Brian J. Pombo Live

Brian talks about a quote he saw while driving around town.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeeWSwfbzb8

Transcription

Expect nothing, appreciate everything.

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

I saw this quote, when I was driving down the street. There's a local, I believe it's an insurance company. Now I got to look it up, I apologize to them for not remembering who they are, where they have the Wendy's marquee signs.

They switch the letters around to put up interesting sayings. And this isn't the first one that I've written down, I may have even done an episode on this on these guys before because they have interesting quotes.

This is another one that is very interesting to me because I agree with the general spirit of it. But I disagree with the exact nature of it. Okay, and I'll get into it in a second.

So the first half of this is expect nothing.

And that is the part that I have a little bit of issue with.

Here's what I mean, in English. I'm quite certain that I've seen this in other languages where there are different words, for very different things. But in English, we tend to use a lot of the same words for all the same thing, but for very different things.

Expectation is one of those words that we use to explain a whole lot of different things. And I'm going to talk about two of them right now.

First, there's very much a difference in the human psyche. When you're talking about any emotional expectation, versus an almost factual expectation. I heard this the other day, this analogy and let me try and use it here and see if it fits, I'm thinking of it as we're sitting here.

If you turn on a light, and you've been in the room a million times, you know, the electricity is on because other lights in the house are on. But you go in this particular room, you turn the switch on, you expect the light to turn on, it's not an emotional expectation, you expect it.

If everything's working properly, the light will turn off. And if the bulb has burned out, whether you know it or if you don't know it, or if something if a mouse chew through the wiring or something it won't turn on.

The expectation doesn't do anything different because you have a very factual it's a very straightforward expectation. It's just direct.

When you get emotional about your expectations, I mean, even the emotional, the term emotion, and emotional have been twisted quite a lot through the years.

When I'm saying emotional, I'm talking negative, emotional. So it means you put your self-worth and you're very being into the idea of what happens in life.

That type of emotional expectation where if something doesn't happen the way you want, you're crushed.

As opposed to just saying, this is the way it's going to be this way I expect it to happen. And I'm moving forward under that expectation.

The emotional expectation and the way I'm describing that type of emotional expectation, I think is one of the most damaging things to people's lives. Because they expect something not based on reality, but based on this false emotional reality that we create on the inside.

When you do that, you can see that happen over and over and over again with people's lives who get their hopes up about something get all wound up about something and they build up this almost this intensity of I'm not sure if I can think of the word but its entitlement in a sense.

Understanding how business works.

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

Transcription

Patience for non business owners.

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

I'm saying, if you're a business owner, if you're an executive, one of the people that's in charge of a business, you have to have patience.

If people do not own a business, have never owned a business have never ran a business, they're going to view the world in a different way than you view it.

They may not understand how business functions or how it works and you got to be patient with them. You can't just come unglued on them, and try and shout them down and think that they're just being belligerent because many times they aren't, it's not taught in schools.

It's not taught out there in public shools. It's not being really pushed all that much with our media, you don't see a whole lot of reality TV shows showing the reality of business, they'll show the outside fun parts of business and so forth, you know, that something like it was thinking of the Shark Tank. Shark Tank, you know, it shows the, the idea of pitching a business idea to a possible investor.

That's the fun side of business, right?

That's not business itself, the business the day to day running of a business, how it works, how profits are difficult to come by in certain periods of time until you find out how, and then profits can be used. And all these things matter.

They matter really, to how our economy runs and everything else.

Another show, I was thinking of Pawn Stars that show all about the the pawn store, they show the interaction, the give and take between a person trying to sell something and the and the pawn place for taking it.

That's the fun side, they don't show the down and dirty stuff behind the scenes.

I was having a conversation with a friend on Facebook, because he had posted and I'd seen these posts quite often.

But this is somebody that I I feel like I communicate with pretty well. He had posted something about how horrible gas prices were, and how all these things that really weren't to blame for it, how he thought they were to blame for it.

At first you feel like exploding, especially if you've been involved in business or you understand how business works.

If you have any understanding whatsoever, dealing with somebody like that is difficult, but you got to be patient. You got to say, okay, what if they really don't have any idea what they really don't have any clue.

You'll look at how he the different political positions he promotes and everything, it's pretty clear, he doesn't understand it.

Took I take my time, and I outline some of these ideas to see if anything sticks, you don't know if it ever will, you can't expect anybody to believe you.

But you got to be patient, you have to be patient with people and you got to find creative ways to educate as best as possible while still being open.

Because they may have an idea that is muddled with all the nonsense that they come up with. See, when you're for those of you who aren't in business, I'm not trying to talk down to you or say that you're stupid.

