Back home from a family trip to California for a few weeks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAobztgsn4g

Transcription

Make them feel at home.

Hi I'm Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

I am back at home.

For those of you who don't know, this is the home office of Brian J pombo.com. What I call the headquarters. And it's good to be back.

It's about 10 o'clock at night, and all the kids have been put to bed and we're just happy to be home. For those of you who are maybe new, the last couple of episodes I was at Disneyland and Legoland before that, celebrating Thanksgiving with family.

And so a whole lot of traveling via car, a little bit of traveling via plane and just go go go for 10 days straight kind of a marathon for me and my family. So it was it was fun.

And what I like about traveling, I like getting out and doing something new.

I love going to new places.

I love going to places I've been before I just love getting out there and moving and shaking things up, I really do.

But the funny thing is, is there's nothing quite like home, especially after you've been away a while. There's nothing quite like this getting back at home, it's just that comfort zone. That just feels right.

And everything's where you want it to be, you know, or where you at least expect it to be, you may not even want it there. But you're you expected to be there.

And everyone's got that in someplace. If it's not the place where you live, sometimes the place you know, where your parents live, or where you grew up, there's always a place that you consider home where you feel the most comfortable.

This plays back into business because ideally, what you want to create for your customer base is a feeling of home, all of those types of comforts.

Obviously, this can be taken too far and done in the wrong way and create horrible addictions and everything else by feeling that comfort. But I don't want to get into that I want to talk about just the easygoing idea that people feel like this is where they belong.

If you can create that belonging concept in your business, it makes a big difference. And you got to think of it as the same way you feel when you've been away from home and you come home.

That feeling if you can somehow duplicate that in your business. That's a really useful thing. I talk about it a little bit in my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business by a little bit.

It's one of the nine ways is how to create belonging. And it's I dedicate a whole chapter to it. It's at least a start in talking about this idea it kind of exploring it for you and your business.

So I highly recommend you go check that out. If you haven't yet, gotten yourself a copy, you can always just download a free copy, go to AmazonProofBook.com.

It's been a long day and a long week in so I'm gonna I'm gonna you know, have a cup of herbal tea and get to bed relatively early.

So I can have a nice full day tomorrow because we've got stuff to do tomorrow. Certainly stuff around the house, a little bit of business, and a lot of fun.

So, we'll see you then come on back.

And in the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

Brian's family trip continues as the fam gets set for a trip to Disney's California Adventure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzSdT3GVJCk

Transcription

You don't have to be famous to be effective.

Hi I'm Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J Pombo Live.

Today I'm coming to you from Anaheim, California. I'm staying at the Paradise Pier Hotel and I have had a great day. We've had a couple of days, you know, if you've been following we've had a couple of days of chaos and turmoil. Not a bad way.

So one of the fun types of turmoil, okay.

Today we got to start our day in California Adventure Disney California Adventure is the strange wording of it, but just understand it's the second Park in Anaheim, California, straight across the way from Disneyland from the original Disneyland that Walt Disney built.

It's great that they've done a whole lot with it, it was started in a really odd way.

California Adventure on discussing will start in a very odd way. And they've maneuvered around it over the years to create somewhat of a storyline and to start having a newer character and so forth in there.

One of the major changes that they made was that they took a lot of the story of Walt's life and created lands around it in order to make these lands that were originally created when the when California venture first came out and have a make a little more sense of the first place you walked down is a little bit like the main street, USA type deal.

Except they changed it to call it when a Vista Street and Buena Vista Street is the main concept of it is this is LA in you know the 20s, late 20s, early 30s, when Walt Disney first arrived on the scene.

He already had a rough go at it he had he had a situation where he completely lost a whole lot of his staff, he lost the character, he was working with everything else.

He was looking to try something brand new and so is in LA for the first time. And there's all these casts of characters in places and everything that go along with it.

So this is where this, I've got this picture I want to show you. First off give you a little bit of background when we first walked down the street, it's very quaint, it's very cool. We're going during the holiday time, so they're playing Christmas music and Christmas music of that time period or that style at least.

And walking down is really nice.

In the center circle, kind of like a hub. What they have, because of COVID they have the characters that got Mickey Mouse, they had Minnie Mouse, and Goofy dressed in you know, 30 style garb.

But you can't go up and hug them and talk to them and take pictures with them directly. And because of the whole COVID thing, so that got him kind of distant behind a chain-link fence and not chain link fence but a chain behind a chain where kids can't come up and touch you but they're encouraged to come up and take pictures.

So my kids all run up and take pictures with Goofy and they all run up and take pictures with Minnie Mouse. And then along the other side, I noticed two other characters who I the only reason I know who they are is that I'm a nerd about this type of thing.

I understand what the point is behind them but these two characters are standing there and not many people are taking notice of them at the time. I asked my wife I could go over she didn't mind if I go over I don't need to ask my wife's permission but I asked her if she didn't mind if I go over for a second and take a selfie with these ...

Brian's family trip continues as the fam gets set for a trip to Disneyland.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV4l4C3NNcU

Transcription

Disneyland and COVID-19.

Hi I'm Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

We had a great day at Disneyland today not really a full day, they were closing early and we got started a little later than we expected, or than we wanted to I should say it Was pretty much what we expected and so we squeezed as much out of the day as we could a day at Disneyland with a wife, my and also my mother along and three kids, all under the age of seven, lots of fun, we had a good time.

A lot of interesting things that you can take, as I've mentioned in the past three or four episodes that you could take off of vacation, especially when you're going to a money-making place like Disneyland, where the whole thing is designed to separate you from your money as much as possible as quickly as possible.

And it's a really tough thing to do.

I'm not really sure what the answer is but you can really see a huge change that has happened.

I mean, as in everywhere but especially at Disneyland with COVID-19. And a lot of this goes back to the history of Disneyland, it's a very interesting idea of how it was put together.

How Walt Disney very specifically referred to the staff at Disneyland as not just staff or security or this or that job. But as cast members, they call them cast members.

So he came from the entertainment industry, right.

But he saw that if they see this as more of a show that they're putting on, and that they are cast members, and that the people that are there are guests, and they are putting on a show for them in a sense, if they realize that, that that that brings on a completely different field than any other job, especially in the amusement field, right.

So it that's interesting.

So you've got, you've got a job, you take a job at Disney at Disneyland, you are a cast member so you're an entertainer of sorts, you are fulfilling a need as a member of the cast, whatever that need is, even if you're sweeping, you know, crumbs off the ground like I saw someone do it today who didn't seem too thrilled about it.

I mean, who could be right? It's tough to make that look joyous.

I've seen it done but it's rare that you see somebody do that. But you see a situation where you've got to perform, you're always on.

You realize that and really that's true of any customer service position or any position where you are in the public eye at all. You really are a cast member in a sense. But Disney Land has always made that a point of what they do.

Now, I've never been a Disney cast member. So if there's anybody out there, if there's anything I'm saying that's off base, please put me in my place. This is all from the outside looking in.

From all the stuff I've read about Disney and spoken with other cast members about so I could be off on some of these ideas but you're a performer in a sense, you're also a servant to them, to all the guests that are there.

This is one of those things that's very much drilled in, in and Walt Disney himself from what I understand he said something to the extent of, you know, we work so that the guests can play.

That's the idea that that's the idea of being a cast member really putting it all out there and doing everything you can for each individual guest's experience.

Brian's family trip continues as the fam gets set for a trip to Legoland in California.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agP7IvEhVy0

Transcription

What are you really selling?

Hi I'm Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

I'm still here at Legoland California, late at night, out here visiting with my, well, taking my family on a little vacation I should say. And have been having a good time learning a lot.

As I mentioned last night, there's a whole lot of business inventions that you can gain from, from looking at businesses that work because businesses that work because they feed people, they feed people something that people want, good or bad, they they do their job.

They provide something valuable to people for money and if you can take that and translate it back to your business, look at what's actually being sold.

The real question is, what is what are you really selling?

If you're in business what are you actually selling?

