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The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are
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solely those of the hosts and their guests and not
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those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We
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make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services,
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or products mentioned on air or on our web. No
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liability explicitor implied shall be extended to W FOURCY Radio
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or it's employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should
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be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing
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W FOURCY Radio.
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Welcome to Powerful Business Strategies, where you will find out
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that everything you have ever learned about growing your business
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is wrong. Finally, a show where you'll learn the right
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way to grow your business by learning business and financial
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strategies that your competition isn't doing. And now here is
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your host. President of Next Step CFO Michael Barbarita and
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joining Michael for today's show as an executive moderator is
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chooky obio.
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This is chookey, and I believe that gratitude is undefeated
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and growth is about the next step. So it is
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an honor for me to moderate today's discussion with my
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good friend Michael.
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Michael how are you fantastic, Choky? How do you apologize
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to the world that you were that you had technical
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difficulties to get on the.
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Show by well, well, thank you, Choke.
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My name is Michael Barberica, President of Next Step CFO,
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and next Step CFO is a fractional CFO and strategic
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implementation firm, and our vision is to ensure overwhelmed business
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owners achieve the time, freedom and consistent profits to build
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a legacy and live the life they desire. And our
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mission is next Step CFO is dedicated to guiding small
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business owners and leveraging their time, exploding their profits and
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build a meaningful legacy. And you know this show powerful
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business strateg Jez had our book of the same name,
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is a step toward accomplishing that vision and mission. So
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with that, I'd like to hand it back to my
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co author and moderator for the show, Shooki Obio.
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Michael, thank you, and so address your question about the
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technical difficulties, I would just say, look, we are in
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the business of problem solving and we just solve that.
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I mean right, we solved it elegantly.
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A quick disclaimer, Michael and I are both affiliated with
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a number of different organizations and the business owners the
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leaders that will join our roundtable discussion as part of
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this radio show moving forward will also be affiliated with
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their organizations, but the views expressed on this show our
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own views based on our successful experiences, and my role
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as a fearless moderator for this radio show is just
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to ask the right questions to help you as a listener,
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and to help me learn business and financial strategies that
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the competition isn't doing. And let's kick off with the
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first question. So, look, Michael, the more I learn about
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your career story, the more inspired I am. Why don't
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you take a few minutes to just give us a
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walk down memory lane?
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Great? Thank you, Jocky.
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So back in nineteen ninety nine, I just sold my
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business for multiple I'm sorry. I sold my second business
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successfully in nineteen ninety nine. I was back in the
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Stone Ages, by the way, my first business sold for
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multiple seven figures. And I gotta tell you, I didn't
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think I could do no wrong, you know, after owning
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and exiting too businesses, I just thought I had the
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keys to the business kingdom and that I could succeed
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in any business. So, in all of this glory without
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any experience in the medical profession whatsoever. After all, who
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needs that? I started an outpatient rehabilitation facility called Freedom
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Therapy Center. Now, in the successful businesses I owned, I
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implemented business strategies that my competition wasn't doing. For example,
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my first business with a ski specialty retail business, and
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we grew the company from two and a half million
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to eight million in five years. And a contributing factor
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to that growth was a strategy called a risk reversal
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where the seller in the transaction takes most of all
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the risk. And one of the problems that the customer
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had in the ski industry is they never really knew
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if the ski they were being sold by some hot
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shot ski salesperson was the right ski for them.
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So what we did is.
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We implemented what we called a ski guarantee, where we
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let the customer ski the ski three times. If it
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wasn't right for them, they could take it back and
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would refit them with a brand new pair. Now, Joki,
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just so you understand, when a pair of bindings goes
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on a pair of skis, it depreciates the substantially, not
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to mention when it gets skeedar Wow, yeah, so my
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employees and manages. As a result of all that thought,
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I was, you know, going crazy and out of my mind.
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But I knew there were no competitors that would do it.
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You know, we sold eight thousand pairs of skis the
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first year we implemented a twenty five percent increase, and
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only eight came back.
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That's remarkable.
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Yeah, and you know the next year we sold eleven
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thousand pair and only fourteen came back. You know, many, many,
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many business owners think that when you're taking a risk
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by implementing a risk reversal, that it's going to backfire,
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you know, and it had never seen it backfire, to
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be honest with you. But then you fast forward to
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Freedom Therapy Center, where I must have taken these stupid
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pills or something, because I did exactly what my competition
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was doing, marketing the doctors to get referrals, dropping off
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chocolate cakes as bribes to front office staffs to get
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to the doctors. And by the way, I gave away
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two thousand cakes one year.
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I don't know. I'm almost embarrassed to say that.
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I offered services the exact same way my competition was doing.
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No risk reversals, no compelling offers, no strategic direction, no creativity,
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and no differentiation. And I was looking for customers who
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were anybody, and there were a bunch of anybodies that
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ended up really being nobody. And I'm a financial guy,
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so I know how to manage cash flow. But despite
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all that, we were incurring huge, enormous operating losses, and
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we were hemorrhaging cash every month. Yeah, chick's unbelievable. Every month,
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I was going into my savings to fund operating losses.
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And after a certain point, I promised myself I wouldn't
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put any more money into the company to fund operating losses.
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But like every business owner, I broke that promise, and
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I broke it twice. Thank god I wasn't married. I'd
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be under the pressure of being told to get a
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real job. I was staying up nights wondering what I
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was doing wrong. I was waking up in the middle
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of the night with cold sweats, worried about cash flow
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and customers I was losing every day. There were many
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Wednesdays when there was no money in their company bank
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account and the payroll do on Friday. Employees were looking
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for other jobs. They saw a sinking ship people, we
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owed money to a calling. There was personal liability galore,
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and then it ended.
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I fell on my face. Incredible. Have you ever fallen
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on your face?
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Yes?
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Did you stay down in the hope that no one
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would notice? Wow?
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Did you care more about what other people would think
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instead of what you could.
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Learn from this?
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You think I stayed down too long? Have you ever
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stayed down too long? Vendors, leasing, companies, banks, they all
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had hitmen coming after me.
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My ego was shot.
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The guy who held the keys to the business kingdom,
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the guy who sold a business for multiple seven figures,
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was facing his most difficult point that he thought he
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would ever face in a million years. But I learned
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two things I learned. The first thing I learned is
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that after one falls on their face, the hardest step
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to take is the step after the fall. Yes, the
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next step, Yeah, the next step. And so thirty days
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after I closed Freedom Therapy Center, Next Step CFO was born.
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And the second thing I learned is you just can't
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keep doing what your competition is doing. And today I
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come to you all and I ask you to ask yourself,
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are you doing the same thing that your competition is doing?
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Are you messaging the same way as your competition is
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messaging great service. He is in business lowest price. Do
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you want to change that? Because this show powerful business strategies.
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Everything you ever learned about growing and building a business
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is wrong and all about and it's all about business
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strategies that your competition isn't doing. And that's what this
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show is all about. And I take it right back
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to you, Choky. I can't hear you, Chooky.
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Michael, I'm so inspired. Sorry, it's interesting. One of the
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reasons why you couldn't hear me. I was lost in
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my thoughts, to be honest, just digesting that career trajectory
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and the manifestation of that with next Step CFO as
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your lessons learned, right, And the more I hear about
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that career story, Michael, the more inspired I am. And look,
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you and I have been collaborating for a while, and
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when I think of our professional networking across multiple industries
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with multiple business owners, the sense is that business owners
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are just under a lot of pressure. So, Michael, I've
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got a couple of questions for you related to this,
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just as we build out our conversation. So when you
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think of how you reconnected with not doing what the
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competition was doing? Right, How did you have the confidence
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to do that? Given all the pressures, right, the pressures
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of growing the business, managing the business, how did you
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have confidence to really focus in on what the competition
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wasn't doing and come up with a unique set of strategies?
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Well, I think you've heard of the eighty twenty world
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chookey we wrote about in our book. Yes, and you know,
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for business, eighty percent of what you do I'm sorry, yes,
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twenty percent of what you do generates eighty percent of
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the outcome, or in this case, in this case or
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in many cases, twenty percent of what you do generates
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eighty percent.
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Of the revenue. So you know, one of the things.
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I looked at was I looked at specifically.
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What is it?
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Because if you look at things like all the things
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that business owners have to know, it's it's absolutely overwhelming.
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We could you could take all the different slices that
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that we have to know, and then there's subcategories of
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the subcategories. I mean, in one particular the case like
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digital marketing, for example, there are all these things you
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have to know about social media.
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There's all these.
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Things you have to know about email, there's all these
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things you have to know about drip campaigns. And so
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what I tried to do is just break it down
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into that that twenty percent that essentially generates eighty percent
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of the revenue.
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And so did it give me confidence?
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It was just a different approach though, because it was
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a different approach and it made sense to me, that
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gave me confidence.
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So it wasn't exactly, you know, exactly that.
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What I the way I went to go, the way
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I went about it with the eighty twenty rule gave
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me confidence. It was just breaking it down into what
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really important. That's that that gave me the confidence.
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And so our listeners that I want to pick up
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on that point, Michael, to our listeners, that eighty twenty
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concept is really powerful and this applies across ultiple endeavors
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and specific to business. Michael, just as you've pointed out,
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twenty percent of what a business owner does daily in
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their business is actually what translates to eighty percent of
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revenue impact. I'm fascinated by that. Right, So, to this
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point of the claim that we make as part of
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this show, everything that a business owner has learned about
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business is wrong, right, Michael, I want to get back
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to that, and I want to relate that to the
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twenty percent that business owners should really focus in on.
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So a big part of the challenge for a lot
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of business owners you reference digital marketing is marketing. How
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do you get the right message to the right prospects,
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whether those prospects are clients or customers, whether they transact
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on products or services.
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So to that point, right, Michael, I mean.
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One of the things that we've learned about marketing that
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are wrong.
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Well, uh, I'm glad.
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I'm glad you mentioned that, shooky, because one of the
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things that I talked about at the end of my opening, uh,
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was what I call I hope so marketing. Yeah, and
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what I hope so marketing is it's it's all of
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these little I'm gonna call it, whether it's taglines or uh,
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sayings that the customer is saying to themselves, Well, I
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hope so. In other words, if a customer is going
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to make a purchase and you're saying that you have
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the largest selection, well, if I'm going to make a
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purchase from you, I hope so, I hope you have