This week’s Misfit Entrepreneur is Pejmon Ghadimi or PJ for note. PJ is a self-made entrepreneur and bestselling author, with over 10 books to his name. He was born in 1982 in the middle of a revolution in Iran and was raised by a single mom in France for the majority of his childhood, and eventually migrated to the United States in 1997.
PJ has a number of businesses, most notably Secret Entourage and it's affiliate businesses which have grossed over $40 million in revenue annually. He’s been featured everywhere from Forbes to Fox Business and also has interests in real estate and exotic cars – all of which we will touch on today.
But, the big reason I wanted to have PJ on the show is for him to teach you the systems and processes that he has learned and used to grow multi-million dollar businesses from scratch.
PJ says he’s been able to do what he has done with a LOT of hard work. He spent his childhood fleeing from country to country until they could make it to the US. But when they made it, they didn’t have a green card which made the only way to make money being an entrepreneur. But, PJ did find a loophole that allowed him to get a job at the age of 14 as a telemarketer.
He worked his way up from there to become the director of a remodeling company until he was 18. He then became one of the youngest bank managers in the US and had a successful career in banking until age 25 where he “fired himself” and found himself without purpose. He was 25 and had money. He took time to figure out what he really wanted to do.
He started the world’s first alternative asset investment fund called VIP Motoring and that became his largest business. Through that business, he made a number of great connections and was able to retire as CEO in 2011 and put in place a management team to keep running the business.
He then transitioned his focus to legacy and training and educating people to help them succeed including Secret Entourage and other ventures.
You’ve been through an incredible life journey – what is the most important thing you’ve learned at this point?
The biggest enemy to success is entitlement. You should never feel entitled to anything. Earn it.
You wrote “The 3rd Circle Theory,” take us through the 3 circles and what they mean…
Examples and the lesson of each circle?
Don’t look outward for blame, instead look inward for change…Take responsibility and take back control. You are the cause of your own happiness or misery.
The difference between a business owner and an entrepreneur?
You should first master the art of business before becoming an entrepreneur
At the 19 min mark, we get into a really fascinating discussion on these topics using the example of Tesla.
What are the steps you teach on how to create your 1st million-dollar business?
Good business is simple, but it is not easy…Good things happen, bad things happen, but you must be consistent in your efforts and adaptive to the market
Talk about the systems that are critical to free an owner from a business so that it can keep running and paying them, but without them.
Are there any critical habits that you think entrepreneurs should practice?
How can own exotic and luxury cars for amazing deals or even for free?
Best Quote: “The biggest enemy to success is entitlement. Don’t look outward for blame, instead look inward for change…Take responsibility and take back control. You are the cause of your own happiness or misery. ”
Misfit 3:
1. Do the work, don’t question the work. Focus on getting it done however you need to.
2. Become a master at everything you do. The better you get at something, the less you chase the money, but the more the money chases you.
3. No one can take away your character. Every victory or failure you have builds this in you. All the choices you make define you and your character.
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, I want to talk to you about some lessons I learned for life and business from completing my first half Ironman Triathlon. First off, I cannot tell you how much you and mommy’s support means to me as I go after goals like this. Seeing you cheering for me is a memory I will cherish for the rest of my life.
As you grow up, you will have more and more opportunities to accomplish big goals or bucket list items and get to experience how it feels. It is a big achievement. And probably like me, you will feel, once you've done it, that you can go to even higher levels or push yourself further. Even more important are the lessons you learn in going through the experience. Now that I have done a Half Ironman, I am already planning my second one as well as preparing to do a full. A Half Ironman is a 1.25 mile swim, 56 mile bike ride, and a half marathon (13.1 miles) - 70.3 miles in total. A full Ironman is 140.6.
As I reflected on the experience, some great lessons for life and business stood out to me and I wanted to share them with you.
7 Lessons Learned from My First Ironman:
Planning and preparation makes a huge difference
Expect the unexpected (good and bad)
Training is not the same as the real thing
You can always do better - Perfection is unattainable, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t strive for it
You find allies and partners in the most unexpected places
You win in your mind before you win anywhere else
Having a big goal that you are devoted and so committed to, that there is no option but to reach, it is one of the best drivers for success
So there you have it. 7 very important and useful lessons for anyone on their journey to success. They work across all areas of your life, and sweetie, I hope you can put them to use for you!
