget. You should be able to go in, the order goes through the main company and then you got a cut of the sale, it shouldn’t be that you have to buy all the products ahead of time and the market to it. Of course that would be different if you are a distributor but that’s a whole different type of ballgame if you’re like a fuel distributor, something like that.

Kyle Clouse:  What I’ve seen is what – Paul, you have someone that will end up with a garage full of product and an empty bank account. And it’s just important that people take a hard look at the entire business model, the commission structure and make sure that what they are getting into is going to be something that they can turn a buck at and not be stuck with a bunch of product and an empty bank account.

Paul Koenig:  Yes, absolutely. And to segue, the better option is what if they take a product or service that you want to sell and either pay one little time fee for like exclusive Marketing rights for a region or not pay anything up front at all and be able to sell it to whoever you want without necessarily a rigid structure of how you sell it. A lot of MLM organizations are really stringent on how you’re able to market and they want you to do it a certain way.

And this segues into what’s called Affiliate Marketing. So what Affiliate Marketing is and how it’s different with an MLM organization is you’re still Marketing a product or service but you’re not focused at all on recruiting anybody to also sell it. All you’re doing is selling it to customers be it business, businesses, business owners, retail or people that you know or individuals. And there’s a lot of different ways you can do it and with Affiliate Marketing, the great thing about it is you don’t need to pay monthly to be able to sell it and it’s one thing – if somebody joins an MLM organization, one thing they’ll be able to, if they’re looking for another product to sell my question to them is well, why don’t you find a similar product that you don’t have to pay money for to be able to sell? And I’ve stumped a lot of people with that question in the past because it’s like what Marcia was saying, the main principle behind it is you shouldn’t have to pay monthly to be able to sell a product. You should just be able to sell the product and get money for it.

Marcia Hawkins:  Oh no, it’s great because it’s true. Imagine using a product and I’m telling you when I love something, you won’t shut me up about it. And it’s so great that you would be able to have an avenue that you’ve either used a product or service, you love it and you know you’re going to be telling everybody about it, why not receive a commission for that?

Paul Koenig:  Exactly and that is what Affiliate Marketing is. Affiliate Marketing and generally there’s two types of programs, they can be a close program or an open program. A close program would be only a select few have the privilege or are allowed to sell it then an open program would be anybody who’s interested in selling and Marketing it, can give it a shot and go in and get some sales even if it’s not a huge volume of sales, you can get yourself some more revenue.

Now with Affiliate Marketing, again with any type of other sales product, organization that you’re starting, there are good ways and bad ways to go about it. And the first important thing is to check the reputation of the company, whose product or service you are selling.

One big example of that and I’m going to use this as an example, just through personal experience. There’s a – well, I’m not going to mention the name of the company but there’s a company, it’s not GoDaddy, it’s another one that does web hosting and you can buy domain names from it. My organization purchased a domain for about $5 on a sale, way really early in the year. And then out of nowhere in the middle of the summer, we got hit with a $70 charge that happened again in the next month. And I had no idea where that was coming from. I ended up having to call, dispute it, go through all that effort, stop payments from the bank and that sort of thing, which is a real hassle. Well, what I discovered is that that particular company does things in unethical manner and they would just subscribe customers to services that they didn’t even asked, which isn’t a good way to run the business. But had I checked the ranking on a Better Business Bureau or checked around on the Internet, I would’ve discovered all the components and this particular business have an F ranking on the Better Business Bureau, which is all an achievement but not in a good way.

But the reason I mention this is that that company did have an Affiliate program and imagine if I had been promoting that company. Imagine if I had put my reputation on the line and sold that to 50 or 10,000 customers and they all ended up with that same issue. That would’ve completely destroyed my company’s reputation and not only that, they might have been coming after me for the money or just angrily if they were getting put off from that original one.

So the one thing that’s really important is to check out the reputation of the company, do your homework. If it seems like it’s good or a great service or product, that’s awesome but just make sure that the company’s doing things the right way, check in, make sure they have good customer support, they’re willing to answer questions when you call in, you can even fake calling in that you have a concern with something, see how they handle you. And the one big distinguishing fact with the company is what happens when you sign up if you have a question or an issue, how good is the customer service? How good is the bottom line? And that you know, that’s something that applies to all business as a whole. If you’re starting a business and not just looking for an extra revenue stream, you want to make sure that you put your customers ahead of yourself because that’s going to build a great word-of-mouth reputation for you and people are going to talk about it. And if you’re not doing a good thing, if you blow people off, ring people out of the phone, so on and so forth. They won’t beat to it but it has the same effect, only in the opposite way because people are going to say, oh I had this, you know oh, I had to go to this dispute, I had to go to the Attorney General over to this charge and they didn’t help me on this. What happens is it destroys your company reputation if it’s set up that way, which will have a negative impact on customer growth and retention.

Marcia Hawkins:  I’m so avoiding that.

Kyle Clouse:  I’d just like to comment, Paul, that I know the company you’re talking about. They have two numbers on the ends of an ampersand sign and they look like the Eiffel Tower so I just think it’s important to put that out there and people can watch for that because we definitely don’t want people getting into business with an organization that takes advantage.

Paul Koenig:  Oh yeah, absolutely. And then now that we’ve gone over – well, the first thing to look for, so the first thing to look for is the company itself, the reputation, are they in good standing, do they treat their customers well? The second thing is to make sure that you’re selling a really good product or a good service because I don’t know about you but if I’m promoting something, I want to promote the best thing that’s on the market for whatever niche it is that you are selling, the best project, the best widget, the best service. And the secondary thing to look for is if it really is a good service, if it is the best, how much is it going to make you? Are you going to get a certain percentage per sale? Or is it something that if it’s a product, you’ll get that percentage if the customer reorders? I don’t want to sell a product to a customer where they’re going to probably reorder where I just get a cut the first time and then I don’t get anything continuing because I’d like to build a revenue stream, not a one-time sale.

And then the part of Affiliate Marketing, if you own a business and you’re looking to create more revenue growth for yourself or if you do own the business and you’re looking to build another revenue stream, a revenue stream is going to be recurring income after a sale. Now the best type of product or service is a service with recurring billing. So if you’re looking to Affiliate market the company’s product, if they have a service that charges may be monthly, may be quarterly, may be yearly depending on how they’re set up, that’s the best type of service to market. You want to look at something anywhere from – payout might be 5% to 15% or so but if it’s residual and you’re going to get a percentage every time the billing gets processed for that customer, you saw the 10 customers this month and the next month and the next month, by the end of the year, you’re getting paid every month for 120 customers, not just the 10 that you sold for the current month. And that’s the big thing to look for because you can really build an extra revenue stream so you have more money for the holidays, for next Christmas or to kickstart the new year with growth.

And one of the things and this is something that I got some really good news for you guys. So what if you want to promote a really good product that you know, they’re really knowledgeable about their industry and it is residual income, would you guys want to promote it? And the answer is probably going to be yes. And I want to be as a holiday present for you guys, let you know that New York Stock Exchange we recently started our Affiliate program. We just launched within a few weeks and it’s something that we’ll be putting a link on so if you want to sign up on it and promote it, you can earn 10% for the lifetime of a customer that subscribes to New York Stock Exchange services. And I’ve been working a lot with back-and-forth with Kyle, with Marcia, with her team and I came on – I first, a back story. I met Marcia during the summer, I had some really good meetings with her, really good meetings with Kyle and I was really blown away with just the level of exceptional with their service they provide. There’s a lot of other companies that do business directory, none do a video. I haven’t seen one do the geo targeting, the local SEO, the guarantee that you have a really good ranking on Google and have really good feedback from customers.

Marcia Hawkins:  And we’re very passionate about that, Paul. Kyle and I really pioneered what we do and by offering up our Affiliate program, it’s a way of us being able to have everybody be compensated for helping us grow the company. And that’s really, really important. And my sole mission and my whole desire in starting this search engine if you will, for small business is just finally being able to take back – the small businesses, 2/3 of the workforce and yet the economy being what it is, it’s just so difficult for a small business to spend or have the budget to spend their weight in the first page of Google. We said, you know what, if we all cooperatively band together, we can do it on our own. And that’s essentially what we’ve done. And I got to tell you, Kyle and I are all about the service.

Paul Koenig:  Yeah, absolutely. And that’s one of the immediate things that blew me away with New York Shop Exchange and I approached them and was interested in working with them and as you may have known of what I’m doing is managing their Affiliate program form so I’m creating Marketing material, that includes e-mail – if you have an e-mail list with a lot of customers, maybe a membership site where people subscribed to you, you could shoot out a quick e-mail to them informing them of New York Shop Exchange’ great, exceptional service. If they click a link and buy it, it automatically gets tracked to you and you get credit for the sale. Likewise there’s about 25 to 35 images and banners that you can use and what I want to wrap up on is different ways that you can promote Affiliate Marketing.

So I’m like the typical business where you’re demanded, this is how you have to market, there’s so many ways you can promote it and a lot of them don’t take a lot of time. You could set it up in just a couple of hours really if you wanted to. The first thing is that if you own a website, all you need to do is put a banner up. Put a banner of New York Shop Exchange, describe what they do a little bit and if anybody clicks on that link, if they end up purchasing and subscribing to their service, then you’re going to get that checked, you’re going to get a cut every single time the billing cycle goes through.

The other thing is again, you know, e-mail, you don’t necessarily even have to have a full e-mail about it. You can just mention that that the end of the newsletter if you have one like, hey, here’s a great service that can help jumpstart your business, get you to the first page of Google, have a link that will be provided for you when you set up for the Affiliate Marketing program. If somebody clicks it and they sign up, you get a cut of the sale.

The other thing that was – this can also work really well in the business environment. Say you’re with the company and you do business to business sales and promotions or maybe you own a business and a lot of your business comes from other businesses, you have a pretty good network. New York Shop Exchange is a great cross sell. Say you provide like a CRM system, maybe cell phones for businesses. You can say, oh hey, you know, by the way, we’ve got this great service that we can offer to you guys right now. It’s New York Shop Exchange and it’s going to drive traffic to your website and get you more exposure and you can even include video in the listing which no other directory really does. And the great thing about it is those are all different avenues that you can promote and you can still promote the old-school word-of-mouth, cold calling, however it is that you prefer to do business.

And that’s the great thing with Affiliate Marketing is you can really choose how much you want to work it and how you want to work it you know, if you just want to throw in – maybe you read a couple of articles online, through a banner on a website, yeah, you can do that. But if you want to be really aggressive, do calling, Marketing, do business-to-business presentations, pay for advertisements, you have advertising on Facebook and stuff that link to your Affiliate link, you can do that too.

Marcia Hawkins:  And there are many Affiliate programs out there that are just a great way for other businesses to augment their income.

Paul Koenig:  Exactly, absolutely and that’s one of the things too. If you’re looking for an Affiliate program, you want to make sure that a, we’re wrapping everything up. It’s a good business, it’s reputable business, it’s a reputable company, b, the customer service is excellent and again one big sign of that is customer testimonials. If you’re on a company’s site, if you’re looking at a company, if they have regular customers, they should have spent some money some of those customers and with New York Shop Exchange, if you go on, you can see that they got some of their customers were so happy with the service that they actually shot a brief video to send over that they’ve got on their site including countless, I believe there is dozens of written ones as well.

Kyle Clouse:  Let me ask you something really quick, Paul. The difference between Affiliate Marketing and Multi Level Marketing, now isn’t it historically, the commission payout on Affiliate Marketing much larger because with Multi Level Marketing, whatever payment or percentages left over to go to the marketer, it’s basically spread off – you know, spread out over a downline or upline or however else they have that structured?

Paul Koenig:  Yes absolutely and that’s a great point that I had missed earlier and that’s true. With Multi Level Marketing, it’s the commission of the sale is broken down. However many levels the organization goes, so the same percentage may be going out to seven people or could be going out to 50 people.

With Affiliate Marketing, you get the full percentage and that’s the biggest difference. With Affiliate Marketing, you don’t have to worry about okay, I got to recruit a lot of people before I can really be making money from sales and just hey, I can just sell this, build that up, even a couple sales a month or more, you’re going to see a steady income increase for your portfolio and it really lets you build a customer relations portfolio.

And the other thing is that they can bring more business for your business itself, say you end up having somebody, they read an article that you wrote or they heard that you’re promoting New York Shop Exchange, they see the link, they’ll buy it, they’re really, really happy with the service, they’re going to think really highly of your business for referring you to your excellent service and that will be more likely to purchase your products as well.

Marcia Hawkins:  Well Paul, I must say, we’ve had you on the show twice now and I think the common denominator that I absolutely love about you is the integrity that you have. You really do your homework, you have a very simple business model that you run your business by and I just so appreciate that. And I know why we get along because Kyle and I are of the same clock. We keep it simple and keep the integrity into the business and I just love that about you.

But unfortunately we are out of time and Kyle and I wish to thank our guest, Paul Koenig of GoMarketers and of course, you, our listeners. Please visit us at newyorkshopexchange.com and grab your video business channel to advertise your product or service. We would love to host your business video but more importantly, we promote you. We’re on a holiday next week but we will return the following week in the new year. But until then, I sure hope you have a wonderful, happy, healthy holiday season and of course, a great night.

Male:   You’ve been listening to Preparing Business for Business with your hosts Marcia Hawkins and Kyle Clouse.  Questions or comments?  Email the show at info@newyorkshopexchange.com.  Also, find them on the web at NewYorkShopExchange.com.  Until next time for the best tips on how to manage and grow your business, tune in again for Preparing Business for Business with your hosts Marcia Hawkins and Kyle Clouse.

Filed Under: eMarketing, Entrepreneurship

Lead Prospecting with Launch Leads CEO Brandt Page

December 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Original Post can be found here.

After having success in his first business in college, Brandt Page, now 28, continued to hone his entrepreneurial skill in his two businesses that followed. His latest, Launch Leads, began in his living room around a card table and has seen 200% growth annually since then. Following the advice of trusted mentors, he sold first:  the service of cold-calling on behalf of clients and setting their sales appointments for them, filling their sales pipeline. After selling the idea, he then built Launch whose customized approach to B2B lead generation and appointment setting has earned them multiple awards in the world of sales and marketing including being recognized in the top 25 under 5 by the Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum this year.

Contact Info: Brandt Page – www.launchleads.com, brandt@launchleads.com

Male:   Preparing Business for Business is on the air.  Join hosts Marcia Hawkins, President of the New York Shop Exchange and Kyle Clouse, Vice President for insightful and creative strategies to prepare your business for business.  Listen in for great guests and great offers from our guests and sponsors, as well as thought-provoking dialogue.  Preparing Business for Business offers usable content, insightful ideas and resources to jumpstart your business in an effective, economical manner and to prepare your business for growth and challenges. And now, your hosts for Preparing Business for Business, Marcia Hawkins and Kyle Clouse.

Marcia Hawkins:  Good evening, everybody and welcome to the Business Preparing for Business radio program on the Preparedness Radio Network. I am Marcia Hawkins along with my cohost Kyle Clouse.

Today is Wednesday, December 14, 2011. Heading into the last few weeks of December and rounding the corner into the final weeks of 2011. Kyle and I do welcome you and want to thank you for joining us here every Wednesday evening where you take an informative look at how we can help you prepare your business for business. I think we have some great ideas and helpful information for you along with some exciting guests and informative commentary.

Now our true focus and goal each week, we really want to provide you with some mind expanding thoughts and some helpful resources you need to either start a business, grow your existing business or offer up solutions for you, you know, for some challenges you might be experiencing. Now I’d like to bring on my cohost Kyle Clouse. Hello there, Mr. Clouse.

Kyle Clouse:  Hey, how you doing Marcia? It’s really good to be here.

Marcia Hawkins:  Yeah. How are you today?

Kyle Clouse:  Oh, very good. You know, I was actually just going over our list of hosts, the past hosts that we’ve had including the one that we have on the show with us tonight and really blown away and impressed by the caliber of guests we’ve had on our show as well as the content that’s been provided.

Marcia Hawkins:  Absolutely. I know we’ve had some great guests on as well as some of the resources that we’ve been able to download to our listeners has been fantastic from inspirational speakers to resources for capital for your business and of course now we’ve got someone who’s going to give us another little slant on business, which is great. Our guest this evening is Mr. Brandt Page and I’m going to have Kyle do a little intro about our guest tonight. Kyle?

Kyle Clouse:  Well, sure. Who says you have to be a certain age before you’re successful? Just for the listeners out there, Brandt Page, he is 28 years old and very successful. In fact, he started his first business in college and I believe, if I remember correctly that was a furniture business. Started that in college, ended up selling that and then started Launch Leads out of his living room and then since he started Launch Leads out of his living you know, couple of guys getting around a coffee table, they’ve experienced the 200% annual growth since that time. And this year, Brandt was actually named within the top 25 under 30 entrepreneurs in the Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum this year. And so Brandt has some great insight on to what it takes to make a business successful and exactly how to make that happen.

Marcia Hawkins:  Perfect, so let’s without further ado, bring him on. Hello Brandt, how are you tonight?

Brandt Page:  Hey, I’m doing great Marcia. Thanks again Kyle for the intro.

Kyle Clouse:  Absolutely. We’re really excited to have you on and you know, more excited about the content that I know we’re going to be covering because what we are covering is what – I think for most businesses, it’s a shy point. It’s something that a lot of people don’t like to really get into and target and so tonight, we’re going to really be hitting some key resources and key points and hopefully shorten that learning curve.

Marcia Hawkins:  First things first, Kyle. I need to know how he got his nickname Bubba.

Brandt Page:  I am so glad you bring that up. You know, it’s about time that we get that name out and circulated, right?

Marcia Hawkins:  Yeah, so for the rest of this show, you’re going to be known to the listeners as Bubba Brandt, so I need to know. I want to know where you got the name and how long you’ve had it.

Brandt Page:  You got it. Well you know, if you go to LinkedIn, it says Brandt Page but if you go to Facebook, it says Brandt Bubba Page. The reason I have to do that was that if I didn’t put Bubba on there, half the people I know wouldn’t have ever found me there. And the real reason behind it honestly, the real reason behind it, as a baby, I was a fat baby. I was one of those huge chubby babies, mom, 5’3” and you know, almost 10-pound baby. And literally from that time, I have been called Bubba. And so anyway, it’s just interesting as I started my very first business in college, like he said, the imported office furniture and then set a distribution here in the United States. And I honestly felt – you know, 21 at the time, I felt like no one would take me seriously if I went by my nickname so that when I started the business with my partners, I didn’t think I would gain – have any credibility saying you know, meeting these people in the business world and saying my name is Bubba. Especially since we’re doing a lot of the work over the phone, and I’m introing a call with hey, I’m Bubba and no, I’m not from the South and no, I don’t weigh 300 pounds and I’m not wearing overalls right now, sometimes that’s a perspective. So anyway, Brandt kind of took off in the business penning but I’m glad you bring it up. Bubba has stuck with me. Unfortunately, I’m not as – I guess you could say I don’t have as much weight on me as I did when I’m a baby anymore but that’s okay.

Marcia Hawkins: But you’re not a square anymore?

Brandt Page:  Right.

Marcia Hawkins:  Well, that’s great. I had to get to the bottom of that right off the bat. So my first question is now –not even so much a question but more of a comment. I’m kind of thinking about listening to you, talk about where your name came from and how you didn’t think it would be very professional to go by Bubba and I know that part of your business is being able to help the cold calling process along and make it very successful for businesses. Now I got to tell you, if I was on the other end of the phone and someone by the name of Bubba called me, I would take that call. So maybe we ought to rethink that.

Brandt Page:  Good point! Honestly, I should switch this around.

Marcia Hawkins:  Seriously. I really believe if someone called up and said hi, this is Bubba and I do want to see if I can set up an appointment for you, I probably would, for no other reason than being curious about it. So on that same vein I want to ask you, what makes your cold calling process so successful and if you could be prep us that by just telling us a little bit about what Launch Leads does?

