Hello Misfit Nation! Welcome to another edition of "Lessons for Hannah!" 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, You’re getting a little older now. You’ve recently turned 7 years old and have entered first grade. As you start to grow more, build relationships, and be accountable for things like your grades and other things in your life, I’d like to talk to you about respect.

What is respect? The dictionary defines respect as due regard for the feelings, wishes, rights, or traditions of others or a deep admiration of someone, their abilities, talents, etc. For example, I have deep respect in regard to both these areas for your mother. I respect her feelings, wishes, rights, etc. but I also greatly respect her amazing mind, beauty, talent, and capacity for love.

It’s important that you learn to understand respect, and might I say, learn to honor those you have in your life. At home, it is your mom, dad, family, friends, other parents, etc. At school, it is your teachers and other students.

Everyone you interact with deserves your respect. This can be tough because some people are hard to be around. They may have a bad attitude. They may not like you. They may not respect you. But, you must be the best version of yourself and show respect to them. Why, because it will make you a better person and it will allow you to have a bigger impact in your life – as well as have a deep respect for yourself.

I think this is part of the essence of what Jesus was saying when said, “Love your enemy.” Even your enemies or detractors in life deserve respect – even if they are lacking it themselves.

You see, I believe a lot of times, the people that have the bad attitude or disrespect others, or treat them poorly, do so because they don’t respect themselves. They don’t see the greatness in themselves or how truly amazing they are. Every individual has something, that as dictionary says about respect, that you can admire or show due regard for. But, if they can’t see it in themselves and respect themselves, it’s easy to understand why they cannot respect others.

Hannah, you have so much talent, ability, goodness, intelligence, and amazing attributes. Learn to respect them. Be humble about them. But respect them. Understand that they were given to you to make a difference in this world – and you can make a difference. Every day.

I love you,

Daddy Best

Quote: ​“I believe a lot of times, the people that have the bad attitude or disrespect others, or treat them poorly, do so because they don’t respect themselves”

Misfit 3:

1. It’s important that you learn to understand respect and honor those in your life.
2. Everyone you interact with deserves your respect, even if they do not respect you.
3. Learn to respect yourself, your talents, and abilities, as once you respect yourself, you can truly respect others.

This week’s Misfit Entrepreneur is William De Temple. William is a serial entrepreneur, author of Raise Capital Quickly, and has taken multiple companies to over $100 million. He is the founder and CEO of 9 Figure Company which teaches entrepreneurs a system to scale their company to $100 million or more in 3-7 years. And this isn’t just theory, William has proven this system doing it with his own companies and now a number of clients.

I don’t know about you, but if someone was going to sit down and teach me a process to grow a company to over $100 million, I’d sit up and listen very quickly – and that is what I’ve asked William to do in this episode for you. To share his system, experience, and knowledge gained through an incredible Misfit Entrepreneur career!

www.9FigureCompany.com

William grew up on a ranch and they were always stretched for cash. At 11 years old, he got a paper route which quadrupled through some innovative ways to sell. He even delivered papers on the winter on horseback.

After he graduated college, he got a job, but very quickly discovered that having a job was not for him. He decided to start his first company. It was the early 70’s. It went from $0 to over $12 million in annual revenues in about 7 years. A buyer came along and offered an amazing offer, so he sold it.

He then went on to build companies in everything from tech, which he took through an IPO to service and manufacturing. Each of them growing to over $100 million each.

He then got recruited by venture capital to be a turnaround expert. Things were great, but William’s father in-law got very sick and it required he and his wife to move to Florida to help him. This was a culture shock for William compared to Silicon Valley.

After a little while and some discussions with friends, he decided to start helping companies grow and learn and put into effect the strategies he used to grow companies over $100 million.

What did you learn from growing up on a ranch that helped you most in your career?

• There is no problem that is not surmountable. There is always a solution to every problem.
• When you run into a problem and you are worried. Stop, step back. Identify the problem. Then identify the solution. Then execute it.

