Brian uses a fancy word to talk about critical thinking in your life and business.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLdwOoNB8jM

Transcription

Metacognition and your business.

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

Today I want to talk about metacognition, which is basically the science of, you know, thinking about your thinking, okay. I love this topic, it's one of my most favorite things to talk about is something having to do with our thinking.

And it all starts with us thinking about what we're thinking, not about what we're thinking, but thinking about our thinking or itself, thinking about the thinking process, thinking about how we think, why we think, and everything around that idea.

This is the most some of the most fascinating things that I've ever thought about. And considered and actually made some of the largest changes of my life based on the concept of metacognition.

Now I've never, honestly, I've never used the term metacognition, I think I may have looked at it once when I was taking psychology classes in college but forgot about it.

And just recently, I was looking at things all about thinking about your thinking, and that term came up. So I thought I thought that was interesting.

Besides the term itself, this is something that gets brought up a lot by Dan Sullivan.

If you ever listened to Dan Sullivan, you could find him on a whole lot of podcasts out there, including one of my favorites. So, Welcome To Cloudlandia, this was the one that was that's hosted with Dean Jackson.

It was also previously called, The Joy of Procrastination.

I've discussed it before, Dan Sullivan is the one that heads up that he's both the creator and the lead mind over at Strategic Coach, where they talk a lot about thinking and stepping back and looking at why we do the things we do and how we can make slight tweaks to be able to create different results in our life.

And this is another thing that came into my mind when I was going back and looking at this book, Keep Going. I've talked about this one before previously, keep going by Austin Lleon, Awesome book.

I love Austin's books, they're simple, they're straightforward, very little to read on each page.

So you can make a whole lot of progress quickly and this the idea that he brings up, I don't always agree with every last idea in here. But they're definitely causing you to think about what you're thinking.

This particular page I wanted to bring your attention to, he says pay attention to what you pay attention to. It's really kind of a microcosm of thinking about your thinking. And I really liked what he says here, I wonder I wanted to read some of this for you.

He says your attention is one of the most valuable things you possess, which is why everyone wants to steal it from you. First, you must protect it. And then you must point it in the right direction.

As they say in the movies, careful where you point that thing. What you choose to pay attention to is the stuff your life and work will be made of my experience is what I agree to attend to psychologist William James wrote in 1890, only those things which I notice shaped my mind.

We pay attention to the things we really care about. But sometimes what we really care about is hidden from us.

I keep a daily diary for many reasons. But the main one is that it helps me pay attention to my life,

Thoughts on content marketing and info marketing and the value of evergreen advertising.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz0ZSKqIzu4

Transcription

Content Marketing versus Info marketing.

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

Let's talk about content marketing, shall we?

Content marketing, as it's kind of being referred to today, once again, is one of those phrases, that is explaining something that's always been in existence.

But today has kind of a new turn on things. So when people talk about content marketing, today, what they tend to discuss is the regular marketing that you're putting out there specifically tends to be on the internet, people tend to refer to content marketing when it comes to your internet marketing.

And it tends to be the stuff that has substance to it, it has content, it has value one to itself, that you're putting out there, but it also has a marketing message within it.

So one way or the other, that's kind of how I would go about defining content marketing, just off the top of my head.

Now, info marketing is something a little bit different.

Once again, something that's always existed, has gone by different terms, by different people. But was really I've heard it most often called info marketing or information marketing, by a lot of the direct response marketers that came from kind of the Dan Kennedy School of thought, and that I believe that terminology was really, I know what was at least heavily promoted, and has been used through the years from people coming from that way of thinking when it comes to marketing.

So what is information marketing, basically, is using any type of information to market.

So you have, you have information that within itself is marketing, and can be either given away or purchased. So there's a little bit of crossover with content marketing versus info marketing, I would say that content marketing tends to be most of the free stuff that's out there.

And in fact, it probably is easier to call it content advertising, just people aren't talking about content advertising, they're talking about content marketing.

But really, it's more on the advertising side of things.

