July 24, 2025 • 48 mins
How do you go from having no running water to taking five companies public?
In this episode of From Crisis to Justice, Parag Amin sits down with Jorge Olson - a bestselling author, syndicated media producer, and entrepreneur who’s launched multiple 8-figure companies and helped raise over $100M in capital. What makes Jorge’s story especially powerful is that he started with no formal financial background - just an obsession with books, a desire to help his family, and a mindset focused on preparation, storytelling, and resilience.
They dive into:
- How Jorge broke into the business world starting from Tijuana
- The critical role of mentorship and self-education in entrepreneurship
- Why every business owner needs to master branding, marketing, and financial systems
- How AI and personal branding are changing the game for entrepreneurs
- Lessons on preparation, discipline, and growing with intention
If you're a business owner, creative entrepreneur, or founder trying to scale and build long-term brand value, this episode is a must-listen.
Learn more about Jorge Olson:
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hi, I'm Parag Amin.
Welcome to my podcast.
From Crisis to Justice.
As a lawyer and entrepreneur, I'mpassionate about helping small business
owners successfully navigate situationsthat can kill a business.
As a kid, I watched my dad's dreamsof being an entrepreneur were destroyed
by an unethical businessman, and I don'twant that to happen to you or your family.
(00:22):
That's why I started my law firm.
I want to protect and defend businessowners and their legacies from crisis.
Welcome to From Crisis to Justice.
Hello, everybody.
Welcome back to From Crisis to Justice.
I am your host, Parag Amin,and I am joined
(00:43):
by my special guest, George Olson.
George is a California based entrepreneur,
syndicated media producer and best sellingauthor who has launched in scaled
multiple eight figure businesses,often from the ground up.
He wrote the book BuildYour Beverage, Empire and Marketing Karma,
(01:05):
along with a number of fictionand nonfiction books.
He, in fact, has published 15 books and
or specializes in helping entrepreneursturn personal branding,
storytelling and omnichannelmarketing into unstoppable growth engines,
especially when navigating risk regulationor reinvention.
(01:27):
He's taken five companiespublic and raised over $100 million.
Hey, thank you so much for being on today.
You're very welcome.
All right.
So before we started recording,you and I were talking
and you were telling me a little bitabout your interesting background,
including the fact that you, in fact,despite all these
(01:48):
major financial accomplishments,taking five companies public,
you didn't have any kindof financial background.
And in fact, it sounds likemaybe you grew up in an artistic family
more than a business family.
Is that right?
And can you tell us a little bitabout that journey?
Sure.
And then it even goes further than that.
(02:10):
I majored in artin liberal arts and sciences.
I did go into business,and when I saw that
they were teaching entrepreneurship,it was more how to be an employee.
I changed that to art because I was moreinterested in art anyway.
I was just doing business sothat I could go into the business world.
(02:31):
And then my house, mywe didn't have water running water
or electricity,but we had over 10,000 books in my house.
There were stacked all over the housein every corner.
You had towers of books.
My mom is a speed readerand she finished college
when I was 14, 15, and then becamea teacher of philosophy and literature.
(02:56):
So my love for books grew from there,from having so many books and started
picking up mythology at first,and then astronomy and then other stories.
That was the education they had.
It was how to be a good person and art,
philosophyand everything that goes around that
(03:16):
appreciation of beauty, logic,
the human human behavior, influence.
As a matter of fact, when I realized this,I started to influence since I was 12.
Later, I realized that if you if you put
that influence towards the marketplace,they call it marketing.
(03:37):
And then I was a VP of marketinglike that, like super fast.
When I realized I'd been studyingmarketing, another type of marketing,
but marketing none the less,since I was 12.
So that was that was the the, the,the education I had.
We never talked about money.
We never talked about finances.
I knew we didn't have a lot of money,of course, and I knew we lived day to day.
(04:03):
I'd go go buywhatever we were going to eat.
I would have to go buy it to the storeevery day.
Right?
They would send me walking, Go get this,go get that.
And I walk to get the food.
So that was my education in finance.
It was work.
My mom worked.
My grandma, who lived with us as well,sold the door
(04:24):
to door businesses, business cardsand other printed material.
So that was my world. Wow.
And so how did you howand when did you decide that you
wanted to be an entrepreneur?
I wanted to be a poet in the missionary,
and I was a missionarysince I was 15 years old.
(04:45):
So I did become a missionaryand I wanted to go to the mountains
and forget about civilization
until I realized how poor we really were.
And then they said, I'mthe man of the family.
I. I need to be a CEO.
That was mymy logic as a kid or as as a teen.
It was, well, I need to start by bringing
(05:08):
running waterinto my house and electricity.
This was in Tijuana, in Mexico.
In order to accomplish this, you have toflip the bill for the infrastructure.
And as you can imagine back then,a long time ago, each post
was $1,000 to bring electricity in Mexico.
Right now, minimum wage is $50 a week.
(05:32):
So I said, I'm not goingto make it. How am I going to
how how am I going to save
10,000, $20,000 with the $50 salary?
So I said, well, I'll be the CEO. Done.
So I thought I would bethe CEO of this manufacturing company
because Juana has all of thesemanufacturing companies
from all over the world,Black and Decker, Toyota, Samsung,
(05:57):
both they're all there.
So I thought, well, that's my path.
Later on, I discovered I was an Americancitizen because they didn't know my.
That's where I get the Olson via
the Vikings through Minneapolis to Tijuana
if you can imagine that's that'squite a journey from my grandparents.
(06:17):
So I decided to come to schooland to the U.S.,
cross the border every day, 4 hourseach way to get to school.
A lot of reading, one book a day.
I would read one nonfiction book a daybecause novels is another story, right?
Like a thousand page novels.
I couldn't do one a day, but,you know, 2 to 300 pages, it's doable.
(06:40):
A lot of audio.
Even back then,we had book and tapes instead of
we didn't call them audio books.
We call them books on tape.
So I had my Walkmanand the bus and walking. So
I decided I was going to be an executive.
That was my goal in lifeto be an executive vice president or CEO
(07:01):
in order to my life dreamto have my grandma and my mom stop working
and put water, electricity, sewage,the whole the whole nine yards.
So that was my my financial goal in lifeand go to Europe.
That was my other goal.
So I had those those two big goals.
So I set my mind into being an employeeand then quickly,
(07:27):
I thought, quickly, because I'm a child,the quickly being an executive.
MM. Okay.
And so one of the things you pursuedis, is that path
towardsbecoming a CEO of somebody else's company
and eventually going on to to, well,why don't you tell the story?
So you work your wayup to the executive position, right?
(07:50):
Yeah.
And it's very difficult to do itwith or without mentors
because remember, I was a kid from Tijuanawith no experience, no connections,
so I didn't have somebody to mentor meor somebody to bring me into a company
and say, Oh, I'm on the fasttrack you to investment bank or something.
Like, I didn't have any of that.
(08:11):
As a matter of fact,I couldn't get a job after college.
I like nothing,not even a part time job that I wanted.
So I started teaching languagesand part time
because they would only give me parttime work and they made enough.
I had a car now
and they made enough to pay the gasto come back the next day to work.
(08:33):
So I was just going around in circles.
However,I was teaching languages to executives
from other countriesthat came to San Diego to play golf
and kind of learn another languagebecause really they were on vacation.
And one of the things that I did
get also from my family was
(08:54):
and this is very normal in commonin Mexico, where you open your are
your your arms and you accept everybodyand you host them.
So my my, the people that I caughtwere no different.
And I took them out in about the city.
I even took them down to Tijuana
(09:14):
to eat
Mexican food and have a good timein, of course, all over San Diego.
So I befriended a lot of these executivesand they were top notch.
I'm talking about
the president of Deloitte, for example,came from France, and I was his teacher,
like top level executivesfrom Fortune companies.
One of them hired me.
(09:35):
And it's as simple as that.
One of them hired me, a German fella,
and he said,You want to come to Germany and work?
I said, Duh.
So I, I, I thought my first jobout of college, my first real professional
job was a softwareconsultant in Western Europe.
Not only Germany,but Germany, France, Holland.
(09:57):
Spain was my territory.
So that was my introductionto the business world.
I was still studying like crazyreading like crazy.
And soon after I was the CEO of U.S.
Operationsor North American Operations, Mexico, U.S.
and Canada for this ERP software company.
That that was the wayI got into the business world.
(10:20):
My first paycheck, I called home and said,Retire mom, grandma, retire.
I sent half of my paycheck home.
And with that money,all of the things that I told you,
we were able even washer dryer, cable,I went all out right.
And and that was my dream.
And I achieved that at 26 at it.
(10:44):
29 I was at a different jobexecutive in the software company.
And there's a lot of travel involvedbecause I was selling, visiting,
visiting manufacturersand other accounts to sell them.
I was VP of Business Developmentand I said, Why
am I working so hardif all of my dreams came true already?
