Navigating Uncertainty to Crafting a Digital Agency with Joe Khoei

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
This show is sponsored by DN tenInsurance Services, helping businesses get the right
insurance for all their insurance needs.Visit dn ten dot io to get a
quote dn ten dot io and remember, when you buy an insurance policy from
Denten, you're giving back on aglobal scale. Hello all, my entrepreneurs

(00:22):
and business leaders, and welcome tothe Michael Esposito Show, where I interview
titans of industry in order to inform, educate, and inspire you to be
great. My guest today is thefounder and CEO of sales X, an
agency that helps companies develop profitable customeracquisition programs via search marketing, display advertising,

(00:46):
mobile marketing, analytics, and creativeservices. With two decades of experience
in Silicon Valley, he has beenprivileged enough to help hundreds of businesses prosper
and has mentored many entrepreneurs. Thatis why he started sales X in twenty

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ten to assist companies by providing themwith sem tools to reach the right people
at the right time. Please welcomeCEO and founder at sales X, Joe
Coe Welcome. Thank you, Michael, appreciate being here. I'm excited to
have a chat with you today.Yeah, as am. I. You

(01:30):
know, this has been just suchan incredible experience for me here doing this
podcast. I've been fortunate enough tomeet with so many different executives and community
leaders and so many others CEOs andeverything. But the cool part that I'm
touching on today is that you're inSan Francisco, and I think that that

(01:53):
is so cool that we are justgoing from New York to San Francisco and
having this conversation. And so that'sone of the cool things about meeting you
today. The other one is yourbackground and how you got started in bootstrapping
this business of sales X. AndI say bootstrapping, and I'm not saying

(02:17):
that lightly because I've heard a littlebit about the story, but I'd be
even more interested to hear it fromyou. Gotcha. Yeah, I'mrea.
For about ten years, I starteddoing sales at Oracle in their insight sales
positions, and then just did abunch of enterprise software sales. And after

(02:38):
ten years, I was really kindof tired of working for someone else.
I always wanted to have my ownbusiness, and so I started sales X.
I left then of two thousand andnine, I left went to Hawaii
for a couple of weeks, learnedto learn how to surf, and then
came back started sales X. Andit was supposed to be a sales consulting

(03:01):
company where I would help other companies'team, you know, maybe have start
a CRM, get a list going, get their pitch going, get their
collateral going, get it all going, and help them get some you know,
deals in the funnel and so on. And what happened is the first

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half a dozen customers, I thinkthe first handful, they all needed websites.
Their websites were bad. This isin twenty ten, and so I
was like, well, my actually, my formal education is in industrial engineering
and MBA. So I'm like,okay, I'm an engineer. I worked
in engineering. I could figure outhow to do websites. I'll learn how

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to do WordPress, and I'll dothe websites. So I, you know,
help them do the websites. Thenthey needed to do search engine optimization
so that they could show up inthe search searches, the Google searches.
So I'm like, okay, there'sthere's a document on Google called the Search
Engine Optimization Starter Guide. They literallyspell it out. Anybody that has that

(04:06):
document, they know, it's likea spec sheet from Google saying do it
like this. So I'm like,okay, I could do that for them,
So I started doing that. Thenthey needed paid search, so I'm
like, okay, I'll learn howto do that. So anyway, I
had to shift the business three timesin the first year just to hit where
the market demand was, and sowe ended up sales X becoming an ad

(04:30):
agency effectively instead of like a salesconsulting company, which is actually turned out
to be better because the ad agencyis scalable and the sales consulting company would
have had to, for the mostpart, depend on me for a much
longer time before we could scale it. So then we ended up getting some

(04:56):
accounts that were part of a franchiseand they all needed the same thing.
So our guys were doing like thirtydifferent accounts and I wanted to find someone
that will help bring some automation,and I found Frederick Valleys, who was
at the time he had left Googleafter ten years. He was one of
the early employees at Google. Hehad left Google for a couple of years

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and he had his own agency calledtop Tier. And I hired Frederick because
it was one of the handful ofpeople in the world that knew about automation
for Google Ads, and so wehired him and we paid him to bring
some automation into sales X, andthen after six months, he ended up

(05:46):
giving all of his accounts to usto manage for him because he's like,
oh, you know, you guyshave employees, they're coming in here every
day. I'm having my accounts bycontractors. They're not necessarily prioritizing me.
I don't like that. You guyscan manage the accounts. And then of
course I'll oversee him. And thenafter that he was having his first child.

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He has Trina, and I saidto him, Frederick, with your
travel schedule children, you're going tobe super busy. So long story short,
we ended up merging his company intosales X, made them our CTO,
and that gave us a really goodplatform for automation that eventually led to

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all the kind of the US Searchawards that we've won. We've won the
US Search Awards five times, threetimes for Best Agency. We've also wanted
for best Campaigns and best use ofData. So so sales x became,
you know, really reputable. Overthe years, we've managed We're still in

(06:54):
a boutique agency. We're a smallagency. We don't have a ton of
accounts altogether. I think we haveposted twenty twenty two accounts. So but
these accounts there, they spend goodamounts of money every month on Google Ads
and also Facebook and being and theyneed someone to make sure that they're getting

(07:16):
their money's worth out of that outof that investment, and we are that
someone. So that's that's my professionalside of the business. And then on
the personal side, a kind ofpersonality that when I do something, I
get obsessed with it and I go, you know, ten miles deep.

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That's effectively why salz x was ableto succeed because when I first started it,
I was like, what do Iknow about any of this stuff?
So I signed up for It's likeonline learning Linda l y Nda online learning
where they do video learning, andI I took course after course after course

(08:03):
after course and got the certificate aftercertificate, and I was printing the certificates
and putting them on the wall atthis little ten by ten office. So
when somebody would sat sit in myat my desk in front of me,
they would look to their left andit would be like certificates from ceiling to
floor on courses that had completed onlinder, So that that, you know,

(08:24):
gave me some credibility, but thattranslates. That transfers also into my
personal life where I do Brazilian jiujitsu pretty regularly. I'm fifty three and
I do it six days a weekand that's really hardcore pace. I also
do yoga. I try and doyoga seven days a week as well,

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and you know, meditation, thatkind of geeky stuff. Anything geeky.
I suppose I never thought a geekon stuff so much, but that's what
That's what this kind of ever changingadvertising industry does to you because as soon

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as you try and get settled,boom, things are changed. Change,
change, change, And now there'sthings that are even changing even more with
this chat GPT stuff. So keepsyou sharp. You know, always new
synapses going off in your brain,and it's applicable when your brain's working more.