It is your YouTube page, like this one, or a podcast that you put out a lot of that stuff is all considered content marketing. And then when you start having larger items of pieces of information, seminars and courses and things of that sort, they tend to start blending into the info marketing end.

So things that have so much perceived value that they can be sold separately. Now, it doesn't matter whether you're with your info marketing is made up of content marketing.

So I have a book that is sold separately, and it's all but it's all built out of content marketing. So I put together I had nine separate videos, you could go way back in the archives and find nine separate videos all about Amazon proofing your business.

I then took the transcripts from those videos, switched them around, actually changed the order around on some of them and made them a little bit more clear add a little bit more content added an introduction and all the rest and I got a block right off of my content marketing came in info marketing book, the whole concept of repurposing, which is a huge deal.

If you don't understand that, then you're really missing the boat.

And if you don't understand the power of content marketing,

You'll always spend time with family and friends, but in business, who are the top people you spend time with?

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

Transcription

Who's got your ear?

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

I want to talk about who has your ear?

In other words, who are you listening to, who are you paying attention to, what are you paying attention to?

Because that one little thing can make all the difference in your life.

I mean, really, it's the smallest things, it's the thin threads that make such a huge difference. I was talking with a friend that I hadn't spoken to for a while, and went to go visit him today, had all my kids with me. And we were just we're kind of running some errands.

So I visited a friend, our minds were thinking about a lot of similar things. And one of the things we're looking at is rentals. And I'm relatively new to the concept of having rentals and so forth. But I know a little bit about it, I have family that's involved in it.

I have family that's involved in vacation rentals. And he was in the process of building out one of his rental spaces.

And I had mentioned to him about all those my dad has vacation rentals and telling him about my experience. And I knew a little bit about Airbnb, I was one of the earliest people involved in Airbnb before it was a popular or well-known thing to do, I was renting apartment spaces, and so forth.

When I'd go on out on business, usually, we would grab an Airbnb somewhere, so it was always always a fun thing.

So it's something I followed along with quite a bit. And we were calling back and forth. And I can tell at one point, he like something switch, she's like, Oh, well, maybe I should look at making this vacation, rental.

And all of a sudden, something changed.

By the end of the time, when we're getting ready to leave, he was saying thanks for mentioning that because that might make all the difference that could change how I'm going to be doing everything here, so to speak.

And it's not like I set out to do anything like that. But one little concept, one little tweak, one little splinter in your mind can change everything, how you do things or how you look at things.

So you really got to pay attention to who you're paying attention to who you're surrounding yourself with, obviously, it's that old adage about, you know, the top five or six people that you hang around with. If you take it just on an income basis, you take the top six people you hang around with, and you take all of your incomes, and you multiply, you add them together, and then you divide them up by the sum, you'll end up with basically what most of you make on a yearly basis.

If you just take the annual incomes of everybody that we tend to fit whoever was around, and whoever we surround ourselves with.

So what are you plugging into?

Are you listening to podcasts?

Are you reading books?

Are you doing any other type of stimulation that is helping to change your thought patterns?

Helping to direct your mind in a positive direction?

Or in the direction that you want to go?

Are you doing that, and if not, why not?

Have you thought about it?

Are you considering it sit down and actually think about Okay,

Brian shares a recent attempt of a scammer on Craigslist that tried to use progressive involvement when it came to considering the purchase of a trailer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqCIZFA25rQ

Transcription

Progressive involvement in marketing.

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

Today I want to talk about the psychological concept called progressive involvement.

And I got a quick little story for you. So, my wife is working on a new project that involves a small trailer, she's gonna be redoing a small trailer, we don't have the trailer yet.

She's looking for a small camper trailer that we can tow with our small SUV here. And it's a long-term thing, and I'm not gonna get into the details, but she's searching all over.

And she's searching on Craigslist, and she ends up having a conversation with somebody that pulls her through, this long string of events. What once you know, they asked to have them email you or something.

No, it was text. is a text this number off the ad.