(11:05):
Oh, remember I told youI one of my dreams was to go to Europe?
Well, I lived in Europe for a year.
I had a car,so I got to travel on their dime.
So that was amazing.
So I said, I'm done with my dreamsand my goals and everything.
I'm done.
I, I everything that I want, thatI ever wanted.
I got I had an apartment in Coronado
(11:26):
then then an apartment in LaHoya paid by the company.
These are two of the most expensiveplaces in the entire country.
New car,
more than a month vacation, paid tripsto Europe, the whole thing.
However,
I said, what was my goal?
I wanted to be a missionaryand I wanted to be a poet.
(11:48):
By now.
It was evolved into a writermore than a port, not more than a poet,
a writer.
Because I wanted to write nonfictionbooks, at least at that time.
Now, now I want to write fiction.
And I said, I need to get my time back.
And I.
I studied more and I said, The only wayI can maintain this type of income
(12:11):
without working 12 hoursa day is by being an entrepreneur.
Sure, you can work 12 hours, 14 hours,and I've done that also in the past.
But that wasn't my goal.
My goal was to maintainthe same salary that I had by working
part time,
not not 40 hours and not 60 hours,
(12:32):
and then having time to writeand having time to travel.
So I bought a companybecause I didn't know
how to start a company,even though I was 30,
I bought my first companyand that's the way I started.
It was wholesale distribution,my entry into the business world.
Did you know anything about wholesaledistribution when you bought this company?
(12:53):
I knew nothing about wholesaledistribution.
I did have a lot of
best practices that I brought from from
from my days as a software consultantbecause I would install software
in manufacturing companies and they hadsome sales and wholesale distribution.
(13:14):
So the software integrated solutions.
So I knew it from a backend,I knew it from
ordering, receiving,entering into inventory,
selling it depleting inventory,calculating gross margins.
And that the finance side,I knew as well by now,
I already launched my previous job,my last job,
(13:37):
I helped them get funding, soI knew a little bit about venture capital
and I knew a lot about how to preparefinancials, business plans and that side.
And I taught myself how to do that.
It wasbasically Excel and some business writing,
which I started writing with my first job.
(13:57):
I learned that if you write articles,you position yourself as an expert.
The reason I was able to advance quickly
was becauseI positioned my self as an expert.
So I kept doing thatand I haven't stopped.
So I position myselfas a wholesaler distribution expert.
And the I'm a big believer believerin mentors.
(14:20):
The the gentleman
that took me to Europe became my mentorand taught me how to be an executive.
The person who sold methe business became my mentor
and taught me wholesale distribution,then became an investor.
He invested $1,000,000and became my partner.
So Mentor first he sold me the business,then mentor partner.
(14:42):
By the time he sold me the business,he had 30 years experience in wholesale
distribution that he delivered to mein about 18 months, all day, every day
together, all day, everyday travelto trade shows in the car, importing.
I developed over a thousand consumer goodsat that time while working with him.
(15:04):
That's incredible.
So what's interesting is,is you hit on two very important points.
One, when it comes to entrepreneurship,the importance of learning
to figure things out,learning to break things down
to their essence,to their most important points,
because otherwise you can spend
(15:25):
crazy inordinate amounts of time
just trying to figure out a lot of details
that will just lead to confusionrather than results.
So the first thing is, is your abilityto boil it down to the essence,
the basic facts,the most important factors, and to
the importance ofmentorship and having the right guidance,
(15:46):
having the right people in your corner
to help you ascend to the next level.
So let's break those downand take them one at a time.
First, what would you use?
What one do you do?
You agree with that?
And two and it'sokay if you don't, by the way.
So one, do you agree with that?
And two, in terms of the way
(16:09):
you look at somethingso that you break it down
into its core essence,how do you go about doing that?
What's your what's your approach?
Okay,
I will I believe in what you said.
I agree with it as well.
And I learned that lessonwhen I was 16 years old.
I went to a schoolwhere everybody was smarter than me.
(16:34):
Very, very smart.
Everybody was very, very smart.
Now they're deans in universities.
They work for Nasar, a really smart.
And I thought,okay, it's not going to be IQ
because these guys are much smarter,so it's not going to be IQ.
Am I going to make it inI with my IQ, I need something else.
(16:56):
And I said, I'm going to, I'mgoing to my superpower
will be being able to readand learn and apply.
I said, that's going to be my superpower.
Instead of just making mistakes,I will learn from other people's
mistakes, mentor books, courses,all of these things
(17:16):
that I was just eating every day,eating, drinking knowledge.
And in my reasoning was, first of all,I needed to learn how to learn.
Second, I needed to learn and apply.
Luckily, because I was in Germanyand the Germans have a thing
learning by doing,I got to do a lot of doing
(17:37):
and a lot of applicationso that that was the first step.
Learning to learn
and then learning to apply knowledgewithout making the mistake yourself.
So that was a big thing.
So when the mentor that did it for30 years and told me, Don't do this, don't
do this, do it like this or like that,I was I was able to do it exactly that way
(17:58):
and avoid all of these costly mistakesand learn
faster than normal, let's say.
So yes, that was a big thing.
And I still use the same techniques
to this day of of applicationin whatever I'm doing.
I, I taught martial arts.
I just stopped,but I taught martial arts for some time.
(18:21):
And I was able to move through the systemquickly
because I had a mentor,I was able to learn and apply.
So same thing.
Then when I thought
I was teaching how to learn,not just how to learn the martial arts
so that the students can alsoget into the mindset
of of learning whatever, whatever it is,in this case, martial arts.
(18:43):
It can be business,it can be finance entrepreneur,
worship, literature, or writing books.
Right?
That took a long time for me,especially since I write in English
and it's my second languagethat took a long time.
I couldn't write anything when I startedjust Spanish.
So that transition also a lotof a lot of studying, a lot of reading
(19:05):
and learning from editors, for example,those were my mentors in that process.
I even hired private mentorsto teach me how to write and edit
that were same people who write and edit
for Penguin, Random Houseand this be in the big The Big Boys.
I got them to mentor me
so that I could accelerate to mymy writing.
(19:28):
So that's that's how I apply it.
That's how I go about it with
application learning and application.
So what do you think is the,the best framework for learning?
It's different for everybody.
It's it's how you learned as a child
(19:49):
with what your genes already have.
I'm a big auditory learner.
And the way I explain it,because I listen to a lot of audiobooks
and the way I explain itto a lot of people, especially the people
who do not like audiobooks,is I explain it this way
for the majority of humanity,we couldn't read.
(20:11):
If you look at itwhen we started reading as a planet,
not in the US,not in your state or your city,
but as a planet that includesChina, India, Africa.
It's only been 50 yearssince the majority of the population
knows how to read, but how about before?
(20:32):
How about 240,000 years
know reading?
So how did we learn?
Well, when we developed language,we learned by bye stories before
probably pointinggrunting and noises and pointing.
Right. So a lot of through the ear.
But once we started developing our earin our vocal chords
(20:55):
and communicating them, it's been stories,it's been auditory.
So we have a an advantage
because we can learn from the eareven before we're born.
Stanforddid a study to identify that children,
when they're born,they already cry in an accent,
so they already have an accentwhen they're born.
(21:17):
They also identify sounds, ambient sounds,
the parents or whoever speaking,if there's a dog barking.
They did an experiment that there's a dogbarking in the house before they're born.
The dog barksWhen when the when the child is born
and the child doesn't cry,if they introduce a dog, they cry.
(21:39):
And what they think it's he knows it'sa dog and it's part of the family
so the noise doesn't bother themthey can sleep through.
So for me, it's auditory.
I listen to a lot of audiobooksand I learned
how to do something while I'm learning.
It started, as I said, because I needed towalk, take the bus across the border
(22:00):
in order to get to school withwith my headphones, with my Walkman.
And now I can do
I can drive,
but I can do things around the houseand listen to audiobooks.
I can have conversationswhile I'm listening to audiobooks.
And and that was my one of my secretsthat I was able
(22:20):
to go through more informationfaster than anybody else.
And because I was very attuned to my ear,I was able to learn
that information when I heard only once.
And I think that was a biga big way for me.
Again, everybody's different,but that was the way I learned.
(22:41):
And now it's come to a to apply it.
One of the things that I think it'svery important when it's time to apply
it is forget about failure.
I in Mexico you you don't get enough
it's a number system so if you get a five,you fail in my school.
If you get a six,which is a D, you would fail
(23:04):
and you have to get a Bto stay in the school.
So it was a difficult school,but but I never heard failure
as a grade until I migrated to the U.S.
and I was taken abackthat you would tell a kid that he failed.
Even though I was a young adult, I would.
How can you tell kids they failed?
(23:25):
This is out of the question.
I was indignant to the fact that
that you could fail somebody likeespecially in business.
You don't fail in business.
You just become smarter.You fail forward, right?
You have to fall forward and then be ableto learn from it and keep going.