What the real idea is, though, is business is a very difficult game of math and psychology. And the math part is most of the time a very tight game.

The concept of profits is a very subjective idea.

Brian gives a review for the InShot App, which he uses for these daily videos every night.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ld52Y48_Koo

Transcription

InShot App Review for video podcast editing.

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

Let's talk about the InShot App. Okay, this is an app that I've been using for well over a year now I believe, and I did purchase it, I believe it's a one time purchase, I don't know off the top of my head.

But it is at least to use the full version of the app well worth the price, if you're going to be doing any type of video, podcasting off your phone on a regular basis, especially if you use an iPhone, I'm not sure if it's available on Android.

I record and I use this on an iPhone.

And it is a great little editing setup to where you can take whatever files you have, whether it be video, audio, still pictures, animated GIF, so I mean that everything will fit into this deal.

It also allows you it has its own library of which you may have seen on some of the beginning shots of some of these episodes, these little dancing figures and so forth that you could put on in within your video, you know, you could insert them right in, you could put the titles that I use every time this link, AmazonProofBook.com.

So I AmazonProofBook.com. And those of you listening, it's a little more difficult to imagine this but you can go check out my YouTube channel or go on to BrianJPombo.com and watch the video versions of this, where you can see, you can literally see all these things on the screen.

So there's a video version of this podcast and there's an audio version.

Okay, AmazonProofBook.com is the website that I tend to promote most times for the last year or so. And that's for my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business.

So if you'd like to find out more about my book, you go there get a free copy of AmazonProofBook.com. It's right on the screen the whole time so that people can see it the entire time, whether they heard me talk about it or not. If they're curious, they can go there.

Simple concept, a simple idea that you could be adding to any of your videos, is having a call to action on the screen, at least part of the time.

But I like having it there the whole time because it's a huge portion of why I do these videos, to begin with. This is the sponsor of the videos and I'll lead people to other places.

You could put any type of titles on here, you could type it in, you come up with different fonts, all these other things in what I'm trying to say is in the shot is a very simple straightforward editing software that can be done on a phone, I have a smaller iPhone 12.

So it has it's one of the I think they're called the mini ones or whatever, it's got a smaller screen and even on there, I'm able to edit pretty easily using this program using this app. It's great it's an overall good habit as somebody my friend Bruno asked for a recommendation today and I turned him on to it.

I think he'll like it. It even does chroma key. So if you want to do a green screen effect or anything like that. Now these aren't out-of-this-world effects, you could probably do a lot better. You could get you could probably get better programs that can do specific effects.

Obviously, if you have, you know, an apple at home or a really high-end computer with some really nice editing software, you can do amazing things that I can't possibly do here.

Do you have an issue finishing books?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDarEzs2MlM

Transcription

Do you finish books?

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

Today is an unusual type of episode, I oftentimes will come up with an idea I wanted to get out there. This is one, it's more personal and definitely more selfish.

I have a question for you, do you read?

And if you do read, do you finish reading?

have a horrible, horrible knack for starting books and not finishing them. This is gone my entire life.

My first question is, do you do this and then if you do, my second question is, do you think it's bad?

Do you think it's wrong?

Do you think that there's a way out of it?

Do you think or have you ever been like that and have you found a way out of it?

I'd love to find out. This is mainly a question I'm tossing out there because one of those things that's always disturbed me. But not so bad that I don't sleep at night, but it is one of those things where I've always wondered whether whether a person really needs to finish books are not or whether you just go with whatever life's short, I think all I think of all the books that I own currently.

I'm not sure if I can get through them in the rest of my lifetime if I did read everything that I had not read previously. So just curious. Do you finish your books?

Leave me a comment. There's a short one for today.

Go check out my book, an easy one to finish because it's so short, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. If you really want to see how short it is. You can go download a free copy at AmazonProofBook.com. That's all we have. You have a good one.

Get out there and let the magic happen.

Brian talks about the legend Alexander Graham Bell.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kg0Ha4uQz-0

Transcription

Alexander Graham Bell de technology and business.

Hi Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

Alexander Graham Bell, I'm not sure if they talk about him in school anymore. But he was always one of my heroes, because he was the guy that came up with the telephone, right.

Today's Alexander Graham Bell day, at least as I'm filming this.

I just want to say my respect my pay great respect to Alexander Graham Bell and discuss with you how technology affects your business. Because it will affect it, if you're looking to be a business long-term, you're going to get into a situation where technology is going to change so fast, you're going to have to switch things up.