I love you, Daddy
This week’s Misfit Entrepreneur is Michelle Wienstein. Michelle is “the Pitch Queen.” Michelle is a sales superstar and has done everything from advising CEO’s at billion dollar companies to landing contracts with companies like Costco and pitching her way on to Shark Tank. She is also the host of the Success Unfiltered Podcast and the Saturday morning Facebook Live show Coffee is for Closers.
Michelle’s mission is to help entrepreneurs sell high-value services to their clients without feeling pushy or desperate and to show them how to have empowered sales conversations and skyrocket their top-line revenue.
What I like about Michelle is that she has been through it all. She has been on top of the world in business only to have it all come crashing down on her, but then fought her way back. The lessons she has learned on her journey are priceless and what she can teach you about how to sell yourself and your business will help you grow your business and earn more money.
Out of college, Michelle was a financial analyst. She followed the mantra of go to school, get a secure job, and plan for retirement. After a few years, she couldn’t take it. She left and went into sales at Nordstroms. It was there she learned a lot of skills.
She got thinking what she could do with her analyst background and sales, so she got into the real estate and mortgage businesses. She was working a lot and started to have an unhealthy lifestyle – and she was a health enthusiast. She hated to cook, but wanted to find a way to eat healthier. She came up with an idea for healthy prepared meals to sell. She started Fitzee Foods.
She had initial success. She raised over million dollars for the business. She got into Costco and the Vitamin shop and even got to pitch the idea on Shark Tank, but ultimately had to close the business down in 2017.
As she says, “It was a really expensive MBA program…”
The lessons learned with Fitzee were really the stepping stone to becoming the “Pitch Queen.”
What were the most important things you learned going through the experience with Fitzee? Why didn’t it survive? And How did you claw your way back?
How important is timing?
At the 24 min mark, Michelle shares why learning to sell is so important for success…
Michelle’s 5 Step PITCH Queen System (www.sellwithoutsleaze.com)
At the 37-min mark, Michelle talks about what it means to be “professionally annoying” and gives examples.
How did you pitch your way on to Shark Tank?
You have to be professionally annoying.
It is a better place to pitch for a product based business or tech business.
Michelle reached out to every producer and followed almost 2 times per week.
They send people home all the time if you are not on point for your pitch at all times – you have to be on your game.
Know which Shark you are pitching to because one of them will be the best fit for your pitch and solution.
Shark Tank is the Olympics for entrepreneurs
Best Quote: “When you are always showing up, you become “professionally annoying” and get business”
Misfit 3:
This week’s Misfit Entrepreneur is Matt Schroeder. Matt is just your regular 20 something college student, who started a T-shirt company, Shelly Cove, with no business experience, did $12,000 in sales in its first week and over million in just about year.
Even more impressive is the fact that Matt not only wanted to create a great product, but also wanted to make a difference with it. The company donates 10% of its gross sales to sea turtle rescue.
In talking with Matt, I was blown away by the simple, yet genius ways in which he has grown the business and continues to expand its reach – especially using social media. So, I had to have him on to share his story and these success hacks with you.
Matt started Shelly Cove in college with his parents. They were his business partners. Matt has always had an interest in entrepreneurship, but had never started anything. When he came up with the idea for Shelly Cove came up, he decided to “just go for it.”
When the idea came to him, he was in the middle of engineering internship and one day, he was thinking deeply about if he really wanted to do it. He was talking to his parents and decided he wanted to do something on the side. They got to brainstorming together and came up with the idea. They spent the summer coming up with design ideas and getting things up and running…and when they launched, Matt could quickly see that it was not going to be a side business, but more of a full time business almost right away.
At the 7 min mark, Matt talks about the inspiration that really put him on the entrepreneurial path. Hint: It was a failure and his grades tanked – but it was all he needed to get the entrepreneur spirit.
The original idea for Shelly Cove was to create some T-shirts and sell them on Etsy, but changed to the business it is today. How did that all come together?
You started giving back from the beginning, what made you start out that way?
You chose to focus on women and children for your products and niche. Why did you do that?
How did you sell $12,000 in shirts in your first week?
At the 24 min mark, Matt talks about the marketing strategies he uses today…
Tell us about the “Rep” program you created…
At the 33 min mark, Matt talks about how important the packaging of the products were.
What advice would you give about making the leap to entrepreneurship?