(09:31):
You can apply that to everything.It's not just the one thing that's
awesome. There's a tremendous to unpackhere, I mean, from the business
to your personal and then chat GPT. I had a guest down recently and
I mentioned chat GPT. I said, we're going to talk about it,

(09:52):
and when we didn't get to it, so I know we we got to
get to chat GPT, So Iwant to make sure that I don't forget
about that because the rest of thestuff, there's no way we're not getting
into what you've been doing at salesX. And then of course some of
the other stuff, especially meditation,as my my audience knows, I'm big

(10:13):
on meditating and meditat every day.I think it's it's tremendous for for everything
that we do in terms of managinganxiety, in terms of growth, in
terms of learning, everything that wedo, it's just tremendous. So I
want to go to chat GPT sowe don't forget about it. And I
know that you you probably know alittle bit about it, if not more
than I than I that I'm ignoranttoo, So could you share a little

(10:37):
bit about chat GPT and how briefsummary, I'm not an expert because it's
so new, and it continually isgetting updated and upgraded, and they're adding
tools to it so that we coulduse it like companies can use it,
and it's not just a toy,because when somebody goes through and use as

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a platform from the user interface,that's a toy. That's like a toy
level usage. Right, as anagency, we could never just go into
Google Ads and change everything on theuser interface. Would have if we had
the Red Army of China. Itwouldn't be enough people to do that.

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So we have to go in fromthe back end and use tech to do
all the stuff that we need todo directly into the Google servers, so
chat, GPT. If you're justgoing and using it, it comes across
as a toy. That's why,like Microsoft is integrating it into their search
engine and so on. But basicallyit's changing the way business is being conducted

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in search. In the search likethe way people find stuff. You're probably
old enough to remember pre Google,how we search for stuff where you went
into these other search engines whether itwas Yahoo or Alta Vista or Excited at
Home or whatever the search engines were, and you would search for stuff and

(12:11):
the answers they weren't really all thatrelevant. Right. That's why when Google
came over, they started dominating becauseof the relevance, and then they have
been dominating since two thousands, sincetwo thousand and two, since the early
two thousands, so twenty years,Google has had this rain on search and

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now the ability of search. Rightnow, we go to Google, type
something, right, what do weget? We get some ads, the
first four links or ads. Maybeif that's not an advertising heavy keyword that
we're looking at or search that we'vedone, maybe we get two ard three
ads, or maybe it's such anobscure thing that we don't get any ads.

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But for the most part, whenyou do, when you're looking for
or something, you get ads.So you have the four ads. Then
if it's a local thing that you'relooking at, you get the maps right,
and you get the little jewel boxunder the maps with the three links
of like that that pop up there, and then you get the organic results.
So in terms of usability, somebodyhas to look through the ads.

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If they don't recognize that that's anAD, they might click on it,
or it might recognize that that isan AD and click on it. So
that's one of two ways that canhappen, or I could skip it.
Then they go down to the organicsearch results, and the organic search results
it might be gained to some degree. Somebody might have done a bunch of

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SEO or have done like clickbait stuff. You know, you go to search
for something and they're like the bestten things and the best five x and
then you know whatever it might be. So it might be gamed, so
you might actually have to do alittle bit of digging before you can find
an answer, and can be frustratingto do that. Now, I imagine

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if you just ask a verbal questionfrom a system like chat GPT and it
just gives you the answer, soyou're not going in there and looking at
ads and not looking at links andlooking at clickbait and maybe find the answer,
maybe not find the answer, ormaybe compile the answer from ten different

(14:26):
locations right maybe run into a goodone and nine of them are garbage,
or maybe some of them have someinformation but none of them have all the
information together. There are all thosethings that are that are the search experience
right now. That's why we're alwaysin front of Google saying okay, da
da da da. You know alot of times you have to dig and

(14:48):
dig and dig. But chat GPTstands to change that. That's the beauty
of it. Wow at GPT canbe like the Star Trek kind of computer
where it's like computer blah blah blah, and then it's giving you the legit
answer. You can trust that that'sa good answer. It's not just a
gamed answer because it's taking information fromall over the place and mashing it into

(15:13):
an answer for you. So acouple questions there. One. So then
is chat GPT? Is that justlike a program that any company can use?
Can Google use chat GPT? Can? Yeah? I mean I'm not
for the world's I'm not even anylevel of expert on that, But what
I do know is that actually Googlecame up with that stuff first, before

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there was ever a chat GP.Google had it. They're the ones that
actually spend millions and millions on it. But they didn't want to unleash it,
right, it's a it's you know, they have different reasons. They
have different reasons why they didn't wantto unleash it. They say that you
know, it wasn't ready, therewas potential for error, you know this

(16:00):
and that, But the bottom lineis it can hurt their business. Yeah
yeah, I mean obviously yeah yeah, And now they were unleashing it,
they're unleashing their own version of it. But yeah, Google is when this
AI stuff started. This is whereit started. To the best of my
knowledge, and again my knowledge isextremely limited. Hey listen, I only

(16:22):
found out about chat GPT only afew weeks ago so, and it was
from and it was from somebody intheir sixties. I was in a in
a toast Masters meeting. I'm aI'm an avid toast master. I've been
it for about six years now.And are you as well? Yeah?
I did. I did toast Mastersfor three years when I was at Oracle.

