Impact & Legacy

Meet Today’s Guest: Caty Donovan Wagner

With over 30 years in retail as both an owner and a consultant, Cathy has the unique position of having worked on both sides of the counter. She’s seen firsthand the tremendous benefits that paying attention to your numbers makes. It’s what helped her to grow to 3 stores grossing in excess of 2.5 million dollars. But it wasn’t always easy. In the hard nearly bankrupt times she cracked the code for successful retail. Cathy and her team help retailers develop action plans that increase sales, improve cash flow, and create success…and love their life.

What is the story of how you got into the business that you're in right now?

My sister and I opened up our first store right out right out of college. And we were instantly successful. So you know, being young and ambitious, we decided, well, if one store was good two stores for sure is  better. We were already planning like the houses we were gonna buy, like our new cars. Oh, did I tell you that we lived in apartments? We didn’t have anything. And we're so glad to know, we were the geniuses we thought we were like we always suspected we were geniuses.

We opened up a second store within about a year of opening the first and yeah, that was when things changed. Things just changed and the economy changed. And right. We've all been so impacted by things out of our control like that. And the reality was, is that we were so close to bankruptcy. And the thing that was so shocking was that every single thing we had done that had worked before, not only was it not working for the new store, it wasn't working for the old store, either. And so what we discovered was that we did didn't know as much as we thought we did.

I would walk through the back door like today is going to be the day that turns everything around. And I discovered that planning to do the best you can, is actually a stupid plan. Because you have to have a strategy. All the passion I had for what we were doing didn't matter because I didn't have a strategy about it.

I decided that I really wanted to go after this dream one more time. And that's something I share with people all the time. Because you have to feel like you have a choice in it, you can't feel like you're trapped. Because if you feel like you're trapped, you can't make good decisions. And it's such an important process is to make the decision that you want to stay in what you're doing.

The biggest, the most powerful decision I made was to resource up as to hire a coach and get a different perspective on your business. Because I had made so many mistakes that I didn't even know were mistakes until I hired somebody else. When you're in the frame of the picture, when you're in the midst of it, you can't actually see the picture. The minute the coach looked at everything, and they said one super easy thing that frankly, I was so mad, like how did I not think of this? I mean, I'm doing all this research all this stuff, one easy thing. And it changed everything.

Fill us in on the psychology of numbers and knowing your numbers.

What we decided on a tagline for our business - retail mavens for more profit and better sleep. And it's, it's so interesting, because those are the two things that I hold near and dear to my heart that is that you have to have both. First of all, it's your mental health, you've got to protect your mental health. When your mindset is keeping you from the success that you need, because how your how you are mentally impacts how you are physically. So you have to take care of yourself physically, too, you've got to be moving every single day. Move your body, you change your mind, these two things are so inexpensive.

And what people don't realize is that financial health, the third thing, those three things are all just interwoven. And what happens to all of us people who are go getters who have dreams or visions, we just plow forward with that financial health. If you're not financially healthy, you can't be creative. It's like all you can focus on is how there's no money. So I can't think creatively about what to do and so then that then impacts your mental health which opens this cycle of going around and around.

What advice can you offer us today to help?

You have to just embrace the fact that done beats perfect, and to resource up and get help. There's four steps that I learned from Dave Ramsey's course, which just so helped me. These four steps were then the strategy. You Remember when I said that doing the best you can, is not a plan, you have to have a strategy. There's this great strategy from Dave Ramsey that I want to share. And then the other thing is recognizing that done beats perfect, and that you will screw up and not to beat yourself up for it.

Tip #1 - Save $1,000. How you do it is that you set it up so that a percentage of money that comes into your business, and I suggest you start at 1%, and have that pulled off and put into a fund.

Tip #2 – Start paying off your debt. I always thought that I had to pay off my debt first. So the beauty of having this thousand dollars is that the thousand dollars can cover most every crisis.

Tip #3 – Start saving for retirement.

Cathy’s Free Gift:

You don't have to be in retail to do it, you can still extrapolate it into anything. One of the things I tell all of our clients is that if you're having a sale mark the sale price in red ink. The truth is, our brain can see the same number, the same number in black, and in red. Our brains will think the red number smaller. This worksheet is filled with little tidbits like that, that makes such a big difference. And we have every client that we start working with almost always ends up going through and repricing what they do based on these numbers, and it makes a big difference.

Free Gift Link

How to connect with Cathy

Website: https://retailmavens.com/

“I discovered that planning to do the best you can, is actually a stupid plan. Because you have to have a strategy.” – Cathy Donovan Wagner

Meet Today’s Guest: Melissa Laverty

Melissa Laverty is an accountant and owner at AccountAbility Tax and Bookkeeping. Over her 20 plus years on the job, she has helped hundreds if not thousands of solopreneurs and family run businesses navigate the financial aspects of their business. Her goal has always been to keep as much money as possible in her client's pockets.

Tell us this story about Melissa. How did you get to be the expert in the finance area?

I often joke that there's two types of people in the world that are self-employed, ones that have planned it out, sought it out, maybe they had a business plan, and then enacted that business plan. And then there's others that woke up one day being self-employed and saying, How the heck did this happen to me? Yeah, I would certainly be one of the latter.

I found myself in a situation I had been working for a bank for a number of years, I was very disappointed with an annual review that I had, I was promised the world and disappointed. So I left that job not really knowing what I was going to do next. I was lucky enough to get a receptionist position, working for my now business partner in a small bookkeeping and tax firm that he had just started. And then he and I have been working together for over 20 years now. So it was a couple years into that relationship that we decided to take the leap and break away from the situation that he was in and sort of venture out on our own.

Share a little bit about what your role looks like now.

It has absolutely morphed over the years we’re now 20 years into it now. We have a team of both bookkeepers and accountants that do a lot of the dirty work. So my role right is really amazing. I love my role. Now I run the business and am responsible for managing hiring, all that kinds of stuff. But I get to work directly with the clients, whether that's a strategy role, or if they're new to us  and sort of triage their situation and get them on board. Get them to the right people on the team, and just sort of overall oversight of the whole business.

We really are sort of a family here. Family comes first, we make sure that everyone is taken care of and we have a different culture than I would have if I was really working for anybody else. So I think that's probably my favorite thing about being the boss.

Melissa has some really great information to share about how to run your own successful business so you too can have more balance in your life. Melissa, what is that? What is it that you want to share with our audience today?

I mentioned earlier that it was about four or five years before I really even took ownership of my business. It took a few more years to wrap my head around, what should I be doing? What should I be doing differently? What should I be doing next? And so in sharing these five tips with you, I'm hoping that you get to your goal faster, and that it doesn't take you 20 years to have a scalable business that gives you the freedom that you want to enjoy in your personal life.