So that's the second thing.
Forget about failure and get ridof the fear of fear of failure.
(23:49):
You can keep the fearof not being the best.
I think that helps you a little bit.
The fear of failure in anything.
I think we should get rid of thatin sports.
In speaking right,a lot of people are afraid of speaking in
speaking, in pursuing artsor in pursuing business.
You have to remove the failurefrom the equation.
(24:13):
You know, it's an interesting pointbecause I agree with you
to a certain extent,and I disagree with you
to a certain extent,depending on the context.
And here's what I mean.
Here's what I think you're saying,which I agree with,
which is regarding failure to the extentthat the fear of failure prevents
you from taking action,then I think you're absolutely right
(24:34):
that one has to take actionto be able to move forward.
One has to take actionto be able to succeed.
I think that there'san aspect of the fear of failure
that at least for me,I found to be very positive,
which is the aspect of preparation,the act of preparing.
So it's the other side
of exactly what you're talking about,the actions that need to be taken
(24:57):
and why one would take the action versusnot take the action.
And fortunately,I think we've seen a number of people
who will go in confidence is one thingwhich I think is very important,
and I think it's good.
And confidence gives you the willingness,
the courage many times to take the actionthat needs to be taken.
But unfortunately,
sometimes what can happenis, is confidence can turn into arrogance.
(25:20):
And for me,
the difference between confidenceand arrogance is the lack of preparation.
Somebody's coming in and believingthey're already ready
when they haven'tprepared to do the thing.
So I'll give it back to you in terms ofwhether you agree or disagree with that.
And what are your thoughts onhow one goes about preparing?
Like, for example, you went from CEO toto making a decision that you wanted to
(25:46):
have yourown business, but it's it's a lifestyle
business, a wholesale businessthat you learn from a mentor,
and that would give you the flexibilityto be able
to pursue your other artistic passions.
And so you prepared to be able to do that.
Can you also talk a little bitabout how you prepared to do that?
Sure. And I think it's important to note
(26:07):
I grew up as an athleteand I never stopped being an athlete.
And when you're an athlete, youyou learn preparation
because 90% is preparationand 10% this performance
when you're competing, I'mtalking about the 10% that you compete.
I played basketball,I ran track and then martial arts.
(26:30):
I, I,
I'm addicted to practice.
I love to practice.
So free throws, shootingbaskets for 4 hours a day, 5 hours a day.
That's the wayI became good at basketball.
I wasn't natural.
I prepared.
And then I played defense to make it toto to varsity my first year.
(26:52):
That's that's the wayI approached track and basketball.
Martial arts. Same thing.
You have to get in the ringat a certain point, then fight.
And that's terrifying no matter what.
It's terrifying.
However, even
if you're preparedbecause they can always put you against
(27:12):
somebody much more advanced,younger, stronger, heavier.
So there's always somebodybetter than you.
Preparation was the key for mein practice.
Now, when it came to entrepreneurship,
I took what we could call paid practicebecause I was an executive
(27:33):
and I was running companies in my twenties
that were in my companies,but I was running them right.
I opened a U.S. subsidiary.
I had to start it from scratch pay, pay,
pay, payroll, get an accountant.
It incorporated dual ofall of these things that you need to do.
Also as an employee.
So I did the practice part onsomebody else's dime
(27:57):
with mentorship and the whole shebang.
And then I, I studied a lot.
I studied, I read, and then I practiced
with doing financial projections,running numbers.
Another thing that I did to practice isI went through maybe
40 businesses that I passed on.
(28:19):
And I, I acted as an investment banker.
So I wrote my own prompt write.
You're an investment banker.
Looking at the financialand business model
for all of these businesses, decidingwhich ones to purchase.
So I learned how to read financials.
I learned how to seeif a company is healthy or not.
(28:40):
So all of this was practice for meby the time.
So I didn't just
like some some people
say being an entrepreneuris jumping from an airplane
and learning how to build a parachuteon the way that wasn't me.
I learned how to dohow to make a parachute
and how to pack it beforeI got on the plane.
And then when I was on the plane,I was very confident because I knew
(29:05):
how to make money, I knew how to selland they knew marketing.
And I found out in over a year
since then, 20 plus years, that
when youwhen you have a good financial background
and you understand sales and marketing,
you have to be a screw to a screw up
(29:26):
to to to not be successful in business,
especially with the salesand marketing background.
So many of the businessesthat I've founded or launch
since then have been very strongon the branding,
sales and marketing, a lot of beverages,a lot of consumer goods,
because I know the industry
(29:46):
and I wrote the booksand those in the streets.
Another book I wrote is Wholesale MBAthat I just published.
Again,wholesale distribution, which is sales.
That's that's the way I prepared.
I love that.
And and
that is exactly what I thinka lot of younger entrepreneurs
especially need to hear
(30:07):
because we're so usedto seeing the success stories on Instagram
and those kinds of thingsand success stories like yourself
and hearing this whole ideawithout hearing the full background.
So you hear or see the success,you see the tip of the iceberg, but
you don't see what's underneathall the aspects of the discipline,
the hours that go into thethe preparation that people see
(30:32):
and they see the performance,they see the game, but they don't see that
the off season practices, the workouts,all the effort that goes into it.
And in terms of finance and marketing andsales, I 100% agree with you in terms of
any business
needs to have good, solidfinancial controls.
(30:54):
It needs to have really good marketingand really good sales.
And you know, in that regard,do you have any thoughts or tips on
businesses in terms of
what does makefor great sales and marketing?
And are you using any kind of Ior would you recommend that they use
any kind of AI to help them with it?
(31:18):
What what a wonderful question.
And I'm glad your audience getget to hear those questions because
I fire peopleif they don't know how to use AI.
And there's a disconnect right nowwith teachers also,
they're sending these studentsthat they don't know
AI because they don't let the musicAI And I'm telling those teachers
(31:39):
who are a lot of them,my friends, don't send me kids
that don't know I can't use them
and I can't start teaching themfrom scratch.
So yes, I use AI
and everybody that works for meneeds to use AI and then advanced level,
not dabble with it,but more than they need to know
(32:02):
more than I know about aAI that's extremely important.
And yes, I use it every dayand it's a part of my team.
I have a I open also in art.
I use it in art, in painting,in literature
before my my, my real personeditor gets a manuscript,
I programed my own GPUsthat are my editors so they know my style.
(32:27):
They can write in my style.
I program my my favorite editorso that it, it, it
it's like my favorite editors.
So I fed them all the booksand all of the knowledge
so that I get what I want.
And then I send a much better manuscriptto my life, to my editor, which
(32:47):
then becomes my
mentor, because now their jobis to make me a better writer.
In in terms of marketing, my favoritemarketing is direct response marketing.
And let me tell you why.
When when you go to an MBA program,even business.
But let's talk about an MBA program.
Most of the key studiesare from publicly traded companies,
(33:11):
even in your regular textbooks,in management, finance, accounting,
those studies are from companiesthat you can extract information.
And it's much easier if they're publicbecause you can get real, real numbers,
real data, press releaseseven from those companies.
(33:31):
So now you have all of theseyoung younglings studying
marketing from Coca-Cola.
Let's pick on the beverage industrybecause I that's one of my books.
So now you have all of these entrepreneurs
and I've launched over 100 beverages,and I get a lot of entrepreneurs
that call me even students, becausemy book is used in 200 universities.
(33:55):
So I get I get young kids
calling me, Oh,I'm reading your book in college.
I need to do a paper and start a company.
I plan on doing it like Dr.
Pepper and I go, know, do it like Dr.
Pepper did it when they were a startup.
Do it like Coca Cola.
Did it when they were a startup,like Vitamin Water did it
(34:17):
like all of these companies did itwhen they were startups.
Don't do itlike they're doing it now that.
They're there.
They're worth billions of dollarsin market cap and they have Super Bowl
commercials because when you starta beverage company or any company
that's not going to help you,you you're going to think
(34:38):
you can compete with themand you can not that way.
At least you have to competein other ways in blue oceans, in
in ways that nobody is is envisioning.
It's very difficult to put a beveragein the refrigerator in the 7-Eleven now,
but it easy to sell it on Tik-Tok,for example in the very difficult
for Coca-Cola to sell at it.
(34:59):
Tik Tok But you're not going to getthe refrigerator in the store.
I guarantee it.They own that refrigerator.
So direct what direct response doesto the entrepreneurial mind?
It gives it a startup philosophy.
Even even if you're an accounting lawyeror a service on a call,
I call that all of these professionsartisans, if you're an artisan,
(35:23):
if I if I'm a mentor,so I'm an artist in this well, and
I like to use
all of the direct response measurementsbecause in direct response,
if you cannot measure the response,it's not marketing.
You have to attribute a monetary valueto every click, every view,
(35:44):
every sign up, every lead,every prospect, every customer.