At the 9:30 mark, William tells us about his system for 9-Figures…

• There is always a system for everything.
• William used the strategy of building a house.
• Most people jump in and don’t think the process through.
• You have to know the right order to build a house to do it right.
• It’s the same thing when building a company.
• There are 8 internal practices in building a company.

Every business is in business to solve a problem…Most entrepreneurs when they start a business think that all they need to do is market and sell. And if that is all you do, you will never achieve great success.

Let’s go through each of the 8 areas. Explain them to us and give us something that in each area that an entrepreneur can do to succeed in each area.

First, it all begins with the founder.

• First, as a founder, do some true market research. Get some help if needed but verify there is really a market out there.
• Get the book, “How Google Works” by Eric Schmidt on how they scaled Google.

The 2nd area is Marketing

• Don’t just start marketing.
• Do the market research and find the “low-hanging fruit”
• Look for those niche pockets of easy to sell customers
• The big companies cannot serve every market, so there is a ton of opportunity out there.
• A lot of people think $100 million is a big number. By 2040, the Global economy will be over $200 TRILLION dollars. $100 million is a spec of dust in that bucket.
• You need to open your mind to selling on a global basis.

The 3rd area is sales

• The disciplines for marketing and sales are totally different.
• If possible, you should not one person doing both areas.
• Get a marketing person to do marketing.
• Get a sales leader to lead sales.
• It will create better synergy and better results to have focused individuals.

The 4th area is operations

• There are two types of operations. One is a manufacturing type. A service entity is a different type.
• They are different, but in many ways the same.
• Management is agnostic across the board.
• You need to track everything and know everything around your real costs and what your cost of goods sold is.
• A lot of companies are not charging enough for their product or service, because they don’t know the true cost.

The 5th area is finance

• The financial side of the business is very important.
• The founder needs to understand finance and/or work closely with the financial side of the business to learn and understand the Income Statement, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statements.
• Most people just want to see “profit,” but there is so much more that goes into it which understanding will help you do projections correctly.
• Your goal should be to get as close to or greater than 20% net profit. This gives you the buffer in case something doesn’t go well. It also put you in the “investment grade” category.

What else is needed to be considered investment grade?

• Founder needs good credit
• Need to have the 8 areas well dialed in.
• Need a solid plan and good financial projections
• Be careful with assumptions to make sure they align well with the financial projections – the investor needs to see the correlation and clearly understand how you are getting from point A to B to C and so on….

The 6th area is human resources

• HR’s primary job is not about hiring and firing.
• HR’s biggest job is helping to team to work in synergy, especially with good training and investing in the success of employees.

The 7th area is IT

• It is important to have a very good ERP system in place as it can help you in planning and growing your company in all areas.
• A lot of businesses can’t start with a full on ERP, but can start with modules and grow from there.

The 8th area is quality control

• Quality control also included quality assurance
• Quality control ensures the end user is getting what they are buying in the right way.
• Quality control will also help to find and fix process and human errors to make the company better.

You’ve spent time with everyone from Les Brown to Richard Branson – what have been your biggest takeaways? What have you seen most consistent across these people?

• Their passion is most consistent.
• Richard is the epitome of passion. He is so passionate about what he is doing for the people.
• All of the founders that have grown $100+ million companies have deep passion and 50% didn’t go to college and 50% did.

Best Quote: “Every business is in business to solve a problem…Most entrepreneurs when they start a business think that all they need to do is market and sell. And if that is all you do, you will never achieve great success.”

William's Misfit 3:

1. Make sure you give back however you can. Find a way.
2. Get involved. Network, join organizations where you can participate and help and meet others like you.
3. Always appreciate your customers. Treat them with great respect and treat them well – even when they don’t treat you the same.

This week’s Misfit Entrepreneur is Brendon Kane. Brendan is the business and digital growth strategist to the stars and the guy who generated over a million Facebook followers in less than 30 days. In fact, he has over a million followers on Facebook and a million followers on Instagram alone.

