The

VOLUME 1

ACCELERATORS
Dan
Jeff Sullivan
Walker Joe Polish Sally Hogshead Richard Rossi John Lee Dumas

Bo Eason Dr. Ned Hallowell Sandra Joesph Bob Danzig Dan Kuschell

Peter Diamandis Shannon Waller Jeff Walker Joel Weldon Cathy Davis

Jimmy Harding Ari Meisel Joey Coleman John Ruhlin Mel Abraham
Bo Eason

PROVEN INSIGHTS
FROM REMARKABLE
ENTREPRENEURS
1
 Dear Fellow Entrepreneur,

Welcome to our inaugural issue of The Accelerators. Every quarter, we will select the gems
of wisdom from some of your top podcast guests and share them with you here in one
convenient compendium.

We invite you to read and be inspired by the stories of the exceptional entrepreneurs who
appear on our podcasts. Explore their resources and put their key actions to work in your
own business. And of course, please share The Accelerators with like-minded entrepre-
neurs in your network.

In addition to our podcast, remember that we have a range of additional resources to help
you accelerate your success:

• Our monthly live, interactive webinars co-hosted with Dan Sullivan of Strategic
Coach feature today’s top entrepreneurs. These are world-changing entrepre-
neurs who have the insight to help transform your business.
• Our virtual conferences showcase business leaders and experts in elevating your
success and your life. These one-day online events give you access to the in-
depth presentations and interaction that you’d get at a live conference from the
comfort of your office or home.
• The AESNation.com weekly newsletter will always keep you on top of the latest
interviews and events. Sign up here.

Thanks for being part of the AES Nation community. We’ll see you online.

Best of success,

John Bowen
Co-founder, AES Nation
 

2
CONTRIBUTING ENTREPRENEURS

Dan Sullivan............................................................................................4
Joe Polish.................................................................................................6
Sally Hogshead........................................................................................8
Richard Rossi........................................................................................10
John Lee Dumas...................................................................................12
Bo Eason................................................................................................14
Ned Hallowell.......................................................................................16
Sandra Joseph........................................................................................18
Bob Danzig............................................................................................20
Dan Kuschell.........................................................................................22
Peter Diamandis...................................................................................24
Shannon Waller....................................................................................26
Jeff Walker.............................................................................................28
Joel Weldon...........................................................................................30
Cathy Davis...........................................................................................32
Jimmy Harding.....................................................................................34
Ari Meisel..............................................................................................36
Joey Coleman........................................................................................38
John Ruhlin...........................................................................................40
Mel Abraham........................................................................................42

3
 DAN SULLIVAN
DAN SULLIVAN is founder and president
of The Strategic Coach Inc. A visionary,
an innovator and a gifted conceptual
thinker, Dan has over 35 years’ experi-
ence as a highly regarded speaker, con-
sultant, strategic planner and coach to
entrepreneurial individuals and groups.
Dan’s strong belief in and commitment
to the power of the entrepreneur is ev-
ident in all areas of Strategic Coach®
and its successful coaching program,
which works to help entrepreneurs
reach their full potential in both their
business and personal lives.
He is author of over 30 publications,
including The Great Crossover, The
21st Century Agent, Creative Destruc-
tion and How The Best Get Better®. He
is co-author of The Laws of Lifetime
Growth and The Advisor Century.
The Back Story
We live in a fundamentally different
kind of world than 40 years ago. Forty
years ago, I started paying attention to
how the microchip was going to change
the economy and change society. It’s
based on a law called Moore’s Law,
which says that the processing power of
microchips doubles every 18 months.
And that has just utterly changed our
world. Forty years ago, there were no
personal computers, no software appli-
cations and no Internet so people were
disconnected. So they thought in terms
of incremental growth. You know, “If I
can just grow five percent or ten per-
4
cent,” because that’s the world that they
were trained in actually allowed. Most
industries are still fixated on that type
of linear growth. The difference be-
tween linear growth and exponential
growth is that growth multiplies itself.
So I began taking a look at how entre-
preneurs really thought about things. I
asked, “What if you just had a mindset
that you were going to look for every-
thing that could help you grow 10X?”
Pick your time period. If you do it for
10 years, it’s 26 percent per year. I know
a lot of entrepreneurs who’ve had years
that are 26 percent. If you come closer,
it gets higher than 26 percent. Just by
taking advantage of the opportunities,
the capabilities and the resources that
you already have, but looking at them
from a standpoint of what contributes
to 10X, what doesn’t contribute to 10X?
The Big Breakthrough
You become purposeful through pain
that you don’t want to repeat. It’s not
that successful entrepreneurs haven’t
made mistakes. In fact, they’ve had 10X
more mistakes because they take risks.
But every time it doesn’t work the way
that you want it to work, then of course
there’s some pain, you’re frustrated.
And then the whole question is: Do you
actually learn something from that?
I always consider one of the most im-
portant days of my life to be August 15,
1978, when I was both divorced and
bankrupt on the same day. I was di-
vorced in the morning and I was bank-
rupt in the afternoon. These are official,
like diplomas. You just graduated from
a school and they gave you two diplo-
mas and the two diplomas say, “You’re
doing things really stupidly and you’ve
got to change the way that you’re look-
ing at it.”
Looking back at that now, I don’t see
those as negative experiences at all. I see
them as tremendous transformations of
telling myself what I really wanted and
what I didn’t really want. Every 90 days,
you can tell yourself three things in
your life that you have to eliminate be-
cause it doesn’t belong to 10X growth.
Every 90 days, you can add three things
or reinforce three things that you’re al-
ready doing.
Just by going back and forth between
eliminating and increasing, getting rid
of the negative, getting rid of the activ-
ities that actually deprive you of energy
and actually increase the activities that
“Any entrepreneur
who’s got 10 years BEST BOOK
of experience is a If you’re only going to read one book for this year, and if you’re
only going to use one book as your foundation for the rest of your
hundred times more life, get Peter Diamandis’ book, Abundance: The Future Is Better
Than You Think. Peter is probably the most connected individual
purposeful than on the planet right now as far as cutting-edge technologies. The

when they started. book is about how virtually every part of life on the planet is just
going to get better in ways that most people on the planet don’t

Just multiply that believe right now.

purposefulness
with technological VIDEO INTERVIEW
Watch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/3
capabilities and
that’s where you
get the incredible PODCAST
multiplier—that’s Download the podcast from iTunes.

where you get your

10X.”
increase your energy, you can actually
make tremendous progress every 90
days. Then do that for four quarters a
year, then do that for twelve quarters in
three years, and you’re already operat-
ing in many areas of your life at a 10X
level performance and results.
The Key Takeaway
Focus increasingly on your strengths
and delegate all your weaknesses. The
schooling system actually teaches peo-
ple to work on their weaknesses so
you’re a well-rounded person. You’re
a well-rounded person but you’re not
a purposeful person. You’re not a stra-
RESOURCES
WinStreak
The 80% Approach
tegic person. You can’t work on every-
thing. Just think about the amount of
effort and time it takes to work on your
weaknesses, which in fact are never go-
ing to become strengths. Instead, ask
“Where am I really good?” and just fo-
cus more and more on that.
Find people who are much better than
you are. A world where you’re only
trading strengths and you’re not in-
volving yourself in weaknesses is the
way to go. This really cuts against the
grain, but just go with it. That would
open up the 10X mindset for a lot of
entrepreneurs because the 10X mind-
set is where you’ve gotten rid of all your
weaknesses and you’re just focusing on
your strengths.

5

JOE POLISH is the creator of Genius
Network® Interview Series, founder of
Genius Network® (also known as the
25K Group) and co-founder of 10XTalk.
com and ILoveMarketing.com, two
highly popular podcasts on iTunes.
President of Piranha Marketing Inc.,
his marketing expertise has been used
to build thousands of businesses and
have generated hundreds of millions
of dollars for his clients, ranging from
large corporations to small, family-
owned businesses.
Known for his entrepreneurial focus on
value creation, connection and contri-
bution, Joe’s leadership is the reason
he’s one of the most sought-after mar-
keters alive today.
The Back Story
I started my entrepreneurial career as
a carpet cleaner—no skills, no college
degree. We lived in trailers half my life
growing up. We never had much mon-
ey so I understand struggling for mon-
ey because a good portion of my child-
hood and my early adult life was spent
just scraping by.
And so I learned marketing in the car-
pet cleaning business doing hard phys-
ical manual labor out of necessity. As
the cliché goes, “Necessity is the moth-
er of invention.”
Marketing is basically what you say and
how you say it. It’s storytelling. Selling,
6
JOE POLISH
which is critical, is influence. If you im-
prove your ability to influence, you’re
going to get a better result. If you im-
prove your ability to tell a story, if you
can package your story up and replicate
it in ways, you’re going to share it with
more people.
It doesn’t matter if you’re just starting
out or you’re an extraordinarily wealthy
person. It’s packaging up those stories
and sharing it with people so when
they hear the story they get an un-
derstanding. If you share a very lousy
story, a lousy pitch, you’re not going to
get much attention. You’re not going to
compel people.
Networking is really the same sort of
thing. First off, what’s the story that
you want to tell? What’s the punch line?
What’s the end result that you want?
And how do you influentially and in
a compelling way lead people not only
into your world but how do you recruit
them and enroll them into your belief?
The Big Breakthrough
I grew up incredibly shy, really intro-
verted. Even when I think of myself
today as “networking,” it’s literally in-
teracting in significant ways with other
individuals that end up creating a re-
sult and preferably a real leverage and
real win-win situation for everyone
involved. If you cannot expand some-
body, if they cannot expand you, if they
cannot expand the business, you’re just
spinning your wheels developing that
relationship.
So I have a company called Genius
Network that includes a very high-level
mastermind group. I am always asking:
Who has tremendous wisdom, knowl-
edge, genius, skills in a particular area,
and how can I interact with them? How
can I work with them? How can I do
business with them? How can I com-
bine the capabilities and skills to actu-
ally produce a really useful result? This
kind of networking can be a total game
changer. So networking is just connect-
ing with other individuals but doing it
with geniuses—with people that really
are the most important to your goals
that you’re aligned with.
I like networking with geniuses. I like
having conversations with these peo-
ple because not only am I able to help
them, they’re able to help me. A ge-
nius network is the ultimate network
of great people that you can tap into,
that can solve most, if not all of your
problems, and help you to reach most,
“You’re just 10
minutes away
from a giant APP
FAVORITE APP
I love the voice memo and video apps on smartphones. There are
breakthrough. things that you can do with a video or voice that you simply can
never convey in text. And so I like getting as close to in person
The question is, when communicating with someone and it’s a lot easier and fast-

are you willing er just to record a video or a voice memo and text it or email it.

to sit down and

focus on it and VIDEO INTERVIEW
Watch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/6
get it done?”
if not all your opportunities. If you go
to the very top people, it saves you time.
It saves you money. It saves you ener- PODCAST
gy. So if people are going to fish, they Download the podcast from iTunes.
should fish for the most talented, most
valuable, most capable fish that they
could catch, but they better be well pre-
pared to bait the hook with something RESOURCES
that the fish really wants. I Love Marketing
The Genius Network
The Key Takeaway 10XTalk.com
My dear friend Mary Ellen Tribby
says, “One thing done equals money.
Five things undone equals no money.”
In today’s day and age where there’s a
continuous amount of things that you
could do and should do. At the end of
the day, you can work on a hundred
things and think you’re making prog-
ress, but if you’re not completing any of
them or putting the ball in motion and
you’re not. So one thing done equals
money. Five things, ten things, a hun-
dred things undone equals no money
and no progress.

7
 SALLY HOGSHEAD
SALLY HOGSHEAD rose to the top of the
advertising profession in her early 20s,
writing ads that fascinated millions
of consumers. Over the course of her
ad career, Sally was one of the most
awarded advertising copywriters, in-
cluding almost every major internation-
al advertising award.
Her internationally-acclaimed book,
Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persua-
sion and Captivation, has been trans-
lated into 12 languages. The science
of fascination is based on her decade
of research with 500,000 participants,
including dozens of Fortune 500 teams,
hundreds of small businesses and more
than a thousand C-level executives. Her
newest book, How the World Sees You,
is already a New York Times and Wall
Street Journal bestseller.
The Back Story
Every time you communicate, every
time you get in front of your prospect,
you’re going to do one of two things.
You’re either going to add value or
you’re going to take up space. If you
add value when you communicate—if
you give them something that’s infor-
mational, inspirational or insightful—
they’re going to be more likely to come
back to you. They’re going to refer you,
they’re going to stay loyal to you and
they’re going to buy more from you.
But if you don’t add value then you’re
taking up space. And if you’re only
8
taking up space, you’re at risk of be-
ing perceived as human spam. When
you’re human spam, people delete your
messages, don’t answer your calls, avoid
talking to you and screen you out. And
at that point, you’re vulnerable and you
have to begin competing on price.
The reality is that you can add value no
matter what your personality, no mat-
ter what your product or your service.
You can stand out and be perceived as
intensely valuable if you know what is
within you that your customer desires.
The Big Breakthrough
I just spent a round of research to find
out exactly what makes one entrepre-
neur more valuable than the others. In
other words, why can certain entrepre-
neurs charge more even though they’re
selling the exact same product? Even if
what you’re selling is a commodity, how
can you make sure that your personali-
ty is adding so much value to the trans-
action that you’re able to raise your fees
for your products and services? That
you’re the most desirable go-to option
in your market?
And what I found is that there are very
specific patterns that high-perform-
ers follow. People who make the most
money, scale their businesses the most
quickly and create the most profit are
able to do that because they understand
how the world sees them.
They understand that they need to
specialize their personality in some
particular way. They stand out by find-
ing something they already have with-
in them, some sort of built-in com-
petitive advantage that they can use
to make sure that they don’t become a
commodity.
And so I took my decade of research
with companies and combined it with
a decade of research on personality to
develop the first system to be able to
measure exactly how your personality
adds value so that every time you com-
municate, you can be seen at your best.
People are more likely to focus on you
and take action on what you say.
The Key Takeaway
Your personality has key differentiating
qualities and the more that you can fo-
cus on the qualities that make you dif-
ferent, the more likely your ideal client
is likely to seek you out, find you, pay
“You don’t have to
change who you
BEST BOOK
are. You have to How the World Sees You: Discover Your Highest Value Through

become more of the Science of Fascination.

who you are.”

you more money, refer you and stay VIDEO INTERVIEW
loyal to you. Watch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/4

If you don’t know your own value, don’t

expect anyone else to. It’s not your cli-
ents’ job to figure out what makes you
valuable. It’s not your prospects’ job
PODCAST
Download the podcast from iTunes.
to figure out why they should care. It’s
your job. It’s your job to earn and hold
your listeners’ attention. Make sure that
you make it really easy for them to say
yes. If you have a clear snapshot of how RESOURCES
Take the Fascination Advantage assessment. Visit How to Fasci-
you add value, if you can explain it in
nate and enter the code “jbowen” for your free assessment.
just a few words, people are far more
likely to listen to you, buy from you,
champion for you, join you, hire you
and pay more for what you do.

9
 RICHARD ROSSI
RICHARD ROSSI has devoted his life
to educating, motivating and inspiring
high-achieving young people.
He is a founder of several nationally
recognized educational organizations
dedicated to teaching leadership, life
success skills and career prepara-
tion to exceptional K-12 and college
students. More over 670,000 students
have completed Richard’s educational
programs throughout the world.
Richard currently serves as president
and executive director of The Nation-
al Academy of Future Physicians and
Medical Scientists.
The Back Story
I worked for nine years in the United
States Senate and during that time, I
was asked to run the summer intern-
ship program for my senator and that
exposed me to young people learning
about democracy and civics in Wash-
ington. I got very interested in that so
after I left the senator’s office, I got to
thinking, “Could we do this as a busi-
ness? Could we bring young people
from all around the country to Wash-
ington and teach them what it means to
be a good citizen?” We wanted to teach
them what it means to be an Ameri-
can—that you have to not only take but
you have to be part of the process.
And that’s what got me thinking about
starting my very first organization. I’ve
never actually had a job. I don’t consid-
10
er working for the United States Senate
to be your typical job. After that, at age
25, I became an entrepreneur, started
this little venture. I put $2,500 in. My
partner put $2,500 in. We took one
gamble. If we were wrong, we would
have to go back and find another job,
but we were right. And from that little
beginning, we built this amazing com-
pany over 26 years.
The Big Breakthrough
We sold the first business and I left with
a good reputation. You’re just recover-
ing for a couple of months after sell-
ing a business and then you suddenly
realize, “Well, I’ve got to start thinking
about what the next thing is.” And that’s
where fear sets in because you think,
“What if I fail? What will my friends
say? What will my family say?” And
that’s huge.
If you think that the future is in trouble,
just spend a couple of days in my shoes
with the young leaders of tomorrow
and you will change your tune. They
have the most amazing focus. They are
committed, lovely, intelligent, young
people and they’re not just a few of
them. There are hundreds of thousands
of them around the country. And that’s
the audience I decided I wanted to con-
tinue to serve.
But how? I wanted to reinvent the mod-
el that I had previously used in the old
company and I decided I wanted to
make it bigger, shorter, cheaper and
better. I settled on, for lack of a better
description, a large-scale TED confer-
ence for high-achieving young people
that all focuses on one area.
The first area was medicine. When I
had started thinking about that, all I
got was negative feedback. “Oh, no,
Richard, you’ve got this all wrong. Kids
won’t come for just two days. They
won’t bring their parents. The sessions
are too long. The breaks are too long.
The material is too difficult. And you’re
putting 3,000 kids in a room? Nobody’s
going to feel special. This is like a meat
market.”
And I was worried because they could
well have been right. But they were
completely wrong. In the first event,
we had 3,500 high school students and
3,000 of their parents—a stadium-sized
event. Young people often are awkward
because they’re so smart and not under-
stood and appreciated by their teachers
and their counselors, and sometimes by
“You need three
things to make a BEST BOOK
Boost Your Brain by Majid Fotuhi. The author describes the whole
sale. The person process by which you can not only maintain the edge of youth

has got to want mentally but increase it to a level that perhaps you didn’t even
have in your 20s and 30s.

what you’re selling.

Number two, they’ve APP
FAVORITE APP
WorkFlowy.com is absolutely free and is one of those deceptive-
got be able to pay ly simple apps where when you start using it you think, “This is
nothing but a way for me to create lists.” And it is. You create a list
for it. Number and you can indent and indent and add notes to it and so on. But

three, they’ve got
to believe you. In
the 21st century,
number three is
by far the biggest
challenge.”
their peers, and they look around and
they said, “Oh, my God, I found my
tribe. I found my family, I found people
who get me.” And that’s what happened
over those two and a half days. There
was a magical experience that actually
could not have happened if not for the
volume of kids that were there.
The Key Takeaway
I ask entrepreneurs, “Do you ever
wake up at two o’clock in the morn-
ing worried that you cannot provide
excellent service?” Ninety-nine times
out of a hundred that’s not why they’re
when you start using it, you realize “Oh, my, gosh! This is the most
powerful, little, free-form database in the world.”
VIDEO INTERVIEW
Watch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/1
PODCAST
Download the podcast from iTunes.
RESOURCES
National Academy of Future Physicians and Medical Scientists
awake. They have no doubt that when to classes, taking webinars, reading
they have a client they’re going do a books and devoting at least a couple
great job. hours a week to learning how to market
and sell well, then you’re doing yourself
If that’s you, then you should be spend- a huge disservice. Because in one shape
ing most of your time doing marketing or form, that’s why you’re awake at two
and sales and studying the art and sci- o’clock in the morning—either directly
ence of marketing. If you’re not going or indirectly because of lack of cash flow.

11
 JOHN LEE DUMAS
JOHN LEE DUMAS is the founder and
host of EntrepreneurOnFire, a business
podcast that interviews today’s most
inspiring and successful entrepre-
neurs five days a week.
EntrepreneurOnFire is a top-10 busi-
ness podcast generating more than
150,000 unique downloads a month in
more than 140 countries. His lineup in-
cludes Barbara Corcoran, Seth Godin,
Tim Ferriss, Gary Vaynerchuk, Guy Ka-
wasaki and hundreds more.
The Back Story
I knew I had this passion. I knew I had
this enthusiasm to pour into some proj-
ects, some career, some journey, but for
the first 32 years of my life it just eluded
me. I wasn’t able to really put my fin-
ger on what it was. I was an officer in
the U.S. Army for eight years. I went
to law school in corporate finance. I
tried residential and commercial real
estate. That kind of gave me the entre-
preneurial bug. I was always in the car
driving to real estate appointments and
listening to different radio shows and
getting tired of those and then getting
into podcasts. Because they were free.
They were targeted. They were on de-
mand. I fell in love with the podcasting
medium.
And then one day, I said, “Wow! There’s
just this huge void right now.” Because
I’m in the car every five days a week, for
hours and hours and hours. And these
12
great shows are producing one 30-min-
ute to an hour episode a week. Where’s
that seven-day-a-week podcast that’s
interviewing and inspiring and suc-
cessful entrepreneurs?
I had no broadcasting experience what-
soever, but I said “You know what, to
heck with it. I’m going to be that person
that brings a seven-day-a-week busi-
ness podcast to the world.” So a cou-
ple of years ago, EntrepreneurOnFire
launched. And here we are over 600 ep-
isodes later, having been awarded Best
of iTunes 2013, generating six figures
every single month straight from the
podcast. And it has been an amazing
journey.
The Big Breakthrough
I had the idea for the show in June of
2012. I knew that it was going to take
timing and a lot of back-planning so I
hired a mentor, Jaime Tardy, the Even-
tual Millionaire. I immediately joined
a podcast mastermind and for three
months I learned everything there was
to know. I knew nothing about this
side of the world. I had no web site,
no Twitter account, no Facebook fan
page. I needed to build up everything
from scratch. That’s what I did over that
three-month period, just head down—
did all the platform building, locked in
40 guests, interviewed those 40 guests,
got them recorded and then I launched
in September of 2012.
I quickly grew the podcast to where it
was generating over 100,000 unique
downloads per month. And because of
that fast growth, I was asked to speak
at New Media Expo, which is a confer-
ence in Las Vegas every year for the top
bloggers, podcasters and video. That
was really my tipping point: getting to
that conference, stepping up on stage
in front of an audience and sharing the
fact that I was now an authority figure
in podcasting.
And just a couple months later we had
our first month that we actually gener-
ated five figures in income. And so at
that point, I said “Okay, this is a busi-
ness. I’m generating five figures a month
in income.” This podcast business has a
run rate of a six-figure business right
now. This is really exciting. And it took
me about four to six months to get to
that point. It wasn’t that immediate but
I got there. And that’s just when it got
growing exponentially.
“Podcasting may
sound a little bit
FAVORITE APP
daunting tech-wise APP I was struggling with Google Calendar on my phone. It was really

but it’s so simple just not doing what I needed it to do. Sunrise is an app for phones
that syncs flawlessly with any calendar. It’s been a game changer
once you see it for me. I love my phone calendar again, which is huge.

one time with your

eyes. And it’s a VIDEO INTERVIEW
Watch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/20
great platform. The
barrier is just not
that high.” PODCAST
Download the podcast from iTunes.

The Key Takeaway

The number one thing that you need to
do when you think about creating any-
RESOURCES
thing that’s going to be a business that EOFire.com
represents you—whether it’s a podcast PodcastersParadise.com
or video blog series or just a typical Podcast Launch: A Complete Guide to Launching Your Podcast
blog, whatever that might be—is to
define your avatar. Your avatar is that
one perfect listener. It’s not that target
demographic. You can go there after-
wards but you first need to sit down
and just write out who your perfect lis-
tener is. Who is that perfect avatar for
your brand? actly, you’re going to spend so much
time, energy and effort at each of those
When you’re creating your business, forks on the road. But if you have that
you’re going to come to one thousand avatar drilled down, you won’t have to
forks in the road. And if you don’t have spend any excess energy because you’re
your avatar drilled down to one person going to know without a doubt what
that you can picture in your mind ex- your avatar will want.

13

BO EASON is a former NFL standout,
playing with the Houston Oilers and
San Francisco 49ers. He wrote and per-
formed his one-man play, Runt of the
Litter, which opened in New York to rave
reviews in 2001. He toured with the play
in more than 50 cities and it is now be-
ing adapted as a major motion picture.
He has trained with some of the world’s
best performance and movement
coaches and now draws on their wis-
dom and techniques to coach others to
be excellent presenters and storytellers.
The Back Story
I was in the NFL. I was playing football
for the Houston Oilers and it’s a young
man’s game. I had played five years and
had seven knee surgeries up to that
point and then the last one came. This
particular play happened. My knee ex-
ploded—I broke my ankle, my knee,
my leg, all in one play.
I’ll never forget it. It was in Miami,
Florida and I’m being wheeled off the
field. These two medics are taking me
off the field and the first thought I had
was prison. Because I thought, “Man,
what I’m great at, what I’ve trained to
be the best in the world at, is to throw
my body, and this head, into other bod-
ies. If I can’t find another occupation
where that is valued, I’m in big trouble.”
And so I thought I’d go to prison.
And in the very next moment, to keep
myself from going to prison, I said,
14
BO EASON
“You know what I’m going to do? I’ve
got to find a platform, a stage, some
kind of way to get this expression out
of this body like I used to do in football
and get paid for it and be cheered for it.
I’ve got to find another way to express
this thing so that I don’t have to go to
prison. I’m moving to New York City.”
That’s where it all started.
The Big Breakthrough
I found a mentor. I don’t think he want-
ed to be my mentor initially because his
name is Al Pacino.
I asked all the other students in my
acting classes, “Who is the best stage
performer of our time?” And they’d all
say, “Well, that’s Al Pacino.” And I said,
“Cool! Where is he?” And they said,
“We don’t know. He’s Al Pacino—he’s
probably on a movie set somewhere.”
I said, “Okay, I want what he has so I
need to talk to him about taking what
he’s got and teaching me.” They said,
“That’s impossible. You cannot do it. It’s
Al Pacino.”
Well, within three days, I was at Al Pa-
cino’s house. I spent three hours with
him and we played pool. And the whole
time, I grilled him on what it takes to
be the best and to express myself on the
stage. He said, “You know what, Bo, I’m
going to tell you what to do, but you’re
looking at 15 years.” And I said, “Cool!
I work great in those kind of timelines.
I’m going to do it, Al.”
And as I left him, I shook his hand, I
said, “Thank you, Al... so much for
breaking down my next 15 years. I bet
this happens to you every day. I bet
actors come up to you every day who
want to be famous or want to be you.”
He said, “No, actually, you’re the first.
People come to me and they want me
to get them an agent or they want me
to get them a part in the movie. But no
one ever said they wanted to be the best
performer on stage.”
So 15 years passes, and I’m on a Broad-
way stage with a play that I wrote. It’s
opening night and I’m back behind the
curtain and I’m so nervous I’m about
to wet my pants. I began the play and
about ten minutes in, I started to get
my footing and the nervousness start-
ed to dissipate and I made eye contact
with somebody on the fifth row, right
on the aisle. It’s Al Pacino. And I hadn’t
seen him for 15 years but I had done
exactly what he said. We made eye con-
“You’ve spent a
lifetime mastering
BEST BOOK
your life. Wouldn’t The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield. It’s all about resistance to

it be a shame if you your creativity, to whatever you’re building or creating. Our big-
gest nemesis is our own resistance. Not a day goes by that I don’t
didn’t master the just open that book up and read a paragraph or a page.

telling of that life?”

VIDEO INTERVIEW
tact during the play. He just nodded his Watch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/5
head. I never saw him again. That was
the best review I ever had and that was
when I said to myself, “This is who I
am. I’ve got to create my own voice. I’ve
PODCAST
got to create my own story so that I own Download the podcast from iTunes.
the property.”

Just like any entrepreneur, you own

your property. You own it—your face,
your mouth, your brand—it’s you. So
RESOURCES
BoEason.com
the better I am at telling me and sharing
me, the more successful I’ll be. I wrote
that play in 1998 and I have never had
to wait for the phone to ring again be-
cause of one darn story.

The Key Takeaway

Practice and training to be great is ev-
erything. Being great is gravy. You don’t
have to worry about being great. You
have to prepare to be great. You have
to train to be the best. Hard work beats
talent every time. If you’re going to be
the best, you’re looking at 12 or 15 years
and you’re going to work your tail off.

15
 NED HALLOWELL
NED HALLOWELL, M.D. is a child and
adult psychiatrist, a New York Times
bestselling author, world-renowned
speaker and leading authority in the
field of ADHD. He is a graduate of
Harvard College and Tulane Medical
School, and the founder of The Hallow-
ell Centers in Sudbury, Massachusetts
and New York City.
He was a member of the Harvard Med-
ical School faculty from 1983 until he
retired from academics in 2004 to de-
vote his full professional attention to
his clinical practice, lectures and writ-
ing books. He has authored 18 books
on various psychological topics, includ-
ing attention deficit disorder, the power
of the human connection, the childhood
roots of happiness in life, methods of
forgiving others, dealing with worry
and managing excessive busyness.
The Back Story
It was a zigzag, not a straight line. I
came out of medical school thinking I
was going to be an orthopedic surgeon
and then at the last minute changed
my mind and became a psychiatrist
instead. By accident, I became a child
psychiatrist and that’s when I learned
about this thing called Attention Defi-
cit Disorder. I realized I had it myself.
The first part of my career was spent
diagnosed and treating ADD. I wrote a
book about it that became pretty well-
known called Driven to Distraction.
16
As I was working with folks with ADD,
I realized over and over again, that the
adults tended to be entrepreneurial.
Then I met this wonderful man named
Dan Sullivan who ran something called
Strategic Coach, where he brings en-
trepreneurs in through his marvelous,
magical kingdom up in Toronto and
trains them. And I went up and vis-
ited and I realized, “Boy! This is the
best out-patient treatment program for
ADD going!”
The Big Breakthrough
This term, Attention Deficit Disorder, I
never liked it anyway. It’s not a disorder,
it’s a trait. And it’s not a deficit, it’s an
abundance. Why don’t we just call it the
mind of the entrepreneur?”
The model that I use to explain ADD
really fits the entrepreneur. Namely,
you’ve got a Ferrari engine for a brain
with bicycle brakes. Usually the work
that the entrepreneur needs to do to
maximize productivity is strengthen
the brakes to take full advantage of that
Ferrari brain.
So I started off as a specialist in ADD
and then I realized through Dan Sulli-
van, Joe Polish and others that there’s
this great overlap between adult ADD
and the mind of the entrepreneur and
then I said, “Guess what? This is not
a disorder, this is the American edge.
This is our great gift to civilization. We
do this better than anyone else in the
world.”
But if you don’t harness it, that’s the
prison population. That’s what’s so in-
teresting about ADD—it can go one ex-
treme way or the other. Imagine a Fer-
rari with no brakes. It’s going to crash
and burn. That’s what happens in the
prison population. These people can’t
control their passions. They can’t con-
trol their actions. It can ruin your life.
But if you learn how to control it, it can
take you to the absolute top. I can name
you Nobel Prize winners, Academy
Award winners, Pulitzer Prize winners,
self-made millionaires, billionaires—
you name the top of any profession, any
field, and I can name you someone who
has this trait. But I can take you to Rik-
ers Island and show you to a lot of peo-
ple who have it too. So it’s important to
learn how to strengthen your brakes if
you’ve got a Ferrari for a brain.
“Connection is one
of the very few
things in life that’s
really good for you
that’s also fun,
free and infinite in
supply. If you take it
seriously, you’ll be
amazed at not only
how much more
productive you’ll
be but how much
happier you’ll be.”
The Key Takeaway
The number one takeaway is never wor-
ry alone. People get into trouble when
they worry alone because when you
worry alone, you globalize, you “awf-
ulize,” you activate your worst self, you
tend to self-sabotage, you forget your
power, you heighten your vulnerability.
A lot of that’s going on these days—a
lot of people are worrying alone. Get on
the phone. Talk to somebody. You don’t
even have to talk to them about the
problem. You can just say, “What are
you up to?” Get input. Connect. That’s
really my solution to so many things.
APP
FAVORITE APP
I designed an app called Crazy Busy after I wrote my book, Crazy
Busy. It manages the multiple inputs and schedules of modern
life. It includes one feature that I particularly like. By inputting
three variables, you can calculate a “worth it” factor. So if there’s
something you’re contemplating doing, you enter three variables
and it’ll spit out a “worth it” factor. These days, there are so many
things that are worth it you need to grade them, “How worth it is
it?” It’s got a bunch of other features, too.
VIDEO INTERVIEW
Watch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/2
PODCAST
Download the podcast from iTunes.
RESOURCES
Driven to Distraction
Crazy Busy
Second, don’t waste your time trying to spot—the overlap of what you love to
get good at what you’re bad at. Delegate do, what you’re good at doing and what
that. Do what you’re good at. It sounds someone will pay you to do or what
so obvious but I can’t tell you how many advances the machine. Delegate the
entrepreneurs I see that take it upon rest. Hire it out. That’s working smart.
themselves to get good at what they’re There’s a difference between working
bad at. Once you get out of school, smart and working hard, and that’s one
don’t do that anymore. Go with what of the crucial differences.
you’re good at. Work in your sweet
17
 SANDRA JOSEPH
SANDRA JOSEPH is a singer, actress,
author and speaker who holds the
distinction of being the longest-run-
ning leading lady in Broadway’s lon-
gest-running show. For ten years and
more than 1,300 performances, she
starred in one of the best-known roles
in Broadway history: Christine Daae in
The Phantom of the Opera.
Sandra is now a motivational speaker
and co-author of the audio book, Your
Creative Soul: Expressing Your Authen-
tic Voice. She speaks about what it is
like to follow your passions and to find
success through whatever hardships
life has to offer.
The Back Story
I don’t think I ever woke up and said, “I
want to be on Broadway,” but I did have
a moment when I was 8 years old. It was
on a family trip to see the musical An-
nie, and I was about the same age as the
little girl up there playing the role. As
soon as I saw her onstage, it was like be-
ing struck by lightning. I actually wear a
necklace with little lightning bolts to re-
mind me of what that feels like. I’m sure
many of us have experienced something
like that when you just felt something
come alive inside of you.
Without even realizing it, I just felt, “I
want to do that.” Whatever that is—I
didn’t have a name for it—I just fell
in love with that art form. But it was
the last thing in the world I thought I
would ever be able to do, because I was
18
terribly shy, introverted, insecure, hid-
ing behind mom. I was not the kind of
kid who wanted to be in the spotlight at
all, so it was a huge struggle.
The Big Breakthrough
In my first audition for The Phantom,
I was so intimidated and so nervous,
and I wanted it so badly, that I kind
of choked. I got in my own way. I was
frozen. I couldn’t move. I was like a
singing head with no body. I was numb
from the neck down. I did not land the
leading role after that first audition, and
I was crushed. But they saw something
in me that had potential, so they put
me in the chorus on the national tour.
Off I went. I was suddenly a part of the
show, I was a working performer and I
was thrilled.
After a year, the leading lady left to do
another show, so they flew me back
to New York to audition for a second
time. There I am again, on the stage un-
der the chandelier, deciding theirs is no
way I’m going to freeze this time. I’m
going to show them that I can be in my
body and I can move.
I went in there with pre-planned move-
ments and choreography, and dramatic
steps and gestures. But I knew it just
wasn’t working. When I finished, the
assistant director pulled me aside and
said, “What was that?” I really couldn’t
believe I blew it the second time. Once
again, I just wanted it so desperately
that I showed my desperation; I came
across as phony and trying too hard, so
I blew it again.
That was a huge lesson for me. At that
point I really thought, “Well, that’s it.
It’s over. I’m never going to play this
part. I’ve proven to them that I’m not
capable of it, that I’m a failure. I have to
hang it up and go back to the chorus.” I
was really disappointed in myself, beat
myself up, hating myself for screwing
up like that.
I wrote a thank-you letter to that assis-
tant director and I let go of it. I wrote
down everything I had to be thankful
for, and I really felt myself release it.
No sooner did I do that then I got a call
from my agent, saying, “They still have
not found a Christine, and they want to
bring you back one more time and give
you one more chance.”
That third audition, I walked in there
and I really had surrendered my attach-
ment to getting the role. I said, “Okay,
“You fail, you fail,
you fail, and then FAVORITE APP
you find something
APP The Intention Reminder app really helps me to stay grounded and
come back to center. It allows you to choose a beautiful back-
that works, and you ground and to type in whatever little message you think you need
for that day, or if you have something coming up that’s important
build on that.” and you know you need to stay grounded. It’s a way to remind
yourself to be grateful, to be present, to be yourself, to take a risk.
my only goal is to be myself, to be pres-
ent, to be in my heart, and to sing that
song as honestly as I possibly can.” My
VIDEO INTERVIEW
goal was just to be authentic and pres- Watch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/41
ent. And because I didn’t carry all of
that angst in there with me, I was much
more real, and that’s what every client,
audience member, director, customer,
is looking for—they want authenticity. PODCAST
Download the podcast from iTunes.

We’re always looking for the ring of

truth in people that we want to work
with. It’s that know, like and trust fac-
tor. It’s no different on stage than it is RESOURCES
interacting with clients or when you’re SandraJoseph.com
going to hire someone for a job—you
want to work with people that are au-
thentic and real. That was the critical
key to my success and I went on to play
that part on Broadway for ten years.

The Key Takeaway

Take a moment to reflect and think
about how far you’ve come. We all still
have another level that we’re looking to
achieve, or things we want to do with
our lives. It’s such a gift when someone
gives you that perspective on where
you have come from, and how much
there is right here, right now, to be
thankful for.

19

BOB DANZIG spent his childhood shuf-
fling from one foster home to another,
never quite belonging. When he got his
first job as an office boy at the Albany
Times Union, the newspaper became
his family. Encouraged by a caring
boss, he spent three years in the navy,
went to college at night for five years
and was awarded a journalism fellow-
ship to Stanford University. Nineteen
years after walking in the door as an
office boy, he became publisher of the
Times Union.
Seven years later, he was named CEO of
Hearst Newspapers. In the next two de-
cades, he led the 6,000 employee com-
pany to a renaissance of talent, strate-
gic purpose and 100-fold profit growth,
earning him industry-wide respect for
his innovative marketing leadership.
The Back Story
I recall this very vividly and it’s about
being open to the good people who
cross your path. They reach out and of-
fer you a chance to sip at their stream
of life. The first one that I remember
was my social worker who was mov-
ing me to another foster home. She
reached over, took my hand, looked me
in the eyes and said, “Never forget you
are worthwhile.” And that lady, May
Morris, made me feel like a person for
the first time. I never forgot her words.
They were tattooed on my mind. So I
believe that these things start by being
open to the people who cross your path
and offer you that twig of possibility.
20
BOB DANZIG
The second most important one also
came from another woman who was
accidentally on my path. She was the
office manager at the newspaper in
Albany, New York and hired me as the
office boy. I had worked there for about
six months. I did not know that she had
been a foster parent. She later told me
that when she found out I came from
the foster care system, it incented her
to take an interest in me. One Saturday
morning she said she wanted to see me.
I was scared to death; I was afraid that I
was going to get fired.
She sat me down and said, “I’ve been
the office manager for 15 years and I
have been observing you.” Then she
leaned across her desk and said to me,
“I believe you are full of promise.” And
that moment—I was 17 years old—at
that moment, she gave me permission
for ambition. I never forgot her words.
We have those moments in our lives.
Everyone can shut their eyes and see
those moments. I call them angel
threads in the tapestry of our life. She
was an angel thread of my life. I never,
never ever after that felt that I was un-
worthy.
The Big Breakthrough
When I took over the Hearst Newspa-
pers, we had a bunch of broken proper-
ties all over the country, mostly big city
losers, all unionized, afternoon papers.
They’re kind of drifting along, feeding
off the profits of our magazines and
television. So at my first board meet-
ing—Randy Hearst was alive at that
time—he said, “Bob, what’s your first
priority?” I said, “To get off welfare.
We’re on corporate welfare.” That be-
came my theme with our folks: “We’re
going to get off welfare. We’re going to
develop strategies together to confront
this and we’re going to identify the tal-
ent that can get us there.” So we empha-
sized talent. We emphasized strategy.
We emphasized risk taking. And we
celebrated success.
It’s amazing what happened. I went
from being a ward of the state in our
company to being the leading cash cre-
ator by the time I stepped away. That
wasn’t just me. There were all these fac-
tors: You start that with transparency,
candor, and you engage people to join
you in the journey. I never felt I was
equipped to mandate what we should
do. I’m just not that good or smart. But
I was equipped well enough to know
what reasonable strategy was and what
“Management
is about today. BEST BOOK
Leadership is When I was in the navy, they had a book sale and I picked up a
book for 10 cents. The name was Today Is Here by a vagabond
about tomorrow. poet named Don Blanding. That book has been such a source of
inspiration because he writes his homilies, not difficult poetry,
Management is and draws beautiful stuff. I have found that book over all these
years to be such a comfort.
about the process.
Leadership is
VIDEO INTERVIEW
about purpose.” Watch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/11

unreasonable strategy was. And that’s

how we become strategic rather than
operational. Operational is managing a
place. Strategic is leading a place. There’s
PODCAST
Download the podcast from iTunes.
a real difference between the two.

The Key Takeaway

Find where to celebrate the talent of
the organization. The starting point for RESOURCES
Conversations with Bobby by Bob Danzig
an entrepreneur is be aware of what it
The Leader Within You by Bob Danzig
means to celebrate the shared talent BobDanzig.com
who are really helping create that busi-
ness with them. When we do that, the
folks who are engage with us have their
talents flow more robustly. You can’t
manage that. You invite that by effective
leadership and you lead by celebrating
the colleagues. You’ve got to feed the
body. But leadership is about nurturing
the spirit. When you nurture the spirit
of a person, you invite excellence.

21
 DAN KUSCHELL
DAN KUSCHELL is a sales and market-
ing expert who teaches people how to
maximize profits, transforming busi-
ness ideas through successful sales
and profit strategies.
Through his radio show on NBC, on-
going seminars, books and teaching
resources, he empowers people to
achieve the success they desire. His
strategy involves three stages to iden-
tify and overcome obstacles hindering
growth, establish and build a founda-
tion for success, and magnify sales to
create large profits.
The Back Story
There’s the quote from Oliver Wendell
Holmes that goes, “I wouldn’t give a fig
to be on this side of complexity, but I’d
give my life to be on the other side of
simplicity.” And so what I feel I have the
ability to do is take big, complex ideas
and really simplify them down overall.
I’ve been able to do that not only for
my companies over the years—and I
learned a lot of this by making a lot of
mistakes—I’ve run about eight differ-
ent companies and in my early years, I
made a bunch mistakes. At one time, I
had over 5,000 independent sales reps
working for or with me and then I had
a big large series of companies work-
ing together—five different companies
where we had about 200 employees.
And I found myself, maybe like a lot of
entrepreneurs, saying, “Oh, my, gosh!
22
I don’t have time. What am I doing?”
And dealing with overwhelm.
And so I went back and started study-
ing and putting practices in place that
allowed me to simplify the manage-
ment structure, the operations struc-
ture, the finance structure, the market-
ing, the sales. I guess what pops up is
a book from Michael Gerber. I was in-
troduced to it years ago in my 20’s and
I lean back on it. Michael teaches this
idea that systems run your business, so
find good people to run those systems.
The Big Breakthrough
One of the things that transformed my
entire business career years ago is a dif-
ferentiator that worked extremely well
for me and that I see can work for a lot
of people is simply writing a book. It
positions you as a preeminent expert.
To be able to get a book published like
this—a couple of hundred page book—
it’s just a few bucks per book.
And what I did was I actually got the
book published. Then I went on radio
and created a 30-minute value-oriented
event. Then we sent it out to multiple
stations all over the country and drove
the audience to an 800 number. People
were inquiring, they were calling us,
because of the attraction mechanism,
the attraction factor.
And now we had that lead. Now we
put them into a value-added sequence
where we could follow up with them
with education-based marketing. Then
we drove them to an application to see
if they wanted to engage further on a
higher level relationship. And we were
able to enroll people into different types
of coaching, different types of services,
different types of products using that
simple mechanism that started with
something as simple as a couple hun-
dred page book. Then a simple radio
thing that essentially you just write a
check for. Write a check to buy the ra-
dio time in different markets across the
country to generate ultimately what be-
came thousands of leads a week at one
time to then enroll them into a higher
level of programs and services.
The Key Takeaway
For years, I built structures and hierar-
chies and I’ve seen a lot of hierarchies
in companies. Here is a simple struc-
ture to keep in mind in running the
company.
“Maximum
performance = VIDEO INTERVIEW
execution x ideas Watch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/14

x confidence.”

Number one at the top, usually it’s the PODCAST

entrepreneur/owner, which we call Download the podcast from iTunes.
the visionary or the driver of the busi-
ness. And then below or next to that
person—however you want to look at
it—you have someone that is the facili- RESOURCES
tator or executor of the visionary ideas DanKuschell.com
or driving ideas that are being shared. The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber
Then compartmentalize the business
into four main areas: sales, number
one. Marketing, number two. Oper-
ations, number three. And finance,
number four.

Putting someone in charge of those

four areas is where I’ve seen a lot of
companies struggle. I’ve seen a lot of
entrepreneurs’ companies struggle as
they try to be up here as the visionary
and down here driving the sales piece
of it or the marketing piece of it, or the
operations or the finance. The better
strategy is to put someone in charge to
handle that and then you can just have
huddles with these people who ideally
are experts. They are the best at what
they do at that moment in your partic-
ular company.

23
 PETER DIAMANDIS
PETER DIAMANDIS is chairman and CEO
of the X PRIZE Foundation, which leads
the world in designing and operating
large incentive prizes to drive radical
breakthroughs for the benefit of hu-
manity.
He is also an international leader in the
commercial space arena, having found-
ed and run many of the leading entre-
preneurial companies in this sector
including Zero Gravity Corporation, the
Rocket Racing League and Space Ad-
ventures. As co-founder and chairman
of the Singularity University, he coun-
sels the world’s top enterprises on how
to utilize exponential technologies and
incentivized innovation to dramatically
accelerate their business objectives.
Peter is the New York Times bestsell-
ing author of Abundance: The Future Is
Better Than You Think. His next book,
Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and
Impact the World, will be released in
early 2015.
The Back Story
My story is one of a serial entrepreneur.
I grew up passionate about space flight
and the majority of my companies are
in in the space arena. I’ve started two
universities, International Space Uni-
versity, and most recently, Singularity
University.
I started a company called Zero Gravi-
ty that does parabolic flights. We train
NASA’s astronauts. Another company
24
called Space Adventures takes people to
the space station. And those were great.
And because they were driven by my
inner passion, and they were big, bold
concepts, they were things I didn’t let
go of easily. They each took a decade to
get built, but I didn’t give up. I realized
that you can do things at huge scale. It
just takes some time and dedication,
but that time is being reduced because
of the ability of this massively intercon-
nected, hyper-connected world and ex-
ponential technologies. But at the same
time, it does take really finding things
that you’re passionate about to make a
big difference in the world.
The first thing I say to entrepreneurs is
do not do something just for the money.
You really need to be doing something
because in your heart and your soul, it’s
your purpose and mission in life. And
if you don’t know what your purpose
and mission is, go and find it. Because
ultimately, you would give up before
you get to the final point because doing
anything big and bold in the world is
hard. You could be lucky and you could
be using the cutting-edge technology.
The rate at which we’re going from “I’ve
got an idea” to “I run a billion-dollar
company” is faster than ever before,
right? But for the majority of people,
even though the rate is getting faster,
it still takes a good amount of time to
build your business. If you don’t love it,
you’ll give up before you get that criti-
cal break that you need.
The Big Breakthrough
The year was 1994. I had been given a
copy of The Spirit of St. Louis by a good
friend of mine to inspire me to finish
my pilot’s lessons. It’s an amazing book;
it won a Pulitzer Prize in 1954. And
back in 1994, I said, “Okay, I had no
idea Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic in
1927 to win a $25,000 prize. And that
$25,000 prize had inspired nine dif-
ferent teams who spent $400,000. I’m
going to create a prize for private space
flight.” And I believed that $10 million
was enough money to inspire the entre-
preneurs, but not the governments.
And so in 1996, I went on stage under
the arch in St. Louis with the head of
NASA, 20 astronauts, the Lindbergh
family—everybody I could gather. I
had spent two years getting enough
interest in this idea to announce this
prize. I didn’t have $10 million but I
was so certain that it would be easy to
raise $10 million that I took the risk.
And so on May 18, 1996, I announced
 “The best way to
predict the future
FAVORITE APP
is to create it APP I love the TED Talk app because if I have 15 minutes available in

yourself.” a cab or on the runway or whatever, I might listen to a TED Talk.

Constant education is absolutely critical.

this to the worldwide press. I go out to

try and raise the money. First person,
VIDEO INTERVIEW
no. Second person, no. Tenth person,
Watch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/7
no. Thirtieth person, no. A hundred
and fifty people in. I’d gone to every
major philanthropist and people were
just like, “Yeah, private space flight?”
Because for the $10 million, you would PODCAST
have to build a private spaceship with Download the podcast from iTunes.
no government involvement, carry
three people up 10 kilometers, land
safely, and do it again within two weeks.
It was incredibly challenging and peo- RESOURCES
ple said, “Isn’t somebody going to die AbuncanceHub.com
trying?” No one wanted to take the risk. HeroX
I was shocked by how risk-adverse we
had become.

Finally, after the better part of six years,

I found the Ansari family, who put up
the cash. All my friends and family had
been saying, “Give it up. It isn’t going
to happen.” And it was really just re-
fusing to stop that got me to the finish
line. The Ansari X PRIZE and Virgin
Galactic came out of it. We re-wrote
the regulations. We have driven billions
of dollars of investment into this field.
And it really was the beginning of the
private space flight industry.
The Key Takeaway
The majority of entrepreneurs are try-
ing to get 10 percent bigger. That’s a
very linear mindset. If you’re trying to
grow your company in a linear fash-
ion, like 20 percent bigger, you’re in a
smartness competition with everybody
else who’s trying to grow 10 or 20 per-
cent. Instead, look at 10 times bigger,
not 10 percent bigger.
The day before something is truly a
breakthrough, it’s a crazy idea. So even
if you think it’s a crazy idea, set that
stake and go after it. Because most
times, it’s not 100 times harder to go 10
times bigger compared to 10 percent
bigger. And there’s no one there com-
peting with you and you’re have an in-
credible opportunity that inspires peo-
ple. just focusing on your strengths.

25
 SHANNON WALLER
SHANNON WALLER is passionate about
the power of entrepreneurial team-
work, which is clear in all she does. The
creator and lead coach of the Strategic
Coach® Team Programs, Shannon also
designs and coaches customized on-
site workshops, along with webinars,
speeches, and entrepreneurial tools.
She is the author or co-author of sever-
al books on teambuilding, including The
Team Success Handbook: 12 Strategies
for Highly Productive Entrepreneurial
Teams and the soon-to-be published
Multiplication by Subtraction.
The Back Story
My passion for helping teams began
when I was selling Strategic Coach. My
job was to attract people to the pro-
gram and have them sign up and keep
them in the program. And what that
meant at that time because we were re-
ally small, is that I would coach our cli-
ents in between the sessions. A number
of times, they would call me up and say,
“Shannon, can you please explain this
to my team? Because I’m not doing a
very good job.” Or the other phone calls
I got, which were completely fascinat-
ing, was a team member would call me
up and say, “What have you done to my
entrepreneur?” Because all of a sudden,
they were doing things differently and
they had no idea why.
So I realized that there was a really im-
portant connection needed between
26
what entrepreneurs are doing at Strate-
gic Coach and I knew these tools would
be incredibly useful for team members
because they’re good for people. And
my job is to create a bridge between
that. So that’s really been the genesis of
all of the programs and all the intellec-
tual capital we created is really because
entrepreneurs talking to their teams
and vice versa is not something that
happens automatically or even every
day. And then fortunately we don’t yet
have the chip called Entrepreneur 101
that we can install into team members’
heads. So until that time, they have me.?
The Big Breakthrough
My breakthrough moment was realiz-
ing that without communication and
without clarity on the direction that
entrepreneurs are going, the team has
no chance of helping. And that’s the
biggest breakthrough that I endeavor
to create in everyone I coach. Entre-
preneurs really need to appreciate that.
I’ve heard so many times where people
keep it a secret and they’re reluctant to
share their goals or reluctant to share
their vision because they’re afraid that
people may think that they’re too big
for their britches. They may not sup-
port the idea. They might not like it or
something.
First of all, if your team members do
think that, frankly, they may not be the
right team for you. But your best team
members are going to be so excited.
They are salivating. They’re hungry to
know what you’re up to and what’s in
your head—all the good things, that is.
They want to know where you’re going
because that means that’s where they’re
going. So if you’re mysterious to them,
it doesn’t actually give them any con-
fidence. So by sharing your goals and
how great you can be together, that’s in-
credibly inspiring and motivating and
confidence-building for a team.
So one of the breakthroughs that is re-
ally important for people to recognize
is that their goals should not be a secret.
And actually the goals get richer. They
get better. They get more fulfilled when
you embrace other people’s unique
abilities to make them happen.
The Key Takeaway
Know what your unique ability is. Know
what your passion is. Know what you’re
best at. And how you can be a hero at
“You can’t play a
very big game if BEST BOOK
you insist on doing Tribal Leadership by Dave Logan, John King and Halee Fischer-Wright.
For entrepreneurs who are interested in building self-managing
every aspect of it companies, this is a go-to book for looking at how to create the
conversations that create a higher level of teamwork.
yourself.”
doing that to your audiences. And re-
VIDEO INTERVIEW
ally, do only that. For everything else,
Watch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/27
surround yourself with people who are
unique at everything that you’re not.

When we go outside of our area of PODCAST

unique ability, we create messes. We Download the podcast from iTunes.
create stuff. We lose energy. It’s a mess.
So we can stay really tight on our unique
ability with our best audience and sur-
round ourselves with people who are RESOURCES
complementary to that. And make sure Strategic Coach
that they have an entrepreneurial atti- The Team Success Handbook
tude. Make sure they share your values.
Make sure they think a little bit like you
do and then it will be easy.

27
 JEFF WALKER
JEFF WALKER is the creator of the Prod-
uct Launch Formula and author of the
New York Times bestseller Launch: An
Internet Millionaire’s Secret Formula
To Sell Almost Anything Online, Build A
Business You Love, And Live The Life Of
Your Dreams.
Over the last 20 years, he has trans-
formed the way products are sold on-
line. Along the way, he’s become one
of the top entrepreneurial and market-
ing trainers in the world.
The Back Story
I was a corporate failure. I just did
not know how to do the whole corpo-
rate thing. I got out of school, went to
work at Motorola, worked there for a
few years and bounced to a couple of
other corporate jobs. Then my wife be-
came pregnant with our first child and
I could not stand my corporate job so
I quit and became a stay-at-home dad.
And this went on for four or five years.
Then one day, my wife came home in
the middle of the day from her job. I’m
in the living room taking care of our
two kids and my wife walked in the
door in tears. And she’s said “Jeff, I just
need you to try to help support a fam-
ily in some way. I’m getting up in the
dark, I’m coming home in the dark. I
want to be a mom or at least a part-time
mom. Is there some way you can help
support the family?” It was like a knife
in my gut.
28
At that point $10,000 in a year would
make a huge difference for us. We were
just surviving on one salary and it was
not a lot of money to go around. And I
just felt like I was in a complete box. I
don’t have anything on my resume so
my idea was to start publishing a news-
letter. So on August 30, 1996, I pub-
lished the first Walker Market Letter
and sent it out to 19 email addresses.
That list it grew through the mouth.
Eventually, by 2000-2001, that list to
80,000 subscribers.
Intuitively, I knew that’s the one thing
I was getting right. I knew that if I get
this list of subscribers, then I’m going
to have some kind of influence, some
kind of power. It’s worth more than zero
dollars. I had this thought that maybe I
could sell them something. And I had
no sales experience. I had no marketing
experience. But I was desperate.
The Big Breakthrough
I started a process where I just delivered
a lot of value and I kept on giving more
and more and more value. And eventu-
ally it led up to asking for the first order.
I didn’t know it at that time but what
I was creating was really the basics of
the foundation of Product Launch For-
mula, because that’s what my formula
is all about. The product was just an en-
hanced version of my free newsletter. I
just added more stuff to it and made it
come out more often.
I did my first product launch on Jan-
uary 1, 1997. I built up through No-
vember and December to delivering
tremendous value and then I set up a
sales letter sent via email. When I got
my first order, I jumped so high. I could
not believe it that someone would pay
me. And then within a week, I had a
few more orders come in. And then it
ended up being $1,650. That was huge
for me at that point.
The next launch did get better. I did
$1,650 and then I did $8,000. And it
just kept on ramping up. My list grew
and my skills grew. In June 1998, I did
$34,000. That was more than I ever
made in an entire year. In 2000, I did a
launch that did $106,000 in seven days.
And it just kept getting better and bet-
ter and better. And then in 2003, I went
to a seminar, a marketing seminar, and
I’ve realized that what I was doing was
“If you’re just out
there advertising,
no one cares. No
one’s watching. But
if you put together
content and you
do it in a fashion
that leads down the
garden path to your
product, you win.”
unusual. Up till then, I figured every-
one must be doing this stuff, but I start-
ed teaching a few friends that I met at
that seminar. One of them did a launch
that did a $1 million in 24 hours.
The Key Takeaway
There are a lot of great salespeople in
the world and they’re always selling.
That’s working, in my experience, less
and less nowadays than it used to. We
all know that business success is based
on repeat sales and if you’re not a great
closer, often you’re not making that re-
peat sale. So they’re not providing value
upfront.
On the other hand, you see a lot of peo-
ple who just provide value. They’re put-
ting out blog posts and YouTube videos
FAVORITE APP
APP There’s an app called Relax Melodies that is a white noise gen-
erator that lets you layer in all kinds of sounds. When I get in that
creative mode, I’ll close the door and put that on. It will just help
me focus and just completely turn the world off.
VIDEO INTERVIEW
Watch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/8
PODCAST
Download the podcast from iTunes.
RESOURCES
Launch: An Internet Millionaire’s Secret Formula To Sell Almost
Anything Online, Build A Business You Love, And Live The Life Of
Your Dreams
JeffWalker.com
and they are value, value, value, but
they’re not actually closing sales. You
have to provide that value but also have
that grease. Be seen as the authority
and the service provider or the product
provider but also close on the sale. You
need both. You need to provide that
value upfront and you need to have that
lead in to the sale.
29
 JOEL WELDON
For more than 40 years, JOEL WEL-
DON has been one of the most highly
respected and sought-after keynote
speakers and sales trainers in North
America, as well as an idea consultant
and executive speech coach for some
of the world’s leading businesses.
Joel is the only speaker to have earned
all four of the highest honors in the
speaking profession: The Golden Gavel,
the coveted Communication & Leader-
ship Award, induction into the Speaker
Hall of Fame and naming as Legend of
the Speaking Profession.
The Back Story
I’m a professional speaker and for the
last 40 plus years, I’ve been hired by
major corporations in all kinds of in-
dustries to speak to their people, sales
groups and leadership groups for all
employees of a company. And most of
these companies are made up of highly
successful individuals. And our busi-
ness has been word of mouth for 40
years. And if you do a great job, people
will tell somebody else about it. And
that experience has gotten me paid
to speak over 2,950 different times.
Over these 40 years, I’ve watched at
least 10,000 speakers speak at business
meetings. And it became very clear in
the beginning that some people are
amazing at what they do and some peo-
ple could use some help.
One of the things I learned early in my
career as a Toastmaster. I joined the
30
Toastmasters Club to overcome my fear
of speaking. I was a terrible speaker—
didn’t know what to do. But at Toast-
masters, you get feedback. Everybody
critiques you. So I used that every time
I was paid to speak. I would ask my au-
dience what they liked and what they
didn’t like. And all I kept doing for 40
years is keep doing what they like and
stop doing what they didn’t like. You
don’t have to be a genius to figure out
that’s a pretty good way to keep im-
proving.
The Big Breakthrough
The breakthrough was in the very be-
ginning. It occurred to me that the rea-
son most people aren’t that effective is
that they’re not prepared. They don’t
know their audience and they’re fo-
cused on themselves. If I had to sum up
everything I’ve learned in 40 years, in
22 words this is it: Speak to your audi-
ence about what they need in an orga-
nized way that they can follow and get
yourself out of the way.
And that’s it. And once I understood
that years ago, that’s what I practiced
doing. And that’s what I help other
people do. It’s all about your message.
It’s what you’re saying that should be
so important to your listeners that they
hang on every word.
Think of your career as an entrepreneur.
How many meetings have you gone to
where you’re listening to the speaker
and you turn to the person next to you
and say, “Hey, what’s he talking about?”
Or, “Where is this going?” You don’t
have a clue.
So clarity of message is so important,
but the content is the king. It’s not your
delivery. It’s not your style of presenta-
tion or your visuals. It’s your message.
And if you spend time focusing on the
needs of your audience and organize
your ideas in a way that they can fol-
low and make it impossible for them
to misunderstand you, then you’ll be
effective in your presentation.
The Key Takeaway
It’s not about you, it’s about your au-
dience. You can use a personal story
or talk about your experiences in pre-
sentations, but only if it helps them
do what they should be doing. It’s not
bragging if you’ve done it, it’s a fact.
But make sure you tell that story with
the audience in mind, not you. Look
at how many times you say “you” and
how many times you say “I.” If you
record one of your presentations and
“Speak to your
audience about BEST BOOK
what they need in Younger Next Year: How to Live to 80 and Feel Like 50 by Henry
Lodge and Chris Crowley. This was featured as the book of the

an organized way
that they can follow
and get yourself out
APP
of the way.”
hear that all you’re talking about is “I,
me and mine,” it’s pretty obvious you’re
not talking about the audience which
would be “you, your and yours.” And
every time you use those words, it’s like
plugging into your audience. And they
know that you’re talking to them.
month by Fortune magazine some years back. It’s fascinating,
amazing. I recommend it to all my clients.
FAVORITE APP
Google. In the past, when I would have to prepare for a company
meeting, like years ago in the late 70’s, I was doing a bunch of IBM
meetings, I had to go to the library to find out things about IBM. I
had to look up things and try to find copies of their annual reports.
There was no Internet. And there certainly wasn’t Google. Now you
can find out anything. Everything is available.
VIDEO INTERVIEW
Watch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/19

PODCAST
Download the podcast from iTunes.

RESOURCES
Executive Speech Coaching

31
 CATHY DAVIS
CATHY DAVIS is a project manager and
program designer for Strategic Coach®
as well as a coach for The Unique
EDGE®, a Strategic Coach® program for
young adults.
The Back Story
I absolutely did not even know that
project management was a thing that I
could do when I went to school. It wasn’t
something I actually studied. Fast for-
ward a little bit to Strategic Coach,
which I’ve been with for 13 years now.
There’s such a wonderful example of a
unique ability organization. They real-
ly look at their team’s strengths and try
to organize them into those strengths.
When I started at Strategic Coach, I was
actually in an administrative role and I
was successful. I did what I needed to
do but what they noticed—the things I
really excelled at, the things I really did
well—were actually organizing projects
and getting things done and doing new
and different things.
Over the years, I moved into more and
more positions where I was able to do
that on a daily basis. About seven years
ago, I started working specifically with
Dan Sullivan on the creation of the
Strategic Coach program and project
managing all of his projects.
But it really was because they recog-
nized that that was something that I
had, a natural ability in leveraging my
strengths. My Kolbe profile, a profile we
32
use at Strategic Coach, is really geared
around organizing projects. I’m very
responsive and I think that’s something
that’s really important in an organiza-
tion, especially with entrepreneurs.
And with entrepreneurs, there are lots
of ideas, lots of things on the go and
having someone that can jump in and
take action on the things that are most
important is a really important compo-
nent.
The Big Breakthrough
It was in the push back. Early on, I was
working with Dan, owner of the com-
pany, visionary, and really excited to be
in that role. I’m very responsive and I
would just respond to absolutely every-
thing. You can get yourself into trouble
that way because you can’t do every-
thing—you can’t be everywhere all the
time.
I got to the point where projects were
falling through the cracks, things
weren’t happening the way they were
supposed to. I wasn’t happy with the
way they were happening and that is
when Dan said to me, “Okay, if this is
going to work between us, then you
need to tell me when it’s too much, you
need to push back and I need to let you
do that. I need to give you permission.”
I think that’s the big thing for the entre-
preneurs, is you really do need to com-
municate that it’s okay for the team to
push back. That’s not our natural ability
because we want to do great things for
you, we want to show up, we want to
be heroes. So you actually have to be
explicit about the push back that you’re
willing to let your team give you.
The Key Takeaway
Stay on your side of the line. When you
are making things up—when you’re in
that visionary role—stay in that role.
You started your businesses, you can do
everything, you have those capabilities,
but to get to that next level of capability
and growth in your organization, you
need to focus in on the things that are
going to have that big multiplier effect.
And you can’t do that when you’re do-
ing everything.
So figure out what’s most important
and stay on that side. Have your team
members figure out and organize them-
selves. That includes process managers
and project managers, wherever they
fall within those roles, because that’s
where you’re going to have the most
passion. That’s where you’re going to
“You started your
businesses, you BEST BOOK
Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger. Berger talks
can do everything, about the psychology of talk and social transmission—the whole
idea of how ideas catch on. It’s a world of social: social media,
you have those socialness, happening out there right now. Getting clear on this is
just a good thing for anybody.
capabilities, but
to get to that next FAVORITE APP
level of capability APP An app that I use religiously every day is called Trello, which is a
really flexible project management software. I can organize all my
and growth in your projects like a dashboard so I can see things really quickly, I can
move things around, and I can change priorities. It keeps me on
organization, you top of things because I can add things in easily. So if a new idea

need to focus in comes in on the fly, I can shuffle things around. It’s just an easy,
quick, visual way to organize what’s most important.

on the things that

are going to have
VIDEO INTERVIEW
that big multiplier Watch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/13

effect.”
 see the greatest results and that’s were
PODCAST
the best teamwork happens because
Download the podcast from iTunes.
you know who the people are you can
pass things off to. So definitely, stay on
your side of the line.
RESOURCES
Strategic Coach®
The Unique EDGE®
The Multiplier Mindset

33
 JIMMY HARDING
JIMMY HARDING is an author, advisor,
speaker, consultant and entrepreneur.
He is CEO and founder of Jimmy Hard-
ing Consulting and the creator of Game
Changer Talks, a podcast dedicated to
bringing you high-level strategies to
take your business to the next level.
In 2013, Jimmy’s proprietary marketing
programs helped his clients increase
their profits by $20 million. He is an ex-
pert in creating marketing strategies and
systems that combine traditional adver-
tising with direct response marketing
and the most up-to-date and effective
digital media and social technologies.
The Back Story
I’m a lifelong entrepreneur, so I’ve al-
ways been in business for myself. I’m
the type of guy who go get a job for
two weeks to figure out a business so I
could start my own every time I needed
to learn a new skill.
I had a really successful construction
business where we built both residen-
tial and high-end custom homes for
over 20 years and we literally got wiped
out in Hurricane Katrina in New Or-
leans. But we were really blessed and
fortunate to be able to help so many
people recover in the initial rebuilding
phase which lasted about 18 months.
We helped so many people and did
more business than we ever imagined
that we could do in that short time.
And then the business all dried up and
the only things that were available were
34
big, multimillion dollar, hundreds of
millions and billion dollar, government
programs that were going on.
But I had noticed something about six
months earlier when lots of compa-
nies were coming in from out of town
and spending all of this money doing
this marketing. I had always kind of
laughed at marketing. I’m like, “Why
do that? I mean, I do such a great job
for everyone, everyone always comes
to me. I’m positioned perfectly in this
market. I’m not going to spend all that
money in marketing.”
And what happened to me is after that
18-month initial phase, the other com-
panies were getting all the business and
I had no business because I was doing
no marketing and I didn’t know how to
market. So as things were going down
for me, I tapped this last slush fund of
money to make it happen. I went out
and spent money on a bunch of mar-
keting that didn’t work. I ended up
buying time on the billboard at the Su-
perdome during the Saints games and
all of this fancy stuff that was beautiful,
but nothing that ever worked. The only
responses I got were from other adver-
tisers trying to sell me more advertis-
ing. So out of necessity I started to learn
digital marketing because I needed to
market for my business.
The Big Breakthrough
A light bulb went off. Going through
all of those struggles after having been
a success, I kept thinking, “Oh, no, not
again.” One time, instead of saying “Not
again,” I said, “How can I use this expe-
rience as a situation that I could turn
into massive value not only for myself
but for others?” And I thought, “Here
I am, a guy who’s been a contractor for
over 20 years, had these businesses,
have gone through struggles, just like
every other entrepreneur and business
owner does.”
And all of a sudden I find myself in a
boardroom to sign a million dollar
contract with some executives. How
did I get in front of them? By using
some direct response digital marketing
techniques. And I said, “This is a valu-
able skill and craft that I’ve learned, so
maybe instead of doing this for myself,
I can start doing this for others.” And
that was the breakthrough.
The Key Takeaway
This sounds so simple but it’s true:
Don’t major in minor details. When
“This is a valuable
skill and craft BEST BOOK
that I’ve learned, Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got: 21 Ways You
Can Out-Think, Out-Perform and Out-Earn the Competition by
so maybe instead Jay Abraham.

of doing this for

FAVORITE APP
myself, I can start APP One of the apps that I use the most is Dropbox. So everyone has

doing this for heard of Dropbox but not everyone has it on their phone. It gives
me access to all of my stuff that I need on my phone so I can

others.” literally manage a project on the road. If I’m creating something

with my team, I can see what’s going on and do what I need to
keep it moving.
I first started this digital business and
went on this learning curve, I was
spending my time on things I shouldn’t VIDEO INTERVIEW
have. I heard a guy at a mastermind Watch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/18
group say, “Take an inventory of your
day and see what you’re spending time
on that someone else could be doing.”
And that’s what I did. I realized that 50 PODCAST
percent of my day was spent on mun- Download the podcast from iTunes.
dane tasks that someone else could be
doing. And I corrected that problem
and put my team on it and things really
RESOURCES
just transformed for me. JimmyHarding.com
GameChanger Talks™

35

In 2006, ARI MEISEL was diagnosed
with Crohn’s disease, an incurable
disease of the digestive tract. His case
was severe, requiring more than a doz-
en daily medications and several hos-
pital visits. After reaching a personal
low point in the hospital, Ari decided
he would do everything in his power to
strengthen his by-then weak body.
Through a combination of yoga, nutri-
tion, natural supplements and rigorous
exercise, he was able to fight back the
symptoms of Crohn’s until he was fi-
nally able to suspend his medication.
Eventually he was declared free of all
traces of the ‘incurable’ disease, and
competed in Ironman France in 2011.
Ari has since spoken at seminars and at
a regional TED Talk about his struggle
against a seemingly insurmountable
opponent. Through the process of data
collection, self-tracking and analysis,
Ari helped develop Less Doing.
The Back Story
Through the process of overcoming
Crohn’s disease I realized that the fit-
ness and supplements and nutritional
aspects were actually the easy part in
a lot of ways. The hard part was over-
coming the stress. My response to the
stress aspect was to create this system
of productivity which I would end up
calling “Less Doing,” as in “Less Doing,
More Living.” All I cared about in the
beginning was helping people free up
36
ARI MEISEL
as much time as possible with the goal
of helping them to reclaim their minds
and do the things they want to do. So
I set out this framework to optimize,
automate and outsource everything in
life, including your health, in order to
be more effective. But really, I’m just
trying to mitigate people’s stress.
I have a geeky obsession with having
things more efficient. The fortunate
thing is I would never recommend
anybody else do it the way that I do it
because a lot of times I go through a
lot of painstaking inefficiencies to find
and create those processes so that other
people don’t have to. So my passion is
about helping people save time. That’s
really what I want to do: I want to make
people save time so they can do better
things. I have this very idealistic belief
that everybody has this awesomeness
in them that is usually being obscured
by something stupid like having to run
errands or scheduling meetings.
The Big Breakthrough
You really have to start with optimiz-
ing. Optimizing is where you’re actu-
ally identifying the process that you’re
going through that is inefficient, that
you can try to make inherently more
efficient before you do anything else.
The second step is automation. This
honestly is where I live; it’s where I
really love to dig in and just come up
with new stuff because there are so
many things now that you can do. It’s
settling it and forgetting it—that’s what
automation is. And automation could
use people sometimes, but more often
it’s systems or processes or web apps or
other services that will just run for you
and that you don’t have to think about.
Then if there’s anything left over—and
a lot of times there isn’t, but if there
is anything left over—that’s when you
look at outsourcing to a specialist or a
generalist.
These three steps can be applied to any-
thing in your life from paying bills to
hiring people to how you make dinner
for your family.
The Key Takeaway
My personal definition of success is
that if I’m better today, in any way that I
was yesterday, then I’m successful. And
I really do believe that. It could be as a
better father, as a better entrepreneur,
as a better writer, better at speaking
a foreign language, better at keeping
“You don’t need
technology to be FAVORITE APP
more efficient. You APP The number one place that I like people to start is with their email.
It’s amazing to me how you find really high-performing individuals
need to get more with 4,000 emails in their inbox. I understand that but it’s almost
a travesty to me because email is the single greatest productivity
efficient before tool that you can find on the planet, if you use it right. There is no
other system that can carry on 14 conversations with different
you start adding on people, in different languages, in different countries, in different
time zones all at the same time and keep track of it. It can help
more technology or you remember every conversation you’ve had for years and make
sure that things are followed up on, deal with corrections and
it will only add to documents and collaborate on work.

the problems you Email is amazing. And if we use it properly, you can be so much

already have.” more productive, get so much more done and be much more suc-
cessful. I know that might sound silly because I’m talking about
email but that is the truth. Email is so, so powerful if you just own it.
my cool in situations that make me
stressed, and trying to always strive to
be better in some way and always op-
VIDEO INTERVIEW
timizing myself in one way or another. Watch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/10
And I think that’s a journey that every
one of us can be on.

PODCAST
Download the podcast from iTunes.

RESOURCES
Less Doing, More Living: Make Everything in Life Easier
LessDoing.com

37
 JOEY COLEMAN
JOEY COLEMAN is the Chief Experience
Composer at Design Symphony, a cus-
tomer experience branding firm that
specializes in creating unique, atten-
tion-grabbing customer experiences.
His clients include individual entre-
preneurs, start-ups, small businesses,
nonprofits, government entities and
Fortune 500 companies.
He is a recognized expert in customer
experience design, an award-winning
speaker at national and international
conferences, and has taught business
and creativity courses at both the col-
lege and graduate school level.
The Back Story
I have an extremely eclectic background
and it’s been a wonderful career. I was
educated as a criminal defense attorney
who also had an expertise in national
security law. I’ve done stints with the
Secret Service, the CIA and the White
House. I was a criminal defense lawyer.
I then taught at the executive education
collegiate level. And I eventually end-
ed up running a marketing and design
firm and I’ve done that for over a de-
cade now.
People ask, “What does a criminal de-
fense lawyer know about making logos
or about creating customer experienc-
es?” The fact of the matter is, we all
want to buy products that fill a need or
a want. At the end of the day, it’s got to
deliver a certain result or a certain ex-
pectation that we have. And when I was
38
criminal defense lawyer, my job was to
stand up to a group of people, a jury,
and convince them to take a course of
action that weren’t otherwise predis-
posed to take. In other words, find my
client innocent.
Now my job is to help companies stand
up in front of their customers, their
audience, and convince them to take
a course of action that they’re not oth-
erwise predisposed to take, which is
spend their hard-earned money on my
product.
The Big Breakthrough
I thought I was in the marketing and
design business—designing logos, ad
campaigns, helping people to experi-
ence brands visually. And what I real-
ized is I was actually in the experience
business. Because the experience you
create for your customers is the last
great differentiator. Thanks to total
quality management in the 80’s, the
quality of your product has to be fantas-
tic. It has to have zero defects. It has to
be beautiful. Thanks to the commoditi-
zation and the Wal-Martification of the
world, your price has to be super low.
So the last way that we are really able to
differentiate in any meaningful way that
it isn’t a race to the bottom—and really
the death knell for your business—is to
create fantastic customer experiences
that keep your customers in the door
and keep them coming back for more.
In the typical business across all indus-
tries across the globe, 20 to 60 percent
of your customers are leaving within
the first 100 days. These are people that
you’ve gotten in the door, have given
you money, have raised their hand and
said, “I’m all in.” After they’ve entered
the fold and become a customer, they
bolt and they go somewhere else in the
first 100 days. The main reason for that
is because we spent so much time and
effort prospecting and acquiring and
sales pitching and driving people to our
door. But we spend little to no time ac-
tually keeping them in the door.
The Key Takeaway
The most dramatic thing you can do to
improve the bottom line of your busi-
ness is to focus on keeping the people
you’ve already brought in the door. Fo-
cus on those first 100 days. There are
a lot of ways to do it. Take advantage
of great technology like video. What
about sending someone a video thank-
ing them for purchasing your product?
“If you can get
customers to stay BEST BOOK
The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman. It talks about how all
to Day 101, the human beings are divided into five languages that they speak flu-
ently. They feel and react best depending on what language you
typical customer speak. You take a test and it lets you know which language you’re
best at speaking and which language you’re best at hearing. You
will stay for five can run your clients through this. It’s absolutely revolutionary and
it will make your relationships exponentially better. I guarantee it.
years. If you can
just focus for three FAVORITE APP
months, you’ve APP I use Nozbe every day and I absolutely love it. It’s a task manage-
ment system for creating enhanced to-do lists that you can share
got five years of with other people. It allows you to check things off as you go so
you know you’ve got them. I can share it with my team and assign
revenue. It’s a tasks and know when they’re doing them. Fantastic interface. It’s
available on both iOS and Android platforms as well as a web app.
no-brainer.”
Shoot a quick handheld video. Send
VIDEO INTERVIEW
Watch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/37
it to them. Let them know. These are
things that are not happening right
now. There are great ways to set your-
self apart.
PODCAST
Download the podcast from iTunes.
I would just encourage people to fo-
cus on having multiple interactions in
those first 100 days that aren’t about
upsells. Stop making it about how you RESOURCES
can get them into their next purchase JoeyColeman.com
mode. Instead, make it about how you
can deliver value. How you can serve
them. How you can make sure that
the results they sought when they pur-
chased your product or my service have
been achieved. And if they haven’t been
achieved, pile on more to make sure
that they are.

39
 JOHN RUHLIN
JOHN RUHLIN is ranked #1 in sales in
the 65-year history of Cutco, the largest
cutlery manufacturer in North America
and one of the largest direct sales com-
panies in the world. His records still
stand among the more than one million
Cutco distributors.
He is regularly sought out to teach to
executives and sales leaders in the pro
sports, business and nonprofit world
the strategies and impact intention-
al appreciation can have on sales and
culture. In addition to his speaking and
teaching, John is the founder of The
Ruhlin Group, a company that special-
izes in helping companies develop and
execute year-round strategic gifting
and appreciation programs for pros-
pects, employees, clients, investors and
other key stakeholders.
The Back Story
Any entrepreneur who’s been doing
things for a while has multiple scars.
My first was when I started a business
so I could go afford med school. Un-
fortunately, it was a blue-collar type
position making $40 an hour, climbing
poles and ladders and I fell off the lad-
der two times. I got lucky that I didn’t
kill myself both times. I was scrambling
to just make ends meet in college. I was
at a low point because I was like, “I’m
not going to be able to afford school.
I have to drop out.” I grew up a poor
farmer’s kid, got straight A’s but I had
to pay for school on my own. But for-
40
tunately I ended up interning with a
company called Cutco.
That tenacity to find a way led me to go
sell knives door to door for this direct
sales company and led me to the idea of
inventing a corporate gifting program
for them. I sought advice from my girl-
friend’s dad at that time who was an
attorney and I was able to build a rela-
tionship with him. Even though he was
an attorney, he made all of his money
off of non-attorney related things be-
cause he was always giving away and
everybody always took his phone call
because Paul was such a giver. And so
a lot of what I teach was modeled 14
years ago for me, this poor farmer’s
kid in college just trying to make ends
meet.
The Big Breakthrough
One of the things I’ve realized in work-
ing with all these different industries
is just how little strategy is being put
into appreciation. A lot of times people
want to check a box once a year and
send a Harry and David’s box or some
wine of the month or something.
And I’ve realized that we kind of fell
into the trap of just helping people with
whatever they were willing to spend on
gifting and not really redirecting their
travel, entertainment and marketing
budgets and getting them to think ho-
listically 365 about a real plan. And so
we’re getting our clients to think more
year round about appreciation.
I always encourage people to think
about the current value of a relation-
ship and what it could be in a perfect
world. And I think a lot of times we’ve
been successful in spite of ourselves and
we may have gotten 10 or 20 percent of
the value of the relationship because we
didn’t pour more back into it. I view it
as that 10X principle of what you reap,
you sow.
If you’re profiting $100,000 on a client,
why would you reinvest 2 to 5 percent
back into that relationship? One, just
to solidify that your current business
with them but also to inspire them to
do more business with you and to refer
you. What would that do to your busi-
ness? We’re not trying to get people just
to spend money just to be cool. It really
is an investment in that relationship.
The Key Takeaway
A common thread that goes through
all of our strategies is to do the exact
“At the very end
of the day, gifts BEST BOOK
without strategies One of my favorite books is called Give and Take by Adam Grant.
Adam essentially has broken people down into givers, takers or
don’t really make a matchers. He talks about givers either at the top of their class or
the bottom. And a few minor details of how you interact with the
huge impact.” world determine whether you’re a winner as a giver or whether
you’re a loser as a giver. And it gives multiple case studies. It was
one of those books you can’t put down.
opposite of whatever everybody else is
doing. It’s such a simple thing, but most
of the time when we work with a cli-
ent, they’re not spending more money, VIDEO INTERVIEW
they’re actually spending less. It’s easy. Watch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/21
Nobody gets fired for hiring IBM and
nobody gets fired for spending a mil-
lion dollars on a trade show, but imag-
PODCAST
ine if you’re able to redirect that million
Download the podcast from iTunes.
dollars to your most important rela-
tionships. What would that look like?
And how would that change your busi-
ness? Or even half of it.
RESOURCES
RuhlinGroup.com
A lot of times we say, “Cut whatever
JohnRuhlin.com
your budget is in half and let’s redirect
the portion towards the people you
want to have key relationships with.”
And it’s amazing what takes place when
you do the opposite or whatever in
your industry is doing.

41
 MEL ABRAHAM
MEL ABRAHAM is the founder of Busi-
ness Breakthrough Academy and
Thoughtpreneur Academy where he
helps entrepreneurs bring their busi-
nesses to the world and build the
lifestyle that they want. He is a highly
sought-after entrepreneurial mentor
and strategic thinkers.
He has built, bought and sold numerous
multimillion-dollar businesses for him-
self as well as his clients. As the au-
thor of The Entrepreneur’s Solution: The
Modern Millionaire’s Path to More Prof-
it, Fans & Freedom Entrepreneur, his
strategies have helped build thousands
of businesses and have generated hun-
dreds of millions of dollars for his cli-
ents, ranging from large corporations
to startups and small family-owned
businesses.
The Back Story
I ended up as CPA primarily because I
didn’t know what else I was going to do
in college. And someone told me it was
a great profession to go into—if I could
only remember who told me that, I’d
strangle him. But it gave me the inroads
to understanding business.
I went to one of the large local firms
and I was on a fast track to partner-
ship. A number of years into it, I was
working late one night, which I did a
lot, and I looked into the partner’s of-
fice and there I saw my future of being
overweight, having high blood pressure
and diabetes, being stressed out and
42
wondering whether I’m going to make
it to 46.
So literally that night, I walked in and
quit. And then I took off and left and
went to Japan for a number of months,
which is a whole another story. But I
came back knowing that I wanted to do
something more—that I didn’t want to
just be a little cog in the wheel. I wanted
to build something. I wanted to have a
greater impact. I wanted to know that
I could make a difference in people’s
businesses and lives and that’s how this
journey started.
The Big Breakthrough
The biggest knock down that I got was
shortly after that, as I was building, I
was getting momentum and growing.
My son came home from school one
day and looked at me and says, “Hey,
Daddy, I drew a picture of you at school
today.” And I bent down, looked at this
picture and there I was, a felt-tip pen
drawing of me standing in front of two
computer screens, a phone in one ear, a
phone in the other ear and another one
ringing. It was a shot to the heart to sit
back and say, “Wow, this is how he sees
me. It isn’t about us playing ball. It isn’t
about us in Disneyland.” He saw me in
an office doing work and that’s the de-
scription he had of his dad. Kids are just
brutally truthful but very insightful.
That’s when I started to think about
how we shift. How can I create my busi-
ness and have other people create their
businesses without separating things?
Can our dreams and our life co-exist
at the same time? As entrepreneurs, we
see it. We have what I call the “hum-
mingbird syndrome.” We see these op-
portunities and we start chasing them
and we go full force into it. And then
all of a sudden, we look back and say,
“Alright, I got this ball, call this oppor-
tunity and then I’m going to stuff my
life in the cracks.” And that’s a mistake.
And I learned that from a six year old.
The Key Takeaway
A lot of times when I first get involved
with businesses, they want to talk about
the mechanics of business. How do I
make money? What systems do I have
to have in place? What products? But I
think one of the things to do first is to
get real clear on who you want to be.
How are you going to show up individ-
ually and as a business? Because until
we understand those concepts of busi-
ness identity—what our values are in
“Wealth doesn’t
necessarily equate BEST BOOK
to peace of mind. One of the books that I love right now is Simon Sinek’s book
Leaders Eat Last. It’s a great book about leadership from a differ-
You think it does, ent perspective and understanding the why and resonating with
your team. And the author does it in such a way that he brings
but peace of mind in a little bit of the science but also the psychology behind it and
the performance behind it. It’s a wonderfully put together book
depends on how on the topic.

you’re chasing
wealth and how VIDEO INTERVIEW
Watch the full video interview. www.aesnation.com/39
you’re building your
success.”
our business, what our vision is of what
PODCAST
Download the podcast from iTunes.
we’re going to stand for—we can’t make
the proper decisions on the mechanics
of business.

The one thing that has shifted every- RESOURCES

MelAbraham.com
thing about the way I do business and
Mel Abraham TV
many of the folks that I am mentor-
ing do business is to realize that there
is such a thing as a business decision.
Every decision we make is a life de-
cision. The context may be business,
but we need to realize that the choices
we make affect lives—whether it’s our
lives, our teams, our significant others,
our children—we need to make those
decisions in the context of a life deci-
sion. And when we do, we give it the
proper weight. We give it the proper
attention. We give it the proper focus.
And we typically make the better deci-
sion for the grand scheme of life versus
just a profit motive.

43
 A Second Opinion on Your Finances
A Complimentary Service from Financial Advisor Select for the Members of AES Nation

Dear Fellow Entrepreneur,

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44
 45
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