A lot of people will just in the late 90s and early 2000s, people were still using fax as a fax machines, as a very popular way to be able to, especially for b2b business, is a great way to market it especially when they were doing it in mass.

I knew lots of people that made money off of sending out cold faxes out to people. And that's something that just went away technology-wise. I know they're still cold faxing out there and I know they're still direct faxing people like, you know, Dan Kennedy still notoriously uses a fax machine.

But when it comes to technology, it's always changing. That's an extreme version, obviously, email and everything else, kind of jumped in there.

But it's going to happen, it's absolutely a certainty that's going to happen.

So you can't get bogged down with the fact that things are changing are going to change, they will you have to be ready for it. You have to be ready to spin and change and move and don't get caught up.

It's really an argument about tactics.

It's a very common thing to get caught up in the tactic versus the principle on the other far end of it.

What are you trying to achieve strategy-wise?

What are you trying to achieve?

What were you achieving?

So for example, I was working with a business where they had been using CDs and compact discs are still a technology that exists. But it's a technology that's a lot smaller than it was before. It's pretty much on its way out.

So what do you replace the compact disc with?

If that's what you're sending out all the time?

If that's what you're using?

Where do you go next?

It comes down to what is it achieving for you?

What is the end-user using it for?

What are the other possibilities that you could also use?

And so at that time, we were looking at, what if we had tablets that you sent out an inexpensive tablet?

What if you sent out a USB thumb drive with an mp3 on it?

What if you just sent email an mp3?

And so you have to ask yourself, what are each of these things actually achieving?

When you get caught up in technology for a long period of time?

Sometimes you forget, okay, what are we actually achieving by using this technology versus everything else?

It's just a tactic. It's a means to an end, you always have to remember that's all technology is technology will always change.

Brian shares an interesting mailer he got from AAA for Life Insurance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCN5a1guyoM

Transcription

Official looking, sneaky, direct mail.

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

We like to talk about tactics, strategies and principles that can help you in your business.

So much of the time I've been focusing on principles, but I want to kind of try something a little bit different here and talk about some tactics.

When you're promoting your business, it's a good thing to look at all options, especially the stuff that's not as sexy. That's not as new and modern, the stuff that's been around forever, that's the stuff that sometimes works better than the new stuff because no one else is using it.

In fact, some of the oldest tricks in the book, so to speak, can be really profitable and useful for getting people's attention, which is really in the end what it's all about, it's all about standing out.

I've got this is a letter I received, I set it aside, I got this quite a while ago, I set it aside to be able to talk with you about it, and just never got around to it.

I am going to open it for you but I want to show you something, it's a large envelope. It has my name and my full name and everything here. And it says, Oregon, which is the state I live in notification of eligibility. My name Brian J. Pombo says right there.

To open fold along this perforation side here, open it up, show you what we've got.

There we go right there. Nice little certificate now turns out this is from AAA and it says, AAA Life Insurance Company.

So this is going to be a pitch for AAA life insurance. You know, most people don't understand this but AAA is an incredibly sharp business model.

If you're not familiar with it, the main draw to AAA is to pay on a yearly basis so that you have access to roadside assistance. That's kind of what their bread and butter and what that what they're famous for.

But they have all these other things that come along with it.

Once they have you as a member, they advertise to you on a regular basis, all the other deals that they have going, which is probably really where the big money's made, like life insurance, similar to something like Um, let me see here, what was the other one I was thinking of?

It'll come to me, there's another club that you could belong to. That does the same thing. Once they get you involved, they just go after you over and over again.

So the very official looking certificate noted notification of eligibility is Brian J. Pombo, is eligible to recruit quest term life insurance at group rates available only to AAA members and their spouses.

Once you've applied complete this for your records, if approved, you will receive a certificate of insurance. I've applied for blank, blank, blank.

So it has a little thing for you to fill out. As a AAA member of the State of Oregon, you're eligible to apply for…..ok, and it kind of goes into detail along with the letter.

Everything is very personalized to me which is great. That's really good looking, kind of draws a person and requires a lot of reading, you would think that something that requires a lot of reading wouldn't get a lot of attention. That would draw people away but when it comes to something like this.

If the person is either interested or not interested in life insurance.

Brian shares how one Facebook post has helped make a huge difference for his wife's family that is fleeing from Kyiv.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnHtl_GI674

Transcription

1 social media post.

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

Today I wanted to discuss this is a story I've been telling a lot of my other friends. And so I figured I'd tell all my online friends. I glad you could come.

We've had the situation, right now this is, depending on when you're watching or listening to this, this is in March, early March of 2022. We've been going through this situation of Russia invading Ukraine.

