In this episode, Dave is excited to welcome Dinesh Kandanchatha . Dinesh is a serial entrepreneur, consultant, and investor. He has built over 13 businesses and exited 3 of them – one for over $200 million, and has built an extensive global network that he uses to help entrepreneurs grow their businesses.

As Dinesh will tell you, he initially went to university for sciences, which lead him to a career in software. It wasn’t long before he realized that his pay would hit a ceiling. You might say that the reason he got into business was the money. He saw the sales guys driving Porsche's and Jaguars—and wanted in. Little did he know that his passions were in unlocking a business' potential, which goes far beyond the sale.

A big lesson he learned in the early days is that money is a measure of the value you create for customers, not an outcome. An MBA later, and after PHD from the school of “hard knocks,” Dinesh has been able to create a ton of value with some amazing entrepreneurs throughout the world.

www.dineshk.com ​ ​

​Clarity.fm/dineshkatwork

Dinesh started out in the sciences following a typical route of going to be a doctor. But decided to do something that no one in his family had done which is go into business and entrepreneurship. As he says, he was blessed to be able to live his passion as his job.

His first business was huge success that was quickly built into 7 figures and he was able to exit through a purchase. He then had a few startups that did not pan out before starting his most successful business which was bought by a larger competitor for over $200 million in 2010.

Since 2010 he has been doing investments and advisory to early stage companies helping them scale and position themselves for success.

Biggest challenges small and mid-size businesses have?

• Biggest challenge is the business being centered around the founder and being the “Chief, Cook, and Bottle Washer” which gets owners into a habit of crisis management that consumes their time – this presents a problem in trying to scale.
• Business owners not strategically buying themselves the time because that time is critical to being able to scale and grow.

As Dinesh says’ there is no magic bullet in changing the role of a founder to give them the time they need, but he does discuss how important it is to have a schedule and daily plan that allows for that time. He suggested asking “why?” Asking why you do things the way you do. Asking why things are working the ways they are. The key is to not provide the solution at this time, but to ask the open question and then figure out how you can leverage those around you to help create the solution. Dinesh recommends just an hour a day 5 days a week, but the results can be massive.

Dinesh’s Advice for Growth Hacking and Growing Sales:

• Everyone uses a “playbook” for sales and the industry uses the same one. Your prospects have seen that time and time again.
• You have to decide what is your business and what is your value – where are you truly unique?
• Triple digit growth comes from really identifying your value and shrinking your market to focus on being the only solution to bring the value to the clients that are really focused on that need. (Blue Ocean Strategy)
• Once you find this…go all in focused and dominate

As the 18 min mark, Dinesh gives his thoughts on how to get off the fast start and good start to the year as an entrepreneur:

• Start doing a quarterly report card Do a spend analysis of your expenses for the previous year and each quarter.
• Look for things that you may not need or that you are spending too much on. Dinesh specifically has a rule to scrutinize anything that is 5% or more of your expenses.
• Grade these expenses as A, B, or C.
  • Did the expense generate an A, B, or C result? Did it generate the result intended? Anything that is a C, you need to ask if there is something you can do about it or just stop doing it. Most often, C’s need to be stopped and you need the discipline to do it
  • B’s – give yourself 90 days to make it an A and plan (Why, what, how)
  • A’s – invest more in. Take the money saved from getting rid of the C’s and use it toward the A’s.
• This exercise will give you a clear view going into any year or quarter with what you need to do.

At the 24 min mark, Dinesh talks about raising capital, busts a lot of myths you may have been taught, and what entrepreneurs should know.

At the 28 min mark, Dinesh talks about what entrepreneurs should know when exiting a business.

• “Exiting is the translation of value that you have created over the life of the business”
• You need to think about exiting during the life of business and start with the end in mind. Who would the asset be valuable to? And at what time in the lifecycle of the business?
• Run the business like you are never going to sell it, but always build it to be sold.

At the 33 min mark, Dinesh talks about how to manage a fast growing business and cashflow to keep it growing. “Cash is king. And if you have to sacrifice growth for cash, sacrifice it.”

At the 36 min mark, Dinesh gives advice for those just starting out and great general advice for anyone

Best Quote: "Run the business like you are never going to sell it, but always build it to be sold."

Dinesh's Misfit 3:

1. Just because someone tells you something is true, doesn’t mean it is or true for you. You are going to hear a lot of things in your journey – don’t just take them for granted and ask for what you want
2. It will always take longer than what you think. Embrace this.
3. As long as believe in it, it is possible. It may not happen the way you thought it would, but it is possible. Be prepared to pivot, but don’t pivot on your core idea.

