Interviewer: What’s shaking, Fire Nation? JLD here, and welcome to an audio masterclass. It’s going to be awesome because we’re going to talk about how to scale your business without those scaling mistakes. So, we’re going to grow, we’re going to leverage our time and our business, but without making those mistakes, and it’s going to be awesome. It’s going to be huge. And we are joined today by Michael G., a 36-year-old entrepreneur who has scaled his publishing business to over $25 million in gross sales. He’s the CEO of BPO USA, and Pixx Media, as well as the cofounder of a real estate investment company.

He loves sharing his scaling strategies with passionate entrepreneurs, just like you, Fire Nation, and we’ll be doing just that, as soon as we get back from thanking our sponsor. So, Michael, say what’s up to Fire Nation, and share something interesting about yourself that most people don’t know.

Interviewee: Hey, what’s up, Fire Nation? One thing about me that’s kind of interesting is I was actually on a weight loss TV show, when I weighed about 500 pounds. And now, I weigh about 205 pounds, so –

Interviewer: Are you allowed to say the name of the show?

Interviewee: Yes. It was called Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition, which was then changed to Extreme Weight Loss, and it aired on ABC.

Interviewer: Wow, congratulations. And if you could just share one thing that you think has made the difference for you from going from 500 to 200, what is it?

Interviewee: Truthfully, it’s being focused on the small things, and not trying to do everything at once, just doing a lot of small things over, and over, and over.

Interviewer: And what’s one things you do over, and over, and over that’s really helpful?

Interviewee: I mean, this is not a real breakthrough, but I go to the gym. That’s a big part of it.

Interviewer: So, Fire Nation, this is not about how to lose weight. This is entrepreneurs on fire. We’re going to be having an audio masterclass today about how to scale your business without doing those scaling mistakes that we all seem to do over and over again. So, I want to start off with an acronym that you have, Michael. I think it’s pretty neat because the acronym is MOPS, and how do we use this acronym, MOPS, to clean up our business?

Interviewee: A lot of time, I have people come to me, and they want to know, how do I grow? How do I scale? How do I sell more? And what I find is that people are focusing on the wrong things. They really need to be focused on MOPS. And what is MOPS? But – it’s kind of the four big keys that I always focus on, as I scale my different companies. So, we have – the M stands for marketing, and the O is operations, the P is your product or service fulfilment, and the S is sales, which is part of it. Now, people always ask me, well, how do you define marketing vs. sales? Some people don’t quite follow that. And the big thing that I say is, marketing gets the attention, sales gets the money.

And so, the thing is, you have these four different components, and there’s also a big F that I sometimes write over the word at the end, but that F stands for finance. And that’s a big piece too, that people don’t every really talk about. But the MOPS part is so important is because each of those four pieces are tied together. So, you can’t just do one without the other. If you crank up marketing, then you’re going to have to have better operations. That means you’re going to have to have better customer service. You may have to hire some more people. If you crank up the sales team, but you don’t have enough ads out there to feed them or feed whatever your sale cycle is, you’re going to continually run into problems.

So, those are kind of the four pieces that are just core to being able to scale any company.

Interviewer: That was marketing, operations, what was the P?

Interviewee: The third is P, which is your product or your service. So, that includes also, not only what do you sell, but how do you fulfil on what you sell? A lot of times, companies sell way too fast, and they don’t have the proper product in place, or if it’s a software, it’s buggy. So, you’ve got to make sure that your product is on point, be it if it’s information, if it’s software, even if it’s a physical good. If you have product problems, that’s going to lead to refunds, chargebacks, complaints, all those kind of things, which in the end, is a big problem when you scale because you’ve got to make sure that you’re plugging every possible hole, where anything could break.

Interviewer: So, then, it’s marketing, operations, product, and sales, MOPS.

Interviewee: MOPS, yeah.

Interviewer: MOPS, Fire Nation. So, there’s three big needs that most businesses need if they’re going to scale, but the reality is, if they’re not solving at least one of these three, they’re never going to scale to the level that they could be. So, kind of go through these three big needs that we as businesses need, and again, to have at least one, if we’re going to scale.

Interviewee: So, this is something that I actually hate teaching because it makes me sound like an awful person. So, I’ll begin by saying that. This is not core beliefs that I hold about myself or about things, but it’s something that I’ve seen. So, what I’m talking about here is what we sell, and the ability to be able to really, really scale products, and this is more specifically, especially for informational products or things that you’ll see highly, highly advertised. There are three things, and I say this sort of tongue in cheek, but also there’s a strong reality to this. If you have a product that you want to scale big, it’s got to meet kind of one of these three things – greed, lust, vanity. Greed, lust, vanity.

And I know that sounds so, kind of sad because we’re always talking about enlightenment and spiritual development, and these are things that I’m into, but just over time, when you look, and you break down things that a lot of people buy a lot of, they tend to fall into one of those three. So, anything that has to do with earning more income, earning anything cash wise, it’s all – at the end of the day, we can talk about supporting your tribe, and I’m going to teach you how to start a membership site, or I’m going to teach you how to blog, or do e-commerce, or teach you to be a coach, be a consultant.

All those things, if you get to the root, it’s a way for people to what, make money, which is backed up greed. So, I say the term greed, not to mean that you need that type of attitude, but just as a way to – so it sticks in your head. So, all these things, at the end of the day, when we break it down to the core, that’s one, greed. And then, lust, so this is one way of talking about dating. And obviously, there’s a huge industry online built around just the sexual side. And I’m not even trying to talk about that. But there’s the idea that we have this innate desire to partner and procreate.

So, a lot of times, you’ll see these really, really big programs, dating advice, get your girlfriend back, get your boyfriend back, learn dating secrets, how to approach people of the opposite gender, all those things. They’re all tied in, ultimately, in a very crude, exciting way, lust. Then, we jump to vanity, and when you look at vanity, and you look at the things people are buying, and you’ll see this all the time when you look at display ads, you’ll always see things like teeth whitening, how to get more firm abs, anything to do with weight loss, all those kind of things.

They’re all tied into the idea that we want to look better. Anti-aging, wrinkle creams, these are the things that usually, people scale very, very big. What I find is, there’s people that often will come to me because they want to scale their concept, but you can only scale certain things so big. So, if you’re serving a very, very certain audience, then I would tell you, just own that audience. You don’t have to necessarily change what you’re selling to appeal to more people. For example, if you’re selling – if your thing is, you help companies grow from one million to ten million, the reality is, there’s not a ton of those companies.

There’s a good chunk, but there’s not as much. There’s a lot more people that are getting started, who want to learn to make their first buck, then there are those that are at one million. So, there’s difference of strategy there with what you teach, what you sell, how you help people scale. That’s a big piece. So, those are the three things that I look for in a type of product that I really want to scale big. And again, I’ll stress that it’s not what I necessarily want. It’s just a reflection of what I’ve seen, as I’ve been out here for 12 years, doing these kind of things.

Interviewer: Greed, lust, vanity. I mean, the reality is, Fire Nation, if you’re in the health and wellness field, I mean, that’s the vanity right there. People want to look better. They want to feel better. They want to exude confidence. They want those things. And then, with – there comes a greed, I mean, that’s kind of harsh word, and that’s kind of got a lot of negativity around it, understandably so. I could maybe argue a little bit here, if you are looking to generate revenue around what you’re doing, so you can keep living that lifestyle that you want, then are you being greedy? Well, no. You’re maybe being more realistic.

But I know what Michael’s really talking about is, if you’re looking to scale, if you’re looking to get to one million, ten million, $100 million in revenue, if you’re looking to scale, these are the three things that you really need to be focusing on. But if you’re looking to create a lifestyle business, where you’re making $85,000.00 a year, and you live in Northern Michigan on a lake, and that’s fine, you can do the things that doesn’t necessarily revolve around greed, lust, and vanity. So, it just is a decision that you’re going to make, and how far do you want to take it? I mean, how far do you want to go down that road?

And again, what Michael’s talking about is about the scaling to the big, massive level. And as you know, Michael, there is a secret to successful scaling. And I know that it’s actual hidden within that word, scale. So, why don’t you break that down for us?

Interviewee: This is a big one for me, that I realized one day, as I was sitting there, thinking about the word scale. When you want to scale something, that basically means you want to make it bigger. You want to do more of that. And the word scale though, means kind of two different things. There’s that word scale, as far as we want to scale it up, but then there’s also the word scale, in reference to balance, in reference to the scale of justice. You can picture up and down. Well, the reality is, the real secret to scaling and to doing things at scale is to make sure that you keep things even, and you keep the scale balanced as you move up.

So, kind of like I referenced earlier with the MOPS talk, you’ve got to look at each piece of your company, and ask yourself, if I scale my ad spend, am I going to make sure I have enough support people to be there for those, say, frontend customers? If I scale the sales team, am I going to have enough leads for those sales people to speak with? And I know it sounds like common sense, but when you really break it down, if you just look at each piece, and you make sure that you don’t push one up without the other at the same time, and you’re keeping the scale balanced as you go up, that’s just a very, very simple, easy way to think about scaling.

Because when you say the word scaling, especially if you read the really professional, Harvard type books, it can get to be this very, very complex thing, where they’re talking about formulas, and make sure you know – it’ll sound like, make sure your GDP is attached to your RCQ. By the time you’re done, you’re like, what in the world did I just read? But what I found is, if you just break it down, and you look at those four pieces, marketing, operations, product, and sales, and you continue to balance them, and bring them all up at the exact same time in proportion to each other, that’s where you’ll make out.

And we’ve had issues in the past where sales went up, but our operations side, which includes customer service, wasn’t up to speed yet. We were behind on hiring. So, that’s part of it too is – and sometimes, you’ve got to hire before the need is realized, and that takes kind of being able to look into the future, but it also takes some confidence, and a little bit of guts because it’s always a little bit scary to start paying people salary before you even know that they’re going to be started.

Interviewer: So, Fire Nation, MOPS, marketing, operations, product, sales. That’s how you clean up in business. And if you’re looking to scale, if you’re really looking to scale to that Nth degree, is your business solving one of these three big needs, greed, lust, vanity? And then, of course, we just talked about the secrets to successful scaling. It’s not just scaling up, but it’s are you scaling up evenly across all levers? Otherwise, if you have this unevenness, this not equal distribution, you might be getting into some trouble. So, you gave us one kind of vague example, Michael.

Dive into a real specific example that either you or maybe even better off, one of your clients that you’ve worked with, or a business that you’ve seen, has really scaled, but unequally, unevenly, so that they really found themselves in a bad situation because they weren’t scaling equally across all levers.

Interviewee: So, I’ll jump into my own stuff because I always like to kind of talk about what I do. I don’t like to talk bad about my – people that’s I’ve consulted with, but for me –

Interviewer: It’s not really talking bad about them.

Interviewee: Yeah, I know.

Interviewer: It’s more, seeing the mistakes they made, and how they learned from them.

Interviewee: For sure. So, and me, right now, with my current company, so we sell an e-commerce product. So, we teach people how to start their own e-commerce stores, how to get traffic, and grow them. And one of the big things that we did is we had a really, very, very good frontend offer that got in a ton of people extremely fast. And our backend on that is we actually will build a store for our people. So, they’ll come in, we’ll teach them how to build their own store, but then we say hey, if you’d like, we’ll build the store for you. We didn’t really know how it was going to convert, but we did have a very, very good frontend offer.

And I was like, you know, I’ll just go ahead and just kind of crank it up. We’ve got two or three people that can build the stores, so we should be – that should be fine. Well, after about one month, we – because it takes, for our sales cycle, it takes about 30 days before we start seeing sales. And what we found was our store sales just went way, way, way up, way more than we had ever thought it would be. So, we were getting to a point where we actually sold about 300 of these in one month. And instantly, we had this major, major backlog of people that were owed stores.

And then, we had about a two week promise to build stores out for four people. That was kind of what we had said in the sale. And I quickly realized, there’s no way possible, we’re going to be able to hit this two-week timeframe with only two or three people. So, then, we had to go out and as fast we possibly could, hire almost ten more people that we added onto the store development team. And as you might know, when you’re trying to hire people fast, it’s sometimes hard to find the best people because you’re just trying to be speedy. So, we were adding people, and some would stick, and some would fall away, and some would stick.

And meanwhile, because our offer had caught so much traction, it was extremely hard to turn it off, or get it kind of brought down some. So, we were continuing to add people, add people, add people on the frontend. So, it definitely felt a lot like building an airplane while you’re trying to take off. I think that’s kind of the best way to say it. And it took us about 60 days to really get everything streamlined, where we had enough people to build stores, we had brought in some more salespeople, we had brought in some more traffic people on that side because we recruit a lot of affiliates. And we finally – it took us about, like I said, about two months, and we got things streamlined.

So – and under that example, where we were off was a little bit on the product side. So, it’s a service and it’s a technology product, and we, unfortunately, weren’t – at the time, we weren’t able to build the stores as fast as we had set the expectations. And then, that led to a few refunds, a few upset people, which we were able to talk to them, and get them back on track. But it was just a – it was definitely something that I learned, we should have already had at least five to ten people from the start. And then, we wouldn’t have faced that. But again, as you’re scaling, I don’t want to make it sound like you’ll be able to solve everything.

There will be problems. The good news is problems, when they arrive, are very loud. You’ll see them instantly. And you’ll know, I’ve got to go fix that. So, it’s not – unless you’re sitting a ton of cash where you can afford to build your team and wait, there’s not going to be a way to avoid some of this stuff. You’re going to have some –

Interviewer: It’s going to happen, Fire Nation. It’s just something you can’t avoid because even for you, I’m sure this was going through your head, Michael. You’re like, I’m hiring all the people right now. What if the demand dries up? What if, all of a sudden, I have 10, 15 people who are ready to work, and this big push, this big launch happened, but then it turned into a trickle, which often happens with launches, and big promotions, etc. So, it’s never going to be this perfect scenario, Fire Nation. You’re always going to have to be adjusting and trying to scale, which is – even out those scales and always adjust the levers.

That’s the world that we accept as entrepreneurs. That’s just the reality. And Michael’s been dropping value bombs, Fire Nation. And I got to tell you, some more coming up after we thank our sponsors. Specifically, I want to put him to the test with a recent product of mine, so stick around for that. We’ll be right back. So, Michael, we’re back, and there are five persuasion points that make people buy. Let’s go through those. What are those five persuasion points?

Interviewee: Well, at the point of sounding super cheesy, I’ll bust out my second acronym here because I am sort of the acronym king. My brain just naturally thinks of acronyms. And what this one is, these are the five things that I look for, that I use to sell products, but that I also look for in products, and I call them persuasion points. And the acronym is FEELS. So, if you want to give your prospect the FEELS and get them to want to buy from you, these are the things that people want. So, the more that you can make your product fit into this, or the way you advertise your product to fit into at least one of these five, this is what people want.

They want something that can be fast. That doesn’t mean it has to be fast. It just means faster than without it. Easy, same thing. It doesn’t have to be easy, but it can be easier than without the product. Then, so you have fast, easy. They want to know that they’re going to learn, or get experience, or get help from an expert, so F-E-E. Then, the L is lifestyle. So, how is their lifestyle going to change? And this is where I see people make the mistake, that they think oh, it has to do with – you’re going to drop weight, or you’re going to look better, or you’re going to whatever. But that’s truly kind of like benefits. I’m talking about the benefits of the benefits, so lifestyle change.

And then, finally, the S is system. So, people want to know that there’s a process they can follow. And this applies to just about anything that you sell. If you’re selling weight loss stuff, people want to know that they can drop the weight fast, it’ll be easy because you’re an expert and you know what you’re up to, and they’re going to finally get to wear that black dress again, that they haven’t worn since they were in – 21 or whatever. And they want to know that there’s a proven system they can follow. They want to be told, at 9:00 a.m. eat this. At 12:00 eat this. At 2:00 do this. They want to know there’s just a process. Follow the process, the system.

Those five things legitimately, have changed my life. They have been worth, to me, millions because I just use them again, and again, and again. And the real cool part is I look for products that solve those problems, that do those things. So, it’s a big part of how I choose what I sell. So, if the product doesn’t hit those points, I kind of know hey, it’s probably not going to sell because that’s what people want. I mean, if you think about even going back to easy, every single time there is a development of a new product, just about any type of thing, it’s always about making your life easier.

I mean, think about the whole robot thing and the whole AI thing. It’s all about making life easier. Why should we have to drive our own cars? Why should we have to mow our own yards? Why should we have to vacuum our own house? Everything is – is there a way to make this easier, where we don’t do anything because that’s what people, at the end of the day, want. They want things to be faster. They want it to be easier. They want to know that who they work with or who they learn from, knows what they’re talking about. And the lifestyle change, of course, that’s what they want. And they want to process or a system. So, that’s my FEELS.

Interviewer: Oh, I love the acronyms. I’m a big acronym guy myself. Fire Nation knows my favorite acronym is FOCUS, follow one course until success. So, I love your MOPS. I love your FEELS. And I kind of want to put you on the spot here, like I promised before the sponsorship break, and maybe have you break down my most recent product launch that I’ve done, and maybe kind of tell me how you think it might fit, one, two, three, four, or all five of these, and maybe give me some ideas as to some ways that I could use the right persuasion points to make people really get excited and fire up about this.

And Fire Nation, as you’re listening actually, this is a live product. So, you can definitely see what changes I might have made between when I’m interviewing Michael, and when I’ve actually implemented it, and when you’re hearing this a couple weeks down the road here. But Michael, this product that I’ve created, No. 1, it’s free because I really want to get as many people into it as possible. I just really wanted it to impact and to help my audience, Fire Nation, who are entrepreneurs, wantrepreneurs, small business owners, people that are just struggling, right at the very beginning point, the just getting started point.

So, as you mentioned earlier, this isn’t for the people that are going from 1 to $10 million. This is for the people that are just looking to get started, and I realize that what my audience’s biggest struggle is, is the idea, singular. They have a lot of ideas. We all have a lot of ideas, most of us, before breakfast. But what’s that one big idea? So, over the course of many months and some strategizing, we’ve created what I think is an incredible system. And that’s exactly what it is. It is a system. I refer to it as a system. And the name of the course is, “3 hours to Your BIG Idea.” “3 hours to Your BIG Idea.”

And the promise of the course, Michael, is that you will be able to sit down, and three hours later, after following this step by step system, you will have your big idea. I will take all of those ideas floating in your mind, and I will give you, at the end of the system, your big idea. So, talk to me. What are your thoughts on that? What are some things that maybe we could improve upon? Let’s go.

Interviewee: Firstly, I mean, the price point’s pretty awesome. You can’t really beat that. So, that’s good. I think secondly, you’ve got your audience down. You know who they are, and you know what they need. One of the biggest things that I have always seen, that I kind of personally, it makes me mad, but I’ve learned to accept it is most people, they don’t want what they need. They want what they want. And so, sometimes, we have to kind of modify the way we present things to be more angled towards what people actually want.

Interviewer: Like when Henry Ford said, if I gave people what they wanted, they would have a faster horse.

Interviewee: Yeah, exactly, exactly true. So, I would say, and again, you may already do this. I have not seen your actual sales page. But I would definitely beef up the problem of the big idea. And the truth is, one good idea can be worth billions. I mean, there’s so much value there. So, going back to the FEELS side, you have it great with the three hours. I would even test making that sound even shorter – 180 minutes from now, you could have a big idea that could be worth X amount, whatever. You’ve got to be careful with what you promise people. But 180 minutes to the best idea you’ve ever had in your business life.

Some other things that jumped out at me, the system part, again, that’s such a key. And I would stress what it’s meant for you because obviously, in your job, you’re presented with opportunities probably every second. You probably get ten emails a day from people going, I got this idea. I have this idea. Hey, you should try this. And so, you’ve had, just through shear willpower, had to figure out how to vet ideas. And I think that a big part of your core audience, like you brought up, they’ve got all these concepts. They have ideas, and they want to know, what’s the right one?

So, imagine if, in 180 minutes from right now, you could, for sure, without a doubt, know exactly the idea that you should hold onto, and that you should run with. You’ve got the system. And then, I would stress more as well, is how is that going to change their life? It’s going to take them from being a guy who thinks he might know something and might have an idea, to a guy that has the confidence to pursue that idea with wild abandon. This is your time to shine because so many times, people get stuck in this place where they don’t know how to start, or they don’t know if they’re spending their time on the right stuff. So, that’s one area.

Two, this is going to save so much time for people. How much time do you waste, trying to launch something you should have never done anyway? So, there’s a huge, huge factor there of really focusing on the problem side and saying look, you’re going to be able to save so much time, and I’m going to show you the fast and easy way to find the idea, the big idea that works for you. And again, because you are the expert, and you deal with it all the time, that’s again, where I think you can do some big stuff there. And again, I love the three-hour thing, “3 hours to Your BIG Idea.” Let me ask one question. How do you differentiate and idea from a big idea?

Interviewer: I think that is a good question. I would say that one thing that I really do within this three-hour system is I have people kind of really flesh out the pros and the cons of each one of their ideas. And so – because a lot of people, when they have these ideas, they’re just thinking about the pros and what’s good about it, and they don’t oftentimes, think about the cons. So, for me, that exercise that I have within this system, really starts to pinpoint, listen, I know that this seemed like a really good idea.

But now, when I’m listing out the cons to it, this is really making me see that it’s going to cost a lot of money, or I’m going to have to build a big team, or it’s going to require funding, or all these different things. And then, you start to say, maybe this isn’t a really big idea for me. Maybe this is just an idea that would really take me on a path I don’t want to go. So, that’s kind of how – one way that I distinguish it, by really having people write out those pros, but even more importantly, write out those cons because a lot of times, again, we just don’t think about the cons.

Interviewee: That’s great, man. That’s very good stuff. And I think that ultimately, when you’re tying it into the bigger picture, you’ve got the whole concept of let’s make sure that this idea makes income, this idea to income angle.

Interviewer: Michael, you might as well have worked on this course with me because this course is free, this “3 hours to Your BIG Idea,” and then what happens is, at the end of the three hours, the whole point is saying hey, now you have your big idea. Let’s turn your big idea into real revenue. And then, that’s the name of the course, real revenue, that’s that next step. So, now, you’re taking your big idea, boom, you got that in three hours. Now, I’ve taken – and I show them. I’ve taken four big ideas, my podcast, my podcasting community, my journals, key affiliate relationship, and I’ve taken each one of those individual big ideas, and turned them into million-dollar result, individually, four of them.

So, I want to show you how I took my big ideas and turned them into real revenue. That’s that next step.

Interviewee: That’s awesome. I was going to suggest a good upsell, but you already got it.

Interviewer: Again, I’ve been working on this for a while. You came up with it in a second, which I’m pretty jealous of. It took me a couple months to get there. But Fire Nation, all I can say is, this is the process, the FEELS, I love it. And honestly, as you were going through those, I was like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I’ve hit every single one of those, but Fire Nation, it took me a little while to get there. If I had had this acronym, I would have been able to start off with that base. So, you have this base, Fire Nation, that’s so amazing. So, before we move on, Michael, anything you want to add, or anything you want to point out in that are?

Interviewee: No, I think that’s it, man. I mean, I think that’s going to be a good thing for you, and I can’t wait to see how well you do with it. I would test the 180 because it sounds like hey, that’s not that bad. Three hours is good too, but it could…

Interviewer: I’m definitely going to do that. I’m going to say hey, listen, Fire Nation. I’m going to do a survey. I’m going to get it out to you, and I’m going to say, what sounds more like something that you would want to just jump into right now – because it is that fast part of it. Does 180 minutes to your big idea or three hours to your big idea – so by the way, if you’re listening to this, and you missed the survey that I already sent out because I’ve already now, done this, after talking with Michael, just shoot me an email, [email protected] Let me know your thoughts. You might still have an impact on that, which would be pretty cool stuff.

So, I guess the last thing I’ll leave you with, Fire Nation, is if you’re like well, that’s pretty cool. Well, it is, so just visit yourbigidea.io. You can sign up for that course for free. So, Michael, where I really want to go next is the three questions that we have to be able to answer about our business for anybody who asks. What are those three questions?

Interviewee: The three big ones that I always ask people are what do you do? Why do you do it? And who do you serve? It’s a what, why, and a who. And I’m sure that this is done by quite a few people, but I put a small little spin on it because I think about what do you do? A lot of times, people will say oh, well, I make a podcast course or whatever. But in reality, you’re truly doing a lot more than that. You’re offering people a chance to create the life of their dreams. If their dream is to be a podcaster, you’re truly creating their – a chance for them to achieve something that they couldn’t do without you, possibly.

So, you’ve got to think about that in a bigger way than just what is the – because I think we get focused so much on what is the thing that we do. But the thing that we do is really just a means to an end. And what is the end? So, it’s that end that I want people to really focus on, first and foremost. And then, there the why. I mean, at the end of the day, most people get started, why they do what they do, it’s because they want to make some extra income. But over time, if you solve that problem, you’ll start finding – and some people are, from the start, a lot more altruistic. But you’ll find that why you do something begins to change, the more and more success that you have.

And so, you’ve got to really dive in, as to why are you doing this thing? Why is it so important to you? What is it that – what do you get back from what you give? That’s kind of the – that’s one way of thinking about why, is what do you get back? And then, finally, who do you serve? This answer – so you would think it’s so easy because you’d say oh, I serve my customers, and I give them what they want. But in reality, you actually serve a lot of different people. You do serve customers. You also need to serve your employees. You may have to serve stakeholders, investors, and other people like that.

You also have to serve yourself because if you’re doing something that’s burning you out, at the end of the day, how long can you keep that up? You also have to serve your family. There’s all these pieces that you’ve got to serve, so you want to begin to look at your business, and think, what are the ways that I can help all of these different areas? How can I serve more than just – and I know it sounds bad because obviously, your customers, you’ve got to serve them first. But it’s the same things as the whole airplane oxygen thing.

If you don’t serve yourself or your family, and you’re having all these problems at home, odds are, you’re going to have a lot of problems in your company. And if your employees feel like they’re mistreated, and they’re going to quit, there’s always going to be problems. And so, it’s truly an approach where you take into account, all the different things because I think the biggest lie that there is in business is the customer is always right. We get – that’s one of the things that people say, but a lot of times, they don’t – and it’s not that they’re wrong per se, but it’s that they just don’t even know. They don’t even know what’s going on behind the scenes. They just kind of see the little piece that they see.

So, you’ve got to take a well-rounded approach to how you do all those things, and you’ve got to set your business up to serve you too, not just the customers.

Interviewer: Fire Nation, I hope you’ve been taking some notes. Obviously, our show notes page is going to have every part of this written down in many different ways, but let’s just go through it one more time. We have MOPS, marketing, operations, product, sales, the three big needs, greed, lust, vanity. We went through FEELS, which is fast, easy, expert, lifestyle, and system. And Michael gave me some really cool feedback, so thank you for that, Michael, on what I’m going through right now with my current product launch. And then, the three questions that you must be able to answer about your business, which is what do you? Why do you do it? And who do you serve? And really go deep on those things.

And Michael, let’s kind of wrap this up with a bow. Let’s give Fire Nation a parting piece of guidance. Then, share the best way that we can connect with you and any goodies you might have for us. And then, we’ll say good-bye.

Interviewee: Sure. A thing that I always say is a quote that I came up. And I always feel weird when I quote myself because it sounds very self-serving, but it’s just so good that I don’t even feel like I came up with this quote. It just popped into my head, and I always say this, and this is true for any time. Life rewards those who take action, not those who take notes. And it’s such an important key, and it’s been a huge factor in the success that I’ve achieved – is I find out about something, and I take massive action. I do write things down, so I do take notes too, but the thing is, if you don’t apply what you write down, or you hear at events, or you hear on podcasts, then you’re not really doing anything.

You’re just kind of giving – you might be getting somewhat smarter, but you’ve got to take massive action. I mean, that’s the big key. I think too many people, they, instead of going for massive, they settle for passive. And then, they end up just not doing anything. So, that’s a big, big thing for me. So, if you heard anything on this podcast or any others, get out there and do it. And you’re going to learn so much more by doing something, especially if you screw up. You should be thankful if you screw it up because you’re going to learn so much more. And you’re going well, this is great. There’s no better way to learn than getting out there and breaking stuff.

Interviewer: And one thing, Michael, before you kind of finish off there, I wanted to say, Fire Nation, that this is very similar to something that I’ve been stressing for a long time as well, which is so many people are just in pure consumption mode. You’re just listening to podcasts, watching YouTube videos, reading books, going to conferences, sitting in the audience, consuming, consuming, consuming. That’s a really important part of your life. You need to be doing those things, but there has to be a production mode on the other side. Just like you’re consuming, you need to be producing.

So, when I first started, I was consuming at 95 percent and only producing 5 percent because I didn’t have anything to produce. I didn’t know what I was doing. But over the last six years, those scales – here, we’re bringing the scale equation back. Those scales have been shifting to where now, I produce 90 percent, and I consume 10 percent. And I’ll never drop below 10 percent because I always want to be learning. You, Fire Nation, should always be learning, always be consuming, always be using your drives and you runs for podcast listening, whatever it might be, that you should be doing these things to learn, to stay cutting edge.

I mean, we wouldn’t be able to have these great acronyms from Michael without it. But you need to be producing. You need to be taking action. So, Michael, back to you. Take us home.

Interviewee: Well, a thing that I like to do whenever I’m on these type of podcasts – I wrote a book. It’s not a very big book. It’s kind of a short one, but the book is called How to Obliterate the Blank Page. So, if you’ve ever had to sell something, or convince someone to do something, and you have to write either a VSL, a video sales piece, or an opt-in page, or anything where you’ve got to get people to an action, you always start that by staring off at a blank page. And it can be very, very scary for some people. So, I wrote this book, and it just goes over the core kind of pieces that I teach for people to be able to, from scratch, start and write a converting piece of sales copy.

And that’s how I got my start back in the old days. I wrote – I was a copywriter. So, that’s a book that I give away free on my site. It’s onlyonemike.com/fire. You can get the book absolutely free, and when you sign up there to get the book, I also send people my super six template, which is my own little custom thing that I created on how I get stuff done every single day. It’s all free. There’s really – I don’t really sell anything, so – and it’s just all there for consumption, and like you said, to get people to actually go into production. That’s awesome.

Interviewer: Fire Nation, you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with, and you’ve been hanging out with MG and JLD today, so keep up the heat. And if you head over to eofire.com, and just type Michael in the search bar, the show notes page will pop up with all of the links to everything we’ve been talking about, the resources, the timestamps, and what we said. You can just click on it. It will pop right to that place. And if you want to go back and hear him talking about FEELS or MOPS, you can just click on that link. It’ll take you right there. And of course, check out his book, How to Obliterate the Page because you will do just that, and that’s by going to onlyonemike.com/fire.

Get that book and the super six templates, and it’s all free. So, make that happen, Fire Nation. While you’re there, drop Mike a little thank you note for just providing so much free awesome value. And Mike, thank you for sharing your journey with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you, and we’ll catch you on the flipside.

Interviewee: Thank you.

Interviewer: Hey, Fire Nation. Hope you enjoyed our chat with Michael today. And are you ready to rock your podcast? Well, check out our free podcasting course, where I teach you how to create, grow, and monetize your podcast, at freepodcastcourse.com. And I will catch you there, or I’ll catch you on the flipside.