If you haven't heard my wife was originally from Ukraine, she came over as a teenager with her mother, and to the United States ended up becoming a citizen here.

Her aunt, uncle, grandmother, and cousin are still back in Ukraine. They were in a situation where they were stuck in the capital city. And we're looking to get out as soon as the invasion was occurring, but really didn't know where to go, what to do, how to do it.

So my wife went and posted on Facebook, and basically said, Hey, does anybody know anyone in the surrounding countries that might be able to help out if we're able to get them across the border.

We had people reach out all over the place, everybody. I mean, people we hadn't talked to in years and other people. People that knew people that knew people.

People sent email addresses and phone numbers.

It really overwhelmed my wife, who's good at logistics, by the way. So she kind of took it on herself to help them find somebody. We found a handful of different people so far.

So once they were able to get to Moldova, we had someone there to be able to pick them up and drive them to that capital city.

They're there right now waiting to go to Germany.

they have somebody also, who was going to drive them all that distance and help get them to a safe area. What's amazing is it took that, you know, besides the human element, and all the craziness and the politics and all the rest.

It took one single organic post on Facebook, we didn't have advertising behind it.

We were discussing, if you look at it from a marketing perspective, she was discussing a an event that everyone knows about, that everyone's thinking about, and just gave people a very clear-cut, call to action.

Because of that, it was easy for people who already had that connection to offer it up. I mean, people went out of their way. It's not that it wasn't difficult for them to be able to call people up and say hey, are you willing to house people?

Do you know anyone that's housing anyone?

Do you know anyone who can drive?

It's not that that wasn't the case. That was the case that was amazing, incredible what they've done. We'll post on my personal page, you know, eventually, all the different people that reached out and helped out. We appreciate it more than you can ever know.

But what it's the connections, the thin threads that we have with all the people that we've known throughout our life, that becomes power.

That's the power of social media.

It's not unto itself, anything all that powerful, except that so many people have already gathered in these places.

But it's powerful because of the human connection that exists outside of it.

A few tips to consider when thinking about switching up your advertising.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9vei6czOxg

Transcription

Bored with your advertising.

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

I'm hoping my friend won't mind me discussing what we talked about earlier tonight, if you do just reach out to be a let me know, okay.

I won't use his name, but somebody I'm working with, I was showing them that they had an ad that they were putting out. And they've put it out twice so far, and they wanted to switch something up in it.

This is an ad that's buried as a very specific use, and all advertising has different uses, right. But this has a very specific use and the point of this ad is for name recognition.

And focus on these three major points. He wanted to take those out and put something else in. What he wanted to put in wasn't a bad idea. It was good idea.

The problem was, is it took away from the end goal of what this ad was looking to do. We were looking for repetition, we were looking to see if we can get recognition via repetition in this very specific area. And to get more attention from it.

Oftentimes, when we get bored with an ad, or any type of marketing that we're doing, we'll want to switch it up. We don't necessarily have a rhyme or reason for switching it up, it mainly comes to the fact that we're bored.

This is the worst reason to change anything in your message to the public is that you're bored because you have nothing to do with it.

Most people probably have not heard your message or know it, or have memorized it or anything else. Repetition is one of the most powerful things you can do in marketing.

Now yeah, there are ways to switch things up, you want to switch things up so that people don't become blind to it.

So for example, this was in a local periodical, and I was talking about, you know, have this ad in different positions in there. Instead of just having it on the same spot every time, I have it some, ask them, if you can get it somewhere else that will help.

You might believe and change colors around if it's not gonna really get in the way of your brand, sometimes do change colors can make a difference. The main idea, though, is to stick with the main idea, know what you're trying to get and stick with it long enough to see some type of results so that you can judge that and be able to go from there.

All advertising should be based on that principle.

Very rarely is it most of the time, advertising is based on whoever the business owner is the person paying for it. It's based on their emotions, their mood, and whatever they're interested in at any given time.

People who sell advertising understand this. And so they'll go in and play with you on a regular basis and switch things up and do this and do that.

If you don't have any form of tracking, it's really easy to get lost at all that and to think that you're accomplishing something, when what you're really accomplishing is nothing.

So hopefully that's helpful to you. If you find yourself getting bored, step back and say what am I actually trying to accomplish here and let your advertising do its job. Make sure you track it to see whether it's accomplishing it or not.

That's all I've got for tonight. Go check out my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. These are other ideas that you can use within your business that will really,

Brian reflects on the past three years of doing this podcast as we hit episode 1,000.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYC8QijrfQU

Transcription

1,000 video podcasts.

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

This is the 1,000th episode. And it kind of snuck up on me, it's been a while.

