OTS 145 | Reading List

 

Joe Tarnowski, Salah Khalaf, Shannon Curtin, and Tom and Tracy Hazzard are back to take us into their library as they provide a great reading list for success. Equipped with two books that they felt had a major impact on their lives and businesses, they gear us up for a journey across multiple places. Get in touch with a book for entrepreneurs who work themselves all the time. Find out how brands have goals and life of their own to tell. Learn an interesting model of how to look at your business’ profitability while also diving deep into the world of blockchain. Know the reasons why companies should look for the right people and how to build a brand and make it successful. Finally, move deeper within yourself as you realize how much in control we are with our lives more than we think.

Listen to the podcast here:

#FlashTopic: 2019 Reading List For Success

This episode is going to be a little bit different. There isn’t going to be the big surprise when the panelists find out what we’re going to be talking about. In fact, they already know and the reason we’re doing this is that I wanted to put together a reading list for all the Big Boxers out there. I wanted each panelist to pick two books that they felt had made some major impact in either their lives or how they do business or how they think about business or their personal lives. There were no criteria on the books. Everybody complained, “Only two books?” Yes, only two books. It’s all we had time for from each panelist.

There are five people on the panel. This time, there was myself, there was Joe Tarnowski. There was Salah Khalaf on there. Tracy Hazzard and Tom Hazzard were there. Shannon Curtin is back as a full-time panelist. You have ten books for your reading list, which is going to keep you quite busy. I know that you’re excited. I was excited to see what everybody brought to the table, what books they shared and why they wanted to share those specific books, how it helped them in some meaningful significant way. I was pretty eager to do this particular podcast and hear what they had to say. I don’t want to wait any longer to hear the books that you are going to get to read so let’s get right into it.

I appreciate you guys all being here. How’s everybody? Our flash topic is going to be a bit different. It’s not going to be a topic that you weren’t prepared for. Big Boxers, I want you to know this flash topic is all about preparing you for the year. At the end of the last Flash Topic, the panel and I discussed, it would be great if we did the best book review on a flash topic podcast meaning everybody would discuss a couple of books that have meant a lot to them and have given them a leg up in their journey. What we were hoping is that we would create a reading list for you for the year or for the first six months anyway. Maybe some of the books that we’re going to talk about you’ve already read, but it will be good to get a different perspective on the book and what that person felt was important. It could off offer you an opportunity to go back and reread certain sections potentially.

I have been noticing and I don’t know whether you guys all have been noticing the same thing too, but I’ve had clients that are struggling on Amazon. These are not clients that have not done business well on Amazon. They have had tremendous business on Amazon. Amazon business is becoming tougher. In some cases, I have a client that was kicked off of Amazon and has provided every piece of documentation that’s been required. It’s still not back up and running. I have other clients that their sales have been cut in half due to competition or algorithms. What that’s meaning is a lot of Amazon sellers are now starting to look at diversifying into mainstream retail, which is a bag of worms. I was wondering if anybody else had seen or heard or felt a shift like this.

We’ve been seeing it for a while, Tim. This is Tracy. I did an interview on Product Launch Hazzards with an Amazon seller lawyer because it’s been so aggressive. It’s been happening left and right. There have been some weird things going on. Algorithms on reviews as well where people are getting shut down because positive reviews like lots of them floating in with the same messaging. It makes it look like you amped up your reviews but it’s coming from another seller who’s tanking your listing. There are lots of dirty tricks going on as well. We’re seeing that left and right. Overall, we’re seeing a toughening of the market in Amazon.

Anybody else seeing that?

I’ll tell you what we talked about, which is in the investment community, there are a lot of questions going on around shifts that are happening. What are brands doing? How are they building? How do they keep up with that? There is some speculation that it’s going to continue now that they have 47% of the market and you have that power. How can our brand continue to diversify as we talked about and what are some obvious ways to do that? What we talked about is when you’re looking for a way to pop off Amazon or not be so reliant on it where you have all your eggs in one basket is to be very choiceful and selective about what retailers you’re going to partner with.

The grass isn’t always greener on the other side either. You can make it green by saying these are our consumers and be very data-driven around the store set that you desire to be in so that the productivity level remains high for both the retailer and the brand because they’re going to be additional costs that are incurred on to do business outside of Amazon. Those are things for the readers to think about is when you’re going out there, you don’t want to have 8,000 stores. Trust me, 1,500 of those are EBITDA and some change or across the marketplace, there’s going to be 4,000 or 5,000 EBITDA stores. You’ll want to ensure that you have the right inventory in the right places. That you’re cognizant about the trades that you have to spend when you’re trying not to be so reliant on Amazon, especially with all these tricks that you mentioned about that are happening. They’re going to have to help partner and work that out.

What we’re talking about is I’ve seen times over my career where malls have a resurgence or big box has a resurgence. Right now, I think it’s an optimal time for the return of specialty. It’s an optimal time if you have a knack for it or you have a product for it, people are looking forward and begging for places that they can go and get personalized service. Whereas before I could tell you, “Don’t open a specialty store, you’re going to get crushed.” I don’t think that’s true right now. Over the next five to ten years, we’ll see growth there. It’s already proven. Millennials still want to go into a store, but they want to go somewhere where they feel welcome. They have service. Right now, the big box is struggling and retailers are struggling. Retailers are cutting every aspect that people are looking forward to. It was something that’s been on my mind. I wanted to get your thoughts on it and see what you were thinking. It sounds to me like we’re all on the same page with that.

Tim, I was talking to Peter Roberts and he was mentioning that. One of his podcasts is talking about this cyclical nature. That’s one of the reasons why they’re actually looking to get into breaking more now because of that.

When we wake up, the world of social continues to change. Click To Tweet

That’s P. Roberts from Origin USA, they inked a deal with Vitamin Shoppe. They were on the podcast not too long ago. In fact, they’re number one in the top ten. For the last 90 days, they’ve been number one for a while until Shannon knocks him off. She’s growing also in the top ten. It’s important.

Tim, I was going to add. I’m out of a two-day intensive Walmart Supplier Growth Summit, where they had the 15,000, 18,000 suppliers here in Bentonville, Arkansas for the past two days talking about their merchandising strategy priorities. A big deal is to accelerate omni customer experience. That means in-store and online. They’re very laser-focused on encouraging. They’ve almost told suppliers to step it up and build and adapt digital capabilities quickly. The wheel is moving quickly. They understand the threats. They’re not as good as Amazon as far as online. Knowing how they’re focused on this stuff, a big portion of it was there Walmart Media Group platform, advertising online and the clicks. They’re focused so much on EDLP, Each Day Low Price, which is winning at price. I wanted to plug that in because it was intensive. It’s very good. I don’t want to talk too much about it but it relates to Amazon having issues. Walmart always has issues. They pick up, move on and fix it. I want to put that in there.

