How much money have you lost in a day? In this episode, I’m going to tell you how I lost $11 million in one day, and some secrets that I learned that helped me become a digital monetizer.

How I Lost $11 Million in 1 Day

In the spring of 2000 I was a 25-year-old CEO of a publicly-traded SAAS (software as a service) company. My beautiful wife Crystal and I had been married for about 16 months, we had bought our first home, and she was pregnant with our first daughter. 

In just 5 years between 1995 and 2000 the Nasdaq had skyrocketed more than 500% from under 1,000 to more than 5,000. The Nasdaq peaked at 5,048 on March 10, 2000, and by October 4, 2002, had plummeted by 76% to only 1,139. By the end of 2001, most dotcom stocks had gone bust.

The Collateral Damage

When the dotcom bubble burst my company had not yet reached profitability and was dependent on investors who were funding our software development and marketing. I painfully remember losing $11 million in a single day on the stock market, all from my ownership in my company. When the dotcom bubble burst, investors stopped almost all of their investments in Internet companies. After all of our investment dried up, our investors and I lost the company. I feel horrible for the investors who trusted me and lost their investments, the great team members who lost their jobs, and the hardships that resulted for their families.

The next year, as I focused on growing a horribly unprofitable Internet business, I only earned about $11,000 total for the entire year, or about 1% of what I had lost in a single day the previous year. My family survived in part because of the generosity of others, such as my sweet mother-in-law, Laree Ullery, who regularly brought us groceries and diapers for our new baby girl.

When our daughter was only a couple of weeks old, a key employee quit. This was understandable because of our tenuous financial situation, but we didn’t have the funds to hire a replacement. My wife Crystal stepped into that role and then another, and did an amazing job at everything she touched. She worked more than 2 years, bringing our daughter with her to work each day, without being paid anything, to help us get back up on our feet. 

Our oldest daughter spent the first two years of her life coming into the office. As soon as she learned to walk she began going from office to office, pushing the “off” buttons on everyone’s tower computers. She was delighted at how quickly this got our attention. We finally got smart and started taping business cards over the buttons.

Heat Seeking Missile Aimed at Monetization

The first secret that I learned from this catastrophic experience was to be insanely focused on monetization. During the time leading up to the dotcom bubble I was doing a lot of “good” things that an entrepreneur should do, such as working with press releases and the media, raising money and managing relationships with investors, finding and operating an office space, dealing with HR issues, etc. These are all important things. However, our unprofitable business was like an airplane on a runway. We were trying to get the acceleration we needed to take off but the sudden dotcom bubble burst instantly shortened our runway. I had been so focused on “good” things, that I didn’t spend enough time focused on the most important thing: Monetization… getting us to profitability as fast as humanly possible. 

This experience seared into my soul the lesson that as an entrepreneur my top priority is to be a heat-seeking missile aimed at monetization. When a business reaches sustainable profitability it is no longer dependent on investors and to a great degree becomes the master of its own destiny. When my business was not profitable I did not have the luxury of being distracted by anything other than the top priority of monetization. If I had it to do over again, I would have locked myself in a room with my developers and would not have come out until we had a software product that was completed, working great and that our customers loved. 

This doesn’t mean that other things like HR issues are not important. However, the best thing that entrepreneurs can do to provide stability for their team members is to focus on monetization and get their business to sustainable profitability. 

Read the rest of the blog post at https://www.monetizationnation.com/3-secrets-i-learned-from-losing-11-million-in-a-day/.

A few years ago Russell Brunson was mentoring a group of entrepreneurs and he promised them that if they published something every day for a year on their blog, YouTube channel or podcast, they would become financially free. Some of those entrepreneurs took Russell up on that challenge, began publishing every day, and became incredibly successful. One of those amazingly successful entrepreneurs was Stephen J. Larsen. 

Stephen tells his story of attending Russell Brunson’s Funnel Hacking Live event in San Diego. Stephen couldn’t afford a taxi. So, when his flight arrived he rented a bicycle, held his luggage over his shoulder, and peddled to Funnel Hacking Live through downtown San Diego. Stephen didn’t have enough money for a hotel room, so he slept on a couch in the hotel.  

I have heard Stephen tell the story of when Russell challenged him to publish every day, the challenge that changed everything for him. Before the event, Stephen had told his wife that was the one thing Russell might ask him to do that he wasn’t going to do. However, there at the event, Stephen chose to trust Russell and accept the challenge and begin to publish every day. 

As a result, Stephen has become one of the leading experts in the world on digital offer creation. In 2018 Stephen left his job to start his business from scratch, with no revenue or product. He reached $1 million in revenue in only 13 months.  I attended Stephen’s packed Offer Mind event before COVID-19 hit. I have paid Stephen to teach me how to create effective digital offers and I’ve witnessed firsthand some of the success Stephen has had because he accepted this daily publishing challenge. 

365-Everyday Music Tour

I recently listened to a podcast from Russell Brunson talking about a newlywed couple named Jim and Sam who had been unsuccessfully trying to break into the music industry for almost 10 years. This couple decided on a whim that they were going to do a concert every day for a year, and to create a documentary of their journey. At the beginning, the couple was performing for anyone who would listen, such as a group of tree trimmers. By the end, the couple was performing to tens of thousands of people. 

The documentary is called After So Many Days, and it was named the winner of the Best Music Documentary Feature at the Nashville Film Festival 2020. It has been an official selection at more than 30 film festivals.

In the trailer, Jim says: “So here we go, making something happen every single day.” This is profound. There is a power in doing something small every single day, and the cumulative effect of that consistency creates amazing transformation.

Read the rest of this blog at: https://www.monetizationnation.com/2-how-to-gamify-goals-to-radically-increase-our-chance-of-success/.

My name is Nathan Gwilliam, the host of Monetization Nation. I will be your guide through your journey to become a better digital monetizer. Let’s imagine that you and I were going on a safari to observe African wild animals together (I’ve always wanted to do that). If we were choosing between different safari guides, would we rather hire one who has never done it before or one with a lot of experience? We would probably want a guide with many years of experience successfully helping tourists quickly navigate to the best wildlife while keeping them safe from the dangerous animals. This is similar to my role with this show; to help you navigate the most effective digital monetization strategies that can transform your profitability while helping keep you safe.

I feel so arrogant when I talk about myself, but I need to start off by telling you a little bit about me and my story so you can trust me as your guide to becoming a better digital monetizer.

I am a Creator

I am an incurable creator. For some reason, I always have to be creating and growing something. For example, I have a 5,000 square foot garden where I grow plants vertically, plus an orchard with 3 dozen trees. I have more than a dozen fruit trees growing inside my house. 

I am also a serial entrepreneur and I am passionate about creating my own businesses. I have been building digital ventures for 24 years, ever since I won the university business plan competition my junior year in college and started my first business, Adoption.com, in a college computer lab. With a talented team, we grew Adoption.com to be the world’s most-used adoption site. I’ve created and sold three digital ventures, including two that the Walt Disney Internet Group tried to buy. 

I’m also passionate about helping grow other businesses, and over the years, I’ve helped many other companies grow. For example, I worked as a part-time consultant Chief Revenue Officer for one digital company and helped them add $5 million of new revenue in 12 months. The Walt Disney Internet group also tried to buy that company. As another example, I helped a local media company in a small market to grow their social follows from less than 100,000 to more than 110 million. According to Unmetric, that local media company reached more than 40 million monthly comments, likes, and shares, which I have been told made them the most engaging social channels of any publisher for a period of time. I also created a network of sites in multiple languages which reached more 280 million monthly uniques.

Not everything I’ve done has been successful. For example, in my first episode, I shared the story of being a 25-year-old CEO of a publicly-traded software company in the year 2000 when the dotcom bubble burst and losing $11 million in a day.

What is the show about?

This Monetization Nation show is about digital monetization, which is the process of converting assets into revenue and profit. Many entrepreneurs, CEOs, and other business leaders already have great assets, such as website traffic, social following, great products, technology, a book they’ve written, customer lists, data, expertise, a talented team, capital, and/or content. In this show, we will explore how to identify and more effectively monetize these assets.  

Through the Monetization Nation blog, podcast, YouTube channel, eMagazine, and social channels I will be posting stories and secrets I’ve learned from my successes and failures over decades on my journey to become a digital monetizer. My goal is to help accelerate your success as a digital monetizer. 

I will also be posting interviews with highly successful entrepreneurs, CEOs, marketers, and other digital monetizers who will share their monetization stories and secrets. I’ve already filmed 35 of these interviews. The interviews were originally about an hour each, but we’re editing them down to about 30 minutes with the best parts of the interviews to save you time. 

Read the rest of the article at https://www.monetizationnation.com/want-to-be-a-better-digital-monetizer/

Where the Story Begins

Moviegoers tend to love great origin stories. We want to know how beloved or hated characters became the hero or villain. We want details and stories to help us make sense of their decisions and motivations. Some great movies telling origin stories include Batman Begins, Guardians of the Galaxy, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Iron Man, Monsters University, and Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

My much less exciting origin story begins as an entrepreneurship student at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. I was 18 years old, a freshman in college, and I knew nothing about the internet. 

Mission in Brazil

After my first year in college, I left to go on a 2-year mission to Brazil where I helped people transform their lives and families by coming to Jesus Christ. While I was in Brazil I fell in love with the children on the streets in the northern part of Brazil where I served. These children were very poor. As these children approached me and asked for money, I would give them change from my pocket, but because I was a volunteer missionary, and did not receive any salary, that money quickly ran out. I vowed to do something to make a lasting difference for these children when I returned to the United States. 

The Internet was the Wild West

Before I left for Brazil, I had not even heard of the internet. While I was in Brazil the internet took off. When I returned home, the internet felt like the days of the Wild West, where you could stake your claim on a piece of land, and if you worked the land for a period of time, the people became the owners of that homestead. It was a new frontier where people could pick which area they wanted, and if they worked it well, become the "owner” or category king of that niche.

Brazilian Adoption Program and the Pivot

During my sophomore year in college, I tried to start a Brazilian adoption program with my father, who was an adoption attorney. However, thanks to some very strict and ridiculous Brazilian adoption laws that are not in the best interest of children (I’m very passionate about this topic if you can’t tell…) we were not able to make it work. Some entrepreneurs would look at that as a failure, but I don’t see it that way. It was a necessary stepping stone or pivot to discover the Adoption.com business model. 

I have learned that essentially every successful entrepreneur has had to learn what didn’t work and then pivot to a business model that was much more successful. Pivoting is almost a rite of passage of successful entrepreneurs. Consider as an example Instagram, which began as a location-based check-in service, and then turned into the social media giant it is today thanks to a great pivot. 

The Fateful Phone Call

During the first week of school my junior year, I answered a call from someone who wanted to speak with one of my roommates. The caller left a message about a new HTML class for creating internet sites. The caller wanted my roommate to take the class with him. Neither the caller nor my roommate ended up taking the class, but I did. Before I even signed up for the second class, I was hooked on the idea of creating internet businesses.

To read the rest of the blog post visit: https://www.monetizationnation.com/4-5-secrets-from-my-entrepreneurial-origin-story/

During the last 23+ years of my business career I’ve experienced various tectonic shifts in the business landscape firsthand. For businesses that did not adapt to those tectonic shifts, those shifts were very destructive. The businesses that seized the opportunities of those shifts often had the power to rise above their much stronger competitors. During this episode, we’ll take a look at three of these tectonic shifts and the effects they’ve had on transforming businesses, right after this intro.

1. The Tectonic Shift from Brick and Mortar to the Internet

“The tectonic, technology-driven shifts that characterize the Internet Century have rendered some of the commonly accepted strategic fundamentals we learned … on the job incorrect.”

- Eric Schmidt, Former Google CEO

I remember arriving at college my freshman year in 1992 and having no idea what the internet was. And yet, by 1996 I was creating Adoption.com.

Blockbuster vs. Netflix

The story of Blockbuster and Netflix is a great example of the tectonic shift from bricks and mortar business to internet business.

Blockbuster was the king of video rentals in the late 90’s. They owned more than 9,000 stores in the United States, had 84,000 employees around the world, and had 65 million registered customers. The company received $800 million in late fees alone in one year and at its peak was valued at $3 billion (Source: Business Insider). They must have felt invincible in their industry. 

Netflix was created in 1997. It wasn’t the streaming giant it is today. Back then it was simply an online video rental company. It’s main differentiators were that it shipped the DVDs to customers and it didn’t have late fees. The founders of Netflix, Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings, believed that the internet was the future but weren’t having much success competing with a giant like Blockbuster. 

“While Blockbuster… focused on brick-and-mortar video stores, technological innovations meant that competition was on the rise.” 

- Irene Kim, Business Insider 

In 2000, Randolph and Hastings met with the Blockbuster CEO. They came with the offer of selling Netflix for $50 million. Owning Netflix would allow Blockbuster to be the king of both physical and online video rentals. But the CEO laughed at the deal, considering Netflix to be a niche business. 

When Randolph and Hastings went into that meeting, Randolph describes feeling like “a country mouse in a big city” standing in his shorts and t-shirt when Blockbuster’s CEO came in with his “beautiful Italian shoes” (Source: GQ). However, the Netflix co-founders understood the powerful tectonic shift taking place while the Blockbuster CEO did not. 

Ten years after that ill-fated meeting, Netflix was posting earnings of $116 million while Blockbuster was declaring bankruptcy. Blockbuster had the resources, reach, and reputation. If they had effectively leveraged the shift to the Internet, they would have catapulted their growth. Instead, the Netflix small startup was able to surpass the giant industry leader greatly because they took advantage of the tectonic shift. 

2. The Tectonic Shift from Printed Yellow Pages to Search Engines 

Do you remember that giant phone book that used to get dropped off at your house every year? The yellow pages were filled with different size advertisements of businesses to help people find whatever they were looking for. Advertising in the Yellow Pages was so popular because its audience was ready to spend when they opened the pages. In fact, 9 in 10 customers who saw Yellow Page ads made a purchase (Source: Simmons Market Research Bureau). Many industries enjoyed great returns from their Yellow Page advertisements, such as attorneys who gained $17 per dollar spent, restaurants that earned about $3.50 per dollar spent, and car dealers that earned around $280 per dollar spent (Source: CRM Associates). 

“The Yellow Pages have offered advertisers and businesses an extremely strong and steady return on investment in a medium they can count on — providing a direct, measurable, cost-efficient vehicle for their marketing expenditures.”

• John Greco, President and CEO of the Yellow Pages Integrated Media Association

The Yellow Pages were slow to adapt to the internet. In 1995 Elon Musk approached the Yellow Pages with an offer to partner with them and get the Yellow Pages online. As Musk tells it the executive “picked up the Yellow Pages – this book, this big thick book full of ads, this multibillion-dollar risk industry – and threw it at me and said, ‘You ever think you’re going to replace this?’” (Source: CNBC). 

By the 2000’s, internet search engines were already beginning to cut into the Yellow Pages’ profits with 1 in 3 consumers using internet over Yellow Pages (Source: AdAge). Yellow Page publishers slowly began putting their content online as well as in print around this time but search engines were continuing to change the game. 

Google introduced targeted, pay-per-click advertising that was changing the world of advertising. As Larry Page, Google’s Co-Founder and CEO described the new product,  “AdWords offers the most technologically advanced features available, enabling any advertiser to quickly design a flexible program that best fits its online marketing goals and budget.”

“Yellow Page usage among people, say, below 50, will drop to near zero over the next five years.”

• Bill Gates, said in 2007 (Source: Seattle Times)

Over the years, consumers turned more and more to internet searches. By 2014, more than half of the United States had replaced their phone books with online searches (Source: comScore). Marketers turned to internet advertising because of the returns and flexibility it offered while Yellow Pages has a 1 out of 5 rating in overall satisfaction (Source: Rhino Digital). 

The yellow pages already had the relationships with the advertisers, the reputation and loyal subscribers. They could have been unstoppable in transforming to a business search engine. However, they were slow to take advantage of the tectonic shift occurring and because of that they’ve practically been buried by search engine startups. Google took full advantage of this shift and has experienced massive growth thanks to it. In 2019 Google had $29.9 billion in just ad revenue while the yellow pages announced their last printing of their physical phonebook (Source: Owler). 

The Tectonic Shift from Desktop and Dumb Phones to Smartphones 

Thanks to the immense capabilities of smartphones, we are able to do almost anything on them. Mobile has become the most popular platform for gaming, social networking, and now shopping, with about four out of five Americans making purchases on their mobile devices (Source: Pew Research Center). In fact, 52% of global website traffic comes from mobile devices (Source: GS Stat Counter). 

The tectonic shift from dumbphones and desktop computers to smartphones became very apparent to me when I was sending my oldest daughter to college. I offered to buy her a laptop and her response to me was that she didn’t need one. She believed she could do everything she needed from her smartphone. Although she eventually agreed to the laptop, it amazed me to realize how much people are shifting away from desktop computers and even laptops.

The invention of mobile apps has led to the creation of many startup companies that are able to surpass their larger internet rivals thanks to the ease-of-use smartphones offer. Let’s take a look at how Uber was able to break up the near monopoly taxis held for decades. 

Taxis had been a necessary headache in the world of travel for a long time. The first problem of taxis was getting one. Hailing a taxi from the side of the road during busy traffic required riders to wave their arms and hope that a taxi would come driving by and stop just when they needed it. It was also a problem for taxi drivers who would often waste fuel and money driving around searching for passengers. 

I can remember my own very frustrating experience trying to hail a taxi in London during rush hour to get to one of the most important business meetings of my life. I stood on the corner trying to hail a taxi as literally hundreds of them drove past me. Each minute that passed made me worry more  that I was going to miss my meeting. It took me more than half an hour to get a taxi to stop and take me.  

The solution to this hailing problem was to call and order a cab. However, when you did that, it often took a very long time for the taxi to arrive. There was no guarantee that your cab would actually arrive when you needed it. It may come early, late, or never at all. And of course, as you stood there waiting for your ride, you had no idea if the taxi was just around the corner or in the completely wrong part of town. 

Once you got a taxi, you had to hope that your driver understood where you wanted to go. Airports were easy enough but almost any other location, even major hotels, could cause confusion and have you end up somewhere you never wanted to be. 

And then there’s the cost of the trip, which your driver could change on you at any moment. Regularly in my travels the taxi payment screen would tell me my cost was a certain amount but the driver told me the cost was actually more expensive because of special circumstances or fees. 

And, you never knew if the taxi driver in an unknown city was taking the shortest route, or driving a longer route to increase the mileage fee.

Based on how much difficulty and frustration surrounded using taxis, it’s not surprising that a company like Uber came along to improve things using the tectonic shift of mobile. It’s only surprising just how much of an improvement they were able to create. Uber’s ride-sharing app ultimately erased almost every challenge related to getting a ride. 

“[Uber] is the perfect illustration of how the ubiquity of smartphones enabled clever entrepreneurs to take friction out of a process that, until Uber came along, seemed set in stone.”

- Roger Dooley, Author of Brainfluence: 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince Consumers with Neuromarketing 

As you know, with Uber, riders are able to secure a ride almost always exactly when they need it, put their address into the GPS and share it with the driver so there is no confusion about the destination. The driver and rider can see the route and how much the ride will cost them even before the ride starts. Uber is so fast that I have had to stop requesting an Uber from my hotel room, because I usually cannot even walk from my hotel room to the hotel entrance before the Uber arrives. Riders are even able to see how close their driver is to them so they don’t have to stress about why their ride is a few minutes late. 

In 2019, Uber’s annual revenue was $65 billion (Source: Uber) with 110 million monthly active users (source: Wikipedia).

Taxis had been the industry leader for so many years. Buying a taxi medallion was one of the surest investments someone could make. As the New York Times reported, “Taxi ownership once seemed a guaranteed route to financial security, something that was more tangible and reliable than the stock market since people hailed cabs in good times and bad (Source: New York Times). However, by April 2020, 94% of taxi trips in New York City were from ride sharing companies, with Uber accounting for 67% of all those trips. In Chicago, traditional taxis have seen trip numbers drop 96% from April 2019 to April 2020.

The taxi industry had the resources it needed to create an app and make the other necessary changes to take advantage of this tectonic shift. But because they did not effectively adapt to the shift, along with other consumer needs, Uber has achieved dominance in their industry.

Key Takeaways 

Here are some of the key takeaways that stood out to me from today’s episode:

1. We need to quickly and effectively identify, leverage, and protect our businesses from the tectonic shifts that are constantly happening.
   
   
2. Just because our business is a powerful industry leader does not mean that a tectonic shift cannot disrupt our business. It will happen. Count on it.
   
   
3. Don’t underestimate the upstart business in our industry that is successfully leveraging the tectonic shift. Find a way to acquire or work with them, or leverage the same tectonic shift before they leapfrog us.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow the following channels to receive free digital monetization content:

1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
2. Follow the Monetization Nation Blog.
3. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine.
4. Join our private Monetization Nation Facebook Group.
5. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
6. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. 
7. Connect with Nathan on Linkedin. 
8. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram. 
9. Follow Monetization Nation on Twitter.

Challenge

If we desire monetization we have never before achieved, we must leverage strategies we have never before implemented. I challenge each of us to pick one thing that resonated with us from today’s episode and schedule a time this week to implement it to help achieve our monetization goals.

Share Your Story

What business tectonic shifts have you seen? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Sometimes, we as entrepreneurs and CEOs implement “normal” or traditional strategies that we learned in our business schools. These may be the strategies that are supposed to work or the strategies that many other companies are using, yet we don’t see the results we were expecting. In this episode, we’re going to talk about one of the most common reasons this happens, and we’ll discuss a more effective way to accomplish what matters most.

Doing Things The Same Way as Everyone Else

Years ago I began working with a company that had a very talented, successful, and intelligent executive. This executive (who was not the CEO) had graduated from a great business school where he had been taught strategies and models that have been widely used to run many successful businesses in the past. 

The problem was, these were the same strategies and models that were being implemented by a huge number of businesses around the world. If most business leaders are following the same business strategies and models, then the business with the best resources is often going to win. This could spell disaster for the entrepreneur starting out with fewer resources and brand recognition than the larger companies. 

This is one of the reasons why close to half of all small businesses fail within the first five years and only 1 in 3 stay in business for 10 years (Source: Forbes). They simply don’t have the resources to compete head-on with the larger, more established companies.

Finding a More Effective Way

When I started working with this company, they gave me a very ambitious goal. To achieve this goal we decided to go into a niche that had two Fortune 100 competitors already dominating it. These companies were well-established in this space and had far more resources than we could ever have. I knew we could not compete with these companies head-on with the “normal” or traditional strategies they were already using. Instead, we needed to do something different and compete in a smarter way. 

So, we asked ourselves: “What is the most important thing we need to do?” Once we figured out the answer to that question, we went on to ask ourselves: “What is the most effective way to get that done?” 

Why can’t you just do anything the normal way?

The strategy I created based on the answers to these two questions was new and very different from what this executive had been taught at his business school. Over time, my strategy of doing things in a non-traditional way very understandably started to be a little frustrating for this executive. I completely understand where this successful executive was coming from, and I may have felt the same way if I had been in his shoes. He was taught strategies from professors much smarter than I am. 

To read the rest of the article, visit: 

https://www.monetizationnation.com/6-a-more-effective-way-to-accomplish-what-matters-most/

It used to be that only big companies with big budgets and professional videographers could use video for advertising. Now nearly anyone with a smartphone can make great videos, and nearly everyone has access to a high-speed internet connection and a device where they can watch videos any time. Furthermore, video is usually much more engaging than long pages of text. Because of this democratization of video, we’ve seen a huge tectonic shift towards video marketing.

There is no other form of communication that trumps in person, face-to-face communication, but that kind of communication isn't always possible. Video is the next best option. It allows us to closely replicate face-to-face communication in many ways. We can see facial expressions and body language and bring those elements into the conversation in a scalable way. According to HubSpot, 78% of people watch online videos every week, and 55% view online videos every day. Some would even say that video is better than face-to-face communication because videos can be recorded once, uploaded to the Internet, and then be available nearly any time anywhere. This can give video communication much more reach than face-to-face communication, which is limited by our location and our time. Because of this reach and engagement of video, it is a force multiplier. 

In this episode, I interviewed Benton Crane, who is the CEO of Harmon Brothers, the ad agency behind the most viral ads in internet history. In 2011, he was hired by Deloitte where he served as a consultant with various clients across the national intelligence community. He was the co-founder of VidAngel. In 2013, Benton joined the newly formed Harmon Brothers for a campaign to promote Poo-Pourri, an amazing ad that transformed the way products are marketed. Harmon Brothers went on to produce the most viral ads in internet history including Squatty Potty, FiberFix, Orabrush, Purple, and Poo-Pourri. 

Success with Poo-Pourri

The founder of Poo-Pourri saw what Jeff Harmon, a friend of Benton’s and the future co-founder of Harmon Brothers, had done with Orabrush and reached out to him. He didn't take her seriously at the time, and she ended up sending samples to Jeff, and he really liked the samples. He called Benton, telling him that he was thinking about leaving Orabrush to do the Poo-Pourri campaign. Benton wanted to be a part of it because he had seen what they were doing at Orabrush and knew they were pioneering the future of advertising. He told Jeff to let him join up and he'd bring the data analytics side of the venture. 

Benton left his stable job and moved his family across the country to work on this ad campaign. When the ad was ready, the first people he showed it to were his in-laws. They were appalled. They didn't laugh, and they didn't crack a smile. So Benton turned it off two minutes into the video, knowing that they weren't going to find it funny if they hadn’t already. Luckily, the public reception was the exact opposite of how his in-laws had reacted. They ate it up and it took off like wildfire. Poo-Pourri’s videos have now been viewed more than 350 million times collectively.

Use Video to Tell a Story in a Unique and Approachable Way

Squatty Potty was already a successful business when Harmon Brothers started doing their ad campaign; they were earning around $4 million per year. However, a large portion of their customers were women around 55 or older who had often embarrassing medical conditions. They were ashamed to talk about the Squatty Potty as a solution to their problems, and they would hide it away in the master bathroom. So Benton and his coworkers were faced with the question of how to make this taboo thing into something safe, something that could be talked about and laughed about. 

They realized that in order to talk about this product they couldn't use anything real for the ad otherwise it would be seen as disgusting. So they came up with ice cream and the mythical unicorn and set it in a medieval land with a prince to further remove it from reality. They designed the unicorn to be cute and cuddly to make it approachable. In doing all these things, they took the taboo and grossness out of the subject and turned it into something funny. 

After the ad went viral, their customers no longer had to hide the Squatty Potty in the master bathroom; they could put it in their guest bathroom and it would turn into a funny topic of conversation. Harmon Brothers used video to tell the story in a unique and funny way that made it safe and approachable. It massively expanded the audience of customers to whom Squatty Potty could sell these stools, and it fundamentally changed the business and the owners’ lives while making customers' lives better.

Pioneer the Video Ad Skip Button with YouTube

More than 1.9 billion people, one-third of the internet, use YouTube (YouTube). Before Google bought YouTube, no one saw it as an advertising platform. It was just a place where people could share things like funny cat videos. Google bought it and turned it into a place for advertising. Now we can use this platform where people are finding joy to reach more customers through the ads before videos. 

Around the same time Google bought YouTube, Benton's business partner, Jeff Harmon, created an ad that was about two and a half minutes long, but ads back then were either thirty-second TV ads or thirty-minute infomercials. Everyone was telling him this ad was too long, but he had an idea. He went to YouTube and said, "I want to try something out. Can you give me a skip button for this ad, so that people who want to watch the ad can and those that don't want to don't have to?" YouTube agreed to test this out, and they built in a skip button. This idea completely revolutionized the way we do ads.

Don’t Rely on Virality

The Harmon Brothers are known as the viral video guys, but really only a handful of their videos have gone viral. If you look at all the different variations of the Squatty Potty video, it has been viewed about 300 million times. However, it probably would have reached only ten to fifteen million views if they had just put it out there and relied on the virality of it.

The Harmon Brothers rely on a formula that says if their clients spend a dollar to drive advertising to this video, they should get back two dollars in revenue. It becomes a machine: money in, revenue out, at the same time generating awareness for the company. They can use that machine for weeks, months, or years to drive business results and awareness. This advertising model is how the Purple mattress video has been viewed over 500 million times, while never going viral.

If we can get our ROAS (return on ad spend) to be double or triple what our advertising cost is, then we really don't have an advertising budget. We can have an almost unlimited advertising budget because we know that for each dollar we spend we get our money back and make a profit.

Building an Effective Video Script

An effective script will have all the elements of a great sale: a hook, problem, solution, and call to action. It will build credibility, overcome concerns, and finish with another call to action. The hook is very important; 33% of viewers will stop watching a video after 30 seconds, 45% by one minute, and 60% by two minutes (Ad Age). 

The Harmon Brothers teach how to do research and behind the scenes work to make sure the right pieces end up in the script. The way to make sure the script is really effective is through research. We can ask ourselves, “What part of my message is it that really resonates with my audience?” Once we know the answer we must make sure the script focuses on the parts that resonate. 

“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” -Peter Drucker, management consultant, educator, and author

Focus Our Time on Things We Love

One day when Benton was in high school, he was venting to his dad about how he wasn't finding school fulfilling. He felt like he was wasting his time and that high school was just daycare for teenagers. He wanted to be doing something more, something that he cared about. Benton expected his dad to say, "Stick it out. School is important," but his dad didn't. He said, "If you've got a problem with it, do something about it. If you don't like school, leave. Go do something better." 

His dad's answer was like a slap across his face that woke him up. He started questioning what he wanted to be doing with his life, and the answer he came to was cars; working on cars was the thing in his life that he was most passionate about. He was always buying old cars, fixing them up, and selling them. He read every issue of Motor Trend magazine from cover to cover because he loved cars. 

So Benton dropped out of high school and enrolled in the automotive repair courses at a local college. He absolutely loved it there. A professor saw his passion and urged him to compete. Benton did, winning at the school level, then the state level, and eventually they sent him to Kansas City where he took second place at the national level.

From an outside viewpoint dropping out of high school seemed like throwing away a great opportunity and promising future and pursuing a dead-end career in repairing cars. In reality, though, instead of just going through the motions, he was pursuing his passion that was lighting a fire in him and causing him to excel.

Key Takeaways

Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode.

1. Video marketing is a massive tectonic shift, and a huge opportunity for our businesses if we leverage it effectively.
2. We may consider using video to tell the ad’s story in a unique and funny way that makes the product or service safe, fun, and approachable.
3. Try to create a viral ad, but don't rely just on virality. Instead, try to create an advertising money machine that earns you a profit on each dollar you spend, and gives you an almost unlimited advertising budget.  
4. Ask “What part of my message is it that really resonates with my audience?” Make sure the script focuses on the parts that resonate.
5. Focus your time on the things you love, and your chance of excelling will increase. 

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
2. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine.
3. Follow the Monetization Nation Blog.
4. Join our private Monetization Nation Facebook Group.
5. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
6. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. 
7. Connect with Nathan on Linkedin. 
8. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram. 
9. Follow Monetization Nation on Twitter.

Challenge

If we desire monetization we have never before achieved, we must leverage strategies we have never before implemented. I challenge each of us to pick one thing that resonated with us from today’s episode and schedule a time this week to implement it to help achieve our monetization goals.

Share Your Story

Do you have any tips and tricks about successful video marketing?  Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read more at: https://www.monetizationnation.com/7-video-marketing-secrets-from-one-of-the-creators-of-an-ad-with-300-million-views/

On September 11, 2001, I was in New York City during that horrible terrorist attack. I had a flight scheduled to leave JFK that morning. In this episode I’m going to share my story, and what I learned that has changed how I see the world and run my business.

I Was There

I was in New York City that day and I’m going to share my story, and the secrets I learned about normalcy bias. This will help us understand how normalcy bias can paralyze businesses. It will also help us understand why many businesses do not seize the opportunities at tectonic shifts.

The Days Leading Up to 9/11

On Friday, September 7, 2001, my wife and I, with our daughter who was less than 1-year old, walked up to 1 World Trade Center in New York City. This taller of the Twin Towers had been the tallest building in the world when it was first constructed, standing more than 1,350 feet and 110 stories high. I was in New York City on business and was blessed that my little family could join me. 

That Friday afternoon we were doing some sightseeing, and as we reached the revolving door of the tallest tower of the World Trade Center I wanted to go to the top. I’m always up for an adventure. However, my wife didn’t feel comfortable with that. She felt there was no way to get down if something bad happened. She said I was welcome to go up, but she and our daughter would be staying outside the building. So, we moved on and found another part of New York City to explore together. The streets were packed bumper to bumper with cars and the sidewalks were filled with people scurrying like ants in an ant farm. 

The next day, Saturday, September 8, 2001,  my wife and daughter flew back to our home in Arizona, where we lived at that time. I was scheduled to go home with them but extended my trip a few days to take care of some additional business. I rescheduled my flight for the morning of Tuesday, September 11. 

I remember lying in the bed in my highrise hotel room on Monday night September 10, hearing an airplane fly by, and thinking to myself, “What would prevent an airplane from crashing into one of these buildings?”

September 11, 2001

The next morning, Tuesday, September 11, 2001, I woke up in Midtown Manhattan, about 4.4 miles away from the World Trade Center. As I got ready, American Airlines Flight 11 departed from Logan Airport in Boston at 7:59 a.m. At 8:14 a.m. that flight was hijacked over central Massachusetts. As I was preparing to leave my hotel room, that flight crashed into the north side of 1 World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m.  Only a few minutes later I was down in the lobby, asking the front desk to help me hail a taxi to go to the airport. It was only then that I learned that a plane had hit a building in New York City. I hurried back to my room to turn on the news. As soon as I realized that America had been attacked by terrorists, I quickly called my wife in Arizona to tell her I was safe. 

While on the phone, my wife turned on the same news channel, and we watched together in horror as a second airplane crashed into the other Twin Tower at 9:03 a.m. Within 1 hour and 42 minutes of the first plane crashing, we had watched both of the Twin Towers collapse, just a few miles from where I was sitting in my hotel room.

At 9:25 a.m. the FAA closed all U.S. airspace to all civilian aircrafts, and flights had to make emergency landings around the country. For two unprecedented days, no civilian flights flew in America. The skies went quiet. Commercial flights did not resume until Thursday, September 13 but commercial flights to and from New York City were delayed even longer. For at least a full day after the attacks, even bridges and tunnels to and from Manhattan were closed to non-emergency traffic. Rental cars in the city became an incredibly scarce commodity.

I stayed in my hotel room in Manhattan for hours watching the worst terrorist attack in the history of humanity unfold with 2,997 fatalities, more than 25,000 injuries, and more than $10 billion in infrastructure and property damage.

Later that afternoon I went outside and walked the streets. I walked up the middle of one of the previously packed streets, without a single car or person around me. It was like a scene from the Twilight Zone. Eventually, I found a taxi and convinced him to take me as close to Ground Zero as he could go. My most vivid memory from that ride is of a fire truck covered with white ash. 

In the early hours of September 12th, the train I needed resumed service. I was able to get out of New York City and go to New Jersey where my cousin Drexden Davis and his wife lived. I am so grateful for their hospitality during that crisis. My cousin had been on the tarmac of a New York City airport when the first plane hit. He and the other passengers were evacuated, and he rented a car and drove home. It was very lucky for me that he’d gotten one and was able to transfer it to me. The next day I started my drive to Chicago, which was the departure city for the second leg of my original flight home. 

I remember thinking as I drove to Chicago that all I wanted was to get home to my family. Nothing else mattered. I am always amazed and embarrassed at how often crises are blessings that help us put our lives in perspective and focus on the things that truly matter. I was able to book a flight home in Chicago and finally make it to my family on Saturday, September 15. 

Other Disasters I Have Witnessed

The September 11 terrorist attacks were not the only disasters or crises to which I have had a direct connection. 

• As I wrote about in a previous blog post, I was the CEO of a publicly-traded dotcom company when the dotcom bubble burst. 
• In  2014, I was in Thailand when the military launched a coup d'état, dissolved the government and the Senate, repealed parts of the constitution, took control of the media, declared martial law, and implemented a curfew. 
• My family and I were stuck in a horrible snowstorm that closed the highway during a road trip. All the hotels were full, and we were sheltered in a very generous church for the night. 
• In July 2019 I stayed in the Sheraton Atlanta Hotel for a conference. During that same week, there was an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease in the hotel. At least 1 person died, 11 cases were confirmed, and there were 63 probable cases. 
• We are all now in the middle of the global COVID-19 pandemic that is wreaking havoc on many lives and organizations. More than 1 million people have already lost their lives to this coronavirus globally, tens of millions of people have lost their jobs, and unknown thousands of businesses have closed their doors permanently.

Those are just a few examples of the disasters, crises, and tectonic shifts I have seen. Maybe you shouldn’t hang around me. :)

9/11 and various other crisis situations I have been through have resulted in me seeing the world and business differently. I have tried to learn from these situations so that I can prevent or mitigate the negative effects of similar crises in the future. 

Understanding Normalcy Bias in Business

Normalcy bias is a common situation that is experienced during or related to disasters and crises. It is sometimes called “analysis paralysis” or the “Ostrich Effect.”  As a result of normalcy bias, people underestimate the risk of a disaster or crisis because it has never happened to them or their organization before. The assumption is that if a specific disaster or crisis has not happened to me up to now, then it will not happen to me in the future.  Or, when we are in the middle of a disaster or crisis, we refuse to admit it is happening and underestimate the effects of the disaster or crisis. This is a very common way of thinking for most humans and business leaders.

I often travel with a “get home bag” so that I have the basic supplies I need to get home if I get stranded somewhere. To someone who has never been stranded, their normalcy bias might tell them my “get home bag” is unreasonable. However, because I have been stranded on multiple occasions, my normalcy bias is different and this “get home bag” is a wise and responsible risk-mitigation strategy for me.

As a business example, when I went back to school to get my MBA, a teacher taught us how business leaders should leverage debt to fuel growth. In that lesson, I don’t remember the teacher exploring the risk of leverage that the debt would add to the company. However, a leveraged company becomes a huge risk during an economic crisis such as the 2008 crash or our current global pandemic. When I lost a leveraged company during an economic crisis I learned the hard lesson that there is a huge risk to taking on debt. 

I’m not saying we should never take debt. There are plenty of times when debt is the right choice. But we have to factor in that risk. Is the risk associated with that debt worth the benefit?

To someone who has only seen a growth economy and never seen a company lost to debt leverage, their normalcy bias might tell them that my concern about debt leverage is unreasonable. However, because I have lost a leveraged company, my normalcy bias is different, and carefully weighing the risk of debt leverage is a wise and responsible risk-mitigation strategy for me.

When businesses face tectonic shifts in the business landscape it is very normal for us to ignore or underestimate the severity of that tectonic shift, and its effect on our businesses. We often hear of businesses “doubling down” on a business strategy. Doubling down can be a great thing if we are doubling down on a tectonic shift opportunity that is proving successful right now. However, if we are doubling down on an old and ineffective strategy that used to work, but is being disrupted by a tectonic shift, that can be an almost certain recipe for disaster and a doubling of the crisis.

Sticking with the old, ineffective strategy and ignoring a tectonic shift is a great example of normalcy bias. Business history is littered with thousands of businesses that ignored tectonic shifts and lost market share or completely went out of business.

Normalcy Bias Causes Paralysis

70% of people have normalcy bias during a disaster. Normalcy bias commonly paralyzes people in the middle of the disaster or crisis. Here are a few examples:

• When the Vesuvius volcano erupted the residents of Pompei watched for hours without evacuating. 
• As Hurricane Katrina approached, and the government pleaded with people to evacuate, thousands of people refused to leave their homes. 
• 70% of the 9/11 survivors stopped to talk to others after the plane hit but before they evacuated the building. 
• As the Titanic was sinking, people refused to evacuate because they underestimated the odds of the worst-case scenario. (source: Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias)

Preventing Normalcy Bias

Our businesses do not have to be victims of our normalcy biases.

During the September 11 terrorist attacks, not all of the hijacked planes caused the damage intended by the terrorists. On Flight 93, 46 minutes after the takeoff, 4 al-Quaeda terrorists stormed the cockpit. They intended to crash the plane into the U.S. Capitol Building. Some of the passengers and flight attendants learned from phone calls that other airplanes had been hijacked that morning and flown into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. As the passengers then sought to retake control of the plane from the hijackers, the hijackers crashed the plane into a field in Pennsylvania, rather than give up control of the plane. They were only 20 minutes’ flight time away from Washington. In that crash, 7 crew members and 33 passengers tragically lost their lives.

During the hijacking, the passengers and crew members realized quickly that they were in the middle of a crisis situation. They acted rapidly and decisively to mitigate the damage, made the best of a very difficult situation, and saved many lives.

In my business career, I’ve been blessed to hit some home runs. However, the strategies used for each of these home runs were different. I did not use the same strategy twice to hit different home runs. The common denominator is that we found a tectonic shift that was changing the business landscape for that business, and we quickly leveraged that tectonic shift to accelerate growth and leapfrog over established competitors.

In the book I am writing, I talk about tectonic shifts that are happening right now and how to leverage those tectonic shifts to leapfrog competitors. It is critical that entrepreneurs and business leaders leverage these tectonic shifts today to drive growth and protect their businesses. However, tectonic shifts this year will likely become common business practices in future years. Then, new tectonic shifts will happen, and we will have to adjust to those as well. Furthermore, specific industries, geographic locations, and individual businesses will face their own unique tectonic shifts. The main point of the book is to teach us how to identify, leverage, and protect ourselves from tectonic shifts today and in the future. Great companies will even be able to create their own tectonic shifts. 

We Must Innovate to Survive

Tectonic shifts are inevitable. They have happened, they are happening, and they will continue to happen. This means as businesses we need to be constantly adapting our strategies to survive. Just because something worked well for us in the past does not mean it will continue to work well for us. Finding the tectonic shifts affecting our businesses and industry today and leveraging them is one of the most effective ways to innovate. 

“If you don't innovate, you die” 

- Gary Vaynerchuk, New York Times Bestselling Author

Fortune 500 companies are the largest corporations in the United States based on their revenue. When you compare the Fortune 500 companies of 1955 to the Fortune 500 companies of 2019 only 10.4% of the companies have stayed on that list (Source: AEI https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/only-52-us-companies-have-been-on-the-fortune-500-since-1955-thanks-to-the-creative-destruction-that-fuels-economic-prosperity/#:~:text=31%2C%202019).,started%20(see%20graphic%20above). Staying stagnant is not an option. These tectonic shifts will cause either growth or destruction. Innovation with tectonic shifts is one of the keys to ensuring our businesses continue to experiences growth. 

Monetization Secrets

Here are some of the top monetization secrets that stood out to me from today’s episode:

1. When crises strike, as they will, instead of wallowing in our plight, we should focus on what matters most, such as our families and the monetization of our businesses (because revenue helps solve many of the business crises). 
   
   
2. We shouldn’t wait for crises and disasters to strike and remind us to focus on the things that really matter in our lives and businesses. We should be doing that every day.
   
   
3. During a business disaster or crisis, we need to quickly identify what is happening, and immediately take action to create the best outcomes possible instead of sticking our heads in the sand and just hoping things get better.
   
   
4. We need to learn vicariously from the normalcy biases of others who have already “been-there-done-that” so we don’t have to learn the same tragic lessons for ourselves the hard way.
   
   
5. We must prepare so we are ready to respond to tectonic shifts. What is in our metaphorical “get home bags” that we can use to keep our businesses safe when we go through a crisis? Do we have a cash reserve, a stable recurring revenue stream, education about the newest trends in our industry, low expenses and leverage, a huge list of loyal customers who trust us, etc.?
   
   
6. Tectonic shifts are all around us, and they will continue to happen. These tectonic shifts will cause destruction or growth. In many cases, it is our choice based on how we prepare and respond. The difference between companies that fail and companies that thrive is often how we prepare for and respond to tectonic shifts.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
2. Follow the Monetization Nation Blog.
3. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine.
4. Join our private Monetization Nation Facebook Group.
5. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
6. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. 
7. Connect with Nathan on Linkedin. 
8. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram. 
9. Follow Monetization Nation on Twitter.

Challenge

If we desire monetization we have never before achieved, we must leverage strategies we have never before implemented. I challenge each of us to pick one thing that resonated with us from today’s episode and schedule a time this week to implement it to help achieve our monetization goals.

Share Your Story

Have you observed a company with normalcy bias that did not prepare for or respond to a crisis effectively?  Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read more at: https://www.monetizationnation.com/8-6-business-secrets-i-learned-from-being-in-new-york-city-during-the-september-11-terrorist-attacks/

Hello Monetization Nation. I recently interviewed John Rampton, who is one of the top digital marketing influencers. He is a regular contributor to leading business sites, such as Entrepreneur, Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal. John is a serial entrepreneur, and currently operates digital ventures such as Due.com and Calendar.com. In this interview, John tells the story about a business he grew to $110 million of annual revenue. $92 million of that revenue was from sales on Amazon. Amazon essentially shut down that business after they launched a competing product. John and I discuss why it is so important to build a “skyscraper” on “land” we own, along with other monetization stories and secrets.

Building a Skyscraper on Land You Own

John and I first met when we both worked for a company named FamilyLink. Family Link created the We’re Related Facebook app, which became the 4th largest Facebook app with more than 60 million app installs. As a part-time Chief Revenue Officer, we went from almost no revenue to more than $5 million of revenue in 12 months. 

Unfortunately, Facebook saw how many people wanted this functionality and built similar functionality into their core offering. Then, Facebook made it extremely difficult for the We’re Related app to continue to operate. The reality is that publicly-traded platforms are going to ultimately make decisions that are in the best interest of their shareholders, which includes making decisions that better monetize their platforms.

Family Link truly built a skyscraper on leased land that Facebook owned, and Facebook had the right to take the land away any time they wanted. As a result, FamilyLink lost most of its business value.

Amazon Competing with 3rd-Party Vendors

Amazon used a similar strategy in which they allowed 3rd-party vendors to sell on their platform. Many of these 3rd-party vendors made a lot of money from their relationship with Amazon. Unfortunately, this is another example of building a skyscraper on leased land. When Amazon learned which products sold the best, Amazon decided to go directly to manufacturers and cut many of the 3rd-party vendors out of the loop. The 3rd-party vendors were essentially doing market research for Amazon so Amazon knew the most profitable products to sell directly. Amazon owned the land, so as soon as they had their own product, it was easy to preference their products on the Amazon platform.

The Rise and Fall of Organize

John purchased and grew a company named Organize. He sold a “scrap trap” that hangs on the end of kitchen counters. As you cut, you can scrape your scraps into it. He used Amazon and other platforms to grow his business. He estimates that more than 30% of the kitchens in America have this scrap trap. He went from “smaller 7 figures” to “8 figures a month.” Annual revenue exceeded $110 million. 

John says that “Whatever a platform can give, they can take it away.” This is what happened to John and his company. One day the Organize team noticed a competing product that showed up higher in Amazon search results than his product. He tried bidding much higher amounts per click but was unable to get his listing above this new product. Amazon also undercut John on price. 

After they launched a competing product, Amazon turned off John’s product listing and would not turn it back on. As a result in a very short period of time, John lost a $92 million per year revenue stream from selling products through Amazon. John had to lay off 76 people in one day. He liquidated his inventory and the business went under. 

How Should We Work with Platforms

It’s ok to work with other platforms such as Facebook and Amazon. This can help to radically accelerate our growth, especially before we’ve built our own large platforms. However, it is important to realize that our relationships with those platforms will most likely change over time to their benefit and our detriment. So, we must build platforms of our own, such as our own blogs and email lists, where we have direct relationships with our customers and can contact them when we choose. Then, as we use other platforms such as Facebook and Amazon, we are focused on driving the traffic to our platform, so we can own the relationships, and are not dependent on other platforms.

Diversification

John encourages entrepreneurs and business leaders to diversify, to sell through other channels such as affiliate partners, so we are not dependent upon a handful of platforms, such as Amazon. John says about 85% of his revenue was from one source, and when Amazon chose to compete and shut down John’s business, he lost the entire company. John recommends that no more than 40% of a business’s revenue be from one source so they can weather the storm when they lose any one revenue stream. If a revenue stream becomes more than 40% of revenue, John pushes really hard to grow revenue through other sources, even less-profitable sources.

Here are four effective ways to diversify our revenue if one source grows too large:

1.  Create new products and services so we aren’t too dependent on one product.
2.  Develop new marketing channels so we aren’t too dependent on one channel.
3.  Try to drive customers from other platforms to our platforms, such as your email list so you can build direct relationships with customers, and contact them directly when a platform shuts us down. John advises us to focus everything we can on driving every sale through our websites, so people learn that is where they go to buy from our companies.
4. Work with a diverse group of influencers through an affiliate program. Pay the influencers for sales that result from them sending visitors directly to your site. Platforms will probably not be able to take away these influencer relationships.

Liquidating Inventory

John tells a great story about how he learned to liquidate huge amounts of inventory quickly. He grew his liquidation revenue from about $5,000 per day to more than $150,000 per day just by hiring people to dance with signs on the sidewalk. He used this strategy to liquidate $500,000+ in three days. 

Due.com Invoicing System

John purchased an invoicing company, then he required hundreds of people to send him invoices to use that system. He logged in one day and the invoicing system had ballooned to 32,000 registered users and almost 200,000 invoices sent in the last 30 days. He was excited by this huge growth, so he purchased the Due.com domain name and added an upgraded subscription for people who wanted to send a larger number of invoices. Due.com now has more than 500,000 active users.

Calendar.com

John has created a new business, Calendar.com, that brings all of our calendars together into one place, allowing us to merge our personal and business calendars, but not allowing the personal events to be seen by business colleagues. Business managers can sign their teams up for Calendar.com, and see how their team members are allocating their time. With Calendar.com we can easily book meetings and publish our calendar online if we want to. Calendar.com already has hundreds of thousands of customers.

Freemium Business Model

John has very successfully used the freemium business model to monetize both Due.com and Calendar.com. John allowed customers to use the core software for free so that the services could get some traction and momentum. Then, once a lot of people were hooked on the software, he started selling upgraded versions of the services.

The freemium model also allows businesses to launch quick (MVPs) minimum viable products that can be rolled out to the market quickly to see if we have something the market really wants. Furthermore, as initial customers used the service, John was able to see what they were actually doing, and once he knew the most valuable features, he used that information to develop the premium subscription service. John also emailed all of the free customers and asked them what they would be willing to pay for. Then, he found the most common responses and turned those into features of the premium subscription service.

Recurring Revenue from SAAS Companies

John transitioned from being an e-commerce entrepreneur to being SAAS (software as a service) entrepreneur. He loves the SAAS model because it provides consistent, recurring revenue. He’s able to avoid huge revenue swing months and able to easily calculate the lifetime value of a customer. 

High-Level PR Engagement to Grow SEO

One of John’s secrets to digital marketing success is using high-level PR engagement to grow SEO. John starts this process by writing for high-level publications such as Forbes, CNN, Wall Street Journal, Inc, Mashable, TechCrunch, and New York Times. He is not paid for these articles, but he is allowed to add links from those articles to his sites. Those links from high-quality sites provide tremendous value to John’s ventures and help them to rank much higher in search engine results. 

Become the Very Best at Something

John advises that we should pick something and learn everything we can about it, and become #1 in the world at it. So many people think that to succeed in business you have to be the best at a million different things. Instead, he suggests that we should focus on becoming the best at one thing, and then expand over time into other things.

How to Become a Writer for Leading Publications

John gives advice on how to become an effective writer for leading publications. 

1. Start writing for your own blog and start to build your following.
2. Then, approach smaller publications to help you build your reputation and following. As your following and reputation grow, you can start writing for larger and larger publications.
3. Then, network to an editor at a leading publication you want to write for. Work on nurturing a relationship with that editor, such as by commenting on and sharing content from that publication. 
4. Focus your articles on providing actual value to the readers. Don’t be promotional at all, but it is ok to add links. 
5. Be really authentic in what you write. 
6. Build a large personal social following and share what you write with that following. It will take time, but be consistent. 

Genuinely Help People Without Expecting Anything in Return

John says, “If you can build up trust with someone, they will follow you for life.”

John has a motto in life. He likes to genuinely help others without wanting or needing anything in return. John finds that 1 in every 10 people he helps will help him back. 1 in every 100 people he helps will turn into a financial relationship where John makes money. And, 1 in every 1,000 people he helps turns into a multi-million dollar relationship. So, John tries to genuinely help 3 people every day. The people that John helps are his tribe. 

John shares a story of someone he started helping, and that person helped John in return. This relationship of reciprocity continued for years, and now they are making millions of dollars together as business partners.

Connect with John and His Companies

If you want to learn more about John Rampton and his companies:

Due.com - https://due.com/

Calendar.com - https://www.calendar.com/

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnrampton/

Twitter - https://twitter.com/johnrampton

Monetization Secrets

Thank you John for sharing your monetization stories and secrets with us. Here are some of the top secrets that stood out to me from today’s episode: 

1. We can use a platform strategy to quickly grow our business. However, we need to build a skyscraper on land we own. This means we should focus on driving as many people as we can to our site and email list so we have direct relationships with customers that cannot be shut off by a platform. 
2. We should diversify, so no more than 40% of our business is coming from one source.
3. The SAAS (software as a service) business model is very attractive because it can provide consistent, recurring revenue.
4. We can effectively grow our credibility and search engine backlinks by writing for leading publications. However, we should remember that when we do this we are building on land that someone else owns. For example, John put a lot of time into writing for Inc. One day he received a call that they were done working with him, and all of the effort he invested there was gone. So, we have to focus on bringing people back to something we own, such as an email list when we are doing a platform strategy.
5. We should genuinely help people with no expectation of anything in return. However, because of the law of reciprocity, many of those people will want to help us as well.

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Challenge

If we desire monetization we have never before achieved, we must leverage strategies we have never before implemented. I challenge each of us to pick one thing that resonated with us from today’s episode and schedule a time this week to implement it to help achieve our monetization goals.

Share Your Story 

What ideas do you have about how we can leverage platforms to build a skyscraper on land we own? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read more at: https://www.monetizationnation.com/how-john-rampton-lost-92-million-of-annual-revenue-by-building-a-skyscraper-on-land-he-didnt-own/

Happy Valentine's Day! This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host. 

Creating and running businesses isn’t easy. However, being the spouse of an entrepreneur or CEO isn’t easy either. One of the primary reasons we are creating our businesses is so we can have the time and resources for the people and things that matter most. This especially includes our spouse, the person who should matter most to us. We need to be sure we don’t let the stress and business at work be an excuse for not sharing our love and being there with our loved one this Valentine’s Day and the rest of the year. There is nothing we’re working on at work that is more important than the people we love. But, unfortunately, approximately 50% of marriages end in divorce.

So, in today’s episode, we’re going to discuss some of the most successful strategies entrepreneurs and CEOs use to destroy their marriages and some alternative strategies for those of us who are trying to nurture more loving and connected marriages.

Strategy 1 - Don’t invest time to re-connect daily. 

Sometimes entrepreneurs and CEOs don’t prioritize daily connection with their spouse. Instead of making this mistake, maybe we can schedule opportunities for daily connection. Some ideas might be a regular date night, regular walks together, or lunch dates together. If we’re traveling or away from home we can schedule reminders to send regular texts or to make regular video calls. Marriage is a daily decision that we must invest in every day.

Sometimes couples quit dating each other. Don’t ever quit dating. Dating and regular connection are probably how you and your spouse fell in love initially, and something we need to keep doing to continue nurturing a loving marriage. 

One of the business tectonic shifts we talk about a lot at Monetization Nation is “Connecting through Passion.” This doesn’t just work in business, but it can also be very effective in our relationships. We should try to identify our spouse’s level-10 passions and strive to connect with our spouse through what he or she is crazy-passionate about. 

As an example, a study found that couples who watch romantic movies and discussed the relationships in them afterward had a 50% lower divorce rate. Sorry guys. Just watch the romantic movies with her.

Strategy 2 - “Outsource” sacred parts of the marriage. 

As entrepreneurs, we often learn the importance of outsourcing in order to get everything done. However, some of us make the mistake of outsourcing parts of our marriage. Sometimes couples outsource sacred elements of the marriage, such as emotional connection, companionship, and sometimes even sex, to people other than their spouse. Sometimes people outsource to porn and romance novels. When this happens, the spouse is escaping and finding fulfillment with other people and things. 

A study at the University of Oklahoma found that the chances of divorce double when pornography is viewed (Source: Marripedia). Dr. John Gottman, a world-renowned therapist who has 40 years of experience studying relationships, explains in an open and honest letter that pornography should never be viewed because of the unrealistic expectations it creates. Men and women who find fulfillment through explicit images and videos almost always find they have trouble finding fulfillment with an actual partner. Dr. Gottman states that “even non-compulsive use of [pornographic] images can damage a committed relationship.” 

In a similar manner, romance novels can have a similar effect. These books are full of unrealistic people, relationships, and sexual experiences. When a spouse gets too caught up in romance novels, they begin to believe that their partner should be more like the character in their novel. They can also begin to turn to these novels for feelings of romance, love, and desire instead of to their spouse, which decreases their connection. 

We should be committed to nurturing those sacred parts of our marriages only with our spouse. This commitment will help ensure that we keep our marriages strong and our intimate, sacred moments special and wonderful. 

Strategy 3 -  Focus on digital devices and entertainment instead of your spouse. 

When was the last time we checked our phone while our spouses were trying to talk to us? A recent study found that mobile phones can have a negative impact on closeness, connection, and quality of conversation in human relationships (Source: University of Essex).

Do we neglect our spouse because we spend too much time glued to digital entertainment, such as TV, social media, or video games? I recently spoke with a church leader who told me video game addiction is one of the top reasons couples in his congregation are getting divorced. 

Instead, maybe we commit to ourselves to put our phones away when we’re having meals with or talking to our spouse. If the phone rings or we receive a text, and our spouse encourages us to take the call or check the text, maybe we can say, “I’m sure it’s not as important as you.” Instead of watching too much TV or playing too many video games, maybe we make a commitment to ourselves that we only consume digital entertainment after we have made a meaningful connection that day with our spouse. This habit might help us to put first things first, as Steven Covey taught.

Strategy 4 - Don’t be responsible with money. 

Fights about money are the second leading cause of divorce, right behind infidelity (Source: Ramsey Solutions). Many couples don’t have a budget or don’t stick to it if they do. My wife is so much better at this than I am. Some couples buy the biggest house the bank will let them buy and drive the nicest cars they can. One study from researchers at Brigham Young University found that married individuals with higher levels of materialism had less satisfying marriages. Some couples keep their finances separate and don’t communicate with their spouses about financial issues. Money issues are cited as a cause of 36% of divorces. 

If you haven’t before, I would highly recommend taking a financial course with your spouse. My wife and I took the Dave Ramsey course and it helped a lot. A good financial course forces spouses to talk through and come to a consensus on important financial decisions. For example, do you and your spouse both know what your next big purchase will be and how fast you’re saving to earn it? What do you picture for your future retirement and how much money do you need to be putting away now to achieve that? Are you both comfortable with how much money is being spent every month versus how much is being put away for future plans? Having these discussions and learning about financials together can help avoid money problems and create open and honest communication about our financials. 

Strategy 5 - Don’t make intimacy a priority. 

Sometimes spouses don’t make regular sex and intimacy a priority. Sometimes touch is eliminated outside of sex. Regular sex and other intimacy can be a powerful glue that binds together spouses with a stronger connection. For many people, touch is their primary love language. For most couples, touch and sex can be a powerful way to reconnect and communicate love. 

Relationship expert Dr. Lurve believes that one of the most essential ingredients to any long-lasting marriage is daily hugs. She prescribes a 10-second hug every day to her clients who are struggling to reconnect with their spouses. This daily hug releases oxytocin, promotes sexual desire, helps us resolve issues more quickly, and can alleviate stress (Source: Body and Soul). 

Strategy 6 - Have Intimate, opposite-sex friendships. 

Sometimes we don’t recognize that emotional relationships with someone of the opposite sex can be deadly to our marriages. These relationships often start innocently, as just lunch, advice, or lending a listening ear. These relationships can sometimes lead to emotional intimacy. Our spouses should be the first person to which we turn to share our joys and our sorrows. 

When we have our own safeguards in place and don’t make justifications to break them, we’re much less likely to find ourselves in inappropriate relationships. Keep in mind that most affairs don’t begin because someone wanted to cheat. Actually, 80% of affairs began as “just friends” (Source: Shirley Glass). "The new infidelity is between people who unwittingly form deep, passionate connections before realizing that they've crossed the line from platonic friendship into romantic love," explains Shirley Glass, Author of Not “Just Friends.”

Strategy 7 - Don’t help out. 

Our spouses are probably carrying heavy loads, and so are most entrepreneurs. It’s very common for us to focus on our own heavy loads we are carrying and to be resentful or put out when our spouse asks us to help. Doesn’t our spouse realize how busy we are? 

Instead, maybe we identify a job that our spouse most dislikes doing. Maybe it’s cleaning toilets, doing dishes, or cleaning up dog poop. If we don’t know which tasks our spouse dislikes the most, ask. Then, maybe we proactively start doing that task every day without being asked or saying anything about it. 

Early in my marriage, a counselor taught me that when my wife asks me to do something, I should look at it as a gift because she is telling me what she needs. This way I know what I can best do to help her. 

Strategy 8 - Point out all your spouse’s weaknesses. 

When you were dating, how often did you point out the faults in the person you were dating? How often do you do it now? Maybe, instead of focusing on his or her faults, we should strive to find everything we love about our spouse and everything we’re grateful for, and strive to build him or her up with love and gratitude every day.

It’s especially important that we don’t speak badly about our spouses to others. Media is filled with spouses making jokes about each other such as: “I have four kids. Three, if you don’t count my husband.” TV shows and movies can make these lines seem innocent enough but in reality, speaking about our spouses in any kind of derogatory manner will only hurt our marriages. 

Just as we’re aware of our own weaknesses, our spouses are aware of theirs. We’re not here to point them out, or even worse shout them out to our friends and family. We’re there to love and support them as they strive to change for the better, just as we’ll be doing. Leslie Vernick, a well-known author and speaker shared that “regularly thinking negatively about your [spouse] increases your dissatisfaction with [them] and your marriage.” The more we focus on the things we love about our spouses, the more in love we’ll be with them and our marriage. 

Strategy 9 - Make other people a priority over your spouse. 

Often parents prioritize their children above their spouse. A relationship expert named David Pisarra said, “... the most frequent issue I hear from men I represent is that the focus of the wife turned to the child, and never returned to the relationship with the man.”  

Sometimes we allow parents, friends, or a boss to be a higher priority. Instead, maybe we need to listen when our spouse says he or she is having issues with our parents and set better boundaries. Maybe we need to plan scheduled alone time each day, a scheduled date night each week, and quarterly getaways with only our spouse. 

Maybe we commit that whenever our spouse calls or texts we do everything we can to immediately take the call or respond to the text so that our spouse can feel they are our priority.  We need to make sure that our spouse always comes first. 

Strategy 10 - Be harsh or abusive to your spouse.  

It doesn’t matter how bad of a day we’re having. There is never an excuse for being harsh with or yelling at our spouse, calling him or her names, or abusing our spouse in any way that can take a long time to heal. Abusing our spouse is never ok. Yelling at our spouse is never ok (unless maybe the house is on fire). Calling our spouse names is never ok. 

Our spouse should know without a doubt that we will be loyal and never speak badly about them in front of another person. Jonathan Bennett, a relationship expert said, “If you’re having a fight or [are] annoyed by your partner, the appropriate course of action is to address it directly. By airing your dirty laundry for everyone to see, you’re showing a lack of respect for your partner and the relationship.”

Strategy 11 - Threaten divorce. 

Some people threaten divorce to get leverage so that their spouse will make the desired change. However, this threat can often have the opposite effect and create long-lasting rifts and disconnection in the marriage. When we threaten divorce that could be the nuclear bomb that destroys everything else around it. 

In 1519, a Spanish conquistador named Hernán Cortés arrived in the new world with six hundred men. Soon after arrival, he burned all his ships, sending the message to his men that there would be no turning back. Within two years he had conquered the Aztec empire. I realize there are situations, such as serious abuse, where divorce may be the right decision. However, if we are not in one of those situations, we should probably burn our ships, commit to improving the marriage, and not threaten divorce as the backup. We should let our spouse know that this may be a really hard situation, but we love them so much that we’re committed to doing everything we can to work through this.

Join Entrepreneurs of Faith

If this episode of Entrepreneurs of Faith resonated with you, please subscribe for FREE to Monetization Nation so you can receive an episode of Entrepreneurs of Faith each Sunday.

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In April 1982, President Ronald Regan gave a speech before the U.S. Chamber of Congress saying: 

“Entrepreneurs are heroes of modern times. They rarely receive the credit they deserve. Treasury Secretary Don Regan recently reminded the student body of Bucknell University that it was under capitalism that mankind brought ‘light where before there was darkness, heat where once there was only cold, medicines where there was sickness and disease, food where there was scarcity, and wealth where humanity was living in squalor.’ And much of what he was talking about came into being in the lifetime of many of us here in this room. But the societies which achieve the most spectacular progress in the shortest period of time are not the most tightly controlled, the biggest in size, or the wealthiest in material resources. They are societies that reward initiative and believe in the magic of the marketplace…” (Source: Small Business Trends)

As we take this day to remember our presidents, we want to also recognize and learn from those presidents who made entrepreneurial ventures, took risks, and helped add to the prosperity of this country. Although each of them was not successful, there is something to be learned from their stories. Today we will be recognizing 11 entrepreneur U.S. Presidents along with their challenges, resilience, and successes. 

These 11 entrepreneur Presidents are from both major U.S. political parties, and I understand that some of these Presidents are controversial to some people. By including them in this article, I’m not endorsing their political views. Instead, I’m trying to learn and teach what I can from their experiences as entrepreneurs. 

1. George Washington (1789-1797): 1st President

“The harder the conflict, the greater the triumph.”- President Washington 

While most presidents were entrepreneurs before they took office, President Washington didn’t become an entrepreneur until after his final term as president. For much of his childhood, Washington lived on a farm in Mount Vernon, Virginia, which was later inherited by his half-brother, Lawrence. When Lawrence passed away, Washington leased it from Lawrence’s wife and inherited it in 1761 (Source: History.com). He later renovated the estate into a mansion, gardens, a place to lay family tombs, shops, barns, and various living quarters. Washington even turned a large portion into farms as wheat being his main harvest. He then packaged the wheat and created GW Flour, one of the very first branded food products (Source: GoodReads review of “George Washington, Entrepreneur”), which was then exported throughout the US and Europe.

President Washington’s farm manager, James Anderson, later encouraged Washington to open up a distillery on the grounds of Mount Vernon, Virginia, and “with just a boiler and five copper stills, the 2,250 square-foot distillery became profitable almost instantly.” (Source: Ondeck) By the year 1799, Washington had one of the largest distilleries in the country making 11,000 gallons per year (Source: Business News Daily). 

2. Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865): 16th President

“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.”- President Lincoln

In 1833 and at the age of 23, President Lincoln and his friend, William Berry, opened up a general store called Lincoln-Berry in New Salem, Illinois. Many sources say that they were not very successful as they purchased inventory from other stores on credit and then made a profit by reselling the items. Although the economy was doing very well at the time, the location of their store wasn’t ideal as the town stopped growing. Lincoln had to sell his share of the store as a result, and after Berry died, Lincoln received his $1,000 debt (Source: Business News Daily), which resulted in Lincoln’s bankruptcy. Over 17 years, soon to be President Lincoln was required to pay his creditors back (Source: Legal Zoom). 

“Despite it all, Lincoln was known to rise triumphantly out of failure. He went on to launch a successful law practice in 1837, and became the only president to receive a patent in 1849” (Source: OnDeck), which was for a device to lift riverboats over sandbars. 

“The best way to predict your future is to create it.”- President Lincoln 

3. Andrew Johnson (1865-1869): 17th President

“I realized, there are people out there who can beat me, want to beat me. And unless I continue to innovate and evolve, I am going to learn a painful lesson from someone who has.”- President Johnson

Before becoming President of the United States and running political campaigns, President Johnson was a very successful tailor and real estate owner. His mother was also a very talented seamstress who helped Andrew find an apprenticeship in Greeneville, Tennessee when he was only 18-years-old (Source: OnDeck). His talents with tailoring flourished, he opened up a shop in 1826, which became very successful, and he started investing in real estate from there. A fun fact about President Johnson is that while working at his tailor shop, “it eventually became a gathering place for political debate, and Johnson held his first meetings as an alderman (an elected member of a municipal council) in 1829.” (Source: OnDeck)

4. Warren Harding (1921-1923): 29th President

“America’s present need is not heroics but healing; not nostrums but normalcy; not revolution but restoration.”- President Harding

President Harding was raised in a family that found interest in the newspaper. He eventually attended school at Ohio Central College, and there, according to an article by Business News Daily, “he studied the newspaper trade in college after dabbling in teaching, insurance, and law,” and graduated at the age of seventeen. Two years later, he and several partners purchased the Ohio newspaper, The Marion Star, for $300 (Source: OnDeck) while it was near bankruptcy. Their biggest challenge was owning a Republican newspaper in a Democratic area (Source: OnDeck), but Harding completely turned things around with his wife's help in managing the newspaper. The Marion Star eventually became “the city’s official daily newspaper.” (Source: CheatSheet) 

After receiving full ownership of the paper at the age of 21, Harding became worn down and had to spend time at a local sanitarium (Source: Business News Daily). He eventually recovered, found favor in his writing from local politicians, and earned revenue to run his political campaigns (Source: FreedomVoice Blog). He was a very successful businessman and after being in the newspaper business for 39 years (Source: TIME), he was able to sell the newspaper before dying in 1923 for $550,000, which is equivalent to $7 Million today (Source: Business News Daily). “Today, the business (from the newspaper in Ohio called the Marion Star) is still alive and owned by the Gannett Company, a publicly-traded media holding company.” (Source: NextShark)

5. Herbert Hoover (1929-1933): 31st President

“Competition is not only the basis of protection to the customer, but is the incentive to progress.” - President Hoover

At the age of 40, Herbert Hoover became a millionaire (Source: FreedomVoice Blog), but he found success from his labors by being diligent and resilient. When Herbert was 9-years-old, he became an orphan along with his two siblings. His uncle eventually took them in, but according to an article by Miller Center, “the young Hoover was shy, sensitive, introverted, and somewhat suspicious, characteristics that developed, at least in part, in reaction to the loss of his parents at such a young age.” Although he had average to failing grades except for math (Source: Miller Center), Hoover was determined and attended Stanford University. According to the same source, he worked in the clerk’s registration office to pay for tuition and began using his entrepreneurial skills by creating a student laundry service. 

After graduating college with a geology degree, he got a job with Bewick, Moreing & Co working 70 hours/week in a gold mine pushing carts. Hoover then left to start his own mining consulting business called Burmese silver mines, which focused on reorganizing failing companies and finding investors to pay for developing new mines. His company quickly employed 175,000 employees (Source: Entrepreneur), and the success that he built with his company earned him the title of “Doctor of sick mines.” (Source: OnDeck) By the time that he was forty, his wealth had grown not only from his company but from publishing a leading textbook on mining engineering. Other entrepreneurial successes he had included inventing a new process to extract zinc that had been lost and starting up in the Zinc Corporation, which later became part of a larger corporation (Source: Business News Daily).

6. Franklin Roosevelt (1933-1945): 32nd President

“The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”- President Roosevelt

At the age of 39, Franklin Roosevelt became ill with many symptoms, including paralysis of his legs. Although he was first diagnosed with paralytic poliomyelitis, his symptoms were shown to be more consistent with Guillain-Barre syndrome (Source: Pubmed). Despite his physical circumstances, he refused to accept that he would be permanently paralyzed. He became president in 1933, but before his political endeavors, he founded a hydrotherapy center in 1926 for the treatment of his disease, according to the FreedomVoice Blog. It became known as the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation and still operates, serving about 4,000 people each year with all types of disabilities (Source: Entrepreneur).

8. Harry Truman (1945-1953): 33rd President

“I studied the lives of great men and famous women, and I found that the men and women who got to the top were those who did the jobs they had in hand, with everything they had of energy and enthusiasm and hard work.”- President Truman

Due to medical issues, President Truman is the only president elected after 1897 who did not earn a college degree (Source: Business News Daily). He then served in France during WWI and upon returning home, Truman and his wartime friend, Eddie Jacobson, opened up a men’s clothing store in Kansas City, Missouri, which was successful for three years before failing, due to the postwar recession. “After his shop went bankrupt, it took him 15 years to pay off his share of the firm’s debts. Nevertheless, the store established Truman’s reputation as a respected businessman, which in turn set him on the path to civic engagement.” (Source: OnDeck) This new path paved the way for greater success in other offices. According to the same article by OnDeck, he even joined the Triangle Club, which is an association of businessmen committed to improving the city, and became involved in activities with the American Legion. 

9. Jimmy Carter (1977-1981): 39th President

“It’s not necessary to fear the prospect of failure but to be determined not to fail.”- President Carter

When President Carter was 10-years-old, he stocked his family’s peanut farm with produce and took it to town to be sold. He continued to save the money he made, and by the age of 13, “he bought five houses around the plains which the Great Depression put on the market at rock-bottom prices. He then rented the homes to families in the area.” (Source: Abby Connect) 

The risk of losing the 2,500-acre peanut farm became very high when his father died of cancer in 1953. According to an article by Entrepreneur, Carter then returned home from the Navy to manage the struggling peanut farm. “Carter reportedly threw himself into farming the way he had with his naval duties, and hard work and effective management made the Carter farm prosperous by 1959.” (Source: Entrepreneur) 

In 1971, a sudden drought hit, bringing another risk to the farm, so Carter bought local farmers’ peanuts and sold them in bulk to big processors. “This led Carter Warehouse to gross $800,000 annually by 1971, up from a mere $184 when Carter started.” (Source: TIME)

9. George H.W. Bush (1989-1993): 41st President

"No problem of human making is too great to be overcome by human ingenuity, human energy, and the untiring hope of the human spirit."- President George H.W. Bush

President George H.W. Bush found much entrepreneurial success from the oil industry, after graduating from Yale with an economics degree. He first started in oil as a salesperson for Dresser (Source: Time), then later formed a partnership with his neighbor, John Overby, and created the Bush-Overby Oil Development Co. in 1951. Due to family connections, the company was financed with nearly half a million dollars from Bush’s uncle (Source: Entrepreneur). 

The success of the company grew, and in 1954, Bush-Overby Oil controlled 71 wells, which produced 1,250 barrels of oil per day (Source: LegalZoom). By 1953, their company then merged with another independent oil company to create Zapata Petroleum, of which Bush became president (Source: Entrepreneur). After years of growth and in 1966, Bush was able to sell his holding and made about $1 Million doing so (Source: TIME).

"Be bold in your caring, be bold in your dreaming and above all else, always do your best."- President George H.W. Bush

10. George W. Bush (2001-2009): 43rd President

“Prosperity results from entrepreneurship and ingenuity.”- President George W. Bush

George W. Bush earned his bachelor’s degree from Yale and then became the first US president to earn his MBA, which he received from Harvard. After school, he followed in his father’s footsteps in the oil industry, but took a different approach as he “searched mineral-rights titles in county courthouses around West Texas and then would see if the owners would lease those rights to oil companies.” (Source: Time) In 1977, he then founded his own company called Arbusto (Spanish for Bush), which focused on low-risk, low-return wells, and found a relatively low gas field (Source: Abby Connect). Eventually, the price of oil dropped, and their company became very high-risk. Spectrum 7 Energy Corporation jumped in and rescued their company, merging the two in 1984 with Bush as the CEO, according to an article by LegalZoom. “After losing $400,000, it was purchased by Harken Energy Corporation, and Bush served as a consultant to Harken,” (Source: LegalZoom)

After working in the oil industry for many years, Bush decided to move into sports and invested in the Texas Rangers MLB team with $600,000 (Source: Entrepreneur). According to the same article by Entrepreneur, he then sold his stakes for the team in 1998 for $15 Million, a 2,400% ROI.

11. Donald Trump (2017-2021): 45th President

“As long as you are going to be thinking anyway, think big.”- President Donald Trump

Donald Trump is a real estate guru. He studied real estate at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School and invested in Philadelphia real estate while studying there. He took over his family’s company to develop it into an international brand and according to Abby Connect, in the 1970s he began branching into Manhattan skyscrapers and renamed the company Trump Organization. He’s built luxurious hotels such as the Grand Hyatt Hotel and Trump Plaza, Trump’s Tower on Fifth Avenue, as well as the Trump headquarters. In the 1980s, he started placing casinos in Atlantic City, adding to Trump Plaza, and Trump Castle. In 1990, he even opened up his own Trump Taj Mahal, known as his own “eighth wonder of the world.” (Source: Abby Connect) 

According to Time, Trump appears to own or control more than 500 businesses in some two-dozen countries around the world! He has been very successful, but not without several bankruptcies, according to Abby Connect. Amidst his many businesses all over the world, he has also published books, opened up golf and hotel resorts, owned beauty pageants, and created his own branded products such as Trump steaks, Trump University, Trump shuttle, and Trump Success Eau De Toilette (Source: Business News Daily). 

“Get going. Move forward. Aim High. Plan a takeoff. Don't just sit on the runway and hope someone will come along and push the airplane. It simply won't happen. Change your attitude and gain some altitude. Believe me, you'll love it up here.”- President Donald Trump

Key Takeaways

Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. President  Washington the greater the conflict, the better the triumph. We savor the hard-won victories even more. 
2. President Lincoln taught us to not let failure stop us. Perseverance is a key attribute of successful entrepreneurs.
3. President Johnson taught us that unless we continue to innovate and evolve, we’re going to learn a painful lesson from someone who has. This is so true with tectonic shifts. 
4. Don’t be afraid to take risks. Be determined, don’t get caught up in the circumstances, and press forward as President Harding did. 
5. Current circumstances will not remain forever. Diligence and resilience go on a long way as President Hoover has proven. 
6. President Roosevelt encouraged us to be bold and persistently experiment. Try something. If it fails, pivot or move onto another.
7. President Truman taught that those who made it to the top were those who did the work, with enthusiasm and everything they had. Whatever we do, we should do our best and give it all we have.
8. President Carter taught us that we don’t need to be afraid of failure, we just have to be determined no to fail. 
9. President George H.W. Bush taught us to be bold in our caring and dreaming.
10. President George W. Bush taught us that prosperity comes from entrepreneurship and ingenuity. 
11. President Trump taught us to move forward, aim high, and create a plan. We shouldn’t wait around for others to do the work for us or to make things happen.

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Challenge

If we desire monetization we have never before achieved, we must leverage strategies we have never before implemented. I challenge each of us to pick one thing that resonated with us from today’s episode and schedule a time this week to implement it to help achieve our monetization goals.

Share Your Story 

Do you know of any other entrepreneurial presidents or stories of president entrepreneurs that we missed? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://www.monetizationnation.com/11-11-u-s-presidents-who-were-entrepreneurs-and-what-we-can-learn-from-them/

I recently interviewed John Pestana and he told me an amazing story of how a game of paper, scissors, rock helped grow his business which sold to Adobe for more than $1.8 billion.

John was in a class with me during my junior year in college. Since then, John has been a phenomenally successful entrepreneur. He was a co-founder of MyComputer.com, which he sold as his first exit. He then co-founded Omniture, an enterprise analytics company, which he sold to Adobe for $1.8 billion. He is currently the founder and CEO of ObservePoint, a data analytics company.

Here are a few of the monetization secrets from my interview with John. 

Creating “Wow” Engagement 

While John was working at Omniture, they sponsored a lunch at a large software conference. Normally whoever sponsors the lunch has a chance during the meal to stand in front of everyone and speak about their company. John and his team noticed that nobody ever seemed to pay attention during these little speeches, and they wanted to find a way to change that. 

Instead of standing up and speaking about their company, they decided to hold a paper, scissors, rock competition for the attendees. The winner would receive a hummer. As you can imagine, attendees were absolutely thrilled to participate. Participants collected business cards from everyone who participated and had them chant “Om-Ni-Ture” instead of “paper, scissors, rock.” 

This “wow” moment was unforgettable and created amazing brand awareness and lead generation for Omniture. As we try to engage with potential customers, we should try to think outside the box and create “wow” engagement. Some ideas may fall flat, but when we succeed we have a chance to become legendary.

Agility and Grit

"The people who become really successful have agility and grit. They just keep going no matter what. When you fall flat on your face, you just pick yourself up and keep moving.”  - John Pestana

Embracing Data, Good or Bad

"I’m not afraid of data. I actually want to know if something is bad. There are so many people who don’t want to know the bad things. I want to know the bad things because the only way I can fix the bad things is if I know about them.” - John Pestana

Connecting With Every Employee 1-on-1

Within 3 days of becoming the new CEO of ObservePoint, John had done 1-on-1 interviews with every employee. Now, every 6 months John does an interview with every employee (100 people), even the part-time interns. These interviews build John’s credibility with his team and show that he cares about them and their thoughts and opinions. If there is anyone a CEO should be talking to, it is the front-line customer service reps who are working with the customers.

Obsess About Customer Happiness

We should obsess about customer happiness. Live and breathe it and instill it throughout our company. 

To be credible, we must know our industry well enough that we are a credible source of information. We also must know our customers well enough that we know what is going to help them or not. 

When we do a good job helping solve problems for our customers, they start coming to us and asking us to help them solve other problems in their business. It is tempting to want to take that additional work, but we have to ask ourselves if that is a business we want to be in. We don’t want to destroy our credibility in the things where we are experts because we took on additional projects where we were not experts and performed poorly.

Most salespeople just spew out information when they are trying to make a sale. That doesn’t work well. We should never start off that way. The first thing we do is ask potential customers about themselves and their problems. Then, we know how we can make them happy. We can then focus on solving their problem instead of selling our product. When we listen first, we are more credible because we are giving people what they need.

The Power of Saying “No” and Setting Good Expectations

There is a power in saying “no.” By saying yes too much, we can destroy our credibility. We don’t have to be everything to everybody. We need to understand what we are.

Credibility is doing what we say we are going to do. That is a two-sided stick. We obviously need to do what we say we are going to do, but just as importantly, we need to set proper expectations upfront about what we are going to do. 

The Results Pyramid

When we want to see new results in our companies, we tend to focus on giving out many new orders and action items. However, in order to receive the results we truly want, we need our team members to understand why there are new actions and to believe that we can achieve the results we’re reaching after. So the first thing we need to do is create experiences that can change beliefs. Those changed beliefs will lead to changed actions, which will ultimately reward us with the results we’re seeking. 

When John started as CEO at ObservePoint, customer retention was only in the high 70’s. He told his employees that the company goal was to bring it up to 95% retention. When his employees heard this, they rolled their eyes. They needed to have experiences that would help change their beliefs that it was possible to achieve that result. 

So John started giving them those experiences. One example he shares is that in the past when they needed to have a team meeting to solve a service problem, the team would look at their calendars and schedule something 2 weeks in the future. Under John’s leadership, he stated that they needed to have an emergency meeting at 5 p.m. that day to solve the problem.

After six months of having experiences like that, John asked his team who believed him when he first said that they would have a 95% retention rate. Only two members raised their hands. He then asked who now believed that they could achieve a 95% retention rate and every employee raised their hand. 

Leveraging Associations & Tradeshows

When we serve in industry associations it is a way for us to give back, and it is also a way to give credibility to our companies. 

We should carefully track the return on investment from every trade show so we know which ones convert and which ones do not.

Trade shows aren’t just about finding new customers. They are also about being in touch with our current customers. Trade shows can be effective ways to meet everyone in person, as opposed to having to fly out and meet everyone individually.

It’s important to know the metrics that we will use to measure the success of a trade show before the trade show. Otherwise, it’s too easy to come up with statistics to justify an ineffective decision after the fact.

Using Zoom Effectively

Meeting someone in person helps build credibility. During COVID, we need to figure out ways to do that virtually. We must treat Zoom professionally so it helps to build and not detract from our credibility. When we are using Zoom, we need to have a professional Zoom photo, get ready for the day, and have good lighting. If you don’t have professional lighting, at least face a window instead of having a window behind you.

When we are using Zoom, we should try to create as close to an in-person experience as we can. For example, when John does company meetings over Zoom, he calls out people who are not sharing their videos, because it is important that we see each other, even if we are not the ones presenting. As John is presenting, he will engage people and make it feel more human and not too produced or fake.

The Power of Extending Trust First

One of the most important things about trust and credibility is not being afraid to extend it. If in every interaction we force people to gain our trust, we are never going to gain the trust of anybody. We should give our full trust in every relationship upfront and take the risk that we might be hurt. When we put full trust in others first, they will generally extend trust much faster to us. Then, we need to do everything we can to be sure we don’t break that trust. 

As we work hard for others, give to others, and strive to help and make others happy, we will see it come back to us tenfold. 

Connect with John and His Company

If you want to learn more about John Pestana and his company:

John Pestana’s LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnpestana/

ObservePoint - https://www.observepoint.com/

Monetization Secrets

Thank you John for sharing those stories and secrets. Here are some of the top monetization secrets that stood out to me from today’s episode: 

1. We should try to create “wow” engagement moments with potential customers to be unforgettable and maybe even legendary like Omniture did with their paper, scissors rock competition.
2. We should embrace data, whether it’s good or bad, and make data-driven decisions.
3. We’re all going to stumble and fall. We will be defined by the moments we have picked ourselves up and kept going. 
4. We should obsess about customer happiness and use the power of “no” to set great expectations.
5. We must extend trust first if we want to gain credibility.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
2. Follow the Monetization Nation Blog.
3. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine.
4. Join our private Monetization Nation Facebook Group.
5. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
6. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. 
7. Connect with Nathan on Linkedin. 
8. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram. 
9. Follow Monetization Nation on Twitter.

Challenge

If we desire monetization we have never before achieved, we must leverage strategies we have never before implemented. I challenge each of us to pick one thing that resonated with us from today’s episode and schedule a time this week to implement it to help achieve our monetization goals.

Share Your Story 

When have you observed businesses create “wow” moments of engagement with their potential customers? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Reat at: https://www.monetizationnation.com/12-how-a-game-of-paper-scissors-rock-helped-build-a-company-that-sold-for-1-8-billion/

“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” - Archimedes

A lever is one of the most basic tools and yet it can be incredibly powerful. Levers allow us to lift items that we don’t have the strength to lift on our own. Using a lever is called leverage, which according to dictionary.com means to “use to maximum advantage.” That’s what we’re going to be talking about in this episode; how we can leverage our assets to metaphorically lift more than we would have the strength to lift on our own. 

Leveraging Our Time

Time is a precious resource and we want to be sure we are using it to the maximum advantage, or in other words, leveraging it. That means we need to spend our time doing the things that will reward us with the returns that matter most. One way we can do that is through delegation. If there are tasks we can delegate to someone else, we should do it. This will require us to have other assets like effective team members and money to pay them. 

Another way to leverage our time is to leverage unexpected extra time. On Salesgravy, Jason Eatmon shares a story of when the soccer team he was coaching played a very difficult opponent. At one point in the game, one of Jason’s players was injured. As Jason jogged out to the field to check on him, he was surprised to see what the other team was doing. Instead of standing around, they ran quickly to their coach on the sideline and started stretching and discussing the game. This team realized the importance of unexpected timeouts and leveraged that time to improve and prepare themselves for the rest of the game. 

Time Audit

If we’re not sure if we’re leveraging our time effectively, we should do a time audit on ourselves. A time audit works very similarly to the budget planning process, in which we record how we are spending our money, then group together similar transactions, analyze that data, and then make a plan for how we would like to spend our money in the future. Finally, at the end of future months, we repeat this process and compare our actual spending to our plan and make changes as necessary to accomplish what matters most with our money.

Here are the steps of a time audit: 

1. Record - We carefully record everything we do with our time for a week. It’s important to not deviate from how we normally spend our time during this week. 
2. Categorize - We group together the time spent on similar tasks in categories.
3. Analyze - We analyze how we spent our time. 
4. Decide - We decide how we want to change our time allocation to best invest in what matters most. 
5. Schedule - We develop a schedule for how we are going to use our time according to our plan going forward. We put this schedule in our phones with reminders.
6. Assess - Finally, we schedule a time regularly to assess how we are doing implementing our plan and make any changes necessary to achieve what matters most to us with our time. 

Leveraging Our Customers

Next, we need to leverage our customers. I’m not suggesting we take advantage of anyone. What I mean here is instead of focusing on one and done sales, we should be striving to create long-lasting relationships with our customers by continually providing them with value. 

Acquiring a new customer can be 5X more expensive than holding onto our existing customers. In fact, increasing our customer retention by as little as 5% can yield an increase in profits anywhere from 25-95% (Source: Outbound Engine). Plus, hopefully, most of our existing customers already like us. That means it should be much easier to convince them to do more business with us. Statistics show that selling to a repeat customer has a 60-70% success rate while selling to a potential customer is only 5-10% (Source: Outbound Engine). That’s why it’s important to see our existing customers as an asset that we can leverage. 

Leveraging our existing customers is about recognizing what other offerings they would benefit from. A great example of this is DBDPet. This company is a one-stop-shop for exotic animals but it didn’t begin that way. It began with just one bearded dragon in a garage and expanded into more exotic animal breeding from there. That was when the company began to recognize how difficult it was for their customers to obtain all the tools and food they needed to meet their pets’ needs. DBDPet decided to fill that need and began selling everything needed to take care of the animals their customers were buying. 

DBDPet didn’t stop there in offering their customers value. They realized that there wasn’t a lot of information on how to care for the pets they were selling. They became experts on the care of many different animals, and they share their information for free on their social media channels. This free offering provides great value to their customers and attracts potential customers to their brand. Ultimately, DBDPet has done a great job leveraging their customers to increase the company’s offerings and improve customer loyalty. 

Another way we can leverage our customers is by sharing their success stories, testimonials, and incentivizing them to refer us to their friends and family. Short videos are usually the most effective way to leverage these success stories and testimonials. Consumers are turning more and more to trusted sources for advice on where to buy. Past customers are some of the most trusted sources for new customers. This is why leveraging our customers can be invaluable in gaining new customers. 

Leveraging Our Successes 

When we experience great successes and achievements, we should be leveraging those experiences to gain more business opportunities. Potential customers are more likely to trust that we can give them what they want if we can show them we’ve done it before. For example, my first successful business was Adoption.com. Once I had that success, I leveraged it to gain my first consulting client. The success I helped that client achieve added to my Adoption.com leverage and helped me gain more clients and investors. 

Here’s another example of leverage related to my consulting work in Brazil. I know Brazil and the Portuguese language well thanks to my two-year mission there. When I went back to finish my college degree, one of the deans of the business school recruited me to serve as the President of a non-profit foundation started by David Neeleman. David is the founder of Azul, a Brazilian airline. David got to know my work through that non-profit. My knowledge of Brazil and the Portuguese language from my mission, alongside David Neeleman watching my work as I ran his foundation during my schooling, gave me leverage. That’s why when David started Azul, he recruited me to help develop and implement digital strategy. I was told Azul became the fastest-growing airline while I was there. 

Carlos Martins is a billionaire in Brazil. He saw the success we had at Azul (more leverage) which resulted in him hiring me to help him grow three of his ventures in Brazil. Notice how the success at each level gives leverage that helps us advance to the next level. We can leverage our successes by sharing testimonials and success stories. 

Another way to leverage our successes is by sharing awards from credible sources. Here’s an example. Years ago, the BYU Center for Entrepreneurship gave me their “Best of the Decade” award. I can think of many people who deserve that award more than me, and I don’t know why they gave it to me. However, that sounds like a very impressive award, and I’ve been able to leverage that to help secure contracts with numerous other graduates of that school. We just have to be careful to not share the stories in ways that sound arrogant, just like I probably sound really arrogant sharing that story. Sorry. Just trying to give an example of a principle.

Leveraging Tectonic Shifts

“When we leverage, we aggregate and organize existing resources to achieve success.” - Richie Norton, Author of The Power of Starting Something Stupid

As I’ve shared before, there are tectonic shifts occurring all over the business world, and they’re going to run their course and change things up whether we leverage them or not. The businesses that are quickly and effectively leveraging tectonic shifts are likely the ones that are going to jump ahead of their competitors and come out on top. 

Leveraging tectonic shifts is all about being willing to change the way we do business to match the changing opportunities. It doesn’t matter how big, well established, or dominant we are. If we keep doing the same things we’ve always done, our competitors will leverage the tectonic shifts, and the tectonic shifts will have the power to bury us. We will become stagnant and stale without them. Instead, we need to recognize the tectonic shifts occurring and leverage them by changing the way we do business. 

A good example of this is the Wine Library, run by Gary Vaynerchuk. In the late 90’s Gary recognized the tectonic shift the internet was creating. His father owned a simple, local liquor store, Shoppers Discount Liquors. Gary moved his father’s liquor store onto the internet, making it one of the first online stores for alcohol. They renamed the company Wine Library and went from making 3 million to 60 million (Source: Gary Vaynerchuk). 

Gary didn’t stop there either. He saw how popular videos were and how easy it was becoming to upload your own videos and he decided to create Wine Library tv. In his show, Gary teaches viewers about different wines. This idea wasn’t something many were doing at the time and his show became very popular. It was highly effective because it was a form of advertising that consumers were actively seeking because of the entertainment and knowledge it provided. The online tv show added greatly to the success of Wine Library. 

At Monetization Nation, we are coming together as fellow entrepreneurs to identify tectonic shifts and find ways to leverage them together to our advantage. If you’d like to join us in this quest, visit our Facebook page to find fellow digital monetizers who are striving to achieve monetization goals they’ve never achieved before. Or, follow our podcast to hear from real business leaders as they share with us the lessons they’ve learned from successes and failures. 

Key Takeaways

Here are some of the key takeaways that stood out to me from today’s episode: 

1. We should leverage our time by performing a time audit, helping to ensure we’re maximizing the precious time we have. 
2. We should leverage our customers by offering products and services that will result in repeat customers, incentivizing referrals, and sharing customer success stories and testimonials. 
3. We should leverage our successes by sharing our stories of success or our awards won, hopefully in a manner that doesn’t feel arrogant. 
4. We should leverage tectonic shifts by changing the way we do business to fit the new shifts occurring. 

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow the following channels to receive free digital monetization content:

1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
2. Follow the Monetization Nation Blog.
3. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine.
4. Join our private Monetization Nation Facebook Group.
5. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
6. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 
7. Connect with Nathan on Linkedin. 
8. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram. 
9. Follow Monetization Nation on Twitter.

Challenge

If we desire monetization we have never before achieved, we must leverage strategies we have never before implemented. I challenge each of us to pick one thing that resonated with us from today’s episode and schedule a time this week to implement it to help achieve our monetization goals.

Share Your Story

What assets do you leverage or hope to leverage in the future? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://www.monetizationnation.com/13-with-enough-leverage-we-can-move-the-earth/

Meet Mark Morris

Mark Morris has had a storied business consulting career. In this episode, Mark will share how captivating storytelling helped save the 2002 Olympic games, along with his insider story of helping create Burger King’s viral Subservient Chicken campaign, which some believe is one of the top-10 marketing campaigns of all time. 

Mark Morris has a Harvard MBA, is a University professor of business management, worked as a consultant for Bain and Company and Deloitte, and has consulted for more than 100 companies. 

He was also in New York City during the 9/11 terrorist attacks with a CEO client. The day before that, the Olympic committee had been in New York looking for a place for the Olympic flame to rest during the Christmas holidays. 

Scandal Surrounding the 2002 Olympics

Mark had the opportunity to assist with the marketing and communications for the Salt Lake City 2002 Olympic Games. It was projected to be the worst Olympic games because of a bribery scandal. This scandal was having a huge effect on the credibility and monetization of the games, and sponsors were not wanting to be associated with the scandal. 

Mark feels that the Olympics is one of the most passion-filled events. It is filled with people who have dedicated their lives to being elite athletes. 

As Mark met with the team trying to move the focus away from the scandal, they decided to focus on telling the stories of the Olympic athletes and what they had overcome to arrive at this event. They felt that the focus should be on helping people connect with the athletes and their stories. Instead of trying to focus on defending the scandal, they moved on and focused on creating connections with the athletes. As the team behind the 2002 Olympics was able to successfully focus on telling these athlete stories, the focus did shift away from the scandal and sponsorships did come back. 

These Olympic games had been projected to lose a huge sum of money greatly due to the scandal. However, in great part because of this storytelling strategy and the connections with the athletes, the games became profitable. Some even said the 2002 Salt Lake City Games were the best-run Olympic games ever. 

Subservient Chicken

Mark worked with Burger King to launch a new chicken sandwich. Before that, Burger King had a "chewed and glued" chicken sandwich that wasn’t whole-breast chicken. Mark was helping them launch a higher-quality chicken sandwich that could be customized.

With this launch, they rolled out the "Have it your way" campaign. To do this, they hired a person to dress up in a chicken suit and recorded him doing about 400 different actions. Then, they put it online so people could type in commands to have the chicken do things "your way." This became the "Subservient Chicken" phenomenon, and it went viral. Many of the people thought that the chicken was doing their commands live and didn’t realize it was all pre-recorded. 

Here’s a quote about the Subservient Chicken campaign from Adweek:

“The ‘Subservient Chicken’ instantly struck a nerve with bloggers, in part because the site’s technology allowed users to type in nearly anything and get a response from the chicken. He could do jumping jacks, dance, do push-ups and even watch television. He seemed impossible to stump. Within a day after being released, the site had a million hits. Within a week, it had received 20 million hits. Who was behind this strange Web phenomenon? Many visitors to the site were surprised to see it was Burger King.”

Mark remembers taking the Subservient Chicken to Fox News in New York so that the newscasters could "have it their way." Later that night, Mark took the Subservient Chicken clubbing in a stretch SUV.

Some people rank the Subservient Chicken as one of the top 10 marketing campaigns of all time. 

Hard Times are an Opportunity to Create Connections

Hard times are sometimes the best times to connect with people. The 9/11 terrorist attacks were the worst terrorist attacks in history, but they created a more unified "tribe" of Americans. Another example is when a group of students go through the challenge of business school together and become very bonded.  

Mark believes that when we focus on the hard times it can cause us to feel crushed, defeated, and hopeless. But as we work to get through the hard times together, it can become binding to an amazing degree. 

Mark went into business because of a hard time he experienced. Mark’s dad was an entrepreneur who went through an economic downturn. He went from having lots of business and opportunity to having very little. 

Mark tells the story of sitting in a college economics class and the teacher being able to predict the past and the future because he understood the laws or tectonic shifts of economics. Mark felt like he was observing magic tricks. He wanted to go into business because of what he learned, and because of his desire to help others learn these things.

The power of being there for our customers during hard times and the opportunity this provides to build long-term loyal relationships isn’t about being opportunistic. It’s about valuing our customers beyond the dollar, especially during hard times. For example, Mark was with two executives in New York during 9/11, one from California and the other from Utah. Both executives rented cars and drove home, and the car companies waived all the charges.

Recurring Revenue

The New York Times was able to use its credibility to build one of the most profitable, if not the most profitable, paywall/subscription recurring revenue stream of any news organization. Mark thinks recurring revenue is similar to utilities. Many businesses today have reconsidered how they can add recurring revenue streams to their business models. Mark explains that the software industry has done a great job of shifting from one-time sales of software to software as a service with a recurring revenue stream.

Connect with Mark

To connect with Mark and learn more about his consulting services, visit: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-morris-1b711b161/.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Mark for sharing your stories and secrets with us. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. When we face a scandal or other crises, using great storytelling to build connections can be a powerful tool to shift the focus away from the scandal to something much more positive. 
2. When we are in the midst of something negative, it is often difficult to just remove the negative. That leaves a void and something has to fill the void. Often it is much easier to make the negativity go away by focusing on replacing the negativity with something positive. 
3. When we can create marketing campaigns that our target audience feel are personalized (like the Subservient Chicken), it can greatly increase our ability to connect with that target audience. 
4. We should look at hard times as an opportunity to build deeper connections. When we are there for others through their dark times, it can build loyalty that lasts forever.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
2. Follow the Monetization Nation Blog.
3. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine.
4. Join our private Monetization Nation Facebook Group.
5. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
6. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 
7. Connect with Nathan on Linkedin. 
8. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram. 
9. Follow Monetization Nation on Twitter.

Challenge

If we desire monetization we have never before achieved, we must leverage strategies we have never before implemented. I challenge each of us to pick one thing that resonated with us from today’s episode and implement it to help achieve our monetization goals.

Share Your Story 

Who do we know that is going through a hard time right now, and how can we be there for them during that hard time? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://www.monetizationnation.com/14-how-storytelling-helped-save-the-2002-olympics/

“If you love life, don't waste time, for time is what life is made up of.” -  Bruce Lee

I’ve observed many incredibly successful entrepreneurs and CEOs who make many more decisions based on time than on money, and I’ve seen the same trend in my career. In this episode, we’re going to discuss how to more effectively invest time, our most precious commodity. 

Going Back to College After a Decade to Get My Degrees

After my junior year in college, I dropped out of school to focus on growing Adoption.com full-time. After running Adoption.com for more than a decade, I felt stagnated and paralyzed in my entrepreneurship. It felt like others were putting limits on me because I didn’t have a college degree, and that I was hitting glass ceilings. I wanted to be a better entrepreneur, and I didn’t want to be a limiting factor in the growth of my businesses.

As one solution to be a better entrepreneur, I wanted to go back to finish my degree. My wife and my business partner were both supportive, so I hired a good friend to manage the day-to-day operations of the business under my direction and immediately enrolled in school in another state. 

Soon after restarting school, my wife suggested I try to simultaneously enroll in the MBA (Masters of Business Administration) program, which was about to start, while I was finishing my undergraduate degree. This MBA program was something she knew I really wanted to do, but I believed I had to finish my undergraduate degree first and then apply for the MBA program the following school year. I didn’t think there was any chance the MBA program would ever let me simultaneously enroll while I was still finishing my undergraduate degree, or that they would let me apply to start in just a few weeks. But, because of my wife’s encouragement, I asked and I was shocked when the university agreed to let me do both programs at once. 

I gratefully did that MBA program and I loved it. I know some entrepreneurs feel college isn’t worth it, but I disagree, at least for my situation. I loved my professors, classmates, and classes in the BYU MBA program. Through that program, I was amazed at how much I learned that I didn’t know I didn’t know through my first decade of entrepreneurship. Doors opened to me, such as the Deseret Digital Media position, or university classes I’ve taught, that would not have been possible without that master’s degree. 

Finding the Best Mentors 

As a second solution to becoming a better entrepreneur, I went looking for mentors. Since I had started my first business as a college student and had always been the CEO since then, I had never had the experience of being mentored by highly successful entrepreneurs who I worked for. I wanted to be mentored by and learn from highly successful entrepreneurs.  

So I started doing digital strategy, marketing, and execution work for other entrepreneurs. Over the next few years, I approached four incredibly successful entrepreneurs from whom I wanted to be mentored, and I was very blessed that all four of them allowed me to work for them. These four men weren’t just successful entrepreneurs, but they were also striving to nurture family and faith at the core of their lives, which I wanted in my life as well.

Those four entrepreneurial mentors for me were:

• David Neeleman who founded 4 airlines such as JetBlue and Azul; 
• Carlos Martins, a billionaire entrepreneur from Brazil who created the world’s largest network of language learning schools; 
• Paul Allen, who started Ancestry.com (not the Microsoft Paul Allen); and
• Clark Gilbert, who was a former Harvard Entrepreneurship professor and the CEO of Deseret Digital Media.

I was able to absorb strategies and insights from those amazing entrepreneurs by helping grow their ventures. My treasured time working for these four men felt like an apprenticeship stage of my entrepreneurial journey. It is very important for every entrepreneur to create mentoring opportunities where they can learn from entrepreneurs who have been-there-done-that and have already achieved the kinds of success we want to achieve, in the areas that matter most to us.

Time is Our Most Precious Commodity 

One of the most important lessons I learned from these great men was that time seemed to be their most precious commodity. I saw them make many decisions based more upon time than upon money. For example, I vividly remember the first time I traveled to Brazil to meet with Carlos Martins and his team, and how he had a helicopter pick me up at the airport in Sao Paulo and fly me to his home to save me hours of driving in traffic to his home. Time was so precious to him. 

Then, later that night I remember playing soccer (or football as we call it in Brazil) in Carlos’ backyard with him and his family. I played soccer as a child and in high school and I love it. I think Carolos was surprised that an American knew how to play soccer. For Brazilians, soccer is just a part of life. For many Brazilians, it is more prestigious to be on the Brazilian national soccer team than to be the President of Brazil. No joke.

Anyway, the helicopter ride had saved hours of driving, which allowed us time to make some fun memories together. I was blessed to help Carlos create several businesses, and that soccer game was a great way to start off the business relationship. He had traded the cost of the helicopter ride in part for the time to make that connection.  

Each of my four mentors had to be incredibly diligent about managing their time so they could accomplish the amazing things they did, and still have plenty of time for the other things that mattered most, such as their faith and their families. They each had to consciously remove many less-important things from their lives so they had time for the things that were more important. It’s kind of like they were constantly working to maximize their ROT (Return on Time).  I believe that because these men learned how to leverage time as their most precious commodity they were able to find much more success in all of those areas.

Reinvesting Time in Things That Matter Most

I have not had anywhere near the success of those four men, but time has also become my most precious commodity. I find myself wanting more time to do the things that matter most to me, such as spending time with the people I love, my faith, my health, and the causes I care about. I strive to outsource and delegate tasks I can so I can get time back. 

More than two decades ago, when my wife and I were newlyweds, she had an OBGYN whose daughter was attending college. His daughter’s college was 1 hour 45 minutes away, but he had a scheduled lunch appointment with her every Friday. That meant he invested about 5 hours each Friday to have lunch with his daughter. He was a doctor, whose time was very valuable, yet he chose to invest his precious time with someone who was even more precious to him.

I was so impressed with his recurring father-daughter dates, that I am trying to follow his example and do a date with each of my daughters every week I’m in town.

Coaches and Consultants Can Help Us Get Time Back

The National Academy of Science survey respondents reported: “...greater happiness after spending money on a time-saving purchase than on a material purchase.” Coaches and consultants can help save us the time of having to learn and execute everything new on our own. 

Almost every entrepreneur I consult for has lamented that they and their teams are maxed out and don’t have enough time to implement everything they want to do in their businesses. Some entrepreneurs identify top priority projects, and outsource those projects to qualified people they know will complete the projects well.  Most of my consulting clients have contracted with me as a way to buy more time. They were capable of figuring out and doing their own digital monetization, but they were very busy and didn’t have the time to wait to learn and implement it on their own. They wanted someone they could trust to quickly do things well for them, so they could save that time.

If you are looking to get more of your time back for what matters most, and if you want some help developing and implementing a revolutionary monetization strategy that leverages tectonic shifts, please visit my consulting site at MonetizationPartners.com to schedule a free consultation. 

Tectonic Shifts Can Give Us Time Back 

Tectonic shifts can be another very effective way for busy entrepreneurs to make more powerful use of their most precious commodity of time. As I mentioned in a previous episode, tectonic shifts can be kind of like catching a wave surfing. If we ride the wave, the momentum of the wave can get us to shore in a fraction of the time. Similarly, as we effectively leverage tectonic shifts, the momentum of that tectonic shift may help get us to our desired business goals faster.

For example, passion-driven marketing can help us connect with our potential customers faster, diversifying revenue with information products can help us grow our revenue faster, credibility marketing can help us increase trust faster, and funnels can help us improve our conversions faster, etc.

Key Takeaways

Here are a few of the key takeaways from today’s episode to help us get a better ROT (Return on Time):

1. Continuously invest in our entrepreneurial education, as I did going back to school. Online courses, live conferences, podcasts, and blogs are other great ways to do this.
2. If we really want to do something, it often doesn’t hurt to ask, instead of assuming the other person will say “no.” They might surprise us and say “yes” as the MBA program did with my simultaneous enrollment request.
3. Create mentoring opportunities where we can learn from entrepreneurs who have achieved the success we want to achieve in the areas that matter most to us, and not just financial. 
4. As we find ways to save time, we should be careful to re-invest that time in the things that matter most to us, as my wife’s doctor did with his daughter.
5. We should consciously remove the less-important things from our lives so we have more room for the things that matter most. 
6. We may consider outsourcing some of our most important projects to someone we can trust will get them done well. 
7. We might consider hiring coaches who can accelerate our learning curve, and save us the time having to learn everything on our own.
8. We should leverage tectonic shifts to accelerate the growth of our businesses.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
2. Follow the Monetization Nation Blog.
3. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine.
4. Join our private Monetization Nation Facebook Group.
5. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
6. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 
7. Connect with Nathan on Linkedin. 
8. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram. 
9. Follow Monetization Nation on Twitter.

Challenge

If we desire monetization we have never before achieved, we must leverage strategies we have never before implemented. I challenge each of us to pick one thing that resonated with us from today’s episode and schedule a time this week to implement it to help achieve our monetization goals.

Share Your Story 

How have you been able to save time and reinvest it into something that matters most to you? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://www.monetizationnation.com/15-how-to-more-effectively-invest-time/

Customers are increasingly wary of companies and brands they aren’t sure they can trust. According to research by Edelman, 67% of people surveyed agree that “a good reputation may get [them] to try a product, but unless [they] come to trust the company behind the product, [they] will soon stop buying it.”

Carla Meine is an entrepreneur with an amazing track record. Her company was one of the Top 100 fastest-growing companies in Utah for five years. She ran one of Utah’s top 10 women-owned businesses for nine years and won Utah’s Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award. 

In 2007, Carla Meine and her husband began running a small weight loss company named IdealShape. She implemented innovative credibility marketing strategies that helped transform the business to $60 million in annual revenue. 

4 IdealShape Credibility Marketing Strategies

Here are some strategies Carla used to create and market through trust:

1. Great Customer Service

“One-third of Americans have used social media to complain about a brand or its customer service.” - Microsoft

While Carla owned IdealShape, they put a strong emphasis on customer service. They strived to get their products to customers within two or three days. They quickly replied to comments and posts in their Facebook groups and monitored comments, making sure things never got ugly. When a customer was dissatisfied with their products, they provided refunds and did everything they could to make their customers happy. 

Doing all of these things produced a loyal group of customers who felt that the company really cared about them. It made them feel listened to and appreciated. IdealShape built up their loyalty with these customers to the point where the customers started defending them against anyone who complained in the Facebook groups.

When their company sold, the new owners didn’t put as much emphasis on customer service. They let go of employees who worked in customer service and/or managed the Facebook groups. As a result, they couldn’t foster that community in the same way and sales declined.

"You really don't get credibility marketing if you don't do a great job with customer service." -Carla Meine

2. Use Facebook Groups to Create a Space Where Customers Feel Comfortable Sharing their Experiences

While at IdealShape, Carla helped create the Ship Shape Challenge, a competition that leveraged Facebook. Customers would post their “before and after” weight loss pictures and stories, showing off the results of IdealShape’s products. Then the person who received the most votes could win a cruise. 

This contest got people to share their posts on social media in hopes that more of their friends and family would vote for them. It resulted in a lot of exposure for the company. Eventually, the customers asked for a private Facebook group, which the company promptly created. 

Carla and the company recognized the value of these private Facebook groups as customers felt more comfortable posting in this community where people had similar experiences. The group members were connecting with members of their tribe. Because of this, IdealShape started promoting their general Facebook page to everyone who bought their product. After they befriended customers there, they invited them to the private group. In the private group, customers could see positive reviews of different IdealShape products from group members, which helped give credibility to those products. 

3. Utilize Influencers to Accelerate Reach and Credibility

Some people try to get influencers to give them promotions for free. This can sometimes give a one-time increase in revenue, but it is not a sustainable strategy. Influencers today generally don’t work for free, and they will especially not continue to do so. When we pay influencers fairly, it can help us establish long-term win-win relationships with the influencers.

After IdealShape started their private Facebook groups, they needed people to help manage them. So, the company reached out to influencers and hired them to do exercise videos while managing a private group. 

The people who watched the exercise videos created by the influencers would join the Facebook groups, and from there they were encouraged not only to join in the community but to buy more of the products shared in the Facebook groups. The use of influencers doubled the company’s revenue from $20 million to $40 million. Then, they added another $20 million the next year, reaching $60 million in annual income.

4. Create an Environment Where Employees Feel Trusted and Accountable, but Not Controlled

Sir Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Group, said, “I have always believed that the way you treat your employees is the way they will treat your customers, and that people flourish when they are praised.”

In the 1990s Carla was the CEO of one of the first large remote call centers. Back then, working from home was almost unheard of in the call center industry. Now especially, working from home is often necessary, but many companies are struggling to effectively manage their teams remotely. Carla’s business systematized accountability, through which employees could receive much more freedom. 

IdealShape told their employees that as long as their stats stayed the same or went up, they could work from home. If their stats went down, supervisors would call the employee and tell them to come work in the office so the supervisor could help them get their stats up. This resulted in natural accountability, and the employee could have the freedom to work from home as long as they met their metrics. 

Employees followed their metrics closely and knew when their metrics were down before the supervisor called. Because the ground rules were laid out from the beginning, the employees knew what would happen. The employees felt trusted that the company allowed them to work from home. Thanks to this systematized accountability, the call center team was able to have the freedom of working from home. Furthermore, with this system of accountability, the team was more effective from home than they had been in the office with all of the distractions.

"Because you trusted your employees, you got more productivity out of them. Because you created a trusting environment instead of a controlling environment, you actually had much greater success." - Nathan Gwilliam

Recurring Revenue Streams

Through her experience, Carla has also realized that it is easier to build a trusting relationship with an existing customer than to market to find a new customer. At IdealShape, they realized they needed to do some type of automatic shipping program to generate more recurring revenue. So after a customer would purchase the first package, the company would follow-up with them when they were close to running out of the product. In the follow-up email, they would offer them a really good deal, such as 20% off their next purchase and free shipping. The company was then extremely flexible with all future orders, making sure to treat their customers right. The average customer would accept the deal and stay for eight to nine months. 

Diversifying Revenue Streams

Another monetization strategy Carla used with IdealShape’s customers was diversifying their revenue streams. A customer typically came to them because they heard about how great their shakes were. The company kept these customers coming back by constantly releasing new products such as new shake flavors, new supplements, and new flavors for meal replacement bars. Carla noticed their sales would go up every time they released a new product or flavor, so the company made a goal to release four or five new products a month. 

Connect with Carla

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Carla or connect with her, you can find her on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/cmeine/

Key Takeaways

Thank you Carla for sharing your stories and experiences. Here are some of my key takeaways from today’s episode:

1. Find the right motivation for your customers to share their experiences with other customers like them, such as IdealShape’s cruise for the winner of the Ship Shape Challenge.
2. Use influencers to bring in a lot more customers and help build credibility. 
3. Be willing to pay influencers. This will help turn one-time influencer deals into long-term influencer deals. 
4. Customer service is one of the most important ways to build credibility. Take care of customers with every interaction to keep them coming back.
5. Create a trusting environment rather than a controlling environment for employees.
6. Systematize accountability so that employees can enjoy more freedom. 
7. Create recurring revenue streams. It is easier to keep current customers than advertise to find new ones.
8. Diversify revenue streams by giving customers add-ons and new products to improve customer lifetime value. 

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
2. Follow the Monetization Nation Blog.
3. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine.
4. Join our private Monetization Nation Facebook Group.
5. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
6. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 
7. Connect with Nathan on Linkedin. 
8. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram. 
9. Follow Monetization Nation on Twitter.

Challenge

If we desire monetization we have never before achieved, we must leverage strategies we have never before implemented. I challenge each of us to pick one thing that resonated with us from today’s episode and schedule a time this week to implement it to help achieve our monetization goals.

Share Your Story

What are the best credibility marketing strategies you’ve seen? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://www.monetizationnation.com/16-4-credibility-marketing-strategies-that-helped-idealshape-reach-60-million-in-annual-revenue/

This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host. In today’s episode we’re going to discuss the common misconception that money is evil, and share some great stories of entrepreneurs who generated wealth, and used that wealth to do some amazing things.

Jim Edwards Using Wealth to Save Lives

Jim Edwards is the author of Copywriting Secrets and the creator of a highly successful software product called Funnel Scripts, which my company has used. When Jim graduated from college with a history degree, he had no idea what he was planning on doing next. He quit or was fired from 7 different jobs in his first 18 months out of school. Through some turbulent years of many ups and downs, Jim eventually learned to publish books, create DVD courses, and sell coaching programs. Thanks to these programs and his entrepreneurial spirit, he went from being bankrupt and living in a trailer park to making $400,000 in just three months and paying off his house in 18 months. His Copywriting Secrets book and Funnel Scripts software generated more than $10 million within the first year of launch.

Jim’s son-in-law was part of the military and was deployed to Iraq. When his son-in-law was deployed, Jim went to the commanding officer and asked “what does your unit need?” Jim wanted to do anything he could to make sure this young man made it home safely. 

The commander gave Jim a wishlist of all the equipment that he’d like to have to help keep his unit safe. Jim replied that he would take care of it. The commander asked Jim which of the equipment on the list he’d be able to supply, and Jim responded “all of it.” Because Jim had been so successful at monetizing his business, Jim was able to purchase and provide everything on the commander’s wishlist for the entire unit. 

One dark night in Iraq, Jim’s son-in-law was driving with his unit in their Humvees when an IED exploded beneath his Humvee and destroyed the vehicle. In the pitch black and confusion of the wreck, the unit drug themselves out of the Humvee while they were bombarded by enemy fire. 

As the soldiers fought for their lives, the medic on the squad flipped on his headlamp to check on the soldier who was fighting next to him. With that light, the medic quickly saw that the soldier was bleeding out badly. The medic quickly patched up the soldier and the soldiers were eventually rescued. 

When they were back at their base, the medic approached his commanding officer and asked him to thank whoever had provided the headlamps. He told the commanding officer that without that headlamp, the soldier next to him would have died because he wouldn’t have been able to see well enough to know he was bleeding out. The commanding officer then told him that the headlamps had been provided by the injured soldier’s father-in-law. Jim had been blessed with wealth by God. He had chosen to use that wealth to do good, and as a result, he saved the life of someone he loved… the life of his daughter’s husband… the life of the father of his grandchildren. 

Money vs. Love of Money

Some people may question, or even criticize me, for investing my time and other resources into building a business that focuses on helping business leaders make more money because they feel “money is the root of all evil.”

I believe the bible verse these people are referring to is 1 Timothy 6:10. This is actually one of the commonly misquoted and misunderstood verses of scripture. It is so commonly misunderstood that many people feel guilty about generating profits and wealth. Some people believe that profits and wealth are a sin and that poverty is a virtue. Here is the actual scripture:

“For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith...." (1 Timothy 6:10, KJV)

This verse does not say “money is the root of all evil.” It says “the love of money is the root of all evil.” Huge difference. 

Money itself is not evil. We all need money to provide for ourselves and the people we love. Orphanages need money to care for children without families. Charities need money to accomplish their charitable causes. Money builds churches, schools, hospitals, and homeless shelters. 

So, what is the “love of money”? The love of money is putting the pursuit of money or materialistic things before God. The love of money is greed, and not using the money with which God has blessed us to help others and do His work. 

Parable of the Talents

Matthew 25 records a parable Christ taught about talents. In this parable, a Lord was leaving for a faraway country. Before he left, the Lord gave his first servant five talents, his second servant two talents, and his third servant one talent. Talents were a unit of money used at the time of Christ. 

When the Lord returned, he had a reckoning with the three servants. The first servant reported that he had traded with the five talents and doubled them to be ten talents. The second servant reported he had invested the two talents and doubled them to be four talents. To the first two servants, the Lord said, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.” 

However, the third servant reported that because he had been afraid, he had buried that one talent and not done anything good with it. The Lord called the third servant wicked and slothful and said that he should have invested the talent wisely. The Lord then rewarded the first two servants abundantly. But, he took the talent from the third servant and gave it to the first servant, and cast out the third servant. 

What can we as entrepreneurs learn from this parable of the talents? God gives talents to all of us, and he expects us to use those wisely to multiply our talents and do good things with them. As entrepreneurs, we have talents to create businesses, products, services, jobs, and wealth. God wants entrepreneurs to create successful businesses that can provide well for themselves and the people they love. He wants us to create quality, ethical products and services. He wants us to create good jobs so our employees can provide well for themselves and the people they love. He wants us to use our wealth to help other people.

I’m going to share some examples of successful entrepreneurs who have been wise stewards with their entrepreneurial talents, have generated great wealth, and have then used that wealth to do God’s work and help a lot of people.

Tony Robbins, Motivational Speaker and Coach

Tony Robbins is one of the most successful motivational speakers and coaches in the world. According to Inc, Tony Robbins is involved in 31 companies--12 of which he actively manages--to the tune of a reported $5 billion in annual revenue. His family grew up in impoverished financial circumstances. They often didn’t have food to put on the table. However, one Thanksgiving, a generous person provided Thanksgiving for Tony’s family.  As a result of that kind act, last year alone, Tony’s charity Feeding America provided meals for more than 100 million people that couldn’t afford a meal. 

David Health, Co-Founder of Bombas

Davide Heath is a co-founder and CEO of Bombas, a company that makes high-quality socks. Because socks are the most-requested clothing item in U.S. homeless shelters, for every pair of socks they sell, Bombas donates a pair of socks to someone in need. Each day a new employee joins Bombas and before they are allowed to do anything else, they are given 10 pairs of socks and are asked to walk around the city to hand them out, while interacting with the people on the streets. Bombas is just about to hit their millionth pair of socks donated, in their third year of operation.

Bill Gates, Co-Founder of Microsoft

Bill Gates famously made his initial fortune as a co-founder of Microsoft. Bill and his wife Melinda have given away more than $45 billion to charities over the years (source: CNBC), including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. That foundation and its partners are credited with saving more than 122 million lives through their childhood vaccination programs, and nearly eradicating several tropical diseases (source: The National News).

Paying for My Honeymoon

When my wife and I were engaged, we planned to travel to a tropical island for our honeymoon. However, as the date of the wedding came near, the financial situation of my young business did not make it possible for us to have the funds to go on that honeymoon. Instead, one of our generous investors made it possible for us to stay in a cabin for our honeymoon the week after we were married. My wife and I have been forever grateful to this man and his generosity, and we like to pay it forward for other newlywed couples.

Charitable Causes Need Monetization

Nearly any charitable cause requires funds to operate, which often originate from people who have been successful at monetizing a business, whether it be from the owner of the business or the people who received compensation from that business. Without these funds from business monetization, most charities would be unable to do the good they’re trying to accomplish. Most of the things that really matter in our lives, such as health, family, relationships, service, and faith, require money and time that we can only give if we have enough to share. 

Helping Orphans Find Homes

Here’s an example from my Adoption.com business. Some people think you shouldn’t talk about making money in the adoption community. At Adoption.com, we make money in certain areas of the business, such as selling advertising sponsorships because it then gives us the resources we need to do other projects that help many children and families. For example, we have a photolisting with thousands of children waiting to be adopted but we don’t charge anything for the foster children to be listed in this photolisting. We’re able to provide this free community service and help children find loving, forever families thanks to monetization in other areas of our business. 

Monetization Can Help Us Accomplish the Things that Really Matter

Money itself is not inherently evil. However, the love of money, or greed, can defocus and distract us from the things that really matter. Money can provide the means for us to take care of ourselves, the people we love, to serve others, and to make a difference for good in the world. 

The goal of Monetization Nation is to help us earn more money so we can be good stewards and have the resources to take care of the things that really matter. 

Join Entrepreneurs of Faith

If this episode of Entrepreneurs of Faith resonated with you, please subscribe for FREE to Monetization Nation so you can receive an Entrepreneurs of Faith each Sunday.

1. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine.
2. Follow the Monetization Nation Blog.
3. Join our private Monetization Nation Facebook Group.
4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
5. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 
6. Connect with Nathan on Linkedin. 
7. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram. 
8. Follow Monetization Nation on Twitter.

Share Your Story 

How have you seen money used to make a difference for good? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://www.monetizationnation.com/17-isnt-money-the-root-of-all-evil/

Imagine being a real estate developer and building a skyscraper on land someone else owns, and that the landowner has the right to change the price, the rules, and the terms of the land use at any time. That’s insanity. Why would any sane developer invest so much time and money building that skyscraper when the landowner will eventually change the terms and destroy the investment? Yet, that’s what nearly always happens when we build our businesses to be dependent on digital platforms other people own. In this episode, I’m going to share a story of how Harry’s, the men’s grooming company, built an email list with more than 100,000 subscribers in a week prior to their launch. They did this as part of their strategy to build their skyscraper on land they own, along with other great stories and secrets about platform strategy.

How Harry’s Built a 100K Email List in a Week

Jeff Raider & Andy Katz-Mayfield, co-founders of Harry’s, a men’s grooming company, wanted to make a splash when their website launched. That’s why they began a strong campaign to grow their email list before they even had much information about their new company out. 

Harry’s used a strong referral campaign to grow their email list. Instead of launching their company’s website, they had a simple two funnel. The landing page invited the visitor to sign up for their emails with the words “Be the first to know” above the box and “step inside” instead of the usual “confirm” or “submit” button. These word choices created a sense of urgency and intrigue. 

Once the visitor signed up to receive emails, they were brought to the second page of the website, which was all about their referral program. This page contained a unique URL that the visitor could share with their friends and family. Then it had a tracker to show many people you had shared with. Harry’s gamified the referral process by setting up nice prizes for how many referrals a visitor made. 

Referring 5 friends earned you a free shaving cream. 

Referring 10 friends earned you a free razor. 

Referring 25 friends earned you a free premium razor. 

Referring 50 friends earned you free shaving for a year. 

These incremental prizes were a great method for convincing visitors to share their referral codes with their friends and family. Plus, it built excitement over the company finally opening its doors. 

This campaign led to Harry’s receiving 100,000 email sign-ups in just one week. Raider shared that 77% of the collected emails were referrals (Source: Viral Loops). This massive email list allowed Harry’s to ensure that when they finally opened, they weren’t just making their opening to crickets. They had an engaged and excited audience for when their products were finally available, which helped them become highly successful. 

Harry’s successfully built their skyscraper on land they owned, their email list, instead of on land someone else owned, such as shelf space at big box stores. They now own the relationships and can contact their customers at any time, something that would be nearly impossible to do with a big-box distribution strategy.

Platforms Can Give and Platforms Can Take

Years ago I worked as the Chief Revenue Officer for a company called Family Link. Family Link had created a Facebook app called We’re Related that allowed users to connect with family members and show those connections on Facebook. During my first 12 months with the company, the app was wildly successful and we were able to add $5 million in revenue. The app became the 4th most popular on Facebook and had 90 million installs. 

Facebook saw how popular our app was and decided to create much of that functionality into the core Facebook offering. And not only that, they removed our app from the user's main profile pages who had already installed it. Essentially, Facebook decided to compete and then made it extremely difficult for us to compete. It was kind of like the landowner changing the terms of the deal after we had built the skyscraper, and it was perfectly legal because our app was built on their platform. We had built a metaphorical skyscraper on land they owned, and they could do just about anything they wanted. It is unwise to build businesses under these types of circumstances where we are not the masters of our own destinies.

Facebook isn’t the only platform that does this. As another example, Amazon encourages third-party vendors to sell on their platform. However, in many cases when they see a highly profitable product, they create their own version of the same product and compete. 

"Facebook and other social media platforms seem like a shortcut because they make it appear easy to reach new people. But the trade-off is that you're a sharecropper. It's not your land. You don't have permission to contact people; they do. You don't own an asset; they do." - Seth Godin, Best-Selling Marketing Author

Building a List We Own

This doesn’t mean using social media sites is a bad idea. The lesson I learned from the Facebook experience was the importance of building our own lists. An email list full of customers and potential customers that have already shown interest in our products or services is one of the most valuable assets a business can own. 

Joe Pulizzi, the founder of Content Marketing Institute, explained it perfectly when he said: “An email list is critical because you can’t build your content on rented land. So many brands and companies build their audiences on Facebook and Google+, which is fine, but we don’t own those names – Facebook and Google do. If we are thinking like real media companies, the asset is in the audience.”

That quote was obviously from back when Google+ was a viable platform, but it illustrates that building our businesses to be reliant on other platforms can also go out of business, and we lose all of the investment we put into building our presence on that platform.

Does this mean we should avoid using social media platforms or other company’s websites? Of course not. They are still a great source for growing our reach. The point I’m trying to make here is that the end goal of our platform strategy must land outside of these platforms. We need to control the relationships and communication we have with our customers and potential customers. That means we’re building our email lists, gathering phone numbers and mailing addresses, and doing anything that will allow us to contact people off of the platform we found them on. 

“The most effective tactic is the use of email marketing to drive a real return. The reason it is effective is that people may engage and share on social, but they will buy from a sequence of emails that educate first and sell second.” - Jeff Bullas, Social Media Marketing Strategist

LivingSocial Collects the Email of Every Website Visitor

Here’s another example:

LivingSocial is a coupon company that recognizes the importance of capturing the contact information of prospective customers. They recognize that consumers who love coupons are usually willing to give up their contact information in exchange for coupons. That’s why LivingSocial requires the email address of any of their website visitors. 

That’s right. Every single visitor, if they want to see what coupons LivingSocial has to offer, must exchange their contact information to see the company’s website. This is an aggressive campaign that wouldn’t work for all audiences. After all, most visitors need to experience some value before they’re willing to give up their email addresses. LivingSocial has found that it works for their unique customers though. 

One of the keys to LivingSocial’s success is that the emails they send have great value to their ideal customers. For example, one of the emails the company sends out is called Instant Deals. The idea behind this is to help people find a spot to eat lunch. Right when their customers are beginning to think about what they’ll eat for lunch, they receive an email with instant deals that can save them money on their meal and give them ideas for where they might like to eat. 

I love this example because it shows how well LivingSocial knows their customers. Both the manner in which they collect contact information and the information they send in their emails demonstrates that they know their ideal customers well. 

Each business has its own unique audience with its own unique desires and preferences. We need to build our platform on that. The better we know our audience, the better we’ll know what kind of email capturing will work best for them and what kind of plan we should implement. Then we’ll be able to provide them with effective emails that will transition them through the buyer's journey. 

Becoming an Influencer

Authority occurs when someone takes the right steps to combine standout, trustworthy expertise in his or her field with the kind of high visibility you might often associate with a celebrity. When that happens, the expert’s name becomes synonymous with the field he or she works in - Adam Witty and Rusty Shelton, Authors of Authority Marketing

Most business leaders have the expertise, passion, and knowledge that we can share with others. When we share that expertise, passion, and knowledge on our own platforms we can often become an influencer in our niches. 

We can become an influencer and thought-leader by writing a book, speaking at events, hosting a podcast, creating YouTube videos, writing blog posts, sending an email newsletter, and more. As we provide our followers with useful and engaging content, they’ll want more and more from us and we’ll begin to build a true relationship. One of the reasons this works so well is because we’re providing value before we ask for anything in return. Once we’ve established our expertise and created a loyal following, we’ll be able to market our products and services in a way that is authentic and credible. 

Again, it’s important to recognize that as we’re building our followings on social media, we need to find ways to build a list of our followers we own and can contact off social media platforms. The more we can encourage our followers to visit our sites and sign up for our email lists, the stronger our foundation will be. Then we’ll be building our skyscraper on land we own.

Key Takeaways

Here are some of the top takeaways that stood out to me from this episode: 

1. We need to build our metaphorical skyscrapers on land we own. This means growing a huge email list, membership site, or other platforms where we own the customer contact information and permission to contact customers and potential customers directly. 
2. Our social media efforts, when we’re using someone else’s platform, should focus on getting our customers to come to our platform, gathering their contact information, and gaining permission to market to them. 
3. The asset is the audience. In other words, the lists we build will become one of the greatest assets of our companies. 
4. We can leverage our platforms to become influencers when we share our knowledge and expertise. Becoming an influencer can give us more control over our destinies because we cannot get de-platformed. A platform then cannot block us from contacting our own followers. 

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