Brandt Page:  Absolutely. So just to kind of give you a heads-up, launchleads.com is obviously the best place for resource. But what our company does, what we focus in is we fill our clients sales’ pipelines with qualified leads and scheduled sales appointments. So what all that jargon basically mean is we do the heavy lifting of cold calling, prospecting, lead qualification on behalf of our B2B client so that their sales team can focus on closing more business and not necessarily having to do all the hard work of cold call prospects lead call. And so we’re based on pay-per-performance model so our clients are truly paying only for qualified opportunities, these appointments and so therefore really no risk to the clients. But what helps me to I guess gain value for this call with what I can share with everyone is what we’ve learned. We’ve help now many clients in a B2B world that are trying to get in touch with a potential client, a potential prospect. And we are the ones that are doing all that work in getting in the door, talking through gatekeepers, getting to the decision-maker and getting that interested so hopefully, I can share some of that secret sauce and allow everybody to gain from it.

Marcia Hawkins:  Perfect. Because in that same vein that I’m going to do a follow-up question to that, that I think has got to be probably the hardest part, the hardest obstacle for anybody in business to overcome. What – and without giving away all your trade secrets and if you wanted, that’s great too but what would you identify as the ability for somebody to overcome those, I don’t know, was it fear? Is it just they’re not articulating correctly? What is it that a, is hard for people to cold call? Why does it make it so difficult for them and more importantly, how do they overcome that?

Brandt Page:  Well, that’s a lot of questions in one but I’ll try to start with one and you can help me along if I forget to answer the other one.

Marcia Hawkins:  Well, I’m good at that, don’t worry.

Brandt Page:  So cold calling obviously is not the favorite job of anybody out there. I mean there’s very few people who have fallen in love with the job of cold calling. Therefore you know, why we have a business. But here’s – the key thing is I think a lot of people forget. Now I’m a huge marketing fan. I mean you’re talking SCO, PPC, anything web-based, anything webinars, any trade shows, all marketing is good. And nobody should throw any of it away. They should do all of it but I think a lot of people forget that people still communicate by the phone. People still are at their desk the majority of the day and they will pick up phone calls. And so I think this whole cold calling efforts people put on their bottom priority and so it never gets done. And what happens is salespeople get lower than expected performance and they’re not as happy with their own sales because they’re not closing up deals.

Cold calling is just a necessary evil, to be totally honest. Now some of the reasons why people don’t do it obviously is they hate rejection. It’s a lot easier to deal with an inbound lead that comes off of the website than to cold call into somebody and try to convince them of your value proposition. So number one, the rejection is just painful for most people to take. For any experienced sales person out there, obviously you’re going to be used to that rejection. So it might not be as hard but – and so rejection is one.

Number two is how people approach cold call and really what they try to do most of the time is they try and close the sale on the very first conversation. And at least in the B2B world, that just doesn’t happen. Most sales calls or more sales cycles are more than a one phone call approach and people need to understand when you make a cold call, you’re not trying to sell that person and collect a credit card or a payment right then and there on the phone. Now, obviously there are some exceptions at certain industries but for the most part out there for B2B, prospecting and cold calling, that’s not the case.

So that key being a one – I guess, piece of secret sauce that people can take with them is that if you take the approach to cold call as just set an appointment with that decision-maker, to then at a later date talk about the details and their need, you’re going to have a much better success rate of closing a sale. Now there’s many reasons behind that as number one, nobody wants to talk to you on a cold call, right? They pick up the phone, they realize it’s a cold call and they try to get you off the phone as fast as possible. Some other piece of our process and our methodologies that number one, you try and diffuse some of the concerns that these people have. Diffusing these concerns, what that means? I’m a huge fan of – when I’m on the phone and it’s a cold call that I’m going to upfront you know, after I tell them my name and the company, I’m going to say Mr. or Mrs. So-and-so, Mr. Decision-maker, I know you’re busy. Now for most of you guys listening out there you’re going to think, gee, that’s ridiculous. Why would I say I know you’re busy? That’s cheesy. But the real reason to do that is so that people, the person on the other end of the phone, they know that you recognize that you’re not going to take forever. And you actually have to be honest with them and not take forever to do that. And so the key piece with that is just simply to say hey, I know you’re busy, I’m not going to take forever and so let me help you out there.

So that’s just one piece of the pie. Then basically, what you’re able to do is just give the brief value proposition of what your company offers on the phone. And once you’ve given the value proposition, the hope is that that decision-maker will then ask the question of how can that value proposition help my company? Once you’ve gotten that question, then you’re able to then set up an appointment to then talk about the details. The sales cycle for most people, you need to do a needs analysis or a needs audit, you want to ask that decision-maker what their true needs are before you just fly into a sales pitch and give them something that they might not even want. So hopefully, that wasn’t too much all upfront but.

Marcia Hawkins:  No, not at all. I just want to follow up a little bit and then I want to get of course, Kyle in here but I guess for me, one of the things that I’m starting to recognize is that with the explosion of the Internet, as good as it is and it’s great, I’m not discounting that. But I do believe to a certain extent that we have become a business minded community where we do not feel that we need to communicate unless we really want to. With e-mail, texting, Skyping, whatever. We’ve really become just kind of disassociated with communicating with people the way that we used to. And I think that that’s kind of fed into a person’s fear of cold calling because everybody is so used to doing everything electronically now. Do you find that that’s probably you know, ramped it up a little bit for people?

Brandt Page:  Absolutely. I think a lot of people are so used to the 140 characters that they’re not thinking of having a true conversation with somebody. And I think a lot of it comes back to most of us, want to get things done as efficiently and as quickly as possible and some people think that a cold call is not going to be that efficient and effective. And the reality of it is that in sales, it’s just a must do. You just have to do it. If you have thousands of inbound leads coming in everyday and you can’t possibly have anyone in your – on your company to make outbound calls because you’re too busy with inbound, then that’s awesome. But the reality of it is most companies don’t have that problem.

Marcia Hawkins:  Right. When I was with my team, I always tell them it’s all about sharing. Share the information, find out what issues they have. Just identify how you can help them because then the conversation starts to flow much more naturally, that’s my opinion. But I do know that cold calling is just such a huge thing for people, I was very interested to get your insight on that but let’s grab Kyle because I know he’s chomping to get in here with some questions. Kyle?

Kyle Clouse:  One thing I think I want to bring back Brandt was you talked about the value proposition. And you know, I know I’m sure that there’s universal laws, doesn’t matter what industry or niche or your business is in. Getting that value proposition in front of the right people is key. But how do you do that in a way where you’re not – you know, you’re already making a cold call. You’re trying to diffuse the situation by mentioning that you understand that their time is valuable but how do you get your value proposition?

First of all, can you explain in more detail like what a value proposition is or the definition of that? And then secondly, how do you get that in front of someone without you know, like if I called you the on the phone and I said, I know what your concerns are without me really knowing what your concerns are or what your struggles are in business. How do you get that value proposition in front of someone in a methodical way so that they don’t – so that it doesn’t put them back on their heels as though I know what your problems are. Does that make sense?

Brandt Page:  Absolutely. And honestly so my view, my opinion on what a value proposition is it’s a very, very simple factual statement of what your company’s product or service can do for that potential client. So and you know, for every company, they’re going to have a unique value proposition. Hopefully that value proposition either differentiate yourself from your competition or it allows the person on the other end to be interested in how that could affect their business.

So to give you an example, we drink our own Kool-Aid. So how we’ve grown Launch 200% year-over-year is that we do our own prospecting and cold calling, we set up our own appointment and we close our deals, right? Just like we do for our clients, we’re doing the outbound calling, we are setting up the appointments, doing the qualifications so that they can close their own deals. So also that gives you at least a base of what a value proposition is, it’s going to be what your product and/or service could – can or could do for that potential client.

And an example we would use is something like, hey, Mr. Decision-maker, my name is Brandt Page with launchleads and I know that you’re busy so I don’t want to take too much of your time but I’m calling to set up an appointment with you, talk about how our company can increase your sale by 50%. And that – I am giving that as a basic example.

Another thing would be by giving a mini case study but the reality is you got about one sentence of your value proposition but before that person hangs up the phone, we typically talk about it in a seven second situation. You’ve got seven seconds on a cold call before someone is going to hang up on you or have some excuse to get you off the phone if they’re not interested. So if I were to say something like I can increase your sales 50%, somebody might say to you, that’s too broad, I don’t want to talk to you, right? So if you can narrow down your demographic of who you’re calling and know they’re typical of maybe what their pain is, maybe understanding who you’re calling into is going to be a huge help.

I always break it down to three things. There’s a three step process that I use to find out what your value proposition is so hopefully, this helps the listeners. The three-step process is just understanding the core values of what business owners want to hear. So number one, they want to hear if they’re going to make money. If you’re going to help them make money. That would be step number one. If your product or service can help them make money, you better tell them. And you should have some staff to assist in that.

Number two is that if you can help them to save money, if you can help them save money in some way, a business owner is going to want to know that before a senior-level Executive. So number one, make money. Number two, save money and the third one is somewhat unique but – you know, everybody should know this is – number three is if it makes their life easier. Now there is plenty of technology out there today that you and I and everyone that’s listening is using just because it makes our lives easier not because it’s less expensive or because it made us money but because it made made our life easier.

So if you can break down your product or service to fit into either one or two or all three of these pieces either make money, save money or make your life – make your clients life easier, then you can create a value proposition today, right now. And your value proposition needs to be built around one of those three things. So that at least gives you a structure as to base how you can get that value proposition created. The more factual information you can give like a statistic, the more engaging that decision-maker might be on the phone.

So, for example, my cheesy statement of how you can increase your sales by 50%, if I can get more specific light saying, something to the effect of, you know – well, depending on the business and maybe I should give an exact example but looking at the different industries that are out there, pick a statistic that you can use to help that business owner or senior-level Executive be more interested on what you have to say.

So those are the three pieces and then the step-by-step process that we use here at Launch is number one, knowing that you have seven seconds to introduce your name, your company and your value proposition. So when you do write your value proposition and make sure it’s barely a sentence. It gives enough crunch to be able to turn that seven seconds into 30 seconds.

Now here’s kind of the magic that we use internally. Once you can get past that seven seconds and the 30, the 30 seconds allows you to have a little bit of a dialogue. Now we train our staff and our entire team to never necessarily have a pitch. Don’t just have something that sounds like a robot talking. Obviously and especially in today’s environment where social media is king, the comfort conversation and engagement aspect of marketing sales is huge. So when you can get past the seven second intro and you have a 30 second mini dialogue of just finding out to see if that person is interested or not, then you can turn that 30 seconds into three minutes. And this is a beautiful thing that I’d love to share with everybody is this is a really fast step-by-step process of how to turn 30 seconds into three minutes and this is a huge piece of our secret sauce if you will, on what we do at Launch Leads.

Kyle Clouse:  Hey and maybe we should do this…

Brandt Page:  – in a break and I’ll share that secret sauce.

Marcia Hawkins:  Sure. Yeah, let’s do that. Okay we are going to take a quick break to recognize our fine sponsors. This is the Business Preparing for Business radio show on the Preparedness Radio Network. I’m Marcia Hawkins along with Kyle Clouse. Please stop by and visit us at NewYorkShopExchange.com and we’ll be right back.

Alrighty, welcome back. This is Marcia Hawkins along with Kyle Clouse and our guest this evening on the Preparing Business for Business radio network is Brandt Page, also known as Bubba with launchleads.com. That’s launchleads.com, that’s where you can find him or you can e-mail him at Brandt@launchleads.com.

Welcome back, everybody. Now right before the break, we heard something about saving money, helping somebody, 30 seconds and special sauce and I don’t know where the heck this is all going but I know you’re going to clarify that for us.

Brandt Page:  You got it. Well thanks, Marcia. So just before the break, we talked about – and what I’m trying to do is help walk through some key industry best practices for prospecting, specifically in a business-to-business setting where anybody out there, if you take these key principles, you can increase your success rate immediately. It really is a fairly simple process to be able to increase your success. So we talked about some key pieces of being able to build your own value proposition and understanding how to build that value proposition by having your product or service either helping people, make money, save money or make their life easier.

And once you can get past that initial seven seconds of the cold call, which is the intro, your name and the company you’re calling from and your value proposition and you’re able to have a 30 second dialogue, what I wanted to share was how to take that 30 seconds into three minutes. And the 30 seconds into three minutes, the purpose of this is to schedule an appointment. Again just like we talked about before the break, the purpose of the initial cold call is not to necessarily sell and collect the credit card of your product. In most business-to-business cases, it’s going to take a few conversations. So just looking at that piece at least, give you some of the background for those who are just joining in.

So the secret sauce of going from 30 seconds into three minutes, most who have ever prospected before have always been faced with objection. And there are many, many types of objections. They all mean the same thing, they all mean I basically want you off the phone. Now most at the time, when people give you an objection, it’s not because they are not interested in your product or service, they probably don’t even understand what you’re offering yet but they’re giving you an the objection because they just don’t want to talk to you. Now a very, very common objection that everyone receives, most likely is, Mr. So-and-so, thanks for calling but I’m really busy right now. Can you just send me an e-mail? Now, everybody has gotten that before and most people think, oh great, this guy wants to hang up the phone, and they answer, sure, sure, I’ll send you an e-mail and they will go into a blackhole and they will be deleted.

Well, our secret sauce is very simple. But what we do to take that 30 second dialogue into a three-minute conversations to schedule an appointment is that when they say hey, will you just send me an e-mail, you respond, absolutely. And the reason for that is that you’re – number one, going to say well perfect, what is the best e-mail address for me to send it to you? Most people are going to give you their accurate e-mail address and for those who have been prospecting in the past or who are thinking they need to do it again, most of the time you don’t have an e-mail address when you’re cold calling somebody.  So if you’re able to gather the information, it’s critical. You can use it for your nurturing, you can use it for next contacts, for newsletters, whatever it is because they’ve given it to you offhand when they give you their e-mail address.

So number one: they say, yeah, why don’t you just send me an e-mail you know, in quote, person gets info, you know, I’m going to get this person off the phone.And you agree with them and say, absolutely, Mr. Decision-maker, I will be happy to send you an e-mail. What is the best e-mail address? Once they give it to you, you repeat it back to them and make sure you have it spelled correctly and then here’s a little piece that most people don’t do. Most people do not have a template, an e-mail template created already with your key value proposition and intro right in the e-mail.

Now in the e-mail template, you should have your name, you should have your company name and the value proposition with maybe three bullet points, three very specific bullet points of why your value proposition can help them. Now it should be in a template so it’s already created and after those three bullet points and that you know, you should have a link. No attachments anymore guys and gals. People don’t like to open attachments. They would rather see a link. Now, you if you attach that or have that link right below the three bullet points, you have a very high success rate of getting some of them to click on the link, and here’s the reason why. When that person says, send me an email you say, absolutely, what’s the best e-mail address? When they give it to you, you type it into your e-mail template that you already have open on your screen and you hit send. You hit send before you get off the phone. And the piece that’s so important is you say, Mr. or Ms. Decision-maker, I just sent you the e-mail with our information. And sometimes, that e-mail goes to junk or spam. Would you mind checking to see if it got to your inbox?

Now you guys might laugh at how simple this process is but they are going to stay on the phone, you can most likely hear them click on their e-mail and say oh, yes, it actually showed up. It says, this is Brandt Page from launchleads.com. And the simple process is if they’re not on their computer obviously you can’t do that. But most people will be and if you just ask and say you know, Mr. Decision-maker, I have a link in the e-mail, I just want to make sure the link works properly. Now again, I’ll let you off the phone here but if you could, just open the e-mail and click on the link that you see. Now again, you guys might be laughing at this at how simple the process.

Marcia Hawkins:  I love simple.

Brandt Page:  Most people are going to actually open the e-mail and click on your dang link. Now this is what’s amazing. In a business-to-business world, that guy or gal just thought that they’re getting you off the phone and you committed to them that you are going to get off the phone, you’re just asking them the simple and harmless questions of number one, did you get the e-mail because sometimes it goes to spam. Number two, again, I know you’re busy and I just – last thing again, just make sure that you open the e-mail and click on the link so that you at least make sure that it works.

Now you’ve done a couple things here. Number one, they’ve opened your e-mail so you know that it didn’t hit spam because how many times if you just send it blindly, you don’t even know if they received it or not. Number two, if they do click on the link, they’re going to let you know, so yeah, the link is right here, the website opened up, that whatever landing page or PDF that you gave me, yeah, yeah, whatever it is, case study, I’m looking at it right now. You have got them looking at exactly what you wanted them to look at in the first place. Even if they only look at it for a matter of five or 10 seconds, your branding is there, they now know your name, they know your company name and they probably have read your value proposition again in that e-mail or on that landing page or PDF or whatever you have linked. And obviously at that point you can say to the decision-maker, yeah, thanks for clicking on that link. Again I’m going to let you go, I know you’re extremely busy but what I thought I would do is follow up with you about XYZ value proposition, right, restate the value proposition, on Wednesday at 2:00. Would 2:00 or 4:00 be better for you?

Now, the reason I did that very specifically was you gave them two options. You did not ask then, when are you available? That question will say, well I’m not, no thanks and hang up the phone. And you don’t say, well, let me give you a ring next week to follow up because then they are not expecting you to call and they’re going to be bugged when you do call next week. But if you give them an exact date and time, that decision-maker will expect you to call them and by all means you better dang – you better be able to call as you stated. But it allows you to set up this process so that the decision-maker is expecting you to call, they’ve seen your message because they’ve opened the link, they’ve opened the e-mail so they know your e-mail is nondeliverable and they probably understand who you are and what are value prop is.

Now of course, you hang up the phone once they’ve confirmed their appointment. In my opinion, if you can send a calendar invite right then and there that would be critical so then they can click yes on attending that appointment and it automatically goes to their calendar. If you’re not familiar with a calendar invite whether you are using outlook or Google apps or whatever it is, get to know appointment calendar invites because they’re very critical. But that will turn your 30 second dialogue into about a three minute conversation. It is very harmless, they do not feel threatened, they don’t feel like you’re selling them something because you’re truly just trying to set that appointment and the crazy part is, this actually works.

Marcia Hawkins:  That’s wonderful.

Brandt Page:  The amazing thing is I’ve trained and talked in many circumstances with just 100 of different entrepreneurs and businesses, I always tell them, if you’re going to try this, you have to do it 100 times before you quit, before your quit and say it doesn’t work, you need at least try it 100 times before you come and e-mail me or send me a message saying it doesn’t work because 99% of the time, this will increase your current production and what you’ve done in the past.

Marcia Hawkins:  The keyword, the operative word there, simple. Simple always works. It always works. Kyle?

Kyle Clouse:  Yes, I wanted to – the timing about this Brandt is great, this is very key content but I want to kind of step back and dissect that a little bit because as I’ve listened to what you’re saying, it seems that there is a level of pressure, there’s a two-sided level of pressure when a cold call is being made. You have a level of pressure of the person making the call and thinking, oh, I’ve got to try and close this sale. And secondly, you got the pressure on the decision-maker’s shoulder thinking, this guy wants me to make a decision now. And so they’re scheduling the appointment, you’re actually removing the pressure from that and still getting the key information in front of them. So if they can look at that for the scheduled appointment when the decision will be made.

Brandt Page:  Absolutely, absolutely. You hit the nail on the head. And it’s all about diffusing those concerns or pressure. I love how you use that terminology as a pressure. You’re right, I mean people just – you’re nervous if you’re cold calling and the decision-maker is nervous trying to be polite and get you off phone and you’ve done – if you use this step-by-step process, you’ve not only diffused the pressure, you’ve released some of that pressure, you’re allowing them to have a true conversation with you. And obviously, the appointment is where you’re going to truly sell – there’s no product and service that cannot be explained in a five minute phone call. You need to have some time to build rapport, build a relationship and an appointment allows you to do that. So anyway, hopefully that’s helpful.

Kyle Clouse:  Absolutely. Let’s go back because I’m sure there’s people listening that you know, would say, gosh, I hope I can just stay on the phone for 30 seconds, let alone the short seven second window, which – it’s about the time that it takes me to blink my eyes a couple of times and I have seven seconds to make a first impression and that first impression is coming over the phone and through a cold call.

So what are some key things that people can do within that first seven seconds that they can do – turn that seven seconds into 30 seconds as far as you know, what is their posture in on the phone, how do they sound on the phone, what are some things that you guys at Launch Leads had found to be very successful?

Brandt Page:  Great question, honestly. Great question. There are definitely some simple steps again – cold calling is not necessarily rocket science, right? But it takes determination and it takes some great you know – hard work into it and there of course, you have some of these secret principle or step to get in there so everybody’s probably heard out there, “Smile and Dial”. And I’m sure there’s some smirks on people’s faces as they hear that. Smile and dial is so critical, it’s even more critical than most people are saying.

When you’re talking on the phone, you only have your voice for people to understand who you are. They can’t see your face, they can’t see your body language, they can only hear your voice and the inflection in your voice. It’s very critical that when you do get on the phone especially when you’re talking to a gatekeeper and a decision-maker to have a huge smile on your face. And now what’s so funny is obviously they can’t see your face but they can feel your intonation and your voice that allows them to know that you’re number one, a positive person. Some of them probably even want to talk to you. It’s a lot easier for a gatekeeper to be nice to you if you’re nice to them and you treat them like a friend, treat them like they are valued. And then when you talk to the decision-maker, being positive on the phone shows that you truly care about your product or service and that you want to help them. And that – you know what, you’re not a smart aleck and you’re not going to be telling them that they’re not smart for not listening to you, you’re going to be a nice person.

So honestly, number one, smile and dial. It is a crucial component with anything that has to do with sales, phone sales. Number two is going to be confidence. You are absolutely got to be confident. If you’re not a naturally confident person, you got to fake it till you make it, you know what I mean? That is something where you just got to show that confidence – and no, confidence is not arrogance, it’s not being cocky. Confidence is knowing what you’re talking about and who you are talking to and showing that through the phone. Confidence is critical because a decision-maker does not want to hear somebody say, um, ah, let me see, you know – they don’t want to hear those filler words, they want to hear and cut down to the chase of what your value prop is so have that confidence.

And then what I would say is number three that helps – number one, smile and dial, number two, confidence, number three is assume the sale. Now obviously when you’re prospecting and it’s initial cold call, you’re assuming the appointment, not a sale but you’re assuming the appointment. You’re assuming that they’re going to want to take an appointment with you because your product or service is just that good. So when you’re smiling and you’re confident and you’re assuming that they’re going to want to take the appointment, a lot of times you’re going to get some success. Now if you’re further along in the sales process and you’re – you know, you’ve already had your initial call, you’ve already had the media analysis call, you need to assume the sale in order to close the deal. I’m sure a lot of people out there heard that before but it’s so critical. The person on the other line on the phone does not want to think that you’re not confident. They don’t want to ever not have that assurance that your product or service is going to be the key for them to succeed.

And so being able to assume that sale again, not being cocky or arrogant but assuming in conversations such as at the end of a phone call saying well, Mr. Decision-maker, why don’t we do a follow-up call at Tuesday at 4:00 so we can discuss more details? Even something as simple as that is assuming sales instead of saying hey, decision-maker, would you like to talk to me again? That is obviously not portraying confidence nor assuming anything other than they don’t want to talk to you. So make sure that you set up follow up calls on every call but hopefully, those three steps, give people some ammo when you do hop on a phone to help out.

Kyle Clouse:  No, absolutely. So I’m going to put myself in someone’s shoes that is doing the cold calling. So I’m smiling and dialing, I’m maintaining my posture or my confidence, I’m assuming the sale and I get past the seven-second mark. I’m in the 30 second window. Now I know that there’s a lot of people who, within that 30 second window – I mean, you’ll do everything 110% to the first seven seconds and then somehow kill the deal in the next 30 seconds or overanalyze or overthink the situation, what are some things that people when they are cold calling, what are some things that they should avoid or some things that they should avoid saying that can cost them to kill setting the appointment or killing the deal?

Brandt Page:  Great question, Kyle. So what we do at Launch Leads is we always try and get questions to be asked. So instead of what I would say that the not do or don’t do is don’t – once you get past the seven seconds and the person says, well, how are you going to get that value proposition X to work for my company? Instead of going into a full-blown speed pitch where you just vomit all of your information all over that decision-maker, what we always train our staff to do is ask some simple questions.

The reason for that is the number one, you’re going to show some humility on the phone by not trying to – one, you can assume the sale but don’t assume you know everything about their business. The truth is, you just don’t. And the decision-maker does not want to ever think that you think you know everything about their business either. But you know everything about your business and why your product or service is going to help them. So if you can ask some key questions that will help you to tailor your sales pitch to exactly their need, that will allow some success. So let’s take an example of a software company and let’s say we are calling on behalf of one of the clients which is a software company. They might ask a simple question once they get past the intro and the value proposition out to the decision-maker. Hey, decision-maker are you currently using a software like this or are you currently using the software to do XYZ? All of this is a simple question, it’s non threatening, the person can say yes, no or yes, we are and this is who we’re using or no, we haven’t but we’re looking, you know what I mean? Something to engage in that conversation. But it also allows that salesperson to know if they are using somebody and the follow up question would be, what/who are you currently using?

So that way, you can find out and you’re prepared to tailor your appointment when you set that appointment. So anyway, not to go on for too long but I would have two or three questions to ask them that will help solidify your value proposition in their minds. You will also engage in a little bit of conversation to allow that 30 seconds to go to three minutes, to be able to get that e-mail sent and get an appointment scheduled.

Marcia Hawkins:  I think one of the things that you’ve alluded to but really haven’t stated right out there is the fact that when you’re calling another business to tell them about a service or a product that you have and you want to get that all-important appointment, I think that it’s implied with what you’re saying that really, knowing your product and knowing that it’s going to help that person on the other end of the phone and believing in what you do is also part of the puzzle.

Brandt Page:  Oh, absolutely. And that part of assuming, assuming a sale, right? If you don’t have confidence in your product or service you’re offering, it’s going to be really hard for you to assume that that person is going to want to buy your product or service. So you absolutely have to have confidence in your own product and service and if you’re not, if somebody’s listening that’s a salesperson or a marketing person, go find another company to work with or help your current company change a product or service to be something that you are absolutely confident if they would – whatever prospect they’d want to buy.

Marcia Hawkins:  Very key, very, very key. I know when – I’ve always told people when I believe in something and it’s really, really the foundation of business because a product that you’ve purchased or the service that you’ve utilized and you have experienced, had a wonderful experience with that, what are you going to do? You’re going to tell everybody about it.

Brandt Page:  Absolutely.

Marcia Hawkins:  Kyle?

Kyle Clouse:  Yeah, absolutely. We’ve gone over some really key information, Brandt. Let’s talk a little bit now about Launch Leads and what makes Launch different from other companies or other prospecting companies. What makes you guys different and why should someone look at your company versus another prospecting company?

Brandt Page:  That’s a great question. Well, before I even dived into you know, maybe some of our competitors and to be honest, our biggest competitor is our clients doing it in-house. And of course I’ve been teaching everyone now on how to do it in-house, right? And hopefully, these key information will allow a lot of people listening to do the majority of this in-house. So when it comes down to the point of should we build it or should we outsource it? That’s really where it comes down to,  to how we can help. I know you might need to take a quick – so maybe I’ll come back and talk specifically about our differentiators here.

Marcia Hawkins:  Well, I’m going to tell you right now, I’m so sorry that we’re out of time and I got to tell you, we have got to rebook you for another hour because this has been beyond fantastic and entertaining all in the same time but we just so enjoyed having you, Bubba. I really want to make sure that we reschedule this and have you back on.

Brandt Page:  I’d love to be a part of that.

Marcia Hawkins:  Yes and I just really enjoyed speaking with you tonight and I just want to make sure that we schedule that. But again, I do need to close out for the evening and I first of all, want to of course, say thank you to our fine sponsors, Healthy Harvest, Sun Oven, The Berkey Guy and Lehmans.com but again we are out of time and we want to thank our guest, Brandt Page of launchleads.com. That’s launchleads.com. And of course to you, our listeners, please visit us at NewYorkShopExchange.com and grab your video business channel to advertise your product or service and we would love to host you. You can tune in every Wednesday at 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time for Business Preparing for Business radio show and we look forward to meeting you here next week. But until then, you have a great night.

Male:  You’ve been listening to Preparing Business for Business with your hosts Marcia Hawkins and Kyle Clouse.  Questions or comments?  Email the show at info@newyorkshopexchange.com.  Also, find them on the web at NewYorkShopExchange.com.  Until next time for the best tips on how to manage and grow your business, tune in again for Preparing Business for Business with your hosts Marcia Hawkins and Kyle Clouse.

Filed Under: Entrepreneurship

Small Business Loans with Lendio

December 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The original publication of Small Business Loans with Lendio can be found at Preparing Business for Business.

Preparing business for business is on the air.  Join hosts Marcia Hawkins, president of the New York Shop Exchange and Kyle Clouse, vice president for insightful and creative strategies to prepare your business for business.  Listen in for great guests and great offers from our guests and sponsors, as well thought-provoking dialogue.  Preparing Business for Business offers usable content, insightful ideas and the resources to jumpstart your business in an effective, economical manner and to prepare your business for growth and challenges and now, your hosts for Preparing Business for Business, Marcia Hawkins and Kyle Clouse.

Marcia Hawkins:     Good evening everybody and welcome to the Business Preparing for Business radio program on the Preparedness Radio Network.  This is Marcia Hawkins along my co-host, Kyle Clouse.  Today is November 16, 2011 at 7 P.M. Eastern Standard Time on a rainy, cold night here in the northeast.

We do welcome you and thank you for joining us here every Wednesday evening to take an informative look at how we can help you prepare your business for business.  We have a platter of information for you along with exciting guests and informative commentary.

Our objective for this show is to provide you with the tools that you need to either start a business, grow your existing business or offer up solutions in challenging times which we all know a little bit about that, don’t we?

Now, tonight we’re excited to bring in an interesting guest on.  But first, I want to bring on my Kyle Clouse.  How are you Kyle?

Kyle Clouse:          Hey.  It’s great to be here, Marsha.  I’m very excited about the show that we have tonight with the content that we’re going to be offering.

Marcia Hawkins:     Yeah, me too.  We’ve got an exciting guest.  I’m going to give a little bit of information on him in a moment.  But boy, we have a little insight into what Brock Blake does and what he’s all about.  And it’s interesting because knowing the challenging times that small businesses are experiencing.

The banks are a little bit tight with the money right now and of course, it’s really hard to grow your business and hire employees hence, why we have such a high unemployment rate right now.  And our guest tonight is going to give us some information on how we can maybe help you with that and assist you with.

So, a little about Brock Blake, he is the co-founder and CEO of Lendio.  It’s a free online service that matches business owners with viable sources of financing.  Now while he was at Brigham Young University, Brock won a $50,000 entrepreneur contest.

And he used that money to start his first company and he hasn’t looked back since.

Now, since college, he started multiple companies.  And in six years, he has led Lendio to a rapid growth including Back-to-Back Years in the Inc.500 and being named the Fastest Growing Company in Utah in 2011 by Mountain West Capital Network.  And Brock has been named as one of Utah’s “Top 40 Executives Under 40” and as an emergent executive of the year of 2001.

So Kyle, do you want to talk a little bit about what Lendio does and then we’ll bring Brock on.

Kyle Clouse:          Oh absolutely yes!  So, Lendio makes business so simple by matching qualified small business owners with active things, credit unions and other lending sources.  The use of a proprietary matching technology and Lendio helps business owners identify the types of business loans and lenders that offer the highest probability for that business owner to prepare for and secure a business loan approval.

Lendio is a venture backed by Highway 12 Ventures and backed by Venture Partners.  And obviously for more information, send Lendio an email at press@lendio.com.

Marcia Hawkins:     Okay.  So, that’s press@lendio.com.  Well, welcome aboard, Brock.

Brock Blake:          Thanks Marsha, Kyle

Marcia Hawkins:     Thanks so much for being here.

Brock Blake:          I’m excited to be here with you tonight.

Marcia Hawkins:     Great!  Yeah, we’re happy to have you.  I have an arsenal of questions for you.  I’m very excited about this.

As a business owner, I certainly know what it’s like to raise a capital and I think you know.  And maybe you can a little about this.  It’s very intimidating for people to go after finance, would you not agree?

Brock Blake:          Yeah.  I mean you’ve kind of said it.  There are so many great businesses across the United States that are really good at being a business owner.  They might be a restaurant owner or a landscaper or a dry cleaner or whatever it might be.

But when it comes to getting financing small business loan or other types of financing, usually it’s a little bit intimidating.  They don’t understand or aware of all the underwriting criteria or all the various banks that are out there and the different loan products.  There’s so much information and so much to be aware of that — it’s hard to keep up and we’re in the business.  So yeah, for a business owner, we totally understand there’s tremendous pain that they are going through.

Marcia Hawkins:     Absolutely.  And you know what?  I know we’ve talked a little bit about that before the show about the state of small business and business financing and the struggles.  And I say, I don’t even think we need to even to touch upon that because I think everyone’s experiencing it first hand.

But I got to tell you, one thing I do want to touch on is kind of breaking the barriers for people that need to go after financing.  I’m concerned sometimes that the intimidation factor prevents people from even applying.  And you know what I say to that?  “Who cares if they say no?” You have to at least go out there and try.

Brock Blake:          Right.

Marcia Hawkins:     And what’s the worst thing that’s going to happen?  They get told no.  Well, we’ve all been told no before in our life.  And I say, when someone tells me “no”, it just makes me all that more determined.

So, for all of our listeners out there, one of the things I really want to instill in them is you’re not going to know unless you try.  And as capital, to grow your business or start your business is what you need, obviously Lendio would be a great place for you start.

So, I want to ask you a couple of quick questions and then we’ll of course let Kyle in here because I know he’s got some for you too.

Brock Blake:          Sure.

Marcia Hawkins:     But I really want to know because I know that given the economic downturn and again, I don’t want to focus so much on that because we’re on uplifting so.  But, I want to know you’ve mentioned that there was a pivot point for you with Lendio.  Can you talk a little bit about that?

Brock Blake:          Yeah it’s a great question.  Several years ago, our focus of our business was to connect entrepreneurs to angels and venture capitalists.  And that’s a very challenging space to be in because most angels in VC’s are looking for very specific types of businesses to fund.  Most of those businesses would be the next Facebook or Google or Twitter.  They’re very high growth technology type businesses that are going produce 50 or $100 million in annual sales.

So, we had a lot of business owners coming in through the platform and they were looking to get angel or VC financing.  And you know they didn’t necessarily meet those criteria.  And so essentially, what we are doing with turning away 98% of our customers and say, “Hey you’re not a good fit for an angel or VC.”

And the pivot point really came when we kind of looked at that and said, “You know you’re not going to be very successful.  You’re not going to build a very successful business if you turn away 98% of your customers.”

So, we really look and said, “Okay, how can we help the 98% of the business owners, the main street business owners is out in the U.S.  How do we help them get financing?”  And a lot of times, the amount of financing wasn’t even — that wasn’t really the question.  Sometimes they only needed $5,000 or $10,000 or whatever it might be to get their business off the ground.

And so at that point, we started to look at changing from equity financing or i.e.  Angel investors and venture capitalists to business loans and that means SBA loans, working capital loans, business credit cards, equipment loans.  There are about 20 different types of loan categories.

And so once we decided to focus on that customer segment and shift our model from equity financing to loans, that’s when our business really started to take off and kind of the most important pivot point up to our business lifetime this far.

Marcia Hawkins:     Oh, interesting.  You talked a little bit on your website about a near-death experience.  Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Brock Blake:          Yeah.  I’m actually on flashbacks — it was about this time of the year.  A few years ago, we had I think maybe eight employees on our team and we were kind of going through that, trying to figure out how to get this business owners angel or venture financing and it was just difficult.  And it came up on a day where I realized that maybe I was being a little bit naïve and that we were coming up on payroll and we weren’t going to be able to make payroll.  It was a very difficult time for me in my business career.

So, on a Friday afternoon — I’m going to shorten the story, there’s a longer story in this but on a Friday afternoon, I brought our team together and I was very candid with them and said, “Hey, we’re not going to be able to make payroll.”  But we have a plan, here is this three-month plan to be able to help us get back to where we want to be and this plan was part of this whole pivot.  And so I said –

Marcia Hawkins:     Can I just ask you a quick question Brock…

Brock Blake:          Yeah, yeah.

Marcia Hawkins:     …before I forget it.  So, can you just describe emotionally what that was like?  Because as I’m listening to you, I know there are other people out there.  They’re listening to this thinking, “Oh man, I am there.”

Brock Blake:          Yeah.

Marcia Hawkins:     And I think sometimes, just letting people understand that they’re not alone and other businesses are experiencing that, sometimes it’s what they need to get motivated to kick their way out.

Brock Blake:          Yeah, that’s a great question.  And maybe emotionally, like I said it was the most difficult time in my business career up into that point.  I mean, you’re pretty lonely at that scenario because you can’t really get solace from any of your employees because you’ve got to figure out the best plan.  And it’s hard to go to other people because they don’t quite understand.

And so certainly, I’m sure there are a lot of business owners that have gone or will go or are going through similar type of situation and I just say it’s lonely, it’s challenging, it’s painful, you really care about your employees.  And so you’re kind of in the situation, “I need to do whatever I can to get out of this situation that I’m in and make it better.”

So, it was definitely a difficult time for me personally as I kind of went through that.  And what really got me through it was that I’d already had an established network of strong mentors who I could go to, that have kind of been through it and been there and done that and they kind of said, “Okay, let’s take a deep breath.  Let’s put together a plan that you can present to your employees and what would that look like.”  So emotionally, that’s kind of what it was like.

Marcia Hawkins:     Wow.  So, I’m guessing though we could almost re-categorize that experience as a near-birth experience because you did survive it.

Brock Blake:          Yeah.  And I guess that’s the fun part about the story, is that we kind of put together this plan and it’s easier to talk about it now a few years later but we put together a plan and part of the plan was, “All right, instead of K for the next three months, we will give anyone that is willing to stay.  We’re going to give him ownership or options in the company.”  And I said, “You know, it is Friday afternoon remember and it’s before Christmas.  We’ve got all these families.”

And I said, “You know, go home.  Talk to your family.  Talk to your spouse and decide if you’re in or not.  And if you’re not in, I totally understand.  You probably hate my gut and you probably — you need a paycheck.  I totally understand it.  I get it, right?  But if you are in then come back to work on Monday and if you come back to work on Monday, I’m going to assume you’re in and we’ll pay you an option and equity versus basically a paycheck.”

And so, it was a pretty stressful weekend.  Come back Monday morning all eight employees, not a single one that we lose them.  They are all back, ready to go and it was kind of like — during those three months, it was just crunch time.  Everyone was working their tails off.  We kind of came together and it was a story.  It feels good now, but it really helped us to pivot to where we are today.

Marcia Hawkins:     Oh my gosh!

Kyle Clouse:          Very cool.  Now Brock, the way that I see it — and this actually tightened to the story that you’re just talking about.  There are two types of businesses.  Those are the — they’re a start up or having just started up that are looking to go from concept into product but then you also have businesses who are bootstrapping.  And it sounds like for those three months, you guys were absolutely bootstrapping and looking to take it to the next level and needed some money to increase your growth.  So for a small business owner, why is securing financing so crucial?

Brock Blake:          Well, it’s so crucial.  It really depends on the small business owner.  Every single business owner is going through a different scenario.  And sometimes getting financing is about getting the idea off the ground.  And it’s opening the doors.  For other businesses, it’s keeping the doors open.  Other businesses, it is growth.  It means hiring new employees or maybe it’s purchasing that equipment that will allow you to increase your revenues by X percentage.

It’s fascinating because we see nearly 8,000 to 10,000 business owners from across the U.S. a month and every single one of them has their own story that they tell and why they need financing.  And some of them are looking for a lot of money.  Like I said, some of them are saying, “Hey, if I just had $5,000 to buy this inventory that would make a huge — Christmas is coming and I need $5,000 for inventory and it will make a huge impact on my business.”  But every single business has their own unique story on why the financing is important to them.

Kyle Clouse:          Very cool.  Let’s take that and go into the next step.  And let’s go over some tips the small businesses can use in order to secure financing and more specifically, also what Lendio is able to do for those businesses.

Brock Blake:          Yeah.  So, we traditionally — I think this is important to understand why we make such a difference.  Traditionally if you’re a business owner, the process is, “Okay, I need a business loan.  I’m going to go to the bank ABC on the corner that I banked with for 50 years and I’m going to walk into the branch, I’m going to fill out their loan form application and I’m going to submit it and I’m going to hope I get approved for loan.”

And unfortunately, nine times out of 10 I think are the statistics.  Ninety percent of the time that business owners is getting declined.  And so then they’re thinking, “Well–.”  And a lot of times, they’re getting declined for reasons that they — it’s not that they’re not bankable.  If they’re getting declined because that bank doesn’t have the loan product that they could actually get approved for, or that bank has a different underwriting criteria, or whatever the reason might be, then they may go to three or four other banks walking, fill out a bunch of loan from applications.  And every single time they do that, they’re getting their personal credit deemed.  It’s negatively affecting their personal credits.  Their credit score is going down which is hurting their chances of getting a loan.  So, I mean it’s this process over and over again.

And so, what we do is we’ve gone out and we’ve consolidated, we’ve added banks to our network.  And we first of all, talk to each bank and we say, “What’s your geographic footprint that you lend in?  What are the loan products you have?  What are the underwriting criteria?”  And we gathered all that information into our platform.

Then, when the business owner comes in, we say, “Okay, Mr.  Business Owner, you’re going to give us some information about your business.  We’re going to use that data to then match you up to all these lenders and we’re going to do it without hurting your personal credit score so that we narrow down 3,000 different loan products and options for you and we turn it in to four or five.  It could be four or five things you’ve never heard of, they’re not even in your state but they have a loan product that is going to be more likely to improve you for that loan then the banks that you’d go on the corner.”

So in essence, we’re just making that process easy and efficient for the business owner and with the ultimate goals, improving their chances of getting a loan.

Kyle Clouse:          So, I’ll just break this down.  Lendio has basically already taken cared of the heavy listing of the loan process which is finding a bank that’s just — has the loan program sort of business A or business B.  So, you guys have gone out and I’m assuming you’ve interviewed different banks and then categorize them within your proprietary software.  So then when a potential client of yours comes in, you’re going to be able to match them up with a specific bank.

Brock Blake:          Right.  That’s exactly right.

Kyle Clouse:          Very cool.  What are some — let’s talk about some alternative types of financing that a business owner is able to also look at that they might not — typically when people think of financing, they’re thinking of, “Okay, I’m going to walk into Bank of America.” or “I’m going to walk into Wells Fargo.”

Brock Blake:          Yeah.

Kyle Clouse:          What are some alternative types of financing that a business owner can also look at?

Brock Blake:          Yeah, great question.  So as I mentioned before, we kind of look at the broad spectrum of business loans.  There is literally probably — I think there is 20 different loan categories.  So, I’m going to name the loan categories and then I can talk specifically about each of them but you’ve got — you know most people know of SBA loans.  But within SBA, there is about six or seven different types of SBA loans.  There are smaller ones that are community express loans or 7(a) express loans and then there are larger ones.  There are like five or four and other things like that.

So, SBA is one category.  You’ve got equipment loans.  You have merchant cash advance loans, peer-to-peer lending, franchise loans, professional loans.  So, there are a lot of different categories.

So if I were to kind of highlight maybe a few types of loans that maybe some people aren’t as familiar with, one would be a peer-to-peer loan.  So, this is a loan that you could get up to about I believe it’s $35,000 and it’s really dependent upon the business owner’s personal credit score.  So, the nice thing about this loan is that — most business loans, you need to be in business for a couple of years.  They don’t really lend to start out.  This loan program will allow you to be a start up.  They’re going to look at your personal credit score.  The credit score needs to probably be north of the 650 about and you can get like I said up to $35,000.

And where that loan comes from is it’s coming from a platform of a bunch of different individuals out there who each pitch in a little bit to — and they consolidate all of that into one loan of $35,000 that you pay back overtime.  So, that’s an interesting loan program that’s getting a lot of attraction.  We’ve seen a lot of customers that way.

Another one that I think is pretty interesting, that most people aren’t aware of is it’s a mix between a business performance loan and of kind of a merged cash advance loan.  And essentially what this is, is it’s a new loan program where you can get up to about, I think it’s 150 on the very high end.  And what they do, they’re looking at the health of the business more and less about your credit score.  So, you can actually have a credit score of all way down into the 550s I believe but they’re going to want to make sure you’ve been in business for one year and they’re going to want to see that you’ve got — the business is healthy.

In other words, they’re going to look at your merchant account.  Like how many transactions are you doing a month?  What’s your monthly revenue?  How much cash do you have in the bank?  And they kind of look at some other factors besides just maybe your credit score and the traditional financial metrics that a banker credit would look at.

These loans are super interesting for a lot of our main street business owners.  Restaurants, they have pretty predictable income.  It’s all done through their — most people pay through credit cards and so they can kind of engage the predictability or success of that restaurant based on some of those factors.  So, those might be two of the alternative loan programs that maybe some people may not know about or hear right away.

Kyle Clouse:          Perfect.  So, the difference between — let’s talk a little bit about the difference between a peer-to-peer business performance loan.  And then just in contrast with the venture capitalist or a seeding loan or something within that area.

Now as far as I understand, venture capitalist, once they loan the money, they have a stake in the business or in the company.

Brock Blake:          Right.

Kyle Clouse:          And it’s different with bank loans.  How are the two different?

Brock Blake:          Yeah, that’s a good question.

So, the major distinction is between — there’s debt and then there’s equity.  So equity means that you’ve got — it’s not a loan.  They’re actually buying ownership into your business and that’s usually — we’ve kind of talked about it before.  It’s an angel investor which is usually an individual who’s been very successful and is wealthy and they’re looking to invest a certain amount of money into your business in exchange for ownership in your business.  Usually, they’ll take 15% to 40% of the business.

Kyle Clouse:          That was right.  Then we have to run through a break really quick and pay the bills and highlight our sponsors, but this is Kyle Clouse and Marcia Hawkins along with Brock Blake.  We’ll be back in just a second and we’ll run right now to our sponsors.

Marcia Hawkins:     All right everybody.  Welcome back.  Again, this is Marcia Hawkins along with Kyle Clouse in the Preparing for Business Radio Network.  And our guest tonight is Brock Blake of Lendio.  And I do want to just take a moment to thank our sponsors Lehmans.com, Humless Solar Kit, Tomorrow’s Harvest and Freeze Dry Guy.

Now make sure you check out those sponsors for us.  We would be happy if you do that.

Welcome back Brock.  I was really taking in and listening to all the information that you’ve given us this far and it kind of hits my curiosity on a couple of points that I wanted to get into.  And I just want to — what would be — if you had your 30 second elevator speech to give advice to somebody, what would be the key to actually being able to secure an angel investor coming in to help them with your business?

Brock Blake:          So on the angel side, the major component is first of all you got to build a business that is scalable.  What I mean by that is it’s got to be a business that can hit, $10, $20, $50 $100 million in annual sales.  And most people, they think they can go raise money from an angel or receive just by having a fancy business plan and financial forecast and stuff like that.

The key is first build a good business then, prepare yourself well.  And so the second part of that is are you prepared?  Do you know how to pitch your business to angels or venture capitalist?  Do you know when you pitch him do you have Power Point ready, do you have an executive summary ready, do you have a financial model ready?  And so you got to be really prepared.  And then I think the third aspect is that is just you got a network like crazy, you go to pitch everyone you can, try and get in front of as many people you can.

It’s like a sales process.  I mean you’re pitching a hundred people hoping that 50 of them give you a lunch meeting and 20 of them will give you a do or die beeper in that and you just kind of narrow it down hoping you can that one individual or one venture capitalist that will put money or invest money in your business.

Marcia Hawkins:     Now, I sold real estate for several years and one of the things that I used to do is I would really prepare my clients prior to sending them to the bank.  I had quite a five-page outline of what they needed you to do prior to going in front of that loan officer and applying for the loan.  Is this something that you offer with Lendio?

Brock Blake:          You know we have quite a few partners.  So now we’re kind of switching focus back to the bank side out for taking a loan.

We obviously as a business owner needs to be prepared as well as they’re approaching a banker credit union.  And we have — during our process, we help them understand that the items that they need, they need to have a good business plan, a good marketing plan, a good financial model and some other items.  We don’t actually do that prep work.  We have some really strong partners that do what that we were referred over to, to help them kind of get package and stuff like that if they need that but we really just focus on the match making piece of the business.

Marcia Hawkins:     So you do have that available for your clients just to make sure that when they go into pitch their business, you know, they’re putting their bench space forward?

Brock Blake:          Right.  Yup, through some partners.

Marcia Hawkins:     Perfect.

Kyle Clouse:          So it sounds like from one you’ve been talking about Brock, it sounds like you’re geared towards traditional loans versus venture capitalist, is that right?

Brock Blake:          Right.  Yup.  And you know like I said, early on we — a lot — most of our focus was on venture capitalist and angel investors but now it’s set for — we’re very familiar with that space and we helped a lot of business owners going through that but our business today is 100% focused on small business loans.  And we don’t do a lot of helping people connect to venture capitalist.

Marcia Hawkins:     I just wanted to touch on something that you — we opened the show with, and when we were talking about going after that 98% of the consumer basic that needs funding.  And a lot like our business newyorkshopexchange.com, our business model is on and is well.

Certainly with the search engines and what not Google for example completely is dominated with larger businesses and of course you have everything in here from medical records to term papers to obituaries.  And for us, we really felt like the small business owner was really being squeezed out of the search engines and nobody could find their business.

Brock Blake:          Yeah.

Marcia Hawkins:     And so we really took that niche and kind of made our own and hence, we’ve created this video search engine for small business and online sellers.

So, I understand that.  Is that really where your passion lies?  Is it really helping someone who was in your shoes of that Friday when you couldn’t make payroll?

Brock Blake:          Yeah certainly.  I mean, you can read it almost everyday in the Wall Street Journal or New York Times, you know.  I mean even President Obama addresses it so often and that is getting credit in the hands of small business owners.  And not the high growth big businesses, we’re talking Main Street businesses, the one that I’ve talked about before, the people on the corner, they’re are selling shoes or that are consulting businesses or manufacturing shops or just through Main Street business.  And that’s really the area that we are focused on, of helping that business who is in a little a town or wherever, Arkansas.  Say “Okay Mr.  Business owner or Mrs.  Business owner, how do we help you get a loan?”  So yeah we’re very passionate about you know, like you describe what you’ve done with New York Shop Exchange.

Marcia Hawkins:     Yeah.  And I wanted to ask you also, in looking at business and you’ve done a business in person and still are what do you think trips up a small business owner?  I mean what do you think is one of the dominating things that just trips a business on erupt that just causes that kind of downward spiral?  And how can people prepare for these pitfalls and how can they identify these issues and starts to take action to remediate them?

Brock Blake:          I think that one of the recommendations that I have is just to really focus on marketing and sales.  If you focus on bringing new customers, if you have a process in place and a plan to be able to acquire new customers, that alone will help your business suffer through a lot of mistakes that you make.

I kind of like to use the saying that “Revenue will cure most ills.”  And so sometimes business owners are kind of just open the door and hope that people would just walk in and that’s not the case and so creating a plan around, “Who is my target customer?  How am I going to acquire that customer?  How am I getting improve or increase sales?”  I think it’s an important aspect for any business no matter how large or small.

Marcia Hawkins:     Yeah, definitely.

Kyle Clouse:          If you can tell us Brock, what percentage or what is the increase percentage that a business owner has if they use your services versus just trying to find a bank?  And with that, what are some of the things that business owners need to come to Lendio and prepare with in order to increase their chances of obtaining funding.

Brock Blake:          Yeah that — so historically, business owners, they’re only getting approved between 5% and 10% of the time.  And business owners that come through our platform, we’re going to increase those chances about 68 folds.  So, 60% at a time, a business owner comes through our platform, we’re going to help them get approved for a loan.

Marcia Hawkins:     Wow.

Brock Blake:          Now, let me tell what a business owner needs to do to be one of those individuals.

First of all I think it’s super important that they do their best to take care of their credit.  As much as people don’t like the fact that banks and credit unions use credit of the business owner instead of the business to determine whether they should give a loan, it’s still the case.  So, it’s just part of the system and so you need to embrace it.

And so most business owners, what we recommend is anyone with the $6.50 and above credit score is really going to put themselves in a good situation.  And if it’s above 700 obviously the higher it gets, the better opportunity that you have.

Secondly, I would say those businesses that have stable or predictable revenue, it’s a lot easier if you got a business that’s been in business for a year or to and you can look and see some history of incoming revenue and the profits even better because they want to be able to see that your business is stable, that you’ve got income to build or repay that loan.

The other factors — I mean those are kind of the two main kind of qualifying criteria.  There are other factors that are really depending upon which type of loan you’re trying to get.  Sometimes you’re going to need some collateral that you may want to leverage.  Other times they may require that you’ve been in business two years.  So, it really depends on the type of loan that you’re looking for.

But just generally, having good credit, having a business that can show some solid revenues, those things are going to put you in a much better situation than to be able to get approved for a loan.

Kyle Clouse:          Let’s talk about like a couple — I mean usually we talked about the two types of loans.  We have the peer-to-peer loans from someone who has a start up to $35,000, 650 or greater in their cycle score or the business performance which is for someone who has a lower cycle score but has a great track record of the business that is moving and being successful.  So what about someone coming in with a double negative if they are in the start up and the lower cycle score?  What are some things that they can give to you, secure funding for their business?

Brock Blake:          Yeah.  So, that’s the segment of customers that it is a most difficult for them to be able to get financing.  If you start up and you got low credit, it’s definitely a challenge.  But let me give you a few different suggestions that we might have.  One would be friends and family, to be able to go out, talk to your friends or family.  Talk to them about what you’re trying to do.  Help them kind of get off the ground and other things like that.  That’s one option.

The second option which is coming available, I’m pretty excited about this idea of crowd funding.  So, right now crowd funding is illegal.  It’s regulated by the Security and Exchange Commission, the SEC that a business owner can’t just go out and get a thousand dollars here and a thousand dollars there from anyone and from the crowd.  Fortunately, this bill has been going through congress and actually just passes with flying colors through the house representatives.

President Obama is supporting it and it just needs to go now through the senate.  It looks like it will pass in the senate and will be made available on cue on of 2012.  So, crowd funding essentially — it’s like I’m like to go, I’m going to post my idea on the website, I’m going to spread my idea to many people as I can.  And whoever is interested, he’s going to come and give me a thousand dollars for a piece of my business and it’s not dependent upon your credit score.  It’s depending on whatever — you can make whatever case you want whether it be because you’ve got a great business or because whatever reason and you’ll be able to that.

And so the SEC is looking at making that available so individuals can be able to invest up to a thousand dollars.  I think it is — if they’re not accredited which means — well, it’s a long story there.  But they can invest up to a thousand dollars in the business through kind of a crowd plan funding platform.

So those are kind of the other options for an individual that the startup low credit individuals.

Marcia Hawkins:     Wow, interesting.  When you say crowd funding, I think — I guess it’s vision of mosh pit somewhere and they’re bouncing people around, funny around.

Brock Blake:          Yeah.

Marcia Hawkins:     And I know that’s not what it is but that’s what it reminds me of.  I just want to touch briefly back what we started to show within and talking about that, that Friday where you’re unable to make payroll.  And I know I keep going back to that.  But the reason I do is because we are in a downturn economy and a lot of small business owners and some big business owners are really struggling to try to figure out what that magic bullet is going to be to pull their business and turn it around and be able to hire people.

And a lot of people don’t understand that the economy is driven by small business which makes up 2/3 of the workforce.  And unfortunately, there are some different types of businesses out there, organizations that will kind of act as a support group, the chamber of commerce, the Small Business Administration, those types of things.

But I think, I’ve always said that the definition of an entrepreneur is somebody and — you can dispute this or agree with it.  It’s entirely up to you.  But the definition of an entrepreneur is someone who has the ability to fight through the challenges, would you not agree with that?

Brock Blake:          Yeah.  I’m 100% agreeing with that.  I think so much of entrepreneurship is persistence and it’s about the journey.  So, there’s going to be of the highest of highs and then lowest of the lows and you need to be able to enjoy and endure through it all.  And if you’re kind of left standing at the end of the day, then it’s a win and then you stand another day and you just kind of figure out how to fight through that.  So, I really, truly, I 100% agree with you that so much is just about, “I’ve got to make it through this challenge.  And if I get through this challenge then it’ll be okay.  There’ll be another challenge but I’ll be okay.”

Marcia Hawkins:     Yeah, I think that what really starts to kind of chew at people’s brains when they’re trying to problem solve is their inability to look that they do have solutions.  I think sometimes, they got so caught up in what the problem is.  And Kyle and I had a conversation earlier that the tone of our show is, we are touching upon it but we don’t want to dwell on it.  We know the economy is not doing so great right now but what we want to do for our listeners is to give them the tool that they need to really find their solutions because I always say, no matter what it is you can sit there.  You digest it.  You understand.  You know what the problem is people get so lazy or focused on what the problem is.  They fail to recognize they have solutions and that’s where I think people can really kick their way out of those and they just for some reason, for whatever reason they seem to focus on that.  Do you have any strategies for that?

Brock Blake:          Well, I mean, it’s a — I was just kind of go on a quick other direction and that just kind of give some hope and I hope that’s okay.

Marcia Hawkins:     Sure.

Brock Blake:          What I was going to say was now is a good time to be able — everyone has this perception that thinks aren’t lending.  And there’s no doubt that during the recession over the last couple of years that banks pulled back significantly and they weren’t lending.  And if they were, they were lending a lot less than what they were doing before.

But what happened during that time was that banks ended up getting a lot of deposits.  They got a lot of people that were depositing money and there’s been some regulation that basically comes out to the banks and say, “Hey banks, you can’t make as much money on fees like you used to.”  They would make money through a fee here and a fee there and so they kind of regulated that.

And what’s forcing them to do is to get back to traditional lending.  And in fact, the federal government is encouraging through all this various incentives for banks and credit unions to lend more to small business.

And so, I would say over the last six months to a year, the banks — we are talking to banks all day long and the message that they’re trying to communicate is that they are lending.  They’ve got all these deposits on their books.  And to be able to make money, they need to be able to lend that out.  And now, they’re going to still use their underwriting, they’re not going to just throw money away but they do want to lend their very aggressively looking to grow the number people they’re able to lend to and stuff like that.

So regardless of what you hear I know that the banks want the message out that they are lending.  And in fact over the last — I think it was this last quarter, the SBA came out with — I think, it was a record quarter for cents like hasn’t been — since like 2008 or 2007 or something like that, this was a record of a quarter for the amount of loans that are done.  So, there are some really positive signs showing that banks and credit unions are getting back to traditional lending to small business loans.

Marcia Hawkins:     I’m really glad you clarified that because that really goes back to what I was talking about, and people understanding they have solutions and you’re basically describing that effect.  If they’re sitting there wondering how they’re going to make payroll on Friday, I mean obviously it’s going to take a lot longer than that.  But the point is I do think that there’s a misconception out there that the banks are absolutely positively not lending and you clearly have changed my thinking on that for sure.

Kyle, do you want to add anything to that?

Kyle Clouse:          Yeah, I’m curious and I’m sure that there are a lot of other people on this call but are also curious.  They come to Lendio — when they’ve been listening to the call — you know, we’ve talking about how banks are opening up for their wallets per say, base our lending.  There are all the programs for all types of different businesses, credit scores, financial statements.  And so what are the first steps — if somebody is coming to Lendio, what are the first steps that they take once they come to you website?

Brock Blake:          So, it’s really easy.  They come.  They sign up to our website.  We’re going to ask them a few pieces of information.  We’re going to ask them about how much financing they’re looking for.  We want to know how long they have they been in business.  We want to know what the revenues are.