At the 37 min mark, Matt talks about the most important thing he has learned about himself from this journey…
He learned to find his confidence
Best Quote: “It doesn’t matter how old you are, it matters how driven you are and how willing you are to learn…”
Matt's Misfit 3:
This week’s Misfit Entrepreneur is Alan MCkenna. Alan is the President and CEO of Business Acceleration Strategies, a firm that has generated over $30 million in additional revenue for clients through implementing funnel optimization, producing 6 and 7 figure evergreen, automated sales and marketing funnels.
Alan has worked with and provided expertise to everyone from John Assaraf, T.Harv Eker, Success Magazine’s Darren Hardy, Lisa Sasevich, and a number of INC 500 companies.
Alan has done the impossible. From adding $600k in additional revenue and shortening a client’s sales cycle by 66% in just 6 months to helping clients go from $0 to over $200k a month in revenue in just 4 months – he is a master at growing a business. So, I wanted to have him on to get his best tips and secrets that you can use to turbocharge your own income.
www.businessaccelerationstrategies.com
www.highprofitsalesfunnels.com
When Alan was 21, he was working for a company making good money, but kept seeing a guy a few years older than him that was doing exponentially better. The guy was the #1 sales guy in the company. Alan approached him and asked him to mentor him. The guy took Alan under his wing and taught him how to sell and get leads. Alan, sold for a few years and then went into marketing.
The owner of the company then purchased another company in New Jersey and Alan moved from the UK and was asked to come open the office to run marketing and build the sales team.
After a few years, Alan went back into selling because it was very lucrative. He did that for a while and had put away a significant amount of money. He then moved to California and started to study internet marketing and immersed himself in it.
His first clients came by word of mouth and things just grew from there. One of Alan’s secrets is the way he looks at a business and where sales and marketing fits in from end to end.
What was the #1 piece of advice you learned from your mentor in sales?
What is your best advice for creating a great, consistently producing funnel?
How do you setup a good joint venture?
How do you find a good JV Partner?
Brian Tracy taught you a great way to double revenues and you created a system for it, what is it?
If you want to double your sales, you have to increase the face-time you have with people.
At the 20-min mark, Alan talks about his 9 simple sales conversion strategies and gives us some of his top ones with examples on how they are implemented.
Alan gives a FREE 1-page infographic on the 9 Strategies
Best methods for generating more leads
List size thoughts?
What are the biggest mistakes that are made when it comes to funnels?
At the 38-min mark, Alan talks about how people can create a virtually unlimited marketing budget and how do it… (You’ll want to listen to this a couple times!)
Best tips for maximizing marketing and sales on the following:
Best Quote: "One key thing every business must have in their marketing to find the best way to consistently communicate with their perfect audience. You must spend the bulk of your time there."
Alan's Misfit 3:
This week we have a pair of Misfit Entrepreneurs in billion-dollar CEO Scott Morehead and former Pastor, Ryan McCarty. You may be thinking, why is Dave interviewing a CEO of a billion-dollar company and Pastor in the same show? Let me tell you. Scott and Ryan have teamed together to create an incredible organization called Culture of Good, based on the best-selling book they wrote together of the same name.
It all started when they partnered together to grow Scott’s company, the Cellular Connection, or TCC, which now is the largest Verizon Authorized retailer. Scott hired Ryan to help create a Culture of good and drive results. Over 6 years, they took the company from 190 stores and $137 million in annual revenue to 630 plus stores and over $830 million in revenue using the culture of good philosophies. Today, the company is a billion-dollar company with over 1000 stores and more than 3000 employees.
Scott and Ryan’s story and TCC have been featured in Forbes, INC, FOX Business, and countless other outlets. I’ve asked them to come on and share it with you and teach everyone in Misfit Nation the principles of a Culture of Good.
TCC was started by Scott’s parents. He started working in one of the stores while in college. After college, he went to work at the head office and after a few years, he bought the business from his parents for a hefty price tag.
Scott never took any money out of the business and invested it back in to grow the business exponentially. The big challenge was creating a culture that could transcend across the country as the company grew. Everything was harder – communication, motivation, running the business, etc. He realized that he was really in the people business. Scott had to find a way to create and keep the culture as the business scaled.
One day, he went to a church with a pastor that had tattoos and earrings, and a mow hawk. It was an incredible experience. The pastor was Ryan delivering a sermon about you “what equaling your why.” So, Scott took Ryan to lunch to talk more about the concept – and by the end of lunch Ryan was trying to talk Scott in hiring him.
*One lesson I took from the story is how important it is to be open for opportunity because it can come at any time.
