Episode 115 – Patti Mara
Welcome to another episode of The HERO Show. I am your host Richard Matthews, (@AKATheAlchemist) and you are listening to Episode 115 with Patti Mara — Creating UpSolutions & Reinventing Your Business During Disruptive Times.
Patti Mara is the owner of Maranet Inc., PattiMara.com, and creator of The Profit Generator Program. She has worked with hundreds of independently-owned businesses to reposition them for success — dramatically increasing their growth, customer retention, and profit. This is all possible through her Business Reinvention Framework.
Join Patti as she talks about how the current crisis of global uncertainty, pandemic, and lockdown has accelerated recent business trends that have been squeezing independent business owners and almost overnight putting those businesses at risk.
Here’s just a taste of what we talked about today:
- Discovering customer experience development and how Patti has seen —firsthand— how it dramatically impacts business revenue.
- Shifting your business focus from sales to solutions, and from transactions to relationships.
- Discover Patti’s unique combination of three talents and how she brings them together so she can help other people slay their villains and come out on top in their own journey.
- As a general rule, entrepreneurs are very good at a very slim margin of activities.
- A person can be good at a lot of things but can only master one thing. A Jack of all trades, master of one.
- Hiring people takes a leap of faith and it gets easier as more members are added to your team.
- Patti welcomes enemies and challenges as they create the conflict or contrast that allows for more creativity.
- The product of service that you sell is important but it is no more than a vehicle for you to create value.
- Breaking up the legacy thought patterns — “this is the way we’ve always done it”. And asking yourself one important question. Would you start your business today?
- Patti’s mission is to enable 1000+ businesses to reimagine, reinvent, reposition, and become the leaders coming out of this global COVID-19 crisis.
…all that and more. So, check out the full episode!
Recommended Tools:
Recommended Media:
Patti Mara mentioned the following book/s on the show.
- UpSolutions by Patti Mara
- Win Bigly by Scott Adams
- Willpower Doesn’t Work by Benjamin Hardy
- Personality Isn’t Permanent also by Benjamin Hardy
- Start with Why by Simon Sinek
- Abundance by Peter Diamandis
- The Team Success Handbook by Shannon Waller
- Multiplication by Subtraction also by Shannon Waller
Also, don’t forget to check out PattiMara.com/HeroShow to get all of Patti’s resources and to find out how to reach her directly.
The HERO Challenge
Today on the show, Patti Mara challenged Shannon Waller to be a guest on The HERO Show. Shannon is an intrapreneur and a key team member at Strategic Coach. She created the entire entrepreneurial team training program at Strategic Coach.
Patti thinks Shannon would be a fantastic interview because of being intimately involved with leveraging entrepreneurs and developing a career area of expertise — understanding, engaging, supporting, and setting up entrepreneurial teams to win.
Shannon also authored books. The Team Success Handbook and Multiplication by Subtraction: How to Gracefully Let Go of Wrong-Fit Team Members.
How To Stay Connected With Patti Mara
Want to stay connected with Patti? Please check out their social profiles below.
- Website: PattiMara.com
- Website: PattiMara.com/HeroShow
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/pattimara
With that… let’s get to listening to the episode…
Automated Transcription
Patti Mara
I love this because my mission is really enabling independently owned businesses to thrive, not just survive, but thrive. I believe that our independently owned businesses are the cornerstone of our communities.
Richard Matthews
…3-2-1
And welcome back to The Hero Show. My name is Richard Matthews. And today I’m live on the line with Patti Mara. Hi, are you there?
Patti Mara
I’m here.
Richard Matthews
Awesome. So glad to have you here. And for those of you have been following along with our travels, we are still stuck in Florida during our wonderful COVID-19 pandemic. And Patti, I know you mentioned you were coming in from somewhere north of the border up at near Toronto. Is that right?
Patti Mara
That is I’m just outside of Toronto, Canada.
Richard Matthews
Okay, so just because I’m curious, what is summer like, way up there? Is it like really nice out there now?
Patti Mara
No, it’s actually Well, it’s been a hot summer. Um, so I would say normally we’re probably about 85-90 degrees, maybe 95. And we’ve had days that have been over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. So it’s been, a it’s been a warm summer. It’s just much shorter than yours.
Richard Matthews
It is because I mentioned one of my good friends lives up in Toronto. And she always sends pictures during the wintertime, of like, you know, people are like riding their bikes to work in the snow. And I’m like, wait, people go outside during the snow and it like doesn’t even. Like she’s like, wait, why would that not be a thing I’m like, because if it snows here, we don’t go outside. That’s the way it goes. So anyways, so what I want to do real quick for our audience is introduce you so people know who you are. So see, you are the author of a new book called Up Solutions Turning Teams Into Heroes and Customers into Raving Fans. So, that’s your new book and you run a coaching and consulting company that helps small businesses that correct?
Patti Mara
That is correct.
Richard Matthews
Awesome. So with that, what I want you to start off with is what you’re known for, right? What’s your business? Like? Who do you serve? And what do you do for them? Let us know where that is. That’ll sort of be our foundation for where we go in this conversation.
Patti Mara
That sounds great. Richard, thank you. And thank you for having me on the heroes show I love the whole premise about entrepreneurs are heroes in their communities out in the world. So I love that. I would say, you know, there’s definitely been an evolution over time. And certainly we’ve been in a crisis for the last four or five months dealing with global pandemic and the business fallout, the business impact of the global pandemic. And so, there’s definitely been an evolution. And what I’m known for now is being a business reinvention specialist. I’ve worked with for over 25 years I’ve been coaching independently owned businesses.
I specialize, I focus with retail and service and mostly brick and mortar. And it’s really helping brick and mortar businesses, identify what their strengths are and play their game of business. I find that most independently owned businesses are playing the wrong game of business. They are trying to compete with the chains and they’re being commoditized, squeezed on price. And there’s been some shifts there. There certainly have been trends going on in the industry, which I believe has been accelerated by this global crisis. And and the shift has been to a customer centric solution based business model. So if an independently owned businesses, an entrepreneur is not communicating, why choose them, the impact they have, the value they create the solutions they provide. They’re being judged on price and they’re being commoditized. The thing is, the chains actually can’t play the game of the independently owned businesses as the independent own business entrepreneurs play their game of business, which is creating solutions developing and building relationships, setting themselves up as trusted solution partners with their customers. The chains can’t touch them. And that’s what we want to focus on.
Richard Matthews
I call that the in our business, we call that the transformative value, right? You have you have a transformative value that you offer. And when you when you nail down what that is, it’s very difficult for other businesses to compete with you. Because your transformative value comes specifically with your perspective and your story and your experience along with whatever it is that you’re offering. And it’s it’s a very unique thing. It’s hard to compete with.
Patti Mara
Absolutely. But if you’re not compete, you’re delivering it. If you’re in business as an independent business, you’re delivering it. But if you’re not communicating it, people are not making decisions based on that.
Richard Matthews
Absolutely. So what I want to find out then is how you got to where you are now, right? We talk every good comic book hero has an origin story, right? It’s the thing that made them into the hero they are today. We want to hear that story. Were you born hero or were you bit by a radioactive spider that made you want to do business right? Did you start a new job maybe and eventually moved to become an entrepreneur. Basically just wanted to know how you got from where you started to being an entrepreneur that’s coaching and working with, you know, local brick and mortar businesses to, you know, communicate their value.
Patti Mara
Great. Well, and and i would say I was a little bit of both maybe a little bit born with and a little bitten by. It’s interesting, you know, I grew up with my family weren’t necessarily they weren’t entrepreneurial, and then they didn’t own the business. But my grandfather’s both of my grandfather’s were very entrepreneurial in their approach. So they had very much almost like an ownership mentality. One of my grandfather’s launched Buster brown children’s shoe in Canada, and was in charge of the children’s shoe division of Brown shoe company. And it was just, you know, it’s like there are a lot of hurdles. Turns out people in Canada want to shoes to look very differently than people in the States. So there was a lot of hurdles but it was just an I learned a lot. You know, he would share about inventory management and creating that customer engagement. And I just learned a lot. But then a pivotal experience was when I was in university, and I was working part time in a bookstore. And this is just a chain bookstore nondescript bookstore in a mall. And I had a really good manager. So the manager, all of us were trained, that when somebody came into the store, we stopped what we were doing, and we said, you know, hi, welcome, can I help you find something? And if they were looking for something specific, we took them to the section put the book in their hand, if we didn’t have it, we offered alternatives or made, you know, so, we could order it in for them, which we weren’t supposed to do. And if somebody had customers in the store, they had our full attention. There was no side chitchat, you know, customers were included, never excluded. And it was about them. Very simple. The number of times that we had customers That would stop back in saying, you know, we’ve been in most of the stores in this mall. And we just wanted to say thank you that this was the only store that we really felt welcomed. And then a couple things came out of that we had very low team turnover, staff turnover. It was a fun place to work, the shifts went by quickly, we were very engaged. And of course, this is almost all part time. I think it two full time positions and the rest part time. So that’s unusual. At the end of the year. This store, this is in the mid to late 80s. This store was budgeted to generate 500,000 gross revenue. And we did just over a million that stayed with me the experience stayed with me the back end, the outcome, the results, it stayed with me, and it really led me through to doing you know, customer service development, customer service training, which of course has continued to evolve that we now talk about customer experience, what is the experience you’re creating? And is it aligned with the value you’re providing as a business? So that’s, that was my start. And that really led me on my path. I would say the other key piece was that when I graduated from university, it was during a recession, the end of the 80s, early 90s. And it’s the first time that management were laid off. I remember the newspaper article that IBM for the first time in its history had laid off their middle managers and it was the start of micro processing, reducing layers of what used to be the corporate structure, and nobody was hiring. So, you know, the expected was you got a job, you got training, you grew up through the ranks that wasn’t there. So from there, it was, you know, finding a series of things that was what next you know, in developing skill sets and I would say I was good at getting something off the ground, but it didn’t how to continue growing beyond that, until I came across across a company called Strategic Coach, and then that was a pivotal piece of being able to put the structure in place and build a team and leverage beyond my efforts and that’s really where my business exploded from there.
Richard Matthews
That’s really awesome. So I have a couple of things I want to to just touch on from your story. The first one is something that just was a humorous thought I had. You said your grandfather’s company was a was Brown shoe company.
Patti Mara
Well, so he worked for Brown shoe company.
Richard Matthews
So did they sell colors of shoes that were other than Brown?
Patti Mara
Yes. Yes. Brown Shoe Company was I believe they’re still around brown shoe company still around but they were at the time the leading shoe name brand
Richard Matthews
That’s awesome. Yeah, my my favorite pair of shoes that I ever had was a pair of brown shoes. So I don’t know there’s something about a nice classic pair of brown shoes look and feel really good. So anyway, just popped into my head.
Patti Mara
I’m dating myself with Buster Brown because Buster Brown was like a little kid that had a dog spot. And there was all of this fun stuff around Buster Brown shoes.
Richard Matthews
Yeah. So the other thing that really caught my attention about your story was the whole idea of seeing how customer experience dramatically impacts revenue firsthand. And I realized that it’s something that has been happening over, you know, since we started the Industrial Revolution, we went from, you know, from everything was made one off before, right before the Industrial Revolution, it was people made one thing one at a time for one person, right. And it was, it was it was just the way things were done. And we move into the Industrial Revolution and you end up with mass production, right? And mass production is what we lived with all the way up through starting into the 80s when it started to turn into what they what I call now mass customization. Right? And that’s, you know, just for for people who are watching one of the you know, a real easy way to think about that is like if you order an iPhone nowadays. On their checkout process, you can have it engraved custom, right? That’s like it’s mass customization. It’s customization in mass. And we realize that like today in business, the experience that you give to a customer has to be individualized to them. Right? Otherwise, it’s not going to, like you’re not going to connect, right? And people people are not expecting, or they’re not going to continue to do businesses with businesses that treat them, like mass production, right? Like just another cog in the machine to, you know, to drive revenue. And when you I think, for for businesses that aren’t, you know, if you’re not an apple working on massive customization for each individual customer, you’re talking about a bookstore, that customization comes in with your interaction with the customers, right, when you have individualized interactions with your customers, and how do you do that, you know, as a foundation for your business, and then how do you do that at scale, and it sounds like that was a was a big turn turning moment and sort of your mindset and I just wanted to call that out because it’s such an important aspect of where business is going, I think into the future. And we’re still in that transition, right? We’re still in that transition where we have a lot of companies that are still treating their customers, like they’re part of a mass production of, you know, get people in the door out the door, right? You know, Walmart comes to mind, everything they do is like that. And that’s changing.
Patti Mara
And I love that you brought up Walmart, because that’s their business model. Their business model is transaction-based. I actually think there are new business rules. And the new business rules are you have to shift your focus from sales to solutions, and from transactions to relationships. And so the, for an entrepreneurial business, the focus has to be on the solution to provide so you need to know your customer base. So you’re providing solutions and you need to be focused on the relationship. It’s literally it’s not enough to do a transaction. The next step should be how do I how can I be a trusted solution partners for my customer, for this customer that’s chosen to do business with me. How can I create value? Because I’m a trusted solution partner?
Richard Matthews
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, this is this is just a, an aspect of my business, right, because of the type of business that I run. But one of the things that like a lot of my clients that I’ve had for years now, we’ve gotten to the point where the relationship we have is such that, you know, they invite my family over to barbecues, right? And that’s a very different relationship than we just have a transactional relationship. Because it’s, it’s a lot deeper than the relationship is a lot deeper than the transaction, if that makes sense.
Patti Mara
Absolutely. And, and an independent, it costs a lot of money. If you want to just talk numbers, it costs a lot of money to acquire a new client. And you can calculate that whatever your business, whatever your businesses, whatever you spend over the course of the year on marketing and lead generation, divided by the number of new customers you acquired. That’s your, you know, Your your acquisition costs. So I found it varies with different businesses, the different types of business. But I found on average, most businesses need to interact with a customer a minimum of three times before they’ve paid off the acquisition cost. So if you’re not doing something on a long term, now a Walmart, a Walmart, you know, their whole model is based on transactional fractional margins and transaction. They’re all volume in volume out. But that’s not true for an independently owned business.
Richard Matthews
Yeah, and if you’re trying to compete that with that, Walmart will crush you every time.
Patti Mara
Absolutely. Yeah, they actually had there was a great, there was a great PBS. I like to say it was a big Expo day if you google PBS, and Walmart, there I think was in three sections. And it actually you know, kind of pulled apart Walmart’s business. model and it’s it’s they they have the most money to spend on marketing and they mark it perceived that’s important they market perceive lowest price. Often what you know, one of the examples was that Walmart offered advertises a $25 Mark, microwave, you think, Oh, I could use a new microwave. So you know, off you go to Walmart. But chances are the bare bones model for $25, you’re not going to buy, you’re going to go one for this $50 and $75. That’s likely less expensive somewhere else. So they it’s actually a misleading business model. And you can’t match them for the amount they spent in advertising to create that. So another for me and another entrepreneurial rule is that if you’re not clearly communicating, why choose you, the value you provide, then the only information that your customers have to make a decision is price because you’re customers don’t even know how to make an effective buying decision. They don’t know what you know, you’re delivering a huge amount of value. If you just guide customers through or clients through, you know, ask by asking questions, guide them through understanding and opening up, what are the things that they need to know to make an effective buying decision that they’re going to be happy with, that’s creating value for your customer. But that
Richard Matthews
doesn’t happen in Walmart. And just, just just to put it in the Walmart, like, metaphor here is like, imagine you had a microwave store, right? The value you provide, if I come in and say, Hey, I’m looking for a microwave that’ll I can mount in my, I don’t know, RV as an IT, for instance, because I just bought one a couple months ago and stuck it in here. I can’t go into Walmart and find anyone who can answer any questions about any of their microwaves.
Nope, absolutely not.
They could be like, well, this one is $100. And this one’s $150 what Do you want to know like, that’s literally the only thing you have to go on in Walmart is whatever marketing get the manufacturer put on the box and the price tag. Yes. And so pretty much any business that is trying to compete in that space can just come in with a little bit of knowledge and already you have more value that you can offer to someone then transactional only relationship. So yes.
Patti Mara
And how many times have we bought something numerous times for me that I’m not happy with the what I bought because I didn’t actually know what I needed to know or consider to make a decision. And your example of the microwave is is brilliant. This happened when I decided probably about six years ago, I decided I was going to invest in a flat screen TV. I figured you know, $400 Let’s get one they’re popular. You can get them in the grocery store now. And so, because I know what I don’t know, my method of doing it is to go to at least three different stores because then they educate me I was lucky enough at the time that there was a Georgetown TV and stereo store with George Jones where I live. And I went in and they asked me questions well, how big is the room? Do you want to put the TV in? What do you like to watch on TV? What you know what’s the turns out it’s different type if they want action or drama or you know, whatever, you know, just regular TV. And so then they educated it was when I was doing this is when led first came out. And before that, it was plasma and LCD and I got completely sold on this new technology. So I ended up walking out spending 1200 dollars, got a home theater outfit, but the store came set it up, did everything and I was ecstatic. You know, so I had a budget of $400 spent 1200 dollars happy happy with my purchase, rather than feeling like I don’t really like this
Richard Matthews
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it’s one of those things like we bought a flat screen because you know, for, I don’t remember if I mentioned this or not, but we travel full time in an RV. So I’m actually in our back office, our RV here, we’ve been traveling for several years, but we, we bought a TV for the front of the RV. And so you know, we have a small space, right? So the size of your TV is actually dependent on how far you are sitting away from it. Right? And like you see on, on some of the comedy TV shows, it’s always like, you know, the bigger the TV the better, right? But you know, if you’re sitting, if you’re sitting three feet, then TV, a 40 inch or 50 inch or 60 inch television doesn’t do you any good. You can’t see the whole thing, right? Maybe you’re just looking at pixels on the screen because the resolution doesn’t change. So so you know, you have to get a TV that that is commensurate with the size of the room that you’re in and how far away you’re sitting from it and that kind of stuff. So anyways, yeah, there’s there. The whole point of this whole discussion is just that be just because you’re in the brick and mortar space. doesn’t mean you have to compete on transaction value alone.
Patti Mara
And I think actually Oh
Richard Matthews
shit. Yeah, and you don’t have to right that’s a whole price elasticity. Right You were willing to spend 1200 dollars with the buddy 400 to come up with something that that fit better?
Patti Mara
Yeah, I didn’t know I was willing to spend 1200 but I you know ended up being ecstatic with when I was buying.
Richard Matthews
Absolutely. And you know, one of the things that I’ve always loved about we meant I mentioned them already Apple is like their, their whole retail strategy is brilliant for that kind of thing where they come in and they actually, you know, they assign a person to you, right? And you spend time with that that person and they walk you through and show you all the different products and you know, what are you going to use it for and how you’re going to use it and well let me let’s see what you think about this one. And so so they spent a lot of time with every customer. And because of that there were they call it the price per square foot that they sell out of their retail stores is like 10 times that of anyone In the industry, in any industry, if my understanding is correct, I think the only one that even comes close to them is like Tiffany’s selling high end jewelry. For the amount of dollars they sell per square foot of retail space they have. And it’s because of that really high level of customization they have with with every customer transaction.
Patti Mara
Yes, brilliant.
Richard Matthews
So I’m gonna move on a little bit in the interview and talk a little bit about your superpowers, right, so we say every iconic hero has a superpower whether that’s a fancy flying suit made by a genius, intellect or the ability to call down Thunder from the sky, or maybe even super strength. In the real world heroes have what I call a zone of genius. It’s a skill or set of skills that either you were born with, or you developed over time that really energize all the rest of your skills, right. This superpower is what sets you apart and allows you to help other people play their villains and come out on top in their own journey. Right. So you have a superpower. I want to know what it is.
Patti Mara
Great. I love this question. It’s so fun.
It’s, uh, you know, it’s kind of honing into what are the things that are innate? And sometimes we take for granted. So I love this question. I think there’s three things that I’ve identified that are my unique talents. And it’s not the everyone else in the world doesn’t do them, but it’s how I bring them together. And one is that I find that I connect well with others, I connect very quickly with people. And I genuinely care. Like it’s important to me, what’s what’s important to them. So there’s, there’s a connection, and it’s, you know, it’s not 100%, but if it’s not there, it’s glaringly not there. And then the second is the way my brain works is, I kind of think in a framework and a core model. So any concept that I’m exposed to or learn or develop, it’s like I get my mind gets around the framework of it, and then understands the core of it. And what that means is that I can apply it. Once I really understand the mechanics of the concept. I can apply it regardless of the circumstances. So I’ve worked with entrepreneurs in all different industries. And I specifically work with entrepreneurs and not you know, national chains. I don’t speak the corporate lingo if it’s not entrepreneurial lead it I for me, it has to be results, people that are engaged and results focused. But once you know, it really is it doesn’t matter the circumstances, the strengths, the industry, the challenge, there’s a there’s a common place it’s a commonality that can then be customized, which you know, goes back to your mass customization. And then the third thing is and this is a friend that said this to me at dinner one time I listened for strengths I my just how I’m hearing all the time. What I’m what I’m processing what I’m listening for our strengths, what what are their talents? What can be reinforced? How did they create the results? And so that’s just kind of the underpinning of everything.
Richard Matthews
No, I I really love that answer because it brings together a couple of things that I think are really, really important for entrepreneurs to understand. And so you mentioned, you mentioned that, you know, the, there’s three things. And it’s not that other people don’t do those things. It’s that you bring those things together, right. And one of the, one of the authors I recommend a lot of people read is Scott Adams, he’s the guy behind the Dilbert comics. And one of his books that he just came out with was how to win big Lee, I think something like that. I can’t remember the exact name of the book, but how to win big Lee. And it’s, it’s basically it talks about the idea of how like how you become really, really good at something. And what’s interesting to me is one of the things that he’s talked about in that book, is the idea that in order to become the best in the world That’s something, it is not about becoming the best in the world in a single siloed category. It’s more like a Venn diagram, right. And if you can get into the top 10 to 20% of someone here, and the top 10 to 20% in another skill, and you put those two things together, where those come together, that puts you up into the upper echelons of people, very few people will have that mixture of two skills. And if you do that with a third skill, and you become top 10, top 20% in three different areas, that puts you in the top one to 2% of people in the world for that combination of skills. And so he talks about it as skill stacking. And so when you talk about things like you know, you have the connection with others, right and then genuinely caring, is I find that as fascinating a superpower. because not a lot of people understand what it actually means to genuinely care about the other person. A lot of people, a lot of people approach relationships with what I can get out of it, which is a very unnatural state to be in nothing wrong with that. But it’s, it’s it’s a, it’s a different mentality to look at the relationship from what they can get out of it first, and and genuinely care about who they are and what they want to get out of everything that goes into it. And so if you combine that together with the other two skills that puts you in a very unique spot, right, not a lot of people can do what you do the way that you do it. So anyways, I just wanted to point that out. I think that’s really cool. And just if you hadn’t recognized that before, the idea that when you combine skills together, that puts you up in the, you know, upper echelons of business.
Patti Mara
I hadn’t I hadn’t looked at it that way. Richard, I love that. Um, it
all of us have our unique. I mean, I think that’s the key piece we all have our unique pieces are our unique talents. You know, the things that we’re known for, I think the challenges we keep looking for what we need to improve rather than acknowledging what our strengths are.
Richard Matthews
Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing I wanted to point out was just the whole Thinking and frameworks and the core model thing is it’s such a it’s it’s similar to a skill that I’ve got, I’m not sure if it’s exactly the same, but I tell people I see the world and systems and, and steps and processes and stuff like that, which is really cool. Because when you sort of, like I see the skeletons behind things, right, and then you can, you can build up the flesh and bones and everything on top of on top of the skeletons afterwards. And for me, what that’s always turned out to be is that I can, I can pick up skills really quickly, because like when I watch someone draw, for instance, when I watch someone play the piano, I can see the steps that are happening, and then pick them up. And that works really well for me and I do a lot of stuff with my clients where I help them build systems because I’m like, Hey, you have a specific outcome, what are the steps that need to happen for the outcome, and then we can take those and we can, we can replicate systems in their business and then across other businesses, I think it’s a similar type of thing because you can see, you’re seeing what’s below the surface. And I don’t think a lot of people see what’s below the surface, which is a it’s such a powerful skill and I just for those people who are listening, if you don’t have someone in your life who can see below the surface, it’s very, very useful to either have, you know, someone on your team or someone that you’re getting coached by or someone you know, just a friend, I have another friend of mine who’s got the same skill set, that I run everything by them because they see things that others don’t see. And it’s it’s a rare skill. So I just wanted you know, that’s it’s a cool thing to have. And I know that, that for someone that’s doing what you do, right, you can go in and you can see those core models, see the frameworks and then break them down and teach them to other people or implement them other businesses such a such a cool skill.
Patti Mara
That’s great. I love I love that Richard and saying that I actually see here a distinction between what I said with framework and core and you’re both seeing below the surface but the that you see the structure, when you were talking about mass customization of that system. Right when you know the mat the secret, in my opinion with mass customization is that you nail it with 12345 customers like you nailed creating solution for them. And then what’s the system and structure that you can then do it consistently and expand out? brilliantly?
Richard Matthews
Cool. So the flipside of a superpower is where’s the fatal flaw? Right? So every Superman has this kryptonite, and every Wonder Woman can’t remove her bracelets of victory without going mad. You probably have a flaw that has held you back in your business, something you’ve struggled with, maybe it’s some of the things that I struggled with perfectionism that kept me from shipping product, or lack of self care, which meant that I let my clients walk all over me early in my business career. Or maybe it’s something like being a visionary where like, I have big visions, but I lacked the discipline to actually implement and get the the minutiae stuff done and I’ve learned a lot of ways to To overcome those flaws, and I think more importantly than what your fly is, is your rectification of it right? How have you worked on those things? So people who might be listening can learn a little bit from your experience.
Patti Mara
Yeah, that’s great.
So mine and I kind of touched on this in my origin story.
I’m, I can easily be a jack of all trades. I can do at least a surface level. Well, you know, I’ve done some plumbing. I’ve, you know, I’m in a group of called volunteer builders that we we go in and build buildings for nonprofit children’s camps once a year, and I’m a roofer. You know, there’s, there’s, I can do a lot of things at least adequately well, but that was my limiting that’s like the rugged individual of being an entrepreneur is that it’s up to you to do it. And that was the pivotal shift when I came across Strategic Coach, then I started being able to identify my unique abilities, and what did I need to have as a team. And so the shift the way out of that the freedom I have in my life these days is because of the incredible team I’ve put together and developed. I was talking to Shannon Waller, who’s really well known as, like an entrepreneurial team guru. And she made a comment that really resonated that, that entrepreneurs as a general rule, entrepreneurs are very good, very good at a very slim margin of activities, very, you know, specific set of what they should be spending their time on. And the rest of it, the team should be doing this is where you’re leveraged and supported, and that where I’ve gotten well, where I was limited, where I couldn’t grow beyond, you know, maybe 150,000 In income in a year was because I was doing it all and I could do it adequately. And now I have a team as an example of that. I launched the profit generator program in 2007. And I had some support. I had a key assistant had some online capabilities. And I, you know, hired someone to do my WordPress and I, you know, plugins and but I was doing a lot, I’ve figured out code and I was doing a lot. And this time around, I’m about to launch a program and this time around, I have relationship manager, I have my online marketing manager, I have a social media manager. I’ve got a writer that I pull in where I need I’ve got an assistant who does all the HR and coordinating with the team, and I am just completely liberated. I you know, I really I get to have fun with people do this things I love to do. I’m not stuck in building this website or can I do it? Probably do I want to do it Not on your life?
Richard Matthews
So I love that answer, mostly because it sounds like you lived my life. So, so one of the things that really, really strikes me that the actually the friend I mentioned, he lives in Toronto actually told this to me. So so maybe it’s just something that you learn in Canada faster than we learn here in America. But she said, he told me that, you know, the whole idea that you’ve heard the term jack of all trades, master of none, have you heard that before? Yes. So what’s interesting is that’s not the original phrase. The original phrase is jack of all trades, master of one.
Ah, interesting.
So historically speaking, that’s where the phrase came from is and it was in reference to this idea that you can be good at a lot of things but you’re only going to master For one thing, right and so the context of her teaching me that was she was she was doing some, some coaching on, she worked with fortune 500 CEOs, and up and coming fortune 5000 companies that were growing. And the commonalities between all of them all the ones who grow big companies is the idea that the CEO, the entrepreneur, the one who is driving the ship, they always come back to they have one thing that they’re really, really good at. And that’s the only thing they do. Right? If they do anything else, the team does it. Right. Like there’s there’s nothing else except the one thing that they’re really, really good at. And her challenge to me was you need to figure out what you were one thing is, right, it’s okay to be a jack of all trades, right? And I’m the same way, right? I know how to I have completely renovated to RVs. Now everything from plumbing, to roofing to carpentry to you know, working on the on the engine, I can tear a whole engine apart and put it back together. But that’s not that’s not my thing, right? That’s just I realized through going through this exercise that the reason why I’m a jack of all trades, is because of my one skill. The one thing that I’m really good at is I can see the systems right I can get really, really good and see how the systems work and where they apply and how to use them to figure out how to do things mediocre with you know, I can become a mediocre Carpenter I can become a mediocre you know, electrician and a mediocre plumber and a mediocre you know, uh, you know, coder and I can become a mediocre like I can be, you know, jack of all trades and all sorts of things. But the reason I can do that is because I have one skill, right? So my, my master of one is that systems and processes thing. And then learning for myself was how do I leverage that into, for me, it was learning how to build a team, and how to put the systems together that they could, they could do all the things that needed to be done without me being there. Right. So it’s sort of, you know, like we ended up in the same kind of place but that’s the it’s it’s such an interesting discovery to realize that hey, I need to I need to figure out how to I only do what only I can And then how do I set up my system? So my team is working the same way, right? So that they’re only doing things that only they can do. And because they each have their unique skill sets, and how do we, you know, build our systems and build our, our processes in a way that really, really leverages the things that they’re really good at. So anyways, I think that’s a it’s a fascinating thing to learn. And it’s not something that I think you can just flip a switch and figure out, I think you have to sort of go through that experience and, and learn over time.
Patti Mara
And it’s, you know, for entrepreneurs, it’s an asset, if you can asset if you can be a jack of all trades at the beginning. Because you do have to do everything to generate the cash flow to start bringing on team members to start leveraging you. It’s that pivotal shift that you’re going to max out that you can only grow so far doing it on your own.
Richard Matthews
Yeah, and one of the things that struck me about hiring my first person, which I did at the very end of 2018, I brought in my first team member, and I remember my mentor at the time, he pulled me aside and he was like the thing that You need to do next is you need to hire someone because you’re the bottleneck in your business. And I remember thinking at the time, I’m like, That’s crazy. I can’t afford to hire someone. And he was like, he was like, You don’t understand this yet. But you were thinking that is the crazy thing. Right? And I was like, I just I don’t believe you. And I remember struggling with that for several months. Because it was I think he told me, he said that to me in October. And it wasn’t until the end of December that I hired someone. So I struggled with it for several months. And I finally was like, Okay, I’m going to hire this person. And I hired someone to do and it was it wasn’t it wasn’t particularly like hiring for a project thing. It was actually bringing someone on staff, right, because I had hired people for projects here and there to get specific things done. But to have someone on my team who was part of this part of the organization, so to speak, was a big shift for me. And I remember the first week that I hired him. I was suddenly I was like, now that I have this person, I’m not sure how I’m going to afford to pay for him. But now all of a sudden I have twice as many hours of work getting done. Right. And it became immediately apparent where the money came from to pay for him, because now you can have twice the volume of output for the same amount of inputs. And it was like it was a revelation. But it’s one of those things that until you actually step out into the water, so to speak, he realized, Hey, I can walk on water. It’s a miracle that you can, you can leverage time.
Patti Mara
It takes a leap of faith. And every inning really, it’s it’s easier as you add more team members, but it still takes a leap of faith every time you add more on. But as you said, I love it. The productivity, the engagement, the output all shifts.
Richard Matthews
Yeah, it all shifts because now suddenly, instead of me putting in 40 or 50 or 60 hours of work a week now there’s two of us, right and if I can put in an hour of work to like, figure out what he needs to get done or how he needs to get it done. And then he goes into gets 40 hours of work done you’re like it changes your changes your life. Right and I brought him on Part time, I brought him on for 20 hours a week that lasted about three weeks. By the time the fourth group is on, it’s like, I need you full time. So I brought him on full time. And halfway through the next year, we had three staff members. Right. And it, it completely changes your business. Absolutely. So. So anyways, I just wanted to point out, you know, hey, we’ve I think we’ve all gone through the same sort of journey there. And it’s one of those things that I wish more people would would learn, right, because we have this idea that, that it is cool to be a solopreneur. And it is right, there’s nothing wrong with being a solopreneur. But when you will always have caps on the amount of time you can put into your business, the amount of income you can make in your business, until you learn how to add that time leverage that comes from having a team and there’s a lot of stuff that there’s a lot of good that comes out of that from you know, I like I struck me this last year I was doing our taxes. We paid more in salary this last year than I made in my business in our first year. Wow. Right. Which is a cool place to be right I was laid back 10 years. 10 years ago, we made this much money. And this last year, we paid that much in salary to other people’s, to other people and like, so we’re supporting four families with our one business. That’s a cool thing. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah, it’s not something you think about ahead of time, right? You’re just thinking like, I how am I gonna afford to pay for this person to help us grow? And anyways, it’s, it’s a unique place to be in your business. I look forward to, you know, growing and becoming a better CEO myself. And it sounds like you’re doing the same thing. So my next question for you has to do with your common enemy, right? Every superhero has what I call an arch nemesis. It’s the thing they constantly have to fight against in their world, right? And the world of business that takes on many forms, but generally speaking, we put it in the context of your clients, right? The people that you work with, and it’s a mindset or it’s a flaw that you’re constantly having to fight to overcome, so that you can get your clients better, cheaper, faster, and or a higher degree of results. So what’s the thing in in your business that you’re constantly have to fight against? If you had a magic wand? You could just tap him on the head and remove it. What would that thing be?
Patti Mara
Oh, it’s interesting. I love that that extra piece you put in about being able to tap them and have them go away, except I actually think, you know, what I would define as my enemies creates the conflict or contrast that allows for more creativity. You know, it’s responding to that. I would say my common enemy is the national chains, the Walmart’s, right. them and in the transactional that, that it’s almost an unfair business model. That because of the size because of the revenue, they can control an industry. I worked spent about 11 years working with independently owned pharmacy, pharmacies in the States, mostly in the States, because when I launched my profit generator program, I had somebody come up to me and said, You need to you need to work in my industry and turns out, you know, he worked with independently owned pharmacies. So not only Not only were they competing with chains, the national chains, the Walgreens and the CVS is, but they also had to submit their claims data to a middleman called the pbms. And there’s no transparency, right? So the pbms were put in place to manage keep drug costs down, but there’s no transparency and so in and the outcome is pbms have the highest paid CEOs of any industry globally. And so but these independent pharmacies have to literally submit their claims data to this PBM. The PBM are largely owned by the insurance companies, the insurance companies are largely owned by the chains. And so they’re literally compete, you know, submitting their patient data to their competitor and then the competitor sending in letters. If you switch to our mailorder, we can get you average wholesale cost minus 30%. Rather than Average wholesale cost minus 15% at your local pharmacy, but it’s apples and oranges because there’s no transparency and you can repackage it. It’s not the same average wholesale price. So it literally for me in pharmacy in particular, it’s an unfair marketplace. But that also means that if a pharmacy thinks their business is dispensing medication, they’re going out of business. If a pharmacy thinks their business is as a health hub for their community, and the value they bring to their community, they’re thriving. But it’s a pivotal shift in mindset. And the but it’s dealing with that enemy almost like a creative force. There are I’ve talked to a lot of pharmacy owners that have just sold their pharmacy because they’re not willing to.
It’s like the I can’t remember the it’s like the
you know, the impact of the chains that they can’t do the business the way they have known to do their business and they maybe they’ve been in front of for 40 years, and they don’t want to go through change, but there are other pharmacies that are literally thriving, like they’re expanding, they’re buying other pharmacies, because they’ve shifted their thinking and they viewing that competitive pressure as almost like, where to look and where to hone and what’s the opportunity?
Richard Matthews
Yeah, that’s a it’s a really fascinating thing, right? Because you’re talking about that, that transactional business model. So you actually you have you have some like legit unfair business practices that you have to fight against. But on a on a wider scale, anyone who is in the brick and mortar space and is trying to come up against the Walmarts or the CVS is or any of the big chain businesses, the Amazon. Yeah, the Amazons or the big furniture stores or whatever you have. You have the difference between your local business and your, in your big corporate businesses. Is is if you think you’re in like you said if you’re if you think You’re in the medical medication dispensing business, you think you’re in the furniture selling business, you’re in the wrong business. Right. And one of the things that I tell all my clients nowadays because we do a lot of marketing work, right, and we do podcasting, right, so we have a full service podcast production business. And it’s like, it doesn’t matter what what business you think you’re in the business, you’re actually in his you’re in the attention business. Right? And so you have to learn how to be in the attention business. And so like, I’ve struggled a bit little bit of that with our push button podcast businesses, I was trying to figure out like, how do we market a, we’re a full service podcast production business, because like, That’s not the thing that we do. The thing we do is we help you build attention, right? So we have to, we have to figure out how you how you communicate the the the value that you actually provide, because it’s less about the product or service, right or in your use your words, it’s less about the transaction that’s happening. And it’s more about what’s going on around the transaction. Right and and being more involved in the In the relationship with the customer,
Patti Mara
I think I think it’s important. What you sell is important. your product or service that you sell is important, but it’s just the vehicle that you’re for you to create value. It’s literally no more than the vehicle. It’s all about the value you create, in your example of a podcast service. It’s exactly right. It’s why do they want to have a podcast? What impact are they want to have? And you’re enabling them to have that the you know, the fact that you’ve got a plug and play podcasts service is really just the vehicle that you get to deliver connecting them to their mind.
Richard Matthews
Yeah. And and it’s one of those things like you want your vehicle you want to offer the coolest vehicle you can, right it’s better to have have, you know, a Tesla that you can offer to your clients rather than an old jalopy or you want to have a good vehicle but you want to make sure that the journey that you’re taking them on is a worthwhile journey. Absolutely. You know, are you taking them to, you know, bf nowhere or you take them to a cool destination, right. You have to have You have to have more than just the vehicle. So yeah, I think I’ve went off the deep end on our metaphor there but yeah, I really I like that that whole idea of figuring out how how do you how do you combat the that whole transactional business model and I think it’s something that that every business is struggles with today particularly. And especially with all the shifts that are happening in business right now. The big corporations are weaker now than they’ve ever been. Right? And now is a great time to figure out how you can change your messaging and change your marketing and under figure out how to have what did we say before we get on data that repositioning pivoting into figuring out how do you how do you sell that relationship model? How do you sell that? Sell the the deeper connection with your with your audience?
Patti Mara
Yeah, I came across a great question. That was would you start Your business today. And I love this because if you think through whatever your business is, would you start your business today? Because whatever business you would start today is the business you need to be focusing on moving forward. We really got to break up the legacy thought patterns that this is the way we’ve always done it. A crisis interrupts all patterns. So this is this is the period the opportunity is to reinvent. And really I love that question. asking that question. What business knowing everything, you know, all the experience, your relationship, your wisdom, everything you’ve learned, and you apply that to what business would you start today? Now you’re starting to look at what’s next. What’s the opportunity for you?
Richard Matthews
Yeah, what’s funny about that is that’s legitimately how I ended up with the push button podcast business was I was like I needed to, to throw out everything I was doing and build for specific, some specific things. And because of that, it actually helped re figure a lot of the stuff that I was doing in my business before. And now it all like fits together really nicely because we throw out all the stuff that didn’t work, right. And it’s just the stuff that’s going to help push our business forward. So that’s a great question. And it’s useful to ask even in times when you’re not in a crisis, right, because we actually were doing that several months before the COVID crisis. But now I’m actually thankful we started doing all of that ahead of time. So it’s a really useful thing. So the flip side then of your common enemy, is your driving force. Right? So just like Spider Man fights to save New York or Batman fi save Gotham, or Google flights to index and categorize all the world’s information, what is it that you fight for, in your business, your mission, so to speak, in my
Patti Mara
I love this because my mission is really enabling independently owned businesses to thrive, not just survive, but to thrive. I believe that our independently owned businesses are the cornerstone One of our communities. So my mission is to enable 1000 plus businesses to reimagine, reinvent, reposition, and literally be the leaders coming out of this crisis. And because I believe they in turn will lead their communities out of this crisis. And every historically every time we’ve gone through, I mean, I think the pandemic, certainly in my my experience has been nothing like it my experience there, if historically, you can look at crisis of this magnitude, but it’s pretty, I mean, it’s off the charts for what this is doing on a global level. And, but But if we look at there’s a history of crisis’s, whether it was the.com bubble, it was the market crash and you know, the call that the Great Recession after the market crash in 2008, back to the world wars, to the Spanish flu pandemic. I mean, if you go back and look at every major crisis. Once you know all patterns crisis, all patterns are interrupted. Once we’ve adapted to kind of the new reality that’s emerging out of the crisis. Every single time there’s been a greater level of abundance for all the challenges in the world was more millionaires created after the Great Depression than at any other time in that century in the last century. I think that’s where we’re at right now. And you said it, Richard, I think you’re spot on that corporations, they’re struggling, they infrastructure, they have the, the waiting, they don’t change on a dime, entrepreneurs are nimble. We can say, Okay, this was working. It’s not working today. Who do I want to work with? What do they need? What can I offer them? Let’s put it in place. I think we’re, we’re the ones that are gonna literally if we can get our mind around what the possibility is what the opportunity is. I think we’re in the middle of the greatest opportunity in our lifetime. But we have to do that pivot. And it starts with shifting thinking about what’s possible now that wasn’t possible before, and what isn’t going to change and how we build on it?
Richard Matthews
Yeah, I actually find it really fascinating. If you look at a lot of the big companies that exist today, and you look back to when they were founded, they were all founded post pricey, right? Like, you know, Coca Cola. And Paramount Pictures are both, you know, post the Civil War, right, in the late 1800s. And, you know, so the, like, each time you look at Big, big companies, where they’re coming from the biggest companies that survive and thrive and grow, come post crises. So the biggest opportunities we’re going to see probably in our lifetime, are going to happen right now over the next several years, right and have the willingness to stand up and figure out how do I build something, how do I grow from here? And, you know, to to your point, how do you figure out how to build a business itself. Based on having a unique, you know, transformative value I can offer to other people. Right. And that’s one of the reasons why I do this show is because entrepreneurs are the ones that change the world, right? They’re the ones that look at this world full of its problems. And they say to themselves, you know what, I can do something about that I can fix it, I can change it, I can make it better. Right? And that’s where we’re going to see a lot of the stuff that’s coming out of this pandemic is we’re going to see things like, you know, medical inventions and communication inventions, and, you know, working from home and schooling, like there’s a lot of stuff that is being interrupted, that we’re going to see huge value shifts, right. And those value shifts are going to come from entrepreneurs who are looking at those problems and saying, How can we make it better? Right? And that’s what that’s what a hero does. A hero looks at a problem and figures out how can I fix it?
Patti Mara
Absolutely, and this is, this is the biggest hero opportunity of our lifetime.
Richard Matthews
Absolutely. So I want to get into a practical portion of our show, right I call this the heroes tool belt. And just like every superhero has a tool belt with awesome gadgets like batter rings, or web slingers, or laser eyes, or a big magical hammer, I want to talk about top one or two tools that you use in your business that you couldn’t live without could be anything from your notepad to your calendar, to your marketing tools to maybe your product delivery, something that you think is essential to getting the job done something that you use every day in your business.
Um,
Patti Mara
zoom. Zoom is is become an everyday tool, both for content delivery, engagement, connection, relationship, the fact that I almost don’t get on the phone anymore, whether it’s a client working with a team, working with my own team, the fact that we have the face to face engagement as well, as you know, that connection, it’s a different level of connection than if you’re just over the phone. So zoom is Definitely one of the ones for me. And then another one that we use with my team a lot of slack. That’s, that’s what we use for our team communication so that we’re not bogged down in email. I mean, if if we have to, you know, we’ve got
our online folders so that everyone has access to all the materials,
which I’m very happy that my assistant Heather’s coordinating and manages. So all of that’s great. The fact that everything’s cloud just makes a huge difference. The collaborative ability to work collaboratively, productively, remotely has been profound. So I’ve done it for my team has been virtual for 15 years. I don’t I don’t drive around in an RV Richard, but but it’s been you know, it’s like just who I ended up working with. We live in different countries, different states. Different provinces. So I’ve worked remotely for quite a while. But the level of productivity and collaboration that’s possible, has just accelerated dramatically. We’re not emailing things back and forth and emailing changes and editing, we’re working collaboratively collaboratively on the same document. So I would say I’m gonna say three, the cloud, slack for communication and fun and zoom for the connection.
Richard Matthews
Absolutely, yeah. So a couple of things on that one of them zoom I just read yesterday that zooms growth over the last six months. Had it overshadowing, like, the combined revenue of like six other massive companies, I can’t remember which industry it was in, if something like automotive industry in there like that, but they were like big New York Stock Exchange companies that you really like you recognize those companies zoom overshadowed them in the last six months because of that collaborative nature and what’s been going on and it’s That’s a huge shift. And they just weren’t positioned really well because of what’s going on. But that type of communication, right is picking up and growing, right? There’s gonna be a lot of pressure in that marketplace to have competition for zoom. Google’s already pushing it with their meat application. And there’s other ones that are competing there.
Patti Mara
Facebook has launched Facebook have launched their own meat thing, and
Richard Matthews
they’re absolutely yeah, it’s, it’s gonna be a huge thing. You know, for those of us who’ve been working virtually for years, it’s like, not a big shift for us. But it’s interesting, like they’re some of the biggest YouTube videos right now or like how to get on a zoom meeting. Like who would have thought, right? Like, like for for for those of us who’ve been working virtually for years, like how to get on a zoom meeting is like, you know, we do that every day, hundreds of times a week kind of thing. And, you know, we’re recording this interview in zoom for people who are you know, watching it wherever we, you know, we use it for podcasts, we use it for our company communications, we use it for a lot of different things. So that communication level is such a cool thing. And slack is another one. We use that in our organization as well. Right? And we have, we have people from several different countries as well as you know, here in the States. And it’s interesting to me like one of my favorite things is like one of one of my staff members speaks Filipino better than they speaks English. And I mentioned to him I was like, you don’t have to speak English, slack will actually translate live for you. And so like he’s, he’s been communicating in the Filipino language, and you can turn on the Translate function and it’ll translate back and forth from English to Filipino. Live in the conversation chat. And it’s not perfect, but it’s pretty damn good. For for those for those things, and it’s just amazing to me, like, it’s almost like we’ve gotten to that whole you know, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy babelfish style stuff, and it won’t be too long before that’s like legitimately a reality. Right. I don’t know if you saw Apple’s announcements they released late earlier this year. For The the new iPhone OS is coming out in September or October or whatever. One of their their translate apps has a babelfish style functionality where you can just talk to it conversationally, and it’ll automatically detect what language you’re speaking and what language the other person is speaking and live translate between the two. I’m like, what world do we live in? That’s great. Yeah. So like, that’s the kind of stuff that’s making. You know, we talked about tools, you know, 10 years ago. The stuff that we do today is like, it seems almost magical. And we take some of that stuff for granted. But I think the takeaway for people who are listening is if you’re looking to get started in business today, I tell people, it’s the golden age of business, right? Because you can compete on a from a tool level with fortune 500 companies and have the same type of level playing field that they have in terms of access to high level tools, right like slack is it slack is free. slack is used by Microsoft and Apple and Google and stuff like that for internal team communications, you can use the same tool that fortune 500 companies are using, right. And it’s not a not a huge thing. Zoom I think costs $14 a month to have a professional account, same tool that your fortune 500 companies are using. And you know, you could skip a skip a latte once at once a month and and afford to have the same level of tools at fortune 500 companies are using, which is you know, it’s fascinating. The hero show we’ll be right back. Hey there fellow podcaster. Having a weekly audio and video show on all the major online networks that builds your brand creates fame and drive sales for your business doesn’t have to be hard. I know it feels that way. Because you’ve tried managing your show internally and realize how resource intensive it can be. You felt the pain of pouring eight to 10 hours of work into just getting one hour of content published and promoted all over the place. You see the drain on your resources but you do it anyways because you know how powerful it is back. You probably even tried some of those automated solutions and ended up with stuff that makes your brand look cheesy and cheap. That’s not helping grow your business. Don’t give up though. The struggle ends now introducing push button podcasts a done for you service that will help you get your show out every single week without you lifting a finger. After you’ve pushed that stop record button. We handle everything else uploading, editing, transcribing, writing, research, graphics, publication and promotion. All done by real humans who know understand and care about your brand, almost as much as you do. And powered by our own proprietary technology, our team will let you get back to doing what you love. While we handle the rest. Check us out at push button podcast.com Ford slash hero for 10% off the lifetime of your service with us and see the power of having an audio and video podcast growing and driving micro celebrity status and business in your niche without you having to lift more than a finger to push that stop record button. Again, that’s push button podcast.com forward slash hero. See you there.
Patti Mara
Yep. Now then it all becomes around the talent and you know, getting it out into the world. You’ve got all the resources available at your fingertips today.
Richard Matthews
Absolutely, yeah. So you just have to figure out what is that value you have to offer the world and then go out and offer it. Yeah. Go become a hero for someone. And know speaking of heroes, I’ll talk a little bit about your own personal heroes.
Unknown Speaker
Oh, yes, there
Richard Matthews
has their mentors. So you know Frodo has Gandalf. Luke has Obi Wan Robert Kiyosaki has his rich dad and spider man has his Uncle Ben. So who are some of your heroes, their real life mentors, speakers or authors, maybe peers who are a couple of years ahead of you, and how important were they to what you’ve accomplished so far in your business?
Patti Mara
I love it. The
I’d say a couple of them. I mentioned Strategic Coach a couple times the entrepreneurs behind strategic coaches dance are Dan Sullivan and Bob Smith. Dan is a visionary. He’s created all the content and it’s it’s the whole idea of leveraging entrepreneurs around the unique ability and building anything Ability team and then leveraging that into the value create in the world. And expanding entrepreneurial freedom is phenomenal that you know how my brain works with the framework and the core. When I got my hands on that way of thinking, it was just like an explosion. So I’m very, very grateful. And he’s continued and continues on the leading edge. Ben Hardy. willpower doesn’t work was my favorite book has just come out with a book, personality isn’t permanent. And the book he’s coming out that he co wrote with Dan Sullivan in the fall is who not how the whole idea is, as an entrepreneur, your job is to figure out what you know, create what result you want to do, and then find the who that can do it for you. So that whole idea is, you know, don’t get into the house because as soon as you get into the house as an entrepreneur, you’re bottleneck your whole business. So they’re in bed. actually built Strategic Coach, Babs built the business, Dan’s in charge, the content and the thinking and Babs built the team. And in that the the partnership there is just from profound. So both of them are really wonderful mentors. And then another one that comes to mind is Simon Sinek. And I’ve never met Simon, I have been at a conference that he spoke, I literally, pretty much anything he puts out, I would watch or read or listen to, I find that he’s just brilliant in his counter thinking, as you were saying about seeing underneath something. But we start with why his book start with why. But it was that first TED Talk, how great leaders inspire action, and all of it was what’s the why, and everyone’s out there talking to how and which is like you’re selling your product and service rather than creating the value. And it’s the why people buy because of the why not because of what it is. So the Those are the ones that really stand out. I mean, I feel I figure I started life with a wonderful advantage because I have a great family and you know, I got had great, great mentors with my grandparents and my parents. But for as far as the business expansion and thinking and possibility and the other one is, I think is Peter Diamandis. And he’s kind of how his book abundance is how technology is shifting us from you know, if you studied economics at all, anywhere from five years ago and beyond before, it was the, you know, economic model was all around supply and demand. And Peter’s kind of flip that saying that technology is now anytime we hit a period of scarcity technology shifting at one to abundance, that the economic framework actually needs to shift to one of abundance for all an interview just my opinion. Interestingly enough, I actually I it’s it’s landed on me a couple of times, that the crisis we’re going through and breaking up patterns is actually enabling the future that Peter talks about that level of abundance for all to happen faster, I think we would have resisted a lot of the technology that’s emerging, because it goes against the structure that’s been in place. And their current crisis is interrupting all that structure.
Richard Matthews
Yeah, I actually, I have friends and family who think I’m crazy, because I am extremely optimistic about what our world looks like three years from now, because of this crisis. And I see a lot of things happening in our financial markets. I see a lot of things happening with our bilateral trade agreements versus the global trade agreements that we had before. And I see I see a lot of shifts happening in a lot of areas. Everything from we’re seeing things With with health and wellness, with therapeutics that are being looked at because of the COVID crisis, and we’re looking at red tape coming down because of that are allowing everything from like here in the States, one of the things that was passed because of the crisis is a right to try right there where you could try therapeutics in ways you couldn’t before because red tape existed, but we’re actually pushing things forward in the health space that was being held back because of, you know, corporate red tape. Right. And so I think, financially and health wise and technology, there’s a lot of stuff that’s being pushed forward, that I absolutely agree we’re going to be in a place of extreme abundance over the next couple of years, which I think makes it all that much more important to pivot and transition your business today to be ready to take advantage of what it looks like to have an abundance a world that’s full of abundance tomorrow, because I think that’s where we’re headed.
Patti Mara
Hundred percent agree.
Richard Matthews
Absolutely. So We’re nearing the end of our interview here. I have one a couple couple final things. One of them is your guiding principles, right. And one of the things that makes heroes heroic is that they live by a code. For instance, Batman never kills his enemies, he brings him to Arkham Asylum. So as we wrap up to this interview list, he talks about top one or two principles that you use regularly in your life, maybe a principle you wish you knew when you first started out on your own hero’s journey.
Patti Mara
I’d say the first one is the opportunity in change. And I’m with you. I’m the optimist, I think where we were going, you know, three to five years because because of this crisis, we’re going to be in a much better place, whether it’s breaking up restrictions, allowing more innovation, all of the structure that’s no longer serving us. We’re going to create new and it’s next platform for growth. So the opportunity and growth I you know, there’s the saying when when closes another door opens. I believe that wholeheartedly. And yet when I have conversations with entrepreneurs and with people, it’s like they spend so long looking at the closed door that they’re missing this gapping opportunity that’s literally saying, Come to me Come to me. So definitely the opportunity and change and but it takes looking at things asking great questions. Like, what business would you start today? Like, what isn’t going to change, you have to ask great questions and that opens that door, that door of opportunity. So say that would be my first guiding principle. My second guiding principle is really identifying the wisdom in your business. And when I look at the wisdom in the business that includes your team, in most businesses, once you started to put a team in place, it’s the team members that have the contact with your customers on a day to day or clients on a day to day basis and Once somebody has worked in your company for three months or more, I’d like you to consider that they are experts compared to the customer customers or clients, that your customers or clients don’t even know the questions to ask to make an effective buying decision. And just if your team understand their role that their opportunity is to be heroes, to your customers to create solutions for their needs to problem solve. If they understand their role, that’s where you turn your customers into raving fans. But that means the team members have to be focused on the results they create not the task, so their role, and they need to be empowered. Something we’ve talked about this earlier in the interview, just helping a customer or a client make an effective decision is creating a huge amount of value. It’s not as complicated as we make it when we look for our one thing, it’s not as complicated as the things that we innately do. Whether we got paid or not we would do it that’s starting to lead you into your one thing it underpins everything else. The challenge is we take it for granted.
Richard Matthews
Yeah, on that point, one of the things I tell people all the time is like, if you’re looking for your zone of genius, look at all the things where you say, Well, why, you know, why is that a problem? That’s easy. Anytime you say that’s easy. That’s an indicator that you’re stepping into your zone of genius in some way. It’s easy for you for you. It’s easy for you. It doesn’t mean it’s easy for everyone else, right? I tell my wife this all the time. She’s a genius with all sorts of creative stuff. And you know, she does, she does things with with paint and with cakes and in the kitchen and with the kids and all these things that are creative. I’m like, I don’t even know like how you did that. Like, oh, it’s easy. You just do this thing here. I’m like, you know, but see, the moment you said that’s easy. That’s when you lost me because like what I’m looking at, I’m seeing magic. Who like legitimately you use magic from on high wave your fairy magic dust over it and then stuff happens and I see it You know, that’s what? And so my I tell people all the time, that’s an indication anytime you say that’s easy, this is how you do it, right? That’s where you’re stepping into your zone of genius. And to your point with your team members, right when so like one of the things that I constantly strive for with my team and with the systems and processes you set up in your business is, how do you make it so that your team members are doing? Yes, doing what only you can do, right? So only do what only you can do is just sort of sort of a life mission of mine, that like, hey, there’s there are specific things that you’re good at. And if you can find out, you know, what’s, what’s the thing you can do that no one else on the team can do, or that you can do better than anyone else, like those are the things they should be doing. And when you build your business that way about around their skills and their talents, you start to realize that, like, they come up with better solutions that you would have come up with, right, they come up with with better outcomes than you would have come up with. And once you sort of start to realize that you start to like let go of the reins and realize that hey, my business is growing because my team as a part of that, and you know, one of the things that’s that I think is vitally important is to start recognizing that one to allow them to do it and then recognize them for it. Right. And it helps to, to sort of grow all those things. And to your point on the other one, the whole asking great questions idea, is I think that’s such a powerful thing. It’s changed my life quite a bit of learning how to ask better questions. And just to sort of, you know, put a close on that thought. The whole hiring a team thing for me was, it happened because I started asking a better question, right. And I know one of the things that I asked myself all the time was like, I’d have a task in front of me. And the question I was always asking is, should I do this myself, or should I hire someone to do it? And that was a poor question, because the answer to that question is always I should do it myself, because I’m better at it and I’m faster and it’s cheaper to do it myself, which keeps me poor. Hence, it’s a poor question. And When I shifted the question and the way I shifted the question was my, you know, I mentioned my mentor told me just hire them, and you’ll figure it out once I hired them. And now I had this person I had all their time on my plate, right? Where I was like, I have 20 hours of this person’s time. The question now is, what do I have on my plate that I can take off and put on theirs? And that’s a completely different question. Right? And it’s a much in my, in my experience, a much wealthier question. It’s a much better question to ask. So when you shift the questions that you ask, you shift the answers that you get, so you have to learn how to ask yourself better questions. And that’s a I wish I knew how to teach people how to do that. But it’s in my experience is something that you just have to you have to ask more questions and figure out where where you’re getting better answers.
Patti Mara
I got some great coaching. I had the same I had some really good coaching and the coaching was anytime you have a statement, how can you turn it into a question? And that practicing that develop a lot more questions?
Richard Matthews
The skill of asking Better questions so you can get better answers. That’s a good way to think about that. So how to turn your turn statements into questions? Yeah, that’s basically a wrap on our interview. But I do finish every interview with a simple challenge that I call the hero’s challenge. And we do this basically, it’s totally a selfish thing that I do. Because it gets me access to stories I might not get access to otherwise. So the question is simple. Do you have someone in your life or in your network that you think has a cool entrepreneurial story? Who are they first names are fine, and why should they come share their story on our show?
Patti Mara
Interestingly enough, I actually, who came to mind is someone I talked about earlier is Shannon Waller. And she’s an intrapreneur, in that she’s a key team member at Strategic Coach, one of the principles, but she created the entire entrepreneurial team training program at Strategic Coach. So she’s been intimately involved with leveraging entrepreneurs and developing a career area of expertise, if you will, is understanding and engaging and supporting setting up teams entrepreneurial teams to win. And she’s written a couple books, the team success handbook and multiplication by subtraction, how to let wrong fit team members go gracefully. And really, again, back to exploding your team productivity when you have the wrong fit to kind of anchor the rest of the team. So that’s that’s who comes to mind.
Richard Matthews
Awesome. Well, we will reach out after the show and see if we can get a an introduction to her so we can see we invite her on the show. So thank you for that. And for our send off, right in comic books, there’s always the crowd of people who witnessed the heroic acts and claps and cheers for them and the works that they have done. So as we close what I want to do is find out where can people find you if they want your help in the future, right, where can they light up the bat signal so to speak and say, Hey, you know what, Patti? How can I get your help with, you know, changing my business and pivoting and refocusing That kind of stuff. And more importantly than, you know, where they can find it was were the right types of businesses to raise their hand and reach out and say, Hey, you know what I would really like to get help from you. So if you would let us let us know where we’re where they where they can find you who they should be.
Patti Mara
Sure, absolutely. Well, the the who is, I would say small mid size, entrepreneurial owned businesses. And again, mostly focused on retail and service, brick and mortar, some online business, but a lot of it has been converting brick and mortar. Which, you know, everyone is online at this point in time, but there’s there’s some sort of a space. And the easiest way to get ahold of me is my website, which is Paddy mera.com. That’s pa TTI ma ra.com. And when you go to the website, you can see all the social media, so you know, we’re on all the channels, social media channels, and we’ve actually got a really great absolutions Facebook group. It’s just a private group, and I post a lot of content there. That’s really good. was set up as a resource hub for entrepreneurs with, you know, to support each other to share ideas. And I put a lot of resources into it all of that you can access off of the website. And Richard, we created a link for your listeners. That’s a special podcast resource page, that they can actually get access to one of the tools I created that helped them and to engage their team to thinking from your customers perspective, but also to look at your at your business and different touch points in your business. From your customers perspective to build the muscle of developing your customer experience was aligned with the value of the business. So if you go to Patty mehra.com, forward slash hero show, then that will take you to a page where if you want to buy the book you there’s a button to buy the book. If you want to download the tool. The tool is free to download. There’s a short training video and there’s a drumroll direct link into the solutions Facebook group. So all the resources are there, please do reach out. Again, let’s engage this is our biggest opportunity. I think this is us coming together supporting each other, and, you know, leading our communities out of this crisis.
Richard Matthews
Awesome. And so with that, if you are in that space, if you’re a local business or a local service provider, and you’re looking to reposition or re pivot your business in the midst of this crisis, definitely take time to reach out to Patti Mara. So it’s Petey Mara comm forward slash hero show and you should be able to get access to some of those resources. Patti, thank you so much for coming on the show. Really appreciate it. It’s been a fascinating conversation. Do you have any final words of wisdom for hit this stop record button and finish off our episode?
Patti Mara
Um, I would say have grace with I think we all need to have grace with ourselves that we’re part of dealing with crisis as we’re going through change, and it feels like imposed change. I do think We’re in the biggest opportunity of our lifetime. But I think we also have to have grace for ourselves as we go through and, and test things out and try new things and see what works and what doesn’t work. I have so much admiration for business owners and key team in the entrepreneurial team members, because you’re all living on the court. You’re in it, you get direct, immediate feedback, this works. This doesn’t work. It takes tremendous courage. So I just really honor and respect entrepreneurs that take that risk and make a difference. And let’s figure out how to, you know, navigate this crisis and come out the other side.
Richard Matthews
Yeah. And while we’re talking about the whole idea of have grace with yourself, also have grace with all the people around you, everyone is dealing with this craziness, right, and there’s a lot of divisiveness and the more grace we can have with each other. I think the better we’re going to end up we end up on the other side of this. So I completely agree with that. Again, thank you, Patti, for coming on and sharing
your story with us today.
Patti Mara
Thank you, Richard. What a what an absolute joy and love Your your podcast
Richard Matthews
and the whole focus around your hero show. So thank you for having me on.
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Richard Matthews
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