We partnered with Equifax so that we can do a soft poll on their personal credit or look at their credit without actually negatively affecting credit score.  And then in a matter of minutes, they can take that — we will take that information and then match it up to all of our lenders and they’ll also get a call from one of our customer service reps to make sure that we’re answering any questions that they have and helping them walk — basically walking them to the right bank or credit union to give them the best chance of getting approved for a loan.  It’s really pretty easy.  Just come, sign up and hopefully we will take care of the rest.

Kyle Clouse:          Are there any — I’m sure that there has to be cost involved with that.  Are there any costs for someone coming to do that at Lendio?

Brock Blake:          You know it used to be — we used to charge for it but we just made it free.  We came out of some press a couple of weeks ago and the one thing that there is a cost for is if you want a case manager to work individually with you one-on-one to walk you through that process, then that’s $99 a month to do that.  Otherwise, we make money on the backside.  The banks and credit unions pay us for us to be able to send them customers.  So, it sounds too good to be true but it’s free for the business owner.

Marcia Hawkins:     Oh, that’s great.  A little bit of hand holding for them.  That’s wonderful.  Brock, I can’t thank you enough for being here with us.  We got to wrap up unfortunately and pay some bills here.

Okay everybody, we want to thank you so much for listening and we also want to of course thank our sponsors, the Lehmans.com, the Humless Solar Kit, Tomorrow’s Harvest and The Freeze Dry Guy and of course our guest Brock Blake, CEO of Lendio, Lendio funding for small business.

It sure was informative and preparative show.  We sure hope you’ll visit us at our site newyorkshopexchange.com and get your business moving with video on your very own Video Business Channel.  We look forward to chatting with you next Wednesday at 7 p.m.  And again, thank you so much.  I’m Marcia Hawkins along with Kyle Clouse.  Enjoy the rest of your evening.

Male:                   You’ve been listening to Preparing Business for Business with your hosts Marcia Hawkins and Kyle Clouse.  Questions or comments?  Email the show at info@newyorkshopexchage.com.  Also, find them on the web at newyorkshopexchange.com.  Until next time with the best tips on how to manage and grow your business tune in again for Preparing Business for Business with hosts Marcia Hawkins and Kyle Clouse.

Filed Under: Entrepreneurship Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Ty Bennett, Founder of Leadership Inc., and the Power of Stories in Business

December 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

 

This is a repost from Preparing Business for Business.

Male:  Preparing business for business is on the air.  Join hosts Marcia Hawkins, president of the New York Shop Exchange and Kyle Clouse, vice president for insightful and creative strategies to prepare your business for business.  Listen in for great guests and great offers from our guests and sponsors, as well thought-provoking dialogue.  Preparing Business for Business offers usable content, insightful ideas and resources to jumpstart your business in an effective, economical manner and to prepare your business for growth and challenges. And now, your hosts for Preparing Business for Business, Marcia Hawkins and Kyle Clouse.

Marcia Hawkins:  Good evening and welcome to the Business Preparing for Business radio program on the Preparedness Radio Network. I’m Marcia Hawkins along with my cohost Kyle Clouse. Today is Wednesday, December 7, 2011 and we wish to recognize that today is Pearl Harbor Day and we’d like to thank our vets and active military on this somber anniversary yet commemorative day in our country’s history.

We welcome you and want to thank you for joining us here every Wednesday evening where we take an informative look at how we can help you prepare your business for business. We have great ideas and helpful information for you along with exciting guests and informative commentary. Now our true focus and our goal each week, we wish to provide you with mind expanding thoughts and helpful resources you need to either start a business, grow your existing business or to offer up solutions for you in these challenging times that we’re all facing.

So now let’s bring on my cohost, Kyle Clouse. How are you doing, Kyle?

Kyle Clouse:  Good, very good. I am very excited to be here with you Marcia and I mean, as we’ve evolved this show, Preparing Business for Business, it’s really great to see the quality of guests we’ve had on the show and the content that we’ve been able to provide. It’s really exciting.

Marcia Hawkins:  Oh, it sure is and I’m excited that we were able to do a back-to-back with Ty Bennett who is the founder of Leadership Inc. I invite all our listeners to go over to his website, it’s quite interesting. Last week our topic of conversation was The Power of Influence and again you can get his book, The Power of Influence at LeadershipInc.com. That’s LeadershipInc.com.

But this week, we’ve decided to take a new slant, a little different direction and we’re going to talk about storytelling which is I must say, I don’t think that anybody can truly appreciate the art of storytelling until you’ve been asked to public speak. And I know for many people that I’ve interviewed, a lot of people that I’ve spoken to, they will say that that’s probably one of their number one fear and a lot of people don’t even recognize the fear of public speaking until they’re thrown into it. And they get taken by surprise because people, I don’t think understand about standing up in front of an audience and all of a sudden it’s like,  “Oh well, this isn’t what I bargained for!” But it’s very interesting because I do believe storytelling, you know, it takes on a couple of different twists and turns and a lot of people really don’t recognize the art of storytelling.

So, can you just give our listeners a nice, little background update on Ty? And then we’ll get started and bring him on board.

Kyle Clouse:  Yes. So I’ve actually been to a couple of events where Ty has spoken and he’s very eloquent. In fact I’ll start off – let me start off with a quote by Olympic gold medalist Peter Vidmar and this is what he said about Ty and this really epitomizes Ty Bennett and his ability to connect and just his ability as a public speaker. But Peter Vidmar said, “It is rare to find a speaker that has built a multimillion dollar business at such a young age. Ty has energy, experience and wisdom beyond his years and he is a great speaker, one you won’t forget.” And I just really think that that epitomizes Ty Bennett and who he is. Now Ty…

Marcia Hawkins:  What did I tell you last week about him? I said you don’t hear his words, you feel them.

Kyle Clouse:  Exactly and he is able to make that connection with people. I have another – well, we both have his audio CD, The Power of Belief and that’s when I first came in contact with Ty but he is really able to make that connection with his audience and definitely something we’re going to be talking about tonight and getting some great insights from Ty on how he’s able to make those connections and things that we can do to also make those connections with our audience.

Marcia Hawkins:  Yeah, it’s really funny because I must say, as I said on last week’s program that I keep his CDs in my car all the time and I listen to them all the time. I’ve always, always – I’m  going to wear them out actually but what’s interesting about them is I always – I can be in the worst mood and I could turn on his program and listen to it and I instantly feel lifted. And I believe that that correlates exactly with the topic of tonight’s show which is the power of storytelling. Because his intent is to make you feel better for listening to his CDs and mission accomplished.

So without further ado let’s say hello to Ty. Good evening, Ty!

Ty Bennett:  Good evening. Thanks so much for having me back. It was fun last week and I’m excited to be here again.

Marcia Hawkins:  Oh, terrific. I know we got lots of questions we want to talk with you about. So let’s really get right into it because I know last time we probably could’ve kept going on and on and on and I want to make sure we cover everything tonight. Can you give us a little background on your feelings about storytelling and why you feel compelled to get this message out?

Ty Bennett:  Absolutely. I think it’s great what you said, Marcia, in the introduction as you start to talk about it because it’s true as a speaker if you’re ever in a – being put in front of a group or whether that’s small or large, it really doesn’t make a difference. When it comes to public speaking, for sure, storytelling is a big piece but I want you to recognize the fact that we are all in the people business and we are all communicators and we are involved in selling as entrepreneurs as many people are on the phone, you are involved in leadership where you need to communicate your vision and your company and your direction, your mission, what you’re doing whether that be with your employees or the potential clients, vendors whoever it may be.

If you are involved in any teaching capacity even if that’s just as a parent, I mean, think about the best way to teach your kids lessons are through stories. I believe that storytelling is the most influential form of communication and I believe it is for several reasons but the biggest of which is that we’re all emotional creatures. I mean we’ve heard the saying and we all probably understand that people buy based on emotion and when you think about that, people take – the truth is people take action on emotion. And so if you are communicating a message that you want to – you want them to take action on whether that’s a vision as a leader or that’s a product you want them to buy or it’s a concept that you want them to learn and to implement, in any of those capacities, storytelling and being able to communicate your message more clearly, more concisely and more persuasively, storytelling, the art of it when you can master that is a huge technique and skill set that really will make you more influential.

Marcia Hawkins:  Absolutely. I’m going to kind of ask you a trick question. I hope it’s okay but I know you are – but I’ve always said, whether it’s in a business relationship, whether it’s with your husband or your wife, sister, brother, whatever, I’ve always found that sometimes the direct message is not as well received as the ones that you kind of knock at the back door with. And what I mean by that is sometimes when you pound on the front door and, “I’ve got something to tell you” and “This is what I need to tell you right now,” unfortunately, it is not absorbed. And I’ve always found that at times you can communicate better by kind of slipping in the side door or quietly in the back door.

And so, my trick question for you is do you ever feel you can storytell without words?

Ty Bennett:  Yes, I think that you can. I mean, I think your example tells a great story. You think about the leadership capacity, your actions tell a great story. There’s a great quote, kind of famous quote that says, “Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it,” and that kind of placed to what you were just saying in the fact that you don’t necessarily have to spell it out intentionally.

When you think about just last week, we talked about being influential and one of the ways that you do that in reaching out in service to other people, when people see you serving they see those actions, they can definitely see your story in action. So yeah, I think you can definitely tell a story without having to physically tell it. But I think – it’s kind of an interesting question because I’m trying to think of specific examples. But regardless of whether you tell a story or you live a story, I think that it does bring that emotion that really engages people.

Marcia Hawkins:  Yeah. I really subscribe to that because sometimes, I think my actions and my demonstrations and just certain ways that I carry my life, I really feel that I do try to influence people that way. And sometimes I feel that it’s better received than you know, one-on-one conversations.

So let’s bring Kyle in here. I know he’s got some questions for you, too. Kyle?

Kyle Clouse:  Oh yeah, absolutely. Great conversation going on. Ty, I think that it’s important that we go back to last week a little bit when we talked about the power of influence and being an influencer. Now can you just touch upon what an influencer is and how that applies to being a storyteller?

Ty Bennett:  Yeah, I believe with the people that I work with as I speak and as I’ve written books and come out with different programs and things, I kind of classify the people I speak to as influencers and I define that as anyone involved in speaking, selling, leading or teaching. In essence, if you’re in business, in the people business, you’re an influencer because you want to or are influencing people around you.

And so in the last week we talked about it and the underlying principle behind influence, which is also the underlying principle behind storytelling, is that it’s not about you, it’s about the other person. If you want to be influential, you need to figure out how to make it about the other person and not about your own agenda because people act in their own self-interest and so we need to be able to help them move in the direction that they’re looking for.

Now as it pertains to storytelling and communication, the same principle holds true. It’s not about you as the storyteller, it’s about your audience who’s hearing the story, whether that’s an audience of one or an audience of 1000, people really don’t care about your story because that’s just focused on you trying to look great. But if you can show them how your story impacts them and how it pertains to their life, then it can be extremely influential. So I think the same principle holds true and if we are to tie that together, last week we talked about some real practical ways to be influential and today, we’ll dive into the practical tool of communication that you can be influential with.

Kyle Clouse:  Oh, very good. Very good. You know, in follow-up to that, if you turn on the TV and you see a lot of what’s going on especially since we are in this political arena right now, there’s a lot of people out there that everyone’s looking at the credibility and if someone’s credible or not. So how can we use storytelling to build credibility?

Ty Bennett:  Well, I think that – a couple things. Number one, when you approach telling a story or communicating and I don’t want it to be – sound like you know, you’re going to tell those great, elaborate stories. Sometimes it’s just a simple thing that you’re bringing a little bit of human nature into your message, you’re humanizing your message with a story so that it’s not just facts and figures that people don’t engage with. Because your goal if it’s about your audience, you need to engage them which means that you need to involve them, you need to make them part, you need to get them to buy into what you are saying and that really hangs on a balance.

What I teach is that credibility is important. It’s one half of the equation because it’s a balance. You have to balance credibility and relatability. If you can tell great stories, if you can communicate a great message, you can build up your own credibility because of the way that you communicate. But you also have to be relatable, you have to connect with the people that you’re talking to. When you take a look at that from that standpoint, I mean, you just mentioned politics, that is one of the key balances that every politician is trained to find. You have to see them as credible because if you don’t see them as credible, you’re not going to care about their message. You’re not going to look at it and say, “You know, that’s somebody I could really vote for.” But if you don’t seem as relatable, if you don’t connect in some way, then you don’t – they struggle to get that connection and therefore win you over as a candidate as well.

I mean, take for example, the Republican race that’s going on, one of the knocks against Mitt Romney has always been that he’s very credible but he’s not very relatable. He comes across a little bit too perfect. You know, it sounds funny to say but that’s in the knock on Mitt Romney. In fact, I have a friend who was helped with his campaign from that standpoint and helping some of his speechwriting to make him a little bit more relatable to the U.S. population.

So when you look at that balance, if you can communicate in a way where you can find credibility and relatability then you can really be influential.

Kyle Clouse:  So storytelling helps us or – let me rephrase that, storytelling helps our audience to relate to us?

Ty Bennett:  Relate to us and to our message. You know, you think about the oldest form of learning, the oldest form of communication that exists in the world is storytelling. And so over time before the written word, people told stories through oral narrative and because of that, over time our minds have been genetically programmed to learn through stories. And storytelling, when you tell a great story, it engages both sides of the brain. It’s not just talking about facts and figures and those things that engages the emotional, creative side of the brain on the right side of the brain and so it gets people’s full engagement in that regard. But there are studies that show that people remember stories much longer than they remember facts and figures. They’re – it increases the emotional engagement which increases the motivation and the willingness to take action and so storytelling allows us to connect to and influence anybody that we’re talking to on a much more powerful way.

Marcia Hawkins:  Well, that’s interesting when you started to veer off the cliff with politics, I thought, “Oh boy, were going to need a couple of hours for this.” And when you started to talk about a politician talking and their story and if you can connect with them, you may not care what they’re saying I’m like, “Wow, is this applicable sometimes.” But yeah, yeah. It’s really funny…

Ty Bennett:  Yeah, that’s for sure. If you’re watching the debates I mean, you look at it and go – and really, you can look at it from one side and there’s some people I would look at and say, “You know what, he’s got some bright ideas but I really don’t like him,” you know. So incredibly,  he’s not relatable. There’s some people that I’m like, “You know, he’s kind of fun to be with but he is a dufus when it comes to his political standpoint so I just don’t agree with him.” You have to find that balance.

Marcia Hawkins:  That is so important and it’s going to lead me, it’s going to segue me in to another question but a little bit of commentary on that. What is so interesting about that is, as you are saying, I was going to bring up the debates because they really say that in a debate, they look for that defining moment that everybody remembers.

And I’ll – just a couple off the top of my head, when Ronald Reagan was debating Walter Mondale and he asked him about – the moderator asked him whether or not he believed that his age was going to be a factor in the election and Ronald Reagan quipped right back so fast, “I am not going to make his youth and inexperience part of this campaign,” which is of course the place was up for grabs after that. And that is one that I will never ever forget.

It’s really funny because I almost feel as though that they – you know, the debates have a couple of different agendas on them but I really do think that it is a way of kind of allowing the voters to see how they handle the pressure when questions get fired at them. And it’s really interesting to watch the ones that can really rise to the occasion and really stand on their principles and get their message across and other ones where you might see them on a one-on-one interview and they articulate very, very well. But when it comes down to the debates they do terrible. I mean look at Rick Perry, I mean, he just completely.

Ty Bennett:  Rick Perry has been quoted because of that, yeah.

Marcia Hawkins:  Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But what that segues into my next question is do you feel that – and it kind of wraps into public speaking but do you feel that one’s self-confidence really allows their ability to storytell, good or bad?

Ty Bennett:  I think it definitely has a huge factor in that and so I think that that’s an underlying principle that it makes the difference because it comes across in the way that you communicate. I mean, you think about sometimes, you’ve heard people communicate and they come across as strong and confident and other times they come across as unsure and timid and not – they just don’t present in a powerful way.

Now when I say that, there’s a caveat to that because I think that authenticity comes across in storytelling more than just being bold and confident in that regard. And so the fact that you don’t have to sound like this powerful, you know, Martin Luther King giving a speech. That’s not what I’m saying because everybody has a different voice. But you do need to have a confidence in the way that you say things. Now the way that you might say things Marcia and your confidence is going to sound different than I do or Rick Perry or anybody else. But yeah, confidence definitely plays a difference because people can feel that and they buy into it.

Marcia Hawkins:  Absolutely.

Kyle Clouse:  Absolutely. As I’m listening to you speak about storytelling, it reminds me of a couple things: campfires, my grandpa and really – you know, experiences in my life where I’ve had the opportunity to connect with someone on a heart-to-heart level. And it sounds like that that’s the message you’re trying to get across is that through storytelling, where it will really connect on a deeper level, otherwise – that we otherwise would not have been able to and it also just to relate to the audience or the listeners of the show. You know, I think about if I’m in church and I’m listening to the speaker, or the person giving the talk at church, or whoever that is, if someone is just – I’ll use the frame you know, something – the Bible, you know, it really doesn’t connect with me but when someone tells life experiences, life stories and then relates that into what their message is, that’s what’s really connects with me.

Ty Bennett:  And I’ll add to that, Kyle, I think that’s true and I like to say that stories humanize your message. And I think this is a good thing to think about. Marcia, you brought up earlier that people are afraid of public speaking which you know, it’s – Jerry Seinfeld has that great quote that it’s the number one fear. And even more so than death so people would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy at that funeral. And the truth is, there are a lot of people who are afraid of it but here is something that I think has really helped people that I’ve talked to. If you buy into the idea that your focus is on your audience so it’s really not about you and you’re focused on them and how you can help them.

Marcia Hawkins:  Is this where we imagine them with no clothes on?

Ty Bennett:  No, no. I think that hurts your cause, that’s my own personal opinion – but I think one thing that helps is the problem that most people have is their goal for a presentation is perfection and here’s the truth. No, perfection does not happen. I have given speeches to audiences of 15,000 people. I’ve given speeches to Fortune 500 companies. I’ve sold to people one-on-one, I’ve done radio shows like this all over the place. Perfection never happens. But if you change your goal from perfection to connection, then you can really achieve something because regardless of if it’s perfect, if you make a connection, if you make it about them, that it makes up for all the imperfections that take place.

Marcia Hawkins:  That’s a good point because when you think about the debates and I had to keep going back to politics but that’s very true and that relates to what Kyle said earlier in terms of being able to connect with the church sermon if you will, when Kyle said, when it’s authentic and it’s a story, he tends to engage and listen in as opposed to someone just up there and you’re not able to connect with that person.

And in a debate it’s the same thing, they are so focused on being perfect that they really – they micromanage it in their minds almost and it doesn’t allow for your authenticity to come through when you’re conveying your message, that’s very, very true.

Kyle Clouse:  And you can see…

Marcia Hawkins:  Go ahead.

Kyle Clouse:  I was just going to say while you’re on that vein, Marcia, and you can notice that, not to beat the politics but you can recognize that. You know that Michelle Bachmann talking about how many children she’s raised and the foster children and just trying to connect to the mothers on that level and trying to tell that story of her life, I guess that’s what she believes in politics.

Marcia Hawkins:  Yeah, like in the debates if you watch, like certain people when you hit a chord with them, you know.  You got John McCain talking about his military service, he shines. He shines. It’s the conviction in him. And I think it goes back to exactly what Ty said. And I know the first time that I had to do public speaking it was actually – it was kind of ironic because we have Ty on but I did Nu Skin several, several decades ago when Nu Skin first got going. And I just thought that the products were the best products I’d ever used in my entire life. And I would get in and be able to stand up and I could talk a blue streak about those products because I just love them.

So well, I got to take quick break here, just going to be a quick break. We got to highlight our sponsors, we want to make sure we mention the Berkey Guy and Lehmans.com.

This is Business Preparing you for Business on the Preparedness Radio Network. I’m Marcia Hawkins along with the Kyle Clouse. Please stop by and visit us at newyorkshopexchange.com and thank you for allowing us to help your business prepare for business. We’ll be right back.

Alrighty, everybody. Welcome back and thank you for our sponsors, we got to pay a couple of bills there and now, we’re going to get back to our program. We are on with the Ty Bennett. This is a Marcia Hawkins along with Kyle Clouse on the Business Preparing for Business Radio Network.