Brendan works with Fortune 500 corporations, brands, and celebrity clients such as Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Xzibit, Charles Barkley, Michael Strahan, supermodel Adriana Lima, and pro skateboarder Ryan Sheckler. He also served as vice president of digital for Paramount Pictures and helped scale one of the largest social optimization firms in the world, working with brands such as Disney, Fox, NBC, Xbox, LinkedIn, and many other notable Fortune 100 companies.

He is the author of the best-seller, One Million Followers, and that strategy is just one of the many things we are going to talk about in this episode.

www.BrendanJKane.com

@BrendanKane

Brendan initially went to film school to learn how be a producer and the business of movies. He quickly learned that they don’t teach much about it. So, he decided the best way to learn was to create his own business. He started a few internet companies and then moved to LA after the Dotcom bust. He started to work with producers and directors to leverage how to grow brands and get more reach for their projects.

He began to help craft strategies for films from $15 mil to $100 mil budgets. In order to be more efficient as he grew, in 2006/2007, he built one of the first influencer marketing platforms for Myspace. He continued building technology and setting up partnerships with companies like MTV, Paramount, Lionsgate, and others. The JV partnerships with Viacom and MTV opened the doors to work with celebrities like Rihanna, Taylor Swift, and others.

He then got into the paid media space with a company that was managing paid spend on social networks. Brendan helped them craft their growth strategy from $1 million a year in spend to over $100 million. A lot of money was being wasted by these companies as they didn’t have a way to really tell if they were advertising in the right ways.

That is when Brendan decided to create a system of testing methodologies on top of social media that allowed to test content at scale and see which audiences really resonated, etc.

Over 3 years, he optimized the process working with the top people and brands.

But, he had the idea that “What if you took someone from scratch, who didn’t have the start power or anything – could you grow their following like you can the others?” And that is where the 1 million followers in 100 countries in 30 days experiment came from.

How did you create 1 million followers in 30 days?

• First is the mindset of it. You need to understand why you are doing, what return on investment looks like, etc.
• People underestimate the work it takes to do it.
• Brendan’s system was built on top of the Facebook advertising platform – but Brendan uses it as a tool for market research and then push people into action.
• Brendan test 5000 pieces of content
• Every night at midnight, he would test 150 different variations of content.
• He would then measure to results in the morning and use what he learned to make the next set at midnight better and so on…
  • o It’s kind of like the “Double a Penny” experiment. If you double a penny every day for 30 days, how much do you have? Over $5 million dollars!
• It’s not as daunting as it sounds. He spent 1.5 hours a day on it when he did it.
  • There are 5 keys elements to a variation:
  • The content itself: Video, image, text, etc. o The description: Above/Below
  • The demographics: Male, female, age group, etc.
  • The interest level: What are they interested in? Products they use? Etc.
  • Geolocation: Targeting to zip code
• All of them are interchangeable – you can take 1 piece of content and create tons of variations by changing one thing in 20-30 mins.
• The key is testing content at scale and rapidly iterating.

What did you learn about content to consistently generating the most interaction? What should people do in their posts?

• Look at the content like an advertisement for your brand. Like a TV spot. It must be captivating. What would make them click the follow button?
• You must be very strategic in your approach to inspire and motivate people to say – “I have to follow this account…”
• Videos are more powerful and effective but are harder to pull off.
• The track Brendan took was image based content to quote based content, and then video-based content – but still used all 3.
• Video will get higher opt-in overall

What other things should people know to maximize their footprint?

• You need to separate which category you are in
• Are you looking to drive leads, sales, and conversions or are you looking to build a brand that you will eventually leverage?
• If you are E-commerce or want to market a product, build revenue first, then invest it into follower growth.
• If you are creating campaigns for follower growth, make sure you are focusing on changing content to be different than the way you normally post. It needs to stand out and make people click follow.
  • The algorithms lend to the virality of it and the engagement of people clicking to follow.
• • Instagram has shifted. It is not about hitting the explore page and driving growth. The best way is to distribute content out onto other channels and drive that content that back in.

At the 20 min mark, Brendan gives an example of different types of posts and how they work and grow following.

Other platforms?