And even when they leave, every referral,
for example, in in when I'm workingwith real estate agents, for example,
mentoring real estate agents, I ask them,why do you give people when you give
when they give you a referral?
Mind you, houses in San Diegowhere I live are $1,000,000.
(36:06):
So ridiculous.
But that's that's the price.
So these guys are making $30,000if they make 3%.
So I tell them,what do they give them? Well, cookies.
I tell themI hope they're happy cookies because
they just made you $30,000.
You should give them a tripto Disneyland or Hawaii to spend $3,000.
(36:29):
And they're like, That's ridiculous.
Really? Is it?
If you send somebodyevery year on vacation,
I guarantee you they're going to send youone customer a year
because they'll be accustomedto that vacation.
I would do it.
I would I would send a114 sure customera year to a real estate agent.
If I would get a trip a yearand I think most people would
(36:52):
as well,instead of getting brownies or cookies.
So that's that's an example.
Same if you do Google ads
or meta ads,you have to see it as a formula.
What's the cost of acquisitionof a customer?
What's the lifetime value of that customeras it relates to wholesale distribution,
What's the cost of acquisitionof a 7-Eleven in your neighborhood?
(37:16):
And then what's the cost of acquisitionof a customer, whether you sell snacks
or hats or sunglasses in the 7-Eleven,it's the same formula.
Then how much does it cost you to keepthat 7-Eleven and that customer? Or
even if it's one
customer that comes back every dayto drink your drink or to buy
sunglasses or a lighter or cigaretsor whatever they buy.
(37:40):
And that's what I like about directresponse.
It gets it makes it very easyto for entrepreneurs
to to learn marketing without,oh my God, branding.
I'm not artistic.
It's a little bit of magicwith some fairy dust.
No, it's numbers.
Yeah, absolutely.
And so, well,going back to a little bit of a
(38:03):
I and how you might recommendentrepreneurs end up using it,
you know you did touch upon you know,there's the entry level
and then there's thethe more advanced level.
So can you describe what you mean by thatand what can you give us a specific
example, like what is an entry levelor a bad type of prompt?
And what what is a better type of prompt?
(38:23):
Okay.
I would say that
if you're an entrepreneur, you should pay
for GPP, the paid version number one.
The main reason isbecause you can create your own GPP.
What that means is very simplythat you train the
AI as if it was a member of your business.
(38:44):
What memberyou decide you can have different members
you can have one member, for example,
you might create one GPTthat's a graphic designer.
You might create another GPTwho has a headline editor.
So all they do is pick headlines for you.
And you would.
What I did is I, I did, I, I fed it
(39:08):
the best headlines of all time.
All right.
So copywriter, right?
It's a headline writer or copywriter.
It writes to sellit writes copy that sells not
science fiction fantasy.
They write to sell.
That's important.You might have another one.
That's a financial.
(39:30):
You might have another one,which is your accountant.
I even do one per project or per customer.
I LGBT based on the business model,
and they come up with the business modelfor that business first.
So this is the way I would approach it.
Number one,start with yourself as a person,
(39:51):
be it everything about you,
what you like,what you don't like, your strengths,
your weaknesses,tell it or have a conversation.
Right nowyou can put on your phone, push a button
and you can be driving to workor to your office
and train your GP by having a conversationand you would just tell them
(40:13):
to interview you.
You would tell it.
I want to write a GP who'sgoing to be my publicist
or my personal brand manager,help me train it.
That's that's your prompt,because what you really want is for a
to interview you once it interviews you,all of that copy.
By the way, this might be 10,000 words.
(40:34):
There may be a lot you would feedthat interview as your prompt
so that that big conversationyou know most the book
we talk about 8000 words per hour
so if you if it's a 30 minutedrive to your office in 30 minutes back
guess what you just trained an incrediblemodel like an incredible almost a book.
(40:57):
Right.
If you do that two days,it's an actual book that you just wrote
with yourwith your interview just by conversing
because it is smartand it will it'll ask you
and you can tell it to ask youdeep questions so it'll get to know you.
Now you have something to feedyour first GP
or your first custom A.I..
(41:19):
You feed it that 10,000 wordsand you say, You're my publicist.
This is the conversation I had with you.
Learn from it and you will help me
with my businessbased on what you know about me.
So now you have your own GP t traina new personal branding is a big thing.
(41:40):
When I started, it wasn't a big thing nowbecause you see all of these executives
that you get to knowand they kind of live a reality show.
A lot of these
software executives
we're used to, we know they're a brandand it's important.
Back in the day, people would hideBSB behind logos and corporations.
(42:04):
Even when LinkedIn started, I remembermy friends wouldn't put their picture
like for for ten yearsthey didn't put a picture
because how can they I'mnot going to share a picture online
right now.
If you don't have a picture on LinkedIn,you don't exist.
You're not going to get hired right?
Nobody's going to trust you.
When they Google you, they're going to saywisely way ways to get hiding.
(42:27):
So that changed a lot.
So I would startwith the personal branding.
Then from there I would do the samewith your company, I would say.
But to this trend, yep,I wouldn't start from scratch.
You I am the CEO with all of theseweaknesses and strengths.
I am the CEO of this business.
(42:47):
This is the business model.
Please help me write myself,
letter my email, utter responders, my ads,
my brochure, my about me page,
my press releases, whatever,
whatever you write and do my branding,my logo, it would do a logo for you
based on your favorite colorsand maybe arts.
(43:10):
If you're into art, you can tell itwhat art styles you like
and then it'll it'll start doingall of this for your business
once you have this big document foryour business, then you do the same thing.
You start a new GPP and you feed it.
All of this informationthat your first year gave you.
(43:32):
So now you have a personal branding teamand your business
that will help you createLinkedIn posts, ads,
press releases,a job ads so you can attract talent.
All of this you just trained.
Same with art and branding learn.
You need to know a little bit about artor get somebody who knows
(43:56):
a little bit about art.
This is where being an art majorand an art lover helps me because
I was a VP of Marketing since I was 26
and I did all the creativefor the companies that I've worked with.
I've done creative for Snoop Dogg, forRick Ross, for NFL players, NBA players.
(44:16):
So I don't get a designeruntil my designer do it.
I, I, the designer is my, my,I know it's CGI, but back then it was
my designer and I would tell I would givemy designer props as well as styles.
Use these styles. Don't invent anything.
(44:36):
Do exactly what I tell youbecause when I tell them,
use your imagination and try to give mesomething, I never like it.
So then you're the problem, right?
It's not them, it's you.
So you have to know what you wantand you have to know something about.
Now I'm getting into brandingfor the branding side, not just the direct
response copy,but the let's call it the visual aspect,
(44:59):
because now you can do videos,you can clone yourself,
you can do video ads, mini movies,all with the eye, right?
With the new release from Google,which is amazing,
you can do seven second videosand then or even with soda and then
put them together to do a commercial.
(45:20):
So you need to understand art.
If you don't understand artor you don't get one, get in to it.
Use the word vibe.
For example, I want a seven piece
underground Russian metro
vibe.
I won the PAC Men seventies,late seventies vibe.
(45:42):
I won an eighties arcade in San Antonio
vibe and then B.A I understands,or a manga, a Japanese manga vibe, right?
If you're into that type.
And then it'll it'll say,I know what you mean.
They'll say throwing you things thatthen you get, Oh yeah, I like this one.
And then you say, Reverseengineer it for me, reverse prompt it.
(46:06):
Once you find a vibe that you like,you reversed, prompted.
Now you're an expert.
It's prompting the art that you like, andnow you can go ahead and brand yourself.
Your company with thiswith all of the same type of art.
So that's, that's the way I, I use aI currently I love that.
That is so good.
That is one of the best summariesand useful
(46:29):
tactical descriptionsof how somebody has successfully used A.I.
in terms of marketingand branding that I've heard.
So thank youfor sharing that with the audience.
You're welcome.
So, George, let me ask you this.
If our listeners want to find outmore about you, including
how to work with you,how can they reach out to you or find you?
(46:53):
Sure call
Salon.com, which is my name, dotcom George O'Loughlin
and I have a free newsletterwhich happens to be a webinar
because I brand myself through videomore than anything,
and I have free webinars that I go in to,but that starts the conversation
because you'll have my email, LinkedIn,if you can't wait
(47:15):
and you want to talk to me immediately,I go to LinkedIn.
I'm a big user of LinkedIn, I'ma first adopter of LinkedIn.
I have groups in excessof 100,000 members on LinkedIn.
So I always answermy LinkedIn is I treat it as
text is texting my email.
Now I like LinkedInbecause I know who you are.
If you go to my Twitter, you can hide.
(47:37):
And I don't like thatI, I like to know about you as well.
So LinkedIn is great if it's urgent,but if you want more information,
if you want to get my vibe,go to waterholes and dot com
and then you'll get emails and videosfrom me.
Awesome. Love it.
I hope you all learned as much as I did
(47:59):
in terms of the vast breadth of knowledge.
More hay, the depth of knowledge, more.
Hey, so thank you againfor sharing this wisdom
and knowledge with me and the listeners.
You're so welcome.
And to everybody who joined in,I hope you enjoyed this podcast episode
and if you want to hear more,
(48:20):
including tactical tips to help youscale your business and avoid any crisis
or go from crisis to justice,make sure you like and subscribe.
Until next time, I'm your host, Farai.
I mean, and I'll see that
all.
Hi, I'm Parag Amin.
Welcome to my podcast.
From Crisis to Justice.
As a lawyer and entrepreneur, I'mpassionate about helping small business
owners successfully navigate situationsthat can kill a business.
As a kid, I watched my dad's dreamsof being an entrepreneur were destroyed
by an unethical businessman, and I don'twant that to happen to you or your family.
(00:22):
That's why I started my law firm.
I want to protect and defend businessowners and their legacies from crisis.
Welcome to From Crisis to Justice.
Hello, everybody.
Welcome back to From Crisis to Justice.
I am your host, Parag Amin,and I am joined
(00:43):
by my special guest, George Olson.
George is a California based entrepreneur,
syndicated media producer and best sellingauthor who has launched in scaled
multiple eight figure businesses,often from the ground up.
He wrote the book BuildYour Beverage, Empire and Marketing Karma,
(01:05):
along with a number of fictionand nonfiction books.
He, in fact, has published 15 books and
or specializes in helping entrepreneursturn personal branding,
storytelling and omnichannelmarketing into unstoppable growth engines,
especially when navigating risk regulationor reinvention.
(01:27):
He's taken five companiespublic and raised over $100 million.
Hey, thank you so much for being on today.
You're very welcome.
All right.
So before we started recording,you and I were talking
and you were telling me a little bitabout your interesting background,
including the fact that you, in fact,despite all these
(01:48):
major financial accomplishments,taking five companies public,
you didn't have any kindof financial background.
And in fact, it sounds likemaybe you grew up in an artistic family
more than a business family.
Is that right?
And can you tell us a little bitabout that journey?
Sure.
And then it even goes further than that.
(02:10):
I majored in artin liberal arts and sciences.
I did go into business,and when I saw that
they were teaching entrepreneurship,it was more how to be an employee.
I changed that to art because I was moreinterested in art anyway.
I was just doing business sothat I could go into the business world.
(02:31):
And then my house, mywe didn't have water running water
or electricity,but we had over 10,000 books in my house.
There were stacked all over the housein every corner.
You had towers of books.
My mom is a speed readerand she finished college
when I was 14, 15, and then becamea teacher of philosophy and literature.
(02:56):
So my love for books grew from there,from having so many books and started
picking up mythology at first,and then astronomy and then other stories.
That was the education they had.
It was how to be a good person and art,
philosophyand everything that goes around that
(03:16):
appreciation of beauty, logic,
the human human behavior, influence.
As a matter of fact, when I realized this,I started to influence since I was 12.
Later, I realized that if you if you put
that influence towards the marketplace,they call it marketing.
(03:37):
And then I was a VP of marketinglike that, like super fast.
When I realized I'd been studyingmarketing, another type of marketing,
but marketing none the less,since I was 12.
So that was that was the the, the,the education I had.
We never talked about money.
We never talked about finances.
I knew we didn't have a lot of money,of course, and I knew we lived day to day.
(04:03):
I'd go go buywhatever we were going to eat.
I would have to go buy it to the storeevery day.
Right?
They would send me walking, Go get this,go get that.
And I walk to get the food.
So that was my education in finance.
It was work.
My mom worked.
My grandma, who lived with us as well,sold the door
(04:24):
to door businesses, business cardsand other printed material.
So that was my world. Wow.
And so how did you howand when did you decide that you
wanted to be an entrepreneur?
I wanted to be a poet in the missionary,
and I was a missionarysince I was 15 years old.
(04:45):
So I did become a missionaryand I wanted to go to the mountains
and forget about civilization
until I realized how poor we really were.
And then they said, I'mthe man of the family.
I. I need to be a CEO.
That was mymy logic as a kid or as as a teen.
It was, well, I need to start by bringing
(05:08):
running waterinto my house and electricity.
This was in Tijuana, in Mexico.
In order to accomplish this, you have toflip the bill for the infrastructure.
And as you can imagine back then,a long time ago, each post
was $1,000 to bring electricity in Mexico.
Right now, minimum wage is $50 a week.
(05:32):
So I said, I'm not goingto make it. How am I going to
how how am I going to save
10,000, $20,000 with the $50 salary?
So I said, well, I'll be the CEO. Done.
So I thought I would bethe CEO of this manufacturing company
because Juana has all of thesemanufacturing companies
from all over the world,Black and Decker, Toyota, Samsung,
(05:57):
both they're all there.
So I thought, well, that's my path.
Later on, I discovered I was an Americancitizen because they didn't know my.
That's where I get the Olson via
the Vikings through Minneapolis to Tijuana
if you can imagine that's that'squite a journey from my grandparents.
(06:17):
So I decided to come to schooland to the U.S.,
cross the border every day, 4 hourseach way to get to school.
A lot of reading, one book a day.
I would read one nonfiction book a daybecause novels is another story, right?
Like a thousand page novels.
I couldn't do one a day, but,you know, 2 to 300 pages, it's doable.
(06:40):
A lot of audio.
Even back then,we had book and tapes instead of
we didn't call them audio books.
We call them books on tape.
So I had my Walkmanand the bus and walking. So
I decided I was going to be an executive.
That was my goal in lifeto be an executive vice president or CEO
(07:01):
in order to my life dreamto have my grandma and my mom stop working
and put water, electricity, sewage,the whole the whole nine yards.
So that was my my financial goal in lifeand go to Europe.
That was my other goal.
So I had those those two big goals.
So I set my mind into being an employeeand then quickly,
(07:27):
I thought, quickly, because I'm a child,the quickly being an executive.
MM. Okay.
And so one of the things you pursuedis, is that path
towardsbecoming a CEO of somebody else's company
and eventually going on to to, well,why don't you tell the story?
So you work your wayup to the executive position, right?
(07:50):
Yeah.
And it's very difficult to do itwith or without mentors
because remember, I was a kid from Tijuanawith no experience, no connections,
so I didn't have somebody to mentor meor somebody to bring me into a company
and say, Oh, I'm on the fasttrack you to investment bank or something.
Like, I didn't have any of that.
(08:11):
As a matter of fact,I couldn't get a job after college.
I like nothing,not even a part time job that I wanted.
So I started teaching languagesand part time
because they would only give me parttime work and they made enough.
I had a car now
and they made enough to pay the gasto come back the next day to work.
(08:33):
So I was just going around in circles.
However,I was teaching languages to executives
from other countriesthat came to San Diego to play golf
and kind of learn another languagebecause really they were on vacation.
And one of the things that I did
get also from my family was
(08:54):
and this is very normal in commonin Mexico, where you open your are
your your arms and you accept everybodyand you host them.
So my my, the people that I caughtwere no different.
And I took them out in about the city.
I even took them down to Tijuana
(09:14):
to eat
Mexican food and have a good timein, of course, all over San Diego.
So I befriended a lot of these executivesand they were top notch.
I'm talking about
the president of Deloitte, for example,came from France, and I was his teacher,
like top level executivesfrom Fortune companies.
One of them hired me.
(09:35):
And it's as simple as that.
One of them hired me, a German fella,
and he said,You want to come to Germany and work?
I said, Duh.
So I, I, I thought my first jobout of college, my first real professional
job was a softwareconsultant in Western Europe.
Not only Germany,but Germany, France, Holland.
(09:57):
Spain was my territory.
So that was my introductionto the business world.
I was still studying like crazyreading like crazy.
And soon after I was the CEO of U.S.
Operationsor North American Operations, Mexico, U.S.
and Canada for this ERP software company.
That that was the wayI got into the business world.
(10:20):
My first paycheck, I called home and said,Retire mom, grandma, retire.
I sent half of my paycheck home.
And with that money,all of the things that I told you,
we were able even washer dryer, cable,I went all out right.
And and that was my dream.
And I achieved that at 26 at it.
(10:44):
29 I was at a different jobexecutive in the software company.
And there's a lot of travel involvedbecause I was selling, visiting,
visiting manufacturersand other accounts to sell them.
I was VP of Business Developmentand I said, Why
am I working so hardif all of my dreams came true already?
(11:05):
Oh, remember I told youI one of my dreams was to go to Europe?
Well, I lived in Europe for a year.
I had a car,so I got to travel on their dime.
So that was amazing.
So I said, I'm done with my dreamsand my goals and everything.
I'm done.
I, I everything that I want, thatI ever wanted.
I got I had an apartment in Coronado
(11:26):
then then an apartment in LaHoya paid by the company.
These are two of the most expensiveplaces in the entire country.
New car,
more than a month vacation, paid tripsto Europe, the whole thing.
However,
I said, what was my goal?
I wanted to be a missionaryand I wanted to be a poet.
(11:48):
By now.
It was evolved into a writermore than a port, not more than a poet,
a writer.
Because I wanted to write nonfictionbooks, at least at that time.
Now, now I want to write fiction.
And I said, I need to get my time back.
And I.
I studied more and I said, The only wayI can maintain this type of income
(12:11):
without working 12 hoursa day is by being an entrepreneur.
Sure, you can work 12 hours, 14 hours,and I've done that also in the past.
But that wasn't my goal.
My goal was to maintainthe same salary that I had by working
part time,
not not 40 hours and not 60 hours,
(12:32):
and then having time to writeand having time to travel.
So I bought a companybecause I didn't know
how to start a company,even though I was 30,
I bought my first companyand that's the way I started.
It was wholesale distribution,my entry into the business world.
Did you know anything about wholesaledistribution when you bought this company?
(12:53):
I knew nothing about wholesaledistribution.
I did have a lot of
best practices that I brought from from
from my days as a software consultantbecause I would install software
in manufacturing companies and they hadsome sales and wholesale distribution.
(13:14):
So the software integrated solutions.
So I knew it from a backend,I knew it from
ordering, receiving,entering into inventory,
selling it depleting inventory,calculating gross margins.
And that the finance side,I knew as well by now,
I already launched my previous job,my last job,
(13:37):
I helped them get funding, soI knew a little bit about venture capital
and I knew a lot about how to preparefinancials, business plans and that side.
And I taught myself how to do that.
It wasbasically Excel and some business writing,
which I started writing with my first job.
(13:57):
I learned that if you write articles,you position yourself as an expert.
The reason I was able to advance quickly
was becauseI positioned my self as an expert.
So I kept doing thatand I haven't stopped.
So I position myselfas a wholesaler distribution expert.
And the I'm a big believer believerin mentors.
(14:20):
The the gentleman
that took me to Europe became my mentorand taught me how to be an executive.
The person who sold methe business became my mentor
and taught me wholesale distribution,then became an investor.
He invested $1,000,000and became my partner.
So Mentor first he sold me the business,then mentor partner.
(14:42):
By the time he sold me the business,he had 30 years experience in wholesale
distribution that he delivered to mein about 18 months, all day, every day
together, all day, everyday travelto trade shows in the car, importing.
I developed over a thousand consumer goodsat that time while working with him.
(15:04):
That's incredible.
So what's interesting is,is you hit on two very important points.
One, when it comes to entrepreneurship,the importance of learning
to figure things out,learning to break things down
to their essence,to their most important points,
because otherwise you can spend
(15:25):
crazy inordinate amounts of time
just trying to figure out a lot of details
that will just lead to confusionrather than results.
So the first thing is, is your abilityto boil it down to the essence,
the basic facts,the most important factors, and to
the importance ofmentorship and having the right guidance,
(15:46):
having the right people in your corner
to help you ascend to the next level.
So let's break those downand take them one at a time.
First, what would you use?
What one do you do?
You agree with that?
And two and it'sokay if you don't, by the way.
So one, do you agree with that?
And two, in terms of the way
(16:09):
you look at somethingso that you break it down
into its core essence,how do you go about doing that?
What's your what's your approach?
Okay,
I will I believe in what you said.
I agree with it as well.
And I learned that lessonwhen I was 16 years old.
I went to a schoolwhere everybody was smarter than me.
(16:34):
Very, very smart.
Everybody was very, very smart.
Now they're deans in universities.
They work for Nasar, a really smart.
And I thought,okay, it's not going to be IQ
because these guys are much smarter,so it's not going to be IQ.
Am I going to make it inI with my IQ, I need something else.
(16:56):
And I said, I'm going to, I'mgoing to my superpower
will be being able to readand learn and apply.
I said, that's going to be my superpower.
Instead of just making mistakes,I will learn from other people's
mistakes, mentor books, courses,all of these things
(17:16):
that I was just eating every day,eating, drinking knowledge.
And in my reasoning was, first of all,I needed to learn how to learn.
Second, I needed to learn and apply.
Luckily, because I was in Germanyand the Germans have a thing
learning by doing,I got to do a lot of doing
(17:37):
and a lot of applicationso that that was the first step.
Learning to learn
and then learning to apply knowledgewithout making the mistake yourself.
So that was a big thing.
So when the mentor that did it for30 years and told me, Don't do this, don't
do this, do it like this or like that,I was I was able to do it exactly that way
(17:58):
and avoid all of these costly mistakesand learn
faster than normal, let's say.
So yes, that was a big thing.
And I still use the same techniques
to this day of of applicationin whatever I'm doing.
I, I taught martial arts.
I just stopped,but I taught martial arts for some time.
(18:21):
And I was able to move through the systemquickly
because I had a mentor,I was able to learn and apply.
So same thing.
Then when I thought
I was teaching how to learn,not just how to learn the martial arts
so that the students can alsoget into the mindset
of of learning whatever, whatever it is,in this case, martial arts.
(18:43):
It can be business,it can be finance entrepreneur,
worship, literature, or writing books.
Right?
That took a long time for me,especially since I write in English
and it's my second languagethat took a long time.
I couldn't write anything when I startedjust Spanish.
So that transition also a lotof a lot of studying, a lot of reading
(19:05):
and learning from editors, for example,those were my mentors in that process.
I even hired private mentorsto teach me how to write and edit
that were same people who write and edit
for Penguin, Random Houseand this be in the big The Big Boys.
I got them to mentor me
so that I could accelerate to mymy writing.
(19:28):
So that's that's how I apply it.
That's how I go about it with
application learning and application.
So what do you think is the,the best framework for learning?
It's different for everybody.
It's it's how you learned as a child
(19:49):
with what your genes already have.
I'm a big auditory learner.
And the way I explain it,because I listen to a lot of audiobooks
and the way I explain itto a lot of people, especially the people
who do not like audiobooks,is I explain it this way
for the majority of humanity,we couldn't read.
(20:11):
If you look at itwhen we started reading as a planet,
not in the US,not in your state or your city,
but as a planet that includesChina, India, Africa.
It's only been 50 yearssince the majority of the population
knows how to read, but how about before?
(20:32):
How about 240,000 years
know reading?
So how did we learn?
Well, when we developed language,we learned by bye stories before
probably pointinggrunting and noises and pointing.
Right. So a lot of through the ear.
But once we started developing our earin our vocal chords
(20:55):
and communicating them, it's been stories,it's been auditory.
So we have a an advantage
because we can learn from the eareven before we're born.
Stanforddid a study to identify that children,
when they're born,they already cry in an accent,
so they already have an accentwhen they're born.
(21:17):
They also identify sounds, ambient sounds,
the parents or whoever speaking,if there's a dog barking.
They did an experiment that there's a dogbarking in the house before they're born.
The dog barksWhen when the when the child is born
and the child doesn't cry,if they introduce a dog, they cry.
(21:39):
And what they think it's he knows it'sa dog and it's part of the family
so the noise doesn't bother themthey can sleep through.
So for me, it's auditory.
I listen to a lot of audiobooksand I learned
how to do something while I'm learning.
It started, as I said, because I needed towalk, take the bus across the border
(22:00):
in order to get to school withwith my headphones, with my Walkman.
And now I can do
I can drive,
but I can do things around the houseand listen to audiobooks.
I can have conversationswhile I'm listening to audiobooks.
And and that was my one of my secretsthat I was able
(22:20):
to go through more informationfaster than anybody else.
And because I was very attuned to my ear,I was able to learn
that information when I heard only once.
And I think that was a biga big way for me.
Again, everybody's different,but that was the way I learned.
(22:41):
And now it's come to a to apply it.
One of the things that I think it'svery important when it's time to apply
it is forget about failure.
I in Mexico you you don't get enough
it's a number system so if you get a five,you fail in my school.
If you get a six,which is a D, you would fail
(23:04):
and you have to get a Bto stay in the school.
So it was a difficult school,but but I never heard failure
as a grade until I migrated to the U.S.
and I was taken abackthat you would tell a kid that he failed.
Even though I was a young adult, I would.
How can you tell kids they failed?
(23:25):
This is out of the question.
I was indignant to the fact that
that you could fail somebody likeespecially in business.
You don't fail in business.
You just become smarter.You fail forward, right?
You have to fall forward and then be ableto learn from it and keep going.
So that's the second thing.
Forget about failure and get ridof the fear of fear of failure.
(23:49):
You can keep the fearof not being the best.
I think that helps you a little bit.
The fear of failure in anything.
I think we should get rid of thatin sports.
In speaking right,a lot of people are afraid of speaking in
speaking, in pursuing artsor in pursuing business.
You have to remove the failurefrom the equation.
(24:13):
You know, it's an interesting pointbecause I agree with you
to a certain extent,and I disagree with you
to a certain extent,depending on the context.
And here's what I mean.
Here's what I think you're saying,which I agree with,
which is regarding failure to the extentthat the fear of failure prevents
you from taking action,then I think you're absolutely right
(24:34):
that one has to take actionto be able to move forward.
One has to take actionto be able to succeed.
I think that there'san aspect of the fear of failure
that at least for me,I found to be very positive,
which is the aspect of preparation,the act of preparing.
So it's the other side
of exactly what you're talking about,the actions that need to be taken
(24:57):
and why one would take the action versusnot take the action.
And fortunately,I think we've seen a number of people
who will go in confidence is one thingwhich I think is very important,
and I think it's good.
And confidence gives you the willingness,
the courage many times to take the actionthat needs to be taken.
But unfortunately,
sometimes what can happenis, is confidence can turn into arrogance.
(25:20):
And for me,
the difference between confidenceand arrogance is the lack of preparation.
Somebody's coming in and believingthey're already ready
when they haven'tprepared to do the thing.
So I'll give it back to you in terms ofwhether you agree or disagree with that.
And what are your thoughts onhow one goes about preparing?
Like, for example, you went from CEO toto making a decision that you wanted to
(25:46):
have yourown business, but it's it's a lifestyle
business, a wholesale businessthat you learn from a mentor,
and that would give you the flexibilityto be able
to pursue your other artistic passions.
And so you prepared to be able to do that.
Can you also talk a little bitabout how you prepared to do that?
Sure. And I think it's important to note
(26:07):
I grew up as an athleteand I never stopped being an athlete.
And when you're an athlete, youyou learn preparation
because 90% is preparationand 10% this performance
when you're competing, I'mtalking about the 10% that you compete.
I played basketball,I ran track and then martial arts.
(26:30):
I, I,
I'm addicted to practice.
I love to practice.
So free throws, shootingbaskets for 4 hours a day, 5 hours a day.
That's the wayI became good at basketball.
I wasn't natural.
I prepared.
And then I played defense to make it toto to varsity my first year.
(26:52):
That's that's the wayI approached track and basketball.
Martial arts. Same thing.
You have to get in the ringat a certain point, then fight.
And that's terrifying no matter what.
It's terrifying.
However, even
if you're preparedbecause they can always put you against
(27:12):
somebody much more advanced,younger, stronger, heavier.
So there's always somebodybetter than you.
Preparation was the key for mein practice.
Now, when it came to entrepreneurship,
I took what we could call paid practicebecause I was an executive
(27:33):
and I was running companies in my twenties
that were in my companies,but I was running them right.
I opened a U.S. subsidiary.
I had to start it from scratch pay, pay,
pay, payroll, get an accountant.
It incorporated dual ofall of these things that you need to do.
Also as an employee.
So I did the practice part onsomebody else's dime
(27:57):
with mentorship and the whole shebang.
And then I, I studied a lot.
I studied, I read, and then I practiced
with doing financial projections,running numbers.
Another thing that I did to practice isI went through maybe
40 businesses that I passed on.
(28:19):
And I, I acted as an investment banker.
So I wrote my own prompt write.
You're an investment banker.
Looking at the financialand business model
for all of these businesses, decidingwhich ones to purchase.
So I learned how to read financials.
I learned how to seeif a company is healthy or not.
(28:40):
So all of this was practice for meby the time.
So I didn't just
like some some people
say being an entrepreneuris jumping from an airplane
and learning how to build a parachuteon the way that wasn't me.
I learned how to dohow to make a parachute
and how to pack it beforeI got on the plane.
And then when I was on the plane,I was very confident because I knew
(29:05):
how to make money, I knew how to selland they knew marketing.
And I found out in over a year
since then, 20 plus years, that
when youwhen you have a good financial background
and you understand sales and marketing,
you have to be a screw to a screw up
(29:26):
to to to not be successful in business,
especially with the salesand marketing background.
So many of the businessesthat I've founded or launch
since then have been very strongon the branding,
sales and marketing, a lot of beverages,a lot of consumer goods,
because I know the industry
(29:46):
and I wrote the booksand those in the streets.
Another book I wrote is Wholesale MBAthat I just published.
Again,wholesale distribution, which is sales.
That's that's the way I prepared.
I love that.
And and
that is exactly what I thinka lot of younger entrepreneurs
especially need to hear
(30:07):
because we're so usedto seeing the success stories on Instagram
and those kinds of thingsand success stories like yourself
and hearing this whole ideawithout hearing the full background.
So you hear or see the success,you see the tip of the iceberg, but
you don't see what's underneathall the aspects of the discipline,
the hours that go into thethe preparation that people see
(30:32):
and they see the performance,they see the game, but they don't see that
the off season practices, the workouts,all the effort that goes into it.
And in terms of finance and marketing andsales, I 100% agree with you in terms of
any business
needs to have good, solidfinancial controls.
(30:54):
It needs to have really good marketingand really good sales.
And you know, in that regard,do you have any thoughts or tips on
businesses in terms of
what does makefor great sales and marketing?
And are you using any kind of Ior would you recommend that they use
any kind of AI to help them with it?
(31:18):
What what a wonderful question.
And I'm glad your audience getget to hear those questions because
I fire peopleif they don't know how to use AI.
And there's a disconnect right nowwith teachers also,
they're sending these studentsthat they don't know
AI because they don't let the musicAI And I'm telling those teachers
(31:39):
who are a lot of them,my friends, don't send me kids
that don't know I can't use them
and I can't start teaching themfrom scratch.
So yes, I use AI
and everybody that works for meneeds to use AI and then advanced level,
not dabble with it,but more than they need to know
(32:02):
more than I know about aAI that's extremely important.
And yes, I use it every dayand it's a part of my team.
I have a I open also in art.
I use it in art, in painting,in literature
before my my, my real personeditor gets a manuscript,
I programed my own GPUsthat are my editors so they know my style.
(32:27):
They can write in my style.
I program my my favorite editorso that it, it, it
it's like my favorite editors.
So I fed them all the booksand all of the knowledge
so that I get what I want.
And then I send a much better manuscriptto my life, to my editor, which
(32:47):
then becomes my
mentor, because now their jobis to make me a better writer.
In in terms of marketing, my favoritemarketing is direct response marketing.
And let me tell you why.
When when you go to an MBA program,even business.
But let's talk about an MBA program.
Most of the key studiesare from publicly traded companies,
(33:11):
even in your regular textbooks,in management, finance, accounting,
those studies are from companiesthat you can extract information.
And it's much easier if they're publicbecause you can get real, real numbers,
real data, press releaseseven from those companies.
(33:31):
So now you have all of theseyoung younglings studying
marketing from Coca-Cola.
Let's pick on the beverage industrybecause I that's one of my books.
So now you have all of these entrepreneurs
and I've launched over 100 beverages,and I get a lot of entrepreneurs
that call me even students, becausemy book is used in 200 universities.
(33:55):
So I get I get young kids
calling me, Oh,I'm reading your book in college.
I need to do a paper and start a company.
I plan on doing it like Dr.
Pepper and I go, know, do it like Dr.
Pepper did it when they were a startup.
Do it like Coca Cola.
Did it when they were a startup,like Vitamin Water did it
(34:17):
like all of these companies did itwhen they were startups.
Don't do itlike they're doing it now that.
They're there.
They're worth billions of dollarsin market cap and they have Super Bowl
commercials because when you starta beverage company or any company
that's not going to help you,you you're going to think
(34:38):
you can compete with themand you can not that way.
At least you have to competein other ways in blue oceans, in
in ways that nobody is is envisioning.
It's very difficult to put a beveragein the refrigerator in the 7-Eleven now,
but it easy to sell it on Tik-Tok,for example in the very difficult
for Coca-Cola to sell at it.
(34:59):
Tik Tok But you're not going to getthe refrigerator in the store.
I guarantee it.They own that refrigerator.
So direct what direct response doesto the entrepreneurial mind?
It gives it a startup philosophy.
Even even if you're an accounting lawyeror a service on a call,
I call that all of these professionsartisans, if you're an artisan,
(35:23):
if I if I'm a mentor,so I'm an artist in this well, and
I like to use
all of the direct response measurementsbecause in direct response,
if you cannot measure the response,it's not marketing.
You have to attribute a monetary valueto every click, every view,
(35:44):
every sign up, every lead,every prospect, every customer.
And even when they leave, every referral,
for example, in in when I'm workingwith real estate agents, for example,
mentoring real estate agents, I ask them,why do you give people when you give
when they give you a referral?
Mind you, houses in San Diegowhere I live are $1,000,000.
(36:06):
So ridiculous.
But that's that's the price.
So these guys are making $30,000if they make 3%.
So I tell them,what do they give them? Well, cookies.
I tell themI hope they're happy cookies because
they just made you $30,000.
You should give them a tripto Disneyland or Hawaii to spend $3,000.
(36:29):
And they're like, That's ridiculous.
Really? Is it?
If you send somebodyevery year on vacation,
I guarantee you they're going to send youone customer a year
because they'll be accustomedto that vacation.
I would do it.
I would I would send a114 sure customera year to a real estate agent.
If I would get a trip a yearand I think most people would
(36:52):
as well,instead of getting brownies or cookies.
So that's that's an example.
Same if you do Google ads
or meta ads,you have to see it as a formula.
What's the cost of acquisitionof a customer?
What's the lifetime value of that customeras it relates to wholesale distribution,
What's the cost of acquisitionof a 7-Eleven in your neighborhood?
(37:16):
And then what's the cost of acquisitionof a customer, whether you sell snacks
or hats or sunglasses in the 7-Eleven,it's the same formula.
Then how much does it cost you to keepthat 7-Eleven and that customer? Or
even if it's one
customer that comes back every dayto drink your drink or to buy
sunglasses or a lighter or cigaretsor whatever they buy.
(37:40):
And that's what I like about directresponse.
It gets it makes it very easyto for entrepreneurs
to to learn marketing without,oh my God, branding.
I'm not artistic.
It's a little bit of magicwith some fairy dust.
No, it's numbers.
Yeah, absolutely.
And so, well,going back to a little bit of a
(38:03):
I and how you might recommendentrepreneurs end up using it,
you know you did touch upon you know,there's the entry level
and then there's thethe more advanced level.
So can you describe what you mean by thatand what can you give us a specific
example, like what is an entry levelor a bad type of prompt?
And what what is a better type of prompt?
(38:23):
Okay.
I would say that
if you're an entrepreneur, you should pay
for GPP, the paid version number one.
The main reason isbecause you can create your own GPP.
What that means is very simplythat you train the
AI as if it was a member of your business.
(38:44):
What memberyou decide you can have different members
you can have one member, for example,
you might create one GPTthat's a graphic designer.
You might create another GPTwho has a headline editor.
So all they do is pick headlines for you.
And you would.
What I did is I, I did, I, I fed it
(39:08):
the best headlines of all time.
All right.
So copywriter, right?
It's a headline writer or copywriter.
It writes to sellit writes copy that sells not
science fiction fantasy.
They write to sell.
That's important.You might have another one.
That's a financial.
(39:30):
You might have another one,which is your accountant.
I even do one per project or per customer.
I LGBT based on the business model,
and they come up with the business modelfor that business first.
So this is the way I would approach it.
Number one,start with yourself as a person,
(39:51):
be it everything about you,
what you like,what you don't like, your strengths,
your weaknesses,tell it or have a conversation.
Right nowyou can put on your phone, push a button
and you can be driving to workor to your office
and train your GP by having a conversationand you would just tell them
(40:13):
to interview you.
You would tell it.
I want to write a GP who'sgoing to be my publicist
or my personal brand manager,help me train it.
That's that's your prompt,because what you really want is for a
to interview you once it interviews you,all of that copy.
By the way, this might be 10,000 words.
(40:34):
There may be a lot you would feedthat interview as your prompt
so that that big conversationyou know most the book
we talk about 8000 words per hour
so if you if it's a 30 minutedrive to your office in 30 minutes back
guess what you just trained an incrediblemodel like an incredible almost a book.
(40:57):
Right.
If you do that two days,it's an actual book that you just wrote
with yourwith your interview just by conversing
because it is smartand it will it'll ask you
and you can tell it to ask youdeep questions so it'll get to know you.
Now you have something to feedyour first GP
or your first custom A.I..
(41:19):
You feed it that 10,000 wordsand you say, You're my publicist.
This is the conversation I had with you.
Learn from it and you will help me
with my businessbased on what you know about me.
So now you have your own GP t traina new personal branding is a big thing.
(41:40):
When I started, it wasn't a big thing nowbecause you see all of these executives
that you get to knowand they kind of live a reality show.
A lot of these
software executives
we're used to, we know they're a brandand it's important.
Back in the day, people would hideBSB behind logos and corporations.
(42:04):
Even when LinkedIn started, I remembermy friends wouldn't put their picture
like for for ten yearsthey didn't put a picture
because how can they I'mnot going to share a picture online
right now.
If you don't have a picture on LinkedIn,you don't exist.
You're not going to get hired right?
Nobody's going to trust you.
When they Google you, they're going to saywisely way ways to get hiding.
(42:27):
So that changed a lot.
So I would startwith the personal branding.
Then from there I would do the samewith your company, I would say.
But to this trend, yep,I wouldn't start from scratch.
You I am the CEO with all of theseweaknesses and strengths.
I am the CEO of this business.
(42:47):
This is the business model.
Please help me write myself,
letter my email, utter responders, my ads,
my brochure, my about me page,
my press releases, whatever,
whatever you write and do my branding,my logo, it would do a logo for you
based on your favorite colorsand maybe arts.
(43:10):
If you're into art, you can tell itwhat art styles you like
and then it'll it'll start doingall of this for your business
once you have this big document foryour business, then you do the same thing.
You start a new GPP and you feed it.
All of this informationthat your first year gave you.
(43:32):
So now you have a personal branding teamand your business
that will help you createLinkedIn posts, ads,
press releases,a job ads so you can attract talent.
All of this you just trained.
Same with art and branding learn.
You need to know a little bit about artor get somebody who knows
(43:56):
a little bit about art.
This is where being an art majorand an art lover helps me because
I was a VP of Marketing since I was 26
and I did all the creativefor the companies that I've worked with.
I've done creative for Snoop Dogg, forRick Ross, for NFL players, NBA players.
(44:16):
So I don't get a designeruntil my designer do it.
I, I, the designer is my, my,I know it's CGI, but back then it was
my designer and I would tell I would givemy designer props as well as styles.
Use these styles. Don't invent anything.
(44:36):
Do exactly what I tell youbecause when I tell them,
use your imagination and try to give mesomething, I never like it.
So then you're the problem, right?
It's not them, it's you.
So you have to know what you wantand you have to know something about.
Now I'm getting into brandingfor the branding side, not just the direct
response copy,but the let's call it the visual aspect,
(44:59):
because now you can do videos,you can clone yourself,
you can do video ads, mini movies,all with the eye, right?
With the new release from Google,which is amazing,
you can do seven second videosand then or even with soda and then
put them together to do a commercial.
(45:20):
So you need to understand art.
If you don't understand artor you don't get one, get in to it.
Use the word vibe.
For example, I want a seven piece
underground Russian metro
vibe.
I won the PAC Men seventies,late seventies vibe.
(45:42):
I won an eighties arcade in San Antonio
vibe and then B.A I understands,or a manga, a Japanese manga vibe, right?
If you're into that type.
And then it'll it'll say,I know what you mean.
They'll say throwing you things thatthen you get, Oh yeah, I like this one.
And then you say, Reverseengineer it for me, reverse prompt it.
(46:06):
Once you find a vibe that you like,you reversed, prompted.
Now you're an expert.
It's prompting the art that you like, andnow you can go ahead and brand yourself.
Your company with thiswith all of the same type of art.
So that's, that's the way I, I use aI currently I love that.
That is so good.
That is one of the best summariesand useful
(46:29):
tactical descriptionsof how somebody has successfully used A.I.
in terms of marketingand branding that I've heard.
So thank youfor sharing that with the audience.
You're welcome.
So, George, let me ask you this.
If our listeners want to find outmore about you, including
how to work with you,how can they reach out to you or find you?
(46:53):
Sure call
Salon.com, which is my name, dotcom George O'Loughlin
and I have a free newsletterwhich happens to be a webinar
because I brand myself through videomore than anything,
and I have free webinars that I go in to,but that starts the conversation
because you'll have my email, LinkedIn,if you can't wait
(47:15):
and you want to talk to me immediately,I go to LinkedIn.
I'm a big user of LinkedIn, I'ma first adopter of LinkedIn.
I have groups in excessof 100,000 members on LinkedIn.
So I always answermy LinkedIn is I treat it as
text is texting my email.
Now I like LinkedInbecause I know who you are.
If you go to my Twitter, you can hide.
(47:37):
And I don't like thatI, I like to know about you as well.
So LinkedIn is great if it's urgent,but if you want more information,
if you want to get my vibe,go to waterholes and dot com
and then you'll get emails and videosfrom me.
Awesome. Love it.
I hope you all learned as much as I did
(47:59):
in terms of the vast breadth of knowledge.
More hay, the depth of knowledge, more.
Hey, so thank you againfor sharing this wisdom
and knowledge with me and the listeners.
You're so welcome.
And to everybody who joined in,I hope you enjoyed this podcast episode
and if you want to hear more,
(48:20):
including tactical tips to help youscale your business and avoid any crisis
or go from crisis to justice,make sure you like and subscribe.
Until next time, I'm your host, Farai.
I mean, and I'll see that
all.
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