So before our break we were talking about public speaking and being authentic and being able to connect with your audience and I must say, I was giving you a brief overview about my first experience with public speaking and I must say that I think one of the things that really, really helps is that when you have a passion I guess, that’s my buzzword this week but when you have the passion for what you’re trying to communicate about, what you’re – the story you’re trying to tell, if you will, when you have that passion woven into your being, if you will, public speaking comes so much easier.

I mean, you could find people that may have a little trepidation about public speaking but you get them on something. I mean, talk about a mother talking about her children. I mean, I could go on for days about that ad nauseam but it’s very – in my opinion, it’s very, very one of the integral parts of the storytelling is to really have a complete knowledge of what you’re talking about and a complete passion for what you’re talking about. Would you agree with that, Ty?

Ty Bennett:  Absolutely. You know, in fact, the word passion actually originated at the time of Christ and it means being willing to suffer for something you love and you know, I think it’s interesting when you think of the fact that so many people have a fear of public speaking. It’s like suffering to them but they’re willing to overcome it if they’re really passionate about something, they don’t really think about it.

And for passion, it drives you. It makes you takes action and you eliminate fear or any stumbling block that may be in your way and you have a message that you want to share. So for sure, passion definitely helps you get your message out.

Kyle Clouse:  Oh, it’s interesting that you bring up passion coming back from the days of Christ and suffering for something that you love because it’s been my experience that being passionate about something has always come at the expense and I say expense but actuall,y it’s a benefit of suffering for something you’re having to go through something and then that event or that – or what I’m passionate about becomes a part of me.

Ty Bennett:  That’s for sure, it molds you for sure.

Kyle Clouse:  Ty, now you referred to this a little bit earlier in the show about the mindset of an influencer. Can you describe a little bit about the mindset of an influencer?

Ty Bennett:  I think we touched on this but you know, the focus is always on your audience. And if you’re focused on the audience then your purpose as influencer, your purpose is to engage that audience. And I want you to think about what that means to engage.

You know really, if you look it up, the word engagement means to grab their attention and to make them part, to bring them into it. And so I know that there’s a lot of people, as business people who are involved in a sales process of some sort and I think all too often we don’t recognize that we’re involved in the sales process that we’re involved in speaking or teaching or something but we are always selling some kind of message. And I believe that for engagement to happen, we need to move away from giving presentations and having conversations.

And what I mean by that is that you know, presentation by definition is a monologue, it’s one person talking. And a lot of times a sales presentation would go something like me talking over and over and over and Kyle, at the end I would say, “You have any questions?” And there is no engagement in that, it doesn’t really bring you in, it doesn’t make you part and because of that, I very rarely get you to take action. But if I can create engagement and I don’t just mean through conversation because that can be part of it. You know, you may have a question answered but when I have an audience of 1000 people I can’t have a conversation with every individual but I can have engagement. I can ask questions to give them to think. I can cause them to laugh. Humor’s a great form of engagement if you can cause somebody to respond. If you can cause somebody to react just through shock or amazement or anything to your message, if you can bring a motion into it, you can cause engagement.

So ultimately we want to engage those people. We want to balance that credibility and relability and that’s what I really mean with the mindset is the approach to your communication really determines whether that’s going to be influential or not.

Kyle Clouse:  Very good. As you’re actually talking about presentations to conversations, I was going to ask a question. I noticed on – you have some free online courses at influencethroughstories.com or some free online video tutorials and I was going over those and watching those and I was watching you as you’re – in my mind you were telling a story. And as you were telling the story, you would pause and then ask a question. Now even though you’re talking to an audience that cannot respond to you because it’s all via the web and through video, you were still asking a question and trying to get that engagement with your listening audience or getting us to ask the questions of ourself that you were asking. And I thought that was a very, very powerful.

Where do you find the happy medium? Like when you’re asking an audience a – and I guess it depends on what you are talking about but when you’re asking an audience a question, where do you find that happy medium? How many questions do you ask or when do you ask those questions? Or is it just kind of a natural flow in the cycle of your storytelling?

Ty Bennett:  Well, I think that a couple of things: number one, overall, you need to develop a conversational voice. And that for me is part of my conversational voice. When I speak, I ask questions. Whether they’re rhetorical or actually want an answer depends more on the side of my audience than anything else but I want people to stop and think. I want to get people to engage in the content of what I’m sharing and so I’m going to ask some questions. Ultimately, they’re a tool to bring people into the story as it is storytelling, and there’s a couple of tools that I teach. Asking questions, specifically you-focused questions is a great way to do that. I’ll tell you one way to get start that process because you asked about that technique, is instead of just starting a story, if I were to start a story and I were to just say, “Let me tell you about my experience with goalsetting,” for example. You know, the truth is, in your mind and everyone’s mind, they don’t care about your experience. They really don’t care about your story unless they know how it pertains to them. So a great way to bring the audience into that communication, into that story and engage them is to ask a you-focused question on the front end of the story.

So Kyle, let me ask you something like you know, “Kyle, what stops you from achieving your goal? I mean, and really Kyle, just think, what comes to mind when asked you that question? What stops you from achieving your goal?”

Kyle Clouse:  I feel like I’m on..

Marcia Hawkins:  Want me to talk about that? No, I’m just kidding.

Kyle Clouse:  Yeah, Marcia can answer that. No, I think for myself, what stops me from achieving my goal is that I’m a very – I like to have a control of a lot of things and I juggle a lot of things at the same time and I think sometimes it gets in the way of that.

Ty Bennett:  So, you’re juggling too many things and sometimes a matter of focus is that what you’re saying?

Kyle Clouse:  Right.

Ty Bennett:  Okay, I know. I totally get that. I mean for me when I was 21 years old and boom, I just had a perfect segue to tell you a story that brought you into it because it was about you and what you were going through. Does that make sense? If you can ask a question and make it conversational, even if you didn’t respond to that if I would ask that question, it kind of intrigues you, engages you and then I can bring into the story. That’s just a simple technique but it’s turning that presentation into a conversation and really making the audience part.

Kyle Clouse:  So even though the story is about you, you’re making the story about me?

Ty Bennett:  Well, if my goal is to make it about my audience, then my story has to be about you and if you learn how to tell a great story and you tell it the right way, in the end, the audience doesn’t feel like your story is about me and my experience or about whoever I’m telling the story about, they are going, “That story is about me. That was – I mean, that story was – he was describing me and my situation and I feel empowered by that.” That’s what you want. That’s when you know that your story really hit home and know that it’s influential.

Marcia Hawkins:  Well that’s interesting but I do need to interject and tell you that Kyle does accomplish a lot of things.

Ty Bennett:  Oh, I know.

Marcia Hawkins:  He has laser focus. I’m probably the reason he gets off-track sometimes because I’ll call him up and I’ll be downloading on him, “Kyle, help me with this!” And we – because Kyle and I work so closely together, we are in constant communication and we troubleshoot so much between ourselves and we try to problem solve,  if you will. But just to set the record straight. What’s that?

Kyle Clouse:  I know. I would just…

Ty Bennett:  Kyle, I know that you are very productive. I know you’re very productive and I was just using that as a general example but you’re a go-getter for sure.

Kyle Clouse:  I was just going to say if my – my biggest challenge is that my pen does not move as fast as Marcia’s mind does. If I could just speed that up, I would be in good standing.

Marcia Hawkins:  No kidding, Ty. I will call him and say, “Okay. Well, how about if I shoot 50 videos, do the intros,” and I’ll bet he’s like, I know he’s just scratching his head thinking, “Oh please, where is her downshift?” You know? That’s too funny, I know that’s too funny.

Ty Bennett:  There are worse problems to have for sure.

Marcia Hawkins:  Exactly. But I do want to engage our listeners a little bit here and how we can apply this to preparing your business. And one of the things that I want to talk about is the storytelling between a business owner and their customer and their employees. And how much of their personal story and how much of their personal mission for their business should be really out there for either their employees or their customers? Do you find that it helps the business owner? Or maybe it kind of sets the wrong tone? Any comment on that?

Ty Bennett:  Let me address that in a couple of ways: number one, there are several ways that you’re going to tell that story. Obviously, you’re going to communicate that over the phone and in person as you have meetings. You’re going to communicate that through text and video in your website and so you have to find the balance in some of those things.

When you’re telling a story especially, there is a specific model that I teach that an influential story has a struggle to solution model. And the struggle to solution model really is the fact that your business exists to solve a problem. Your business exists to create a solution, right? And so part of that is identifying what those problems are and being able to tell your story in the way where you connect with the person because the struggle is relatable. And if the struggle is relatable, than the solution will become credible.

Marcia Hawkins:  I’m going to have you call everyone on my team because I have really – I talk about that all the time. I didn’t mean to interrupt you, I just had to – really, I’m completely relating to what you’re saying.

Ty Bennett:  And so the problem that most of us have in communicating our business, our products or whatever it is, is that we are not really – we’re just trying to sell just the product and the feature, not the benefits of it. And we are not relating to the individual. And so if we cannot be real and identify what the problems or the struggles were, whether they’re for ourselves as a leader or they are for a problem that we saw in other people and we created the products for it or that’s why we started the business or whatever it is, if you can craft that struggle to solution story in a way that connects with your employees, that connects with your prospects and shows the benefits of what you give to the market then absolutely, that story needs to be told over and over and over again because that’s what’s going to influence people in your direction.

Marcia Hawkins:  Yeah, that is such a great point. I know that when you go to any website or mostly websites just because it’s more applicable here, but when you go to someone’s website, one of the first things I do is I click on the “About Us” and they really give you their story. And how their website and their business evolved and it’s really interesting, some people let’s face it, are better storytellers than others and I think sometimes – and I think you really struck a chord with me when you talked about really making the story connectable with that audience, so to speak.

And being able to really get your message across and I really find sometimes that – Kyle, you know we’ve had this conversation how many times and I’ve said, if my team could convey the three fundamental challenges of why I built New York Shop Exchange, I know that their audience is going to respond because I know that I’m not unique in terms of business. The challenges that I experience, I know for a fact that every other small business out there was experiencing the same kinds of problem.

And it’s so funny sometimes I’ll get these e-mails and I’ll get these phone calls or I’ll be talking with a potential client and you listen to them and I think, “Oh you know what, it’s all the same.” Everybody struggles with the same challenges and it’s just amazing to me that really, you could read the About Us and really, the common denominator with most businesses is that they identified that problem and found a way to solve it so that’s such a great point to make, Ty. I’m really happy that you brought that up.

Ty Bennett:  And so to add to that Marcia and your particular situation, if you’ve identified three main challenges or problems, if your people who are out there talking to other business owners can develop that conversational tone and can ask those people, you know, “Do you ever face this issue? Is this something that you ever struggle with?” And they can learn to tell that story and that person connects with it and say, “Marcia Hawkins, the reason she came up with this concept is really because she was facing those same issues and they can learn to tell that story.” Boom, that’s magic because you connect with that struggle.

I like to say you hook them with a struggle and you help them with a solution.

Marcia Hawkins:  I love that.

Ty Bennett:  If they can really buy into that, if it hooks them and be strong enough and they feel like that’s relatable to them and you help them with that solution it becomes credible and that’s exactly what they’re looking for.

Marcia Hawkins:  Two points on that. I love your comments on it. One of the things that I wonder sometimes is because they were my struggles and not my team’s struggle that maybe it’s not a little relatable,  if you will. And on the flip side to that, I often wonder if the challenges – the three quick challenges are that website building is great but it’s really difficult and I know people listening would say, “Oh yeah, don’t tell me about someone building my website.” It’s very difficult sometimes to get –somebody build you a website in a short amount of time. And even if you are able to accomplish that and somebody builds you a beautiful website, it costs a lot of money.

And the worst part about it is that by the time to get that website done, most of the information because the Internet everything happens in a – you know, what used to take 30 days now takes 30 seconds, a lot of that information is obsolete at that point. So now you have that challenge, which is of course where the video comes in. And then the third piece of that is, “Well great, I have this big beautiful site that I paid gobs and gobs of money for, how do I market it?” Just because you’re a web designer doesn’t make you a marketer. And so hence, that’s what evolved New York Shop Exchange.

But as I said, it’s been my challenges, it’s not necessarily my team’s challenge. That’s one little fly swimming in the ointment and the second piece of that is, is that I wonder sometimes and maybe you can you know, and this is a little off track but I’d love your insight on it. Do you feel sometimes that sometimes people don’t want to admit what their challenges are?

Ty Bennett:  Yes, so I will address that in a couple of ways. First, the last question you asked. Yes. People are afraid to talk about a struggle. I’ll tell you how you make them feel like they can, is you have to talk about yours. That’s what most people don’t do, is when we share our stories, we don’t share our struggle to solution story. We share a solution story, we share triumph, we talk about how great we are and we’re not ever real about some of the challenges that we face and the things that we had to overcome. And when we are real and we’re vulnerable and we’re authentic a little bit, it allows other people to be the exact same thing.

And so I think that becomes part of – that sounds, that flies in the face of maybe everything that most salespeople has ever learned. But you have to realize that you are trying to make a human connection. You’re not trying to sell a product, you’re trying to make a human connection. If you buy into the idea that business is about relationship, which I really do, then people buy from you because they know like, they trust you and so you have to open up so they can know you and begin to like you and trust you. And so that becomes a piece of it.

Number two, you can share other people’s stories but you have to learn how to personalize it. So yes, there are some of your salespeople who are sharing your story in terms of how you developed the company because you faced some of those issues. But they have to personalize it and they can personalize it through their client’s experience. You know, if they start to tell your story and they can make that connection just giving the example we were using before of maybe some of the challenges you faced, if they can share some of the triumphs that they’ve had with other clients and what you’ve been able to do for them, it’s more personal to them because they were involved in that process. And so they can share that a little bit easier from that standpoint.

But you can share other people’s experiences in a powerful way, you just have to make it as personal as possible because the more personal your experience becomes, the more powerful it is because you bring that passion piece into what you talked about earlier.

Marcia Hawkins:  Right. That’s great, Ty. Kyle?

Kyle Clouse:  Yeah, absolutely. What I was thinking about Ty, was as we talked about storytelling and how powerful they can be and how they help us to connect with our audience, you know, somebody listening in on this call, where do we start.

Ty Bennett:  Well, I’ll give you a great resource that you can start with and you mentioned it earlier, if you go to the websiteinfluencethroughstories.com. You just put in your name and e-mail, I have a three free videos, they’re all I don’t know, 20 or so minutes of great content. I have a more in-depth video training program that you can purchase if you really want to dive into it. But you can start there with those three videos and really start to learn the art of it. But ultimately as a communicator, you have to go out and practice. And as you learn some of these techniques you have to go out and start communicating, maybe you roleplay with your husband or wife and then you take it out to a prospect or your employer, whoever it may be. But I don’t know of a way to make you an incredible communicator other than to work on your communication through doing it.

Kyle Clouse:  One thing, Ty and this was, gosh, this had to be two years ago and you may or may not remember. But the first time that I listened to your CD, The Power Of Belief, I reached out and I sent you an e-mail and I asked you. I said, “What if I want to become a better speaker or communicator, where do I go? How do I do that? How do I find opportunities to speak out?” And you mentioned, I can’t remember off the top of my head what it is but I think that they have these meetings or these events nationwide. Does that ring a bell for you?

Ty Bennett:  Yeah, it was the place to learn public speaking, I believe I referred to this as toastmasters, Toastmasters International. It’s a very nominal fee but you get a chance to go in a safe environment and to learn the art of public speaking. That’s a great way you can do it in a very affordable way.

There’s a lot of other organizations that teach public speaking. I coach speakers and things like that and there’s a lot of people out there who do it and have video and audio programs that teach the same process. But it came from that same reason. I’ve had several people just like you, Kyle, who have asked me, how do you learn this and/or have people come to me and say can you teach me how you learn how to speak? And so that’s just evolved from that standpoint for me to really personalize and define the specifics on how you tell a great story, how you communicate a powerful message.

Kyle Clouse:  So is this – has this been natural for you to be an effective communicator? Or have you gone through some learning curves and some struggles to get to the point where you’re at now?

Ty Bennett:  I think I was inclined to it but I have definitely gone through my fair share of struggles and failures to learn the process just like everybody else does.

Marcia Hawkins:  Unfortunately, we are out of time but I do want to make sure that I give a huge heartfelt thanks to Ty Bennett for being with us the last two weeks. Please visit him at leadershipinc.com and also you can access three free videos that teach storytelling at influencethroughstories.com and if you need a public speaker, inspirational speaker, I highly recommend you grab Ty for that event. Your audience will feel Ty’s words, not hear them.

So as I said we are out of time. Unfortunate but we will be back next week. We are here every Wednesday evening from 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. We want to thank you so much for listening and we also of course want to thank our sponsors and of course our guest, Ty Bennett.

This was an uplifting and informative preparative show. We sure hope you’ll visit us at NewYorkShopExchange.com and get your business moving with the power of video with your own video business channel. We look forward to sharing an hour of you next Wednesday at 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time and again, thank you so much. I’m Marcia Hawkins along with Kyle Clouse. Enjoy the rest of your evening.

Male:   You’ve been listening to Preparing Business for Business with your hosts Marcia Hawkins and Kyle Clouse.  Questions or comments?  Email the show at info@newyorkshopexchange.com.  Also, find them on the web at NewYorkShopExchange.com.  Until next time for the best tips on how to manage and grow your business, tune in again for Preparing Business for Business with your hosts Marcia Hawkins and Kyle Clouse.

Filed Under: Entrepreneurship, Personal Development Tagged With: , , , , ,

Ty Bennett and the Power of Influence

December 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Ty Bennett is the founder of Leadership Inc, a speaking and training company dedicated to empowering individuals and organizations. He is a gifted communicator who has a unique ability to make the complex simple and to teach and inspire.

When Ty was 21 years old he started a business with his brother Scott, which they built to over $20 million in revenue while still in their twenties. Because of this experience and success Ty has been able to speak to more than 100,000 people in 7 countries.

Ty’s early entrepreneurial success led New York Times Bestselling Author Bob Burg to say, “I wish I could get back to Tys age and know what Ty knows. He will amaze you!”

Ty is the author of The Power of Influence, which has been described as “How To Win Friends & Influence People for our day.”

Contact Info: Ty Bennett – www.leadershipinc.com, ty@leadershipinc.com

Male:   Preparing business for business is on the air. Join hosts, president of the New York Shop Exchange and Kyle Clouse, vice president for insightful and creative strategies to prepare your business for business.  Listen in for great guests and great offers from our guests and sponsors, as well thought-provoking dialogue.  Preparing Business for Business offers usable content, insightful ideas and the resources to jumpstart your business in an effective, economical manner and to prepare your business for growth and challenges and now, your hosts for Preparing Business for Business, Marcia Hawkins and Kyle Clouse.

Marcia Hawkins:        Good evening, everybody and I do welcome you to the Business Preparing for Business radio program on the business network preparedness radio network and this is a Marcia Hawkins along with my cohost, Kyle Clause. Today is November 29, 2011 at 7 p.m. on Eastern Standard time zone. On this last day of November, which is showing us some pretty warm temperatures here in the Northeast.

We do welcome you here and thank you for joining us here every Wednesday evening to take an informative look at how we can help you prepare your business for more business. We have a treasure trove of ideas and some great information for you along with some pretty exciting guests and informative commentary.

Our true intention and our goal each week is really quite simple. We want to provide you with the tools that you need to either start a business, grow your existing business or offer up solutions and some challenging times that we’re all facing right now. But I’ve got to get my cohost in here really fast tonight because I’m very, very excited about the guest we have on tonight.

Hi, Kyle!

Kyle Clouse:  Hey, how you doing, Marcia?

Marcia Hawkins:        I’m pretty good. So I am just so excited that you are able to secure your our guest for this evening. Without further ado, let’s enlighten our guest as to who we have on tonight.

Kyle Clouse:  Yeah, we’ve got – you know it’s really exciting because we have a two-part series with our guest. Our guest is it Ty Bennett, he is the founder of Leadership Inc. and tonight we’re going to be talking about the power of influence. Next week will be the power of stories and Ty Bennett being the federal of leadership, what that is is speaking and training company that is dedicated to empowering individuals and organizations.

