Brian shares a personal story that happened today and how keeping your emotions in check can help you solve problems.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRfq4b6dxqY

Transcription

Intuitive business building.

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

Let's talk about intuitive business building, shall we. I've got a story that has nothing to do with business. But it proves a point better than even the business story I had for today.

So I had a I had a really great interview this morning, and I can't wait for it to come out just more than anything, not for what I said in it but what the host that I was with, it was so cool getting to meet him. Finally face to face, we had chatted a little bit back and forth over social media and the admirers from a distance of each other's work. And I really am excited to see what he ends up doing with his company as he moves ahead, can't wait to see more about that.

And I'll tell you more about that in the future. So stay tuned.

But I want to talk with you about something that happened later in the afternoon we had a situation. I've got one of these things where we have certain days of the week that are left a little wide open in the schedule, so that we can fit in little odds and ends of our lifestyle. And Fridays is one of those days in general. Sometimes it's packed in tight, but other times, we leave it a little bit loose just to fit in all the things that we need to do during the day.

I had a situation that I wasn't planning on where I needed to go get a couple of tanks of gasoline, we get this. So in Oregon, they add all the extra stuff to your gasoline. And it's not good for yard tools and so forth.

So I had to go get some of the gasoline that had no additives in it for the yard stuff. And just in case we get in a situation where the electricity goes out, which tends to happen toward the beginning of fall winter, when the rain starts coming in the electrical grid for some reason can't handle it or they use it as an excuse to shut things down.

But we get into a situation where we have no electricity, so you got to have the generator going. So you got to get go get gasoline, so I go in with my empty containers to go get gasoline and it's not that far up the road, it's probably three miles up the road to this gas station. And so I was no big deal.

I tossed my shoes on, I didn't even put real shoes on, I've got these stupid rubber crock things. And so I had those on, I wasn't even planning to wear those there. But I just I've just it's just a quick thing, it wasn't meant to take that long. I go to the gas station, I park. It's an odd situation because it's away from the other gas tanks and so forth.

So it's a different area and I get out of the car and I'm like okay, now I got to go around and open up the other door to pull the tanks out.

So I unlocked the other door, make sure that happens. I set everything down, I go over to the other side. Instead of pushing unlock on the car, I pushed lock on the car, and my keys got locked in, but not just my keys, my phone got locked in, everything got locked in. And I just realized that, you know, since my wife had her phone number change, I never memorized it. I never wrote it down. So I don't even know how to get ahold of my wife and this wasn't supposed to take long.

This was supposed to be a quick since scenario. And so it was one of those things where when we're a ways out in the country, so I'm like, Okay, if I called if I call a locksmith open up the car, that might take a while.

Brian chats about the Worthington Method and actions steps to take in your business.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGH7RAqpQjw

Transcription

What are your three actions?

Hi I'm Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live. Where we talk about all the strategies, tactics and principles that you need to be able to explode your business.

I want to talk about three things that this was something that came to me today is that I've never developed a way to easily describe in a quick way, what it is that I do with businesses when I'm businesses that I invest in businesses that I partner up with, what is it that I actually do?

And what if I could encapsulate it all into three ideas, three actions that, that I take part in, and I want you to try this for your own business.

So if you if you're a business owner, if you're an executive, you're one of the people that are in charge, can you break down what it is you do for your ideal client, customer, so forth?

Can you break it down to three things or three areas that you cover or something specific in terms of an outcome?

I don't know if I'll stick with these or promote them or anything like that but this was, this was kind of what I came up with. So there's three actions, there's three things, and the first thing that I take everybody through is a process that the easiest way to explain it would be to call it strategic order.

And I please don't try not to judge me too much for my horrible second grade handwriting but it's all about strategic order.

I go in that typical situation with with a business is I go in, and we sit down and we just start at the very beginning. We look at where they are, where they want to be how soon they want to get there.

What's the ideal situation and we start creating strategic order?

We do this through a process that I call the Worthington Method.

So this is something that I came up with, I'm just gonna say W M here.