So she texts the number doesn't hear from them for a few days. Then she gets a text back and says that it says okay if you're interested, we we have some details regarding this.

And she's okay I'd like like to know, you know, where you're at, to see if we'd be able to actually transport it and some more details about it. Email this email address, and we will email you all the details, or give us your email address and we'll email you the details is what she said. And so she sent them her email address.

It's like okay, it was strange right off the bat, you know, our antenna was up. But figured, you know, might as we'll see what they're up to, right.

So they end up emailing back, a name that is a very common, very common name. So it could be real, could not be real, with this whole story about how they're selling this trailer for $800, and she just wants to get rid of it. Here's one picture of it.

And of course, it's a decent picture, it's in perfect condition, I'm selling it for cheap, and I'm not asking for anything more or less than 800 because I just want to get rid of it.

My husband just died and too many memories attached to it, so I just need it gone as soon as possible.

Doesn't answer any of the questions my wife asked, doesn't say where it's at, nothing else. So my wife, but both of us are talking back and forth. She gets suspicious.

So, she does a search for the email address, which is a good tip. If you're ever looking to find out more about a person, you don't know much about them and you have their email address, just take their email address, put it in quotes and toss it into Google and see if anyone else has anything to say.

Well, sure enough, this person's a scammer. And multiple people, they've gone through the process with them in trying to purchase different things where they have very similar stories about husband, father, whoever just dying, not wanting to be part of it inexpensive situation.

Well, what they end up doing is they end up leading you through the process of sending them gift cards.

And I don't know the reason why I'd even follow it along. But my wife had already emailed her back to find out more details. So we'll see where this ends up going.

But there's a very specific process that people will take you through especially scammers, but you can learn something about human psychology by looking at how it's done badly in a sca...

Thoughts on having an outside consultant that understands your business and methods to provide objective advice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9J2IfGqcBc

Transcription

The one thing you need is an outside man.

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

Today, I want to talk with you about this concept of an outside man, because I was having a conversation with a friend and a potential business partner, we're in the process of we're looking at, some systems that he's building.

And he said something that really stood out, he said, you know, I need help from somebody like you, because you understand the principles, but you're also on the outside, I'm stuck on the inside of the business, looking at the inside of the business, and handling all the details. I know all this stuff about the inside but I need someone on the outside, that can tell me how it looks, it could tell me how it's being viewed by the public and could tell me, you know, the consumer point of view.

It stuck in my head, and when I sat down to talk with you tonight, I wanted to bring this up, because that really is what everybody needs, myself included.

Everybody I've ever worked with needs at least one outside man.

And when I say man, I mean person, okay.

It doesn't matter the sex or gender, okay.

You need somebody that's on the outside that you have common principles with, that you know, that they understand business, they are and they understand the style of business that you have.

Maybe they understand the industry that you're in, but they also can give you the perspective of the customer, they can give you the perspective of the just a different perspective, you need somebody that's on the outside looking in because you are always on the inside looking out.

This is where masterminds have come in handy.

You know, sometimes, because that's more than one person, you also have to take into account, I remember, one of the first masterminds I went to for business, I'd come away and I had a long drive to go to this one.

And I'd come back to driving home and going, especially when they really hit the nail on the head on something in my mind would tell me, well, they don't know. They're not in it every day like I am, they don't get all the details of this business, they don't understand the nuances and then all the things that I have to go through on a daily basis, they can't possibly know.

But on the same end, what they were telling me I needed to hear. And that's why it was sticking, and you have to go through that growth process of putting yourself in front of somebody else.

Now, everything they come up with is not going to be correct.

But the stuff that sticks, the stuff that you know is true, deep down, that's the stuff you need to hear, and you need to hear it more than once.

Because chances are you hear at once it's not gonna completely stick, you're gonna easily be able to pass it by or get distracted by a shiny object, you know, we all do it.

But if you have someone there, that's consistent, that builds with you, that understands where you're going. But they're still on the outside that they don't have…sometimes they don't excuse me, they don't necessarily need a financial stake.