And Ty, I’ve actually been to a few of the Ty’s events and he is a very gifted communicator and speaker and have unique ability to inspire people and to teach and to make the complex very simple.

Marcia Hawkins:        I just want to interject something really quick though of my perception of Ty. I’ve never met Ty. I’ve only briefly spoke to him on the phone prior to us going live but one thing that came across and the audio set that you sent me as a gift was that I didn’t hear Ty’s words, I felt them. And that to me was pretty powerful.

So let’s bring our guest on because I just think that the audience is going to be quite excited to listen to Ty tonight. Good evening, Ty. How are you?

Ty Bennett:     I am great. Thanks so much for having me and Marcia, I have to tell you, that’s a great compliment to hear that coming through in the audio program that you heard and I hope that tonight we can share some great insights that are going to help the people who are listening.

Marcia Hawkins:        Yeah, you know I just wanted to tell our listeners to really kind of relax their minds a little bit, you know, try to really absorb you know, some of the information that you’re going to be able to download to them tonight because it’s really amazing.

I have your audio set in my car and I’m probably wearing the CD out because I listened to it all the time. And it’s just amazing how many times I listen to it and every time I listen to it, I pick up one new thing, you know, another new thing and I can just can never stop learning from these audios.

So I got to say in some of the dialogue on your CDs and some of your thought processes are so powerful, can you give our listeners just a little bit of insight as to where you developed that?

Ty Bennett:     Well, I think that overall, I owe a lot to my parents. I was born to really good – great parents who have taught me tremendous amount and who have been amazing examples to me.

But I’m a fairly young guy, I’m 30 years old but in my ’20s I’ve had quite a bit of experience probably much more than most people have had in their ’20s. My brother and I started a business when I was 21 and he was 22. And you know, we struggled at first but we kind of made our way through those struggles and actually built that business over $20 million in revenue while still in our ’20s on an annual basis.

And I – in the process of doing that, really discovered my love for teaching and inspiring and we built a very large sales organization so I did a lot of speaking in the process of that. And so I wrote a book called The Power of Influence and have put out a couple of audio programs, a new video training program and had a chance to speak all over the world in more than a dozen countries in the Fortune 500 companies and all sorts of different organizations.

And for me I would think more than anything I guess it really comes down to me being a constant learner myself. I’m always studying and learning and reading and just trying to fine tune myself. I think that life is really about growth and if we adopt that philosophy of constantly learning and growing and becoming a better person, then we’re –we always have something to look forward to.

Marcia Hawkins:  Absolutely. So can you tell us what was your inspiration to write The Power of Influence?

Ty Bennett:     You know, I believe that every business, every entity if you will, every family, every organization, you name it, I think that it all really boils down to leadership. I think that if you want to survive and to thrive personally it comes down to your own personal leadership I think that if you look at any organization, the level of leadership that they have of the people who are involved is really what moves people forward. And when you boil it down what leadership is because it’s one of those nebulous terms that you can find 5 million definitions for.

I think influence is the best tangible idea of what leadership really is. Because if you have the ability to move people, if you have the ability to inspire people, to influence people in the direction that you want them to go, whether that’s in the sales process, you’re influencing them to buy your products in a leadership capacity, you are helping them to buy into your vision and to take action on that. Maybe it’s in the teaching capacity and you’re helping to influence the way that they learn and the amount of effort that they’re willing to put into something, it could be in the mentoring capacity, it could be in a speaking capacity, being able to influence people from stage, whatever area that is, influence is really the tangible action item of leadership. And the thing about influence that I love there is that it’s very practical. You can learn it step-by-step. You can learn the techniques and the tools of it but it’s also very profitable when you do learn those things and begin to apply them.

Kyle Clouse:  Ty, one of the things – let me just sneek in on a couple of points here because one thing that I thought of when Marcia earlier was talking about she was able to feel your words, one of the things that came to mind as I was speaking because I’ve experienced that too. I’ve listened to your CD, The Power of Belief. I know we’re not talking about that, you have – the word that came to mind was “connect”. And you have the ability to connect with your audience. And just wondering, how does that sit in to influence, being able to connect with your audience or if it’s someone you were speaking to over the phone?

Ty Bennett:     Well, I think the connection is really key to influence in a huge way. Next week, we’ll dive into this even more as we talk about the power of stories and how to communicate your story and your message because I think one of the things that people need to recognize is when it comes to communication, any leader, any influencer is a communicator.

By nature, we’re all in the people business. We all interact with people everyday whether it’s at work, at home, at play, in whatever capacity it may be and the way that we connect and move within the people business is through communication. So we need to just face that fact and work on becoming better communicators. But I think people miss the mark in communication because most people are aiming after perfection.

I mean, you think about it. You’re trying to – when you ask somebody, “How did your presentation go?” they’d go, “Oh, it was perfect.” Or you know, I don’t know. I could’ve been better in this capacity and their aim, their goal is perfection but the goal of communication is not perfection, it really is connection.

You see, the truth is with communication it never goes perfect. I mean this radio show is going to be great but there’ll be things when you go back and you listen to it and you say, “I could’ve said that better,” or you know, “I could’ve done this better,” “this transition could’ve been smoother.”

I mean that happens in anything. There’s never perfect communication. But if you can make a connection with somebody, that perfection can be made, that lack of perfection can be made up for and people will still take action even though it’s not perfect.

So for me, my goal is really connection whether that’s with an individual or with an audience. I think that that comes down to a couple things. Number one, you need to be authentic.

People can read if you are true and real or not. If you’re trying to be something that you’re not, it comes across to people in the conviction in your voice and the look in your eyes and the way that you say things. And so for me, one of the things I’ve – I know for me I don’t just write about anything, I don’t just speak on any subject. I want to speak on subjects that I feel like I have a lot of experience and a lot of know-how and can talk about it in an authentic way and feel like I am an expert in that area because I’ve had success there.

Otherwise I don’t feel authentic and I don’t feel like I can connect and the right way. So authenticity is a huge piece. Just the simple focus of designing your concept and making it about the listener, making it about the other person as opposed to making it about yourself and we’ll talk about that a little bit when it comes to influence. But those simple little things really change the connection that you have with people.

And I agree Kyle, I think it’s a good point that especially when it comes to communication, don’t focus on perfection. Focus on connection.

Kyle Clouse:  So very, very good, Ty. Very good. What – one thing, it’s funny as you mentioned being authentic, I actually wrote a note. I was writing as you were talking and I wrote a note from earlier when you were talking about you and your brother’s business and talking about you know, how you generated $20 million in revenue before you reach the age I think, it was 28 if I remember correctly.

But one of the things that I wrote down was when you were saying that, you weren’t saying that in a manner that was bragging, you were saying that in a way that was showing what’s possible. And when we think about in the terms of the world today when we think of a lot of money, we see it as fast cars and fancy clothes and expensive jewelry but you don’t come across that way. You come across very authentic and that’s something that I wrote down is how you apply authenticity into the power of influence and you really hit that on the – you really nailed that.

One thing that I would like to hear about Ty, is how and maybe you can explain this because I’ve heard you speak and so I can ask this question and if you can explain this. The plan really – you talk a lot about the platinum rule and how does that apply to influence?

Ty Bennett:  Yeah. I want to give a little bit of context in – as we lead up to that. Just from a simple standpoint that I really believe as an influencer, the idea that you need to come away with it, if you were to take anything away from this call and you were to say, “Okay, what is Ty’s main message? What is – how do I become more influential?” And the way you become more influential is that it’s not about you, it’s about them. It’s never about you.

I mean, think about it from a standpoint. If you’re a leader, if you don’t have followers, then you, by definition, are not a leader. And so you don’t exist without the people that you’re leading. And so it has to be about the people that you’re leading and not about you. If you’re a speaker and you don’t have an audience, well your message isn’t impacting anybody and so it has to be about them. The same thing if you’re a teacher, the same thing if you’re in sales and whatever capacity you are influencing someone or trying to influence someone, it’s always about them. It’s always about your audience.

Well, the platinum rule is a great application of that principle. Now we’ve heard of the Golden rule before and the golden rule I think is a great rule. I mean, I remember learning it in Sunday school when I was a kid and my parents were reinforcing that and I’ve reinforced that with my kids as I’ve said, you know, “You treat other people the way that you would want to be treated” and what’s that teaching is more of an ethics. It’s teaching that you’re not going to hurt somebody because you don’t want to be hurt. You’re not going to do something mean to somebody or you want to treat people in a manner in which they would love – you would love to be treated, with respect and kindness.

But when it comes to communication and influence, the thing that I think we don’t recognize is that being as a people business, we need to recognize the difference within people and we need to be willing to give that extra effort to connect with people individually as opposed to as a whole.

And the Platinum Rule is a step above the Golden Rule and it’s to treat other people the way they want to be treated. Not the way you want to be treated, the way that they want to be treated and that sounds like just a little nuance and you might say, “Yeah, what’s the difference?” Well, the difference is huge. When you think about the fact that each of us, you know, the three of us on the phone, if we were to talk about the difference and our likes, what motivates us, what drives us, the pet peeves that we have, our favorite things, the things that we’re really going after in terms of our goals, we are all very different people.

And so if I can learn those things enough about each of you, you know, Kyle, I’m going to treat you differently in some ways that I’m going to treat Marcia because of the simple fact that you are two different people. And if I care enough to try and influence you individually then I’m going to practice the platinum rule. So the platinum rule I think is a such a great rule of thumb when you start to really try and influence people but it’s based on the whole idea that influence is always about the other person.

Marcia Hawkins:  Absolutely. I could not agree with that more. That is for sure. I just want to do a quick backup a little bit. As you were talking with Kyle and talking about influence, do you find that you’re so good at communicating with influence because you have been so heavily influenced?

Ty Bennett:     I think that has a lot to do with it. I mean, you definitely learn from role models in that regard and I learned a lot from the people that had influenced me. And you know, I – people ask me all the time, “Who are your mentors?” And the truth is I learned from so many different people and I learned different things. I don’t know that I have one mentor for everything but I can take great qualities and great experiences and great things from everybody I meet but absolutely, I know for me, I don’t believe people are self-made at all. I don’t believe in that concept.  I think that there’s a lot of influences that affect each of us and I think then if you’ll buy into that principle then it becomes our responsibility to be that positive influence for the people that you are around as well.

Marcia Hawkins:  I’m going to veer off track a little bit and I hope it’s okay but I’m just very curious to pick your brain about this one particular subject because this one stumps me a lot. For me, I have absolutely no problem instigating change. When I see something –I’m great at making a decision, I don’t need to vacillate on it for very long. When I see something that needs to be done, I do it. And yet I find sometimes that many people really stuggle with instigating change in their life. Any thoughts on that?

Ty Bennett:     I think people struggle with change quite a bit. I think that, you know, we hate the word change, we almost look at it like a four letter word. I think number one we need to change your mindset about the word change. I don’t personally like to use the word change not because I personally see it as having a negative connotation but most people do. What I want you to – just listen to the difference of how that sounds. If I were to change the word change to the word growth, what’s the difference that that makes in your mind?

Marcia Hawkins:  Oh, a completely different mindset.

Ty Bennett:     Okay, so – can you name that change that you make in your life where it doesn’t cause you to grow? I mean, every change causes you to grow, every new experience causes you to grow. And you know, I think if you want to be successful, the truth, that we fear change because it’s uncomfortable. We fear change because it’s unknown. You know, it feels a little bit risky, it doesn’t feel you know, and we are creatures of pleasure and comfort and so we don’t like to step into the unknown but the truth is if you want to be successful, you have to get really comfortable with being uncomfortable because in the world we live in today, everything is changing.

I mean think about it. Five years ago if I would’ve said, “We’re going to promote this. We’re going to have a radio show on the Internet and we’re going to promote it over Facebook,” you’re going to go, “What are you talking about?” I mean, everything is changing. Just even the platform, the business that you and Kyle operate, that platform didn’t exist a year ago, the ability to do what you’re doing. And so we have to be willing to adapt and grow I think it starts with our mindset. I’d change – I would switch out the word change for growth and recognize that we need to be uncomfortable and that’s okay because that growth process requires a little bit of being uncomfortable but that’s what sets us apart from most people who aren’t willing to do that.

Marcia Hawkins:        I often say that people get very comfortable, uncomfortably. They are very uncomfortable and yet you have to be very comfortable with it,  I talk about that quite a bit. So I know Kyle’s chomping at the bit to ask you another question. So, Kyle?

Kyle Clouse:  Oh no – yeah, absolutely. Well in your book, Ty, since we’re to tie it up on The Power of Influence, your book on chapter three you talked about developing outward taking and one of the things that I love about your book is that each chapter begins with a quote that you put in there. I just want to quickly read the quote that you have there by Napoleon Hill that says, “Self-discipline begins with the mastery of your thoughts. If you don’t control what you think, you can’t control what you do. Simply, self-discipline enables you to think first and act afterward.”

So can you tell us a little bit about what you mean by developing outward thinking?

Ty Bennett:     Well, Kyle I alluded to that a little bit earlier. When – to change your thought process from a me focused thought process, to a you focused thought process, meaning the other person, to go from inner directed to outer directed from a selfish state to a selfless state, that’s not a natural thought process.

Our natural thought process is for us to be selfish, to thrust to take our own needs, wants and desires and there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s basic human nature. But if we can change that, if we can make that shift, that really comes across the people in a genuine way and a way that for you care about them first.

If you think about it in the sales position. There’s the old saying that “nobody wants to be sold but everybody wants to buy.” Well, what does that really mean? You’ve probably all felt a salesperson who you know cares way more about the commission they’re going to make than they do about whether or not you make the right choice. We’ve all felt that before. But you’ve also probably felt somebody who cares way more about you as an individual than they do about the money they’re going to make from the transaction.

That’s what I’m talking about. It’s being able to place the other person first being an outward thinker because that thought process just like Napoleon Hill just said that thought, it starts there and if we get our thought process right, that comes across in the right way to people that we’re interacting with.

Kyle Clouse:  Very, very good. Absolutely. Tell us a little bit about – and the story that goes along with this. Tell us about the elephant mindset.

Ty Bennett:     Well I used that analogy in the book because to me – I had a mentor when I was 19 years old who really drove home the power of our thinking in my mind and he did it with this analogy. When he talked about when a baby elephant is born into captivity, the captors will take that baby elephant and they’ll take a big heavy chain and they’ll drive a huge stake into the ground and they’ll chain that baby elephant’s leg to the stake and that elephant will pull and pull and pull and to no avail. He won’t be able to pull away from it, he’ll be stuck.

The reason they do that when he’s young is because then he develops the mindset that it’s not possible to escape. Well they have to do that when he’s young because the elephant will grow in size and stature to the point where he can rip that stake right out of the ground but because he doesn’t think it’s possible, as he grows and becomes a bigger elephant, they actually can hold the elephant there with a shoelace, not because it’s not possible but just because he doesn’t think it’s possible.

And you know, I know that elephants don’t have the same brains that we do but the truth is that analogy holds true with humans as well. We often don’t do things not because they are possible but just because we don’t think they’re possible and if we understand how powerful our thought processes are and as it pertains to influence the conversation we are having, thinking selfishly is a powerful thought process that drives even subconscious actions that will impact whether or not you influence people. And so changing that to think outwardly and to place other people first will really have an impact on the way you interact with people.

Kyle Clouse:  Absolutely. You know, it’s just an interactions with people. And Marcia and I, we talked about this as well is there’s a lot of people out there that don’t feel like they have any control whatsoever with their circumstances. You know, everything happens to them and they feel like they don’t have any control and you know, as soon as – it’s in the elephant story. There comes a pull, the elephant doesn’t feel like he has any control over his surroundings or what’s chaining him back.

In your book, you offer a litmus test. And for anyone listening, how to recommend the book, The Power of Influence, you can pick up at LeadershipInc.com. But in the litmus test you gave some indicators that what a person can ask himself whether at – you know, with the power of influence and with the platinum rule in developing an outward mindset.

If you had a – if you just rattle off on a couple of words and key to – actually Ty, we have  to get to this after the break. Marcia?

Marcia Hawkins:        Yes, sure. Okay, we’re going to take a quick break to highlight our sponsors. This is the Business Preparing You for Business program on the Preparedness radio network. I am Marcia Hawkins along with Kyle Clouse inviting you here each week to join us for an informative dialogue on everything about business preparation. Also please stop by and visit us at NewYorkShopExchange.com and thank you for allowing us to your business prepare for business. We’ll be right back.

Okay, welcome back. Again, this is Marcia Hawkins along with Kyle Clouse. Our guest this evening is Ty Bennett of Leadership Inc and you can also get his book, The Power of Influence at www.LeadershipInc.com.  Again, the power of influence at Leadership Inc.

So Kyle, why don’t you go ahead and ask Ty that follow-up question you had right before the break? I think – did we lose Kyle?

Kyle Clouse:  I’m sorry, Marcia. I’m here. I’m sort of having a technical difficulty.

Marcia Hawkins:        Okay.

Kyle Clouse:  We were talking about outward thinking and putting others first and at the end of Ty’s – at the end of the chapter, Ty has a litmus test. And just curious, Ty, what are some of the main key points that someone can ask themself to see how they’re doing on outward thinking?

Ty Bennett:     Well number one, I think a lot of people who are listening are probably involved in sales and if you are, I really want you to think about in the process of getting through a sales conversion, as you are talking to a perspective client, are you really concerned more or thinking about more the commission you’re going to make or about the client themselves? And really, what’s going through your mind? Because that subtle difference will come across to the person you’re talking to.

Another idea is, as you think about it, we’re all involved in personal relationships. And how do we react to things? When things are brought up, do we get defensive and do we place blame in other areas or do we take personal responsibility? I think some of those things will really telltale signs on how you’re doing with your thought process. And trust me Kyle, when I say it for me, I think that that wasn’t assessed as something that you could take on a weekly, monthly, daily basis because it’s something I think you always have to keep in check and something I know I’m constantly working on.

Marcia Hawkins:  Well, I think that segues nicely into – about investing in people. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Ty Bennett:     Yeah. One of my key strategy is I believe that as I watched other influencers and that I teach in my book is to start to invest in people. I learned this from a mentor that I came across when I was a senior in high school and he taught me the importance of investing in people when he told me he wanted to invest in me. And when I heard the word invest I thought he just meant money and I was like I don’t know what to do with it, am I going to start a business or anything right now.

And then he said, “You know, Ty, I have almost found that I get my highest return on investment when I invest in people.” And that always stuck with me because what I’ve come to realize in my leadership capacity than those I’ve watched other great influencers is that people invest in people with time, with care, with understanding. It’s that little difference that makes such a huge impact in people’s lives.

And so it’s little things like reaching out just to say hello instead of having something that you want to get out of the situation. Maybe just making it about them and then when was the last time that you just called somebody just to check in and see how they’re doing? Or when was the last time that you wrote a thank you note, like a physical a thank you note, put a stamp on it, put it in the mail and sent it to somebody?

I know for me,  I got a thank you note from somebody in the mail a couple weeks ago. I spoke at our church and somebody sent me a thank you note and just said, “You know what? What you said today I think was just perfect for me to hear.” I kept that card, it means something to me. It’s a little investment that they made in me. I feel more connected to that person. I honestly don’t know that person very well. But that meant something to me and those little investments, they’re like deposits in an emotional bank account so they really do pay dividends over time.

And so if you can adopt this philosophy of everyday as a leader, say, whom I going to invest in? Who am I going to make a little bit of extra effort? Who’s somebody on my team that I can do something extra for today or who’s one of my clients or customers that I can reach out to a make a little investment in? That investment is going to pay huge in the long run.

Marcia Hawkins:  Absolutely.

Kyle Clouse:  Now – that’s perfect. As we’re talking about investing in other people, Ty, I’m going to ask you a yes or no question but please follow-up with an explanation. But when it comes to investing in people, do little things matter?

Ty Bennett:  I think they absolutely matter. I mean, I gave you that example of the thank you card but I mean, just little things. For example,, if you Kyle were just to offer you know, come out and say, you and I ran into each other and you were to offer or we work together and you were to offer me a treat or something, you have a candy bar in the office, that would be great.