Worthington Method is really the beginning of all of this. And it's the process that I take companies through, you can go and check out my other videos that have to have to do with the Worthington Method.

In the future, I'm hoping to have some examples up here, people that I've taken through that process, but strategic order is all about setting up and saying okay, what do we need to do when when I was talking with a banker, that not not a specific banker.

But you know, we say banker with picture a guy in a suit with a mustache and a top hat, these cartoony concepts that we have in our heads, but a person in the banking industry that is, is working in a, in a growing bank, they have multiple locations, is on the East Coast of the United States.

And we were sitting down, he is one of the main executives in charge. And we say what are the what are the main issues you're facing?

We're just kind of giving her an initial having an initial conversation over some of these things, because one of the people that I work with was helping him out with some with some other items. And he said just in general, what what are the strategic concerns that you have?

And he said, we know everything we need to do, but we don't know of the order in which to do them.

That thing that hit me, I wrote it down immediately, and I said, that is encapsulating.

What so many business owners have an issue with is they know what to do,

Building relationships from marketing your products and services.

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

Transcription

Marketing to relationship.

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

Let's talk a little bit about business marketing, shall we, and how that leads into having a business relationship. Because in the end if you really look at it carefully, and you really look at building a business that lasts, that works as an asset that continues to produce.

With at least less effort put in over time, at least from you, as a business owner or the executive, then it's going to take being relationship reliant, which is one of the three pillars that we teach here at BrianJPombo.com.

It's one of the three things that I look for the three major pieces that I look for when I'm looking for a business to invest in or to partner up with is those ones that already have that relationship reliance built in.

In the end, the understanding that every thing that you do in business has to do with other humans, whether you deal with them directly or not, it's you're dealing with other humans, and if it's going to work for the long run, which is be ideal in all circumstances.

So whether you're talking about your customers or clients, whether you're talking about your business partners, the other executives that you may work with your employees, co workers, vendors, anybody that you have any form of business relationship with, it needs to be as stable relationship as possible, it needs to be one of these things that solid, and that starts from the very beginning.

In your marketing, if you understand that with your marketing, you're trying to do a few things I understand initial marketing is you've got specific calls to action.

You've got a specific demand that you're making of the person or command I should say, as I think Perry Belcher used to say that it's really a command that a call to action is a command.

You're saying this is what you need to do?

This is the next step.

And that's all important in in the terms of the short term strategy. So in terms of short term strategy, your marketing is trying to get them to do something.

You're trying to get them to either purchase a product or service, or sign up for something, maybe give exchange you their email, in exchange for some type of item or some type of idea.

I mean, there's a million things of what that first processes, but in the long run, you just need to understand that the long run is going to take a relationship and you need all the things that every relationship needs.

A whole lot of that is is under this auspices, it said over and over again but it can't be said often enough with the right context. People do business with people they know, like and trust. In that order, they got to know you first, they got to know I killed next, and then they got to trust you.

It goes beyond trust and a long run. But they at least need to get to that point to have a solid relationship with you over the air does, I don't care if they're buying dog food from you, on a monthly basis.

Whatever it is, it all comes back to that it all comes back to a trust based relationship. If you know that you're marketing, everything you do in marketing, everything you do in any form of communication, with your potential customer, with your current customer with your previous customers.

All of that changes if you realize that the real goal is to ...

Brian talks about the advantages to slow selling fro Neil Rackham's book, SPIN Selling.

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

Transcription

Advantages to Slow Selling, SPIN Selling a review.

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

Today we're going to be talking a little bit about this and a little bit about the concepts that were brought out by this book SPIN Selling, by Neil Rackham.

You could tell this isn't a book, this is a collection of CDs, an abridged version of his book is just something I had available in front of me here that this was a real and I have to thank Sam Ovens was the one that tipped me off to how good this one was, it came out in 88.

And it's one of those that isn't brought up very often SPIN Selling, it's an acronym, SPIN, it's for Situation, Problem, Implication, Need.

And what that means is, it's a process that he takes people through to do consultative selling. So it's all about the slow sale and he talks about that early on discussing how, if you have certain products that are made for everybody that are impulse buys, then it doesn't take a whole lot of salesmanship to sell them.

It doesn't take that long if it takes a conversation, it takes a quick conversation, it takes, you know, a little bit of a demonstration, it takes some shown showing you why you need it. And you either want it or you don't want it and you buy it.

That's all fine and good.

There's a huge value to that as soon as you go up in price, and further in how much time the product or service takes to complete or to be able to move on. Or let's say it's an ongoing product, some type of deal where you're going to be paying forever, you know, if you're talking about that, then a lot of times you're going to need some form of consultative selling, you're going to take a longer time to go about selling something to someone, explain it to them probably take more than one touch.

It'll probably take more than one situation when people talk about selling they talk about as if it's all the same thing.

Where if you're selling something that's very simple and very straightforward, and it's a low price, that's a whole different situation than selling somebody on something that is a larger price is going to take more commitment.

It's going to take a whole lot of back and forth from the person that's purchasing or from their company or what have you.

Then you've got a longer process on your hands. And you've got to be open to having a longer process, you got to be open to willing to have a little bit of a back and forth.

Like I talked about being relationship reliant is a huge piece of this. And so you're going to want to develop some type of relationship long-term with the potential customer or client.

Now that's where this comes in.

He was one of the first ones to really talk about this in mass nowadays, it's talked about all over the place. But this is great if just for the historical benefit of going back and reading or listening to spins online. Excellent, excellent book. And there's a lot of pieces in it that I would say, have possibly changed, but it's very principle-based. So the ideas in it are very useful, especially if you don't have any salespeople, direct salespeople in your organization.

If you have an e-commerce website, and you have no one on salespeople whatsoever.

I highly recommend that you read books, and listen to conversations about selling one on one...

Thoughts on Brian's preferences when walking someone through a strategy session.

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

Transcription

The dreaded strategy session.

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

I've worked a long time as a strategist and one of the things that are very common in the field and in the field of consulting is the concept of the strategy session.

When I first started, it was an uncommon term, but it has become synonymous. It's been everywhere, ubiquitous, I should say.

You see strategy sessions are offered all the time, are strategy sessions.

And I'm saying this from the perspective of somebody who uses strategy sessions, I still haven't renamed my strategy sessions, maybe by the time you're watching this will have a different name for it. Because I don't like to be painted in the same sense of how other strategy sessions are.

So I'm going to tell you, for those of you who don't know what they are, I'll explain that this is for people who have either been through one worthy recipient of strategy sessions, or for those who are putting on strategy sessions.

I like to talk with you because this is a really interesting concept.

When I first started out, I'll tell you how it happened is when I first started working in the field of consulting.

This concept of having a strategy session, and I can't remember what we were calling it originally something like a discovery meeting or something of that sort. And there's a handful of phrases that describe them out there.

And what they?

What they really are, in the long run is a sales pitch.

In most cases, they're a disguised sales pitch.

I went through one today, and I wanted to tell you more about it.

I was interested to see where it was going to go based on who was putting it on it was by a rather large company. And also, I wanted to see, you know, the process, I figured there would probably be some type of pitch toward the end that's in most cases, what happens. And I just wanted to see how that how it ended up working.

I love going in and being able to see this from the customer's point of view as much as possible. Because one thing that I found that works in a strategy session is to not pitch at all, at the end you offer a doorway to walk through if they're interested in having a further conversation about working with me, or what have you.

But try to offer as much value upfront, and then see where they go from there. That has worked out well for me, it's allowed me to be able to set aside people who would not make good clients, and partners, and also be able to have further conversations with the people that would and so it's really for my benefit, it's for their benefit because they get something out of it.

And that was always my goal is that give something and to eventually get something from the right people.

So that's kind of how business works, isn't it, but it tends to be used more and more as a sales tool and that's it.

And so you a lot of times people are put in this position, and there is a very specific process that they take you through of asking questions.

If the person's very skilled, they're good at asking questions following having follow-up questions, getting down to the meat.

And especially if you have a sale at the end,

Brian chats about Dan Kennedy's checklist, The 10 Smart Market Diagnosis and Profiling Questions from his classic book The Ultimate Sales Letter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GK9XUL8lK7A

Transcription

Customer research methods.

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

I wanted to talk a little bit of a piece out of this book and it's really good for research.

Sometimes it gets tough in the very beginning, especially when you're getting into advertising, and you're wanting to learn more about your customers. And that's really the beginning of the good direct response advertising is really knowing about but who, really know about who you're trying to reach, and making that kind of your primary start.

If you've at least got that in your mind, you're on a good track and sometimes if you start there, it's like, Okay, well, what do I need to know about him?

I mean, there's a million things, you got your demographics, and psychographics, and all these different things.

Well, this is a great checklist from Dan Kennedy's book, the Ultimate Sales Letter, I think this checklist is in a couple of other formats floating around out there also but this is a good book to begin with.

I mean, this isn't a complete review of this book but it's an awesome book. It's not just about sales letters, it's about communicating a thorough message when you're trying to sell something to anyone in any way, especially online, where you have actually sales letters printed on pages. On websites, you've got video sales letters, in a sense, you have audio coming through and podcasts and other formats.

There are a million ways to be able to sell people now more so than ever before. And it all really originated with mailers, and direct mail, and, and advertising that way and through magazines and newspapers.

It's moved to today, but at the same time, the same things are true. And so when we're looking to find out more about potential customers, we're wanting to do research and really find out what they're all about so that we can communicate properly to them, and be able to speak their language, then this is a great way of going about doing that this is from chapter one.

It's the first step in his process of creating a good sales letter, and specifically a good sales message.

He says step one, get into the customer.

And he has this list. It's called the 10 Smart Market Diagnosis and Profiling Questions.

Okay, so there's 10 of these, let's go through them real quick, shall we?

Number one, what keeps them awake at night, indigestion boiling up their esophagus, eyes open, staring at the ceiling?

And what keeps them awake at night is all bolded. It's what really has your customer on edge, you got to at least know that whether it has anything to do with your product or not, you got to know where they're coming from.

In general, once again, a whole lot of this is guessing unless you already have a customer, or unless you are already familiar enough with the market unless you know them personally. And you could base this off of one person to begin with if you needed to.

Number two, What are they afraid of?

There's a very common thread throughout all of this. We'll hit on that at the very end.

Number three, and then once again, that could be number one. Number two could be the same thing, right? It all depends.

Thoughts on what it means to be mentally tough.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nV9xC24AwGE

Transcription

Mental Toughness Training.

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

How do you become mentally tough?

This is an issue and it's one of those things I'll probably read some more upon and come back to this in later episodes. But I wanted to kind of give you my perspective for now.

As a kid, you tend to hear, especially as a male child growing up, you tend to hear suck it up, you know, suck it up and deal with it. You know, that's kind of the idea behind mental toughness, but at the same end, there's more to be mentally tough than just deal with it. Because we're usually not taught, we're certainly not taught in schools and in most cases not taught by our parents, how to be mentally tough.

I had some examples, but they were never direct examples. So my grandfather, my father, both had their own ways of dealing with things. And through their life example, I learned ways of being mentally tough, but it was never discussed directly that I can remember.

What it really comes down to, I think is this conversation of mental toughness.

We talk a lot about business here on this show so I'll tie it in as we go along here but this is a life kind of a life lesson.

If what toughness really comes down to is resilience. And that resilience comes from realizing what makes you less tough.

What brings weakness?

And we don't talk about that either. We never talk about, you know, what makes a person weak on the inside is mental toughness, no one talks about mental weakness.

Weakness is I think, the bigger issue if you you will be tough if you can keep from being weak. And if you know what causes mental weakness, that can change your whole life, if you learn how to handle it properly.

And what I have found is that most of my mental weakness was self-inflicted. It was always based on circumstances. So it's based on this process of victimhood that we put ourselves through were some situation is causing me great pain and agony or stress, depression, some person or people are causing me horrible situations in my life.

It's always someone or something else's fault, some cataclysmic event, whatever it is, there's always something else outside that is causing the issues inside.

But a huge part of mental toughness is just understanding that how you react mentally, spiritually, everything else, inside how you internally react to whatever is occurring outside is your responsibility.

This comes back to this conversation that I've had previously where there's a big difference between fault and responsibility. So a lot of things can be other people's fault. circumstances, yeah, 99% of all circumstances in the world are someone else's fault. They're not your fault. You know, it was their fault.

In fact, a whole lot of things that happened to you throughout your life are not your fault. They really are. They're not your fault.

You know, you didn't get to choose your parents getting choose your name, getting into choosing your genetics, you didn't get to choose your race, your religion, oftentimes, a lot of these things you don't get to choose, you get raised up in it, and that raising up in those circumstances make you who you are from that point forward.

So a whole lot of how you react to things, how you are based, it's all someone else's fault, and that's okay.

NO, Dan Kennedy didn't endorse Brian's book. But…Brian does highlight advice from Dan in an old Newsletter that fits with what Brian's book is all about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXWyz0KVz9I

Transcription

Dan Kennedy endorse my book?

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

Let me just say, first off, that Dan did not come out and officially endorsed my book. But I wanted to bring it up because the things he's saying he might as well be endorsing my book.

So this is the NOBS, magnetic marketing letter from October 2021.

Let's talk about this a little bit, because starting on page nine, there's a conversation that Dan Kennedy is having with Darin Spindler, the head of marketing over at magnetic marketing.

And they mentioned this book, The War On Small Business by Carol Roth, which I have not read, but discusses how that and Darren starts it out, as it is how Amazon has destroyed a lot of brick and mortar businesses.

Today, they announced they're building brick and mortar department stores themselves.

They go back and forth, talking about how Amazon has done this to companies and how companies have set themselves up to make themselves into fodder for Amazon.

It's a term that, that Dan Kennedy uses here, he actually calls that Amazon, as if it's a verb. He says they just want to deploy and leverage all the assets they have, and every asset that they develop in every way they possibly can.

A little later on, he says, look, Amazon is very aggressive. They tell you that by their name, they're a pretty ruthless company. They're cash-rich, and they're very data-rich, I have to say, for quite some time that there, if there is any real money in it, and it can be Amazon, it's going to be Amazon.

And he goes on explaining about how so many things out there, especially commodities have been taken over by Amazon and Amazon goes in there and just strips that bear and finds a way to undercut people.

See here, a couple of other spots he's talking about. Even in your industry, even if you're in this industry can be Amazon, maybe you can't.

I have a client now I talked to every month who's in the hearing health business, and the hearing aid business is being Amazon.

I don't mean just by Amazon, when I use that verb, I mean by Amazon or by Amazon like entities, in this case by both the whole bottom of that business gets eaten alive by being Amazon.

He talks about how the hearing aid business is being commoditized and being brought down to inexpensive have the ability to create inexpensive products by Amazon, by a Costco, and how they're getting around that how this is one person's get around that as he works on cochlear implant surgery.

Well, that's not the type of thing that's going to get Amazon because it's so specific. It's so high-end, people aren't going to be shown how to do it on YouTube.

Really great stuff here from Dan Kennedy in his NOBS Magnetic Marketing Letter, which you can get by joining Magnetic Marketing.

I don't get paid by endorsing them but it's a great organization. And they just got acquired by Russell Brunson of ClickFunnels fame. Good stuff.

Hey, if you haven't read my book yet, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business.

I wrote this and I talked about Dan Kennedy and one of his books in here, at least one of his books, actually, I think I discussed two of his books in here.

Brian comes to you during his flight back home, while wearing his favorite mask.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCA3rJxOMUc

Transcription

Brutally enforce minimums.

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

You know, most of the time, if I'm in an airport, I will normally find a quiet space to have a conversation with you.

But I have a really good spot here when my planes gonna take off. Now I'm not going to have time to talk with you today. So I gotta sit here with my mask, my federally enforced mask on to just give you a quick tip. And, this video is an example of a minimum that I have to enforce myself.

Of course, now I have this new phone and every once in a while, I will hold it the wrong way and put my thumb right in the camera. So I apologize for that.

I know I have a problem. Oh, hey, I got an idea. See if I drink, I can take this off. Here we go.

See if I can move this without messing up the microphone look like a goofball. So let me take a sip.

I have a million things right through my mind.

Let me just talk about this idea of enforcing the minimum. So if you have minimums, daily minimums, things that you need to do, you just need to have them first, and then enforce them, make sure they're something that you're going to enforce that you're that you can easily build a habit out of that daily minimum, and I just have a handful of things.

None of them are too difficult, that I'm going to dread doing them. One of them includes doing these videos, I've made it to where it's an easy thing to be able to do in most cases.

But I don't dread doing it, I enjoy doing it. I have just a couple of other minimums doesn't mean that's the only thing I'm going to do in that space for that day.

But it does mean that I do have to do it at least this much, at least one, a handful of these different things. So you got to have that for yourself.

Doesn't have to be major things just enough to keep your head in the game. And then if you have employees, if you have partners, if you have other people, you've got to have minimums for them all.

So maybe it's not a daily minimum, maybe it's a weekly minimum or a monthly minimum.

But you'd have to have minimums and you have to enforce them. Keep on it. It's not going to happen unless things move forward. It has to move forward at least a little bit. Every day, every week, every month. Hopefully, that makes sense.

Hey, check out my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business will get a free copy on AmazonProofBook.com. We'll be back tomorrow.

Tomorrow I will be probably in a different airport. This is that right? Yeah. I'll be in Phoenix. Right now. I'm in Charlotte. So we'll see you in Phoenix. You have a good one. Get out there. Let the magic happen.

Thoughts on digging deeper than the first response that comes up when talking with prospects about problems in business.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vysbq2a1MLc

Transcription

When problem-solving, go deeper.

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

Hey, these episodes that I bring to you on a daily basis, they're all brought to you, at least in the current time by AmazonProofBook.com.

AmazonProofBook.com is the only place you can go to get a free copy of, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business, which is basically nine ways to be able to become absolutely competition-proof even if your competition is as big and bad as Amazon.com.

So go check it out, AmazonProofBook.com.

Let's talk about problem-solving.

So I was having a great talk with a new friend tonight and she was discussing issues that they were having at their bank. And I was asking her very specifically, you know if there was one thing that you could change, what would it be?

And she said, If I could somehow make it to where we can hire credible people, that would really be best.

I asked her what kind of people and we went into depth on that. And I said, what's holding that back?

What's keeping that from happening right now?

And she said, Well, I think it is the leadership of the bank, not being willing to spend enough money on the right type of people.

I said, Okay, and then we talked about that for a while.

Then we talked about some other issues at the bank and so forth.

We went back to it and I said, Do you still think that's the number one issue?

And she said, well actually come to think of it, we would probably if I had to replace all the people, a whole lot of them don't really need replacing they need better training.

So what we really need is better training.

And I said, Okay, well, what's it gonna take to get that and we started talking about the solution to that issue, and we started going a little bit deeper.

Never be satisfied when you're working with someone on trying to solve a problem, whether it's in your own organization, or whether attend somebody else's, or whether someone else is helping you to bind the problem, don't be satisfied with the first thing that comes to mind, or the first thing that comes to their mind.

What you have to do is go a little deeper, look at it from a couple of different angles.

Question the way you're thinking about it, question the way you have thought about up until now, and question them in the same manner without being accusatory.

Because I don't know what the right answer is. I don't know if the right answer is what she's providing. I do know that she thinks about it a little bit differently, just from me asking her questions about things that she already knew.

But most of us don't take the time to dig down deep into solving a problem.

Most of us just get consumed with the fact that there is a problem.

We don't like the problem and we tend to hold on to it and resent it throughout the day or what have you.

I'm working more and more with clients and with the people around my clients and partners who have issues that they're not resolving. And they're holding on to it and they're holding it in their back pocket.