Coach Bob Regnerus is the co-founder of Feedstories, a digital marketing expert and the author of five books,

including, The Fourth Edition of The Ultimate Guide to Facebook Advertising.

Settle in and join us for a terrific conversation with Bob as we cover a wide range of valuable topics in personal and business development, that include...

• Become an Established Expert in Your field: The Value of Books, Speaking and Interviews.
• The Power of Being an Author of a Book
• How Masterminds & Building Relationships Can Open Doors For You In Business
• How Bob Co-authored Books with Experts like Perry Marshall and Robert Skrob
• When Markets Shift: Hard-Times, Lessons Learned & Business Growth
• Investing in Flexibility
• Feedstories: What Led Bob and his team to start a Digital Marketing Company
• The Power of Your Story
• Feedstories Ideal Client Relationships
• 10,000 Dollar an Hour Work: Outsourcing & Marketing Outreach
• Business Fundamentals & Building Lasting Value
• The Role of a Coach in Business & Sports
• Facebook Ads: Books, Education & Seeking Knowledge
• Staying Mentally Sharp for the Long-Haul

Thanks again to Bob for sharing his story with us, as well as what's going on over at Feedstories.

For more on Bob's work, check out Feedstories be sure to pick up a copy of, The Ultimate Guide to Facebook Advertising!

• Feedstories - https://feedstories.com/

• The Ultimate Guide to Facebook Advertising - https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Guide-Facebook-Advertising-Marshall/dp/1599186756/

Transcription

Intro - Bob: There's nothing like having all your clients suddenly run out of money and declare bankruptcy and not paying you.

In a span of about three months, my business went from a million down to like 150,000 a year - had to lay off my entire team. So I spent probably two months like just hovering in a corner. Literally, I spent a couple nights in the hospital panic attacks. Not being able to pay your staff, having to lay off people you love and care about. It was awful. But I was either gonna let it break me or I was gonna learn a lesson, I decided to learn a lesson.

Brian: Coach Bob Regnerus is the co-founder of Feedstories, a digital marketing expert and the author of five books, including, The Fourth Edition of The Ultimate Guide to Facebook Advertising. Bob, welcome to Brian J. Pombo Live.

Bob: It is so good to be with you, Brian. Looking forward to a lively conversation today.

Brian: Yeah, good deal.

So I like to jump into these things without a whole lot of research in general. But the issue is, is that I already knew who you were, because I'd seen you around. I knew that you had co-authored this book. And I'd seen your name around probably for years, because I think we have ran in similar circles.

Bob: Yeah, that's probably likely.

Brian: Yeah, just tell me...we'll get into the details as far as where you're at right now, eventually. But tell me how did you end up where you are?

Bob: Yeah, well, I guess I took a little bit of an indirect approach to being an entrepreneur. I was a programmer by trade, I went to college, you know, studied computer science, studied business, I had a dual degree.

And I ended up working for a large corporation out of college doing programming on mainframe computers, that's the computers that take up a whole room.

Did that worked at a couple different corporate jobs, and I met a guy at one of my gigs who was there on contract. And like, I was an employee, he was on a contract, I thought that was interesting. He kind of made his own hours.

And he was making, you know, I mean, he wasn't getting benefits from the company but it felt like he was making more money than me doing kind of what he was doing.

So I became friends with him and eventually, I went on my own with him and was doing some contract work. I worked for TransUnion, the big credit bureau. That was about 1998, I really got the bug for the internet.

Obviously 1998 we're going back a few years, internet wasn't what it is today. Right?

But I was a coder.

I actually developed my first e-commerce website, I built a shopping cart for a business from scratch. By the way, there's still a client today, there's still a client. So it's pretty awesome.

But we launched that thing in 98 and it was pretty funny. The business owner who I'm friends with is like, this is great, you know, we're getting orders, like the middle of the night, you know, when we're closed, it was a big deal.

He's like, how do we get more people to the site? I said, "oh, that's not a big deal, I know exactly how to do that." And of course I had no idea how to do that.

So that's where I dove into the world of internet marketing and direct marketing.

Discovered Dan Kennedy and Perry Marshall and all those things. I really became a student of marketing.

And I shifted from being a technology person to a marketing person, just kind of felt really comfortable for me, it felt like the next step. And I felt like I could provide more value to the marketplace.

So I think was a pretty good decision.

I've done a lot of training and, you know, work with clients over the years. But yeah, I mean, I've been in the business now 20 to 23 years, written some books and helped 1,000s of people. So it's pretty cool.

I really love the paid marketing, like paid search. I got really good at Google and then Facebook was just the perfect media for me, because I really love telling stories. We can dive into that a little bit. But I've been doing Facebook advertising and coaching for people now since 2013.

Have some really great successes over the years.

So I love the predictability of paid advertising, like put in $1 and make five, make 10 you know, whatever the case may be. Never really got into SEO, we never understood it, was too frustrating.

I like the predictability of paid advertising.

That's what's been paying the bills and what people have been paying me for over the last two decades and really proud to keep rockin on and teaching people all the cool stuff that I learned.

Brian: Wow, that's fabulous. 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 a amazing consultant, 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.

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 too 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.

Brian: We've had quite a few discussions on this show about a lot of these items about writing a book about doing speaking.

Just from your perspective, if you were talking to someone that's never written a book before, and is looking to become looking to stand out more and become more well known. What do you think are the main advantages to writing a book?

Bob: Well I think there's a couple of things.

Number one, writing a book really establishes you as an expert.

Quite often, it's like a ticket, right?

I wrote another book called, The Best Business Card On The Planet.

It like literally opens doors for you.

So, you know, to be interviewed on podcasts and things like that. I guess it's a little bit easier these days, but getting interviewed for television or radio, like they wouldn't even pick up the phone unless you had a book. "If you're an expert, where's your book?"

So I think even though the publishing industry has changed to some extent, and a lot of books are self published, I think it's still an amazing positioning tool to be able to put yourself in a book like that.

And I think the other thing it really does is it forces you to really focus in on what are my superpowers. I'm not gonna go write a book about Google display ads or Google search these days, I can write a book about Facebook, because I do it day in and day out. I'm helping my business partner write a book on getting videos that sell, because that's what we do day in and day out.

Putting your knowledge and your superpower into a written format is really powerful for you, the entrepreneur, it helps you really understand like, I do know this stuff, right?

It's a validation for you.

But to be able to communicate it effectively write narrative around it, tell stories about it, it really just solidifies your foundation as an entrepreneur as an expert as a credible person.

And I still think it's one of the best steps you can take.

Now, you don't have to write a 350 page book that entrepreneur press publishes. You can write 125 page, 150 page book, you know, 20 to 25,000 words, maybe even less. That helps establish you, I think it's reachable for anybody that's serious about serving clients or setting themselves up as an expert.

Brian: That's fabulous.

So you've co-written books with some great names out there. You have a book out there with Robert Skrob, you 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.

You know, 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. This is like, I paid Bill Glazer at that time, I think it was $12,000 a year.

Quoting Hamilton, I want to be in the room where it happens.

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

But then I wanted the relationships with people who are doing better than me. And there was 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 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 know, there's 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.

So writing the check and taking the leap really, like makes you go, I'm gonna make the most of it. That's kind of how it happened.

So I met Robert in a mastermind group.

Perry I met through a connection in my mastermind group, a friend of mine also knew Perry.

Perry and I live eight miles apart, literally, I can draw a straight line from my house to Perry's. We spend quite a bit of time together, we became friends.

You know, a lot of it like yeah, there's gonna be another wave. It's like, there's always new people coming in. So want to be friends with people who are driven, who are successful, that can challenge you that could bring you up, that could kind of pick you up when you're let down.

That's another thing that's been really powerful.

My career is just establishing relationships with good people.

And I've come across people that frankly, were terrible for me. Learned my lessons from them. You know, fortunately I could cut bait and move on.

But that's what the entrepreneur life is about is like, you're constantly honing your radar and your sonar and everything.

And it's not a straight line. There's a famous meme where it's like a squiggly line. I mean, that's really what it's all about these days. That's just another way to kind of do something like that, you're not going to just approach a Perry Marshall and say, hey, I'm gonna write a book with you.

You've got to have some cred.

You know, Perry's got a reputation in mind. But Perry has been known to pull people up who are kind of unknown, who've proven they've got chops, but all of them kind of have already established a little bit of a foundation of expertise.

But if you can do that, I mean, you can find somebody to kind of pull you up to their stage, very powerful.

Brian: Yeah, that's fabulous.

So many great nuggets in there, so many great ideas that you brought forth.

Taken in a different direction. You talked about the highs and lows, and we always tend to focus on the highs, it just makes sense to do that.

But give us an example of something that you just thought was going to end everything. Whether it's something recent or something from years past, where you just had a scenario where it just felt like everything was going to come crashing down.

Bob: I'll share an experience that happened during the real estate crash.

So 2008, 2009, I had been speaking, I had been riding the wave from a book. Like I said, I grown my agency to seven figures in a year, it was amazing. I had a great team, a lot of clients.

Well, what I ended up doing though is I had a stable of a lot of information marketing clients, and specifically, a good portion of them were marketing real estate stuff.

As you know, real estate was the thing that crashed the market in 2009.

There's nothing like having all your clients suddenly run out of money and declare bankruptcy and not paying you.

In a span of about three months, my business went from a million down to like 150,000 a year, had to lay off my entire team. So I spent probably two months like just hovering in a corner. Literally, I spent a couple nights in the hospital panic attacks.

Not being able to pay your staff, having to lay off people you love and care about. It was awful.

But I was either gonna let it break me or I was gonna learn a lesson, I decided to learn a lesson.

I learned that I needed to be more diverse and my client base, I needed to have a stool that was more than one leg. All right, you can balance on a stool with one leg for a long time. But eventually, you're going to break and you know, if something knocked that leg out, you're gonna fall.

I diversified my client base, I diversified my services.

But the other thing was that I was flexible with my team.

So I don't have employees anymore. But I have a large team of contractors that I could go up and down in terms of payment. Like if I'm busy, I could pay them more, get more hours.

But if things pull back, we slow down. I don't have that big nugget, right, like of the payroll and the benefits and things like that.

So I said to myself coming out of 2009 to 2010, I'm going to be much more nimble in the future. I'm going to have a value of cash in my business, I'm not going to be living on credit. And I'm also going to have a team that's very flexible.

So COVID hits, right. And I'm like, okay, you know, I was ready for this. We had cash in the bank. We had a team and we had some clients that kind of pulled back for a time, we were able to pull back contractors, so I was not out a bunch of money.

But what happened was is we actually had a service which is remote videos, like you and I are doing this video right now. We have a service that does video through an iPhone or iPad, high quality.

And all of a sudden, once people got over the shock of COVID come April this past year, a year ago, our lead list absolutely exploded.

People who were on the fence about doing video came out of the woodwork.

We actually had our three best months of our company's career, April, May and June of last year, because we were poised, we were ready. We invested in a technology that we thought was going to be important. People kind of push it to the side and then there was an event we were ready for it. So I was really happy.

Obviously wasn't happy about the world situation, a lot of things changed. But I learned my lessons 10 years ago and I positioned myself to be flexible to be nimble, to be you know, value cash to not have a big piece of overhead.

I survived a couple weeks of like, what the hell's going on?

But then we were positioned to really like take advantage of what was going on to be ready for the marketplace. You learn that through experience. You know I could tell the story and people are gonna be like, that's a great, Bob is already prepared.

The pain I had to deal with at the start of the decade to be ready for that was awful but never want to live through it. But I survived it and learn from it. I certainly wouldn't want to go through it again. Which is why I made sure I was prepared for kind of the next big thing that came along.

Brian: What do you think that most businesses can learn from that, in terms of you mentioned having cash on hand. What are the other things that you think that made the biggest difference for you that you think other people could learn from?

Bob: Well, for me, it was investing in things that have the ability to be flexible.

So team members that are flexible with multiple skill sets technology, like we were perfectly positioned to be remote.

In fact, our company's been remote for years, we were on zoom before zoom was cool, we had used it. So essentially, that didn't change.

We also had this enthusiasm for what could be, but we also had a sense of what could go wrong?

Now, the reason we're able to do that is we're in a mastermind with Perry. And as you know, Perry's my friend, he's a client, we do business together, but I also pay him for mentorship, because he's so wise.

And we went through an exercise, January of 2019, which is like, what could go wrong in your business this year?

Now, nobody predicted COVID, but we had some scenarios like, okay, you know, if our technology failed, or we went through probably five or six scenarios, it got us thinking.

Even then, like, what would happen if?

We weren't shocked when COVID happened. We certainly had this sense of dread like everybody else. But we had been exercising our what if muscles and had in mind, like, everything's not going to be rosy. So we're mentally prepared for what happened.

And I was really proud of kind of how we just, we didn't panic, we had some really thoughtful consideration of how we're going to move forward. And we positioned ourselves well, we were prepared for some worst case scenarios.

I think that's one thing as entrepreneurs, we're always thinking like, the best is going to happen. And I love that part of being an entrepreneur, every project we get involved in, we think this is gonna be great.

We haven't unbridled enthusiasm for it, and you have to, but you also have that sense of, okay, what if this doesn't work out?

Or what if this idea doesn't pan out?

You want to have contingencies, you want to have plans in place. Maybe that comes from my upbringing, maybe it comes from experience, I don't know.

But it just seems like the right way to approach things. Or you don't kind of have rosy blinders on and you're oblivious to the fact that we live on an imperfect planet, you know what I mean?

Brian: Absolutely. Boy, that's great stuff.

You touched briefly your company Feedstories, why don't you tell us more about what that is and how it came about.

Bob: So that's interesting, that period between like 2010 and 2013, I was doing a lot of things to kind of find my way again. After you kind of lose an agency, you know, I was just kind of freelancing.

I hosted a radio show for a number of years, doing kind of what you and I are doing right now, which is great, got to meet a lot of new people help other people write books.

But 2013, I got heavily involved in Facebook.

Facebook started to become a media that advertisers could take seriously.

I got my first five clients and one of them just went into the stratosphere. It was a clothing brand. In fact, it was a headband company and it just took off.

One of the best things I did with that client early on was I said, you've got a headband, you know, it's a $15 headband. I said, anyone can knock this off, but they can't knock off your story.

I said, we're gonna build your whole advertising and your whole kind of foundation based on your story. And your story is what's going to sell the headbands.

And I was right.

I was really glad I was right. But I knew kinda internally that would be that way. This business called Bolder Brands Headbands, they won Shopify retailer of the Year in 2014. Driven by Facebook sales, like 99% of their sales came from Facebook.

Facebook, recognize that and said, Hey, Bob, we're having this meeting with some other big brands want you to come in, we're going to kind of brainstorm. I had a chance over a number of years to meet with Facebook.

But in 2016, in particular, I went to this meeting and all they talked about was video, Facebook said we're a video company now Instagram, who's owned by Facebook says we're a video company now.

I'm like, okay, this is my like, I'm looking ahead toward the future.

And I went outside of the meeting was in the sidewalk outside of Facebook headquarters in Austin, Texas. I called Brandon, who's my business partner for Feedstories.

Brian is a creative guy, he's a copywriter, he's a video graphic guy.

I said, we really need to be prepared for this because Facebook and Instagram are changing who they are. And video is going to be like the thing that they are emphasizing the most.

We started that company, literally a conversation over the phone, came into the same city kind of put this thing together and started Feedstories in late 2016.

And we kind of felt for years, we were ahead of the curve. We did a lot of video for companies but it wasn't kind of people's number one concern, COVID was really the catalyst for us where people were like, suddenly realized how important video was.

But we've prepared for that.

That's how Feedstories was formed. It was literally what I heard Facebook and Instagram telling me that they were going to prioritize.

And so if I'm going to continue to be a really good Facebook advertiser, I need to have really good video creative. And why not create a company that produces the creative that I know is going to work in the Facebook ad. That's how that company was born.

And we're going strong here in 2021 so far.

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

Bob: 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.

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.

Brian: Awesome. That's great. And it plays off of another idea I have here. This is kind of random and you could take it any direction you want. If you have anything.

The question is, is there anything that you're reading right now or listening to or watching that's really captivated you, and it'd be something you'd be interested in sharing with us?

Bob: Interesting.

So I can answer this a couple ways.

Number one is, I have been a casual golfer for two decades, I really started kind of in my 20s.

I turned 50 last year, but my wife also picked it up. And the parallel here is this is that I'm not going to be in my business seven days a week. Not possible, right?

I really feel like you need to feed multiple parts of your body and your soul to like really be effective. I've gotten to the point and COVID kind of like accelerated this for me, I keep using that word, I should find a different word.

But I set up my week so that I'm working hard Monday to Thursday.

Fridays are a day where I kind of do catch up, I do some reading, I do some learning. And then especially during the warmer months, I'm out on the golf courses with my wife on Fridays, okay, and Saturdays and Sundays, you know, maybe I'll pick up another round or whatever.

But I find that I can stay mentally sharp about what I'm doing in my business if I'm forcing my mind to be mentally sharp about something else, so it's diversifying.

Kind of what it is kind of like if you're working out and all you do is like benchpress you get really big packs, but like your biceps, and your back, like, you're out of kilter.

I think that happens with people, they're going to work on their business seven days a week, but everything else kind of shrivels up. So their relationships fail.

For me golf is like, I'm a competitive person, obviously, you can probably get that for me. I'm competitive. My wife is competitive.

It's a great way to get exercise some exercise in my body, I'm outside, I'm with my wife, we're working on relationship. Like there's a lot of things there.

So my advice is, yeah, you want to kind of keep up with what's going on in your industry and things like that. But there needs to be this whole idea of, I need to get away and force my body and my mind to do something else.

I think that's the thing that I really learned is, I've done the six, seven days a week thing, and you just get to a point where it's like, it's not worth it anymore. What am I really doing here?

So I work on my golf game, I'm working on relationships, like three days a week and working on my business four days a week, I'm really happy I've been able to structure it that way.

Brian: Oh, that's brilliant. That's such a good point. And it's not mentioned often enough I don't think.

I think a lot more people are being more open about that. Because at one time it was looked down upon, especially, you know, in the most popular circles, but boy, that's so important.

Bob: Yeah, I mean, again, when you're working, you want to be focused and hardworking, right?

I think a lot of us, in this industry were taught that we're entrepreneurs, and we're just kind of wired to work hard. I had a lot of that instilled by my parents, you know, if you're gonna do a good job, do it right type of thing.

But you can take it to an extreme.

I think you just learn this over time. And with experiences, like, you know what, there's some other things that are worth it too and you could actually be sharper during your work time, if you play as hard as you work.

Perry's been real good at kind of talking about that. I don't know if others are.

But certainly Perry talks about Renaissance time. And he says, entrepreneurs need to play as hard as they work, because that's what fuels them.

Like, we're fueled by action and things like that.

So I've taken that to heart. And it's been really good for me to really do that, especially over the last year.

I'm not looking to change that routine at all, even when the world goes back to normal, so to speak, I don't want to go back to necessarily the way I did things before. I think if anything we've learned, okay, there's a different way to go about this.

And so I'm going to seek to kind of stay on this path that I've been on the past year, and really keep working on that.

Brian: That's really important. That's so good. So good to hear that.

We can go on and on and on. But I really love what I've heard from you so far. Is there anything I haven't asked you that you'd really like to answer?

Bob: Wow, we've gone some ways that I haven't...like I've done a lot of these, this is really good, because I'm talking about things today that I haven't talked about in probably the past 50 interviews.

Brian: Oh great.

Bob: So that's really good. It's good to talk about this stuff, quite frankly, got a couple young guys that I mentor casually, it's not a formal thing, but we talk and things like that. And these are the types of things that come up.

But you can only get that out of somebody who's lived. And so you know, part of as I'm thinking about that is, as their 30 somethings going to me, I'm looking at people that are older and have been through the wringer so to speak, or at least had similar experiences.

I think that's always a good thing to kind of learn from people that have been through the ropes a little bit, been through the trials.

There's nothing like living through something to really become wise. But there's also something to like heeding the advice of somebody who's lived through it.

Probably a really good way to avoid some pain, right?

To take somebody's experience and go, you know what, I really think you shouldn't do that. Or I really think this would be a better idea. And if they've got the life experience to back it up, probably a good thing.

But yeah, some really cool stuff that I haven't dug into. I'm looking forward to like going back to this transcript because like, okay, this is some stuff that I could probably write a lot more about and do some videos.

Brian: You really could go in any direction with this. It's so much good meat on the bone. Really appreciate the time you spent with me, Bob. I hope we can do it in the future sometime.

Bob: This has been fascinating. Yeah.

Brian: Good deal. Well, thanks so much for being on Brian J. Pombo Live.

Bob: Looking forward to the next time.

Brian: Yeah.

Brian's Closing Thoughts: 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.