Ryan, has been a pastor/minister and doing global missions for almost 20 years. But, as Ryan said, he never really fit into the normal stereotype of a pastor except for he had a goal of making the world a better place. He had no idea that Scott was in his audience that day. Once he went to lunch with Scott and they started talking – he just blurted out that they should work together. It just seemed right.
Scott didn’t hire Ryan right away. It took several months of conversations and even a bad accident where Scott was injured before Scott decide to move ahead.
At the 14 min mark, Ryan shares a great message about how he knew he had to work with Scott. He talks about comfort zones and faith and following your gut.
What is the philosophy of the Culture of Good?
Taking that from idea to reality are two different things. How do you actually implement this system? You have the 5 Promises for that – tell us about them…
At the 20-min mark, Scott and Ryan go into this in great detail. It is best to listen to what they say, but below are some selected notes.
All of them have to be carried out equally. The more good you do, the more business you get and the cycle goes ‘round and ‘round.
Examples of implementing each one:
What have you learned about the human spirit going through this journey together?
What other advice can you give for growing a great business?
iPhone or Android?
Best Quote: “A business with purpose is a better business for everyone involved...”
Ryan and Scott's Misfit 3:
1.)
2.)
3.)
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, I want to talk to you about your health. You have grown up with your mother and I and we have done the best we can to model a healthy lifestyle for you. Your health and fitness should be a focus in your life because good health and fitness habits impact all areas of your life from your work to how you feel about yourself to your relationships.
I want to share a few of the best tips that have allowed me to get into even better shape now than I was when I played college football and that make a huge difference in all areas of my life, including success.
Before we begin, let me say this – Your body is a temple. It is absolutely amazing. If you just sit back and think about it for a second, it is truly magnificent how everything works the way it does, how each cell knows what to do as part of each organ, how our brains work, our hearts, how everything comes together to work in an almost perfect harmony. It really is a wonder and deserves tremendous respect. I have realized this more as I have gotten older. Like a lot of people, I was not as kind to it in my younger years, but I have always believed in the benefits of healthy eating and exercise – maybe with glass of good wine or a beer or two sprinkled in from time to time. You’ve gotta enjoy life too!
But, what I am about to share with you starts with a respect for your body no matter what. No matter what society tells you about “perfection” or some airbrush picture displays – none of that matters. Focus on your body with a sense of love and gratitude because as I have said before, for us to even be alive is a miracle. In fact, the chances of any of us being alive right now are 1 in 10 to the 2,685th power…or virtually zero. Seriously, It’s the probability of 2.5 million people getting together — about the population of San Diego — each to play a game of dice with trillion-sided dice. They each roll the dice — and they all come up the exact same number — say, 550,343,279,001.
Ok, enough of my soapbox, here are the top 10 things I have found that you or anyone can do fairly easily to have a great impact on your health.
Hannah, I know that you have either seen or heard me talk about these health tips before, but I wanted to get them all in one place for you. I hope that you find a way to incorporate them into your life and use them to keep yourself healthy and enjoy life to the fullest.
I love you, Daddy.
Best Quote: “Your body is a temple. It is absolutely amazing. If you just sit back and think about it for a second, it is truly magnificent how everything works the way it does"
Misfit 3:
This week’s Misfit Entrepreneur is Justin Schenck. Justin is the founder of Growth Now Movement and the wildly successful podcast by the same name. He is ranked one of the Top 8 podcasters to watch in 2018 by INC Magazine and a fellow Icon of Influence at the prestigious New Media Summit.
In addition to running the Growth Now Movement enterprise, Justin is a highly sought-after speaker and founder of Begin Podcasting Now which is a company that helps others launch and grow their own podcasts.
I’ve had the chance to spend a lot of time with Justin and what strikes me most is his willingness to help others and to genuinely help them succeed. I think a lot of this is rooted in his own story of overcoming adversity to create the life he has today. And that is really what I want to focus on with him today – how you can create the life you dream of and grow now!
When Justin was 12, his parents got divorced and it went downhill from there. His dad spent some time in jail and his mom had a 20-year pill addiction. He had 1.7 GPA in high school. He was not a path to any significant success.
But, he realized he was very good at learning from other people’s mistakes and choices, so he started to seek out and learn from entrepreneurs and other successful people. When he was 25, he started a company putting together personal growth seminars and did well for a few years. Then, he and his business partner decided to go “all in” on an event together. It failed literally losing them the business.