The best thing to do is to have them on some type of retainer, at least, you want to you want to encourage the best out of them.

And,

Having a plan to handle negative customers giving you bad reviews can help you make mature decisions when the time comes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR1oF062G2c

Transcription

Embrace your bad reviews.

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

Today I'm going to talk about the scourge of the internet, especially for people in e-commerce of any sort, and that's bad reviews.

What do you do about bad reviews?

I'm going to get to that in a second.

First, I want to remind you about my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business.

If you want to make it to where you have absolutely zero competition reviews or otherwise, then you're going to want to check out this book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business.

This is how you can even keep Amazon.com from destroying your business, you get a free copy at, AmazonProofBook.com.

Now let's talk about reviews. So this came up because I was really listening to a podcast that's getting ready to interview that I did over at OffTheGridBiz.com it's not up yet.

But it may be up by the time you're watching this. It's an interview with a lady in one of the things that she talks about that if she could change anything about her business, it was the idea of bad reviews.

And it's not the first time I've heard it.

In fact, if you listen to other episodes of Off-the-Grid Biz, it's a common issue.

And anybody that has an e-commerce business is going to just despise because all it takes is one, it takes one bad review, it takes one nasty customer, one interaction gone wrong for you to just look horrible to the rest of the internet.

Now there are ways to handle this, but the first thing you got to do is embrace it, you got to realize this is what it's all about, okay?

It's going to happen.

If you're out there doing stuff, you are going to get bad reviews.

Now, how do you get over it?

You have to go straight at it.

First step is you have to respond wherever the interview wherever the reviews are. The bad review is, if it gives you a chance to respond, that is something you've got to do, you got to jump on it right away.

You've got to put yourself out there say I'm not sure quite what we're what went wrong. Or we understand what went wrong, we want to fix it, we want to make it better for you. Or this is how we're we're going to keep this from happening again.

If you come back to us, we'll give you this, this or this, you do everything you can even though the person's a jerk, I understand that the person's out to hurt you, I understand.

But if you can find a way to look good to the people that are reading it, then it doesn't matter what they said.

If you say we're going to fix everything, you know, well, yeah, but you killed my firstborn, and you did this.

I mean, just think the most horrible thing well okay, well, we will bring your firstborn back to life.

You have to go over and above and beyond to say that you're going to fix it.

Especially if that person you know, there's no way on God's green earth that they're going to allow you to fix it for them, even better.

You've got to come out as the one with a solid head on your shoulders, you don't come out and say, Well,

Brian looks back on the week that was after we launched our first interview podcast on BJP Live.

Also, some thoughts on his inspiration to share his behind the scene work, from reading Austin Kleon's, Show Your Work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUpr0e6HPNE

Transcription

Video Interview Podcasts.

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

This is one where I'm going to just take a little bit of time to go over kind of what I experienced over the last couple months, putting together a new process for doing video interview podcasts.

So, up until now, this show has been me and my phone, talking. And that's about it, every once a while, I'll take you on the road, every once in a while, I'll have my business partner or my children and so forth pop in here.

But for the most part, it's me and it's you and that's it.

What ended up happening is I have another two other podcasts currently.

One is called Grants Pass VIP, which is a local based podcast. It's all around Grants Pass, Oregon and Josephine County, and that it's an interview podcast, but it's completely by voice, very easy to edit, very simple.

If anything goes wrong, we can usually fix it, we usually make things sound pretty good.

So, done that for a little while now you can go check those out of Grants PassVIP.com, we've had a lot of great fun with that show.

The show before that, that I started was Off The Grid Biz Podcast, which interviews industry people within the self-reliance niche. So businesses and organizations that help people to become more self-reliant in some way of their products or services.

And so that has been a whole lot of fun too. Same type of deal, it's an audio podcast, very easy to edit, very easy to get somebody either on the phone, or over zoom to be able to do that.

Now with video, it's a whole different thing.