• • Don’t do much with Twitter
• • LinkedIn is huge – cold outreach has generated over $20 million in deals from LinkedIn.
  • Success has come from focusing on targeting very specific people in organizations and being all about value to them.
  • What is going to make their life easier? What is going to make them look like a Rockstar?
  • You must test messages, but always have the intent to utilize your product to bring the most value to them – not “sell” them.
• • Use engagement groups, use video, and be active.
• • YouTube has 2 primary ways – collaborations, search and thumbnail game.

$20 million on LinkedIn? Is there a process you use? How are you doing this?

• It depends on the deal size.
• When you are going after million-dollar deals, it is a much different hook point than a smaller deal. A free report doesn’t work.
• Think in terms of headlines. What is a headline that will grab them and bring them in. Get 5-10 or more of them.
• What will differentiate you from all the other clutter and messages.
• For example – We can save you up to 60% on your paid campaigns and increase your performance 3-4X
• You must have good hook points that are specific to the individual you are targeting.
• Create enormous curiosity! You 3-5 seconds max to show how you solve their problem.

Posting guidelines for platforms?

• Quality not frequency for Facebook and Instagram.
• There is a ton of ways to grow – not just one.
• Invest more in each piece of content to increase engagement and virality.
• Brendan posts early in the AM pacific time once a day.
• You also need to post in the way that resonated best with your style. There really is no right or wrong way…

Paid advertising? What should we know?

• It is a tremendous asset to every entrepreneur.
• The biggest organic entrepreneurs on the planet used paid as well.
• Learn as much about paid to fuel your growth.
• The biggest mistake people make it to put a ton of money behind a few pieces of content and “hope” that it works.
• It is better to put smaller amounts of money into a bunch of different tests

Where do you put your dollars?

• Facebook and Instagram are colder traffic. You need to warm it up in some way, re: retargeting, etc.
• Search engine traffic is warmer because they are looking or interested.
• Search engine costs more, but it being warmer makes it worth it.
• LinkedIn advertising is better for deal sizes that are $10k or more.

Any tools that you recommend people use?

• Facebook Advertising Platforms
• Upwork for creative work

What is the most important lesson you have learned for entrepreneurship?

• The first question is “Are you cut out to be an entrepreneur?”
• You must learn patience and play the long game. It is hard, but so important. What is one thing you wished you knew when you first got started?
• Being naïve is a benefit. If people know everything they need to know to do it, they may not.
• Be a naïve optimist!
• Entrepreneurs go through crazy amounts of pain and stress to get to success.
• You have the highest highs and the lowest lows, but it is worth it.
• As you get through each issue, problem, or setback – it makes it easier the next time, etc.

Anything you’ve learned from working with top stars, pro-athletes, etc.?

• Taylor Swift is a great example
• The important learning lesson is that she grew her fanbase one by one. She understood the power of foster and relationship with fans and turn them into brand advocates.
• Growth comes from people sharing your message at the highest possible velocity. Taylor has done very well because it is genuine, real, and that is what matters to people.

Best Quote: The thing that really separates the successful is that they will find the answers. They know how to find answers and create solutions and they will not give up.

Brendan's Misfit 3:

1. Ask yourself why you are doing what you are doing. What is the purpose behind it? Take time to really understand it as it drives your decisions.
2. Constantly be learning and testing. Never get complacent.
3. Do not give up.

This week’s Misfit Entrepreneur is Sharon Lynn Wyeth. Sharon and I have crossed paths multiple times over the last few years and we just never connected to have her on Misfit. You see Sharon is pretty remarkable. She’s an internationally recognized Neimology expert. Neimology is the science that discovers personality secrets hidden in the placement of the letters within names. Each letter in a name holds a key to unlock one’s true essence. A person’s name contains information about that individual’s gifts and challenges. Neimology® Science can even reveal the first and last impression people remember about us.

Sharon has been everywhere from TV, Radio to speaking at the President of the United States Yearly Conference including the 50 state governor’s and she’s tested and proven her theories in over 70 countries.

She is also the best-selling author of the book Know the Name, know the Person and is hired by companies all over the world to help them in their hiring practices and other needs such as helping lawyers choose juries. What’s in a name? Much more than you think and I have seen Sharon in action. It’s amazing. And I’m excited for her to share this skill with you in this episode.

www.knowthename.com

www.bestnamemeanings.com

Special Offer – For any Misfit listener, just mentioned Dave or Misfit when you sign up for a half hour session with Sharon and you will get a free copy of Know the Name, Know How to Connect on the how to use the 6 vowels.

Everything started for Sharon in her 7th year of teaching school. She was doing a seating chart and noticed that she was starting to pattern how the children’s name fit their personalities. She decided to investigate it further and begin to study names looking for commonalities.

Because of all the students she had had and the network she had built, she had a large bank of names to analyze. She began to commit things to memory and test her theories with people she met or knew to look for the combinations.

How does Neimology work?

• The first name is the essence of who the person is.
• The middle name is where the person goes when they are under stress or pressure.
• The last name is the environmental influence (nature and nurture)
• The first letter of the first name is the first impression that we give somebody.
• The last letter of the first name is the lasting impression we give.
• The first vowel in the first name is our style of communication, learning, and how we like to present ourselves.
• The rest of the letters are the subtleties.
• There are different patterns as well.

At the 8:30 mark, Sharon talks about the patterns and combinations of letters and what they mean.

At the 13 min mark, Sharon takes us through some examples with names…

• Michael: Generally is some who is is good at manifesting, all about family, they can do things the hard way because they have a CH in their name, they have a good balance between their mind and emotions, they have a good sense of who they are, and they want to be include and include other people. They are naturals leaders and better off working for themselves. They challenge themselves.
• At the 14:30 mark, Sharon explains how she knows that about Michael.
• Vowels show us our emotions and how we feel.
• Consonants show us our attitude and how we think.

At the 16 min mark, Sharon talks about what it means if you use a nickname.

• The birthname is your contract for this lifetime and what you came to learn.
• When you go by any nickname, you are saying that you are changing how you are going to go about learning those lessons.

How does understanding your name affect your success and your life? And what can someone do?

• Yes!
• If you know where your challenges are and how to get the answers of your name, you can make a huge difference in your life.
• Each letter has a challenge side and a gift side. You can choose which side you want to be on.
• Sharon uses an example of the ST letter combination at the 18 min mark to explain.

At the 21 min mark, Sharon talks about how important the first vowel in the first name is and the power it had. Specifically, she talks about it in the context of entrepreneurship and business.

• Just learning the vowels can have a huge impact.
• The first vowel in the first name gives you your communication style, your operational style, your love language, your learning style, and much more.
• An A person wants to buy if it is a good deal. Stay on topic and show why things are a good deal to them.
• An E person requires a bond with them to sell to them. Start by bonding and showing you care.
• An I person has to do about family. You want to show how you can integrate their family and benefit them.
• An O person wants to be the boss. You want to make them feel as thought they are in charge.
• A U person wants everything to be fun. Tell jokes, have fun, and keep them entertained.

What about naming a business? Can Neimology play a role?

• Yes, it can. Answer these questions
• Just from hearing the name, what do you want your client to know or feel?
• What kind of clientele do you want?
• Once you have those, then you need to make sure that the letters are in the right places to work subconsciously.

At the 32-minute mark, Sharon takes a business name and tells us what it means…

What can you tell us about how to use the name to hire better?

• The letters S, J, and W mean constant learning is important. They just go about it differently.
  • J’s are natural brilliant. They just know things.
  • S’s are school smart. They want a teacher and to learn the foundation before going on their own.
  • W’s learn through experience. They try different ways to do things better and constantly improve.
• The qualities of the job need to align with the qualities in the name.

At the 41 min mark, Sharon shares how do we use Neimology to better serve our clients?

Best Quote: "You cannot love yourself without thoroughly knowing yourself."

Misfit 3:

1. We all come from the creator and our creator does not make mistakes. Everyone of use has value and no one is inferior. We are all here for a reason and there are no mistakes.
2. What you think and believe about yourself is what others will think and believe about you.
3. You cannot love yourself without thoroughly knowing yourself.