He then went into corporate life in medical sales but felt like something was missing – helping others in a meaningful way. That led to Growth Now Movement and the building of his podcast production and coaching company.
At the 6 min mark, Justin explains the Growth Now Movement…
What have you learned about yourself and what it takes to succeed?
Who is the most inspiring person you’ve ever interviewed on Growth Now Movement and why?
Is there a trait, habit, skill that you see consistent across the guests you interview?
Intention. Every day they set their intention and they go and make it happen. Every single person that he interviews lives a life of intention. Intention is direction.
At the 14-min mark, Justin talks about his best advice for creating the life you desire from what he has learned on his journey.
What has surprised you the most so far?
At the 19-min mark, Justin talks about how he “asks for what he wants” and the methodology behind it…
What are some of the best lifehacks and success hacks you take from guests?
What do people need to make sure to make part of their life to succeed in today’s world?
At the 30 min mark, Justin explains why podcasting should be part of your growth strategy…
Best advice for your entrepreneurs starting out today and where is entrepreneurship going?
Best Quote: “Live selfishly in order to be self-less…”
Justin's Misfit 3:
Misfit Nation! Welcome to the 100th episode of the Misfit Entrepreneur! You know, when I started this little experiment as a way to leave behind the best wisdom on success and life that I could find and give for my daughter, Hannah – I had no idea that this show would grow the way it has and have the following and impact it has had around the world. I am so humbled and honored to be doing this with you. This show is as much mine as it yours as it could not and would not be where it is without you, our loyal listeners in Misfit Nation.
From the bottom of my heart – thank you, thank you, thank you for your support of the show. And we are just getting started. We have much more to come for you over the next 100 episodes both in the guests that we are bringing you and other unique opportunities such as the Grow Thrive Revive Retreat.
It is not a coincidence that we are at this point together. I truly believe we are meant to be on this journey with each other and accomplish amazing things. And you better believe that I will do everything I can to bring you the best information, advice, and actionable success strategies to help you do so.
I’ve spent an enormous amount of time going through our first 100 episodes to find what I consider to be the Top 10 Most Important lessons that they have given us and I want to share them with you.
I have also put them into a FREE guide with text from the episode for each lesson with some action steps on how you can incorporate them into your life and business.
You can get it at www.MisfitEntrepreneur/Lessons
The Top 10 Lessons from 100 Episodes of Misfit Entrepreneurs to Help You Breakthrough to You Highest Potential...
Lesson #1
They practice the DCP Formula and use it through the life and businesses. DCP stands for Discipline, Consistency, and Persistence. I go in depth on this formula in the episode as well as the Top 10 Lessons Guide.
Lesson #2
The highly successful don't do one thing exponentially better than others. They do a lot of things, sometimes very small things, just a little bit better or slightly differently and doing all of them a little better adds up to a huge advantage. I highlight some examples of these things as I discuss this lesson in the episode.
Lesson #3
They have a keen understanding of self and their conditioning and have learned to have control over their thoughts and how they react to the different circumstances in their lives. To me, this realization or understanding is ultimate in personal power and allows people to live from true choice instead of being run by other people's ideas and what they've been told they should do. You must learn to choose your thoughts and what you allow your mind actions to do.
Lesson #4
High performing Misfit Entrepreneurs go through a process of transformation. The learn, as my good friend and business partner in our life-changing bi-annual event, Grow Thrive Revive, Evan Money, puts it and talked about in Episode 59 – they learn the power of the return on forgiveness. Sometimes it is forgiving themselves while other times it is forgiving others for the wrongs that they have done to them. Whatever these things are, for many people, they hold them back and once the truly forgive, they remove a tremendous weight from their shoulders and can move forward in their pursuits to greatness.
Lesson #5
This one should come as no surprise - they have a strong "why" that they anchor to. This why is their driver and the thing they rely on to keep them going when things are tough. It is also, talking about the power of little things, the reason they want “it,” whatever it is, more than others. It fuels them and gives them purpose.
Lesson #6
This one should come as no surprise either, but it is such a constant with high achievers that I had to highlight it. Every Misfit Entrepreneur we have had on this show has a consistent personal growth and development routine. They are different in how they do it. Some people work very closely with a coach or multiple coaches. Others prefer to read and study other great entrepreneurs and successful people. Some listen to a ton of different podcasts. And of course, there are many do a blend of these.