It's a little more difficult to edit. And so it's kind of a one-shot and you're done type of deal, kind of like what we're doing tonight, maybe most of these that you see are completely unedited. I mean, I'll put a little title over the front. That's about it.

That's pretty much what we do for the dailies.

And so what we decided to do was take the whole concept of the dailies, which are each under 10 minutes. And what if we took a video podcast of full-length one, and then split it up. And so we had this last interview with Bob Regnerus over the last handful of nights, which was recorded over a short very short period of time, but took an entire week of content.

So normally when I'm doing these on a nightly basis, I wasn't doing for the past week.

So I was able to leave town, and I'm always able to leave town, but I was specifically able to leave town to go see a wedding for my cousin and got to see family and everybody else. Be able to do it without having to worry about jumping into my car or something to record so that I don't wake people up, because I do these tend to do these late at night.

So this is one of those examples of an episode where I kind of give you a little bit of behind the scenes.

And they all came from this book, Show Your Work, one of my favorites, by Austin Kleon. It's a short book, lots of pictures, lots of diagrams and stuff. Great one you want to go out and check out this book show your work by Austin Kleon.

And the whole concept is 10 ways to share your creativity a...

Part 7, Brian gives us his closing thoughts on his interview with Bob Regnerus of Feedstories.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDcpm2YZmcQ

Transcription

Bob Regnerus of Feedstories, part seven, the commentary.

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

I want to take some time after if you haven't if you didn't get to see the interview I did with Bob Regnerus, go back and watch it. It's great stuff, you can see the whole thing over at BJPchats.com.

And it was really a lot of fun because this was one of the first major interviews that we're putting here out on this platform on Brian J. Pombo Live. So I have two other podcasts in which I have interviews, and I'm now starting to implement having some interviews of different caliber or different people on Brian J. Pombo Live.

So that's a lot of fun, just unto itself.

But let me point out a couple things that Bob brought up. Great stuff. One of those you'll want to go back to over and over again, because he has so much experience and brought in so many great points, principles and strategies that you can use.

One of the first things that I heard him say that I think really stood out is talking about exercising your, "what if" muscles, okay?

In a sense of not just looking at, well, what if this wonderful thing happens, which is, as entrepreneurs, we tend to be very positive to begin with, we tend to focus on the positive.

And we don't spend enough time being skeptical and looking at, okay, what if the worst case scenario happened?

Or what if, you know, just a slightly more negative version came out?

What would we do about it, then how would we handle that?

And if you don't take those steps ahead of time, you're going to be in for a world of hurt.

If you do take those steps ahead of time, chances are a lot of those horrible things will never happen for some reason or another. If you prepare some, oftentimes you prepare for the worst and the worst never happens. But at least you're prepared even when things start looking a little bit negative.

So that's one thing I think is so important, you can write an entire book on that.

And Bob's got some great experiences as far as that goes.

The other thing he said is, I don't want to get involved in the day to day with my business.

So when I asked him the area that he loved most about what he does on a day to day basis, he basically said that he's designed his life so that he's only working on the stuff that he loves, and that everything else is being outsourced.

It's being run by a system, it's being run by people, it's being run by automations, which is really a fabulous thing.

It's the one thing I encourage all my clients to start heading towards, no matter where you are at in your business, whether you're just starting, or whether you're partway along, or whether you're on the tail end of what you think is the lifespan of your business, you need to start pulling out of the things that you don't need to be involved in.

And only focusing on those things you knew do need to be involved in and only spending the amount of time necessary to get those things done.

Having other pieces of focus, that was the thing that he put a whole lot of focus on.

You definitely want to go back and listen to that is having those alternative pieces in your life so that those pieces of your ...

Part 6, of our seven-part interview with Bob Regnerus of Feedstories.

Topics covered in this episode

* Staying Mentally Sharp for the Long-Haul* Golfing, Exercise and Relationships

Watch and hear full conversation https://bjpchats.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm-eYhZPir4

Transcription

Intro Brian: Bob Regnerus of Feedstories, part 6.

This is the final piece of our interview with Bob Regnerus.

I'll have a wrap up afterwards tomorrow. But in the meantime, watch this piece and check out the rest of it.

If you would like to be on this podcast or have me on your podcast or speak at your event, go check out BrianJPombo.com.

And now here is Bob Regnerus.

Brian: Is there anything that you're reading right now or listening to or watching that's really captivated you, and it'd be something you'd be interested in sharing with us?

Bob: Interesting.

So I can answer this a couple ways.

Number one is, I have been a casual golfer for two decades, I really started kind of in my 20s.

I turned 50 last year, but my wife also picked it up. And the parallel here is this is that I'm not going to be in my business seven days a week. Not possible, right?

I really feel like you need to feed multiple parts of your body and your soul to like really be effective. I've gotten to the point and COVID kind of like accelerated this for me, I keep using that word, I should find a different word.

But I set up my week so that I'm working hard Monday to Thursday.

Fridays are a day where I kind of do catch up, I do some reading, I do some learning. And then especially during the warmer months, I'm out on the golf courses with my wife on Fridays, okay, and Saturdays and Sundays, you know, maybe I'll pick up another round or whatever.

But I find that I can stay mentally sharp about what I'm doing in my business if I'm forcing my mind to be mentally sharp about something else, so it's diversifying.

Kind of what it is kind of like if you're working out and all you do is like benchpress you get really big packs, but like your biceps, and your back, like, you're out of kilter.

I think that happens with people, they're going to work on their business seven days a week, but everything else kind of shrivels up. So their relationships fail.

For me golf is like, I'm a competitive person, obviously, you can probably get that for me. I'm competitive. My wife is competitive.

It's a great way to get exercise some exercise in my body, I'm outside, I'm with my wife, we're working on relationship. Like there's a lot of things there.

So my advice is, yeah, you want to kind of keep up with what's going on in your industry and things like that. But there needs to be this whole idea of, I need to get away and force my body and my mind to do something else.

I think that's the thing that I really learned is, I've done the six, seven days a week thing, and you just get to a point where it's like, it's not worth it anymore. What am I really doing here?

So I work on my golf game, I'm working on relationships, like three days a week and working on my business four days a week, I'm really happy I've been able to structure it that way.

Brian: Oh, that's brilliant.

Bob from Feedstories talks about the importance of the role of the coach in sports and in your business.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kd43xq48oNE

Transcription

Brian: Coaching the sport versus coaching a business person with their marketing and so forth. What are the similarities, and what are the differences?

What do you like most about that aspect of it?

Bob: Coaching is the same, no matter what sports or business coach is not there to play the game coaches on the sidelines, the coach is preparing the players, the coach is coming up with plays and going over strategy, and putting the pieces in place to make a team more successful.

Same thing in business, right?

I'm not running your business, I'm not there, doing everything for you.

Like, if I'm there doing something for you, then I should be like an equity partner or a state, you know what I mean?

Like, I should be paid differently.

I come in as a coach, and it's like, no, we're going to talk about strategy. We're going to talk about how you win. We're going to talk about positioning people in the right place, we're going to talk about things that have some lasting value.

But in the end, it's really up to you to be successful, okay.

Now, a coach shares in the success probably shares in the blame more than the success. If a team loses, I try to absorb as much of that as possible, like I didn't prepare you enough, or I didn't put people in the right place.

But you know, there's a shared sense of responsibility, but ultimately, the person playing the game, the person on the court, the person in that business is ultimately responsible.

And I think it's a really good relationship for people.

I don't want business owners advocating their responsibility to a consultant or something like that. It doesn't make sense to me, because then ultimately, do you really own that business if you give up the responsibility for its success or failure?

A good relationship for me is going to be one that I may be doing some services for you but ultimately, we're in a relationship where I'm giving you the skills and helping you win when it comes to business or a high school basketball game.

Brian: That's great. It's a great way of looking at it.

Outro: For full conversations, go to BJP chats.com.