But if you want a little bit over, a little bit extra and you knew what my favorite candy bar was, that’s a really little thing, right? But that would stick out to me. If you were to say, “Hey, Ty, I got you a milky way,” because it happens to be my favorite candy bar. Just the fact that you cared enough to know that, that would make a difference for me. I mean that’s just a little thing but it’s those little things that really make a huge difference. There’s a lot of analogies for that but when it comes to interacting with people they do for sure.

Marcia Hawkins:        Yeah, it’s all about the impression, too. Absolutely. And I’ve always said that when you invest in people, it’s the gift that keeps on getting good or bad.

Ty Bennett:     Yeah.

Marcia Hawkins:        And I often said when I look at relationships that we have whether they are of business nature, whether they are of a mother-child, a brother-sister, mother-father and you kind of segued into that in the beginning of the show when you talked about your parents being such a strong influence on you. And think a lot of times, people forget the littlest of gestures can go a long way. Good or bad. I definitely think that that’s something we all need to look at especially as you related it to the sales process.

If somebody were, you know, one of our listeners was thinking about, whether they were in the business, they’re going to start a business, they’re thinking about what they should do, what type of mindset would you recommend for somebody who is about to say hire employees and what their mindset should be and how they can invest in their employees?

Ty Bennett:     Well, if they’re looking to hire people, I mean, number one I think, you need to be really clear on the type of person that you are looking for and uncover ways that you can discern in the interview process the qualities of those people. But once those people are part of your team, I believe that it’s a leader’s job to invest in their people on a daily basis. I don’t think you can just do this now and again. If you do wait too long and to invest in your people and you don’t do it often enough, you lose traction in terms of the influence that you have with those people.

It’s your opportunity when you are in a leadership role to grow or decline your influence on a daily basis and if you’ll make that investment part of your daily practice, you’ll continue to grow that. Because by nature, if you own the business, you have some influence over those people but there’s three types of influence. There’s situational influence where people follow because they have to and that situational influence may be because you provide their checks so they have to listen to you. But the difference that that makes is really when somebody follows because they have to, they’ll do things that they won’t fully give their self to things, they won’t fully commit to those things.

And commitment makes a huge difference in terms of the quality of work that they do and all that. But what we’re looking for is what I call lasting influence, which means that people follow you because of who you are and how you treat them and that’s a huge difference.

It has nothing to do with your title, has nothing to do with whether or not you pay their check or anything, it has everything to do with the way you interact with them and whether they choose to follow you or not.

Marcia Hawkins:        So if – along that vein, is there a time where all the positive influence you can shower upon somebody, are there times – if the audience so to speak, is not hearing you, I’m sure in all your public speaking that you’ve done at times, did you ever feel like maybe and I guess this goes back to what you talked about earlier that connection, being able to connect with them I mean and as you also so eloquently put at times, you will be communicating and might just be a little off, you’re not able to convey your message. And I think sometimes, we kind of second-guess ourselves and think what did I do wrong, what could I have done differently, any suggestions about that when your audience isn’t as receptive as you’d like them to be?

Ty Bennett:     Well, if you have the ability to, one of those other ways to really increase connection is to be real. And real is different than authentic. Authentic means that you are practicing what you preach and you’re not doing like – but being real, if you can go back, I have had so many conversations when I’ll go back to people and say, “You know, I don’t know what I’ve done wrong but for whatever reason it feels like we’re butting heads and we’re not connecting.” I mean, from your perspective, how do you see it? And really learn how to listen and learn how to let that – open that person up and be real and be open to their feedback and their ideas especially if it’s somebody that you worked with closely.

I’ve done that with clients. I’ve gone back and I’ve said, “You know, I don’t know where I missed the boat but for some reason you are not seeing this the same way I am and explain it to me, help me to understand what I did wrong,” and if you can have that genuine, real conversation, that can create that connection as well.

Marcia Hawkins:        Great advice.

Kyle Clouse:  We’d love to stay on this but in fact, Ty, this really segues into something that you talked a lot about and that’s about being interested and not interesting. Can you explain what you mean by that and how can we do that?

Ty Bennett:     Well, I think the funny thing– I mean, remember my rule isn’t always about them. Okay, so think about it. If we focus about being interesting, that’s all about us. Like, how can I look cool? I mean, Kyle, I’m going to drive a flashy car so that people would go, “Wow! That’s somebody I got to talk to.” Well, you mentioned that earlier, if I came home with an expensive car, my wife would probably make me take it back but that’s a good thing of having a wife, it keeps you humble.

But if I’m interested in other people, Dale Carnegie had a great quote where he said, “You can make more friends in three months than you can in three years by being interested rather than interesting.” And what do I mean by that? Well here’s a couple of practical things. Number one, learn how to ask really good questions. Questions that open people up and questions – not only being able to ask them like word those questions the right way but also relay those questions in a way where the person feels comfortable and is willing to open up, so that they’re willing to talk. Then if you can get them to open up and really feel like you are genuinely interested, then really listen. And not listen to respond where you’re listening to the question and thinking in your head, “Okay, how am I going to rebuttal this? What am I going to say in response to this? But listen to understand so that you validate that person.

Another really practical way that you can do this is to be present in conversations. I mean, how often are you talking to somebody nowadays and they’re looking at their cell phone, they’re texting or checking their e-mail or something and either half listening so they’re not really hearing what you’re saying, it’s annoying. And I know, I’ve done that to people. I’ve done that to my wife probably today and it’s something I need to do better at, being  fully present so that people know that you care. Some of those simple things, if you can be focused on being interested, it’s going to take you so much further with people than just being interesting.

Marcia Hawkins:  Kyle, I hope you heard that. Kyle is constantly reading his email when he’s talking to me, Ty, so I’m glad you brought that up.

Kyle Clouse:  It’s actually – one of the things I was thinking, Ty, is that it’s so important that instead of constantly thinking about what our responses are going to be, we should be focused on understanding what’s being asked of us. And even a step further, not necessarily what’s being asked of us but we’re also trying to put ourselves in their shoes, from their point of view and their experience to understand that question even at a deeper level.

Ty Bennett:     For sure. You think about that, what you’re alluding to is empathy. And empathy is being able to place yourself in somebody’s shoes. I mean, have you ever had an experience where somebody asked you a question where you just felt like, “Wow, they understand me,” where it’s not just repeating what you just said that they are going, “Wow, you know what, they totally get what I’m saying, they’ve been there.” And you feel validated in that.

If you can help people have that feeling – because in a world we are in today, I think we don’t have that feeling enough. We don’t have those connections enough. And in our world that we’ve increased the ability to communicate but because of that, we’ve downgraded our ability to connect a lot of ways and it still comes down to human connections.

Kyle Clouse:  So how does someone become a good – well in trying to connect and really understand someone, how are we – what are some things that we can do to focus on becoming a good listener?

Ty Bennett:  Well, number one, it takes practice. You have to have the desire to do it. And I think it takes I mean, it takes effort. I find listening is like a very active – it requires a lot of energy-type of process. It’s not just sit back and take it in, just listen but you are listening because you are paying attention to a lot of subtle things. I mean, what’s the body language tell you? Try to put it in context. What else do you know about this person? Are there infractions you’ve had with a person? Try to lead read between the lines. What are they really saying as they’re saying this? Is there something that they are not fully saying or that I’m missing out on? All of those little things you’re trying to fully understand that person.

And so it’s an active process. I think it takes a lot of practice and it takes a lot of effort and in the process you can learn through that and I talked a little bit about it in my book and some of the things that you can do to become a more active listener. There’s a lot of books and things out there on it but ultimately I think it’s just comes down to you and I going out and practicing as we’re interacting with people.

Marcia Hawkins:  So your message is very clear. To be a great communicator, you really must be an incredible listener.

Ty Bennett:  Absolutely. I think you know, you’re a listener first because you need to understand the people that you’re communicating with and make sure that your message is something that can hit home but understand that we’re on the people business so every single day we get to practice in that business and that’s the fun part.

Marcia Hawkins:        I know. It’s really funny because I’ve been self-employed for 20 years and it’s just amazing in terms of how you communicate with your customer whether you’re selling something, whether you’re just dealing with the customer service issue, regardless of what that is, you really – it just astounds me sometimes when people come in with their guns loaded and I’ve seen it a million times.

You go in to the mall at the holidays and people go in and they just immediately are on edge with the sales clerk and they started packing them and they’re trying to return something or whatever it is. And what’s amazing to me is that I just don’t understand why they would put that out there first. When you’re trying to accomplish a goal and yet they immediately put that person on the defense and I just have never been able to quite understand that.

So how do you handle when you’re in a situation where somebody has really ticked you off and how do you kind of boil that down and recover in that conversation?

Ty Bennett:     Well, that’s a hard thing to do being that we’re all human and we get caught up in our emotion and we look of those things. I think I do a pretty good job of keeping my cool in most situations. I hope I do because I teach people to focus on being interested first and Stephen Covey said, “Seek first to understand and then to be understood.” I think that’s a good rule of thumb. But I was trying to step out of the situation a little bit and look at it from a different angle. Maybe that’s a visual that makes sense. But I try and step out of it and go, “All right, what are they really trying to say and what am I trying to say? Where is the disconnect here?” Because somewhere – if people are having a disagreement, somewhere between where I am and where they are is where we can come together and where we can find an answer to that. The problem is that we just get caught up in our own way of seeing something and it’s really hard to change that mindset. It’s hard to see things from somebody else’s perspective and then even harder to bring two different prospectives together in a place that synergistic and not just one person bows down and says, “Okay you’re completely right and I was completely wrong,” because human nature doesn’t let that happen that often. So I don’t know that I have the perfect way to deal with that. Maybe read crucial conversations or something step-by-step.

Marcia Hawkins:        I just wanted to get your perspective on that because I kind of have my own perspective on that and I’ve always said when I’m in a relationship and having a conversation with somebody, if after the third or fourth time that I’ve communicated my feelings, I realize I’m the problem, not them. And I’m very good at identifying when I’m not getting my message across and I can look at myself and really kind of replay that conversation over and over again and try to extract what it is that I’m not conveying or conveying incorrectly. So Kyle is just itching at me to ask you.

Ty Bennett:     One thought on that because I think this is such a good take away for so many people. I love the fact that you just put an application to the old saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different result.

Marcia Hawkins:        Amen.

Ty Bennett:     That is a perfect situation where you go, if you try and say something 3x one way that doesn’t work, maybe the other person isn’t the problem. Maybe you don’t just keep hitting the door the same way to actually step back and let’s try a new approach. So yeah, we’ll go to Kyle but I just wanted to make that point because we do that in so many areas of our life and that’s a great application to that.

Marcia Hawkins: Oh yeah, it’s like I’m going to back this car and drive into the cement wall once again. I love this. But Kyle has been – he’s been skyping me and he’s been itching for me to ask you to share the plane story.

Ty Bennett:     Okay, so maybe this isn’t the best example of what we are just talking about because this is the story about when I probably didn’t keep my cool the same way. I was thinking levelheadedly but I fly a lot because I’m the speaker I travel all over the world and speak and I’m based in Salt Lake City and Delta has a hub here so I fly on Delta virtually every time I fly and I get upgraded to first-class because of that.

So I was flying from Salt Lake City to Oakland, not too long ago and it’s pretty quite a painless flight and I got upgraded to first-class I was seated in seat 4B and I sat down, I think I was the first person on the plane and I wasn’t paying attention as people are coming on the plane and all of a sudden this gentleman stopped next to me and he said, “Get up, you’re in my seat,”and he said it like a jerk. He said, “Get up! You’re in my seat.” I looked at him and thought wow I mean, “I’m sorry, what seat are you in?”

And he said, “This is my seat. Do you realize this is first-class? You’re in my seat.”

I mean, I don’t know if you ever run into people like this, Marcia but I said, “I realize this is first-class, I’m also in first-class. What seat are you in?”

And he said – then he asked this question I still view as the dumbest question I’ve ever heard. He said, “Did you pay to sit in first-class or did you just get upgraded because I paid for my first-class seat?”

And so I answered him, I said, “I got upgraded, which really stinks for you because that means I paid a lot less money for the exact same seat. What seat are you in?”

And he said, “I’m in 4C,” and I was like, “Ah, you’ve got to be kidding me. I’m sitting in 4B,” and I said, “your seat is 4C, it’s right across the aisle.”

And he just turned without any apology – anything. He just turned and sat down on his seat and I kind of lost my cool with this guy I was like, this guy ticked me off and so I looked across the alley and I said, “You know what, you would suck at what I do.” He was totally flabbergasted.  He said, “What do you mean?” and I said, “You’re not good with people. You’re horrible with people.” I said, “Just be nice, it’s not that hard.” And I kind of lost my cool with the guy but the truth is, the point rings true in the fact that winning the people is really not that hard if we’re just genuinely nice people and we focus on that interaction, we make it about them, we can be very influential in that process.

Marcia Hawkins: Again the moral of my story, the gift that keeps on giving, good or bad so you – that sums it all up.

I am so sorry that we have to go but I’m so excited to tell our listeners the Ty’s going to be back with us next week on December 7 at the same time so unfortunately we do have to sign off and we do have to say goodbye for tonight as we are out of time but we promise we’ll be back next week, Wednesday evening with Ty.

We want to thank you so much for listening and we also of course, want to our sponsors and of course our guest, Ty Bennett. Make sure you stop by at LeadershipInc.com and get a copy of this book, you’ll love it.

This is Marcia Hawkins and Kyle Clouse. This is a very uplifting and informative preparative show. We sure hope you’ll visit us. Our site, NewYorkShopExchange.com and get your business moving with video on your very own video business channel. We look forward to chatting with you next week. Again, I’m Marcia Hawkins along with Kyle Clouse. Enjoy the rest of your evening.

Male:    You’ve been listening to Preparing Business for Business with your hosts Marcia Hawkins and Kyle Clouse.  Questions or comments?  Email the show at info@newyorkshopexchage.com.  Also, find them on the web at NewYorkShopExchange.com.  Until next time. For the best tips on how to manage and grow your busines,s tune in again for Preparing Business for Business with your hosts Marcia Hawkins and Kyle Clouse.

Filed Under: Entrepreneurship, Personal Development Tagged With: , , ,

5 Pieces Of Advice For Becoming Prosporous Entrepreneur

June 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment

All business people look for ways to guarantee success in their business. Lots of people have tried numerous tactics with different levels of success recorded. There are several suggestions that have resulted to great outcome for many people and they could very well guarantee success in business.

Your selection of company formations can influence your business’ success. In England there are various methods of company formation. Creating a company online would be easier, quicker and less expensive because of the benefit of technology that has been accorded to business people. There are websites on the internet offering this service in an easy and convenient manner. You need to verify that what the website is requiring you to provide is as per requirements indicated by Company House and adhere to UK company formations law. This is to avoid finding out later that your company is not legitimate and you end up having a run in with the law enforcement officials. In most cases, all that is needed is to have your documentation in order and submit as required. The next step will be to pay the little fee charged and the moment it’s accepted by Company House, your company is formed.

Another factor that should be well considered is what type of company you want to start. There are four forms of company formations in England. In this condition, reflect on the goal you have for your company and then choose which company formation can best help you accomplish them. If you have to go with the partnership then carefully consider who will be in partnership with you. Reason being partners need to have the same goal, vision and spirit in order to attain their set targets. Having every person on the same level, your business will be off to an excellent beginning and can be guaranteed of succeed.

Business is full of risk. You therefore need to be ready to start out small. As a baby cannot be born and start running, you will need to have the patience and energy to watch your business grow. It may take longer than anticipated but this should not discourage you from focusing on the growth of the business. A majority of business people quit after a year of operating a business not putting into consideration that many reputable businesses took more time to be where they are.

The connection you create with your customers, staff and the public also determine the level of success your business gets. You need to put into consideration into the needs of your customers and get a good method of providing the best business atmosphere that will keep them coming back. Your business is driven by the employees hence you should ensure there is a work environment that encourages team work, rewards effort and encourages development.

In conclusion, your primary attitude towards the business wholly determines how great it performs. You may put into consideration all the above but with a negative attitude, your company will fail. Your business will only do as well as you believe it will.

Filed Under: Entrepreneurship, Personal Development Tagged With: , , ,

Young Entrepreneurs use Tech to Compensate

December 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment

This piece originally ran on FastCompany.com, December 22, 2010.

Humorist P.J. O’Rourke titled his 1995 memoir Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence and a Bad Haircut. He was writing about his journey from hippie to conservative, but the phrase applies just as well to the differences between younger and older entrepreneurs, according to a recent article by Annie Lowery on Slate.

In the piece, Lowery quotes research by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, showing that the cohort of entrepreneurs under 35 may have created more new businesses in 2009, but accounted for only 19.1% of “total entrepreneurial activity.” Additional studies by the entrepreneurship-focused Kaufmann Foundation found that the average age of entrepreneurs was 39, with far more successful businesses launched by Americans over 50.

It stands to reason that experience would be helpful in something as complex as starting a new company. So are other factors that often correlate with age, such as a longer credit history, a thicker rolodex of potential investors, partners and customers, the aura of mature authority, and deeper knowledge of a particular market or industry.

Part of the appeal of the notion of “young entrepreneurship” is that it is counterintuitive. It flies in the face of the very sensible idea that, in business, experience and seniority are key. Young people stereotypically offset the advantages of maturity with greater energy, fewer encumbrances in their personal lives, a streak of unjaded idealism, and, frankly, a willingness to take risks that more seasoned people might consider foolish. When you’re making a big bet on entrepreneurship, it’s sometimes helpful to have less to lose.

One reason there is so much focus on young entrepreneurs is because they tend to succeed most spectacularly in highly-visible industries such as IT, media and entertainment. It may be comparatively more difficult for a 25 year-old to open an auto dealership or a cold storage warehouse, but it’s a much smaller leap to launch a videogame studio or social media marketing agency. In addition to perhaps having more familiarity and up-to-date skills in these areas, young people are also adept at using technology to close some of the entrepreneurial age gaps. For example:

Social networks automate relationship-building: Online networks make it practically effortless to find and connect with people who might prove to be useful business contacts. In addition to general networks like Facebook, there are now increasing online resources and communities purpose-built for young entrepreneurs. This partially offsets the advantages of a thick rolodex built up over years.

Data supplants wisdom: Insights that were previously limited to those with keen intuition or deep experience are now broadly available to anyone who knows what questions to ask. Not only is more business knowledge accessible online than ever before, but savvy entrepreneurs can mine online sites and communities for market intelligence and customer data.

The economics of attention have changed: Innovative businesses need attention from customers, investors and the market to break through. In the past, industry veterans with long experience could count on insider connections to give them an edge. Now great ideas can go viral and global in an instant, and formal structures such as innovation contests are becoming popular ways of exposing and validating new talent.

Capital requirements for knowledge-based businesses are lower. It still takes credit to start most traditional businesses, but in certain kinds of knowledge and service industries, the only capital a startup entrepreneur needs is between his or her ears. That creates a more level playing field for those with short credit histories, and who may lack tangible assets like property or retirement accounts to leverage into the new business.

These tools exist for young and old alike. There’s no reason a 70 year-old entrepreneur couldn’t make just as extensive use of LinkedIn and online analytics as anyone else. However, they all serve to mitigate the traditional advantages of experience, and dramatically reduce the barriers to entry in the highest-impact segments of the economy.

Midcareer professionals who leave established companies to found new ventures in their fields of expertise will still enjoy considerably better odds of success than someone just starting out, and retirees with a lifetime of accumulated savings will still be able to put more resources into a company to give it time to find its feet. A diversified economy needs those kinds of businesses and should celebrate their success.

At the same time, we’ve seen significant changes in the past decade that make it a lot easier for young people to make a serious run as entrepreneurs much earlier in their lives. The kinds of businesses founded by young entrepreneurs make a much bigger impact when they succeed, and leave a much lighter mark when they fail.

Rob Salkowitz is author of Young World Rising: How Youth, Technology and Entrepreneurship are Changing the World from the Bottom Up, and Generation Blend: Managing Across the Technology Age Gap. Follow him@robsalk.

Filed Under: Blog, Entrepreneurship Tagged With: , , ,