Lesson #7
This lesson goes hand in hand with personal development. High performing Misfit Entrepreneurs are very careful who they surround themselves with. They are acutely aware that the people around them have an impact on their success. They are selective in their friends, business partners, employees, and who they choose to spend their time with. Take inventory of who you surround yourself with and spend time. Make sure they are the right people to help you in reaching the levels you aspire to.
If you are looking for a great way to make personal development on a daily basis easy and grow yourself in 10 minutes a day, check out this lifetime offer from our friends at Read it For Me. I used this almost every day as part of my routine. Just go to www.Readitfor.Me/Misfit
Lesson #8
High performing Misfit Entrepreneurs are great problem solvers. They also have figured out that the bigger the problems that they can solve, the bigger their business and success can grow. They seek out bigger challenges. The take calculated, what I call asymmetric risks. Meaning that the risk they take have some downside, but very little compared to the massive payoff they will get in succeeding in taking the risk. Solving big problems requires taking risks and sometimes a leap of faith.
How about you? What problem or problems can you or should you be solving? Are there any problems that you have thought about and are passionate about solving? How can you go about doing so taking an asymmetric risk?
Lesson #9
Systems. Systems are the most important part of growing and succeeding in business and the high performers figure this out. They learn the power of having good systems and implement them across their lives and businesses. This allows them to scale and grow.
We can only do so much with the time and energy we have. At some point we will plateau because we just cannot work any harder or do any more with the time we have. It is at this point that highly successful Misfit Entrepreneurs learn the lesson of putting in systems in place to duplicate the things they are doing or automate them.
Lesson #10
How you do anything is how you do everything. Your habits and choices will define you and your success. This is probably the easiest lesson to understand and hardest to implement because it encompasses everything we have talked about today. All the lessons we have discussed either fall under becoming a habit or a choice. In fact, Tom Ziglar, Zig Ziglar’s son in episode 83 put it perfectly. When I asked him what the absolute most important thing someone can do for their success was, he said “The fastest way to success is to replace a bad habit with a good habit.”
Best Quote: “Embracing these 10 lessons gives you the blueprint, foundation, and guide to success..."
100th Episode Misfit 3:
This week’s Misfit Entrepreneur is Peter Kozodoy. Peter was a 2017 SBA Young Entrepreneur of the Year nominee and is a partner and the Chief Strategy Officer at GEM Advertising – and Inc 5000 award winner. The company helps B to C companies make their sales and marketing departments more efficient and effective.
But, Peter is also the author of the forthcoming book, Honest to Greatness, an INC, Forbes, and Huffington Post contributor, and consultant with a very specific focus - helping entrepreneurs build multimillion-dollar businesses by using the power of brutal honesty.
And that is what I want to explore with him and you in this episode.
Peter came out of college in 2008 during the economic collapse. He was a figure skater all through growing up and had planned to work in the industry. When that didn’t work out, he started a business with his business partner shooting television spots for local TV for a $800 a spot – mostly for car dealers.
They started getting requests from ad agencies for work and found that they could do the same things the agencies did, and as they thought, better. So, the pivoted and became a full-service communications agency. They had no full-service experience, but they found a way and made a way. Now GEM is a leading agency in the marketplace.
At the 7-min mark, Peter talks about how he became obsessed with radical, brutal honesty and what that means to him…
He developed a framework for honesty that calls the “Hourglass of Honesty” that has 3 levels:
Talk to us about Honest to Greatness and the shifts coming in business that we have to prepare for and be honest about..
What is the best way for a leader to get radically honest with themselves and their organization?
At the 21-min mark, Peter tells us about the different cultures discussed in the book – the Inverse Triangle and Flawed Diamond.
At the 26-min mark, Peter talks about “the Executive Mirror” and “Heart and Soul” and why they are so important.
The Executive Mirror is about the change executives have had to make in that they now need to have the skill to taking the information and reflect it back out across the organization vs. just setting the agenda from the top. They don’t have to chart a course from scratch anymore because all of the information they need is at their fingertips.
What is the most important concept about advertising that business owners must understand in today’s world?
With all the changes happening, especially in social media, with regard to privacy – what do you see happening and that business owners need to look for when it comes to advertising on these mediums?
What is the most thing you’ve learned about entrepreneurship on your journey so far? “Our companies only grow as fast as we do…”
What is the most important thing you’ve learned about yourself?
Best advice for an entrepreneur starting out today?
Best Quote: “Comfort is the enemy of innovation..."
Peter's Misfit 3: