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Pumpkin Plan Overview

I know some of you saw me is present before, but what I wanted to do now is give you an overview of what the pumpkin plans all about. So we really have a sense about it for me the next 45 50 minutes. I'm just give you the overview of that 5% change I wanted to talk about. And then for the rest of the next two days were to go into your business is we're gonna go with the people online and go into your businesses and dig into the individual components. Make sure that everything in your business is addressed. That 5% change need to make is being addressed. But started with these words, You don't want to be that guy. I had started my first company. I was in computer networks. And if you don't know a computer networks is it's boring. I was the guy who would come to your office, finagle with some wires and stuff on your desk when your computer broke, and usually you break it a little bit further and in charge of 500 bucks and try to get out of there. The computer guy was made and I was strug...

gling. I was doing well, struggling to relative term. I was doing about a $1,000,000 in revenue. But that doesn't mean as taking home a 1,000,000. That's the first misperception with entrepreneurship. Your friends here, June Oh, you're an entrepreneur. You must be a millionaire. You're living the life, and all you do is on Craigslist all day. What do you know? Will you watch a soap operas while you sound? Make millions? There's a misperception. So I threatened, friends thought is making millions. But I wasn't. That was the revenue. My business was making a lot less, a lot less. I was barely making it. I was pulling from savings just to survive, to cover payroll for on a particular day. Well, I hired a business coach. His name was Frank and Frank came to my office one day and said, I wanted to really investigate what you guys were doing and understanding for your business. When he sat me down and my colleagues there was like five or six of us around the table and Frank start drilling us with questions. He's like, You know what your revenue looked like. What's your P and l look like was the bound sheep. And I'm like, What are those magical words you're throwing at me? You know, he's like, you know, this stuff like No, and he for four hours just drilled us with questions, trying to understand my business. After that, he says, Everyone, please get up and leave the room. So every got up. I sheepishly got behind my colleagues and start to scoot to the door and Frank eyes Last names, Menu Tollo. Frank had this accent just like the Godfather. So when he said like, You don't want to be that guy, he sounded like that. And he looked at me and says, As everyone's getting up to leave, Michael, you sit down. And have you ever seen The Godfather like that is scary when you hear Michael. So I sat down and actually says, You don't want to be that guy. And I said, What guy? You don't want to be the guy who one day ends up in the rusty lawn chair regretting his life, he said, based upon the interview he did with me, that was very clear. I was stuck with my actions and decisions. I was gonna keep behaving the same way on the outside as intel, my making change and trying things, but really gonna act the same way. And he said, Every entrepreneur, every entrepreneur's life is extremely predictable. We are result where we sit today In this moment of the actions and decisions we made over the last five years, we've all made active decisions to be here. All of us at this moment in your business, exact same thing where your business stand stay is because of the actions incisions you made. And he said from that interview, it was very clear I was stuck in my pattern. In five years from today I will be making the same actions, making the same decisions and in the same spot of desperation in the same spot and go five years and five years all the way to the rusty lawn chair. And then he went into this like, visual description. Can you see yourself Michael in the chair? It's the Struss T chair. You got your half lemonade, like in a sippy cup. I'm like, Yeah, he's like, Can you see the hair? I'm like he was not that hair this. Hey, I'm like Oh, my hair coming out of the years, I said, Yeah, I can see that. He's like, Do you want that? No, of course not. It was. Think about it because that's your future and he walks to the door. He turns back around, and you don't even want to know what's going on down here. Hey, walks out on. I'm like That's a business couch. It's a casino. Mass tickets. This is not a cut like this is not what you do. He let me sit there thinking about this. Break a good minute or two, and he walks back in. And that's when he says, If you want my help, this is the time to ask for it, E said. I want your help, Frank and he says, OK, and so Tip number one here For everyone listening, our audience out there for you guys is great sales technique. Scare the living hell out of your customer. It definitely works that I hired him on the spot in Frank, then walk me through the process of growing my business. But there was another thing that struggled with. I was working out here is 9 to 5 and the entrepreneurs. 95 is very much different than the rest of the world's 95. We work from nine a night till five in the morning because it's the only time you can get your work done. Because between nine and five customers are calling problems were happening. You're putting out fires, people you're thought you could count on, never show up. And then at nine o'clock night is when it's quiet enough to start working and you start this exhausting schedule. And I was doing that. And Frank, it's like, Well, this is all you need to do to fix it And he starts drawn charts and diagrams and stuff all over the place, but it was too much to do it. I consider myself maybe a D student at best, a trying to apply. Frank was telling me, but told me one analogy. And perhaps you've heard this before. That was really powerful, he told me. But if if a plane takes off from where I live in New York and flies out to here where we're filming right now in San Francisco, that if it continues this course, but Onley off by 5% if it continues that path off by 5%. The further it travels, the further gets for assassination in a plane leaving from New York off by 5% will land in Canada or Mexico. Foreign lands. We land in foreign territory somewhere. We never expected to be just by trialling off by a little. And that's where he told me. It's only this 5% course correction what we're gonna do together over the next two days. So Frank tells me about this plane raids off by 5% and you're gonna land in this foreign land. He's trying to tell me all these techniques to correct my business. That 5% correction. It was overwhelming working my 9 to 5. But then one day I'm in my little town in Boonton, New Jersey. I hope there's someone from boot in New Jersey watching right now. I'm in boot in New Jersey as reading the local paper called The Citizen. You might call the paper. I'm being very flowery with my definition of what a paper is, because it was a dot matrix print out, and it was like that it was basically didn't flip through. You flipped it over. Cause was a back page and on the back page was a title that says New Jersey farmer grows colossal pumpkin, half ton, £1000 pumpkin. I was fascinated and they had the picture of the guy sitting there leaning against his massive pumpkin like that. And then the journalists ask him. So how do you grow a massive pumpkin? And his response fascinated me, he said. I only changed the growing behavior of a regular pumpkin by 5%. I'm like Frank said it was 5%. This guy says there's a 5%. Let me interview this guy and I spent a full year of my life studying pumpkin farmers. And when I want to share in this low introduction to the pumpkin plan is the things you need to change and growing a pumpkin that results in a colossal pumpkin, ordinary pumpkin to colossal pumpkin and the same things we need to change in our business that taken ordinary business. Perhaps it checked by check business or where you're working exhaustively long hours and turn into a colossal business. So here's what What you need to know about growing a pumpkin first thing is, if you want to be in the group of colossal pumpkin farmers. We call ourselves lords of the Goard's. So if you want to be really cool, we're going break and stuff will be calling ourselves Lords of the Guards. Step one is what's called seed selection. Do you know ordinary farmers go after the biggest quantity sees they can collect, the more seeds they can get, the more cheaply, the better their served. So they collect all these seeds and thrown over their massive fields because there in quantity game after all, and their big day is coming up soon. It is Halloween, Halloween. We go out to the massive fields and all these pumpkins out there, and you and your Children are looking around for the pumpkin, for the front stoop, your house or in front of your door. Maybe your child picks one up like Mommy. I want this one. You're like that looks like my mother in law. We're not getting that one right. That's what happens in my house. They pick up some odd looking pumpkins, But for the ordinary pumpkin farmer, this is a great thing because many seeds out as possible and you'll sell pumpkins. The colossal farmer their seat selection is entirely different. They go after colossal seeds, they instead buying the cheapest seed. Look at all the seeds that are available them sometimes the most expensive, sometimes not. But they evaluated under a microscope. They look into see toe. Look for the strength of the vein ege around the side of the seed. They look for seed that match the soil content in the humidity in the climate because they want to pick the seed that has the most potential for colossal growth in business. Ordinary entrepreneurs picked Easy seat. What's my competition doing that? I can just copy. I mean, this is how photographers work. So comes could do all over for Darvish Dio. This is what fine artists dio on a do it fine arts do. And this is what DJs dio. And this is what the specials of social media. That's what people on eBay dio, and this is what the baby carriage business is all about, and you better copy whatever business were in the easy seed is just copying how the industry operates its natural way to go. What I found that colossal entrepreneurs dio is they're highly selective. Their seat they pick the equivalent of a colossal seat and this is what it is. I want you to imagine your head, uh, the Olympic symbol. You know, the big rings there and on the right side, here is the first ring with a second ring of you squish them together. That kind of overlap can see that your mind's eyes And then there's one more ring down here and you push it up. There's three rings and where they intersect, that intersection in the center is the colossal seat on the right side. This first ring is called uniqueness. What makes us as business owners really unique? If we could unabashedly express who we are, if we could really be ourselves, who would we really big. And the truth is, it's usually in grade school or kindergarten when we're truly expressive of who we are when we start behaving like our natural self. And that's when our in our teachers Seo Travis, you can't do that in this class. You gotta conform in June. Oh, other friends of yours. No, you can't fit in. You gotta look like us. Got behaved like us. Can't be weird. Christin Kirsten can't be weird. You gotta be like us. And there's this pressure from peers and, um, parents and other authorities to comply. But ironically is when we were Children. We expressed ourselves. If we could recapture that uniqueness that we express for Children that still inside of us and now express it in our business, we started to form the seed. Dorian. Oscar Wilde wrote the book during Grey. Oscar Wilde has the best thing. I have it right above my desk. Donna knows this. It says, Be yourself. Everyone else has already taken. That's the definition of uniqueness. And there's historical proof of this in business. This is wildly successful. They will continue to be. And if you apply, Aiken can't guarantee success. But I guarantee, is the seeds of success Apple. It's one of the most heralded cases right now. Everyone talks about Apple. How great Apple Computers is. Steve Jobs exploited the uniqueness, something he was picked on for in grade school. High school? Does anyone here hasn't seen me present before? Are out there, know what it is? Do you know what it is? Steve Jobs was made fun off by his peers because of his fear of buttons. Steve Jobs had a button phobia. You'll never you can. You can google it right now. Out there, you will never see Steve Jobs were anything but a turtleneck or a button this shirt in any historical photos of him because Baden's freaked him out, freaked him out, and I didn't imagine I can just picture the day his engineering team came up with the first version. The IPhone, the prototype. They said it was a product out there. It's the CrackBerry, all these buttons. We just Steve developed the new IPhone and we decided to put more buttons on its better, and they probably showed it to Steve Jobs. And Steve was like in the party scene of the Matrix. Get that away right? And he's freaking out like this because it was not his uniqueness. Steve Jobs said. Get rid of the buttons, for God's sake, get rid of the button. An apple button was this made art. They made the IPhone, which the piece of art. In fact, the biggest innovation and button listening is the apple mouse. You've seen Apple Mouse. It's always a single clicker. Microsoft and IBM and always practice gone. The other way a mouse, A Microsoft mouse really envelopes your hand and you have a glove and a foot pump, for God's say, like that is a mouse. But Apple exploits Steve Jobs. Uniqueness unique is alone, unfortunately, won't bring us two colossal success. There's a second part of the sea. The second part here on the left is repeating demand from top clients. You see, if your unique that's fantastic, but no one wants it. Urine travel referred. Teoh. Oscar Wilde Is it? Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken. Well, if you if you study Oscar Wilde it all, it ends up. He passed away destitute in jail, penniless because he had a propensity to expose himself. Uh, there's not too much customer demand for exposing yourself. Hence destitute. You could be unique, but if no one wants it, you're in trouble. You have to create something that's a true expression ourselves and customers want. And when customers buy it repeatedly, they're telling you by their actions, they love what you have. Do it again and do it better in the third and final element, because perhaps many of you already there you do something that's really expressive yourself. it speaks to you. Some people want it. It's great. But if you don't have the last element, which is system ization, you can never get beyond just you. And just so we're clear on the same page of what system ization is system ization means where you can attract prospects. Have this prospects convert to be customers pay you. You can render your service, deliver your product, have them thrilled about perhaps even referring it other people all while you sleep. That's close system ization. If your business could go full cycle while you're unconscious to the world, watch out. Now you have a colossal seat, something that can grow into perpetuity. Second step to grow a colossal pumpkin. It's called sprout analysis, um, an ordinary farmer as a sprout. Start coming up out of the ground looks that the sprouts and looks for the weak ones because an ordinary farmers after quantity, after all, they want to grow as much as possible. So they're looking at the ordinary small sprouts, and they try help along. They loosen up the dirt. They give a little head of water. They sing a lullaby to it and goes little seed grow colossal farmers focus on Lee on the strongest sprouts. Ah, colossal farm will see the weak spots, perhaps, and to signore them because she knows that if they sprout is colossal now, it has potential to go the distance. If it's the strongest about, that's what's gonna grow the biggest ordinary entrepreneurs focus on weaknesses. Focus on the week. Who's who's the weakest person on my team. Maybe I have a colleague or something. He's really not getting doing well. Maybe will help someone else help. Mauer may have a contractor is not working out so well. Maybe I'll personally coach them toe improve them or who's my weakest client? Because whoever is my worst client, I'm personally devote almost all my attention to fixing this relationship. Focus on the weaknesses or the classic. What are my weaknesses Where I week? Because I gotta go back to school. For that, ordinary entrepreneurs focus on weaknesses and try to fix it. Colossal entrepreneurs focused on strengths and try to exploit it. They look at the team and say, Who are my two or three week contractors or employees? Instead, they say, who's my strongest one? Because my strongest contractor, I do everything to remove any distractions for him and allow him to focus on what he does best. My strong, my strongest client. That's the one that's getting all my attention because of a client Strong now, and I take take care of them. They can go the distance and maybe they can introduce me. Other people just like more strong clients. And what's my strength? Forget my weaknesses. I'm gonna find ways delegate that that's gonna be assigned to the last or something like that. My strengths. That's what I'm gonna dio because when I exploit my strength a strength we can amplify 10 times a weakness, we can fix me 1/2 a percent. Yet we focus. Ordinary engineers focused on the weakness. Colossal entrepreneurs focused on strength. One of things you can do right now today, immediately. If you have a client, your business is Look for the strongest client. Once I discovered this process, I didn't first right about it. By the way, I applied to my own businesses because I knew this would work. My first company. I told you I was the computer guys doing computer networks, a very boring business. But what I did was. I sat down and I evaluated all my clients, and I want you to do the same. Take your client list and sorted by revenue. Look, all the clients you've had over this last year and sort them out by the revenue that they've generated for you, most revenue to least revenue and why this is absolutely critical to your business. His clients show their appreciation, how much they need you by how much they spend with you. It's the action that matters. Inevitably, we listen the works. Inevitably, we say they say they love me. They love my baby products. They love the Google angles, they tell me, but then they don't buy from us. And the reason people don't do that is because it's socially inappropriate to say anything negative about anyone. I was doing a presentation, actually the same kind of introduction I'm doing for you right now. I was doing in Copenhagen because I don't know if I would watch him from Copenhagen right now if there's one from Copenhagen, I was right in right next to Tivoli and they had this large conference there. For mid cap companies. These are large business, a large business professionals. They got half $1,000,000, companies and bigger. And at a conference of 300 people in this audience, one American by right and I'm up there. All the presenters go there all very professional, very good. And then loud mouth American comes up dancing. Tap dancing. How's everyone doing? Let's get the energy flowing. Well, I'm so into this presentation. I have a board of this size of this huge marker. I'm drawing the seed with his big brown marker. Here's your uniqueness. Here's your systems to get well. I'm dancing around so much. I've thrown out so much energy, I start sweating a little bit. As I start sweating, I get this itch on. My brow are some large, but I gotta wipe it off. I have a huge marker. I come across with the marker. I drew freaking uni brow like this massive Neanderthal Simeon Unibrow like this big and no one's anything 300,000 perfect of 3300 professionals had opportunities to say something. They said nothing. That was interesting. I noticed something happened. I didn't know what because the whole audience all a sudden started taking lots of notes and start looking down, No one could look at my hideous face. Herren's like this. I saw a couple of people do this thing at May and drawing and what that price to is. We don't speak the truth through our words. We don't socially inappropriate. We speak the truth. There are actions. Couldn't look at me. Our clients show their value in us, how much they love us by spending with us. Never forget this. Truth is spoken through the wallet, not through the words Truth has spoken through the wall. It's not through the words. I want you to take your client list and you can do in your mind right now. Or you can just drop this down real quickly. It's what clients generate the most revenue for you today. It has done that over the last 12 months. The last year aren't even buying from you repeatedly because that's a big action saying, I love you. Other clients. I don't care how fantastic they think you're are is. If they're not buying it, you really like it or they bought it once. It may just been a gracious gesture. They by repeatedly that's when their distinguishing that they really like what you have to offer. Second thing, you need to do these clients once you sort them out by the revenue they generate. That's their appreciation for you. Now we need the judge. How much you appreciate that This is how you do it. It's called the cringe Factor. It's real simple when a client cause that first client, Travis, when that first client calls on the phone, right Hey, you know we like to buy from you again. Oh my God, they're the worst client in history. All they do is complain. They don't like the art Exactly. I fix it, fix it, fix it, kept stand them, are you? If you're praying that the phone disconnects when you pick up a client, that's a bad thing. It's called the Cringe Factor. The client gives you a cringe when the phone rings. You don't love him so much. And here's the God honest truth. If you have to customers there exactly same and you love one and you hate one or don't like you will perform better for the one you love our natural tendency. And we say in our heads all customers are fantastic. We treat all customers equally. The customer's always right. Not true. The customers we don't like. We subconsciously kind of withdraw. We kind of dodged them. What kind of throw zingers back at them sometimes, and we can't treat them well. Conversely, that same list where you have the cringe sometimes you're gonna smiley face some costumes. The phone's gonna ringing. Yes, it's a holiday. We're gonna make some money and you're thrilled. I love this customer. They don't complain. I make mistakes with them. Sometimes they allow me to fix it, and then they don't complain about me. Fixing it there just really got fixed, and they refer me to other people automatically. That's a great customer that gets a smiley face. And it's the collection of these two factors that start distinguishing your strongest sprouts when it comes to customers. It's not just the money, it's how much you love making that money. And if you have a lot of a lot of pride and joy in experiencing or working with this customer and there may be paying you a lot of money, we're on the path of something really successful. If you are making money, even lots of it, and you hate every living moment of it. That's not sustainable. That's not scalable. The third and final column in this little micro assessment of clients, it was called the Hourly Return. So look at every single client you have that you have built on this list, the ones that are making the most money and you love I want you to one more thing with them. Determine how much time you spend with them. So the client makes $1000 an hour. I'm sorry. $1000 for you and you spend one hour work doing doing the work. You may $1000 now climbing $1000 but you spent hours of the work you made 10 bucks an hour like Go get a job, Mickey Days. You'll make more money. They're a lot more. Certain clients give us the biggest return because it's the least effort, and we love working with them, and it's big money. Overall, they spend a lot with us, those of perfect clients. And when we start identifying to the perfect clients are we have an opportunity to start cloning them. I mean, just imagine for a second your very favorite client. What, you 10 of them? What he had, like, 20 of them wouldn't change your business dramatically does for for me? What? For anybody. And so my own business has the computer guy. I went through this assessment. My number one client was a bank in New Jersey's. I will not reference her name because I have a feeling they may be watching too. But there is a bank in New Jersey who spent a lot of money with me. But they were a big cringe because sometimes more often than not, they would prepare to spend a lot of money with me. They'd say we have this big project we want to do with you, Mike. And then they were back out last minute. Oh, the board of directors didn't approve it. We can't do it. I'm sorry. All the computer equipment you acquired and and all the people you brought board to come out to to our offices starting tomorrow. Cancel. Everything will reconnect within six months. It was killing me. Ironically, with the number two financially. That was actually my favorite client. It was a company called Appaloosa in Chatham, New Jersey. An appaloosa management was run by this guy named Larry. Larry was the guy who talked with me all the time and when Larry would call me and say Mike, we heard there's some new technology coming out specific to our industry. We need upgrader computers. Can you get done next week on? Can you come in such and such time? And every time Larry sent that, he'd hang up the phone and I walk over to the post office box and open it because the check was arriving. He was that on top of things. So this guy's awesome. I'd open the check or the computers and go is like clockwork. I loved Larry, and I recognized once I discovered the pumpkin plan that if I could make like five laris or 10 Larry's came over. My company will grow explosively in that $1,000,000 top line and barely surviving bomb line would change forever. I knew it. So here's what you do, and here's what I did. Once you identify your top clients, ask them to go to lunch meat with them, spend time with them, learn everything you can to get inside their mind set. Why, why you selecting me what value driving for me. So I called Larry on the phone. Say, Larry, wanna want to come out and pick you up and take you out to lunch? For some businesses, by the weight impractical, our clients are in another state or whatever. Still go to lunch with them for God's. They get on a plane and do it. It's going to the smartest marking investment ever. The $500 plane ticket in the $200 hotel and food expenses Wilmore than cover itself. Once you get inside the mind set of your best clients because you're gonna learn how to replicate them, that's how important this process is. So I went out to lunch with Larry on. I started asking questions. I asked him every question. I could understand how hedge funds operate and why a computer guy would be significant in helping him. What could we do to improve ourselves? I only found this three key questions. Three quick, quick questions you need to ask every one of your best clients. Question one is, what am I doing that's working when I do this right now, here's why. This is such an important question what the client responds to you with their telling you what they are noticing. So when I said Hey, Larry, when we doing right is a computer guy, he said, You know, you show up right on time every single time. So promptness is something he's noticing because, you know, when we have an emergency, you guys get on site within like, a couple of hours and start helping out. That's a big deal. What I discovered is all right, new then. When Larry told me that was, If he notices, I'm going on site within two hours. How do I get on site within 10 minutes? Because that will blow his mind. It's something he notices. When clients tell you you're doing something right, you an opportunity to exploit to build on that and do it at a remarkable level than ever experienced before because it's something they're ready. Noticed the second question asked by doing wrong. But here's the thing. If you ask my doing wrong, they will lie to Uni brow. They will lie to you. No one wants to tell you about your ugliness. So you ask your client when my doing wrong and like Oh, you know, everything's pretty good liars, So you can't ask that question. Instead, ask, what is my industry doing wrong? And that's how I did with Larry, said they. Larry, you've worked with other computer guys. I'm not your first like computer guy had computer guys before May. Well, tear comes down. I said, What do you think about the computer industry? What's wrong with my industry? And that's when Larry said, Oh, you know, computer guys like you, your bill rates are awfully high, and sometimes you charge like ridiculous amounts for stupid things. I remember him telling me a story. This is when the Palm Pilot was It was a big deal because we bought a Palm Pilot for 200 bucks and you charge $500 to install it. I consider that the rip off I hate that about you about the industry, and what he was telling me was when he doesn't like about the industry was really the egg on my face we didn't like about me stuff. I had to fix and result and come up with a new way so that he be content. And 1/3 question that you have to ask is what other vendors do depend on whether vendors to depend on other vendors that work with you right now and that you depend on, and that question is a juicy one. It can change businesses prolifically, so I will share a little more detail on that in a minute. But that's the three questions. The third step to growing colossal pumpkin is the watering process. You know, the ordinary farmer uses a saturation system. You can see out the country roads out of the city here anywhere you live. There's these massive saturation systems, these big pipes, that role on these tyres. Ever see these they come across. He probably ever seen running by the way they don't run during the day is too much of apurate of effect. So they kick off a night and they go very slowly across the field, pumping as much water into the plant as possible. And the idea behind this is yet one shot of giving water to the plants. Pump it in very ordinary farming approach. The colossal farmer uses a process called saturation. What they dio is a crank in as much. I'm sorry they crank in just enough amount of water into a plant, and then you walk away. And then once the roots of absorb it, they crank in a little bit more water and cranking a little bit more in the quenching process the colossal farmers use. You hit a plant with water up to 20 times a day to maximize absorption of water. Ordinary entrepreneurs, saturation. Perhaps you've experienced that. Hopefully you're not doing it. Saturation is work. Oh, my God. I need to sell. I gotta sell. I'm just gonna go anywhere and everywhere. Just blasts out what I dough the judge for higher. I don't care what it is D day for D J, right? And you're yelling it out to everybody and then perhaps even experiences. You go to a a networking event and that one you'll sit in there, your have your doughnut and you have, like, a coffee. You're sitting here, your chit, chat it up again. You have kids having kids. So I didn't know you talk. And then all of a sudden, the door opens and the guy comes in and he's got like, it looks like I got two guns on his hips and it's all business cards and everyone sits there and it was like, Oh, God, here we go And that guy lines up, start sticking out the cards that everybody right, take my cart. Here's why do Here's what to buy for me. Buy from me and you're sitting there and you're eating. You're don't just biting into it and the guy comes up to you and jams it in your mouth and it continues on, and that guy goes home and then wonders why we're not getting business because he's saturating. He's hitting the roots too hard, too fast. You can't develop a relationship that way. Colossal entrepreneurs use a quenching process. They simply go to the same spot. They give just enough. Just enough, just enough. When I discovered with sat Down with Larry, the hedge fund guy and started asking me, You know, we're hedge funds, hang out where you guys go and he told me, Well, this was during our lunch, she says. Well, I said, Do you read like Inc magazine, for example, like I Love Inc or Entrepreneur Magazine, Fast Company And he said, No, I don't read those. All the hedge fund guys read this magazine called More hedge. Okay, we're doing hedge funds. Hang out Where you guys network to go to the Chamber of Commerce or or you know, he's like, No, he's like we go to the to hedge fund conferences. There's one in Greenwich, Connecticut, in one in Long Beach, California Oh, so that day nothing. It's Chamber of commerce. It's an awesome platform, but not for my top clients. I left the chamber commerce who went to these two events every single day, and then I stop reaching out to Inc magazine and entrepreneur still write for my own interest, but I wasn't gonna try do any advertising through through them. I called more hedge, and I call this the magazines that I heard your magazine for. Hedge funds. I'm a technology guy and I got a hedge fund client. Is there anything I could do with you guys? You know, what kind of looking for a journalist? Would you be willing to write hedge fund technology articles? They said there's one caveat. We only pay 150 bucks an article. I'm like, I love the caveat. Give me money. I'll advertise to him all day, I think, paid to advertise to my best clients. Question for you is Where do your top clients hang out? Ask them and then start appearing there. Go there frequently. The power of frequency is pretty amazing. When I started going to the hedge fund locations, when I was appearing in Greenwich, Connecticut, and in Long Beach, California, people started seeing me frequently and the more frequently they started seeing me. They start trusting me, and I didn't need to go and start pushing cards. I just started appearing and frequent. See face to face, time builds, know like and trust right? And then they started buying from me just by appearing where the hedge funds were appearing. Within a year, I picked up about five Mawr. Larry's five more companies, just like Appaloosa. Huge business for May. Huge business for May. Frequency is such a powerful thing. What people say, Well, that doesn't work. I need to market like crazy frequencies so powerful it's worked on all of us. If you ever seen like a Coke commercial, it's worked on you. It's worked on this How it works. You watching Olympics was like the London Olympics. You know Michael Phelps is gonna win like the 100 billion gold, the most awarded Olympian of all time. He comes out of the water, and in this race and breath, my spirit comes on is like Michael Phelps just won the gold. We're gonna go to the gold medal ceremony. This is incredible. And then they cut to commercial and you see this pristine Coca Cola bottle sitting there like a bead of sweat dripping down and you look at it almost like a polar bear hand comes up and grabs it, which is bizarre, which is very bizarre, right? It is polar bear like chugs it down. But whatever Coke knows, not a single one of us is watching the Olympics and going, Oh, my God, I should be drinking Coca Cola right now Am I doing? I'm out of here and run into the food store. Cook doesn't want that. Coke is achieving frequency more frequently. We see someone or something the more we trust it, and Coke knows every time that logos and from our face chances are we're trust the brand that much more chances are next time you go to the food store. If you are in the market for a soda and you see a leader of Coke and a leader of generic soda. You have the propensity to buy the Coke, and the ironic thing is logically. We know the greens from the same. It's carbonated water, caramel color and sugar, and lots of it right there, literally identical but in the code cost a dollar more. We buy the Coke because we trust the brand more. That's the power frequency frequencies so powerful that when you drink the coke, you're like this is distinctly good. This tastes so much better than the generic soda. So much better than any other alternative brand. Right frequency actually changes our brain operation toe actually taste things differently. There's been so many tests about this. When people do blind taste tests of different products, they can't determine the price when they see the logo first, like Oh, that's definitely a Coke. There's been wind tests, is my favorite example. There's been wine tests we put down the bottle, put down the bottle, he said. This one's $50 a bottle with $7 about which one tastes better. They tasted the $50 bottle wins out every time they do the exact same thing they poured in a blind taste test. People can't tell the difference there, except they're both exceptional. What we see frequently and what we hear then, predetermines how we're gonna judge our experience. We as entrepreneurs, have a huge opportunity here. We don't have a Coca Cola budget. I get it. But if we know who our best clients are, our top seeds and we appear there frequently they're gonna start seeing is more and more where they're gonna be steeped in us. They're gonna value us more and more. They're gonna have a better experience with us. They're gonna want us to win. That's the power of frequency. That's the power quenching, not saturated. Two more things I wanted to share about the overview of the pumpkin plan. And then we're gonna dig into this in such detail. I want to be going back and forth a lot of questions. That's one really fired up about, but two more things you need to know. The third of the, uh, 12 3/4 process to growing colossal pumpkin. It's called route analysis. And don't worry, this isn't a math test or something like that. Not that kind of route Square Root Math route like under the ground. Do you know the ordinary? Pumpkin farmers don't care so much about the root system. They look at the surface level. If you're an ordinary farmer, you're in the quantity game. The more pumpkins you grow, the more quickly for Halloween, the better your served. So everything's at the surface level. You sit in your big old tractor, you shoot down the farm and you're just looking for signs of blight or disease. If there's a lot of plants that are showing disease, he throw down some pesticides, chemicals, and hopefully you're back into the quantity. Colossal farmers where these crazy freaking goggles that, like the FBI, has firefighters use that can literally see through walls. And they put these goggles on. And they look to seek underground the health of the root system because a colossal farmer recognizes the route represents and could get through this size, by the way, that entire health, the plant, a route in the final growing days, gets this size and compose in £50 of weight onto a growing pumpkin. True, you could put your ear to the ground, usually during night. That's When the water that takes in the most the plant takes in the most water, you can hear the water rushing into the plant. And if a gofer or some disease or something happens, that root system game over, the entire plant dies. So colossal farmers know it's what's happening underground that matters. So what's the analogy to entrepreneurs? Do you know ordinary entrepreneurs? Very surface level. They do surface level maneuvers all the time. In the most common one I see is with clients. We asked for client referrals. This is so commonplace that we've actually been trained on this. I suspect that someone, somewhere has told you your guy asked client referrals, and I found that's a very ordinary practice. An ordinary entrepeneur does. This will go to a client saying, We just I just delivered my product to you. How was your experience? It was fantastic, and I had a great time, great experience, and I love your product. Then we say, Okay, they loved it, which probably lying to you socially appropriate. But they say we then are told to do this well, if you left the product so much, would you happen to have other friends or acquaintances that could potentially also use the product I could contact. And then they say, Yeah, sure, also lying to They don't want to give it to you And then we always think it's kind of weird. We we get the phone number. They write down on the email. We got the phone number and we open the paper that they gave us. My 555 I thought that was just movies like How can you call that number? You can you can. And if you think from the client's perspective, giving referrals is a bad move, Why? Because you're diluting their attention and just gave me great service. And now she's asked me for a referral. I refer to one of my friends. I'll go and attention anymore. I'm diluting our attention, and it's uneven defensive to me. I just gave her good money for her service and her product, and she's saying is not enough. I got to give her more colossal entrepreneurs don't go for client referrals. They make them happen automatically. Remarkable service, and they go for the vendor. Well, that question I said, never forget this question. What other vendors to depend on. This is where comes into play? I asked Larry, the hedge fund guy said, Where do, uh, I'm sorry whether benders depend on And he came back and said, Well, why do you care what other vendors do I depend on? I said, Larry, if I know the guy that cleans the office here and I connect with them, maybe I'll find out when I set my computers. I'm putting cables and stuff in the wrong spot and then when, when they're doing their vacuuming cleaning like I'm messing up the whole cleaning process so maybe we can collaborate and Larry said, like, You're the first person ever to ask me that. That's genius. I want you to connect with my vendors because you conserve me better. You see by asking the question, What vendors You depend on your not diluting your attention to the client. You're focusing it. I'm trying to serve Larry better. So Larry introduced me to a few of his vendors, one Cummings called I Matrix, which may trading desks, the cleaning guy and some other people. I then called them up and said, Hey, we have a mutual client. We both serve Larry, go Larry's awesome, like I know my client to Why don't we collaborate? I'm the computer guy. You're the trading desk guys, one guy called. I said I put my computer on your trained as we should contact if served Larry better. So the meeting was a no brainer with a mutual client. I meet with this trading desk. I He then tells me that when I, uh when I go out there and set my computers that I'm putting the cable, the data cables for the computers in the wrong spot and he has to Pullman he's a yank out the cables. When we said our computers, when he expands the desk causes in the wrong spot, he's a camel e anchor. I was like, Oh my God, that's every time you guys change the desk around. We were having computer problems. I didn't realize we're messing something up. And Larry was getting upset every time they expanded the deaths for new traders, new brokers, the computers were going down when the training, this guy told me, would put the cable. We never had a problem again. Larry, our mutual client, was thrilled. The trading desk. I was thrilled. No, more problems. No more computer problems. The real miracle happened about, I don't know. Maybe it was a week. I'm sorry. A month or two after we started working together with Larry or Mutual client the trained, this guy called me and said, I got another hedge fund just like Larry. We're saying if they're trading desk, haven't picked a computer guy yet. Would you be interested? I'm like, yes, extremely interested. And they introduced me to hedge fund after Hedge Fund after hedge fund, my company went from a 1,000, top line dying bottom line to two million top line, very profitable by line because replicating my best clients, the one of the best hourly return, were coming in over and over and over again. Colossal entrepreneurs that want to grow their business focus on the vendor network and they master it and they master the vendor network around serving in replicating those top clients. The final step to growing colossal pumpkin, the pruning process and and and we're gonna dig into this into big detail over the next couple days. But this is how pruning works. If you're an ordinary farmer, you don't prove so much. You're in the quantity game. More pumpkins, the better colossal pumpkin farmers prune like crazy. If a little pumpkin starts growing up on the vine and they have a colossal pumpkin here, the colossal farmer will remove that pumpkin immediately because he knows if that pumpkin that little ones allowed to grow its stealing nutrients and water away from classle pumpkin. And interestingly, the colossal pumpkin farmer doesn't say Oh, little pumpkin, We have such a good report together. Five give you five weeks notice, uh, and a severance package to join another patch. He removes it instantly and collapse. Entrepreneurs do the same thing. Colossal entrepreneurs have the discipline to say no to the little pumpkins and turn them away a lot because they know every time they say yes to a little pumpkin that they're taking away Nutrients from what's colossal in the Little Pumpkins, by the way, are often labelled as opportunities. Ordinary entrepreneurs love opportunities. Oh, here's an opportunity, little pumpkin. Here's an opportunity, pumpkin. I should be doing this. Oh, I could do this. And constantly growing little pumpkins. Classle entrepreneurs, after going through the process, know what their colossal pumpkin is and protected with their life a little pumpkin comes up an opportunity and they say No if it doesn't feed my classes. Pumpkin note. No, no freshman studies Most successful entrepreneurs. The most successful entrepreneurs say no to opportunities 10 times more than they say. Yes, struggling entrepreneurs say yes to opportunities 10 times more than they say. No. One final thing I wanted to share is, Ah, what people say. OK, Mike, I get this, I'm ready. I'm revved up for the next two days. We're gonna apply this to my business, but it's have a little bit risky. You're saying focus on a niche, dominate the niche, block other things. If opportunity sprouted up that aren't fitting, that you're telling me, Get rid of them. That's risky. That's that's a little too risky for me. I want a guarantee. I want absolute guarantee that this is gonna work for May. Well, good news. I have an absolute guarantee for you. Unfortunately, the guarantees with the ordinary pumpkin farmer you know, ordinary pumpkin farmers are guaranteed never to grow a colossal pumpkin. We will never drive than any country road anywhere in this world in a huge pumpkin farm and all of a sudden miraculously, a colossal pumpkin just sprouted out of patch. The ordinary pot process of the quantity game prohibits colossal growth. It can't happen. The only way to grow class of pumpkin is by focus now, interestingly, as I studied these colossal farmers, I found, and sometimes it doesn't work out. Sometimes a pumpkin starts growing so quickly it actually collapses under its own weight. Other times it just doesn't sprout, doesn't take off. And sometimes season isn't right that weather conditions aren't right. It just comes down and snowing in the summer or hail and it destroys the pumpkin field. But what was fascinating about the colossal farmers is none of them said, Oh, the process is broken. I gotta try a different way. They went back to the shed, pick the next colossal seed and start the process over again. All they said waas it wasn't my season. And that's why found with colossal entrepreneurs to what you're about to learn over these next two days is the process. There is no other process. This is how you grow colossal business, and we'll share case studies and and proof that this works and you're gonna start even experiencing. I believe in your own businesses as you sit here or as you watch. The thing is, no one can guarantee success because the perfect process has to match up with the perfect season. And that's something no one none of us has control over. But you follow the process in the season, plays into your favor, you're gonna spark colossal growth. And if the season doesn't match up, you have to have the courage, and we hope to inspire that. I hope that spies spy that you to stick it out for yet another season in another season until your process works.