This is counting from when I first started, Brian J. Pombo Live. But that isn't where it all started.

So initially, I had started doing YouTube videos, and I still have a handful out there from the first first couple years. That started in, I believe it's July of 2015.

Following that, I had spent a lot of time editing videos and everything else. But I didn't really have a direction, I didn't have it tied to my business or anything else.

It was more experimenting with YouTube, seeing what works, seeing what doesn't work, playing around by interviewing other YouTubers and so forth and seeing how that affected you can see how I was completely messing around with genres and everything just in that those handful of videos that came out, just me kind of playing around.

I had a lot of people that I looked up to in the world of YouTube and I wanted to see how they did it and then kind of have a perspective on I did.

It's a lot of hard work if you're going to put out quality content, which I'm not saying that I did. I'm saying that if you're going to achieve going anywhere near that, it takes a lot of work and a lot of dedication.

So I knew it was going to be a while before I could really do that, to the full extent of how I wanted to do it. Just because life became more hectic.

After 2015, more kids, everything else, it just snowballed. So it's one of those things that that's kind of how it works.

I fell into audio podcasting during the Off-the-Grid Biz Podcast. And that was a lot of fun. Within the first month or two of doing that, I realized that I wanted to have something that was completely different from that but still played into my business.

Even the direction of my business has changed so much since that first very first episode of Brian J Pombo. Live in 2019, in May of 2019.

Everything has changed. Everything and nothing, I mean really, I'm doing the same things. I refer to a lot of the things that I do differently.

Because it's a lot clearer to say that I'm a Business Investor than it is being a strategist. That was confusing people.

When I really stepped back and looked at what I did, it really was more business investing. And it's something that I've really had a lot of fun with. You can see the progression.

If you went and looked and watched or listen to these podcasts all through the years, you would see the progression. You would say this is very different than how it started.

But in the same sense, I had the book partway through, I had started doing interviews with people, which I'm still doing, we'll have more coming out in the future.

It's one of those things where it just keeps going and keeps going and keeps going. It's been a wild ride. I've been happy for those of you who have stuck around with it.

Love to see what you think about where we've been, where we've come and where we're going. What would you like to see more or less of love to find out, leave a comment wherever you're watching this.

Otherwise, I'm going to keep going with it. And I'll talk more about where I was in the begi...

As updates from family and friends come in from Ukraine, Brian has an important message about self control.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPU-FfSe-tA

Transcription

Quit falling for the control illusion.

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

I'm a Business investor. And one of the things that I find myself doing a lot is discussing things with people who are already in business, or people who are executives in businesses, meaning the people who are in charge.

We get a lot of those conversations going either when I'm looking to purchase a business or find out more about it, or see if there's some type of partnership we can do.

There's a common issue along the way, is if you've had any sense of success whatsoever in business, it's really easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you can actually control it all.

When in reality you really can't, and you have to yet and you know that's true, you know it's an illusion.

This control thing is a complete illusion.

Because there's a difference between what you're responsible for, and what's your fault. We've talked about that a lot here before is that, there may be a whole lot that's your fault. But that is very different from what you're responsible for, you're responsible for the whole thing.

But that doesn't mean you control the whole thing.

So I got a great example for you today.

I was discussing this with my wife. She was extremely concerned because as we mentioned before, she has family in Ukraine. At this time of this videotaping they're going through all the whole situation of the Russian invasion.

And so a whole bunch of issues there and it goes way back, because this isn't the first time this was discussed, or the first time it was thought about, you know, they've been talking about this for months.

Previous to that there was always the chance that it could happen because there have been other invasions that have happened within their country, obviously, if you just go a little bit, a little bit back in history, just a few years back.

So this stuff has been happening, and it's been crazy. But there gets to be a point where you really have zero control. I'm talking about us here in America, with her family over there.

She can do her best to instruct, give advice, help them work through the emotional issues and everything else that people have when they're going through a life-changing event.

But in the end, my wife and I don't have very much control over the situation. We don't have an inline to the Kremlin, we don't have, you know, anything that you could possibly be of any help.

There's not a lot we can do other than via the internet, discussing things with them directly.

Here's what ended up happening, we had a getaway plan, I wouldn't call it a vacation, we're just going to be getting away for a couple of days in the middle of the week, which is an interesting thing that you can do.

If you don't own your own business. By the way, it's stuff that I highly encourage you to look into. You can watch some of my videos on that, or check out my website, but we had this plan for a while. Then this situation popped up with her family.

In the end, she had no control over it and you got to be able to recognize what you don't have control over and be able to back off.

On one hand, she thought she should probably cancel our plans a...