Brian J. Pombo Live

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.

Part 5, of our seven-part interview with Bob Regnerus of Feedstories.

Topics covered in this episode

* Business Fundamentals that have Lasting Value* Role of a Coach in Business & Sports* Facebook Ads: Books, Education & Seeking Knowledge

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAE8ERY1Nd4

Transcription

Intro Brian: Bob Regnerus of Feedstories, part 5.

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

Today's a little different than other days, we actually have part five of a conversation with Bob Regnerus.

And so this has been a lot of fun, if you haven't caught the rest of them, go back and watch them.

But if you would like to be on the podcast or if you'd like to have me on your podcast or speak at your event, go check out BrianJPombo.com.

And now here is Bob Regnerus.

Brian: If you can change one thing about either the industry that you work in, or your business itself, if you could change one thing what would it be?

Bob: I think one of the things that bothers me about the marketing industry in general is there's a lot of disingenuis people who really aren't there to serve people, they're there to kind of make money.

And you know, these people tend to get called out after time, they kind of get it…it's really hard to hide that stuff these days. You know, I mean, like, people talk and things like that.

I really don't like people that take advantage of others.

Also I'm not real keen on hacks versus fundamentals, in addition to running companies, I'm a high school basketball coach. And for us to be successful as a team year in year out, is we have to focus on fundamentals.

I'm not big on this is like a fluke play or a tactic or a hack that probably has a shelf life of a couple months. I hate people getting…it's the bright shiny object syndrome. I hate when those things get weighed in front of people and they waste money on it and they spent a bunch of time.

Yeah, maybe it works for a while and then it like fizzles overnight.

I don't want people to be in that cycle.

So I try to do things that are based on fundamentals that have lasting value. And yeah, I think that's what I would change, is that's probably the thing that bothers me the most.

Brian: You mentioned coaching, coaching the sport versus coaching a business person with their marketing and so forth.

What are the similarities and where are the differences?

What do you like most about that aspect of it?

Bob: It's great question.

So coaching is the same. No matter what sports or business coach is not there to play the game coaches on the sidelines. The coaches preparing the players, the coaches 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.

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 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,

As Bob from Feedstories puts it, "every business starts with a story."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GD8KPAbkmjI

Transcription

Brian: Who's the ideal person that would benefit the most from Feedstories?

Bob: We like to work with people that have some sort of mission or purpose behind what they do.

Every business starts with a story.

I think if you don't start with a story, or you don't start with a reason why it's not really interesting to us, and probably you're not going to have lasting value.

We love pulling the backstory out of somebody, it really gets to the heart of why they do what they do. We do these videos called Big Why Videos.

And it's really amazing to kind of just hear from people like, why do they do what they do?

We interviewed this guy, he was down in Texas, and he started a whole chain of yoga studios, and he wanted to start this academy for training more yoga teachers.

And that's a great business, right?

Like, you think Yoga is hot. He's in Texas, he's growing like, fantastic.

Well, in our interview process, and what we got a video was the reason why he started the yoga studios, which was his mom had back issues when she was alive, and she went in for surgery.

And, you know, he was kind of nervous about that ended up that the surgeons kind of botched the surgery, and she lost most of the ability in her legs. And she suffered for a number of years.

He really felt that if yoga was an option for his mom, she went and had the surgery and she would've had a long quality of life.

And you could see like the passion, right? And this is all on video.

Now, if you're a yoga teacher, and you see the passion from this yoga owner, and he's like, I want yoga to be an alternative for people to have surgery, freedom from pain, and things like that really powerful, right?

That's why video is so powerful.

Now, we love working with kind of owner-operators, okay.

Typically we're working with companies that are like somewhere underneath $10 million.

So from startup to 10 million, we have and we'll work with companies that are bigger, but when we can get the owner on camera and get his or her story about why they do what they do.

Talk with the clients and the customers of these businesses.

That's really an ideal client for us when there's a substantial story there and we can pick up on it and about a 15-minute phone call, then they're a really good candidate for us.

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

Part 4, of our seven-part interview with Bob Regnerus of Feedstories.

Topics covered in this episode

* Who are Feedstories Ideal Clients?* What is a "Big Why" video?* 10,000 dollar an hour work: Outsourcing & Marketing Outreach

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXVe3jkrB2I

Transcription

Intro Brian: Bob Regnerus of Feedstories, part 4.

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

Today is part four of our conversation with Bob Regnerus.

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

And now here's part 4 with Bob Regnerus.

Brian: Who's the ideal person that would benefit the most from Feedstories?

It's a great question.

We like to work with people that have some sort of mission or purpose behind what they do. We think every every business starts with a story.

I think if you don't start with a story, or you don't start with a reason why, it's not really interesting to us, and probably you're not going to have lasting value. We love pulling the backstory out of somebody it really gets to the heart of why they do what they do.

We do these videos called Big Why videos, it's really amazing to kind of just hear from people like, why do they do what they do?

We interviewed this guy, he was down in Texas, and he started a whole chain of yoga studios, and he wanted to start this academy for training more yoga teachers.

That's a great business, right? Like you think Yoga is hot, he's in Texas, he's growing fantastic.

Well, in our interview process, and what we got a video was the reason why he started the yoga studios.

Which was his mom had back issues when she was alive and she went in for surgery. And, you know, he was kind of nervous about that ended up that the surgeons kind of botched the surgery, and she lost most of the ability in her legs and she suffered for a number of years.

And he really felt that if yoga was an option for his mom, she went and had the surgery, and she had long quality life.

You could see like the passion and this is all on video.

Now, if you're a yoga teacher, and you see the passion from this yoga owner, and he's like, I want yoga to be an alternative for people to have surgery, freedom from pain and things like that's really powerful.