Tip #1 – Be honest. Be honest with yourself. Be honest with your clients. Do good work, do what you say you're gonna do. If someone hires you to do a job, do a good job, just be honest with yourself. 'm a firm believer in what you put out there will come back to you that has been proven to me again and again over the years.

Tip #2 – Figure out your special sauce. What are you really, really, really good at? What are your talents? And then what areas do you struggle? What areas of your business or really even of your life are such a chore for you that you put them off and put them off and put them off and never get around to them? Be honest, figure out what works and then build a team to fill the holes in.

Tip #3 – Setting goals. I'm a big analogy person, imagine that I am feeling a little bit chubby, and I want to lose some weight. If I set a goal to lose weight, that's really doesn't mean anything. And a couple months from now, I'm probably still going to be chubby. No change, maybe I gained five pounds. If I were to apply my SMART, which is an acronym, my SMART goal recipe to that same situation, it would look a little different. So smart stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant or realistic, and Time bound. So let's take that same initiative. I'm chubby, and I don't like it. And let's reword the goal and say something to the effect of I have a vacation coming up in June, I have three months to lose 20 pounds, my goal is to lose 20 pounds in three months, by a specific date. When we are clear on what we want, and when we want it, magic happens.

Tip #4 – Know your numbers. Numbers do not lie. And they're telling you a story. If you look back at the last month or the last year and you read these nerdy reports that come out of your bookkeeping system, you're going to discover some hidden secrets in there. Where are you making money? Where are you bleeding money, where your expenses going at the end of the day or at the end of the year. You really want to know what you've got.

Tip #5 – Imagine. I'll leave you with the thought that everything exists now, was first imagined. Right? So imagine a better place, imagine a better system? Why are you self-employed? Is it that you were doing this job in a different capacity and decided you could do it better? If you went out on your own? What else could you be doing better? Where is that next step for you. And to be kind of constantly on a track of improvement.

Melissa’s Free Gift:

We have put together this all-inclusive, it's only on two pages, checklist of things that you would need in order to prepare your taxes, whether you're working with someone or whether you're doing it yourself. It's a great tool to make sure you're prepared.

Free Gift Link

How to Connect with Melissa

Website: www.AccountAbilityTAB.com

“I'm a firm believer in what you put out there will come back to you that has been proven to me again and again over the years, might not see the direct correlation. But giving to other people giving up my time giving up my energy has always come back.” – Melisa Laverty

Meet Today’s Guest: Tiffany Hinton

Tiffany Hinton is the author of the #1 Amazon best-sellers Gluten Free Mom Certified and Mom Certified Celebrates Heritage and has written or contributed to over 16 allergen sensitive books. As a professional influencer, Hinton has developed upbeat, advocacy focused content for numerous brands such as Enjoy Life Foods, Lesser Evil, SOGO Snacks, Thrive, Sunbutter and more and is a regular brand spokesman throughout the US including the award-winning Gluten Free and Allergen Friendly Expo, Nourished Festival, and Bloom Summit.

Tiffany has a compelling story that led to her gluten-free lifestyle. Tiffany is available for brand partnerships, speaking engagements, cooking demonstrations, content development, as well as healthy living promotional events. She would be thrilled to work with any company that instills the same healthy lifestyle that she, America’s favorite gluten-free Mom, promotes.

There are some things that you are working on. So why don't you let us know what that is? And then let us know how you got to be the expert at where you are at right now.

So back 14, 15 years ago, I was somebody dealing with infertility, a brand new celiac diagnosis, playing in the multi-level marketing space, not doing a whole lot with it, but just kind of being out there networking and just looking for my purpose, and seeking what is that passion. We were fortunate enough through IVF and infertility treatment to have three girls in three years, which created a bit of busyness. Some may call it chaos, but they helped me find my passion.

So not only was I diagnosed with celiac, but my girls were also all born with food allergies, one has Crohn's disease, and another one has celiac disease. And that just pushed us forward into our passion of helping people find a thriving lifestyle, find a life that they love using food as medicine. Sent me back to school for a functional medicine certification and launched a whole coaching business and wrote 16 more books, an international bestseller last year. And now I write actually, for Natural Awakenings, which is a conscious green, I'd call it kind of like a hippie mom type natural living magazine, I have a column that we write there as well. And it's just a wonderful space where we've went in these 15 years.

How can kind of get our body to become healthier and better to function the way it's supposed to, by fueling it correctly? How do you work with your clients?

I can empathize with them. And I can be right there with them. I myself have four autoimmune diagnosis is now which is nothing to brag about it. But I find that I'm not alone. And the more people that realize that they come forward, and the clients and some of the women in the area, will even say, oh my gosh, I don't know how you do all of that I lay in bed, or I crash at three o'clock. And I hear these things. And what I have found that there's these five simple things. And when you put them together, it just changes your day, it changes your energy, and it changes your life to where you can kind of go back to what you want to do.

Tip #1 – Picking the healthiest food for you. Ensuring you've got the fruits and vegetables that your body actually needs for optimal nutrition. Start nine cups of vegetables, and then four to six cups of fruit every day. Before you reach for carbs, before you reach for protein any of that other stuff. That's your base.

Tip #2 – Water. We've got to constantly be hydrating, but also the hydration also helps flush out. Drink half your body weight in ounces. If you’re 150 pounds drink about 75 ounces of water. A lot of the functional doctors, they'll just tell you to drink enough water until your urine is clear. And if you've got clear urine, then you don't have to count your water.

Tip #3 – Exercise. Just 20 minutes of some sort of movement. The 20 minutes of exercise will help your body generate growth hormone. And so you can regenerate cells, you can regenerate brain cells, you can regenerate organ cells, you can regenerate tissue in different places, you can regenerate your livers, like all of this stuff can regrow, but you need growth hormone. And one way to get growth hormone naturally is by 20 minutes of some sort of movement.

Tip #4 – Decluttering. That clutter, it builds up in our environment and it induces a stress hormone. And so that stress hormone is what really plays into our health. And if you have an autoimmune condition, it could cause your autoimmune to flare. If you've got a like residual virus, whether it's mono or herpes, or shingles, or something like that, that induced stress can cause those to flare as well. Just go through your house and remove at least one item a day.

Tip #5 – Epsom salt soak. You can get your whole self in the tub or you put your feet in the bath with Epsom salt. The salt will help your magnesium levels, it will help your mineral levels in your body, which will help with muscle relaxation. And magnesium helps with your intestinal muscles working the correct way. So you can actually go to the bathroom with ease. And then the other thing is, the Epsom salt will pull additional toxins out of the bottoms of your feet and help as well with detoxification that we need to do to eliminate the years of toxic buildup.

Can you explain a little bit the difference between celiac and crohn’s diseases?

Celiac disease is a genetic. Right now it's gene based, and you have to have the genes that have celiac disease, and they have to be triggered and turned on. You could have one gene or two genes, depending on if your parents were carriers. And you may have them your whole life and it may never get triggered. And so what happens with celiac disease is that your body cannot process the protein gluten. That protein is found in wheat, barley and rye. And it's basically it starts to affect your body in many ways. The very first way that it affects, is in your digestive tract, it starts to act like sandpaper. You bloat you have abdominal cramping, a lot of people end up with skin disorders, or scalp scabs in their scalp.

The other thing with celiac disease is in children, a lot of times they aren't growing proportionally so they'll be under the curve. But or they'll look like these little kids with really tiny little chicken arms and legs and these big swollen bellies. And then your teeth can get these lines in them. They're horizontal lines and they're whiter than the rest of the teeth. Those lines are an indicator of actually malnutrition.

Crohn’s disease is a multitude of symptoms, from gastro bloating, to bleeding intestines, to gas, to abdominal cramping, constipation, extreme diarrhea. Just total discomfort, but it's normally from the belly button below. So personally, my Crohn's disease is triggered by corn. We found that out. And we found out if I eat corn, I swell up and look nine months pregnant. I can't go to the bathroom for three to four days. There's no movement whatsoever. And extreme headaches, just constant pain.

In most cases, gluten, dairy and sugar are triggers for a lot of people with gastro issues. And a lot of people are also told they have SIBO, which is a bacterial imbalance. Getting rid of those three things, the gluten, the dairy and the sugar will help resolve the pain and remove the bloat and just help you function better.

Tiffany’s Free Gift:

Tiffany’s e-book holiday guide. So for a lot of people with food allergies with celiac with things going on or with people in their family that have health conditions. They wonder sometimes what should I buy them as a gift? What can I cook for them? This is full of recipes. It's a gift giving guide. It's full of stories of other people with helpful hints, tips and immunity boosters.

Free Gift Link

How to connect with Tiffany:

Website: https://gfmomcertified.com/

Connect with Tiffany on your favorite social media platforms at @gfmomcertified.

“When you put my five tips together of eating the healthiest foods for you, drinking enough water, exercising, decluttering and doing epsom salt soaks, it just changes your day, it changes your energy, and it changes your life to where you can go back to what you want to do.” – Tiffany Hinton

Meet Today’s Guest: Mona Aburmishan

Mona is an international comedian based in her hometown of Chicago. She has performed, emceed, and produced comedy shows, competitions and events in major clubs, theaters and universities around the world. In addition to comedy, Mona is a sought-after speaker for her experience using stand-up comedy to bring joy and affinity to various socio-political topics in the United States, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Mona has a Master’s in International Development and is fluent in English, German and Arabic and performs in these languages. Having lived and worked around the world, Mona uses her global insight and homegrown Chicago-style to offer a fresh look at shifting frustration into funny.

Most notably, Mona became the first Arab and Muslim woman to perform stand-up comedy in the nation’s most prestigious institutions: Carnegie Hall in New York City as well as the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC; and will be returning this Fall! Currently, Mona is back home in Chicago after having completed a powerful Pre-COVID touring schedule throughout US, and recently WON the “Kennan Thompson Road to NYC” comedy competition in Las Vegas this year; having just completed her Summer tour throughout the West Bank, Europe and the United Kingdom.

As an international producer, host and headliner Mona in less than one week performed and produced 9 shows spanning Palestine, Switzerland, and the heart of London’s thriving comedy scene. While in London, Mona was a special featured guest honoring her self-produced tour on “Islam Channel” as a thriving female Muslim entertainer which was broadcast to over 100 countries. In addition to regularly performing in the US, Canada, EU, UK and the Middle East, Mona is a sought-after headliner on the African continent. Becoming a regular in the South African market, Mona just recently headlined one of the world’s top ten comedy establishments – The Cape Town Comedy Club and returns to tour the entire Sub Sharan African region again in early last year. As for Northern Africa and Middle East, Mona was a featured guest on “Al Bernameg” with host Dr. Bassem Youssef’s ground-breaking satirical news program (once North Africa’s version of “The Daily Show”); as well as headlined Comedy Central’s latest Season 2 and 3, Premier “Comedy Central Present: Stand Up Al Waggif” filmed on location in Dubai, UAE - featured throughout the Middle East and Africa.

She was the first female to headline this revolutionary series produced by Viacom. State side, Mona has been a regular throughout the Midwest, Northeast, South and West Coasts of US. While touring Mona always checks in with Chicago based media as a consistent featured guest on “Pretty Late with Patti Vasquez” Chicago’s #1 late-night radio show WGN 720 Radio as well as a regular feature on Chicago’s #1 daytime talk show, Windy City Live! Globally, Mona launched “Class Clowns” a stand-up comedy, improv, spoken word & writing workshop for kids and adults of all ages in all environments using the comedy club as a microcosm for leadership, self-expression, face-to-face empowerment and healing. The workshop is currently running in the Chicago & Cape Town, South Africa. She is currently working with the University of Chicago to teach medical students comedy skills to relate better to their patients and overcome racism and income disparities.

Share with the audience a little bit about who you are, and why you're on the journey that you're in right now.

The truth is this. I'm your classic bullied kid that turned out when she went back to her high school reunion that I was actually the bully. So I'm the reformed bully, whereby I really got to see that creating laughter as the school bully or the class clown that I was because I had a lot of stuff going on at home that I was bringing to the table. There was a lot of stuff going on personally, where making other people laugh, made me feel really, really good. That line of comedy and tragedy, I walked my whole life. I was a really, really big kid. And in order to get anybody to give me attention, I had to be the funny kid. And typically the funny kid can actually be the bully. So that's really my talk. My conversation and my journey was the emancipation of your high school class clown. It's a shift in perspective. Where, really, laughter is the best medicine.

And you teach this laughter all over the world. I know you've been on some big stages, not only here in the United States, but internationally, so talk about that.

I am my own worst bully. Because imagine, if you're the bully in school, who do you think else you're bullying? You're pulling yourself all day. Us comedians bully ourselves. It's like this rat race. So as my career was getting better and better, it took me a long time to look back and say, hey, Mona, you've done Carnegie Hall in less than a decade, kid. How about you tone down all your self hate? How many of us are super successful and still like I can't believe it.

Where did you grew up Mona?