Thanks for weighing in on that. It’s important. It’s a shift going on. Amazon has such a stronghold, but there’s a tremendous amount of opportunity. If you’re thinking about, and you’re walking through your town and you see a bunch of real estates that are empty, it’s a good time to jump in there if you’re so inclined.

I’m going to send you a link in case you want to use it. I did a video interview with a former Amazon buyer who I met at one of our sessions who’s now working for Stella Rising. Her expertise is in helping people optimize their performance on the Amazon platform in case anybody is interested a little bit about that.

The whole reason for the book thing is, first of all, I’m dying to find out what everybody read and was interested in. What did it mean to them? In the interest of time, let’s not do a full book review. If you can talk about the book a little bit, a couple of key things that you took from it that helped you and why? Shannon, we’ll let you go first. Then we’ll let Tracy go and we’ll fight for the rest of the spots after that.

OTS 145 | Reading List
The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working: The Four Forgotten Needs That Energize Great Performance

I learned to do a plug for Jim Collins. If you haven’t read Jim Collins’ books or if you have, read them again. I love all of them. How The Mighty Fall is a great one, but that’s not what I’m going to talk about. I want to talk about two other books. The first one is The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working by Tony Schwartz. This is a book that did change me in the way that I thought about work, being a Type A personality, doing a lot and pushing myself. The premise of the book is to remind us that time is finite. One of the things that we can do is renew our energy and balance out our energy in order to make a high performing team, a high performing individual. For those that are reading, some of this sounds like fluffy stuff I’m sure, but I want to give one plug on this so you can think about it.

There are four quadrants that people live in and that’s in the performing zone, a renewal zone, survival zone and burnout zone. The best performers live on the right side, which is they continue to renew themselves. It gives you ways to do that and renew the team to get back up in the high performing zone. If you live on the left-hand side of the quadrant too long, which is the survival zone, the burnout, then you start impacting productivity, start impacting team morale. Most importantly you impact profitability. This book is a way for you to be aware of your actions and the time, and what you do with your time to make you most impactful, effective and efficient with the time that you have. That’s a great book. Tony Schwartz was one of the authors of our president. He always has something interesting to say about him. I love him, not our president, but I love Tony Schwartz. It is one of those books that I want you to consider and think about.

The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working, is this a book that would be best suited for people that work on a team or do you get value out of it even if you’re a solopreneur?

This is a great book for an entrepreneur because an entrepreneur works himself all the time. You can get into the burnout zone very quickly after two years working twenty-hour days. You yourself have to get into a practice of renewing your energy or you’re going to stop the effort and the amount of work that it takes, the amount of energy it takes in order to keep your business thriving versus surviving. There is a difference between the two and the amount of energy that you need to produce in order to have those results. This is definitely for an individual as well as someone who has a team.

Everything speaks differently to everybody. Click To Tweet

If you have a team of two or a team of three or you’re by yourself, I highly recommend reading the book because it tells you the importance of sleeping seven hours. It also puts it in a contextual way of how it helps you perform overall on the top line and bottom line with the real results are by doing some efforts and staying in the high performing zone. I highly recommend it to all of you and anyone who is reading too. It’s a New York Times bestseller too. It’s not like I wasn’t the only person in the United States of America and the world that read it. He’s the chairman of the Energy Project. He’s the energy guru. I study energy as a person because it’s interesting what we can do within ourselves and what we can achieve. That was that one. There’s not a lot of people know it.

OTS 145 | Reading List
Crushing It!: How Great Entrepreneurs Build Their Business and Influence-and How You Can, Too

Gary Vaynerchuk. If you don’t like f-bombs, turn your ears off or when you’re listening on audio, if you’re watching or following him or you’re reading it, just skip over it because I love the content behind it. This particular book called Crushing It!. It says, “How great entrepreneurs build their business and influence and how you can too.” His dad had a wine shop when he was a kid and he grew that business from $1 million to $60 million. He did it through the age of social media. I have a lot of clients and folks that I work with that still ask me what’s the importance of social media? It is important for individual people or brands because brands have souls and life of their own to story tell. Each of the social platforms that make sense for you to story tell, for you to have a point of view, for you to share what you’re working on. The world that we live in and the brands that are growing are transparent. When their founder is still involved, people want to know about what the founder is thinking, what they’re working on or what they’re doing.

If the founder is not involved, you’ve got a great brand that you want to share what you’re working on. That strong community can help change the shape of your business. It gives you steps in the book on each of the platforms, so you can understand it, how it works. If you’re 14 or you’re 74 reading this and you go, “Is this book for me?” It is, as it relates to growing your overall business. It was one of those that I thought I would bring forward in this day and age of social media. It’s important for you to be authentic. It’s not important that you post 27 times a day unless that is true to your brand. Gary Vee does stuff like that. That’s true to his brand. Whatever’s true to your brand and the frequency of that and staying in the conversation and leading conversations is awfully important growing a business.

I’ll vouch for that. Our whole content strategy for ECRM follows what he does.

I do think you have to be a little bit careful though. I’ve interviewed Gary Vee. I have heard him speak at conferences. He makes most of his money off of advertisements on his podcast and advertisements on Instagram. He is in a pay-per-play model and Crushing It! is old. Let’s keep that in mind. While I think there are a lot of good things and stuff that you should do in there but it’s also an old model that he’s not even following exactly anymore. That’s the one thing about these digital marketers we have to pay attention.

Someone who is not even familiar with what is out there, it’s a good foundation and starting point. Obviously, when we wake up, the world of social continues to change. I do agree that this is not his freshest book. It’s one that I liked that he wrote as a foundation for folks, no matter where they are in their generations or where they are in their life’s journey. Thank you for that. I agree.

Remember one thing too that everything speaks differently to everybody. Two people could read the same book and one of them might think it’s total trash. The other person could take it completely changed their life. Keep that in mind when we’re talking about a book and what they mean to us. Two people could read the same line in a book and both get different things based on their current perspective. Shannon, any other comments on those? They’re good choices, The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working and Crushing It!. Tracy, you’re up next.

Narrowing it down to two was incredibly difficult. I like Joe who was like, “Only two?” I had to narrow it down to two, so I narrowed it down to the two that have changed my perspective the most because that’s what you wanted us to do here, Tim.

Whatever meant the most to you and may be made an impact that is long lasting.

OTS 145 | Reading List
Profit First: Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine

The first one is called Profit First, Mike Michalowicz. He has a podcast also called The Entrepreneurship Elevated. He’s got an interesting model of how to look at your business profitability. He’s got an interesting mechanism by which you do it by dividing them up into multiple accounts. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. I’ve been handling the financial end of our businesses for 25 plus years. It goes completely in line with how we look at our product costs. The idea of how much you’re reserving, how much profit you’re building in from both a market basis and a cost basis perspective. You and I, Tim, we agree on this one. We’ve talked about it many times on the show about how you look at the two pricing and make a decision that makes the best sense for your product.

This is looking at your business that way. It’s brilliant. It’s unusual. It works. I have a lot of people who I’ve referred this book to who are all implementing it. It’s working including one who runs a program on doing the numbers, getting your numbers right in your business. She educates mostly entrepreneurs who don’t know about the numbers in their businesses and what they mean. She’s implementing and going through their certification process to bring it to market. They have a specific book, Profit First for eCommerce Sellers. I thought that might be good for this audience as well. It’s an unusual look at the profit side of things.

I can’t tell you the number of clients I’ve had that honestly have no idea how much money they make. They operate off a cashflow. Obviously, when they finally did the numbers, a huge majority were not making any money. It’s a big shocker when you’ve been running your business for several years. You feel like you’re doing well. You’re running along pretty successfully. You find out that technically you’re not making any money or you’re even in the red a little bit. Anything that you can do, Profit First sounds like a good first step. Mike Michalowicz, the author, he does these speeches all over the place. He’ll very often have a booth at the event. People would come up and he’ll give them this fifteen-minute evaluation of their numbers in their business. They pretty much burst into tears every single time because that’s what happens.

What would appear to be on a well-established, successful business, has been doing it for several years. He has a lot of employees that depend on him.

It’s not what you do, it's who you hire to do it. Click To Tweet

He looked at his business and part of the reason that he came to us was because he was only doing 1% profit at the end of the day when he looked at all of his numbers. He was making a living where many entrepreneurs are not even paying themselves. At the end of the day, his net profit was 1%. He was like, “That has to change.” Part of it was the Amazon shift that we were referring to in his particular case. That’s what he was shifting and moving out of. Most people don’t recognize that because they’re not watching their numbers. I thought this was fabulous. It changed my viewpoint on how we account and how he managed. Hopefully, it will work for you too.

OTS 145 | Reading List
Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy

My second book is the polar opposite, completely odd. It’s called Life After Google, George Gilder. It was the book that hurt my brain the most as I read it. I felt like I had to google stuff as I was reading it. I like a challenge, so that was pretty important to me. It is starting to talk about how blockchain and digital currency and all of that is going to change the way we shop, change the way we market, change the way we advertise. Despite the naysayers in the blockchain and cryptocurrency market that it’s necessary because our information superhighway was never built to handle social media. It was never even built to handle commerce, handle transactions. We’ve added on to our internet and bolstered on all of these extra layers. Now we’re breaking it essentially. Blockchain is an opportunity for us to start from scratch essentially and repair the things that are going wrong. It’s the reason we have so little security and so lack of trust in our system. It’s wild and hard to read but eye-opening.

I’m like a two-year-old when it comes to blockchain quite honestly. I’ll admit that if anybody else wants to raise their hand. When I see blockchain, I think of plain block sitting on the floor. I don’t understand how it works at all. I understand cryptocurrency a little bit. I had the opportunity to have a couple of guys in the cryptocurrency space be on the podcast. I decided not to do that.

You’ll get trolled if you put cryptocurrency on your podcast. I started a new podcast called The New Trust Economy. That’s exactly what we’re talking about is how’s it going to affect your business, how’s it going to be the future for you and what you should know. This intrigued me so much and made me so interested in making sure that I deeply understood how is our world’s going to shift so we can innovate ahead of that.

You can take me to school because I need to learn.

George Gilder, he has been one of the followers in the tech industry, one of the tech writers in the industry. He knows everybody. He knows where they went to college. He knows what they did with their lives. As he was writing this, I was like, “It’s brilliantly written. I can’t follow this. I don’t know these people. I haven’t been following tech for 25 years at this level.” It’s a different book in that standpoint.

Tracy’s full book list:

Disrupt You! – Jay Samit

Tools to Make You And 2018 Disruptive Enough To Thrive – Tracy’s Inc. article

Profit First – Mike Michalowicz

Life After Google – George Gilder

An End to Upside Down Thinking – Mark Gober

What’s Real and What’s Fake? The Questions You Need to Start Asking – Tracy’s Inc. article

I’ll probably talk to you a bit more about that before I dive into Life After Google. I need to walk before I sprint, jump off a mountain. Salah, what did you have for books that were key in what you’re doing?

I think Shannon mentioned Jim Collins.

I love him. I hope you liked him.

OTS 145 | Reading List
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t

I can’t get enough. I’m going to go back to basics a little bit with what I read. You’ll probably have read this book. It’s called Good to Great. The reason why this book comes to mind always with me, it’s all about people. It’s all about who. It’s all about not what you do, it’s who you hire to do it. This book touches on why companies haven’t done the same thing more often, which is look for the right people before they start putting a plan together. How this book was done is they looked at first leadership. They looked at what they call a Level Five Leadership. This is one of the most surprising things when they did the research of the Good to Great companies and why they made it.

It’s because these people have hired winners around them. They thought about who would they hire before they even put a plan together before they did put anything together. Once they hired the right leaders, once those leaders are in place, they built up the base to where they want to take their companies again from Good to Great. One thing these leaders have in common is they’ve faced brutal facts. They confronted what the book called brutal facts about when in doubt, don’t hire, just keep looking. No company can grow revenues and sales consistently over years without hiring the right people. With these companies, the book did some good research on when you know you need to make a people change act.

Much is always on companies that wait around to make and take decisions on people that may not be good in the department they’re in now, but they could be doing something else within a company. The thing is to act on the change. We always say, “A performers surround themselves with A performers.” It’s true about this. The book would say, “Put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems.” Many companies think about putting their best people in bad situations will help turn the best situation around. While this could sometimes work to everyone’s advantage, managers who fail to grasp that fact that managing your problems can only make you good. Building opportunities is the only way to become great.

Honesty and being upfront, these leaders, they let their people hear the truth. In other words, they lead with questions, not answers. They want to develop their teams. They want their teams to even bring up more ideas. They don’t go into blame people. They go into the details. They go into the nuts and bolts of what is it. They into that detail, the minute details so they can discover and not waste their time on blaming why this happened. They build red flags mechanism that turns information into information that cannot be ignored.

Managing your problems can only make you good. Building opportunities are the only way to become great. Click To Tweet

Once they found and they pinpoint that information they’re looking for, they give their company, their employees and their associates enough time and opportunity to dig into this information. They can finally come up and potentially solve the deeper problems of what this book found. One of the things that this book talks about is a culture of discipline. They tell you about filling your culture with self-disciplined people who are willing to go the extreme length to fulfill their responsibilities. Remember, it’s not about what, it’s the who they hire.

Every time I look at how companies are running, I remember Good to Great and this leadership style and who you have, not what you are doing or what you’re going to do. Finally, the book touches on technology acceleration. Good to Great organization think differently than other organizations about technology and technological change. They will go find the right technologies. They look for it. They want to know what’s going to be working. They don’t waste time. They study it. It’s going back into that detail and they don’t overreact to new technology.

They dig into it. They study it. They go get it. This book in my mind tells a lot. A lot of times, people and companies are looking at, “Let’s put a plan together. Let’s put a strategy together. Let’s come up with new items for the next company I’m going to talk to.” Before you do that, let’s think about who’s doing it. Who are you hiring? Are you hiring the right person? Is the right person doing it? Are they the right fit? Tim, if you tell me book one and book two, this is going to be my two books, Good to Great. There is no second. I’m not going to go into another book. I do have, but I want to keep focused on that. I want people to look at this book online, read it again and again because it’s basic. It’s very crucial to the success of a company for the long-term.

What’s interesting is it made me think back in the day when I was running all the company stores for Oreck Vacuums. We started losing some key managers in our organization, people that were good. It wasn’t we were losing them because they were leaving. We were losing them because instead of good to great, they went from great to bad. Something that you’ve said about instead of putting your best people on the problems, put your best people on the opportunities. When I surveyed all my district managers and regional managers and I asked them, “I want you to tell me what managers you’re spending the most time with.” Overwhelmingly, the district managers and regional managers were all spending the majority of their time with the underperformers.

That’s because they felt like that’s who needed the most help. What had happened was they were leaving their top performers with no supervision, no help, no coaching, no anything. These people were going from great to bad. We changed it around and said, “You should be spending the majority of your time with your top performers because that’s where the opportunity is. If your other managers want your time, they need to step up and become better performers. That made a huge shift. When you said that, you’re putting your best people on your biggest opportunities. That whole scenario came rushing back and in a flip flop way, it’s the same thing. Thanks for sharing that. Good to Great is a classic. Anybody in the entrepreneurial area or running a company or being a leader should read that book. Thanks, Salah, for sharing that.

If you focus on impact, you will succeed. Focusing on the dollars is a path to failure. Click To Tweet

You’re welcome.

Tom, what do you got?

OTS 145 | Reading List
The Birth of a Brand

I’ve got the first book, The Birth of a Brand. The author is Brian Smith, who’s the Founder of the UGG Boot Company. It started in the ‘70s. He built it over many years starting from a very small company into a major brand. Obviously, now they’re in every department store and shoe store in America and then most other countries around the world. It’s a fascinating story of somebody going through the hard knocks of how to sell this product that he believed in the original UGG boot. About that entire journey starting with, he says, “You have to start small. You’ve got to go through all these different steps to build a big brand. You can’t jump a whole bunch of those steps.” In America, we’ve had the rise of big-box retail and he would say, “You can’t go from the beginning starting a brand and selling to big-box retail without first starting at the local or boutique level.

I thought it was interesting, Tim, with what you said, how you think that retail has been changing in this more opportunity for boutique selling now. I thought it ties into this story pretty well. There’s been a backlash to big box retail. The Birth of a Brand, it’s a great story not only about what it takes to build a brand and make it successful, but also talks a lot about some of the challenges that a business will face along the way. One of them in particular that I remember well is, he was talking about at a time when he was well established after the very early days of trying to sell these to surfers on the beaches of California. That is where they first started and how building a brand through magazine ads started to transform them and initially to get known, recognized and become a brand.

He’s a $23 million, $24 million a year company at one point. It’s well-established and needs to obtain financing to continue to meet demand and grow the brand. Financial institution after financial institution was rejecting his company to finance because they thought that UGG was still a fad. It wasn’t going to have lasting staying power. We know 30 plus years later after this company was started that they are a huge brand. That one is a great book for anybody that has the vision to grow a brand. There’s something to be said where it’s a different day and age. We have new technology. We have the internet. Maybe we’re moving into the blockchain. There’s got to be a lot of changes. There’s something to be said for modeling a company that’s gone through giving birth to a brand and starting small growing it very big. All the different sequential steps along the way that it takes to do it. There’s a lot to be learned there.

OTS 145 | Reading List
Focus on Impact: The 10-Step Map to Reach Millions, Make Millions and Love Your Life Along the Way

The second one is a book that’s more of a book that a lot of entrepreneurs, especially in the entrepreneur networking and conference space, may be aware of or have come across called Focus on Impact by Wendy Lipton-Dibner. Wendy is someone who for many years has been in business. She had multiple businesses that she owns. She achieved tremendous success. Everything from the local level in the beauty industry to then on a national level selling all sorts of different products. She had tremendous success, achieved tens and tens of millions of dollars of sales a year in her own businesses. She experienced them also completely crashing and business-ending overnight. She expanded and grew too quick.

The point is she speaks from a place of experience and through her experience got to the point where she analyzed. She’s very good at analysis. She has realized that over all the years, the businesses that succeeded in what always worked was to focus on impact. This book is a ten-step guide, a roadmap for how to reach millions of people, make millions of dollars and love what you do along the way. Having the understanding and the feeling that you can build a business with integrity that is about making a positive impact on people’s lives. If you focus on impact, you will succeed. Focusing on the dollars is a path to failure. It’s her point for sure. She speaks from experience. It is her mission in life not to have people read her book, but to help people achieve this.

It’s to get their message out, to get their impact out in the world. She’s a wonderful person. I loved it because the idea of the next billionaire being someone who reaches a billion people instead of making $1 billion, it has magnified. They might be a multibillionaire in that scope of things. That’s an interesting focus. I’ve always loved that book. I’m glad that’s your choice, Tom.

Thank you.

I like anybody that takes a stand and says, “You go down this road, it’s a path to failure.” It might not end in this or that. It’s you’re going to fail. I like people who take a stand because they have skin in the game. Joe, I know that you’re itching to talk about your books that you’ve whittled it down. I know you had to whittle it down, Joe, but what did you come up with?

OTS 145 | Reading List
How To Win Friends and Influence People

I did narrow it down to two because all the one that I was going to add, I’ve talked about in previous podcasts, which is The ONE Thing. I’m going to leave that out from my two. The first one, we’re going to go way back to 1936 and it’s How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. The title is very misleading. It almost sounds manipulative. This book is anything but. It’s something I read once a year. I recommend it to any salesperson, anybody who deals with people. There are a lot of nuggets in there that you see replicated in business books. It’s very simply written. It’s very anecdotal. Basically, if you have to sum it up, it was all about empathy. Putting yourself in other people’s shoes and interacting with them in a way that they would want you to interact with them.

It’s about being genuinely interested in people. It’s all about human relations and interacting with people. It focuses on a variety of different situations. For example, if you disagree with someone, avoiding criticizing people. Tim, the seventeen eCRM hacks that we did, some of the things that we talked about in there are addressed in this book. Some of it is intuitive or you would think it’s intuitive, but then you read it and you’re like, “I’m not doing that,” or it’s amazing to see some salespeople like, for example, listening. The simple task of listening, forcing yourself to be a good listener in a conversation with someone.

For me, from a content perspective, trying to create content but purely thinking of the audience and not what I want to put out or, “What do they mean?” There are a lot of things in here that are good for focusing on in sales, customer relations and also social media. In fact, I wrote a post about how you can apply some of these things to social media. There are little quotes in here that I will point out that are interesting tidbits from it. For example, this is one that we talked about, Tim, “Criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive and usually makes some strive to justify himself.”

Joe, I want to tell you that saved me. You and I talked about this book not too long ago. I admitted to you that upon rereading it, I still found that the vast majority of the sections in that book I was not doing well. It’s a bit of a blow because I think of myself as a pretty likable person and a good salesperson. Even looking back on that book, I was like, “You’re not super good at that or you’re not doing that well.” I had to have some perspective. I was typing an email to somebody and I was letting them have it honestly. That whole section of the book came back to me. Back then it was writing letters. There were no emails. We talked about that’s futile. It’s not going to get you anywhere. I scrapped the whole email and rewrote it in a much more positive, forgiving and empathetic way. It worked like a charm. I was thinking to myself, “If I would have sent off that first email, all it would have created was hostility. I’d still not have what I want. They wouldn’t have what they want.” Anyway, I don’t mean to jump in on your thing. It was reminding me of that.

That’s what it is. It’s a bunch of little anecdotes. He had little things, make the other person feel important but do it sincerely. Don’t kiss their butts. Be genuinely interested in other people or to listen. Nowadays you see everybody with their cell phones. You can’t have a conversation without them checking their emails or something. If you sit there, lean in towards them and actively listen, it makes a big difference. They feel it. Talk in terms of other people’s interests. That was a big one that helped me when I’m trying to get a video interview with a retailer. They are a lot more difficult to nail for video interviews or for story interviews. It used to be, “We’d love to have you.”

People don't care about what you have to say. They care about what they want. Click To Tweet

Now, you’ve switched that and you put it in terms of their interests, “If we can get you an honest interview, it will help us attract more suppliers to our sessions and give you so many more product discovery opportunities so you’ll ultimately benefit,” and things like that. It’s putting things in terms of other people’s interests. I recommended it. It’s a good refresher for anybody to read. If you’re wrong, admit it right away. Let the other person do as much of the talking as possible. Avoid arguments of any kind. It’s the same thing with criticism because nobody wins an argument.

It’s very simple. You read it a couple of days, but it does bring to the forefront a lot of these things in interacting with people. The same thing goes for when Shannon was talking before about things on social media, a lot of these principles will also help people with their social media engagement. Posting with other people’s interests in mind because people don’t care about what you have to say. They care about what they want. Post and show interest and listen and you can translate all of those things on social media in your engagement with the audience. I found it useful in a bunch of ways.

Are you saying that people don’t generally care what I’m having for dinner? Is that what you’re meaning?

No, because they care what they’re going to eat for dinner although I’m interested.

Joe, what’s number two?

OTS 145 | Reading List
Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win

Number two, you’re not going to be surprised by this one. It’s Jocko Willink’s Extreme Ownership. Obviously, you and I are both big Jocko fans. We’ve spent some time with him when he was out session. There was a couple of things here that I applied and worked very well, particularly in my role at the eCRM. One of the biggest lessons I took from that book is that we are in control of a lot more about our lives than we think we are. Even though we may not have direct control, there’s always a way to influence different aspects. One example I want to use here is content at work and trying to encourage or get other people within the ECRM organization to produce more social media content, particularly getting it on the videos because we’ve been getting a ton of success with the videos.

They’re driving registrations. We’re getting sales from it. I’m trying to get other people involved. None of the staff in all of our categories report to me. I can’t make anybody do anything and nor would I want to make somebody to contact. My challenge was at first it’s like, “Nobody wants to post, so what can I do?” They’re not part of marketing. I started thinking, especially after reading the book a couple of years ago for the first time, it’s like, “How can I change that?” I took ownership of it and found ways to encourage the staff on the different category teams to start making their own content on LinkedIn, a little micro-content, short posts and ultimately videos. Some handholding, some encouragement, some walking them through, answering questions, being there, whatever I needed to do to do that and eventually get them to start enjoying posting for themselves.

Jocko talks all the time about when you’re trying to tell somebody how to do something or why they should do it and they don’t want to do it. He paints a big picture for them. He starts singing I up and talks about, “We want to make more money.” He trickles it all the way down to their job and how their job is affected by it. I thought you did a good job over the course of many months painting the big picture on why people needed to do videos on LinkedIn. In fact, it was your constant big picture and training, “This is what we’re doing. This is why we’re doing it. This is what it matters,” is what got people involved.

We are in control of our lives a lot more than we think we are. Click To Tweet

One of the things I would talk about is how obviously getting their faces out there, their salespeople. My face being out there is great. It builds my personal brand. For our salespeople, I wanted them to build their personal brands. This way when people are used to getting content from them, it builds trust. It builds a relationship with the audience. When they get an email or a call from one of our guys, they’ll be like, “I know this person. He’s always putting out this content. Let me check it out. Let me return the call. Let me respond to the email.” Those are some of the things like Tim mentioned that when we have our twice a year presentations and discussions on leveraging LinkedIn in particular, those are some of the things that we’ve talked about. It took a little while but eventually, some of them started doing it. What happened was, which was cool is they started getting results. They started getting engagement. They started seeing sales come in. That’s it. I didn’t have to do anything else because now I can’t stop them. They’ll be doing it on their own. That’s the biggest thing that I got from Extreme Ownership is the fact that we can control a lot more of our destiny than we think we can.

Joe, I think that if Jocko is reading this, he’s going to have a little bit of a tear for you.

No. He only does normal face. That’s it.

OTS 145 | Reading List
The Art of Exceptional Living

If he has a normal face instead of upset and disappointed face, that’s a win for you. I’m going to go through mine. We have quite a reading list. We have The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working, Crushing It!, Profit First, Life After Google, Good to Great, The Birth Of A Brand, Focus On Impact, How To Win Friends and Influence People and Extreme Ownership. Big Boxers, that’s a huge list. I’m going to add to it a little bit. I’m going to go back quite a bit because I tried to figure out things that influenced me. One of the things I think that influenced me the most and is easy for you all to consume is something called The Art of Exceptional Living by Jim Rohn. It’s a CD. It’s not available in that current type of content on iTunes. You can get the parts of it. The actual CD Art of Exceptional Living is a compilation specifically in a certain order. It’s about living exceptionally. There are a couple of things that he says in there and I’m going to pull two out that were impactful for me.

One is the statement, “Work harder on yourself than you do with your job.” It’s taken me a long time to fully wrap my mind around that. If you’re out there, you have a job and you’re working hard. You get home and you play video games and you do this, it’s all about your value. You’re not paid based on the hours you work, your hourly rate. If you want to elevate yourself, if you want to make more money, if you want to do more things, you have to make yourself more valuable. His whole concept was to spend time making yourself valuable. He’s not saying don’t do your job well. He’s saying, “Don’t pull everything into it. Pour everything into you in making yourself more valuable.” He talks about that even after he retired. He got a knock at the door or I don’t know if somebody came and offered him $1 million to consult on this problem that they had. He said, “$1 million after I was retired.” That’s because he’s valuable. It’s not because he has a good hourly rate or he worked his way up the ladder or any of those things. He spent time his whole life making himself more valuable. It wasn’t a concept that I grasped quickly. It took a bit of time to realize that I was pouring myself into work and not into myself. The more I poured effort into myself, the more valuable I became.

An old mentor of mine, when I first started my consulting business, I called him and asked him, “How much do I charge for my services?” He said, “Charge right now whatever people will pay you.” He said, “When people start coming to you, you can charge anything you want.” That goes in line with people are only going to start coming to you because you’re more valuable, because you’ve elevated yourself. Think about that. The second thing that he said is something that I’ve not always been great at. He said, “If you want to know anything about anything,” and that’s what this whole podcast is about, “Somebody who’s done great at that has already written a book.”

If you want to learn how to skydive, somebody has written a book about that. If you want to learn how to become a millionaire, somebody has written multiple books on that. Why would you not go to the people who know and have done it and have been there and read their book? He said, “Your library is one of your biggest assets.” That’s what we’re trying to do here is we’re trying to get your library started. Everything that you want, everything that you think that you want to accomplish, there are smart people out there that have done it. They were successful at it. We have a book called it they crushed it and then they wrote a book about it. Go out there and get some of those books and read them. That’s Jim Rohn, Art of Exceptional Living.

To your point on focusing on you, one good thing to add would be especially for these younger entrepreneurs, that means at night or after they’re working at their job at night, instead of going home and playing Fortnite, read some of these books.

OTS 145 | Reading List
Think and Grow Rich

A lot of people, they work hard at their job. They give everything they can. They come home and then they play video games and this and that. Spend some time elevating yourself. Spend some time working harder on you than you do at your job. You’re exactly right, Joe. Number two is even older. I know some of you guys are going to roll your eyes and wait until I’m done before you do that. Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich. I know a lot of people think that this book is a little bit of mumbo jumbo about, “If you think good thoughts, if you give good self-talk and you do those things and you tell yourself that you’re going to be rich someday, you will be rich.”

There’s some truth to good self-talk. I’m not going to discount that. That’s not what I wanted to pull out of this book. Our previous flash topic was all about the advice that we would give to an entrepreneur that was getting ready to jump into entrepreneurship. Almost everything that we talked about in that podcast is in Think and Grow Rich. I wanted to pull a couple of things out. He talks about having a burning desire. I want you to think about what does a burning desire mean? A burning desire means you can’t ever think of anything else. You go to bed at night, you’re thinking about it. You wake up in the morning, you’re thinking about it. You’re eating lunch in the afternoon, you’re thinking about it. A burning desire on whatever it is.

If you’re starting a business, launching a product, you have a burning desire to have that success. A lot of people discount burning desire like, “I’ve got a burning desire for that.” No, you don’t. A burning desire is all-consuming. Secondly, goal setting. I know that we can talk about goal setting. There are 600,000 books on goal setting, but he talks about being specific. I added to that once your specific be more specific. In order for you to have a burning desire, you have to understand what you’re going after. You have to understand when you get there. You have to understand and create a pathway for you to make that happen. If you’re not specific enough, you can’t do with it. You can’t create that burning desire because it’s too broad. Understand what your goal is and be specific.

Third, believe in yourself. If you’re going to be an entrepreneur, if you’re going to strike out on your own, if you’re going to launch a product or launch a company, you have to believe in yourself. Sometimes you’re the only one that does. Sometimes every single person around you is going to tell you to go get a job. They’re going to tell you, “You’re not going to make it.” All of these books that we’ve talked about. Think about the one that Tom was talking about, The Birth of a Brand. The guy has got a $23 million business and the banks won’t give him a loan. They don’t think what he’s doing is right. They don’t think it’s going to last. Sometimes you have to be your own cheerleader. Sometimes you’re the only one that will so believe in yourself. That’s a lot harder than it thinks because people will try to tear you down. Not everybody has the balls to go out on their own. When you do, they don’t like it. “Who does he think he is or who does she think they are?” You have to believe in yourself even when nobody else does.

If you want to elevate yourself, make more money, and do more things, then you have to make yourself more valuable. Click To Tweet

Number four, knowing when to get some help. Tracy, I can’t remember but you talked about this a couple of podcasts ago, know what you don’t know and know when you need to get some help. It’s important when you’re building your business, don’t spend a lot of time trying to school yourself up on something that you could get somebody to do that will do it better and faster and easier than you. Your time is valuable. Last but not least, stay with it. This is key. I was going to talk about Three Feet from Gold, but I decided not to. Three Feet from Gold is that concept of staying with it. Sometimes what you want is three feet away and if you quit, you’re never going to get there. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t change the course. That doesn’t mean that you can’t zig and zag to get there. Get there, stay with it. Don’t quit. That’s Think and Grow Rich from my perspective.

Tim, can I add something to that, a little discussion about that. When you brought up Three Feet from Gold, the most typical thing people pointed about Three Feet from Gold is perseverance, not stopping, continuing, working harder. However, Tracy has a different perspective on the lesson from Three Feet from Gold, which is what you were saying before about you don’t know what you don’t know and hiring an expert or modeling someone else to find out what you don’t know. She believes Three Feet from Gold is the same lesson because if you remember from reading that book, the prospect or who we had all the equipment and had the initial place where gold was found, didn’t know gold grew in a vein vertically. He was digging in the wrong direction. Had he dug three feet, 90 degrees from the direction he was doing it, he would’ve found the gold. As she would say, it’s not as much lack of perseverance or being willing to work harder, but it was lack of knowledge. He did not seek out an expert who knew how gold formed. There’s another perspective on that one.

Every book you can have several perspectives and that’s a great one. It ties nicely into the other thing in Think and Grow Rich, which is knowing what you don’t know and hire somebody. That was such the heartbreaking part about that story, which was had he hired a geologist or whatever, they would have said, “By the way, it goes vertically or horizontally. Just dig that way.” You could have the biggest gold strike. Instead, he sold that mine for pennies on the dollar. The first thing the guy does is hire himself a geologist and then they have the largest gold strike in US history. Thanks for sharing that. I’m glad it was you because I know Tracy would have come in and crushed me with that.

She would’ve jumped in quick on that. She has read all those books voraciously. I not as much, but I’ve heard her say that many times so I thought I would share it.

Any final thoughts in anything? I’ll start off with you, final thoughts?

I thank you for bringing up this topic of having us doing a little planning ahead of time because everybody needs a reading list. I agree with modeling and all sorts of things. I think it is great if an entrepreneur has a unique vision or unique plan or something that differentiates them to make their unique impact on the world. That’s great. At the same time, you need to do some research, do your homework. I’m excited for some of these books I’ve heard that I haven’t read.

Salah?

Thank you. There are a lot of good books, good feedback. In Good to Great, how do you then use it and take action with each and every one of these books? What to get out of it and take action to work on developing yourself, your team and ultimately you will achieve your goals. It’s very good feedback, everybody. Thank you.

Shannon?

I enjoyed it a lot. For the readers, have a stack of books that interests you to take some of ours, take some of your own. I agree that you get nuggets from each book and you can form your own ideas, your own strong point of view. Do your homework, do your research and use some of this to inform. That will keep you fresh and relevant until the day that you stop reading.

A burning desire means you can't ever think of anything else. Click To Tweet

Joe?

I would say especially based on this conversation, what was interesting is such a wide variety of types of books that everybody talked about. My one piece of advice based on this would be to encourage or adopt a mindset of creative wandering, along with curious wondering. Wander around and look for books that catch your interest and then dig into them. I find books from a variety of sources. I may hear about a book on a podcast or on TV or something. They’re not necessarily all about business. Some of them are. There are a variety of topics like Shannon mentioned, you’d get something from every one of them. Like the thing that I told you about, I found out about that from Welby Marcus podcast. We get a lot of book ideas from Jocko’s book. There are many different places. I encourage people to wander through different topics of books. Don’t even shut something out and think, “That’s a specific type of book. I don’t read those.” You’ll never know what you’re going to get from all different types of books.

On my end, I have a suggestion for you and Big Boxers. This is one of the things I do when I read a book is I always keep a piece of paper with me. It’s something I learned from bullet journaling, which was when I find something interesting, instead of marking up my book and putting a highlight in there, I have the page. I note down the page number and the line in the page. That piece of paper stays with that book. If ever I pick it back up, I can pull that page out first and find out what I found interesting enough to note down on that page. I go back and read those sections first and then keep wandering. That’s number one.

Number two is an app that I use a lot because I have a truncated timetable and sometimes I want to know what books are about so that I can find out if I want to dig into them. There’s an app called Blinkist. I don’t know if anybody else uses that. It’s got a huge library of books. What they’ve done is they’ve basically scaled it down better than CliffNotes. It’s more business-focused on the key ideas in the book and some analysis on those. The cool thing about Blinkist is you can hit the headphones and listen to that breakdown or you can read it.

For me, it’s been terrific and understanding books that I want to pursue further. If you haven’t tried out Blinkist as an app, you should definitely give that a try. Go to the CliffNotes version, sometimes it’s like reading little clips of news on your phone, news related things. It gives you a good idea and can help stimulate thought and understanding on if you want to read the book in full. Thanks so much. I appreciate each and every one of you and your thoughts. We have a great reading list for the Big Boxers here, which I’m super excited about. Thanks so much for being here. We’ll talk to you next time.

What a great podcast, the panelists really came through. I hope that you got a lot of insight into some books that you can put on your reading list. Let’s recap. We had, The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working, Crushing It!, Profit First, Life After Google. We had Good to Great, The Birth of a Brand, Focus On Impact, How To Win Friends And Influence People and Extreme Ownership. I came through with the CD from Jim Rohn, The Art of Exceptional Living and then also Think and Grow Rich. That’s eleven actually. I know I said at the beginning of the podcast it was ten. There was six of us but Salah felt so strongly about Good to Great. He used that as both of his books. That’s how much he wants you guys to read that.

You have eleven books that you can put on your reading list. I hope that you do that. Read those and then let us know what you got out of it. Everybody is going to get something different out of the books that they read. Not everybody is going to see them in the same way. They’re not going to read them the same way because a lot of what you read affects you based on the things that are happening in your life at the moment that you read it. You and I could actually read the same book, read the same line in the book and have those lines affect us differently based on our current life circumstance. That’s what makes it so awesome.

We’re looking forward to hearing from you what you liked, what you didn’t like, what books you read and what you didn’t read. On the ones that you read, what you liked about it, how it affected you and what changes that you might possibly make based on reading that book. I don’t think there’s anything more important like Jim Rohn says, “Work harder on yourself than you do at your job.” This is part of that, Big Boxers. Part of working harder on you is making yourself more valuable. Get out there. Buy those books and get reading.

I wanted to touch on the subject that we were hashing out at the beginning of the podcast about Amazon and the fact that it’s becoming more and more difficult to do business on Amazon. For some people profits that they were making last year, they’re not making this year. Sales that they were making last year, they’re not making this year. The constant fear that for some reason your product is going to get pulled off of Amazon or it’s going to get copied or it’s going to get shut down. There are all these things. If you have all your eggs in the Amazon basket and something happens to you, something happens to your product, something happens to your production line, something happens at Amazon that shut your page down, 50 other people come on to Amazon selling the exact same product as you.

If any of those things happen and Amazon is your only source of income, Big Boxers, you’re back to McDonald’s. You’re going to have to go out and find something to fill the gap. There is a solution to making sure that Amazon is a huge part of your business, but it’s not the only part. You can diversify your products into mainstream retail. I know what you’re thinking because I hear it all the time. This is one of the main questions I get, “Is my product okay to take to mainstream retail? Will it survive? How is the pricing? How’s the packaging? There is no packaging so how do I get packaging? What’s my brand? What am I really selling?” There are all these questions that you have. A lot of people think because they don’t have the answers to those questions that they need to keep doing what they’re doing. That’s not necessarily true. We have the answers to the questions that you’re asking. At TLB Consulting, we have an evaluation program specifically designed for Amazon sellers that are wanting to bring their products to mainstream retail, but they don’t know if the products are going to do well. Should they go for it? Should they not go for it? All big questions.

If you're going to be an entrepreneur, strike out on your own, and launch a product or company, then you have to believe in yourself. Click To Tweet

Every company that we get that wants to go into mainstream retail, we run them through this evaluation. It’s eight different categories that we look at. We assign each category of value. We assign each category a rating from zero to five and then in the end, we give you your rating. For companies that rate out of four or five, that’s really good. Those products can go right now to mainstream retail. TLB Consulting has about a 75% success rate getting interest from buyers on products that rate out four or a five.

If your product and company rates out less than that, that’s okay. We can provide you with strategies to get your score up. We can provide you with strategies to make your product more appealing to buyers or in a better position, a stronger position. Those things might not happen right away. You might not be able to affect those but at least you’ll have a game plan. If you’re interested in exploring the evaluation process, send me an email, Tim@TLBConsulting.com or you can send it to Tim@OnTheShelfNow.com, either one. We’ll talk about it. I’ll run you through the process and let you know how it works.

I want you to know that if you’re one of those people out there that are thinking, “What if something happens to my Amazon account? What if something happens to my product? What if competition starts to be crushing and my sales go down? This is my only source of income. What do I do?” I’m imploring you don’t wait until it happens. Let’s start diversifying your product off of Amazon into other distribution avenues right now. It’s called product evaluation. It’s super simple. You can get ahold of us on Instagram, @OnTheShelfNow. You can get ahold of us on Facebook, On The Shelf Now. You can check out our closed Facebook group, On The Shelf “Now”. TLB Consulting, you can reach us at TLBConsulting.com. We’re also on Twitter.

There are a couple of ways to get ahold of us. By far the best way is to go to our podcast website, OnTheShelfNow.com. You can comment to your heart’s content on any podcast, letting everybody know what you thought, what you liked, what you didn’t like or how it affected you. You can also share that. That’s the best way to help the podcast right now. Do you want to support On The Shelf? Share the podcast, comment at the podcast, be part of the podcast community so that we can use your experiences and then turn those into answers for other entrepreneurs. It’s been a great podcast. I enjoyed spending time with you. I look forward to doing it again. I hope you enjoy the books. I look forward to seeing you next time. Until then, we look forward to seeing your products On The Shelf.

Important Links:

About Joe Tarnowski

OTS 145 | Reading ListDeveloped content marketing strategy aimed at engaging ECRM buyer and seller customers during and in-between ECRM’s in-person events, as well as driving new event registrations and reducing event cancellations. Also led trade media outreach for ECRMData (now owned by Market Track).

 

About Salah Khalaf

OTS 145 | Reading ListAn adaptable, customer-focused RETAIL MANAGEMENT LEADER AND CONSULTANT, with profit and loss responsibility. Leverages strong interpersonal skills to work closely with cross-functional teams, as well as outside partners, ensuring ongoing growth and lasting success for an organization. A forward-thinking leader, who implements processes to streamline operations and drive business growth, promoting continuous achievement for a corporation. Highly skilled in the areas of strategic sourcing and planning, communication, and decision-making. A proven track record, utilizing broad-based management skills in merchandising, operations, and negotiations to yield increased sales and profit.

 

About Shannon Curtin

OTS 145 | Reading ListAlong with being a wife, mother, beauty industry expert, art curator, real estate developer, traveler, foodie, wellness seeker, and clean water activist, Shannon Curtin is also the founder of TPG “The Possibility Group”. After spending the last 18 years of her career leading beauty teams within big and small-box retailers across the United States, as well as transforming some of beauty’s most iconic brands as a manufacturer, Shannon created an unwavering positive mindset to any business challenge.

The TPG method starts with a positive approach to your business challenges. We listen, we focus on your unique strengths, your purpose, and “why” you exist. From there, we customize modern business solutions and action plans that are designed to move your business forward. TPG cares about you, the legacy you are creating, and the impact you are making on the world.

Transformation is really hard, yet remarkably rewarding. We will help you move through the hard part quickly, so that you have more time to enjoy the impact you have created. The group of experts assembled at TPG has deep expertise in their subject matter and they can help you overcome the obstacles standing in the way of your growth. TPG members will assist you in achieving what’s possible.

 

About Tom and Tracy Hazzard

OTS 145 | Reading ListAs Brandcasters for entrepreneurs, authors & experts, husband and wife team, Tom Hazzard and Tracy Hazzard help major publications, sports stars, and entrepreneurial influencers broadcast their original messages. A highly successful inventor and product designer, Tom has been rethinking brand innovation to build in authority and high-converting revenue streams. Tracy brings an insider media/promotion perspective as an Innovation Columnist for Inc., best-selling author and international speaker. Together, they are blog writers and co-hosts for Feed Your Brand, Product Launch Hazzards & WTFFF?! 3D Printing Podcasts providing businesses of all sizes a system to spread their marketing message, grow a valuable audience, and retain valuable platform authority without a lot of time, cost or effort.

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!
Join the On The Shelf community today: