welcome to daring to dream a show of inspiration hope and practical advice for living a life of your dreams i'm susie's fyvie and as a dream coach i work with small business owners who all face the same challenge how do i get more clients that question alone can stop people from even pursuing their dream of owning their own business one of the top ten reasons small businesses fail is because of ineffective marketing and self promotion well today we're going to get the inside scoop from our rock star in the eyes of some twenty thousand small business owners called a marketing guru by the wall street journal michael port has developed a proven method for taking a business to the next level and increasing sales by up to forty three percent in the first year alone and the cool thing is he developed this method through the process of redefining himself and building his own business after struggling to make it big as an actor and then climbing the corporate ladder he realized his real dream was to create his own business he started from scratch and in just over five years he's a bestselling author international speaker and owner of book yourself solid worldwide now that's daring to dream and if he can do it so can you and run some of the largest and most respected online distance learning programs for small business owners michael is the guy to car when you're tired of thinking small welcome michel you very much thank you so much for coming today i'm a honored to have much so your story is really inspirational and it's not only inspirational from the success from the level of the success you've achieved so far but from looking at how you got here so i'd like to do is give people a perspective of the path you've taken and the choices you've made to get from point a to point b and where you know how you've arrived at this point  yeah and i i was saying psychology in college because there's interest in people and i was interested in psychology and i was psychologically minded but mostly because both my parents were mental health professionals so  i just was bored i mean you know rats running around and we do i don't i couldn't sit still i had i was all over the place so i took an acting class as a fine arts credit and the teacher encouraged me to go on but i thought what do you do with this really i mean i can write you know but i did i went out and i fell in love with it and i started to dream about doing that with my life so pursuing a career in acting yeah but i thought maybe i should get some more this choice to do that my father gave me a little advice and he saw me in a show i was playing tom joad in the grapes of wrath a hot and he took me aside afterwards and he said  you know i know you're studying psychology but i think this is what you should do and i said really and he said yeah he said i think with your disposition my parents were very supportive and i was lovely and then i did i went to the graduate action program and what you and i worked for four years as an actor and i had a modicum of success in his little bit of success wow hate sex in the city yeah that i was sad that i was in high point it was definitely high point you know it's amazing you know i did five i shot for five days on that show a guest starred in one episode and i and that was eleven years ago one thousand nine hundred seventy yeah and i still get recognised from that one thing so far you know five days out of disposition that it took to live the lifestyle of an actor i had the disposition to do the work yeah an actor but i didn't have the disposition to live the lifestyle the lifestyle is a lot of waiting around for other people to give you an opportunity to work right i lot of ups and downs a lot of starts and stops and i have a lot of energy and a lot of desire to do things right here and i'd like to produce and so you know i didn't want to become a producer in that world because his level is that that work is i feel if i was going to be in that business i'd want to but i want to be and so i quit and you know the thing is is when i look back in retrospect i think it was a immature and premature decision to leave yeah yeah i think i was only doing it for four years i was still young yeah i was working right and you know by all accounts  was going to continue to work so i made up all these stories in my mind about why i thought that i should do something else and i thought well maybe i'll go to the corporate world you know if i become a c e o then my my level really mean something you know yeah and  well let me ask you this so when you decided to leave acting did you feel like you were walking away from your dream well i think you are a number of years later i i think that i did walk away from a dream not the dream but right dream right but while i was walking away i didn't recognize it as such because i was able to tell myself a story and believe it well enough that i really should be doing something else so do you know i mean so very very calm very i've got a decent business head and i'm entrepreneurial and you know i should go into work in business and i'll have more stability and should doing something else and i think i think that took me a number of years it took me over years to realize that that was just made up right and so i do think i was walking away from a dream yeah not the dream yeah but a dr d i was running a division of a of a public health and fitness company you know not health clubs or throughout the country and then i opened another club health club in new york for for some investors and and  really didn't feel particularly satisfied and i thought well maybe maybe five become an entrepreneur do it myself i don't have the right in anyone else then my life will mean something and i realize that that that logic was faulty again so you know i kept if i look back i kept having this idea that if i did something different if i just moved away rebelled against what i was currently doing right and started something new  really everything would work out and i don't think that's what most people do i split means for many years until you do finally find your past yeah yeah i think though i mean i don't the thing is i any of those could have been a path so i don't know what i do now is a some of you know some of where i came from but i but i don't think that you know a lot of people say ah but you were meant to do this right you're so good at this year's was successful this and this is what you must've been meant to do and i don't know that that's necessarily true meaning that if i was if i had been more mature when i was acting if i had had some different influences maybe i would have stayed and maybe i would still be doing that today right maybe if i had looked at you know myself in relation to working for other people in a different way maybe i would have stayed and so i think a lot i think that that i rebelled against it more then then made very specific choices to recreate right or to create a new future based on what i already had  and not and what's interesting is that when i became more entrepreneurial and sort of doing what i'm doing now it was so much harder than any of the things i had done before i mean people say the career of acting is hard yeah it is hard because there's a lot of you know luck involved in you sort of going to wait maybe you get it right you don't but the work of an actor i found i didn't find that hard to do something the work in the corporate world i didn't find that hard to do the particular kind of work that i was doing but when i sort of my own business oh why did you walk away from that i mean because i'm sure most people would think while you're doing grey's bored out of my mind i just don't think i really was bored i wasn't interested all the politics there was in the corporate arena that i was in there was a ceiling you know then i'm sort of stuck in this one place and i want to more freedom and yeah and again i think in part there was some rebellious activity right and so to me is you know this i think it's very interesting because many of us and myself included i look back at you know many of the things that i've chosen to do a lot of the choices i've made have been rebellious acts against the present situation and if we continue to create our future based on only rebellious act you know because we're not happy with our present i think our future our future is not something that we're choosing to create it's just in rebellion you know against what we have right right so so saying that what advice would you give to people who are or will fighting against their current situation we look certainly sometimes things need to be discarded right and even a business of a business is not doing well maybe you need to scratch and start over right or relationship when it's doomed look just maybe it's really it's time to throw in the towel right but but often times there's an opportunity to reconfigure what we have and turn it into more of what want but it takes a significant amount of wherewithal to to to as my colleague seth godin says to get through the depths to to get you know from the place where you're starting something to the place where you're actually finishing something and there's a low debt that you've got to get through and the reason that i didn't like acting that much is because you there was no depth you couldn't say well if i do these things then i get to hear but i was just straight turns i just got wait here and hopefully something i do i know it makes me right over it but but when you if you do want to go into business for yourself you there are a lot of things that you can look at say if i do this this and this and this it's likely that i'll go from here to over there is no guarantee and there are no three is definitely no guarantees no three easy steps to any kind of business making you know thirty dollars an hour there is no there is a significant amount of work that needs to be done and i think it it it's  business you build when you are in charge is a reflection right and an extension of you and your personality and many of the problems that we're running into in that business are a reflection of the problems that we have in the way that we behave in the world right so when there's something wrong with my business it's a good idea to look at how i created that problem and what we're going on in your life well not the earlier life or just even the way that you deal with things right right you know the way that you from an ontological perspective not necessarily a psychological perspective but ontological from from their perspective of the way that you behave whether you exist right way that you operate  and and your ways of being are going to affect the business that you're building so i may be very creative in left to do lots of different things but i'm very grateful of the lots of different things and not paying attention to the organization of the business well we are committed lots of good ideas but i won't be able to capitalize on those writers right so we've got to look at if we're in charge right we've got to look at what are our natural strengths and what are our weaknesses and often times and i love the work that the gallup organization has done on strengths just fantastic but sometimes you know now the big conversations are on focus under strange focus on the stressful constraints which is great but if we don't know what's going to get us in trouble that we don't know what to look out for things very important to know where your weaknesses are is that's where you're going to get you know so so let's go back to you decide to leave the corporate just starting yeah and and she said well i just sort of talk to people and help them out with the things i want to do in their life that sounds pretty good i did do that i love to tell people what to do and that was really bad i knew about it so i would start to look into  research it and it seemed like a growing you know industry and so i started to study it and for me i quickly learned for me personally that being a life coach wasn't the way that i wanted to go because i didn't feel that i didn't feel comfortable offering myself in that manner those kind of services what i knew i felt comfortable with was offering specific help as a related to things that i knew about business based on my experience as an actor and in the corporate world because what a lot of people don't realize about actors is that actors know a lot about how to market because they're great storytellers their self promoting all aside they have to be well also there's storytellers and that's got their mother the writer may write the story but the actor performs the story and knows how to connect with people and great marketers are great authentic storytellers so so i was able to combine these things and i had a good reputation in the industry that i was in in the corporate world and so i started a consulting business for that particular industry so essentially just jump sides right and i said well let me help the people that i'm now working for and this way i'll be on my own i'll choose the clients that i want to work with you know i would just have one boss yeah and maybe they'll be no limit to what i can do so that felt right to me so that so that i was more entrepreneurial rather then then just trying to to go into a new field right or trying to be a professional in an industry that at that time didn't really exist it was just kind of new right but it was it was somewhat of a natural progression for you yeah totally yeah now do i deal with issues that are personal in nature all the time of course stars because as i said you so yes but but basically not basically but fundamentally wrong doing is working with people around their business development in their marketing and if issue is you know come up that get them stuck or overwhelmed or confused  coaching approach to help them move through it but it's all with a specific goal as a relates to their business so what's your what would you say your business philosophy is i would say it's a good question i had a friend in college who name was jerry keith he lives in washington so i don't know if you'll see this program but he's an attorney now very reputable respectable guy but so i always were that always stuck in my head for some reason and it was because of so disgusting but i think about business in a similar way but instead of mayonnaise it's value add so much value that you think you've gone too far and then add more like that and and if you look at every single area of your business like that you're going to do ok so you know there isn't a difference you know i was talking to someone about marketing the other night and and  she was saying well why marketing why not some other area and i said because to me marketing is every single aspect of your business i can't separate customer service from market right i can't separate operations from marketing i can't separate sales for marketing because every single interaction that a customer has with a business is market is a reflection and your products are your marketing so your product development is marketing right so you know if you go eat at a restaurant is the food is extraordinary but you have a terrible time with the service well that's you're going to go talk about that your food well the food was great the service was terrible right that's marketing yeah so so to me it's every single thing that makes up a business even the way the books are handled is a marketing aspect how the book you know the book keepers and the people who deal with that deal with the clients as a relates to books and you know what invoices look like when somebody gets it what the tone of the of the notice is you know when somebody is late paying point four nine points and you know it's like all this and everybody go crazy about these tactics but ultimately you don't need a lot of marketing tactics because the best market in the world is when other people spread your messages for you right you need maybe one two ways to create awareness for what you do but fundamentally it's going to be your customers that are out there talking about what you have to operate and so what i realized many many businesses were missing was a good solid foundation for their business from a marketing perspective and then also a good plan for building trust and credibility because the way that ice huge the way that i see it is that if you do some sort of marketing  ve whatever it is you are trying to attract people to your environment whether it's a retail environment or website right or just trying to get them calling on the phone whatever it is well you might create some interest with a piece of marketing some sort of marketing material but then they're going to come back to you they're going to look at you and they're going to decide whether they want to step onto the platform that you're standing on do i want to share that space with them feel like that's a solid space you know or is it a little bit shaky do do they have a foundation on which to stand that i'll feel comfortable standing on and if they do then i'll stand on it and then you'll give that business owner the opportunity to earn trust and credibility and then that might take awhile because trust is not earned in an instant it's earned over time and don't you think that that's a that's a key problem that a lot of small business owners have is that they go into it and rightly so feel lot of pressure to succeed quickly because they've got bills to pay and whatnot but there is probably an unrealistic expectation that you can succeed quickly well look you know everybody's going to succeed at their own pace i mean i don't you know it unless often you know how exactly long does it take i don't you know of everybody it's different right you know some people are going to work you know eighteen hours a day for the first year and they're just going to do great their first year and then they're going to you know sleep for the next year in the business is going to fall right right everybody's going to go their own place but i think most of us are trying to rush the sales process rush the marketing process right you know it's i was thinking about this you know again so much of the way that we behave is is psychologically related or psychologically induced but then we act on that right and so the way they behave again is going influence the way that we build this business and i keep wondering why am i why am i so against a hard sell and when i saw against pushing i was so against forcing people it's because i am so uncomfortable when people try to force me jacking it makes my hair stand up and i i literally run yeah and i'm not just talking about whether in when selling you know from a relationship with somebody in their like you know they don't give me the time to decide if i want to do something or not right if i you know they say oh meet me here at this time i say i'm not really sure if i can or let me think about it and they keep forcing me i'm gone i'm out of because it just ruffles my feathers and to me sales are the same way and most people don't want to be forced to push in the sack like but we we often behave in our businesses in a way that is reflective of our own issues there are way we see the world and we assume that everybody else sees the world in the same way so if you don't mind you know fast selling hard selling all that kind of stuff and you're going to do it too assuming everybody else writes fun with it well and i think that that's that's a really unique aspect of your approach is that it's all about building yeah well you know there's a there's an author named dr tony sandro who wrote a book called the platinum rule and i love it is very simple concept because you've heard of the golden rule treat others as you'd like to be treated right well he says well that's good for the platinum rule takes it one step further treat others the way they want to be treated we make this assumption that you know everybody wants to be treated the way we do yeah and and if you in the book and great marketing  is treating each individual the way they want to be treated and not serving every single you know potential you know customer in the world but a very specific group of people or group of businesses depending on you know what you're offering that have very specific needs that already have a network with through which to communicate this is a very important concept it's very hard from a marketing perspective to try to get people to talk to other people about what you do if they're not already talking to those people so when you think about target market and choosing a specific group of people to market to or a specific group of businesses to market to you want to choose a group of people or businesses that already have a network or multiple networks established for communication right and if they don't already have these networks established they're not going to establish them for you right so they won't spread your messages if they don't already have them you know one of one example of that is i went to see i was got i was given an offer an invitation to come speak to the national association of balloon twisters i know even just the senate there's a national poll so if there's any associate or anything for anything but i mean you literally if you look at associations online in your particular area you could find hundreds if not thousands it's remarkable but they but they're blue twister and they do parties and events and things like that and i really had never you know heard of such a thing but i said sure i have to come so i went spoke to them and within a week i had about six more offers to go talk to more bootstraps they're new and the reason is because they've a very small community but small is relative right right so small compared to you know in the number of people in the u s but pretty good for book buyers sure and so but they already have these networks through which they communicate they're all in these forms together you got these association newsletters that they read they read the same magazines etc etc so as soon as i went there and did good work and i didn't do good work then they wouldn't write those people are going to talk oh you got to get this guy to come in cetera so that i got more offers because they already had the if the blue twisters were twisting together then they wouldn't have caught it makes sense absolutely absolutely and i think that's a wonderful piece of advice to wrap up on i could go on and listen to you for another half hour an hour  thank you very much i really appreciate it i know that the information you shared is going to be really inspirational for a lot of people today so thank you very well and speaking of inspiration if you are anyone watching have a story that you you think would be inspirational for others please let us know you can contact me at susie at susie's spidy dot com or check out our website daring to dream dot tv we'll see you next time on daring to dream