That's why video is so powerful.

Now, we love working with kind of owner operators, okay. Typically we're working with companies that are like somewhere underneath $10 million.

So from startup to 10 million we have, and we'll work with companies that are bigger.

But when we can get the owner on camera and get his or her story about why they do what they do talk with the clients and the customers of these businesses, that's really an ideal client for us, when there's a substantial story there.

And we can pick up on it in about a 15 minute phone call, then they're really good candidate for us.

They're in a growing stage and they're using paid advertising. They're out there marketing themselves, and they know they need a better story. It's pretty common.

When I talk to somebody, one of the first things they'll tell me is we're not doing a good job telling our story.

Bob talks about how a visit to Facebook / Instagram headquarters led to an instant business idea that helped to launching Feedstories.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqAi0v605lU

Transcription

Brian: You touched briefly on Feedstories.

Why don't you tell us a little more about what that is how it came about?

Bob: So that's interesting, that period between like 2010 and 2013, I was doing a lot of things to kind of find my way again, after you kind of lose an agency, you know, I was just kind of freelancing.

I hosted a radio show for a number of years doing kind of what you and I are doing right now, which is great, got to meet a lot of new people help other people, write books.

But 2013, I got heavily involved in Facebook.

Facebook started to become a media that advertisers could take seriously. I got my first five clients, and one of them just went into the stratosphere.

It was a clothing brand. In fact, it was a headband company, and it just took off.

One of the best things I did with that client early on was I said, got a headband. It's, you know, it's a $15 headband, I said, anyone can knock this off.

I said, but they can't knock off your story.

I said, we're going to build your whole advertising and your whole kind of foundation based on your story. And your story is what's going to sell headbands, and I was right.

I was really glad was right, but I knew kind of internally that would be that way. This business called Bolder Brand Headband, they won Shopify retailer of the Year in 2014, driven by Facebook sales, like 99% of their sales came from Facebook.

Facebook recognized that and said, Hey, Bob, we're having this meeting with some other big brands want you to come in, we're going to kind of brainstorm I had a chance over a number of years to meet with Facebook.

But in 2016, in particular, I went to this meeting and all they talked about was video, Facebook said we're a video company now Instagram, which's is owned by Facebook says we're a video company now.

And I'm like, Okay, this is my like, I'm looking ahead toward the future. And I went outside of the meeting was in the sidewalk outside of Facebook headquarters in Austin, Texas.

I called Brandon, who's my business partner for Feedstores. Brian is a creative guy, he's a copywriter, he's a video graphic guy.

I said, we really need to be prepared for this because Facebook and Instagram are changing who they are, and video is going to be like the thing that they are emphasizing the most.

And so we started that company, literally a conversation over the phone, came into the same city kind of put this thing together and started feed stories in late 2016.

That's how Feedstories was formed.

It was literally what I heard Facebook and Instagram telling me that they were going to prioritize. And so if I'm going to continue to be a really good Facebook advertiser, I need to have really good video creative.

And why not create a company that produces the creative that I know is going to work in the Facebook ad. That's how that company was born and we're going strong here in 2021, so far.

Part 3, of our seven-part interview with Bob Regnerus of Feedstories.

Topics covered in this episode

* How a Meeting at Facebook Headquarters led to the beginning of Feedstories* The Power of Your Businesses Story* Navigating through COVID-19* How COVID-19 led to an increase in demand for video content

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

Transcription

Intro Brian: Bob Regnerus of Feedstories, part 3.

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

Today's part three of our series with Bob Regnerus. I hope you've been watching, if not go back and watch the rest of them.

If you'd like to be on this podcast as in a conversation with me, or if you'd like to have me on your podcast or speak at your event, go check out BrianJPombo.com, for all the details.

So here is part 3.

Brian: What do you think that most businesses can learn from that, in terms of you mentioned having cash on hand. What are the other things that you think that made the biggest difference for you that you think other people could learn from?

Bob: Well, for me, it was investing in things that have the ability to be flexible.

So team members that are flexible with multiple skill sets technology, like we were perfectly positioned to be remote.

In fact, our company's been remote for years, we were on zoom before zoom was cool, we had used it. So essentially, that didn't change.

We also had this enthusiasm for what could be, but we also had a sense of what could go wrong?

Now, the reason we're able to do that is we're in a mastermind with Perry. And as you know, Perry's my friend, he's a client, we do business together, but I also pay him for mentorship, because he's so wise.

And we went through an exercise, January of 2019, which is like, what could go wrong in your business this year?

Now, nobody predicted COVID, but we had some scenarios like, okay, you know, if our technology failed, or we went through probably five or six scenarios, it got us thinking.

Even then, like, what would happen if?

We weren't shocked when COVID happened. We certainly had this sense of dread like everybody else. But we had been exercising our what if muscles and had in mind, like, everything's not going to be rosy. So we're mentally prepared for what happened.

And I was really proud of kind of how we just, we didn't panic, we had some really thoughtful consideration of how we're going to move forward. And we positioned ourselves well, we were prepared for some worst case scenarios.

I think that's one thing as entrepreneurs, we're always thinking like, the best is going to happen. And I love that part of being an entrepreneur, every project we get involved in, we think this is gonna be great.

We haven't unbridled enthusiasm for it, and you have to, but you also have that sense of, okay, what if this doesn't work out?

Or what if this idea doesn't pan out?

You want to have contingencies, you want to have plans in place. Maybe that comes from my upbringing, maybe it comes from experience, I don't know.

But it just seems like the right way to approach things. Or you don't kind of have rosy blinders on and you're oblivious to the fact that we live on an imperfect planet, you know what I mean?

Brian: Absolutely. Boy, that's great stuff.