In November of 2016, we introduced a new format that we are putting alongside our regular episodes called “Lessons for Hannah.” Hannah is my daughter and one of the main inspirations for the Misfit Entrepreneur. I wanted to have a place where she could go and learn from her daddy and his Misfit friends throughout her life….even after I am gone. If you haven’t listened to the first episode of "Lessons for Hannah," I urge you to as it gives some more background and tells the amazing story of how Hannah came to be in our lives.

"Lessons for Hannah" are short, very useful, and sometimes comical lessons, that I have learned which I want to share with you and give to Hannah to help in your lives. Because I want Hannah to have these for her life, I’m going to speak as though I am talking directly to her. These episodes are a lot of fun and if you think there is a lesson that we should include in these episodes, please don’t hesitate to send it over to us at support@misfitentrepreneur.com. We’d love to share it.

This week’s Lesson for Hannah

Hannah, sweetie. I want to talk to you about this amazing thing we call life. We live in a big world that gets smaller every day because of technology and the growing connectedness of everything. We are bombarded by interruptions throughout our day, from email to social media to push notifications from apps on our phone, to numerous other shiny objects. And I have no doubt that by the time you listen to this, it will have probably gotten worse, but definitely will have changed.

So, what does this have to do with life? Well, you only get one of them (at least as of now, we’ll see what happens over the next 20 years) and your goal should be to maximize every moment of it. I didn’t truly realize this until your mother and I brought you home and you started to grow. Every day brings something new and exciting. Life is truly about the experiences you have and the daily adventures that you get to unfold. It’s not about things. Years later, you won’t remember the fancy car as much you will remember an experience you had with it. My best advice to you is to seek out new experiences, travel to remote places, and see and feel the world firsthand…not through an app or VR or some other medium.

This doesn’t mean that you don’t have to work very smart and hard to be able to give yourself the ability to do this (your mom and I will teach you as best we can to create your own success and the ability to fund the life you want), but it also doesn’t mean that the best experiences require a bunch of travel and money either.

And that is true point. Amazing experiences are all around you every day. Just hearing your contagious laugh and watching you figure something new out is so precious to me. Watching you learn to ski or swim and do these things on your own is just as good as visiting Hawaii. The key I want you to realize is to make sure you stay open in your life to see and be present for all the wonderful things and experiences you will have, big and small. Don’t get so obsessed with work or a vision that you don’t take the time. I’ve made that mistake and thankfully have had the right people in my life to wake me up from it. I’ll leave you with this….As Ferris Bueller said “Life moves pretty fast…if you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you just might miss it.” Don’t miss a thing in this amazing journey we call life, honey, I love you.

In this episode, Dave is excited to welcome Bedros Keuilian. Bedros is a best-selling author, speaker, and high performance consultant. You may have heard of him or no doubt have followed someone or bought a product in which his systems and processes were used.

Dave has been fortunate to spend time with Bedros and experience his wisdom and insight first hand into how to build a high performing business. But, as Dave mentions, the thing he loves most about him, is that he is not just a “consultant” giving advice, he’s in the thick of it and in the trenches every day himself.

Bedros is the founder and CEO of the fastest growing indoor fitness boot camp franchise, Fit Body Bootcamp. He’s known as the hidden genius that the experts turn to when they want to create and launch successful digital info products, best-selling books, and high level coaching and consulting services.

Bedros is best known for his ability to help his clients quickly establish expert and authority positioning and become the predominant brand in their field.

His sales, marketing, mindset and business systems are the secret weapon used by thousands of successful digital marketers, best-selling authors, coaches and entrepreneurs who want to reach more high paying clients and customers without the use of unpredictable marketing tactics.

www.bedroskeuilian.com ​

Connect with Bedros on Facebook

Bedros has an amazing story. His father was a communist and part of the communist party in Armenia. It was not so much by choice, but by necessity. But, In 1980, his father saw an opportunity and decided to escape his family from communist Russia, who Armenia was under at the time, and flee to the United States. Bedros’s father wanted his family to have opportunity, but more importantly wanted to keep his sons from having to join the communist red army which was required at the time.

So, he found a way to put together $25,000 and escaped to Italy and made their way to the American consulate. Bedros was only 6 years old. They made it to the US 11 days later and settled in southern California…flat broke and not really knowing any English.

