Part 7: Bob Regnerus of Feedstories Interview – Brian’s Closing Thoughts

Part 7, Brian gives us his closing thoughts on his interview with Bob Regnerus of Feedstories.

Transcription

Bob Regnerus of Feedstories, part seven, the commentary.

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

I want to take some time after if you haven’t if you didn’t get to see the interview I did with Bob Regnerus, go back and watch it. It’s great stuff, you can see the whole thing over at BJPchats.com.

And it was really a lot of fun because this was one of the first major interviews that we’re putting here out on this platform on Brian J. Pombo Live. So I have two other podcasts in which I have interviews, and I’m now starting to implement having some interviews of different caliber or different people on Brian J. Pombo Live.

So that’s a lot of fun, just unto itself.

But let me point out a couple things that Bob brought up. Great stuff. One of those you’ll want to go back to over and over again, because he has so much experience and brought in so many great points, principles and strategies that you can use.

One of the first things that I heard him say that I think really stood out is talking about exercising your, “what if” muscles, okay?

In a sense of not just looking at, well, what if this wonderful thing happens, which is, as entrepreneurs, we tend to be very positive to begin with, we tend to focus on the positive.

And we don’t spend enough time being skeptical and looking at, okay, what if the worst case scenario happened?

Or what if, you know, just a slightly more negative version came out?

What would we do about it, then how would we handle that?

And if you don’t take those steps ahead of time, you’re going to be in for a world of hurt.

If you do take those steps ahead of time, chances are a lot of those horrible things will never happen for some reason or another. If you prepare some, oftentimes you prepare for the worst and the worst never happens. But at least you’re prepared even when things start looking a little bit negative.

So that’s one thing I think is so important, you can write an entire book on that.

And Bob’s got some great experiences as far as that goes.

The other thing he said is, I don’t want to get involved in the day to day with my business.

So when I asked him the area that he loved most about what he does on a day to day basis, he basically said that he’s designed his life so that he’s only working on the stuff that he loves, and that everything else is being outsourced.

It’s being run by a system, it’s being run by people, it’s being run by automations, which is really a fabulous thing.

It’s the one thing I encourage all my clients to start heading towards, no matter where you are at in your business, whether you’re just starting, or whether you’re partway along, or whether you’re on the tail end of what you think is the lifespan of your business, you need to start pulling out of the things that you don’t need to be involved in.

And only focusing on those things you knew do need to be involved in and only spending the amount of time necessary to get those things done.

Having other pieces of focus, that was the thing that he put a whole lot of focus on.

You definitely want to go back and listen to that is having those alternative pieces in your life so that those pieces of your brain don’t atrophy. I love that analogy that was really good.

And the final thing, him talking about the power of books, both in the beginning of the interview from the author’s perspective, and then at the tail end of the interview from a reader perspective.

About starting with books that experts are writing first before you delve any deeper before you get into courses, high end courses, or before you even get into hiring somebody as as an advisor.

Make sure you take a look at their books and books around that subject matter so that you get a very well rounded idea of what they’re all about.

That’s fabulous advice.

It’s really is important.

All in all, great interview, can’t wait to talk to him again sometime in the future because there’s so many different directions you could take that conversation because he’s such a wealth of information.

Regarding books, I’ve got my own, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business.

You can get a free copy of that at AmazonProofBook.com.

And if you’d like to be on the show as an interviewee, if you’d like to have me on your show, or if you’d like to hire me as a speaker, go to BrianJPombo.com.

That’s all I got for today. You have a great one. Get out there and let the magic happen.

Business Coaching: Positioning To Win (Bob Regnerus: Feedstories)

Bob from Feedstories talks about the importance of the role of the coach in sports and in your business.

Transcription

Brian: Coaching the sport versus coaching a business person with their marketing and so forth. What are the similarities, and what are the differences?

What do you like most about that aspect of it?

Bob: Coaching is the same, no matter what sports or business coach is not there to play the game coaches on the sidelines, the coach is preparing the players, the coach is coming up with plays and going over strategy, and putting the pieces in place to make a team more successful.

Same thing in business, right?

I’m not running your business, I’m not there, doing everything for you.

Like, if I’m there doing something for you, then I should be like an equity partner or a state, you know what I mean?

Like, I should be paid differently.

I come in as a coach, and it’s like, no, we’re going to talk about strategy. We’re going to talk about how you win. We’re going to talk about positioning people in the right place, we’re going to talk about things that have some lasting value.

But in the end, it’s really up to you to be successful, okay.

Now, a coach shares in the success probably shares in the blame more than the success. If a team loses, I try to absorb as much of that as possible, like I didn’t prepare you enough, or I didn’t put people in the right place.

But you know, there’s a shared sense of responsibility, but ultimately, the person playing the game, the person on the court, the person in that business is ultimately responsible.

And I think it’s a really good relationship for people.

I don’t want business owners advocating their responsibility to a consultant or something like that. It doesn’t make sense to me, because then ultimately, do you really own that business if you give up the responsibility for its success or failure?

A good relationship for me is going to be one that I may be doing some services for you but ultimately, we’re in a relationship where I’m giving you the skills and helping you win when it comes to business or a high school basketball game.

Brian: That’s great. It’s a great way of looking at it.

Outro: For full conversations, go to BJP chats.com.

Part 5: Bob Regnerus of Feedstories & The Ultimate Guide To Facebook Advertising

Part 5, of our seven-part interview with Bob Regnerus of Feedstories.

Topics covered in this episode

  • Business Fundamentals that have Lasting Value
  • Role of a Coach in Business & Sports
  • Facebook Ads: Books, Education & Seeking Knowledge

Transcription

Intro Brian: Bob Regnerus of Feedstories, part 5.

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

Today’s a little different than other days, we actually have part five of a conversation with Bob Regnerus.

And so this has been a lot of fun, if you haven’t caught the rest of them, go back and watch them.

But if you would like to be on the podcast or if you’d like to have me on your podcast or speak at your event, go check out BrianJPombo.com.

And now here is Bob Regnerus.

Brian: If you can change one thing about either the industry that you work in, or your business itself, if you could change one thing what would it be?

Bob: I think one of the things that bothers me about the marketing industry in general is there’s a lot of disingenuis people who really aren’t there to serve people, they’re there to kind of make money.

And you know, these people tend to get called out after time, they kind of get it…it’s really hard to hide that stuff these days. You know, I mean, like, people talk and things like that.

I really don’t like people that take advantage of others.

Also I’m not real keen on hacks versus fundamentals, in addition to running companies, I’m a high school basketball coach. And for us to be successful as a team year in year out, is we have to focus on fundamentals.

I’m not big on this is like a fluke play or a tactic or a hack that probably has a shelf life of a couple months. I hate people getting…it’s the bright shiny object syndrome. I hate when those things get weighed in front of people and they waste money on it and they spent a bunch of time.

Yeah, maybe it works for a while and then it like fizzles overnight.

I don’t want people to be in that cycle.

So I try to do things that are based on fundamentals that have lasting value. And yeah, I think that’s what I would change, is that’s probably the thing that bothers me the most.

Brian: You mentioned coaching, coaching the sport versus coaching a business person with their marketing and so forth.

What are the similarities and where are the differences?

What do you like most about that aspect of it?

Bob: It’s great question.

So coaching is the same. No matter what sports or business coach is not there to play the game coaches on the sidelines. The coaches preparing the players, the coaches is coming up with plays and going over strategy, and putting the pieces in place to make a team more successful.

Same thing in business.

I’m not running your business, I’m not there doing everything for you. Like, if I’m there doing something for you, then I should be like an equity partner or you know what I mean, like, I should be paid differently.

I come in as a coach, and it’s like, no, we’re going to talk about strategy, we’re going to talk about how you win, we’re going to talk about positioning people in the right place, we’re going to talk about things that have some lasting value.

But in the end, it’s really up to you to be successful.

Now, a coach shares in the success, probably shares in the blame mare than the success. If a team loses, I try to absorb as much of that as possible, like I didn’t prepare you enough, or I didn’t put people in the right place.

But you know, there’s a shared sense of responsibility. But ultimately, the person playing the game, the person on the court, the person in that business is ultimately responsible.

And I think it’s a really good relationship for people. I don’t want business owners abdicating their responsibility to a consultant or something like that. It doesn’t make sense to me.

Because then ultimately, do you really own that business, if you give up the responsibility for its success or failure?

A good relationship for me is going to be one that I may be doing some services for you. But ultimately, we’re in a relationship where I’m giving you the skills and helping you win when it comes to to business or a high school basketball game.

Brian: That’s great. It’s a great way of looking at it.

It’s a funny thing about when a person is searching out a coach, or a person that has all these great services like you provide.

If someone were looking to find out more about say, Facebook advertising, what is the first step they should take?

Let’s say this is the first time they’ve ran into you. They’ve said…well, they probably been thinking up till now about Facebook advertising. But what should I do first?

Bob: I’ll answer it maybe a little bit different.

If I’m going to seek out knowledge on something, I’m going to go to a book first.

I’ll say this, I have a high end Facebook course, alright. It’s a couple $1,000 dollars. And it’s hours of me like showing everybody what to do inside an account.

But the book itself that I wrote, contains everything you kind of need to know. All right, now you pay for the course if you want to expediate things or you want that hands on, you know, learning for me.

But you go into a book and you start to work, you start to apply some things.

I love the whole idea of demonstrating something and then doing so kind of way I do coaching and practice is we’ll demonstrate a skill first, and then we’ll work on the skill.

So I like people that have a little initiative that like, okay, Hey, I got your book, or I did this in your book, and I’ve got these types of questions, or I’ve gotten this far. Now I really need to, like accelerate my learning.

You know, that’s really what kind of a course or coaching is for is, I want to take it to the next level.

But you should prepare yourself with a baseline of knowledge.

You know, I wrote the book, so that like a beginner can pick it up and do some things and intermediate because certainly like advance and get to be an expert real quickly.

An expert reads a book and this is interesting, I’ll have people that have been doing Facebook as long as me or at least, you know, manage maybe more bigger accounts than me, who will get into the book and say, hey, you gave me that idea on page 270.

Or they look for one or two nuggets out of the book and it’s worth it to them.

You kind of have to kind of figure out where you’re at. So yeah, I call myself a Facebook expert. But I still, I drop in and I follow people that are on top of things in Facebook, because I’m not going to be able to be on top of everything.

I’m not like going to Jon Loomer, let’s say and stealing, like, oh, he came up with this idea. I’m gonna steal that and no…what I’m trying to do is I’m trying to expand my knowledge and keep up to date with those things.

I’ll go in and I pay for Jon Loomer training because what he does for me is he kind of keeps track of what Facebook does every week. I don’t do that, okay. That’s not what I offer.

I’m more about creative and account structures and things like that, it’s more of a strategic thing.

So if Jon comes out with something, I’ll go to my group and say, Hey, Jon Loomer talked about this. All right. And I’ll give credit to that.

And I think that’s kind of what you do is you start with a skill, you go into a book, you take a beginner course, and then you just keep accumulating that knowledge, like you’re in there practicing it.

I mean, a physician does the same thing.

They go to college, they get a base level knowledge, they start as an intern, they practice medicine, they keep up their skills.

I think anyone who claims to be an expert in anything really has this value of, I just need to keep learning this, I need to because there’s things I know, I don’t know.

And things are going to always change, I need to make sure I’m on top of those things.

So that’s why I approach it, I think that would probably the way most logical people will approach is get a base level of knowledge than the level of acceleration you need is really how much you invest.

So if you want to become better at something faster, you usually have to invest time or money to accelerate that.

Going back to the example before, I knew I wanted to run a company and I had this idea of running an agency, I paid to go to a mastermind, because I know it would accelerate my success.

Because I wouldn’t have to go through all the trials, I had people in that group that would help me get to where I needed to be faster.

So that’s kind of my rationale is you pay either in time or you pay in money to accelerate where you want to be.

That’s kind of the way to stay ahead of things and accelerate what you’re doing.

For full conversations, go to BJP chats.com.

Feedstories: The Power of Your Story 📖 (Videos That Sell)

As Bob from Feedstories puts it, “every business starts with a story.”

Transcription

Brian: Who’s the ideal person that would benefit the most from Feedstories?

Bob: We like to work with people that have some sort of mission or purpose behind what they do.

Every business starts with a story.

I think if you don’t start with a story, or you don’t start with a reason why it’s not really interesting to us, and probably you’re not going to have lasting value.

We love pulling the backstory out of somebody, it really gets to the heart of why they do what they do. We do these videos called Big Why Videos.

And it’s really amazing to kind of just hear from people like, why do they do what they do?

We interviewed this guy, he was down in Texas, and he started a whole chain of yoga studios, and he wanted to start this academy for training more yoga teachers.

And that’s a great business, right?

Like, you think Yoga is hot. He’s in Texas, he’s growing like, fantastic.

Well, in our interview process, and what we got a video was the reason why he started the yoga studios, which was his mom had back issues when she was alive, and she went in for surgery.

And, you know, he was kind of nervous about that ended up that the surgeons kind of botched the surgery, and she lost most of the ability in her legs. And she suffered for a number of years.

He really felt that if yoga was an option for his mom, she went and had the surgery and she would’ve had a long quality of life.

And you could see like the passion, right? And this is all on video.

Now, if you’re a yoga teacher, and you see the passion from this yoga owner, and he’s like, I want yoga to be an alternative for people to have surgery, freedom from pain, and things like that really powerful, right?

That’s why video is so powerful.

Now, we love working with kind of owner-operators, okay.

Typically we’re working with companies that are like somewhere underneath $10 million.

So from startup to 10 million, we have and we’ll work with companies that are bigger, but when we can get the owner on camera and get his or her story about why they do what they do.

Talk with the clients and the customers of these businesses.

That’s really an ideal client for us when there’s a substantial story there and we can pick up on it and about a 15-minute phone call, then they’re a really good candidate for us.

Outro: For full conversations, go to BJP chats.com

Part 4: Bob Regnerus of Feedstories & The Ultimate Guide To Facebook Advertising

Part 4, of our seven-part interview with Bob Regnerus of Feedstories.

Topics covered in this episode

  • Who are Feedstories Ideal Clients?
  • What is a “Big Why” video?
  • 10,000 dollar an hour work: Outsourcing & Marketing Outreach

Transcription

Intro Brian: Bob Regnerus of Feedstories, part 4.

I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

Today is part four of our conversation with Bob Regnerus.

If you would like to be on this podcast or if you would like to have me on yours or speak at your event, go to BrianJPombo.com.

And now here’s part 4 with Bob Regnerus.

Brian: Who’s the ideal person that would benefit the most from Feedstories?

It’s a great question.

We like to work with people that have some sort of mission or purpose behind what they do. We think every every business starts with a story.

I think if you don’t start with a story, or you don’t start with a reason why, it’s not really interesting to us, and probably you’re not going to have lasting value. We love pulling the backstory out of somebody it really gets to the heart of why they do what they do.

We do these videos called Big Why videos, it’s really amazing to kind of just hear from people like, why do they do what they do?

We interviewed this guy, he was down in Texas, and he started a whole chain of yoga studios, and he wanted to start this academy for training more yoga teachers.

That’s a great business, right? Like you think Yoga is hot, he’s in Texas, he’s growing fantastic.

Well, in our interview process, and what we got a video was the reason why he started the yoga studios.

Which was his mom had back issues when she was alive and she went in for surgery. And, you know, he was kind of nervous about that ended up that the surgeons kind of botched the surgery, and she lost most of the ability in her legs and she suffered for a number of years.

And he really felt that if yoga was an option for his mom, she went and had the surgery, and she had long quality life.

You could see like the passion and this is all on video.

Now, if you’re a yoga teacher, and you see the passion from this yoga owner, and he’s like, I want yoga to be an alternative for people to have surgery, freedom from pain and things like that’s really powerful.

That’s why video is so powerful.

Now, we love working with kind of owner operators, okay. Typically we’re working with companies that are like somewhere underneath $10 million.

So from startup to 10 million we have, and we’ll work with companies that are bigger.

But when we can get the owner on camera and get his or her story about why they do what they do talk with the clients and the customers of these businesses, that’s really an ideal client for us, when there’s a substantial story there.

And we can pick up on it in about a 15 minute phone call, then they’re really good candidate for us.

They’re in a growing stage and they’re using paid advertising. They’re out there marketing themselves, and they know they need a better story. It’s pretty common.

When I talk to somebody, one of the first things they’ll tell me is we’re not doing a good job telling our story.

That’s gonna be an ideal client for us, because they know they have a story. They just need somebody like us to help unlock it.

Brian: Wow, that’s great.

It sounds like you wear a bunch of different hats in your business. So out of everything that you do, what would you say that you enjoy the most or get the most out of?

Bob: I think part of this is Feedstories became the startup in 2016 and you kind of do everything. Then as you grow a little bit you bring people in. So now you’ve got a dedicated product manager, we’ve got editors, we’ve got videographers we work with, we have producers, so I don’t get involved necessarily day to day anymore.

My role with the company now is managing the team.

It’s doing business development, and like what we’re doing here, I’m on marketing right now, alright. We’re having a conversation.

But in reality, I’m marketing, I’m sharing my story, sharing as much wisdom as I can. But I’m also telling people about the company.

A lot of my calendar is doing these types of things. I like to have conversations with people, I’ll be the first one in my company that talks to people who are thinking about doing video, or, you know, working Facebook consoles and things like that.

My business partner, Brandon is working on the creative side of things, working on the story with clients.

As you grow, you kind of get to a point where you like, oh, here’s a bottleneck. You put a person in place that’s better to do it than you.

So I mean, my days. My calendars full. I have a lot of conversations with people who are thinking about working with us. I do interviews like this.

I talk a lot with partners, talking about potential joint venture relationship, and then working with colleagues and you know, attending mastermind, so that’s what I’m spending my time on is really thinking about higher level stuff.

Perry calls that $10,000 an hour work.

That’s the best use of my time these days.

You get to a point where like I said, you’re kind of scrambling, you’re doing a grassroots type of thing. You get enough revenue in to get people in place that can do things better than you, more efficiently and better. It’s just the natural life of a startup.

And I’ve never been one, I don’t know if you’ve done this, but like, I’ve never like went out and raised capital and had like a big chunk of money to start. I always start by the skin of my teeth. And grow a business from revenue, I’ve never had the opportunity to, like, get a whole bunch of money and then build it big from the start.

I don’t know if I ever want to do it at this point. It’s just, I do what I know. And it’s just kind of the way that I’ve grown companies over the years.

Brian: Makes a lot of sense. That’s awesome.

For full conversations, go to BJP chats.com.

Relationships & Mastermind Groups (Bob Regnerus of Feedstories Interview)

Bob from Feedstories talks about the value of relationships and mastermind groups and how he became a co-author with names like Perry Marshall and Robert Skrob.

Transcription

Brian: You’ve co-written books with some great names out there.

You have a book out there with Robert Skrob, you’ve got a book with Perry Marshall, how did you go about doing that? How did you go about co-authoring, with people that had a name in a different area?

Bob: Well, in that case, it’s about relationships.

So, you know, Robert Skrob is well known these days. I knew Robert before he was Robert.

One of the things I did early in my career, and I should say this, this is another thing I did is I took giant leaps by joining mastermind groups, not just like, hey, let’s get together on zoom five days a month, or, you know, this is like, I paid Bill Glazer, at that time, I think it was $12,000 a year, quoting Hamilton, I wanted to be in the room where it happens, right?

I was in there with people that were above my pay grade. But the reason I did that was I wanted the mentorship from a guy like Bill Glazer, mentorship from Dan Kennedy.

But then I wonder the relationships of people who are doing better than me, and there were some people that were below me. But when you’re in a group like that, it just pulls you forward.

And so that’s where I met a lot of people who I still consider friends and met friends that introduced me to others. By knowing Perry Marshall, I got to meet and become friends with Brian Kurtz.

I was in the same mastermind group as Ryan Deiss, before Digital Marketer was even a thought in his eye.

I got to know Jeff Walker before he was the Product Launch Formula Genius.

So part of it is you you know, there are these names that we all kind of revere, they’re just normal people. But I got to know them really, before they became famous, okay.

And they’re all more famous than me, by the way, which is fine with me. But I really was intentional about joining those organizations, attending conferences and networking, I’m not naturally drawn to do that.

Like, I’m really good with talking and sharing what I know I’m not really good at meeting new people, but I’ve had to force myself to do it.

And so writing the check and taking the leap really like makes you go I’m gonna make the most of it.

Outro: For full conversations, go to BJP chats.com.

Books, Speaking & Podcast Interviews 📚🎙️ (Bob Regnerus of Feedstories Interview)

Bob from Feedstories talks about the power of writing a book, speaking opportunities and sharing your message in webinar and podcast interviews to help you grow your business.

Transcription

Brian: How do most people find you, how do they come across you end up becoming clients?

Bob: Well, two things that I’ve done that have been really powerful actually three things in my career.

The first thing is writing books.

There’s nothing like writing a book to establish yourself as an expert. I think it’s even over my shoulder here. Let’s see…yeah.

The first book I wrote was called, Big Ticket Ecommerce. And I was encouraged by a friend of mine, Victor Cheng, who’s an amazing consultant, who helped me put that together. And that’s what I use to grow my first seven-figure agency. So that was great.

Now when you write a book, you get clients, but you also get speaking opportunities.

The second best thing I’ve done in my career is speak from the stage. That’s how I’ve got influxes of clients.

And then speaking also applies to what we’re doing right here is I frequently speak on webinars and podcasts. And those three things really are what drive people coming in.

So you know, you get people that buy your book, people that hear you speak my calendars full because I’m putting it out there.

I’m doing the work every day, putting the content out there, developing relationships.

We get a lot of referrals to of course, but that’s how I grow is really just putting myself out there as an expert, sharing what I know, inspiring people and that leads to business.

Outro: For full conversations, go to BJP chats.com.