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Pruning Methods & Student Hotseat

So my biggest take away, if you're wondering, was the live Internet audience. After we were done here in the studio audience, I was connecting online with people left and right. There was emails coming in. I had a phone call with someone, and this is so amazing that I know in the studio here it just a group of us. There's a huge group out there participating. So for me, that was a big take away. The power of the Internet and how we can get immunity from people from Panama to Florida to Moscow is speaking with one of from Moscow yesterday because of what we're doing here. So just a recap what we discussed yesterday, we started off with the basic premise of the pumpkin plan, how the riches are in the niches. And then we talked about how you need to align your business. You know, so many businesses are told to pivot, keep changing to what the customer wants and we forget what we want. We really focus yesterday on what do you really want? We went to the life be exercise. I hope you guys di...

d your quasi homework and you, too, at home that you did it last night and just looked at your own life and maybe didn't go through the actual tool that's available for download. But maybe you just thought about the highlights and challenges. Travis was very open and shared what he went through that inspired his fine art career. I hope you did the same. Then we went on, and we talked about the premise of pruning the baby very basics by looking at the sweet spot. What are the things you need to do and start focusing on that gigantic seed? Some of the clients that you need to possibly remove, but the other ones you need to grow the areas of yourself. The uniqueness is of yourself and your business that you need to exploit and grow. We even came up with names. We have a memory journalist here, and it's funny is June as you were saying that, What does that mean? We go, she got me. It works. It works. And you we all changed our businesses. I love the embedded media journalist. Now, you know, with his Google hangouts, it's just amazing. And of course, we wrapped up with uh oh, now it's kept in my mind. What do we wrap up with? I was Yes, I e I don't know why get stuck on authentic marketing of how do you use who you really are and then exposed to the world? Unfortunately, some businesses use manipulation. We were talking about persuasion. How do you get customers from point A to point B easily and comfortably and when point B is really where they want to go Manipulations. Were you moving from point A to point B? But they really want to go to Point C. So we talked about authentic marketing how to connect it. Well, today we'll start with pruning. Improving Does talk about clients. Some clients aren't fit force, but talks about a lot of other things, too. We're gonna talk about it. I'll be sharing techniques of pruning some of your activities, something activities we dio don't support. What we really need to accomplish its the busy work. So how do you determine what work is appropriate and what work isn't appropriate? First, I want to start off with what Donna has a share, which is run client. So I'm gonna invite you back up just to remind people in the Internet audience that haven't met Donna yet. Donna is my business partner at Prevent Us. Group she leads are consulting and coaching efforts it has recruited now. Team, I was gonna say nationally but internationally on, we're bringing on more more members throughout the world that are out coaching businesses and helping them spark growth. That was Donna's background. That's what she did for so many clients. Now she's helping other people do it throughout the world. So the stage is yours for a little bit, right? Yeah. Great. Good morning, everyone. Oh, I probably need this technology. Um, pruning. So to go back to the pumpkin analogy for a minute. Ordinary pumpkin farmers. We all know what they do, right. They try to grow as many pumpkins as possible. Um, every pumpkin has potential. Look at this cute little punk in here, and this one's a little funny looking, but there's probably someone out there for it. And you think to yourself they're all these opportunities. How can I cut any of them out? There are all these opportunities for these pumpkins to be fabulous, and I want as many as possible. However, the extraordinary pumpkin farmer who grows the colossal pumpkin, as we learned yesterday, has to really be ruthless about cutting out the pumpkins that are not going to turn into giant pumpkins and also pulling the weeds. Those weeds are just as bad as those little pumpkins on the vine, because what happens if you delay for even a minute? Every minute that you wait to get rid of those little pumpkins is sucking nutrients away from your giant pumpkin. It's the same thing with entrepreneurs. If you have opportunities here on opportunities there you have. You take any client, you go after any client. Those bad opportunities, the ones that actually turn out to be distractions are sucking. Resource is away from your giant seed away from your sweet spot, so the sooner you get rid of them, the better. So here's Here's an example of what might be a distraction as opposed to an opportunity. So Mike and I told you yesterday that our sweet spot is working with business coaches and consultants who are currently in a solo practice who wants want to stop trading dollars for hours and turn their their coaching practice into a thriving scalable, a seven figure business. Dots are sweet spot, and we have a system to do that. Now let's say somebody came to us and said, I'm a private investor and I I like to invest in small business And you guys know so much about small business and you can tell which small businesses have that potential to grow into giant pumpkins and which ones don't will you come and work with me and analyzed businesses for us, and maybe they're offering us lots of money, and this is really exciting. This could be a cool new direction for us. But is it really, Or is it a distraction? How does it serve our sweet spot? It really doesn't. And unfortunately, we get these kind of opportunities every day. We talked yesterday about our mission. What's our mission? Sometimes we get really steered off mission because we think, Oh, my gosh, this could be a really great opportunity for me and we forget. Wait a minute. This isn't even part of my mission. It looks pretty nice and shiny, but it may not really serve me what I would love to know from you here in the studio and the audience at home is. Have you experienced any opportunities, quote unquote opportunities that have turned out really to be distractions from your business and maybe took you off course? Does anyone have an example? No, you're all focused. A few months back we were a client of ours, approached us and asked us to do some pro bono work where we would come in and shoot families inside of a state park. We thought, Oh my God, what a cool opportunity And their name will be plastered. And we spent lots of man hours and time and energy doing it, and it completely was nowhere near our path, right? That's a great example. And and it's another good point. Let's say you get a client that's outside of your sweet spot. It's not in your expertise, even if they're going to pay you good money to work with them. It takes extra time toe work with them because they're not part of your system. You may have to do extra research or buy equipment that you don't normally use, So those things all again take resource is away. Is there anything coming in online? Yeah, lots of people are saying it happens all the time we got a couple of examples 10 23 designers saying they've taken on large, tedious orders thinking it's big bucks, but it ends up consuming more time than it's worth. Very, very common. Yeah, I think we said a photo, Love says. In photography constantly. They send us a photo or send us photos and we'll share your name in link. But it doesn't end up working up. Got it? Very good. Anybody else have anything they'd like to share an assistant? That's one name that for eBay and Amazon clients Call me and want me to sell their items. So a man calls that I have all these great car parts for Porsche's and BMWs and I said, Well, that sounds great as high end cars, I know nothing about that. So I hightailed over there and looked at it and said, What is this box of junk? If well, you just have to, like, put a picture up and sell it, it'll sell itself. I said no. So I just left and said that was an hour wasted, but at least I learned something from it. Great. But you only wasted an hour. You could have wasted many hours only to find out that you weren't didn't have the expertise to sell that. So that was terrific discipline on your on your part. Um, I think Pearson had her hand up first. Um, I think even on a much smaller scale, I find that I do this a lot. Like I'll spread myself. Then I'll go after, you know, it's kind of like a throw everything out there and see what sticks kind of a thing, right? Like who should I go after the celebrities? Do I need to go after the press? Do I need to go after LinkedIn and Facebook and the blawg and the, you know, doing all of these things trying. Teoh, figure out where you're gonna you know, you get people toe to come. And so then that takes up a lot of time doing all these different things instead of just focusing on what you That's a great example thing. Really great example. Thanks for sharing that W Did you have something else, Dad? Yeah, I've been finding that I one of the biggest things that I really need to reconsider carefully consider each time is the partners and the projects that I take on, um, where they're not as committed to seeing it through is I am. So I lose a lot of time and a lot of business and a lot of productivity when those situations come around. Yeah, so that's something that you might be able to develop a system of weeding those people out before you get too mired in a project, right? Yes, absolutely. So, as Mike said yesterday, it turns out that really successful entrepreneurs say no 10 times more than they say yes. And the first time I heard that I was really surprised because I thought I thought the whole the whole thing about being a successful entrepreneurs, that you are somebody who jumps on opportunities and you grab all the opportunities, and that's what makes you successful. But what I discovered is successful. Entrepreneurs go after the right opportunities, so it's not any opportunity. It's the right opportunity. So how do you figure out the right opportunities from the ruling opportunities? Um, we have a system called the Three Questions, and this is really focused on honing in on what best serves your sweet spot. Now there are a lot of benefits toe. Having this kind of a system if you have one of the biggest benefits, is if you have, let's say a business partner or you're making ah group decision. Sometimes it can get very emotional, like one person says. This is a great idea. We have to do it and the other person like No way. This is a terrible idea And then you start getting, you know, emotionally wrapped up in Well, he never likes my ideas and she's always going off in the wrong direction, gets very personal. This kind of system takes all of the personal out of it. And even if you're the only one making the decision, what happens is it takes the stress and the emotion out of it for you and allows you to take a step back and look at it from a purely analytical standpoint. And then you don't have to have that anxiety because I get it. I know that feeling when you're like, But what if this was the best opportunity ever and I never get another one like it and grew my life because I didn't grab it? You know, I know that feeling. I'm sure we've all had it where we're trying to make a decision and we're going. How do I know that I'm not missing out on something, But truthfully, what you're doing, if you go after opportunities that are going to distract you, is you're missing out on growing your business and growing your giant seat. So what I'd actually like to do is a quick hot seat If there's anyone here who is currently considering an opportunity or trying to make a decision about something that they haven't decided yet. Does anyone have anything? Come on up, Travis. Okay. And this is is not gonna take too long on. I promise it'll be fairly painless. Okay? So just refresh our memory. Who do you Who do you see as your top clients, friends and family with people that know my story and know my art. And when it's all about okay. And what is the decision that you are that you are considering right now? Right now, I'm doing like, big, abstract kind of metaphysical paintings, and I'm trying to see if I should do thes rock stacks that I have learned to do and see if I can find a way to make that profitable because people seem to love the rock stacks. But, like, I like the paintings. But I really love the rock stacks, so I don't really know you love. So the rock stacks would that involve you going to people's homes and building them at their homes like a zen kind of landscape? So it's kind of like a landscaping thing versus ah, paint. It's totally different than painting. Exactly. OK, so if you were to do this, do you believe that it better serves your top clients? Yes, I guess. Yeah. So you think this is something that your top clients love and would like more of? Yeah, Everybody that sees these rocks text like I see their eyes just bowled out of their head. Like what? Okay, great. So we talked yesterday about area of innovation and unique offering. What do you see as your area of innovation? Every innovation, just It's more than just rocks, you know, like there's a lot mawr deep level that goes into it. And I think that with a lot of rock stalkers out there in the world, because it is kind of a global community, that is just kind of about stacking rocks to them. Maybe I don't want to speak for everyone, but for me, it's much deeper than that. And there's much more power is what do the rocks need to you if you don't mind sharing that with me? I mean, for me, it's challenges in my life. So when I construct the rocks that like the most difficult point and get them to stand there, then I can really do anything. So when someone sees that and I explained that to them, then they can really unleashed their unlimited potential. So they really have almost a spiritual reaction. Yes to it. So you're not just in artists or a landscape designer. You are really a spiritual designer or there's a sort of a spiritual. So would you say that the rocks the rocks stacking would enhance and and or maintain your area of innovation? Yes, OK, excellent. Um, and do you believe that this would increase your profitability? See, that's where it gets a little tricky because, um, I don't know how to monetize it, because sometimes they'll fall over or, ah, you know, I have to kind of go back there and it kind of be a long term thing for me to keep going there, because if I make it more of a long term like flat on top of flour and it doesn't get that more spiritually kind of essence to it, so so they're not permanent. They're kind of short, short term, so like a storm or something could knock them over. Could that be part of the appeal, perhaps built in appeal, that you know, the world is always changing and the earth is changing, and this sculpture will change with it or something. So there's really a question. But there's a question about number three. You're not sure, and I thought about the probable doing it for, like, corporate events or stuff like that. But then it kind of loses that spiritually thing because it just becomes about money and way to generate money for them, right? Well, yes, and that's interesting, But you kind of bring up another good point that it could almost be like performance art or something like, you know, people who build sand castles and that you know, where you make it very clear that this is not necessarily something permanent because if if it was your right, you would be going back. You be spend your time fixing them as opposed to you doing new ones. Yeah. I think that's what's so powerful about the rocks taxes that it just brings everyone to the moment the president s Oh, yeah. Okay, so it's possible that it could be profitable, but that's something that you need to go back and look out. So we can't We can't exactly make this decision today because in order for you to go forward with a decision, all three of these have to be Yes. If one of them is no, then it's a distraction. So what we would say is, Go home, think about it. Crunch. Some numbers taught. Go back to your top clients and talk to them about some ideas that you have. What would you be? You know, would you be willing to pay for a temporary installment? You know, something that may change with the weather and, you know, overtimes to something like that would be a great Well, I I do see it as kind of ah potential performance art together and showing people how you can bring two different people, you know, together or families. And you know, all that kind of stuff and make them beautiful and, you know, work together. Even if they seem different, I guess. And I could see, like the way. I mean, if you started doing this on YouTube and you could just get a huge following of people like people would be Nazem arised by it. I think so. You know, there is potential there, But I would tell you, until you can answer yes to all three of these questions Don't just blindly go forward. Okay? Okay. All right. Thank you. Travis Were coming up and sharing them, actually from people online. Some really interesting ones. Well, here they are again. Told pooper. Scoop his poop. 911 He's saying about teaching rocks, stacking as a team building exercise. That was kind of what he was. Great. And somebody else. I can't remember who it was. I'm trying to look for it right now, but they suggested the upkeep of, um you know that maintaining the proper Lohan. Thank you. Thank you. What was offering up? Keep offering upkeep. Yes, and that's something. So here's another side of it. so if Travis could teach other people how to maintain them, then he wouldn't necessarily have to be the one to go back and maintain them so that that's also a possibility. But definitely you have the you you have. The start of something with potential might remind me is the story. He started telling this touching as they put the rocks together. He's not putting rocks together. He's expressing a story and showing how all links and build. I would be so impressed if Travis was building this in front of an audience in explaining his personal story. And perhaps what if he could do interpret rock there by the wheel, tell their story and you show how it forms into rocks and teach them? Yeah. I mean, I do think there's something very powerful about rocks. People love rocks. I know I do, and I have rocks with words on them, and I love them and you know, So there is something that really connection to the earth about rocks, and I would just say this because you made a comment about how doing this for corporate events wouldn't feel good for you. You would want to find something that made you a market that makes you feel good. So maybe weddings, maybe weddings would really make you happy and offer this as an entertainment slash, you know, kind of coming together performance for wedding, But definitely make sure that it can that your market connects with you also and because you don't want to feel like a sellout. And I could tell by your voice that if you were working with corporations, you would feel for you that was a sellout for somebody else. It might not be at all, but you have to connect. As Mike was saying, You have to align with who you are. Retreat, retreat, not in office. Yeah, I think I love retreat. Retreats are great. Any other questions or comments? It just the one kind of three questions just to build on this. This tool is as just as you were saying, if you can't say yes to all three, that doesn't mean it's wrong. It means that the reinvestigate and what we found is Travis has a customer base that likes its people that know him. Fan friends of family means they know your story so clearly, Top client or people that know the story, the area of innovation. When you talk about innovative uniqueness, what are the unique quality you have? The profitability is the point of concern, and when that simply tells us, is we have to revisit until we find a way to make this also profitable. And why probably is so important is that the only way you can sustain is if it provides you with cash, which is the lifeblood of a business. And too many people say I'm not gonna worry about the money and then they don't have the money coming in to sustain the activity. That's why probably is so important. And I think he's inches away. I want to go and work in this business. You know, Mike, maybe in a one of the modules coming up, we can call Travis on this because we're going to be talking more about profitability later today as well. So yeah, and I agree with Mike. I think you're very close, very, very close. So So that's one really great tool because it really keeps you focused, laser focused on your sweet spot and and keeps you from kind of going in directions that are not going toe ultimately serve you. Even if they serve you immediately down the road, they're going to take you away from where you want to be. Great, great tool. And by the way, we use this all the time way have shiny objects everywhere where we have shiny object syndrome. And literally I don't think Mike and I ever end up in the long run, disagreeing on any decision because we use this tool. And when we go through it, we both see you know, whoever doesn't matter who initially wanted to do water the other we always come to the same conclusion. So really powerful tool. It's simple, but powerful. The other thing I wanted to tell you about is the 10 10 10 method, and this was actually developed by Suzy Welch was Jack Welch's wife. For those of you don't know Jack Welch. Waas, not stories, was the CEO of G E and this is great for, as other says here gaining perspective, we all have a tendency to put more weight on the immediate consequences of any decision on the immediate impact. How is this going to affect me right now? Because that's what That's what we feel right now. Really easy example. Let's say you realize you need to fire somebody like one of your employees, and you really love all your employees. You might avoid doing that because you know you're gonna feel awful. I don't want to fire an employee. I love my employees and I feel terrible. Um, you're looking at the short term, but perhaps in the long run, this is the best thing for your company because it will allow you to keep all the other employees, but it's very hard to see that. So the 10 10 10 role is really easy. And I before I heard about this, I had actually been subconsciously doing this in my life anyway, because in college I had an experience where somebody kind of introduced me to this concept of Don't just think about what's gonna happen now Think about a few months from now or so that 10 10 10 is this when you're trying to make a decision about either something you wanted you or something that you don't want to dio, think about what is going to be the impact on you in the next 10 days, then look at what is going to be the impact of this decision in the next 10 months. And then what is going to be the impact of this decision in the next 10 years and really try to take a look at the totality of it? What is the long term impact? Is it? If I take this action 10 months from now, 10 years from now, is it going to have a positive effect again, Back to the sweet spot? Is it going to take me where I want to go? Very simple. And it's a way to again take some of the emotion out of your decision making OK, any questions about that? We're solid, Awesome. So those are a couple of decision making tools. Mike's got a few more, so we're just going to switch places and he's gonna wow you with some more tools for failure. You know, one thing I wanted to share about the three questions is maybe you thought maybe didn't. This is another way of the guy getting to the sweet spot, that big, gigantic sea they'll grow your business. Does this better? Serve. My top clients were that one ring we're talking about which top clients is, uh, this enhance or maintain my area of innovation. My uniqueness. Best intersection to the last question. Does this maintain or grow profitability? That's what system ization brings about when you can do things repeatedly. That's how you make money. That's how you become profitable. So this is actually just another way. Positioning the seed and you'll see everything that we're sharing during these two days is all about getting back to that seed back to the seed. That's the ultimate focus of pruning, always pushing away things that are not with the seed in doing it. And also one thing has one to build on. This 10 10 rule is people. We put a disproportionate weight on the immediate consequence. I don't know if you ever broke up with someone, and maybe you're the one who decided to do the break up. I want you. I suspect you feel way different about that relationship today than you did in the moment when the breaker was happens. Like wow, not today, Not today. I've offered up one more day, one more day and one more day because it's too painful in the moment because we're putting a huge weight on the next 10 minutes or 10 hours. But when we look at the perspective of long term, we said, Wow, this is unhealthy. Relationship is not working for either of us. It's better for both of us. 10 months from now will probably be back in the dating scene. In 10 years from now, it will be actually a favorable memory. We had a good experience together. It was appropriate that ended, so that's a great way of breaking out of that immediate pain. You might be there right now with this fine art versus rock, you know, fine arts, making money, these paintings and stuff like this. But the rock stacking is my love, but I really I keep painting. And there's all this weight on the media positioning. But if you look 10 years from now, you could be the most prolific rock stacker like ever. Like if you look at the long term, it may change your whole perspective, and that's what we're trying to get out of the natural tendency for us told the immediate consequence. I wanted to share a story about a friend of mine who in a company called by, Right. They make thes things. Don't if you saw me wearing this. But this is one of those bracelets. Live strong was the 1st 1 He made all the knockoff variations. This one says what matters most. Breast cancer awareness, All these different campaigns. He made those, and he would sell these to Wal Mart and other major story. Well, what he did was he had, um, decided to go through. The client assessment is before he knew that we had him formula. He does on sound, you know, the 100 clients he found the number one revenue client was WalMart. Number two was dollar general or dollar. Store number three was Family Tree. And there's these different convenience type stores that would sell stuff like this stationary. And what he notices that there was thing called paradas rule that applied. Is anyone here familiar with Paradas rule? Okay, so Peredo was an Italian economist and what he did was draw on the board. Thank you. He was hired by the King of Italy the time to determine the disproportionate distribution of wealth. Can you, in Italy noticed that the minority of the population controlled the majority of the wealth and Parada went on and found out that 20% of the population maintained 80% of the well and that 80% of the population maintained 20% of the wealth. So the few people were the rich people like that. That's kind of a weird anomaly that's going on in Italy. So then he decided Peredo decided to go out of study other countries and found out the economic distribution is the same. The same in our country is the same in any country, wherever you're sitting watching at home. Right now, 20% of the wealth is maintained by a Britain. The population in 80% of the wealth is maintained by 20% of population. But then thank you. It got really bizarre when Peredo noticed that 20% of the plants I'm sorry. 20% of the plant growth for any kind of plan grows 80% of the growing season. And during only a short period, 20% of growing season, 80% of the growth happens for humans. 80% growth happens in the 1st 20% of our life. Now this really freak you out, especially people home cause I came and see you. The clothing your wearing Right now, you. Probably 80% of the time. It's only 20% of the wardrobe. We wear our favorite stuff. This plays out over and the average going out. This is my favorite clothes. Embarrassing. Yeah, but that's this formula plays out over and over again. It's a law of nature. 20% dictates 80%. 80% dictates 20% back to Joe, the guy who makes these bracelets. He started his client base and said, Um, wow, uh, 20% of my client's Wal Mart dollar store and so forth are dictating 80% revenue. Well, he had out about 100 clients, so he took 20 clients. Implement a list and he said, OK, these 20 clients are generating a person I revenue. I'm gonna focus on them. And he argued, and he's right, and every business should do this. You have to play favoritism toward your top clients. So when he decided to, he said, when the phone rings, he told all his employees when the phone rings. If it's one of these clients in the top 10 actually told me a little bit down to 10. Answer the phone immediately if someone else cause while you're on the phone with one of the top clients, don't answer the phone you already addressing of our top clients. Conversely, he said of one of our other clients. Call for this lower 80% and you're not on the phone already picking up immediately. But if someone from the top 20% calls tell the current client on the phone is I'm sorry, I have emergency have to dress. I'll have to call you back. Play favoritism to your top clients. Great great pruning method. Here was what was really fascinating. He did the next step, the cringe factor. He looked at each client and put a smiley face or frowny face next to it. I hope no one from Wal Mart watching right now, because Walmart, the number one revenue client, got a frowny face. WalMart a great company, but not for certain vendors because Walmart to compete on prices Donna was pointing out yesterday. That's their differentiator. T elevate that area of innovation of price competition. They have to do everything to get product efficiently and cheaply, so when they would buy these things from Joe. They were saying, Hey, Joe, we want you 100,000 of these units, but they have arrived at our one warehouse on Monday between 10. 30 and 10. 35 AM If they arrive outside that five minute window, we're gonna penalize you were not gonna pay you as much if disc using the stamps and stuff aren't right on the box is in the right positions where guys and scan it really fast. We're gonna penalize you. And Wal Mart has a structure that if you can't comply with it, they'll dock your pay, They take away some money and, you know, from warlords perspective totally makes sense. Because Wal Mart is in the area of innovation of price. They have to always be the best price competitive in the world. They have to set these rules for Walmart is genius for certain vendors selling toe Walmart not so good. And Joe realized he couldn't comply with this, but he realized his second client on the list. Dollar General, the dollar store. Do you have him in your neighborhood to those store? Okay. They're great. They didn't have these these tight windows and stuff that he had to comply with. But they have different rules and regulations that he could comply with. Well, that top 10 list. He changed the top nine list and he crossed Walmart off. He actually went. Persons does. Every person had a list the top 10 clients. He went desk by death and crossed out WalMart on this list and said the new rule is anyone who calls you pick up the phone If you're on the phone with anyone. Nine people here minus Walmart. You stay on the phone with him. If someone if Walmart calls wiring the phone, you no longer picked them up. They're not our top priority. And Joe. By focusing on these top nine clients and giving them favoritism, he didn't have to prune and fire clients. He simply put them in a secondary position. His business blossomed, and the time he did this was about 2 to $3 million company. It went from 3 to to 20 and then 20 and up, and he sold it in four years. By the way, that's not so abnormal. Business growth seemed toe happen, almost like a hockey hockey stick from Minnesota will totally get that from New Jersey. Don't even know how hockey stick blocks. But you know, say our businesses grow slowly and we find our thing, Whatever it is and it hits, it resonates with the customers, and we cater to those customers. At the exception of everybody else, that's that's the method of pruning.