As Bedros says, he very quickly became the bread winner for the family at 6 years old…but not in the way you think. All his family members got multiple jobs working for less than minimum wage and Bedros’s job in the evenings was to go to the local grocery store where they dumped the expired food out back in a dumpster. His father would hoist him where he would find food that was still edible for the family.

In the first few years, they lived in 14 different apartments and got kicked out of most of them.

It was the experience of having to persevere and break through resistance that helped give Bedros what he calls the Immigrant Edge. Which he describes as the experiences that help create an almost “suit of armor” that helps you to be able to go through anything because you’ve had to overcome so much to just survive. It’s the ability to break through any adversity that comes your way that gives you a tremendous advantage in the game of life.

At the 10:20 mark, Bedros discusses his philosophy for building a business and what he calls the unfair advantage of “time collapse.”

At the 13:20 mark, Bedros talks about how you can get access to the people/influencers that can help you grow your business exponentially. Specifically here are the actionable steps:

1. Stack the odds in your favor. It’s one thing to connect on LinkedIn or social, but the smarter thing would be to look at who you know that is a degree or two connected to that person.
2. You then would reach out to these people and let them know what the opportunity is for the person they can connect you with and what is in it for them and the benefits
3. Next, you ask if they would provide an email introduction or some form of introduction
   1. One key piece of advice is to do all the heavy lifting for these people. Have a pre-written email/message they can send. Take control from start to finish and make it easy.
   2. You want to be the one to control your positioning to this connection
4. Utilize as much contacts as you can and plan it. For example, if you know 4 people that can connect you. Have them reach our strategically over the course or a week to maximize your exposure and increase your ability to get the meeting you want.

Elements of a great pitch?

• Build them up – Be specific about what you like and know about them
• Let them know what the offer and opportunity is and how you will do all the heavy lifting making it easy for them to say yes and difficult to say no.
• Money – Let them know what the financial upside is of working with you (besides doing all the heavy lifting)
• Meaning – Explain what the significance and benefit is to them. What is the meaning? How will it make a difference?
• Note – keep it simple. Bullet points on money, meaning, what’s in for them, how it will make a difference, etc.
• Frame it this way: You want them to say to themselves “I’m making money. There’s meaning in it for me. The heavy lifting is being done for me. And I just need to plug in and make it go.

At the 21:30 mark, Bedros talks about building a brand and what it takes to be successful.

Tips for maximizing social media?

• Come with a giving hand first
• Push the free – give your best stuff away
• Don’t be part of the noise. Take a long view and build massive trust with your audience before selling something
• Prove to them why they should give you their contact info and then they’ll give it to you
• Get to a point where you have much equity built in your giving bank that when you ask for something, you feel very comfortable doing so.

At the 30:00 min mark, Bedros talks about the discipline and routine needed to build a high performing business and brand.

Advice for starting out online?

• Start with a blog or way of sharing your ideas and content and give, give, give for a year
• Build your email list by giving away a very useful and actionable item (free report, video, etc.)
• After you get a few thousand people, if you don’t have a product yet, you can make affiliate offers
• Learn from your customers and what they want, then craft a product/book/offering around it

Secrets that you share with your $100k Mastermind group?

• Connections – Being in a group of other like-minded entrepreneurs that can also help your business grow accelerates your success and connects you with the right people to help you do it.
• Go to big events. Meet the people in your space, network, and build a relationship with them
• The fastest way to success is to connect and get with the people who already have influence in the space you want to be and have them become your affiliates and promote for you.

Favorite Book: "Outwitting the Devil" by Napoleon Hill.  Bedros's advice is to listen to it on audio.

Best Quote: “People don’t want to deal with your brand, they want to deal with you. They want to see the face behind the brand and the message and meaning that they are carrying. People will buy your brand because of you.”​

Bedros's Misfit 3

1. Start re-framing to yourself that adversity is an advantage. Adversity is the advantage that will build your strong and embrace the adversity to help your learning curve accelerate.
2. How you do anything is how you do everything. Your decisions and the way you do things affect everything. Ask yourself if you do things differently to do them truly right and then put that into practice.
3. Be a control freak. You want to be in control of your health, your relationships, your wealth, of your schedule, ultimately of your life. Being a control freak is not a negative thing. If you aren’t in control, that means someone or something else is, and you lose the ability to affect the outcome of your life.

In this episode, Dave is excited to welcome Russell Nohelty. Russell is the founder of Wannabe Press and host of the Business of Art. Wannabe Press makes weird books and novels for weird people. The company helps people in making the most beautiful and beautifully printed books in the independent market. The Business of Art, helps creatives build better businesses by embracing their inner salesman without feeling negative about it.