I grew up in Chicago. I grew up by Wrigley. I have a Palestinian father who's immigrant came in 71. I have an American British mother and my grandmother immigrated after World War II from the United Kingdom. That was back when Arabs were like the hippies. My pops was in the 70s with this big Afro. And my mom's like he's super cute. So like me understanding my own identity where my Grandmother has a British accent. And my other grandmother is Palestinian like literally from the motherland. And I'm their translator because they don't speak the same language.

How did you get into comedy?

It was one Christmas Day. I had come back from Namibia finishing my thesis in late 20s. And my family said you need to be a comedian. My family said, listen, you're working so hard to entertain us. You need to be a comedian. I said, I just got my masters. The way they came at me was as if it was like a confessional. But that was the best journey of my life because I really did a deep dive into intellect because my first reaction was like, I'm not going to be comedian. They're dumb. Turns out, it's the exact opposite. Your comedian is your modern day philosopher, court jester, celebrity, teacher, reporter. So you have to know a lot about a lot of things.

I know you have a really strong belief about comedy in our culture today. And more importantly, comedy as it really relates to our health. Can you tell us more?

Tip #1 - The three tips that I would give anybody, right now, if they're listening to it, the most important rule in comedy is “yes and.” So whatever you're dealing with, lean into it. If you just got into a car accident, “yes and.” How was this car accident here to serve me? Right? So whatever's going on in your world, if you allow that the world isn't happening to you, it's happening for you. And you just have to add, these are principles of comedy. And these are principles of self-development.

Tip #2 - The second would be a perspective exercise. Which is everything makes sense from the other person's perspective. What is that perspective? And how is noticing that gap in difference important? For example, when I walk into a comedy club, I walk in early and I evaluate my environment. Where’s the waitress staff, what's going on with that? Has the lighting been set up in my environment? What is my environment? Understanding how they interpret me. As an American comedian, who has an English accent and my type of accent? What data are they assuming is true? Based on me walking on stage?

Tip #3 - And third, is going to sound totally counter to number one, but third is the power of no. Being able to be like no, these are my boundaries. Then you can have you have control of the mic, you have control of your voice. And that's why when I teach these comedy classes for kids because if you can navigate society by being able to say Yes, and make fun of yourself, understand how they're seeing you, and how you're seeing yourself and able to say, No, no one's ever gonna mess with your mind.

I work on a lot of spiritual, acupuncture meditative and the comedy classes that I teach like this perspective, exercise is taught at the University of Chicago level. This is a project that I'm currently in three year project where we're teaching physicians, the art of standup comedy, as a modality to navigate society, racism, income disparities, because when a white doctor walks in looking just like you, Christie with a lab coat, and there is an African American man, that's 80 years old, he is existing in a conversation that’s tied to civil rights. So he might feel some type of way when you walk in, or you might be like, this is a black man, I don't want to I don't really don't want to insult him in any way, understanding some of the principles of comedy allows that to navigate much more holistically. And that's the project we're working on.

Mona’s Free Gift:

I'd like to offer a 90-minute workshop which I’ll have the information on when that live class is going to be. It's a 90-minute class clowns workshop. It's the same workshop, whether it's kids in high school for veterans, those old timers or in corporate America, where I've been doing a dual development model for corporate training, team building. A lot of these same principles go into all that training modality. So offering a 90-minute course. I might have comedian friends coming in and out of the background, in and out from different countries. You never know. We've offered that and then it will be also recorded and available for consumption. So we'll have that recording available.

Free Gift Link

How to connect with Mona:

Website: https://monacomedy.com/

“Your comedian is your modern-day philosopher, court jester, celebrity, teacher, reporter. You have to know a lot about a lot of things.” – Mona Aburmishan

Meet Today’s Guest: Michele Mere

Michele Mere is a decisive, driven and committed entrepreneur who helps successful business owners expand, duplicate or sell their companies and make big profits using her business valuation and consulting skills. Michele’s business expertise has been highlighted during her speeches at Harvard and on NBC, CBS, Fox, Entrepreneur.com and Forbes.com. She is a Stevie Award winning business consultant, best-selling author and the Founder of Decisive Minds. She is a serial entrepreneur who knows how it feels to fail miserably at business, at one time the bank called demanding their $1.5 million and knows how it feels to sign the contract to sell her company for $9 million. Business building tips- DecisiveMinds.com

Can you share your incredible journey with the audience today?

Life has been and is still and probably will be till the day I die, about business, about entrepreneurship, about creating your own life and your own existence. So I was born into a family who had kids to guarantee they had employees. We had a grocery store, a mobile home park. My dad started the trucking company. We had a laundromat. I mean, if we thought we could make a dime, we did it. The school bus dropped me off at the grocery store in the afternoon because I went to work after school. I thought everybody did that and I found out later they didn't. And I think that really is what began my love, and of business and entrepreneurs. Learning at the at the knees of my father and my grandfather and watching them negotiate and sell and treat people the way people should be treated.

In 2007 we had the opportunity to sell our trucking company and our grocery store that year. We retired, my entire family, everyone retired when we sold those two companies. I found myself on the couch every day asking, who is Michele, at this point? What am I going to do? I did a couple of things. I started a company flipping houses, that was a lot of fun. And then the credit stuff happened in 2009. And that fell apart. I was surfing the internet one day. I don't know how I ended up on this site. And I end up on this thing that's talking about how to build businesses and the online world and all this kind of stuff. And I go to a marketing seminar in California about building businesses. It's just one little tweak. I had never done it online. I had no clue what to do there.

I started Decisive Minds in January of 2010. And I really just thought I was going to build this online business. I was never going to speak. I wasn't going to network. I wasn't going to leave my house. Because I'm an extreme introvert. What I found out at the end of 2010 was that that doesn't necessarily work. I spent a bunch of money and made none. In January 2011, I had to sit at my father's table, this man, this entrepreneur who helped me to understand who I am, and telling him that I didn't quite make any money with all this time I spent in this business. And I'll never forget this. He said, I don't think that's a viable company. I think you should stop doing that. We need to look for something else for you. I like turned on a dime. And within the next 18 months, I was doing six figures. That was the thing that lit my fire.

And that's really why I started this business, I started Decisive Minds, because everything I have been through in my life and you know, we had the failures. I'll never forget the day the bank called and said, hey, we want our $1.5 million back. So I've been through the trenches in all the businesses that we've had, and including Decisive Minds, and come out the other side on many of them. I've done it all when it comes to business. I think I bring a unique perspective to the business consulting world, because of my experience in the past.

Can you share some of your tips with our audience today and share a little bit about what you think 2021 is going to look like?

I had a magazine reach out to me not too long ago and ask me this exact question like, what do you see is going to be different in the world in 2021 for entrepreneurs. And first, I want to say, I really hope that people take the time to look for the opportunity. And don't just fall back into old habits. What I see different in 2021 is what we're experiencing right now, which is, it's gonna be all businesses will be way more virtual. It doesn't matter what kind of business you're running right now. You're realizing maybe I don't need to have everyone in one office, maybe I can have a more virtual team or let my employees work from home.

My business, Decisive Minds, as a consulting business from day one, I set it up as a virtual company, because almost none of my clients are in the same town as me. So we did most of our consulting through Zoom activities, and then a couple of times a year we come together in person. I think that that's going to just kind of become the new norm, the new mainstream opportunity.

The second thing is that there's a lot of business owners who do things because that's the way they've always been done. Challenge the status quo. You don't need to do it just because it's always been that way. I think that what we see in 2021 moving forward is it's going to be a more virtual world. For those of you who need to start to make those changes, start to embrace and move forward in that and don't just go back to I have to do everything the way I used to do.

You're a master content creator, but you still had to make some shifts you mentioned. So tell us a little bit about that.

I had to make some changes. I seriously went after getting seen and getting known and getting heard and putting out a lot of content, like sucking it up and going to networking events, and doing all those things that I absolutely did not want to do.

I was invited by the director for eWomen in Houston to talk about my book which I turned into an e-book. I walked into that event terrified. I gave a 15-minute talk. My first ever real talk in this world. And 20 women handed me a check for $100 apiece. I walked out with $2,000 in my pocket. And from the little course that I sold, and they got the e-book for free with the course. I call my coach and said, okay, I can do this. How do I how do I make this bigger at that moment? That was my first real win.

Then I came out and I really just I got it that I had to go do those pieces. I had to be seen. That first year, I made a lot of videos. Not a single one of them has my face on it. I knew at that point I had to shift. That people have to engage with me and that they need to see me. So relationship, there's voice, they hear you. That's one level of relationship. They see you. That's another level of relationship. They meet you in person. That's a different level of relationship.

The shift for me, has been that I built a really big business. Decisive Minds got huge. And then I went, oh wait, this isn't really what I want. All of a sudden, I woke up one day and didn’t want to do all of this. And so 2019 was a really rough year health wise for me. And things started to kind of kind of slow down. And then who knew 2020 would look like it does, right? But here's what I realized, this is the opportunity for me to shift into something that's the other thing I love.

I have a degree in accounting, I love the numbers, the reason I can help you build your business is because I understand all of that. My dad told me when I was really little, he's like, look, you don't have to become an accountant. But you should go get an accounting degree. Because when you understand the numbers, you can build any business you want. So that's one of the things I do with all of my clients is make them pay attention to their numbers. I realized I should really be speaking on those topics and building that. What you will more than likely see from me in 2021 is a virtual bookkeeping service tied in to a training type of scenario around this whole conversation of if you're failing, and we look at the numbers, what can we do different? What can we see different? Where is the issue coming from?

You are a master of content creation. Can you share some tips on that?

#1 - Consistency is the key to success in content marketing and creating content. You say you’re going to put out a blog three times a week. You do that every week for a long time. Guess what you have? You end up with 1,000 blog posts on your site like me. Use content in multiple ways. When I create something, how can I use it five times?

#2 - Partner with others. You do not have to be the creator of the content to get value from the content. Bring in people who are going to share great content with your community.

#3 - I don't I don't necessarily write my own stuff. I use PLR, which is private label rights content. So I have writers who write things that I purchased from them and can put my name on, I might modify them slightly. When I hire someone to write things for me, and they give it to me, I barely change anything. It's more important that I was being consistent and putting out great content. Until I tell them that it's not really me writing it. No one knows.

Michele’s Free Gift:

I have a little course called 28 Days to Grow Your List. Don't let anyone tell you that email is dead. It's 12 videos with each of the videos on a different topic.

Free Gift Link: 28DayListBuild.com

How to connect with Michele:

Website: DecisiveMinds.com

“There is opportunity in what looks like a disaster right now.” – Michele Mere

Meet Today’s Guest: Jen Coffel

Jen Coffel is CEO of Engaging Speakers, a successful business coach, a best-selling author with four books, and a philanthropist. She has been featured on Inc.com, ABC News, and the Chicago Tribune. Jen has been mentored by speaking icons like Jack Canfield, Nick Vujicic, and Sandra Yancey, and has spoken on stage to over 10,000 people.

With two decades of business experience, Jen built her first 4 businesses to 6 figures each, all in under a year and all in different industries. She has now helped over a thousand entrepreneurs build their businesses with many reaching 6-figure and 7-figure revenue.

In her previous career, she developed the largest team in Illinois for a billion-dollar direct sales company, personally generating over $25 million in sales and raising over $1 million in donations for non-profits. But she is most proud of founding her own international non-profit “Handing Hope” which brings comfort and smiles to children battling cancer in twelve states and three countries around the world.

Share with our audience a little bit about who you are.

It's been a fun 20-year journey in being an entrepreneur. And I know that there's a lot to share as far as l the backstory but, I started out actually, my background is, I'm an occupational therapist, by degree. My first business was teaching people with disabilities how to drive. And so I started a private practice back in 1999. But it was a really awesome business because I got to do what I love to do, which is to give people freedom.

I tried for six years to have kids. And so once we finally had kids, I really wanted to be home with them. So I sold my business. And I thought that what I sold it for would be enough money to get me through the time. While my first baby, she was adopted, and after like five months into having her we got pregnant with twins through IVF. And then the next year we got pregnant by surprise. All these children came and you know, adoption is expensive, IVF is expensive, kids are expensive. So I went through all the money that I had sold the practice for and was broke. I realized if I didn't do something, to be able to get us out of that financial situation, we were just going to be sunk because my husband was also an occupational therapist, and he didn't get any bonuses or things like that. So I had to find a way and I didn't want to go back to working at a business outside of the house. So I started a network marketing business.

In that business, I really discovered my love for teaching people about business. I treated my network marketing business as a traditional business in terms of picking a target market really having marketing strategies and focusing on sharing it with friends and family and that sort of thing. I had a lot of success with that business I built it to the largest in the state of Illinois and won their Presidents Club trips multiple times and had a lot of fun with it.

In that process, I discovered my love for teaching women how to build businesses and so that led me to start a coaching business and teaching business coaching. I built four businesses at six figures in less than 12 months, all in different industries. And there was a methodology that one of my coaches brought up to me like you have to be using some methodology like to do that. I was able to, with time, really take a reflected look at what am I doing. How am I doing that and then get it out in a way that I could actually teach it and so since then I've taught it to so many people and the results have been amazing.

Please share your story about the first time you spoke, and then now, what you're able to do when you get in front of an audience, that is just an incredible journey. So why don't you share with the audience a little bit about how that first experience was?

In my first experiences with speaking, I remember just front row looking at specifically one man because he started snoring. And he was in the front row, and I'm sharing and speaking and he's falling asleep. But I remember thinking at that moment I have a lot to learn about this speaking thing. I started learning more about how to do speaking, but it's funny when I look back at where I started, and now running an organization is teaching other entrepreneurs how to use speaking and using that so much in my businesses. When I look back at all the businesses that I've had such growth with, it's really speaking has been the primary strategy, and all of them, that has resulted in the growth that I've experienced and the success I've had. And so I believe it's the best-leveraged marketing strategy that we could use to grow our business. And I highly recommend it to everybody.

There's so much more to speaking than getting paid on the front end, it's getting paid on the back end and just giving people a free something or other so then that you can help them and then that could lead to more business. So share about that whole process.

It is a really powerful process. And it's different like what you're talking about is a keynote. And you get paid to speak. It's like a company will hire you to come in and do a keynote and pay you for that. I would say the average that somebody that's really out there as a professional speaker, they're making probably 5 to 10 thousand dollars, on average. Of course, there are lots of people that make way more than that. But I would say when you look at the bell curve what can you expect.

But then when you look at the way that you can use speaking to grow a business if you have a strategically designed signature talk, which is what I call a signature talk that's really designed around your core business that highlights your expertise in a classy way and attracts your ideal clients. It really does become a revenue-generating machine.

And so if that's something that interests you, the first step, to really being able to do that would be to know what your core genius is. And the reason that's important is because you really want to build your business, your core business around your core genius. Your core profits should be really focused on what you're good at. When I say core genius, what I mean by that is whatever your job is.

If things are feeling really hard, if your business is feeling really hard if you're wanting to go into the speaking, and that's feeling really hard, it's probably foundationally, that element is missing. You're not super connected to what your core genius is because everything isn't quite working well.

There is a lot to sequencing and understanding what is needed to build a successful business around your core genius, what your core businesses. I'm not saying that you don't need support in that, because I would highly recommend that because it's a lot faster path. That's the first place I would be asking myself, do I really know what my core genius is? Is that clear to me? And if not, I would start there. If you're interested in speaking or just building your business in general, I would really encourage any listener to start, like looking at that.

Where does one go to get into the speaking world?

We talked about core genius and getting your core message and like what is it that you know, what problems do you solve? What results do you bring that's really kind of all wrapped up in your 30-second introduction, which is, I think it's harder to speak for 30 seconds than it is for 30 minutes. You really want to get your core message clear and know the headaches that you solve and the results that you bring in. And that is the first step.

The next step is learning that framework of how do I then take that and put it into a talk? How is it different than a keynote? I know there's a tendency to want to be very informational. Like when we are going to go out and speak about our service, or our product or our business, we want to like get into a lot of processes. I always encourage people not to focus on it. Yes, you can be educational, but do that inside a story because stories inspire. And stories are what connect emotionally to people. So if you're going to go out and start speaking, you want to learn how to tell a story because your signature talk should be like 50% of it.

So learning how to tell a story, you need to have a character, you might be the character, or when you're doing your signature talk, and you're maybe making one of your powerful principal points, it could be a client story. That's what I recommend using because that's what's going to highlight your expertise in a classy way. That way, you're not promoting yourself, but the listeners being inspired by your expertise by hearing the story of how you've transformed a client's life.

Jen’s 6 stages of sharing a story

Stage 1 – Set the stage. Think about what you want when somebody is hearing you tell the story to be able to envision what it was like, what was normal? And what were things like?

Stage 2 – What changed? Everything was normal. And then something occurred. And what was it that occurred, what changed?

Stage 3 – What caused the change? What was the trigger that caused that change?

Stage 4 – Fight the dragon. That's where the struggle occurs. That's a really interesting part of the story.

Stage 5 - Who did you have to become, who did the character have to become as a result of the fight, the challenge.

Stage 6 - What's the new normal?

That's what you want to take people on in terms of a journey, of a story, and learning how to tell your personal story in that way.

Jen’s story framework

#1 – Working title. This is the overall umbrella results that you bring.

#2 – Identify your origin story, personal story.

#3 – Share who your talk is for. This talk is for you if…whatever the struggles are the headaches that you solve.

#4 – What are they're going to learn in your talk. What are the results that they're going to receive.

#5 - Share three powerful principles. Each of those principles is things that your ideal client would need to know, believe, do, or have, in order to get the ultimate result that you bring.

#6 - Do a review of your points.

#7 - Make an offer or a gift for everybody in the room, that would be potentially an ideal client now or in the future.

#8 – End with an offer to have a session with you. Give a limited number. Don't say how long it is. Call it a session. Name a session which is tied to the result that you bring.

#9 – Close. Closing story or a quote or something.

Jen’s Free Gift:

I have devoured a book by Jack Canfield, “The Success Principles”. There are 67 principles in his book. I have identified 17 principles out of the 67 that I feel have been the foundational principles that have helped me to be successful in the businesses that I've had. I recorded a video for each one of those principles and have application questions and a digital workbook.

Free Gift Link: https://choosetimeandfreedom.com/ibbk-landing-page/

How to connect with Jen:

Engaging Speaker’s Website: https://engagingspeakers.com/

Jen’s Website: https://jencoffel.com/

“I believe speaking is the best leveraged marketing strategy that we could use to grow our business. And I highly recommend it to everybody.” – Jen Coffel

Meet today’s guest: Marla Tabaka

Marla Tabaka is a small-business coach and adviser who helps entrepreneurs around the globe grow their businesses well into the millions. She has more than 25 years of experience in corporate and startup ventures and speaks widely on combining strategic and creative thinking for optimum success and happiness. Marla is a leading author at Inc.com, has appeared on Fox Business News and noteworthy publications such as American Express Open, The NY Times, TIME Business, The Huffington Post, Entrepreneur, and The Business Intelligence Report.

Marla, you are a master business coach and you've been doing that for a long time. I've heard some of your success stories, how you've helped your clients. But you didn't just stumble into this career. Let the audience know how you became intertwined in the whole coaching world.

It was the farthest thing from my mind. Honestly, I had a corporate career, I worked for NBC television and I really climbed the ladder there. And one day, I just decided enough. Things changed, television changed, news media changed. And I just wasn't happy anymore. I spent six months figuring out what I wanted to do when I grew up, and I didn't figure it out. So I left aimlessly without a job without a plan or anything. I did get a job pretty quickly working with a middle-market company. And I launched a new division for them doing web and kiosks development for some large clients like Sears and what was at the time of Claire's boutique.

But you know what? I hated it. Here I was a year and a half into a very high paying job. And I learned a lot and did a lot but I hated it. And one day I was in this lovely, independent coffee house. And I was like, wow, I don't feel connected with my community. I've lived here in Naperville 30 some miles outside of the city of Chicago for at that point, probably 15 years. And I didn't have a sense of community and I didn't realize how much I was missing it. And so I bought the coffee house. I wanted community and so I created the community, little darling coffeehouse where musicians from literally all over the world came and artists came and people connected. And it turned into this really beautiful, wonderful space and experience.

I was talking to one of my customers and he said why don’t you hire a business coach. So he introduced me to Steve and I hired him and magic happened. I felt like I wasn't in this alone anymore. Yeah, someone else invested in my success. I said to him I think I want to become a coach, but I want to do something different than what you do. And I told him people need the mindset and the emotional support to and he said I couldn't agree more and you'd make an amazing coach. So I'd like to mentor you. I sold the coffee house. And I went to school and he mentored me through school sent me pro bono clients and did all that great stuff for me. My practice took off very well and I’m going on my 18th year of coaching.

When I was reading your bio, you had a little snippet about the endless chatter, that goes through our minds. And how true is that?

When I first started coaching, I was ready to partner with these amazing women and help them grow their businesses, but I wasn't ready for the extraordinary amount of doubt and self-confidence that they lacked, and fear of success or failure. And really, even after going through all my coaching training, I was shocked to find that because these women, by all rights were very successful, educated women, and I just didn't expect it. And so that's when I decided within my first year of coaching, I decided that I really wanted to specialize in mindset before most people even knew what the word was. When we have a negative experience in our life our nervous system actually ingrains that into itself. And so when we're up against another challenge, where self-doubt rises, then neural pathway starts firing off and offering us the same physical response in the stomach or heart or throat, whatever it is that you get, that we had back in the original days when the belief was born. And then the other thing that we have going against us and a lot of people don't know, is the brain is predisposed to negative thinking. So it's the way we're built.

Here are some basic tips from Marla for when the negative stuff comes in.

Tip #1 - One of the things that I noticed is that entrepreneurs are so demanding of themselves. We don't really keep track of our little wins. We don't acknowledge them enough. What I started doing years ago is every time a client sends me an email that has some sort of praise or thanks or gratitude, and it's some sort of recognition, I put it in a little special folder in my email. And I also jot down like once a week, toward the end of the week, all of the positive things that I've done that week, things that support my success and the success of others. These are small tips that make a big difference. Write a diary of your wins. And when you doubt yourself, you go back to read all of the things that you've done right. You realize what a rock star you are. Take time to celebrate.

Tip #2 - Disrupt the negative loop that goes on in our brains. We have to disrupt it by doing something like changing our physiology. It's very difficult when we're really engrossed in something negative to force ourselves to get up and move around and shift something, but it's important. We have to acknowledge that there's energy in our physiology. Stand up, go garden, go take a run, go do whatever, walk around the room, pounding your chest and singing Tarzan tunes, or whatever it is, but walk that negative loop, and you will feel so much better.

Tip #3 - Kick the catastrophic thinking to the curb by facing our worst-case scenarios head-on. By separating the negativity from the truth from our reality. A lot of times, our minds travel down this path of destruction, and all these terrible things are going to happen, and you speak these things out loud as if that's happening. And it is important to sit down and to really think of each of those individual thoughts and ask yourself how true they are and say it out loud. The brain needs to separate itself from the problem in order to solve it effectively. So when you write things down, or you draw pictures, or even speak out loud, the brain can step back and assimilate and give you feedback, which can be very, very helpful. It's important to remember that this thinking, the way that we blow things out of proportion is not our fault, it's the brain's natural tendency.

Tip #4 - Sit down the problem or the fear or whatever it is in front of you like, another person. And so you sit down, you talk to it, like it was separate from you and you have this back and forth conversation. And it's, it feels really weird. But you'll get the answers. Do it the way your mind is going to respond best.

Marla’s FREE 10-day Bull Shift Challenge

You'll get an email every day, setting up the problem or the common thought patterns that I see, especially in entrepreneurs and some little tips like what we did today about how to turn it around and how to empower yourself to think differently.

Free Gift Link: https://marlatabaka.com/DPWN

How to connect with Marla

Website: www.marlatabaka.com

“Oftentimes, that worst-case scenario that we build up in our heads isn't as bad as we believe it's going to be.” – Marla Tabaka

Meet Today’s Guest: Michelle Prince

Michelle Prince is a successful business woman, best-selling author, sought-after motivational speaker, publishing expert, leadership coach and CEO/Founder of Performance Publishing Group, a “partner” publishing company dedicated to making a difference… one story at a time. She is known as America’s Productivity Coach, is a certified Human Behavior Consultant and dedicates herself to helping women impact the world, using the strengths and talents already within them, to create an extraordinary life. She’s helped thousands tell their stories and become published authors through her consulting, courses, seminars, and publishing services, and founded the “Book Bound Workshop”. She has also published many successful books, including her best-selling Winning in Life Now and latest, The Power of Authority.

She is a Ziglar Legacy Certified speaker/ trainer and named the Ziglar Brand Ambassador - representing the values and legacy of the late Zig Ziglar. She was the co-host of The Ziglar Show podcast, with 40 million downloads and host of her own podcast, The Power of Authority. She has been a featured speaker for many corporations, associations and events to inspire, transform and support leaders.

How did you get to be the expert you are right now with leveraging your authority and how you want to be an author to do that, and how we really are leveraging kind of our story in our wisdom to really make a bigger impact in the world.

my career started working for Zig Ziglar. And that had a huge impact on me, because, you know, I was just out of college. And I just loved everything that he stood for and values. I knew some way, somehow, I'd be doing more of that as I as I grew into my own, if you will. But I didn't really know how to do it. I always had a goal to write a book, but I didn't dare tell anybody about it. I remember sitting in a conference actually and thinking, well, why not me? Why not? Why don't I just write a book. And so I'm going to write a book. And I'm just going to share it with my kids. And that'll be that. And I did write a book. And it was my first book was called Winning In Life Now. And Zig wrote the foreword, and it was a big deal in my little world.

That book really opened up this opportunity to get out there and speak and do things. I'd meet all these incredible people, and they have great stories, but they really didn't know, they didn't have a platform. They didn't know how to leverage it. And so I started just getting really passionate about helping people figure out their story. It just kind of evolved into not just helping people find their story, but to publish them and a publishing company and everything that goes along with that. It's been an incredible journey.

Tell us a little bit about what Book Bound is.

Book Bound is a conference I've been doing since 2010. Pre COVID we were doing it live, in person a couple times a year, but it's basically three days and it's really designed for new authors who are trying to get clarity. What is my story? What is it? If I did want to really grow my business or leverage what I'm doing, how would I do that? Yes, the publishing part comes into it, but it's really focused on getting clarity on who you are, what do you have to offer. And then how do you go through that process? How do you market a book, all of those things? And so we've been doing that for all those years. It's been great. It's amazing to see how many people have taken that information and just kind of run with it and either created their own book or their own brand.

Michelle is going to be sharing some great tips and wisdom today on how to leverage authority.

We both share the love of helping people to tell their stories. And there is a place for that, right. And you don't have to want to build a business to tell your story, but those that do and people that are business owners, professionals, people that are really trying to differentiate from their competition, they have to look at their story, if you will, as it's just their ability to get more visibility, more authority, how to get more revenue, respect and results all by authoring in a book. It goes through this framework and yes, you can use this framework for anything, you don't have to write a book.

The framework follows a seven-step process to building your authority.

#1 – Clarity. This goes for anything in life. We you can't really accomplish anything unless you really have that clarity.

#2 – Uncovering what’s holding you back. There's so many things that get in the way of getting things done. It could be procrastination, it could be fear, it could be negative beliefs. But there's something going on. It's usually some mind chatter. And that's what holds us back.

#3 – How can I position my story to get more authority. People want to know your backstory. Why do you do what you do? How did you get into this?

#4 – Documenting your story. You could document it in a blog, in a journal, you can do whatever, but you have to document your story, just because you know, the clarity on it doesn't mean it's going to benefit anyone else or benefit your brand. You have to find a way to get it out there and document it, and then publish it.

#5 – Publishing. Yes, you can publish a book, but you can also publish a podcast, you can publish a YouTube channel. It's your story. It's really not about a book, it's more about a medium that you get to share that story at a bigger level.

#6 – Platform. When somebody thinks of you and your brand, it's not just one thing, it's a course, it's a podcast, it's a speaking event, it's a retreat, it's your platform. That authority comes when somebody clearly sees your platform.

#7 – Inspiring others. It's amazing what happens when you when you step into your greatness or you just recognize that you’ve been through a couple things in you business, or I've been through some things personally, that I learned a couple things here and there that I could share with other people, and it could help them. And what happens is, you don't even know it's happening, but you're inspiring other people to find their clarity and to find their story and to build their platform. And it's this cycle.

Michelle’s Free Gift:

Digital download to Michelle’s latest book: “The Power of Authority, How to Get the Revenue, Respect & Results You Deserve by Authoring a Book”

Free Gift Link: www.thepowerofauthority.com/freebook

How to connect with Michelle

Website: www.michelleprince.com

 “What we're doing by sharing our story is that it benefits us, but it's benefiting somebody else more.” – Michelle Prince

Meet Today’s Guest: Bob Burg

Bob Burg is a sought-after speaker at company leadership and sales conferences sharing the platform with everyone from today’s business leaders and broadcast personalities to even a former U.S. President. Bob is the author of a number of books on sales, marketing and influence, with total book sales of well over a million copies. His book, The Go-Giver, coauthored with John David Mann, itself has sold over 975,000 copies and it has been translated into 29 languages. His and John’s newest parable in the Go-Giver Series is The Go-Giver Influencer. Bob is an advocate, supporter and defender of the Free Enterprise system, believing that the amount of money one makes is directly proportional to how many people they serve. He is also an unapologetic animal fanatic and is a past member of the Board of Directors of Furry Friends Adoption, Clinic & Ranch in his town of Jupiter, Florida.

You didn't just wake up one morning and realize that you’re going to be a “go giver”. So how did that all come about?

I was very lucky in being born to a couple of great parents who just set a wonderful example. I wouldn't have thought of the word go giver. I mean, that's pretty much what I saw. These are two people who are always adding value in their own unique ways to the lives of other people. So I got to see that. I got into sales, because I started as a broadcaster first I did sports, radio, and then television news. I was not really particularly good at it. I could read the news. And it wasn't long before I saw that really wasn't going to be what I what my calling was. So I like to say I graduated into sales.

I came across a couple of books on sales. One was by Zig Ziglar. And the other was by Tom Hopkins, two of the legendary sales teachers. I'd come home after work. And I was reading and I was highlighting and note taking an underlying and dog earring and practicing and drilling and rehearsing and blah, blah, blah. Within a few weeks, my sales began to go through the roof. And the reason was, now I had a methodology, I had a system down to do something that I previously didn't know how to do.

I define a system is simply the process of predictably, achieving a goal based on a logical and specific set of how to principles, the key being predictability, if it's been proven that by doing A, you'll get the desired result of B, well, all you need to do is A and continue to do A and continue to do A and eventually you'll get the desired result of B. So I started really getting into sales. And of course, a big part of sales is personal development. We have to build ourselves inside we build ourselves here and here. I was having fun. I mean, I really enjoyed it.

We're going to dive into the meat and potatoes of the “go giver” and the principles that really changed my life. Tell us about these five magical laws.

The five laws, the laws of Value, Compensation, Influence, Authenticity, and Receptivity, are all based around a specific premise. And that is that shifting your focus, from getting to giving. When we say giving in this context, we simply mean constantly and consistently providing immense value to others and understanding that doing so is not only a more pleasant way of conducting business, it's the most financially profitable way as well.

Value: Your true worth, in the business sense, is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment.

Compensation: Your income is determined by how many people you serve, and how will you serve them.

Influence: Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people's interests first.

Authenticity: The most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself.

Receptivity: The key to effective giving, is to stay open.

"Constantly and consistently provide immense value to others and understand that doing so is not only a more pleasant way of conducting business, it's the most financially profitable way as well." - Bob Burg

Bob's Free Gift 

Selling The Go-Giver Way 4-Video Mini-Course: https://burg.com/

How to connect with Bob:

The Go-Giver Podcast: https://thegogiver.com/podcast/

Overcoming Mediocrity is a podcast for success-driven women who want to empower their thoughts, design their dream businesses, and build beautiful lives that are aligned with their destinies—hosted by Bestselling Author and Business Strategist Christie Ruffino. This show is for every woman on the edge of change who’s ready to rise up, overcome mediocrity, reinvent herself, elevate her thinking, and transform her life. 

Each episode features today's top influencers and entrepreneurs on the rise as they share empowering stories and ninja tips meant to become the FUEL that will ignite a positive change in YOUR life and the lives of others.

Our guests didn’t simply coast through life, they didn't let difficult situations stop them; they set big goals, kept their eyes on the prize and they’re joining us today to share insider secrets and valuable resources you can use RIGHT NOW to step into your power and fulfill your purpose in life.

Join Christie each week for powerful conversations, uplifting interviews, mega doses of inspiration, and valuable resources.