I don't mean the product. I don't mean the service itself. I don't mean all the features and the way you would go about describing it. I'm talking about what you're actually selling.

And here's an example.

So is from a customer standpoint, right?

My wife and I are here with my three kids. And I said this really weird thing.

So we're staying at the Legoland Hotel.

It's this place here.

It's pretty wild. I mean, this is in the middle of the night, everyone's while middle of the night.

I think is nine o'clock or something but everyone's asleep.

The kids have gone to bed, and everything's nice and quiet but it's still lit up and everything else, it's still pretty magnificent to look at.

But back to my story. If you think about what we're actually getting from all of this. I sat back and was talking with my wife and I said, You know what, the thing that I've gotten the most out of this experience is, this is probably the calmest I've ever been being out in public with people and my kids.

And I was trying to put my finger on and that occurred to me most of the time.

So I've got three little kids, I've got a seven-year-old, four-year-old, a two-year-old and they're chaos.

Not necessarily in a bad way. Most of them, they're good kids, but they're's chaos.

They're just chaotic little beings and everywhere you take them, you're trying to keep them from either hurting themselves or causing destruction everywhere they go.

And that's not a bad thing. It's just part of having kids and being in public with other people. And people who don't have kids, they didn't understand it.

It's tougher, even if you've had kids at one time. I know my parents they are not as patient the with the kids necessarily as we are because they're just not around them as often and every little thing irks them a little more, you know.

And so it's one of those things where you're always kind of on edge when you're out in public with the kids, you're trying to keep them from hurting themselves because the world is not childproof.

You're trying at the same time you're trying to keep them from getting in the way of everybody else. You try and keep them from being getting lost and running off and getting into this and that. Here, this whole place is relatively childproof.

Brian's family trip continues as the fam gets set for a trip to Legoland in California.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nay1E235p28

Transcription

Legoland for business owners.

Hi I'm Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

I have not walked in this place yet. Here it is late night.

Late night on, let's see, what is it Sunday.

And I'm here to take my kids tomorrow morning to Legoland.

I'm staying right over here, at the Legoland hotel in California.

It's been a fun experience. The hotel itself is very interesting how you can take if you're looking at this from a pure business perspective, how you can take a toy, a relatively benign toy, little plastic bricks that you could put together to create different things, you can create a theme park out of it, you can then produce a hotel out of it.

Let's promote the theme park, you can then have a second hotel, they got a little Lego Castle over here.

You could put all those things together and end up with something completely beyond what the creator could ever possibly imagine, including movies, everything else, you ever want to look at a huge business story in terms of being able to what would you call it, repurpose.

And take a very simple idea and move it over multiple multiple formats and backgrounds with The Lego Movie, though I mean, just everything that Lego touches all the other areas that they touch, including, you know, Star Wars and superheroes.

I mean, is there anything that does not do not have a Lego version out there.

Incredible what they've been able to do, what they've been able to get away with, and how they can print money off of taking one simple idea and duplicating a million times over. It's something you can learn from something you could do in your own business.

But here's how it really goes back to your business. Take your kids to places like this and look at the whole thing. This is what was talking about last night about combining business and family time.

Well, you can do that. Because it's difficult to be in a place like this without any kids. Maybe if you've got a friend or two that are willing to come along with you, it won't look as nefarious.

But if you're just a single person walking around Lego, and everyone's gonna look at you kind of strange, because it is very much a younger person's, I mean, very younger audience that we're dealing with here and so you might want to have some kids.

Now, if you don't have kids, here's the trick, the real trick is if you don't have kids, what you got to do is get somebody else's kids and take them.

Okay, and here's how I would do it. Because I spent many, many years as a single white male, and did not have kids of my own.

I and I never had to do this directly, because I always had nephews and nieces and a good relationship with their parents. So it wasn't, it was never an issue. And I went a lot of places with them.

But what I would recommend you do, if you don't have that is, is think about the people you know, who do have children, and including yourself in those activities as much as possible and just tell the parents, hey, directly, I really would love to check out Legoland.

But I have a hard time figuring out how to do that is just as just a single person. And so how what I'd love to do, I'd love to take your kids now if you've got the money, take their kids and pay for the whole darn trip.

Brian continues his family trip while prepping to fly down to Southern California.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2aerW5eRQo

Transcription

Traveling for business with family.

Hi I'm Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

I am sitting here in the garage of our hotel, we have three kids under the age of seven old trying to get to sleep. This is a very temporary stay because we're looking to fly out of here and probably leave the hotel around five o'clock in the morning. So this will be fun.

We've got an early morning flight out of here, we're going down to Southern California where we'll be visiting Lego Land and Disneyland and this is not a typical business trip.

This is a podcast that we do here, we tend to focus on business concepts and ideas, whether you're talking tactics, strategies, or principles.

Most of the time when you see me out and about we're dealing with a business trip type scenario. But when you're with family, it's the same thing no matter what they are going to see it as vacation, they're going to see it as a fun time out.

And you've got to be able to do business along the way.

Now, while this isn't a distinctly business trip, I am doing business along the way, I've got my laptop with me, and every spare.

Second, I'll be doing the stuff I got to do there but while you're doing that, you also got to take care of family, if you got a wife, if you got kids that that can or husband or what have you, it can get to be really interesting.

And you got to be that there's one word that's very clear, that comes to me over and over again, it's something I've it comes a little more natural to me, even though I've been through a whole lot to force me to be more flexible.

Flexible is the word, you have to be flexible when you're traveling, especially by air. But even beyond that, you have to learn to be flexible, we got into a situation where we thought we were going to be leaving from a different place today.

We had things switched upon us to our benefit that a better situation arose but we had to be flexible. And my wife said I'm starting to learn to just go with it when I'm not in control of things.

That meant a lot hearing that from her because she's not a naturally flexible person. She likes to be in control of things.

So it's been a very interesting eye-opening situation, but also a lesson in flexibility.

We get to the hotel, they don't really know where our room is like we're on the right floor. But for some reason, the room numbers are out of order and so they're not. And the staff doesn't know where the missing room is.

So we had to kind of go door to door until we found ours out in the middle of a strange place where you went think that number would be.

I mean, really lots of fun stuff like that kids are going bonkers because they've gone through Thanksgiving and gotten all sugared up and everything and, and they've been eating leftovers and living out of other people's houses for a while now. And so they're learning to be flexible, but we also need to learn to be patient in dealing with them. Now we're, we're just gonna throw fuel right on the fire by taking them to a theme park, three days in a row.

We'll see how this goes.

We'll see if you hear from me over the next few days.

Hopefully, I plan to come to you no matter what. If I can, if I can. Excuse me,

Thoughts on the how the Omicron Variant may affect your business.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF0xzN74hIk

Transcription

The omicron variant in your business.

Hi I'm Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

This is a show where we talk about business ideas, talk about tactics, strategies, and principles to help you in your business. I'm coming to you tonight, I have to talk a little quieter because I'm going to a house full of sleeping people. And so I'm holding this via hand. So it's gonna be a little bit shaky if you're watching it but hopefully, you'll get the point.

I want to talk a little bit about the Omicron variant, right?

This is the new COVID-19 variant that is supposedly coming from South Africa and has all these horrible scenarios possibly painted around it. And just the announcement of it caused the stock market to drop.

First off, one key idea you got to get through your head when it comes to business if you haven't already. But it's good to remind one way or the other.

Fear is a killer of productivity. There's no way you'll be able to achieve anything if you're scared. And so you got to you have to set even reasonable fears off to the side, you need to set them aside and think from a very logical basis.

Because if you're going to be emotional about it, you're going to end up making the wrong decision.

Once again, even if the fear is somewhat justified. I'm not taking a position one way or the other on this. I'm saying even if it's justified, it's better that you're not scared. But that you realize, okay, there's a situation where that might, I'm gonna let's just talk about from business perspective, this might hurt your business, or it may provide an opportunity for your business.

This may hurt other businesses that in turn could affect you. Supply chains, everything else. All these things are possible, what you have to do is sit back and look at the reality of what is on the ground. And then sometimes what you have to do is kind of strategizing.

What are the possibilities?

Which way might things go and how would I handle it?

If they did, you're not going to know for sure. But you can gameplay this a little bit and be able to work it out. The best thing to do is to talk about this with other people that you work with. Either people on your executive board or vendors or anybody that you really respect to be able to keep mainly a leveled head and ask the proper questions of you.

Because hopefully, you know the answers especially if you're the owner or executive if you're one of the people in charge.

The main thing is to keep your head because obviously it doesn't take much to shake the stock market lose a little bit, and everybody running around with their hair on fire. This is common this will this has always happened, this will always happen.

What you've got to do is stay calm. Make a decision stick by it. Be willing to be flexible if conditions change, as we know they truly have over the last two years here.

So I hope you had a great Thanksgiving. That's all I got for tonight.

Hey go check out my book, 9 ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business you can get a free copy at AmazonProofBook.com

You can just download it right onto your phone. You have a good one. We'll see you tomorrow. In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

Why humor and being around others is important, especially during the holidays.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-yflWoronI

Transcription

Humor keeps us human.

Hi I'm Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

Coming to you from a darkened car.

This is, this is our new van, I'm not sure if I've mentioned it, we purchased it a little while ago a few weeks ago. And I'm coming to you from the road. I'm actually out at my father's house for Thanksgiving visiting family in California, bringing everybody along with me, my wife, and three kids, having a really good time.

Just got through playing a game with my dad and two sisters. And he's just laughing really, really hard and reminding me how good humor is for humans.

If you're a human look into it, okay, if you don't get together with people and laugh really hard on a monthly basis, maybe every other month that most at that I mean, at least I should say, then you're missing out on something, it does something to the insides.

I know there are studies and everything else that say this or that about what humor does for you. I don't know how many of those I believe but I know that after I go through a few sessions of laughing really hard at silly stuff.

And I'm not saying being heavily in you know, heavily intoxicated or anything like that, I mean, just regular straight gun humor, with good friends having a good time, that that can't hurt you. If you're doing it every once in a while. I think that's I think it opens up something on the inside. That's a good thing.

This is just a random thought and during the holidays, if you're not around people, find some people to get around, find some friends, ask if you can come over and just get around some people and have a good time. It's good for you. It won't hurt.

I think it makes us more human, as it is.

We talk a lot here about business concepts but everything in business comes back to you as a person. You know, whether you're the business owner, whether you're an executive or somebody in charge, which is a lot of the what my message who my messages are designed for.

Even then it always comes back to keeping your head on straight, being a good person, finding other good people to work with.

And part of that is also having a balanced life across the board. If that's all possible. I know the word balanced is very, it's kind of it's a Power Word right now that kind of throws people off a trigger word I should say.

But that's all I got for tonight.

Tomorrow maybe from the car also because we've got a full house full of people and by the time I'm able to break away and make a video, everybody sleeping so I got to get away from everybody in order to do it. So we'll see you tomorrow night.

You have a good one and before we get back together, get out there and let the magic happen.

Thoughts on being mindful of the good and bad of influencers in our lives.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJpxtDvRer8

Transcription

Beware: wizards, gurus, and influencers.

Hi I'm Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

I love when I kick the camera stand like then just kind of shake the camera around. That's always nice.

Welcome back, I heard some news today that reminded me of something that I need to be reminded of from time to time, even though I talk about it a lot. There's a line from Dan Kennedy who said, Be the wizard, beware the wizard.

And the concept is that you need to in order to make a difference in the world, you kind of have to be a leader, and you kind of have to be out there in front of it.

In that process, you are kind of putting on a show, so to speak. I mean, I'm kind of putting on a show here. I mean, in the most literal terms, I am, Brian J Pombo Live. But you do kind of have to put on a show. And it's the things that, you know, as simple and mundane as they are to you to somebody out there, it's magic to somebody out there the things that you know, is magic, or are magic, I should say.

And it's like you're a wizard.

To really make a difference in this world, you kind of have to be a wizard, you kind of have to be out there and put on the magic show. Not that you need to go out there and lie or mislead or anything of the sort. But you do have to kind of be a wizard.

But at the same time, you have to be where other wizards are because there's an issue with all of us to a greater extent or a lesser extent, but everyone's got it to some extent where we're looking for people to be influenced by we're looking to pass on our I'm not sure the word off the top of my head, our responsibility pass on our responsibility to somebody else.

When you do that, you kind of put them up on a pedestal and you turn them into a wizard. And you just figure and every time your mind says Well, that was kind of strange what that person did, or I don't really agree with that.

That there's another part of your mind that says yeah, but they're the wizard, they understand something that you don't know.

You can pass on a whole lot of key cues that are going in your head saying, This isn't right, that isn't right. Could pass on those you pass on all that better judgment, all that better discernment because you've put somebody up on a pedestal.

This can be a teacher, this can be a preacher, this could be a guru online. This could be somebody that you're watching on YouTube or listening to on a podcast and you think, well, they've got to know what they're talking about, they're doing what they do.

It may be somebody that just wrote a book.

I mean, I went out and wrote, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. And because of that, I get a whole lot of attention, do or undo, because I went out wrote a book and other people didn't write a book.

I get attention for having a podcast when other people could easily just as easily write a book or have a podcast. But they don't know that it's easy. And so it's special.

And so I'm a wizard for doing it.

It's not that I want to be a wizard, but it does kind of come with the territory and you do tend to attract people to a certain extent when you're out there doing stuff.

There's also the temptation to go along with that and take advantage of and all that too. You know, if you're really got a following.

Thoughts on how to handle bad news piling up all at once.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR9cI-IjVP8

Transcription

Pray for bad news in buckets.

Hi I'm Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

I've gone through quite an interesting scenario to make sure this is on. Right. Right, quite an interesting scenario over the past 48 hours or so. And it's just kind of some not horrible, tragic news.

But bad news, uncomfortable news, one right after another in a very short period of time. And it gave me time to reflect on if we all have bad news.

I mean, honestly, if I were to think about what bad news is, I don't really think bad news exists.

I think it's completely a subjective thing.

And I think that if you handle if you're really in the right frame of mind, you should never be able to see any bad news.

Not that you're saying all good news. But you can see where things are going to turn up, in a good way if you have the right frame of mind. But that's not very helpful when you're going through it, right.

I mean, we all have stuff, and even in the best-case scenario, you're going to have tragedy in your life, just horrific tragedy, you know, bad things happening to good people or situation where you just lose somebody closes a spouse, a child, a close friend, out of nowhere, and sometimes in the most horrific, tragic way possible.

These things happen, you can't do anything about them.

Do I think that they're actually bad news in an objective way?

No, they're not bad news.

We all…we're going to die and chances are, it's not going to be pleasant.

For you look at all the different ways people die. I mean, there's a whole lot of unpleasant ways to go.

So I mean, this kind of comes with the territory. But you can't explain that to yourself when you're going through it when something doesn't feel good. It's bad.

That's what we call bad news.

So let's look at that.

You're going to get bad news anyway and there's a degree to how bad it is or how traumatic it could be or how, you know, horrifying it might be.

But if you got bad situations coming into your life, that we can pretty much say it's bad.

How would you like to receive them?

I think the worst way of getting them, and I think we've all been through this at some point and it ends, usually, in our own perspective, that makes things worse and worse and worse.

But it's that slow drip over months and years of bad news. That just doesn't seem to stop. It's just you can't get a break and it just goes and goes and goes and goes.

That's the most torturing thing in the world and honestly, I think a lot of it is self-inflicted. Not that I'm gonna sit here and tell you how to fix it.

It's not important but I've found that the better I get at handling things, the better bad news comes to me. I like getting bad news in buckets. I like it all at once. I like I want you to rip the band-aid off.

I want it all at the same time because there's a point at which you're overwhelmed. And it's like, I can't take any more.

Anything you have on top of that, you handle really well because it's just like, well, it's okay, there's another one, you know, and it just goes and goes and goes.