It was the latter that intrigued Dave most about having Russell on the show, as one of the areas a lot of people struggle with is sales and selling – even though, discuss in the episode, it should be one of the easiest for people.

Russell is a true Misfit entrepreneur, owning several other business in addition to Wannabe and the Business of Art, and he regularly speaks throughout Los Angeles to groups like the LA Writer’s Society, Scripter’s Network, and at dozens of other conventions throughout the country like ComicCon in San Diego.

www.russellnohelty.com

www.thebusinessofart.com

www.wannabepress.com

russell@wannabepress.com

Russell fell into being an entrepreneur because he couldn’t stand the way the businesses he worked at were run. He went on to build his own companies, but by the time he was 29, he had 4 failed businesses. When he analyzed why he kept failing, he realized that it was because he was not able to sell. He thought he would “build it and they would come.”

So, at 30, he decided he needed to learn to sell and did all sorts of jobs from selling Aflac to advertising to cell phones/plans. Along the way it clicked and Russell learned a few things that worked. As he says, “If you believe in the product and you provide value, then you can sell things without feeling gross about it.” If 2015, he went back out on his own and started Wannabe Press. The Business of Art Podcast sprung from this.

At the 7 min mark, Russell talks about failure and how he learned to overcome it, even after failing 4 times.

At the 15 min mark, Russell discusses sales and why a lot have trouble embracing it…and what you can do about it. He discusses how to remove the fear of rejection and how selling truly is a numbers game – and if you can embrace that, then selling becomes very methodical and much easier.

Russell says 1 out 10 will buy because they love you or your product. There is not much you have to do to get them to buy. Another 1 out of 10 will never buy from you, no matter how good at selling you are. And the other 8 in the middle could buy, but need you to help them understand why they should.

Tips on gaining interest and engagement from 8 in the middle:

• First, make sure you are talking to the right 10 people (you need to develop a persona of who you ideal client is). Focus is critical.
• It’s your job to find our who’s a good fit
• Next, develop a sales funnel of these ideal clients and continue to fill it

Tips on developing a funnel:

• Have enough people at the top of your funnel that know, so that some of them like you, so that some of them trust you and ultimately some will buy from you.
• You have to go out and find people and this is where the numbers game comes into play
  • For example – If it takes talking to 100 people to make a sale and you are only talking to 30 per month that means you will only make a sale every 3-4 month.
  • But, it you are talking to 300 per month, then you are making 3 sales per month.
  • It comes down to how much effort you are willing to put in and how bad you want to succeed.

How do you talk to more people?

• First, have a value first mentality. Provide value before asking for the sale. Your first conversations cannot be “buy my product” as you have built no trust or relationship yet.
• Best in person way to meet people – Meetup.com
• Best online place to meet people - Facebook groups

Advice for approaching a Facebook group?

• Go through and look at the post with the best engagement. Like them, comment, engage them.
• You can then connect with others, but again, be the one delivering value and giving people that connect with you great content to use in their lives
• Bring the enthusiasm

In person?

• Treat every meeting like a cocktail party!
• Show interest in others first and wait until they ask you about yourself
• Don’t sell! – Connect!

At the 33 min mark, Russell talks about the importance of following up and the value of a coach and the resources readily available to you today to become a better sales and business person.

Resources to help in sales:

• Book recommendation – Yes!
• Other podcasts
• Blogs

What are the triggers that someone should focus on to elicit more sales? (Top 6)

1. Having authority (book, interviews, panels )
2. Reciprocity (the more you give, you will get in return)
3. Social Proof (others talking about you or a product or service, 3rd party testimonials)
4. Commitment (when people subscribe to you, like your posts, download your content, etc.)
5. Likeability (how likeable you are and sincere you come across)
6. Scarcity (used when launching a product or offering – limiting or taking it away created demand and incites action)

Best Quote: “Many people think creativity is going to carry them into success and that is not true. Having a great product is the entry. If you can make something fantastic, then you can compete, but that doesn’t guarantee success. What does is the ability to take what you’ve made and to sell it one to one and one to many.”

Russell's Misfit 3:

1. Make deposits into the “goodwill bank” before you do any withdrawals. You are either making deposits or withdrawals throughout life. You need to build up your deposits a lot before taking a withdrawal.
2. Model Success. Everything you want to learn is out there to help you succeed - free from just about every top mentor that exists. Take the action to learn from them.
3. Treat it like a business. If you treat something as “part-time” then you will get part time results. If you are going to do something, go all in and treat it seriously like the business it deserves to be.