Episode 008 – Liana Ling

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Richard Matthews

Okay, and we are on! I am here today with Liana Ling. Liana, are you there?

 

Liana Ling

I am here. I’m so excited to be here. Thank you, Richard.

 

Richard Matthews

Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on to The Hero Show. Liana is the founder of powerupstrategy.com which is a digital marketing and online services company that works with B2B clients. She’s been doing that for the last nine years and you were just telling me a minute ago before we got on the show that you work with visionary clients and help them to grow their business, to get more clients and basically anything they need for social media, digital marketing and even agency stuff where you run ads and other things like that. Does that sound about right for what it is that you guys do?

 

Liana Ling

You got it!

 

Richard Matthews

Awesome. So when we get right into it, I want to talk about what it is that you are known for. When people think of Liana and think of Power Up Strategy, what do they think about?

 

Liana Ling

What I tend to hear from people are two things. Number one, they think of me in terms of providing ROI, because I don’t just hang my hat on the latest, greatest thing. I force us to take a look at what’s actually going to bring a return on investment. Let’s focus on that. And the other thing is that–I’m very proud of this–all my clients see me as a partner. And that’s really what I’m known for as well. Whenever I get referrals or meet other people, they tell people what a great business partner I am. And that’s what I’m most proud of because that’s really what my goal is, to be a partner in crime with them. To help them grow their business and reach their goals.

 

Richard Matthews

Yeah, absolutely. I really love that. I love the idea of being known as a partner. I put some of that language into my own proposals for people. “Let’s think about the work we’re doing together as more of a partnership than clients and provider.” or something like that. Where it’s not just an exchange of cash for services. It’s like, “Let me see how I can partner in your business and help you get to the next level.” So that’s a really cool thing to be known for.

 

Liana Ling

Yeah, it’s something I intentionally started out doing when I first became an entrepreneur and I’ll even tell people that, “Hey, my goal is to be a lifetime partner for you. That’s how much ROI that I want to deliver to you.” It’s pretty much the opposite of what my previous life was when I was a full-time litigation lawyer because I don’t know about you, but most people don’t want to have their lawyer hanging around with them every month. It’s really nice now. Here are people I–actually, one of my first clients sent me a note that said, “You’re a guardian angel. I can’t believe you did this for us.” It just made me cry.

 

Richard Matthews

Yeah. And I love that. I still have one of my first services clients is still on retainer with me to this day. It’s been many, many years. So having lifetime customers like that. And you end up being friends and, you know, they invite you over to Thanksgiving Dinner and stuff like that. I think that’s a great way to run a business. You’re excited to get up and work with your clients every day, I would imagine.

 

Liana Ling

Yes, I am. They definitely keep me going for sure.

 

Richard Matthews

Awesome. So as you know, this show is about the about heroes, right? I talked about HEROPRENEURS, people like you and like me, who get up every day and go out and, save the world in our own little ways. One of the things I want to start off with is your origin story. And I mentioned that every hero has one. So this is where you started to realize that you are different, maybe you have superpowers, maybe you could use them to help other people where you started to develop or discover the value you can bring to the world. So what’s your origin story, Liana?

 

Liana Ling

So my origin story actually started after I became an entrepreneur, I realized that being in Corporate America suppressed what my superpowers were. I felt I was being critiqued all the time for them and it wasn’t until I was an entrepreneur where I started working with other businesses and started getting feedback. Then, seeing what other people were doing was when I realized that I was different. I just thought everybody else was either like me or that what I had wasn’t that special. I just started meeting more and more people and they kept saying that over and over again. I think the first time–and like I said–it was one of my first clients and I’ll always remember this. It was a local business, I came in and I just started creating a plan for them. I did what do what we normally do, but what really stood out for me was–I think they stayed on for about three years until they went on to a different type of business. But throughout that time, there was still so many ups and downs. And each time, sometimes I tried to say, “Okay, I don’t know if I’m helping you anymore.” And they would say, “No, no, we need you. We love what you’re bringing to the table. Yes, we’re having ups and downs. But without you by our side, we don’t even know what we would be doing.” I kept hearing that from people, even today when I make a mistake because not everything is perfect. I had one client who said, “You know what? I’m fine with that because I know if I was doing it, I would have messed it up way more than you.”

 

Richard Matthews

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

 

Liana Ling

Yeah. People giving you that feedback. I think a lot of us don’t think we’re good enough so it took me a while before I kept hearing that over and over again. “I really need to have you on my side” or, “When you’re here, you make everything better.” You lift the standard because I do have high standards for myself. I try and bring that to the work that we do for clients. That’s when I started to realize that and see the other types of services people are providing. It really comes down to the core–my core mission–which is, I genuinely care for people and I treat what I do as a true mission. I really believe that what I do–when I’m doing my training, or when we’re providing agency services–I believe it really does help people and that it’s my mission to go find the people in the world that I am meant to serve. I think that makes all the difference.

 

Richard Matthews

And I know like, your story here with like, being in corporate America and realizing that you are doing more and providing more and just like you’re just like a different level of human being, so to speak. I worked in corporate America for a little while and the president of the company I worked for came to me and told me, “I don’t know what it is about you. But you get 20 times more work done than any of my other employees for the same time.” And he’s like, “I recognize that about entrepreneurs. We’re having, one really skilled person on your team who can just multi-fold, increase your results.”  And it’s almost like your legs, it’s like having a superhero and your team because the entrepreneurs like yourself, they come in and you’re just a just an entirely different level of a person. You get more done in less time with less hassle. It’s awesome.

 

Liana Ling

Yeah.

 

Richard Matthews

My next question then is, out of that, you discovered your superpowers. What is it you do or build or offer this world that helps solve problems for people? What are the things that you use to slay this world’s villains, so to speak? What is Liana’s empowerment strategy, what is your superpower?

 

Liana Ling

Yeah, that’s a really good question. And it’s something that I’ve given a lot of thought to in the past two years. Part of that is a book I read, called “Business Brilliant: Surprising Lessons from the Greatest Self-Made Business Icons.” which talks about how the really successful people in the world are good at one thing, and they pretty much spend their whole life trying to figure out what that one thing really, really is. Then, how they can make money with it. So, I used to think it was because it was marketing because I’m good at it. When I do paid advertising, I get results when people go, “Wow, I can’t believe that.” But when I really, really dug deep, I was surprised that it wasn’t my superpower. I figured out that my superpower is not just one thing. So again, I’m still working on refining it to one thing, but one thing is I’m really good at mixing together problem-solving with the ROI because I’ve trained myself to be not frustrated. But I trained myself to be curious and creative. So I have a very highly creative side of me as well. So, when there’s a problem like an ad is not running or whatever. Something is going wrong in marketing or sales, I can bring that to the table. I think also, my legal training has helped accelerate that skill point in me. The other superpower that I had which I didn’t even know I had was that I can find people in the oddest places and fit them in perfectly into a team. So, if we’re recruiting for somebody I’m able to find people in unconventional places. I’ll know how to fit them on a team where they can shine and where they can do what they do best.

 

Richard Matthews

Have you ever found that it is really helpful for the services you offer–being able to help your clients put teams together?

 

Liana Ling

Yeah, because I don’t do recruiting. Because people might think, “Oh, you’re a recruiter.” It’s interesting because I think it’s indirectly helped me as I build my own team. That’s something that I definitely look out for. A couple of times in the past, I had a handful of clients where I’ve been basically like an outsourced CMO and COO. I’ve done that where I’ve actually helped them build the team and cultivate the team just to help develop a culture. So I have done it directly a little bit, but I think it just helps in terms of how I can deliver. Like I said, my clients, see me as a partner and trusted advisor. So sometimes we’ll just have chats about how their team is going, and how different things fit in, whether it’s a person or software, and just going through. I know, you’re awesome too, at figuring out what’s more efficient but also what’s more effective. So that’s why I bring it to the table. In that sense, it’s an indirect superpower. I’m still learning how to use it best. I was really shocked when I found out that’s what it was,

 

Richard Matthews

It’s like one of those powers you have on the side that you’re like, “Oh, maybe that’s actually really valuable to people.” And you start to get to use it a little bit and see people that they don’t always realize where they need help.

 

As we grow in our own entrepreneur journey, we don’t always realize our skills–the skills we’ve developed over the years. Then suddenly, things that we think come easy don’t always come easily to everyone else. Which is nice, and you can help them. And that’s where it’s cool because everyone who’s listening–everyone who’s on this–they all have their own versions of superpowers that are going to come from the skills that you’ve developed or the experiences you’ve had over time. And then, you realize that those things in your perspective give you a unique set of skills, which is almost exactly what you’re describing.

 

Liana Ling

Yes.

 

Yes, yes. I think we need to tell others around us more about what their superpowers are. Because it’s hard for us to admit what they are ourselves. I’m glad you have this podcast because I think it’s going to remind me to tell others around me what I think their superpowers are. So that we can encourage them to use them to solve problems, because they may not realize that’s what it is.

 

Richard Matthews

I was actually going to say that about you–having known you for a little while now that one of your superpowers, you may not realize, is you are very good at seeing the best in people and seeing ways that you can compliment and encourage them and lift them up, which is not like a direct ROI thing. But it’s a really great power that you have and you’ve probably cultivated over time. And that’s it. That’s another superpower.

 

Liana Ling

Oh, wow. Well, thank you.

 

Richard Matthews

So the other side of superpowers. They all have superpowers and then they all have their fatal flaw. Superman has his kryptonite. Myself, I tend to be a perfectionist to a fault. I won’t get things done because it’s not exactly the way that I want it. My wife teases me about this, I spend hours and hours trying to get a single pic to go on the one spot and the way I want it and it won’t. And I realize that it has no impact on anything. It’s just pissing me off. So that’s my fatal flaw. Being a bit of a perfectionist to a fault. What would you say your fatal flaw is in your business?

 

Liana Ling

I’m going to mention that my fatal flaw used to be perfectionism, which I didn’t know was a flaw. I didn’t know it until one of my coaches said to me, “You know, perfection is the lowest standard you can ever have for yourself.” And I was like, “What?” He said, “Coz you are never going to attain it. And that’s what’s holding you back.” So it pops up because I know that sometimes when I’m afraid to actually do something, it’s because I don’t think it’s going to be perfect. So I do have to keep that at bay. But I’ve done a really good job about just throwing away perfectionism. I think that’s the main one today that really kind of still follows me around. And I’m going to sound like I’m fishing for a compliment but I’m not. But he said I care too much. So sometimes I will get in a mode where I care so much for the people I’m serving, whether it’s my direct clients, or whether it’s people in any of my online training that I neglect to take care of myself. So I neglected taking care of my own well being. I neglected taking care of my own internal processes, my own business because I am trying to give 110% to everybody else. That’s really hard for me to dial back. I know that you have to take care of yourself first because that enables you to take everything to the next level.

 

Richard Matthews

That’s a hard one to get over too. I started with the same thing where I call it Cobbler’s Son Syndrome. Where the cobbler has all of his clients having perfectly good shoes but his own son has holes in his shoes. And that’s because we give so much to our clients that sometimes we leave either our own physical well being, spiritual being, or our business. Like the actual working our business, doing our own marketing and doing our own platform building and that kind of stuff. It will get left to the wayside while we spend all of our time working on our client’s business. So I get that Exactly. That’s, that’s a difficult thing to overcome. So the question for anyone who is like me, or any of our listeners who might suffer from that same fatal flaw. How have you been working on rectifying that in your business?

 

Liana Ling

Yeah. So, a lot of it is surrounding yourself with the right people. I would just sit and think about the people that you talk to every day. What do they represent? Are they somewhere that you are headed or do they represent where you were? Or do they even represent the status quo? One thing I do very intentionally is, over the years I’ve actually moved around to different types of masterminds or different types of groups of people. Not because I get bored with them or something like that. But what I’m trying to do is I’m always trying to position myself with groups of people who are always playing harder than me because that’s where I experienced the best growth. And when I get too comfortable, maybe I end up being a mentor in that group. But I’m always trying to find another group that’s scaring me to death to be a part of it and they’re just playing at a much higher level than me so that’s how I look at it. When I play with people who are playing harder than me, all of them are taking care of themselves and so they influenced me and I’m honest and say, “This is my problem.” So, I do have people who call me out and just help encourage me and all that, just so I don’t forget. I think you need that. You need a community.

 

Richard Matthews

Absolutely. So one of the things that every hero has, along with their superpowers and their origin stories is they have a common enemy. They have someone–the person that they’re always fighting against. If you’re Spider-Man, it’s the criminal (Green Goblin) undergrowth in New York. It’s the thing you’re fighting against if you’ve ever listened to Dan Kennedy. He talks about declaring war on brand-only marketing. He wants people to get in and actually do direct response. Frank Kern talks about his common enemy, that you should do marketing that doesn’t equal–I put in $1 here and at the other side, I get $2 out. That’s what he wants to do, turn advertising into profit.

 

Liana Ling

Right.

 

Richard Matthews

So anyway, what would you say if you could just go into all of your clients’ businesses and remove something that would just make their businesses better? What would that be?

 

Liana Ling

Hmm, that’s a really good question. Remove one thing that would make their business better. Well, that’s a really good question, because I think it depends on the person and it depends on the business. What I found is–number one, shiny object syndrome. That’s one thing I’m definitely fighting against. I think you and I understand that, because we’re both geeks, right? And we love all the tools and the software and everything like that. Sometimes you just got to be like, “You know what, it’s not perfect, go with it, right?” Because it’s stopping you from taking action. A lot of people just don’t reach their goals, or they’re frustrated with themselves, they don’t realize it’s because they’re just not taking any action. Because they’re analyzing stuff too much. You haven’t found the right tool, or you’re constantly changing stuff. So that is definitely a villain that I fight. Because sometimes I’ll have to tell clients, “Look, just, you know what, this isn’t perfect, let’s just go with this now. And then we’ll improve, especially when it’s online. It’s not written in stone, right? We can change it, you know.”

 

Richard Matthews

Crazy. I run into that all the time where people will ask me–’coz I do training like you do as well. And I’ll have people like–I’ll do training on Active Campaign which is a CRM tool  that people use, and I’ll do something then a bunch of people on the group will be like, “Oh, man, I’ve got all my stuff built in Drip or Infusionsoft.” Which are competitors for some of the automation standpoint. And my response is always like, “There’s no ROI in switching tools, the ROI is in actually doing what we were talking about, right? So if you need to modify it, then modify it. And then, use what you have now.”

 

Liana Ling

Yes. Yes.

 

Richard Matthews

Because there’s no ROI in changing up your toolset. If you’ve already got it going like, if you’re starting from the beginning, by all means, take a little time to research and pick the best one. But if you’ve already got something going, it’s easier to change the direction of a moving ship than it is to get a ship going.

 

Liana Ling

That’s right. I love that. You’re right. It’s true. That is so true. It’s hard because there is some stuff that is so enticing and everybody’s talking about it. You just have to almost like, you gotta do the Marie Kondo approach to their tools and software. Just use what you want in your business now, and then move on from it. I think like a second villain that I have now that I think about it…I think it’s really at the core of a lot of stuff that I fight against…it’s actually not failure. Some people would say it’s failure, but it’s actually fear of failure. One thing I’ve learned in the past couple of years is how to really embrace failure like a gift. That’s what I learned from Business Brilliant and working with Lewis Schiff. It doesn’t feel good. But it’s good for you to embrace it as if you’re receiving a gift, like a birthday present or a Christmas present. If I look back at all the issues like your team isn’t performing well, if a campaign isn’t running, or the CEO of one of your companies doesn’t want to do something because they’re fearing failure. That’s really where it comes up. And then once you get past that, and you embrace failure, that’s when you really start to grow. That’s when things magically start to just work better. Because you’re more open, you’re talking about mistakes and learning from it. I mean, it’s just amazing.

 

Richard Matthews

The whole concept of failing forward. Taking those steps and tripping over things, you’ll realize where you can step and how you can improve your gate and all those kind of things. You can make adjustments if you’re moving.

 

Liana Ling

Yes.

 

Richard Matthews

And yeah, and part of learning is the failure. I got a whole pile of children and that’s one of the things that we constantly are talking about. One of the things we say over and over and over again is, “It’s okay to get something wrong. It’s not okay. to not try.”

 

Liana Ling

Yes.

 

Richard Matthews

Because if you don’t try, then you’re not going to learn anything. You’re not going to move forward. I can see how paralyzing it is, especially for my son who’s like me. He’s like, “I just don’t want to try it ‘coz I might get it wrong.” There’s nothing wrong with getting it wrong. It’s not like I’m going to come out and–because we homeschool–it’s not like you’re going to get beaten, because you got it wrong. It’s just not the way it works.

 

Liana Ling

Yes, it’s innate, right? Like, it’s natural for us to move away from failure. I know that in that study which was the basis of that book, he interviewed middle-class people versus super successful people, and all the middle-class people pretty much just didn’t want to think about it. They want to run away from failure. And then the super successful people, this is what really got me thinking about failure a lot was they totally embraced it. And they talked about it a lot amongst their own close network of friends.

 

Richard Matthews

You and I were just talking before we got on this on this show. What was all wrong with how the process for getting on the show went? And especially take notes on it. Because you can actually make changes and fix things if you’re moving and you’re doing stuff because it’s not perfect when you start and it doesn’t have to be. Yeah, and that failure is just part of the game. And that’s another good point, too. It’s a game. The consequences are; maybe it takes a couple of extra days to get something done. Maybe a client says no. Maybe you lose a couple of sales here and there. It’s not like the kind of stuff we’re doing–a business–if we get it wrong then people die.

 

Liana Ling

Oh, exactly. Yes, nobody died. Nobody went to the hospital. You know, it’s okay.

 

Richard Matthews

There are businesses like that, right? Like, if you’re the engineer that’s developing the car and the safety stuff. Like if you get it wrong, people die, like seriously. Perfection is great for that. But most of us are not in those type of businesses.

 

Liana Ling

Yeah.

 

Richard Matthews

So failure is an option. And it’s an option that you should embrace. So I like that.

 

Liana Ling

Yes.

 

Richard Matthews

So that’s the enemy side. On the other side–you talked about this a little bit. it’s your driving force, your mission. So you know, Spider-Man fights to save New York. Batman fights to save Gotham. Google fights to index and categorize all the world’s information, what is your mission? What drives you?

 

Liana Ling

So what really drives me is helping people who have something to offer the world that just makes the world a better place and helping them just to get that out there to the right people. Because I really believe that we’re all meant to serve somebody and we just haven’t found all those people yet. So helping somebody do that, with the skill set that we have, the knowledge we have, through marketing and sales. I mean, that’s what makes me so excited. And that’s what also drives me and sometimes I get in trouble with it, I’ll help people and maybe they can’t afford me, and we just have very little resources. I believe in what they offer so much. That is, like, dive in, right? It’s like, “No, we can do this, we can do this!”

 

Yeah. Because I feel like, that’s really what a lot of people struggle against, right? They have something they know and it can actually help people. But the issue is, how do you get it out to the right people? Like, how do you get it out to your tribe? How do you get it out to the right people that you were meant to serve? 10 years ago, it was a totally different world. Nowadays, it’s much easier to get the message out across the world. And there are different ways of doing that. There’s so much noise out there, unfortunately, that it’s hard to pick out what’s the wise choices and what’s the good stuff that we need to choose?

 

Richard Matthews

There are too many options that it’s hard to make a decision. If you present someone with more than three options, their brain starts to shut down. And the more options you give them, the more shut down they get.

 

Liana Ling

Exactly. And I get so upset when I see somebody buy something that they don’t need. Sometimes we buy courses, let’s all admit it, right? We buy courses, and we don’t use them. It gets me all up in arms. When a friend of mine, or a client, or just anybody else…They bought something and it’s not right for them. The course may be so good but they invested their hard earned money. Now they can’t invest in something else, because they made the wrong decision. Because somebody didn’t help them along the way, say, “This is what you really need. And this is really what you should have gotten instead of, what you spend your money on.” And so that just enrages me a little bit. Because–again, ROI, right? That’s not getting ROI activities.

 

Richard Matthews

I love that force to you’re driving mission because it hits really close to home for me. It’s almost exactly the way that I feel about my business. Everyone has value, right? They have something unique and valuable to share with this world. And what really stresses me out is, I do a lot of instructional design and it stresses me out when someone’s really, really good at something. And then they want to teach someone else and they try to teach and they don’t teach in a way that the other person can get the same results that they want. It’s like they’ve got a really good message. And if they would just learn how to teach, then those people will get better results right there. They’re impacted. I look at my work like the ripple effect. You throw a rock in a pond and you change the pond’s landscape forever.

 

Liana Ling

Right.

 

Richard Matthews

I get the opportunity through–I call it a leveraged influence.

 

Liana Ling

Oh, okay.

 

Richard Matthews

I may not have a huge influence myself. But through working with my clients, I’ve had the opportunity to influence tens upon thousands of people that have their lives enhanced and enriched because of the work my clients are doing. So anyway, your mission strikes close to home for me.

 

Liana Ling

Yes, I know. You were mentioning earlier today about how somebody told you this, it says you should always try and leave somebody in a better position than they were. And I think that’s really what it’s all about, right? It sounds a little bit, you know, “Out there.” “Woo Woo. Hey, we want to change the world.” But I think I really do want to try and leave a legacy where I’ve actually made a lasting change for the better in the world in some way. Maybe it’s because I got to help some of these really special entrepreneurs. I was meant to serve and as you said, you can influence many people through that way. So, if I can just be a little bit part of that, then, I’d be very happy.

 

Richard Matthews

Awesome. So speaking of shiny object syndrome, most heroes have a tool belt, right? Maybe you have a big magical hammer, like Thor or a bulletproof vest, like your neighborhood police officer, or maybe you just really love how Evernote helps you organize your thoughts, or how you can build killer slides in Keynote. What are some of the tools of your trade? Your favorite one, or ones that help you do what you do?

 

Liana Ling

Whoo. So I have to choose one, right? That’s tough.

 

Richard Matthews

You could choose a couple if you want. But what are a couple of your favorites?

 

Liana Ling

Well, just in terms of tools–in terms of getting stuff done. I will tell you that Slack has changed my life. I know you weren’t a believer before. I don’t know if you still are now.

 

Richard Matthews

I’ve actually started using it a lot. And it’s starting to change my life too. So I’m curious to hear this.

 

Liana Ling

Yeah, so Slack is–for those you don’t know, Slack is like a virtual water cooler where you can connect with people virtually. So I actually have my internal team on Slack. And they have a pretty good free option as well. And that’s another reason I like it. Because they just make it accessible to everyone. And how everybody on the team has really impacted the culture that I’m able to create for virtual teams. And I’ve done this as well with clients. I mean, I have one who said, I can’t believe how much we’ve changed since you’ve introduced Slack. Before it was just emailing maybe here and there. Everything’s just all over the place, I didn’t have a central place. Skype isn’t, you know–I’m going to be polite, and just say, Skype doesn’t work the best all the time for us. So slack it was. And we’re all in one place. I have a guideline that says, “When you come in for your shift. Whenever you come online, jump into the General Channel and say, ‘Hi, good morning.’ just like you would in a real office.” And it just helps build a feeling of camaraderie there. And they have all these really cool integrations so that any other thing we’re using, like Trello, for example, you can integrate it right into Slack. I know, people who do their whole customer service inside of Slack, I have something where it pulls in Twitter feeds, so we can actually reply and retweet and stuff right inside of Slack. So we can have discussions about it first before I can click Send. I even have it pulled in my inbox. It’s in there. I have a million different email addresses. And I still haven’t found the right emails program that I like to use because I don’t like outlook. So what I did was, I actually have it all coming into Slack. And we handle it in there, I can reply in there. I can have somebody go in there and just sort it out for me. It’s so great. So it really has changed my life,

 

Richard Matthews

You’re definitely a power user of Slack compared to what I’m using it for. I have like the Trello integration setup. So like, every time something happens on Trello, it pings the board, and in Slack. I get all the notifications there in slack when something happens.

 

Liana Ling

Hmm.

 

Richard Matthews

And like, I have my Virtual Assistants working in Slack. And they all they started saying Hi, and everything in the morning. Basically, because of your recommendation to have them do that. And it’s been really good, and actually had some of my project based people, they hop in and say, hi. And like, I’ve got my business partner. So in the morning, everyone says, Hi. And we’re actually getting to know each other better than we ever have before. Which is cool. So it’s definitely a cool community tool for building your own business. if you especially have more than just yourself that you’re having to deal with. But even it was just yourself, you could pick up all of the other things that you’re working on. So you just have one common dashboard for everything.

 

Liana Ling

Yes, yeah. And it’s, it can also work really well as a pop-up. So I’ve also done it where we were doing events. We were doing the marketing side of it. With events, there are so much going on. So for example, my event manager in New York, when he went to visit sites, he would upload a picture, upload a video, upload a video, and then everybody could comment on it. Or when he’s actually creating the giveaways like the swag bags and stuff like that. He would take pictures and loaded up and it made us feel like more part of the event. And we can all comment on it. And we used it to where–we had one where we had a lot of speakers, and we lost some of the speakers. So we were saying, “Okay, who’s checking who’s not checked in?” Because the interaction there is so quick, there was a bit of a learning curve. But if you set it up properly, it can be really powerful. Just in terms of getting stuff done. Just even from a project perspective.

 

Richard Matthews

Yeah, I feel like one of your future products or case studies should be like, “How We Use Slack to Do X, Y, Z in Our Business.”

 

Liana Ling

I think so, I think we should do that.

 

Richard Matthews

You’re definitely a power user. And I feel like I could learn some things from you on how we could use slack to improve our lives.

 

Liana Ling

Yeah.

 

Richard Matthews

That’s a good tool. I like that. I like that. For those of you who might be looking for Slack. It is just slack.com, it’s free to set it up and try it out. Make sure you download the app on your phone.

 

Liana Ling

Oh yes, it’s a must.

 

Richard Matthews

It’s very useful. And you can get into the other slack groups. Build a community around your own business. So, very cool. Next question is a little more on the heavy side here. It’s your own heroes. So, Frodo had Gandalf; Luke had Obi-Wan; Robert Kiyosaki had Rich Dad. Who were some of Liana’s heroes? Were they realized mentors, speakers, authors, peers who are just a few years ahead of you? How important–what were they to what you’ve accomplished so far.

 

Liana Ling

So I look back over the number of years that I’ve been a full-time entrepreneur. I’ve definitely had a lot of people influence me, but when I pick up the top ones that I think really were life-changing in a way where they really turned around. So the first one was–and some of them are just, I guess a celebrity perspective–the first one was when I literally got dragged to go to a Tony Robbins event. And I know, he’s controversial, and not everybody loves him. There are issues there. But why that was so key to me, and why I think he’s one of my very first heroes–there was the tools that I learned and the approaches that I learned from there. Whether you like the guy or not personally, what he taught there really was a turning point in my mindset for being an entrepreneur. I had a lot of other issues coming in. Moving from lawyers, entrepreneur, I’ve got identity issues, I’ve got like imposter syndrome. All these different things. Going through that event, learning how to always be at peak performance, taking out those old stories that are just limiting you–I didn’t realize I had limiting beliefs, believe it or not. One of the limiting beliefs I had–and I haven’t shared this before publicly. One of the limiting beliefs I had, that I dealt with at the Tony Robbins event was that I always felt that I wasn’t smart enough. So I always felt like maybe I just scooted through into law school, which if you look at the numbers, it’s not true. But that’s what I’m thinking, right? I’m not smart enough to be here. When I’m in a room of other entrepreneurs, I’m not as smart as them. I’m not, as I can’t participate in what they’re doing. That just got me. People say, “That’s crazy. Because, just your whole background…” especially when they hear that I went through law school. We usually think those people are smart. That was a limiting belief I had. I had to smash through that. He also showed me how to be more intentional about serving people and just being more open. So that was really one of the key things and why I still go back to the training that I learned from there. I still go back to my materials, because I still have to remind myself about that. That was definitely one of the heroes that I had for a bit that started me off to other heroes. I have–I wanted to share–for a couple of years, I was able to work with Lewis Schiff, who wrote the book Business Brilliant. And I liked that book so much because it’s based on numbers and research. It’s not a story about, “Hey, I built a $10 million business and this worked for me, and then you’re trying to apply that to your life but it doesn’t work.” What I loved about it was, this was actual data that said, “This is what makes you successful.” I wouldn’t be where I am today if I hadn’t applied the principles in that book. It just makes sense. I even helped create a course around that and a lot of things in there like embracing failure, how you handle your network, just the little things in there that are very counterintuitive to most of us. Focusing in on that made me a much better entrepreneur I am today than I was before. So when I had that in my life for a couple of years that again took me to the next level.

 

Richard Matthews

And how do you spell his name if people want to look up Lewis Schiff

 

Liana Ling

It’s Lewis, L E W I S. And Schiff, S C H I F F. The book is called Business Brilliant. I don’t know if you can buy the hard copy still. But I think you can get it on Kindle. I would highly recommend it just because it’s based out of data. So how can you argue with that in terms of, this is what makes people successful based on research. The third person who made a big difference in my life is a gentleman named Marvin who was my very first personal sales trainer. Who introduced me to this whole concept of Tiger Tools that I know I have made you sit through many times, Richard. When I came into being an entrepreneur. Yes, I had been a lawyer for a while–litigation lawyer. I would fight tooth and nail for you in the courtroom. My goodness. When it came to my own business, I felt so inadequate. And I’m a systems person–I’ve always been a systems person. So he taught us a system that I thought was crazy. First of all, I’m like, “I’m never doing this.” By the end of the training. I’m like, “This is brilliant.” And I just started using it. And again, it changed my life. To this day, it changes and formulates the way I communicate with my clients with people day to day. And with sales, it turned me into being afraid of sales and dreading going out on sales calls to loving it. And just getting a high from it.

 

Richard Matthews

Business.

 

Liana Ling

Yeah. I never even wanted to say I was a salesperson. That was a dirty word. And that it really made a big difference because it was something I need–that structure for myself. I need a system that I can rely on. I don’t want to just pray and pray. I don’t want to just hope and pray that something’s going to work out. I need to follow something that’s proven. And then when I’ve taught it to other people, and they used it and then they’ve had results that make that just makes my week Oh, my goodness,

 

Richard Matthews

It’s an important part of everything we as entrepreneurs do, right? A lot of people have that limiting belief that sales is a dirty word, and realize that sales are not a dirty word. It’s actually one of the most empowering and joyful parts of what you do because sales are the medium by which you impart your value to other people. Without sales, you don’t get to give other people your value. You don’t get to deliver your superpowers or any of those things. You can’t help other people if you don’t have sales. So sales are like a conduit for good in this world. I think it’s such a great thing to tell that and actually, you do some training on that, which we’ll talk about in a little while. So, if you’re struggling with that, we’ll talk about how you can get access to some of her training on that because it’s really, really good. I have one final question for you after.

 

Liana Ling

Okay.

 

Richard Matthews

Who your personal heroes are and then we’ll get to how people can learn a little bit about sales training from you. What are the top one or two principles or actions that you use regularly, or you use even today that contribute to your success and have contributed to the influence that you enjoy with your clients and with your marketplace? And maybe something that you wish you had a principle when you started out?

 

Liana Ling

Yes. So I think that one of the guiding principles that I have is what some people call a mindset of abundance versus scarcity. I think that comes out of being raised to be generous, and really embracing that true generosity to everyone that I meet, whether they do business with me or not. It’s not being a doormat to people. I think some people think it is, but it’s about serving people and as I said, having this mindset of abundance–that means to me that when I go out and meet with somebody, if I go maybe to a networking event, I’m not thinking, “Oh, no, there are so many people here, there are not enough clients to go around.” So then you act differently when you feel that way, right? As opposed to there’s enough business to go around for everyone, what can I do to help us raise the tide for everybody together? You’re going to do something so different that way, and you’re going to make different choices based on that same thing with how you grow your business. If you have a scarcity mindset, you’re going to keep everything and I forgot who said this, but it really struck me, they said, “Don’t play to not win–or don’t play to not lose.” That was it because playing to not lose is a scarcity mindset. But playing to win is an abundance mindset. And you’re going to make those decisions because as we were talking about earlier today, how would you feel if you lost one of your biggest clients? Would you freak out and be like, “Oh, my gosh, like, you know, I’m not gonna be able to get another client that way?” Or would you feel confident that there’s plenty of people in the world, you just have to get your message. I love how you said, sales is a way to impart your value. You have to get that message out to the right people, and they’re there. I know when I fall back in the scarcity mindset, I have a friend and we catch each other, we’re like, “Wait a minute scarcity, get out of that mindset, things change.” I’ve noticed that in the last month where I’ve been doing some wonderful collaborations with Drew, and David, and Delicious Marketing. We’re all focused on helping each other just being completely a hundred percent generous. And, wow, I am seeing explosions in our businesses from that. It’s incredible.

 

Richard Matthews

When you really think about it, the scarcity is such a liberating thing. It changes how you act, and how you think, and how you work with people. When you go into abundance, and you realize like–one of the things that I do regularly when I talk to my clients is, they’ll always ask me, “What about competitors, this or the other thing?” I’ll spend my time with someone asking me about competitors for this idea. I’ll build them all up, right? Like, here’s all the reasons why you should hire that person instead of me, or that group of people. Just comparing people in the marketplace. And it’s like there’s personality fit, sometimes to go with tools or with service providers and things like that. The person that works well with me, may not work well with someone else who does exactly the same type of work, right? There’s room for both of us or all of us. There are 7 billion people on the planet.

 

Liana Ling

Yes.

 

Richard Matthews

There’s space for you and for your value. And there’s someone out there that is waiting to hear your story and your perspective. That’s what abundance is about. We need more heroes in this world. We need more people like you who are stepping out and doing something with their story; with their superpowers.

 

Liana Ling

Hmm, yeah. When I think about it, I think that’s one of the most foundational concepts that I bring into everything, whether I’m building my own team or working with clients. And the second thing is the other principle that I live by is something I learned from my mom–she has her PhD in education. She got that after we were all grown up it’s kind of amazing–she calls it September Learning. Other people call it Continuous Learning, or Education. And I’m constantly in that mode of embracing Continuous Learning and Continuous Education. If you want to always position yourself as the dumbest person in the room, you’re going to learn so much more than just being there and spouting off all your wisdom to other people who are just going to stroke your ego and say, “Oh, my gosh, that’s amazing.” I’m constantly seeking new ways to do things like how can I master being an entrepreneur better? How can I master being a better relationship person? I actively seek out this Continuous Education or Continuous Learning curiosity.

 

Richard Matthews

I love that. And it’s also something that as you get more and you get further into your entrepreneur, journey with whatever it is that you do, sometimes you’ll get to a point where the things that you do–you’re world class at–there’s not a lot of people that are better than you and realize that if you ever get to that point, where one of my mentors mentioned, that if you don’t ever want to get ripe. You don’t want to ripen because then after you’ve ripen, then you start to rot. So you always want to be a place where you’re growing; where you’re getting better. So if you get to the point where you are really really good at some things, you still have other areas that you can go and work on as you mentioned. Maybe it’s relationships, maybe it’s team building, maybe it’s other things–other other aspects of your business that you can go. And start surrounding yourself with people that are smarter than you are. Training that is going to push you and make you grow as a person and you’ll run out of things that you can work on but you can make yourself better and stronger.

 

Liana Ling

Yeah. Yeah. No, I think if you take a look at the most successful people in the world, you have a chance to go talk to any of them if you can give them a new idea or something new that they can learn about…I think you just see their eyes light up. Here’s something else I can dive into and then they’re thinking how do I near that with what I’m really good at and integrate it with what I already do.

 

Richard Matthews

Yeah. Awesome. So I have two last things they’re short; they’re not real long questions. One of them is what I call the Hero Challenge and it is just a simple question. Do you have someone in your network that you think I should invite on to the show because they have an interesting story and an interesting entrepreneurs journey that we need to pull back there mask?

 

Liana Ling

Oh, I do. I do. So, do I reveal it now or do we keep it as a secret for later?

 

Richard Matthews

We’ll go ahead and reveal it. Then we’ll send it and be like, “Hey Liana said you should be on the show.” So that’s gonna be our bait. Who you think we should get on the show.

 

Liana Ling

I think you should interview this entrepreneur who–she has this quality about her and I think you’ll see it when she starts to speak and spout her wisdom. Her name is Amber McCue and she’s actually moved around the world now. She’s living in Ethiopia. She was in Maryland and she is incredibly insightful at helping people grow their business. She’s on my speed dial when I’m spinning my wheels and she can do it so quickly as you think like “Oh five or 10 minutes with Amber what’s that going to get you?” I’ve been like spinning my wheels and talking to her 5 to 10 minutes. Boom. Problem solved. She just turns me right around with what she does. It is really quite incredible. The whole attitude and how she approaches life is amazing, you know. She’s got three kids and she’s been telling her story recently because she moved from Maryland to Ethiopia. But in between, it was a very long journey to get there. I think she spent like several months going in and out of different Airbnb’s and just how she embraces life. I can tell you that one thing I learned from her which I just adore is she-she says to people…we see a lot of we read, a lot of stories about people doing this and that. Oh, we made a million dollars in 10 minutes. He’s got 6000 followers now on Instagram. And then what ends up happening is we get major FOMO. Fear of missing out. And what she says is, “You’re always right on time.” I had shiver sometimes when I say that because it’s so true. When I look back I think “Wow. Like if I had made another turn I would never have gone to Nashville and met you, Richard. And met all these wonderful people and just doing all the amazing things we’re doing.” I just went up and it’s because I was right on time. I can look back at so many decisions I made where I was worried that everybody else was ahead of me like nope, it wasn’t my time and once I accepted that, then I just focus on what I need to accomplish today, next week and magic happens.

 

Richard Matthews

We travel full-time in an RV. I like that. We need to need to get her on. The last thing is, where can people find you? I know we were just talking about this earlier, you do some really really fantastic sales training and you can help people learn how to make that conduit right. To provide their value. It’ll blow them out of the water if they really learn how to make that work. Where can people find a little bit about your training if they want to hire you for helping grow their business? Where should they look?

 

Liana Ling

Sure. So my website is powerupstrategy.com. But what I’d like to do is offer your listeners access to my free training which is Tiger Tools, which we talked about. I’d like to offer that for complimentary and you can go to tigertoolstraining.com and if you go there you’ll be able to access it for free and you can jump into that training. What that actually does is it helps you to basically develop rapport in the sales process and I know we don’t have a lot of time to go into right now but the people who have taken just that part of the training and applied it has seen an increase in their sales closing rates as soon as they do it. I know one gentleman, he applied just a few of the tools and the next day he closed a $15,000 deal and then a couple of days later he closed two more deals. It was pretty powerful stuff.

 

Richard Matthews

Yeah. And the training is free so the ROI on that is ridiculous. You can’t put a number on it. I actually had the privilege of hosting that training with Liana. I can tell you firsthand, it is really really good stuff. If you have an opportunity to check out tigertoolstraining.com and it should be a master class registration like name, email address, and I think it’s about an hour–and–twenty–minute training but you’ll walk away with a really really good skill set for learning how to use sales in your business in a very powerful way.

 

Liana Ling

Yes. For sure. And you’ll be able to take what you learn there and apply it right away.

 

Richard Matthews

Awesome. So that is it. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Liana. I really appreciate it. I love getting to talk through your hero story. And I look forward to maybe the next time we get to have you on.

 

Liana Ling

Thank you. It was my pleasure. I enjoyed our time so much. Thank you for having me.

 

Richard Matthews

You’re welcome. Thank you very much. And for the rest of you, we’ll see you in the next episode!