(16:44):
Awesome. Awesome. Uh so I'mstill I'm still in it. I
love my my my group, eventhough we were small, it's fantastic.
But part of table topics. Howwe how we brought up chat GPT and
when I said I don't know whatit is, he goes Michael, of
all the people I would have neverrun and I was like, yeah,
man, So he put me ontoit and then it was funny like right

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after that, I had a guestcome on and he had chat GPT in
his background, but I didn't bringit up. So that's why I was
like, there's no way I'm forgettingto bring it up now. But I
am going to move on from therebecause I do want to go back to
your story, your origin story,because I think you painted a wonderful picture
of the growth of sales X andhow you went through the different journeys of

(17:33):
pivoting as we tend to use thesedays, but of changing what the business
was, how it started, youroriginal plan for it, and how you
had to adapt to the needs ofthe clients. And I think you did
a tremendous job in doing that,and then of course rolling into the partnership
that later on created even bigger abundancefor this company. And I think again

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another part that I want to unpackis further in terms of partnership and in
terms of investors. But just endthis beginning stage. I remember hearing somewhere
that when you first started sales X, you went through a lot of pain
and to the point where you weresleeping on the floor at your office.

(18:18):
And you know, when I thinkabout our audience here of entrepreneurs and business
leaders and community leaders, I andmyself included, we've all been there,
and maybe not to the same extentthat you were at, but we've all
been there, and some of usare still there, and so I'd love
for you to share a little bitmore about that story and how you were

(18:38):
able to climb your way out.Yeah. Sure. Well the thing is
a lot of people gave me goodadvice. They said, look, if
you want to do something, don'tquit your jobs. Start doing that first,
and then start making some money there. And then once you've done that
and it's successful, then Whitcher's drovingsong. But that's not my style.

(19:03):
I you know, when I wantto do something, I just I just
dive in. And that was youknow, that was a really tough start
because it had a massive financial impact. My thinking was wrong because I had
I was carrying these several million dollarquotas every year and hitting them right.

(19:26):
Whether it was at Oracle or whetherit was at other software companies, I
always carried these massive quotas. Andmy mentality at that time, which was
wrong, but you know, Istill went with it, was that I
don't need to actually bring in allthis quota. I just need to bring
in a fraction of it and thenmy income will be like four times what

(19:48):
it is. It wasn't quite thatsimple because obviously nobody had sales about had
had heard about sales X, right. We don't have any brand recognition companies
like companies that ended with X,they didn't exist at the time. Now
they're all over the place. Oncespace X kind of caught on, then

(20:12):
everybody else caught on with it too. But so I went from my income
of kind of mid one hundred thousanddollars range upper kind of closer to twenty
thousand dollars range in two thousand andnine to an income of like seven grand

(20:32):
in twenty ten, like fifteen grandin twenty eleven, and thirty grand in
twenty twelve. So it was reallyreally tough to transition from making money to
making no money at all. Right, That's why I had to really learn
everything fast and start executing it.But it does really take five years.

(20:53):
I mean people were telling me,oh, it's going to take five years,
and I was like, ah,I'll do it in three months.
And really that's that's what I had, like three months reserves, and I'm
like, that's enough. I'll youknow, I'll make it work. And
I was wrong. I was deadwrong about that because it took a lot
longer. The other thing about itwas that because I was doing it by

(21:17):
myself, I didn't have any kindof a partner, and I've never had
a partner, Frederick came in asour CEO. Then he left to start
optimizing two other co founders which iswhich is the Google Ads platform management platform.
But because I didn't have that,I had to do everything myself.
So being in sales prior to this, I would do the business, do

(21:42):
the deal, get the po youknow, give a copy to the sales
admin, give a copy to bookkeepingaccounting department, and give a copy to
consulting department, and then I wasoff to the next deal. Once I
started sales X, I got thatdeal and I'm like, okay, I
have to do this work there,you know where, There's nobody there.

(22:04):
So then I had to go andtry and fish out people to do the
work, and then if those peoplefailed, then I had to do the
work right. I was the onlyperson that I could rely on because as
war and buff It says, youhave one reputation, it takes a lifetime
to build it and it takes fiveminutes to ruin it. So I was
like, I can't let any ofthese clients down. I have to make

(22:27):
sure they all succeed. So Ihad to do it myself, and so
that's kind of what happened. Wherepeople that start they're usually good at one
aspect of the business but not atall aspects of the business. For me,
it was the sales aspect. Normally, when entrepreneurs start, they have

(22:51):
some other aspect and they're they're lacking. Sometimes they're lacking the sales they have
like they come from a production environmentwhere they they're really good at building something,
coding something, you know, creatingsomething, but they suffer from the
sales side of it. I hadthe other issue. I didn't have any
problem selling stuff, but then executingon it was my difficulty. So so

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it took a long time to learnit. So my deal sizes were tiny
because I could not take on bigdeals. You know. I didn't have
the talent of Michael Dell to bringa massive deal and then learn how to
quote unquote it himself. It's justwhich is how Michael Dell got started.
But I just didn't have that kindof talent, you know, or so

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I had to kind of grind myfingers to the bone, so to speech,
in order to get there. Sofor people that want to start and
they're just starting now, it's adifficult kind of path for the first few

(24:02):
years. But if they can stickit out, then the rewards are infinitely
worth the difficulty that they had tothey had to endure. And a lot
of times, sticking it out meansyou have to work harder. You know,
you have to be more strategic aboutyour moves. But then being more
strategic doesn't mean that it gets easier. It just means that you're working harder

(24:26):
and smarter, so to speak.I don't know if that's yeah answering your
question at all. Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, it was
you. You're talking about how itwas tough in the beginning, and it
took time, and you certainly sharedseveral mistakes that you made along the way,
and I know that we're learning fromthose mistakes. On the other end,

(24:51):
whoever's listening, I know that I'veadded that very similar experience. You
know, I started den and that'sthe shirt that I'm wearing here are insurance
company, and I was very similarto you. I was, well,
I wasn't making the mid six figures, but I started I was making six
figures, and I had the verysame mindset as you, and that I

(25:11):
said, I'm going to quit thisjob and start my insurance agency. Now,
part of the reason why I neededto quit was because it's a conflict
of interest. I was working foranother insurance agency at the time, so
that's part of the reason. ButI didn't save up a year two years
worth of income in order to startmy agency. I saved up enough to
pay off any credit card debts thatI had pribe previously from running the other

(25:36):
business that I have, which isthe one that we're on right now,
Michael'sposeto Inc. Pay off that debtand then just have enough runway for two
or three months, and that wasit. And then and then hit the
ground running and was in a verysimilar position. And I'm only in year
two, so I'm in that twentythirteenth phase of your life and I don't
even think I'm making that much tobe on. So so I appreciate you

(26:00):
sharing that mistake, and I'm sharingit too with our audience here is that
I'm living that mistake and so soimportant for everybody to learn in that if
you're going to start a business,make sure you have the financial capabilities to
last it out. Because the nextquestion I have for you to follow this
all up is about the mindset,because you did talk about sticking it out,

(26:21):
and I mean, that's that's whatI'm experiencing, is sticking it out
and working through the difficulties and thechallenges and one hundred percent like what you
just said. There to add toit is, you know, I work
for a big insurance agency, andall I had to do was go out
and get the big deal, getthe big fish. And then exactly to
your point, they go to themarkets, they go to the quoting,

(26:44):
they do all the work, andI just go out and get another big
fish. Whereas now that's not thecase. I mean, I have a
great team where we can go out, but I can't get the big fish
that I want to get. Youknow, where I want to get these
big ones because as you and Iboth know, the amount of work that
we do for the smaller ones isvery similar to the amount of work that

(27:04):
we do for the bigger ones.But you got to have the support team
to back the bigger ones, whichis the difference in terms of sales.
So I want to just go backto mindset and what was the mindset that
you created for yourself during those leanyears. So the thing was that I

(27:30):
come from I come from a martialarts background, and when I was a
kid, I took it a littlebit of martial arts, but then in
my twenties I really got hardcore intoit. I signed up for this temple.
They were doing two hours in themorning, two hours that night,
yoga and martial arts that were breakingit up between yoga and karate. Two

(27:55):
hours in the morning and then twohours that night, so four hours a
day, and it was tough.It was really, really, really tough.
You know, four hours a dayand you're nineteen years old and you're
doing all this yoga and martial arts. And I continued that. Not with
that temple, I moved on.I did short of Goune for eleven years,

(28:15):
and then I did other martial arts, and then I got into Brazilian
jiujitsu. But all of that stuff, it basically teaches you how to have
a really tough mind, focused mind. Right, You can't give up easily
because all of it is hard,whether it's yoga, whether it's martial arts,
or whether it's meditation. If youdon't have a focused mind, you're

(28:37):
not going to last. So youhave to be able to focus your mind
and you have to endure under pressure. Right. So so in a way
I had I had that resilience builtinto me from all those years of doing
martial arts, where it just II didn't panic and I didn't really care

(29:00):
if I had a hard time.It's like, oh, you know,
just let it roll off off myback. And a lot of people they
they both hate me and love mefor that, not hate hate, but
you know, they both like say, well, not everybody's like you,
you know, and then they're like, oh, we wish we could be

(29:22):
more like you, like my family, especially where I don't let things just
be more than they are. Like, if you're not succeeding, you're not
succeeding. Just keep going and youwill succeed. As long as you have
a vision you drive towards it.You're going to go through some difficulties,

(29:42):
but you just keep your nose tothe grindstone and you will succeed. Now,
the other thing that I was fortunateto do is that I had family
members that wanted to pay some moneyand invest. They're like, we can
give you some money, how muchmoney you need, and we'll take shares

(30:03):
in the business. And I didn'twant to do that. I didn't want
to take anybody's money because I didn'teven know if I was going to succeed,
right, I don't want to havethe family's money and then failed and
then not be able to pay themback. So I kept saying, no,
no, no, I don't wantany money. I'm just going to
do it myself, and then ifI need money, I'll get it from

(30:26):
you later. And I was ableto do the same things. It was
like, They're like, Okay,if I give you one hundred thousand dollars,
what can you do with it?And I was like making a list
of stuff I could do with thehundred thousand, and then a year later
I had done all this stuff withoutthe hundred thousand. So sometimes we feel

(30:47):
that, oh, we need themoney to do something, but we we
can do it. There's more thanone way to kind of reach the top
of the mountain. There's more thanone path. Some of the paths are
did more difficult, more easier,But delaying getting money is always the best.
And eventually, when I had likethree or four people and I needed

(31:10):
to hire more people and I didn'thave the cash flow to pay for their
payroll, I did this is likein twenty fifteen, I want to say
it's five years in. I finallydid get I got like one hundred thousand
from my mom and I got sixtythousand from my sister, but I didn't
give them any shares. I tookit as a loan with interest, simple

(31:33):
interest, not you know, compoundinterest obviously, but simple interest loans.
I gave them a really high interestrate that was way out, way more
than they could get in a savingsaccount, for example, or anything like
that, or even a typical safeinvestment. And then I paid those payments,
and then I paid them their money. So I grew one division of

(31:56):
sales X that was handling those franchiseorganizations. We called it a different name,
called it Care Marketer, and wehad about eighty accounts. There were
these home instead senior care, inhome care agencies for the elderly. And
I carved out that division and Isold that and I paid off all that

(32:19):
debt and all of my personal debtand all of sales x's debt everything with
that money, and were since then, since twenty seventeen, that when that
happened, end of twenty seventeen,we've been knock on wood completely free of
debt. But I still own likeninety six percent of SALESX just because the

(32:39):
other four percent, some of itwent to Frederick and some of it went
to my top guy at sales Xright now, and who's been with me
for about eight years, eight nineyears. So I was very hesitant to
take money because I didn't want totake it unless I I knew for sure

(33:00):
I'm going to succeed. Of course, you never know anything for sure for
short, Right, whenever I saysomething definite, what I really mean is
like ninety six percent, because Itake the eighty twenty rule and I take
the twenty percent and I applied theeighty twenty ye rule to it again,
so then it becomes of twenty percentfour percent, so it's a ninety six

(33:23):
four So even if I'm saying withone hundred percent certainty, what I really
mean is with ninety six percent certainty, because that's there's always, you know,
something that could happen. But Iwas really, really confident that I
could pay back the money and thatwe were going to grow and it was
going to happen when I took themoney, because because who was offering the

(33:46):
money, it was my mom andmy sister. I don't want to just
take their money and not be ableto pay them back. That's like,
how would I ever, you know, lift my head after that, so
that that's not going to happen.Yeah, living in your integrity was very
important and obviously is very important toyou. It's interesting how things kind of

(34:06):
work out in the days that we'rein today. So every day I do
a Instagram live. Every morning,I do an Instagram Live, and I've
been doing it for quite some timenow, and I always go on to
hopefully inspire and help my audience grow, grow in terms of self development,
growth and to give back to them. And so a lot of what I

(34:30):
share with them comes out of myown experiences and comes out of different things
that happen in our lives or inmy life. Right. And what's interesting
about what you just shared in termsof that mindset and how you related it
to martial arts is I just completeda forty eight day fast, and I'm

(34:52):
sure you're very familiar, right,And the reason why I'm doing these fasts,
and I've been doing intermittent fast thingnow for since June, and then
I moved into a twenty four hourand then I just like I said,
complete the forty eight And many peoplethink it's for weight loss, But I
never had an issue with weight.It wasn't really for weight loss. There's
there's some weight loss factor in itbecause I consider myself an athlete. I

(35:15):
play basketball very regularly and I wantto always stay in shape and be able
to be physical and fast and jumphigh and all the rest. But really
it had to do with the challenge, with challenging myself and putting myself through
a state of challenge. And whenI completed the forty eight hours yesterday on
my Live this morning, that's whatI was talking about about. How we

(35:37):
do these different things in life tochallenge ourselves so that it can help us
in other things that we're trying toaccomplish. Because by challenging myself to not
eat for forty eight hours, thatdoesn't you don't see the direct correlation to
that in business, or to thatand DN ten my insurance company. But
what it does is it teaches me. It trains my body, mind and

(35:58):
spirit and conditions it too. Ican overcome hard things, I can overcome
challenges. Right. It's like andthe neural pathways that I think you had
mentioned earlier on right, it developsthese new neural pathways and synapses that that
change everything in my brain to beable to advance. I love that you

(36:19):
brought up martial arts when I askedyou about the mindset, because it's like,
yes, you know, it's somany people don't realize how important the
things outside of the work that wedo is right, right, that resolve
Right, you've done a forty eighthour fast, So it's unlikely that you're
going to get angry and throw ahissy fit in traffic just because you're lunched

(36:43):
an hour lake right, which meansyou're not going to break up your peace
of mind because somebody cuts you off, and you know, reduce the chances
of having those kinds of outbursts whichruin your day, so to speak.
And then you stack those, compoundthose over a lifetime, and it becomes

(37:04):
a monumental benefit. Right, Soall of those things, they compound,
all of those little improvements, theycontinuous improvement. The Kaisan, which is
how the Japanese were able to overtakethe Americans in the seventies in the auto
industry. I don't know if youknow that story, but the father of

(37:27):
quality, quality assurance was going tothe US auto industry saying, hey,
these car qualities they need help.You know, you guys have a lot
of cars that are you know,have a lot of breakdowns and have bad
quality cars that are coming off yourproduction line. And they just laughed them
out of the room. Because theyown the market, they didn't know.

(37:52):
Quality wasn't the priority necessarily. Butthe Japanese they embraced it. And they
call this concept called kaisan kaizen,and the concept is continuous improvement, that's
the direct translation of it. Andso they they continually improve one little bit
every time, one little bit everytime, one little bit every time.

(38:14):
That's why the Japanese quality used tobe junk. It was worse than what
we considered Chinese. Like later ontwenty years later, we're thinking Chinese,
the quality is drunk. But theJapanese quality was considered junk. Before the
seventies, anything that you got fromJapan and the auto industry there were just
it just didn't they didn't measure up. But once they took that continuous improvement,

(38:38):
the kaisan mentality, then they startedreally overtaking the US auto industry,
and the US auto industry had tobasically clean up their act in order to
stay competitive. But it's taken along time, and I don't think they've
ever fully recovered, right, Idon't think like the Japanese quality parties,

(39:02):
I don't know. I guess thehigh end cars too now, but for
the inexpensive cars, if you wantit back, I don't know how much
cars cost now. But back inthe day, if you've got a fifteen
thousand dollars Japanese car versus a fifteenthousand dollars American car, the fifteen thousand
dollars Japanese car were still running twohundred thousand miles later, the Toyota Corollas
were running for like a million miles. And you know, the Ford Escort

(39:25):
was falling apart at thirty thousand miles. So that's the continuous improvement the Kaisan
and this mentality of a forty eighthour fast, for example, any fast,
any amount of fasting, it kindof improves your mentality so that you're
not falling apart as soon as you'reyou know, your capell latte is late

(39:49):
at Starbucks they forgot your order.You're not saying, oh my god,
you know, just relax, it'sokay, either skip it or wait farm
or minutes. It's not the endof the world. Yeah, and it
changes, you know. And justgoing back to martial arts and fasting and
anything that we challenge ourselves on,it just it changes you. And it's

(40:14):
like you said, it's that continuousimprovement. It's challenging ourselves. Is challenging
ourselves for growth. That's why wechallenge ourselves. It's to grow, is
to do something. It's why youtake a class, right you did all
these online classes and you printed outthe certificates. There's a reason for that.
It's you challenged yourself for this growthand you wanted to see the growth.
And I love that that you printedthem out, you know. So

(40:38):
all of that is so vital tothis conversation that we're having. And I
want to go into a little bitmore of the challenge because then you challenge
yourself again. And it was interms of having this business where you have
all these people that are willing andoffering loans and money and you turned it

(40:59):
down, and it was again tochallenge yourself and of course to stay within
your integrity. Eventually you took alittle bit of money and you were able
to do something with it. I'mjust interested in understanding how you were what
you were able to do and whereyou were able to go after all of

(41:19):
that. So now you took theloans, you paid it back and everything,
and then now we're moving into thatpartnership conversation. What did that start
looking like and how did you findI mean, you spoke a little bit
about it earlier on, but kindof just unpacking it a little bit further.
How did you start getting into themindset of potentially having a partner,
potentially having an investor and all ofthat. Yeah, well I still don't

(41:45):
have a partner, right, Soyeah, what happened is Frederick, who
I had hired to basically bring automationinto sales X. He was the one
and only Google ad Wars evangelist.It's kind of that title never existed before

(42:06):
Frederick, and it doesn't exist afterFrederick. He's the one Google ad Wars
evangelist. And he's the kind ofguy that's both technical, extremely technical,
and business minded. He has likean engineering degree from Stanford, was originally
from Belgium. Really cool guy.And through those ten years at Google,

(42:30):
he spoke with a lot of reallylarge clients at Google and he was able
to explain all of this technical stuffto all the techies on behalf of Google
across the world, and so itwas a really good match for us.
We're both I was part of thisboard marketing advisory board for a local university,

(42:58):
Menlo University, and and there wasanother board member. It was one
of the vps at Google who introducedme to Frederick. So this thing about
like toastmasters or other networking opportunities,I did that right for the first five
six years at sales X. EveryThursday morning at seven am, I was
at Silicon Valley B and I theBusiness Network International where you're sitting there and

(43:22):
you're doing kind of networking with likefifty other people. Each one of them
has their own it's just one lineof business for each one. So a
lot of networking in the early days. And so this was another opportunity through
the networking, the meeting with Frederick. And so then when he started with

(43:44):
with sales X, we basically tookthe accounts that we were managing for him,
and we saw how mush those accountswere bringing in and we gave most
of that money back to him ashis salary plus some shares a go.
But then his contribution was on thetechnical side. Because of Frederick, I

(44:06):
was able to attract Emmanuel to mybusiness. And Emmanuel is the other person
that owns some shares and sales Xand significant shares and sales X. But
he was attracted because he knew Frederickand it's like, oh, okay,
Frederick is their CTO, so Iwant to work there. And so what

(44:28):
that ended up giving us is somebodythat is fully skilled on the sell side
and then somebody that's really skilled onthe production side. Right, So you
have every company, you have thedemand side and you have the supply side.
Right. So if you're able tohave two people equally competent at the

(44:52):
head of each one of these sides. The demand sides anything that's dealing with
prospects, sales, marketing, businessdevelopment, strategic alliances, partnerships, anything
like that, anything that's people haven'tsigned the contract with you. And then
supply side is once they signed thecontract, who's going to do the fulfillment,

(45:13):
the maintenance, make sure the qualityis there, the reporting, the
growth, all of that. That'sall the supply side. So if you're
able to have somebody running demand andsomebody running supply, that's two hands that
make a clapping sound in my opinion, right, you have. If you're

(45:39):
just one person trying to do both, then that's that's what takes five years
to run up because you have to. Basically, my early people at sales
X, there were just what didthey used to call them, like a
rack tag band of bandits mean,these people they didn't have they didn't have

(46:04):
that many skills or or you know, job experience. I have to teach
them everything. But now I havepeople at sales X that have been with
me for eight nine years, thethe newest guys that are still pretty involved
with clients. You know, wehave interns that come in later, but

(46:24):
from our core team, our newestguy has been around for five years.
So we don't micro manage people wehave. We're really KPI driven environment,
so key performance indicators for our clients, we walk them through uh determining those

(46:45):
and then we have systems that trackthose on a on a dashboard. So
we're looking at everything all at onceand as soon as things start if they're
if they're everything is looking good,everything is green. If things start slipping,
they turn yellow. If they're reallyin deep trouble, they turn red.
And then people know it's like,ohh, why is this account going

(47:07):
into yellow. Let me, letme get to it, you know,
boom so, because everything is reallyKPI driven. We don't micromanage our staff
at all. You know, Ihave a guy that has been with me
for seven years and he's getting hisblack belt in Brazilian judice to now.
And he started as a white beltbecause I told him, I said,

(47:29):
hey, man, Brazilians just reallyfun. What you should start And to
have that kind of dedication you needto put in a bunch of hours and
to put in those kinds of hoursin that six seven years with a full
time job, you need to havea flexible job. And that's what we
provide and that's why he's able todo that. So anyway, where were

(47:53):
we We were just talking about,well, I'll bring us back for you
and I love Hey, look,you know that that's what this podcast is
all about, just so you know, and and our audience knows, and
our audience knows this as well,that this podcast is all about a conversation
that sometimes goes down a rabbit hole, and it's my job to bring us

(48:15):
back because I enjoy the rabbit hole. I enjoy the ride, and so
and so do our listeners. Weall want to. I think that information
these days needs to be both informativeand entertaining. And while you might not
find too much entertainment out of learningabout someone's black belt, I think the

(48:35):
journey there is very entertaining and Iappreciate that, So no worries there.
I'm interested in the whole KPI aspectbecause I just launched a program. So
I just launched Michael'sposito Inc. It'scalled Sales Mindset Mastery Program, and I
actually pitched a program as not yourtraditional sales tactics in terms of going through

(48:57):
a KPIs and going through opening andclosing the sale. I focus more on
some of the things that you actuallyopened with and spoke about in terms of
mindset and yoga and getting into theright place and overcoming challenges and all this.
I focus more there. But what'simportant for me to understand, and
I have some hands on experience understandingKPIs because of where I was previous to

(49:22):
owning DN ten. I'm interested inunderstanding KPIs from your level and from what
people buy into when you're speaking KPI, And if you could maybe elaborate a
little bit more on that on whatthat process looks like and what your clients
are looking for when they're you know, going through this KPI journey with you.
Sure you, But so for searchengine marketing, for any kind of

(49:45):
Internet marketing where it's really data heavy, it's really easy to fall into the
trap of looking at the wrong KPIs, looking at the wrong metrics, looking
at metrics that seemingly are amazing,but they're not really the thing that you
need. So a really good litmustest for figuring out if a metric is

(50:07):
the correct metric for you or foryour company, for your business is to
see is it adding to the dollarsign in the bottom of your bank account
or is it not adding to thatdollar sign? Okay, if it's adding
to the dollar sign, it's theright metric. Otherwise it's not the right
metric. So what's an example ofthat? So in the Google in the

(50:30):
search engine marketing world, a lotof agencies they talk about clicks and click
prices, the cost per clicks ornumber of clicks or impressions, how many
impressions you got, you know,how many people, how many new people
you got looking at your stuff,or how many people clicked on it,
how many visitors you had. Oftenads are being clicked on, and there's

(50:54):
tons, and then all of thesehave acronyms. There's just there's a million
and one acronym. There are amillion and one acronyms in this industry.
Okay, the one that I reallylike and I use as the kind of
first and foremost. I mean,if if you were only giving given the
choice for one single acronym, whatwould that acronym be, I would say

(51:17):
that acronym is cost per closed lead, cost per closed lead, which is
CPCL. So there's cost per acquisitionCPA, there's cost per lead CPL.
There's you know, cost per clickCPC, there's click through rate ct rds,
all kinds of stuff, but theone that really adds to your bank

(51:39):
account is the CPCL. For example, you might have five different lines of
business. You're selling home insurance,you're selling car insurance, you're selling personal
you know, umbrella insurance, businessinsurance, you know, whatever it might
be. And you're getting leads forall of these lines of business and you're

(52:01):
saying, wow, as long asmy costper lead is fifty bucks, I'm
okay. So your agency is bringingin they set the KPI at a CPA
at cost per acquisition of fifty dollarsand then they managed to that KPI.
They're like, all right, wellMichael wants costper leads at fifty bucks,
so we'll set fifty bucks and we'llgo from that. And then they're going

(52:23):
after these five different lines of business, call it, you know, line
the business one through five, andthey're sending you leads for each one of
these lines of business. Well,what happens when you get the lead,
is your agent are you able tothen close that lead? Yes? Or
no? Yes I closed it,No I didn't close it. If you

(52:45):
closed it, did you close itfor a long for kind of the good
sized contract, a small contract,a medium contract, a large contract,
or a giant contract? Which whichkind of contract was it? Was it
an A lead? Was it theB lead? Was it the sea lead?
Or was it an athlead? Okay, So those kinds of things that

(53:06):
can only come through if you're trackingthose leads all the way through to their
fruition to their completion and then reportingback your findings back into the Google ad
system, and then you're able tothen max up your A leads and then
if there's any money left over,you go after the B leads, and

(53:29):
then if there's any money left overstill, then you go after the C
leads, and then you don't youthrow the eed n F leads to out
for the competitors. You just sothey can have some leads and they think
they're succeeding, but they're really notbecause you're doing the math on it.
And that's possible. Actually, that'sone of the benefits of PBC. It's

(53:51):
not easy, but it's doable becauseevery single click that you buy has an
idea attached to it, unique identifierattached to it. So that's that unique
idea is called. In Google's case, it's called g CLID, it's a
Google click ID. So if youragency is passing the g CLID to the

(54:14):
lead, and then you have maderoom in your CRM or in your spreadsheet
or however it is that you're managingthe leads for that g CLID, and
then you're following that lead all theway through to its fruition, and then
you take that final win loss andthen how good was it? Was it

(54:34):
good or was it bad? Ifit was good, was it an a
lead, a B lead, aC lead? What was it? How
good? Was it? Was itamazing? Then you could take that feed
that back into the Google Ads,and then we can go back and we
can say, oh, okay,a leads from Michael came from this ad
group, and these were the keywordsthat triggered those ads, and these were

(55:00):
the search terms. It's called convertingsearch terms. So we hear in this
industry, we hear a keyword,keyword, keyword, keyword, But what
we don't hear a search term,search term, search term. But that's
what we should be hearing, becausethe search terms is what people actually type
into the Google search box on theGoogle homepage. The thing that you type

(55:22):
in that's called the search term,and the search term, the system sees
it and then try and match it, tries to match it closely with a
keyword, and then triggers the adassociated with it. Well, we can
look and see how many people aretyping in that search term, and then
how many times your ads are showingup every time they type in that search

(55:45):
term. That's your impression shares forthose search terms. So if they're typing
in X, y z search termand your impression shares that ten percent and
those are your for a leads,Well, hew man, before you spend
a dime anywhere else. You gotto take that impression share to like eighty
five percent eighty percent, which iswhere kind of the marginal diminishing returns is

(56:08):
hitting at seventy five eighty percent.But there's no point spending a dime on
anything else at all unless all ofthose A lead search terms are hitting at
eighty percent impression share. But thattakes skill to do that, because and
it takes teamwork, So you'll haveto track all this stuff report it back.

(56:32):
I mean, there's automation that weput in, you know, but
you have to track it in yourCRM, or you have to track it
on a spreadsheet and then upload thespreadsheet at the end of the day or
at the end of the week,or at the end of the month,
whatever it is. The point isthat now you can calculate CPCL. You

(56:52):
could say, all right, thecost per closed lead for these A leads
was like three hundred bucks, butthey closed five thousand dollars contracts, and
the cost for closed lead for theseF leads was fifteen bucks, not three

(57:14):
hundred bucks. But they didn't closeanything. So it doesn't make any sense
to mash these up and then getan average and then set your metric as
that average number. That makes nosense whatsoever, but that's exactly what's going
on every day and night three sixtyfive. So the idea that all leads

(57:37):
are created equal is just outrageous becausethey're not right. You can break down
leads by class and you could say, these leads are awesome. I need
as many of these as I canafford, And a lot of times what
that means is you'll end up payingthrough the nose for the cost per clicks,
because a lot of times people arelike, oh, I'm blwering your

(57:59):
cost per click, and it's like, why are those bringing me to a
leads? What are the A leadclicks? Let's max up at any cost?
Right, we could buy those Alead clicks at any cost. It
doesn't matter what the costs are becausethey convert. So you know that that

(58:19):
scenario was very helpful and also kindof painful for me because I spent a
lot on on Google AdWords and didnot get the results that we had hoped
for. So both both helpful andunderstanding KPI and painful from personal experience.
But just to kind of go ahead, I was just saying that that's a

(58:40):
really common outcome, and especially withall the automation that Google has provided.
Google spend hundreds of millions, ifnot billions of dollars on automation tools that
they've then added into the Google Adsplatform for free. They're like, here,

(59:06):
or advertiser, we'll give you allthis automation for free. You love
it. You can compete now,And it's true, you can compete.
The problem is, let me putit in a simpler way. The problem
is, imagine you're trying to sellyour house and you have three people bidding
for the house. That's great,I got three bids. Now imagine if

(59:28):
you have three hundred people bidding forthat house, or thirty people bidding for
that house, you're going to sellthe house for way more money. And
that's what this automation, the freeautomation that Googles bringing in, that's what
it's doing to the Google Ads platform. It's bringing the floor, bringing up
the floor for the keywords for thebids. So people, now you're not

(59:51):
able to succeed at all. Likebefore, you were up against three other
people and so it was one outof four chance that you got an a
lead at random, because it's fourpeople bidding so all the all the leads
are going into those four so yougot to one out of four chance that

(01:00:13):
you're gonna you're gonna get an alead. Now it's three hundred people bidding,
so your chances are diminished. Youcannot afford to make those kinds of
mistakes at all, or else youget the Google Vacuum, which is what
you got. Yeah, like Googlevacuum. Yeah, yeah, I definitely
got the Google Vacuum. So tokind of just bring this together for everyone,

(01:00:35):
and and just these are my mysimple notes on this, and just
correct me if I didn't capture this. But when we think about KPIs,
our key performance indicators, some ofsome of what I gained from what you
said here, Uh, the bigthings in there are are tracking, tracking
the results of what's happening, trackingwhat's happening in the in the marketplace,
and then what is the conversion fromthose tracking. But but for you guys,

(01:00:59):
and and what I'm learning here interms of your KPIs and what people
should be looking at is it's notjust the conversion, but then what is
the profit on that conversion? Andthen focusing on obviously the higher profit item
that you're selling or whatever it isfocusing on that. So just breaking it
down, the equation I came upwith was pretty much what you find is

(01:01:21):
when when you focus on that,then you're finding the need, which then
all you need to do as thesalesperson whatever you're selling to everybody out there,
is just find a solution to thatneed. Right, yeah, absolutely,
I mean that's taking that one stepfurther, which is backtracking what the
market has available and then seeing whatproduct you could fit into that availability,

(01:01:45):
which is a big deal. Right. We had one client and we're calculating
cost per close leads for these differentdivisions, and one division, their cost
per closed lead was like you know, these they were doing these annual contracts
that were fifty sixty grand annual contracts, so companies paying four or five grand

(01:02:06):
a month for these contracts, andtheir cost per closed leads at their average
cost per closed leads were like tengrande nine grand. Because they got a
lot of leads, people make costcalls, calls and then finally a lead
closed, and by then the costper closed lead was really high. Well,
when when you broke down the costper closed lead by division, you

(01:02:28):
saw that like one division, thecost per closed lead was five grand,
and the other four divisions, forthree of them the cost per closed lead
was ten grand double, and thefourth one the cost per closed lead was
fifteen grand triple. So I wastelling them your impression shares, this is
getting away into the leeds. I'msorry, that's okay, I'll finish it

(01:02:52):
up quick. I was saying thatyour impression shares for these lowest cost per
closed leads, they're only running atlike a eighteen percent. Why are you
spending money on these other divisions?And the guy was saying, well,
because there are fiefdoms, I meanthe fief dumbs, that's the word I'm
using. But he was basically sayingthat all of those divisions need leads.

(01:03:15):
Right, So if this is aCMO, I was talking to chief marketing
officer. So if he decides that, hey, this division can really become
profitable, like can really blow up, can really make a lot of money
really fast, and at the costof those other divisions not getting that budget,

(01:03:37):
then those other guys would probably getthem voted. So there's that like
politics, internal politics. So that'sa decision for the CEO really to say.
Of course, that's a giant companywith lots of funding and this and
that. But for smaller companies andyou're the entrepreneur, you're the solopreneur,
or you're the startup founder and you'restill managing the company, that's an easy

(01:04:01):
decision. You could say, oh, I'm selling these five things, but
I could get really a leads forthis one thing all the time, probably
for another you know, eight hundredpercent of how much business I'm getting right
now, So let me focus onthat for now. Let me max that

(01:04:24):
up first, then go after theB leads. There's no point going after
A leads, B leads, Cleads if you have an opportunity to go
to get a lot more A leads. In my opinion, it just doesn't
make any business sense, right.But of course, not everything makes sense
when you're in a big business becausepeople are fighting for fiftom, you know,

(01:04:47):
fighting to keep their stuff, andthere's internal politics that you cannot ignore,
which I could only assume led youto go surfing for a long period
of time, which is incredible.You have a very unique managing style and
that you don't micromanage, and uh, and I say that that's unique.

(01:05:10):
I mean, I know that there'sa lot of others out there who don't
micromanage, and I think that that'sterrific, uh for for where you wherever
people are. I'm just uh.And you and you brought up about how
you're able to do that micro notmicromanage. You brought that up with with
obviously the person who was able toget their black belt. I'm just interested
in Also, again, I'm alwaysinterested in the mindset of things of the

(01:05:32):
why why was it important for youto have a company to where you don't
need to micromanage? Why was thatpart of what when you developed the employee
handbook, call it that part ofthe employee handbook would mean that you would
be a hands off manager and owner. It's it's less as to why in

(01:05:56):
terms of business and more as towhy in terms of my personality. So,
because I'm a big student of Easternphilosophy, and I'm a big student
of mindfulness and so on, Ihave taken some learnings that I've had over

(01:06:23):
the years to heart, and I'veoperated my business and my life based on
those learnings. One of them specificallythat addresses this one is from the Way
of Life, Laudsu's Way of Life. If you look at this book,
you can see it's falling apart,but you could see that the date on

(01:06:45):
it is nineteen ninety three. Sosince nineteen ninety three, I've read this
book hundreds of times and there's averse in here that says, the best
leader is the one that people don'thear, and the best leader is the
one that when people actually win atthe end, they say, we did
it ourselves. That's powerful. Sothat's the way I've tried to run my

(01:07:13):
business where when people are having successes, when they're winning, they're saying,
we did it ourselves. That's thefirst thing. The second thing is there's
another thing, because that can backfire. Right, you hire people and they
could be slackers and it could backfire, and that's happened to me plenty of
times. The thing about it isthat even if they're slackers, I let

(01:07:39):
them slack. And that's another teachingfrom Laudsu, which is to say,
if you know, if you're goodenough, then you believe the liars.
If you yourself are good enough ofa father, if you're good enough of

(01:08:01):
a son, then you believe theliars. And so I let people know.
I'm like, there's this one guy, this is quite a few years
ago, like twenty sixteen, buthe wasn't working. He just he wasn't
working, and I would let himknow. I'm like, I know what's

(01:08:23):
happening, buddy. I wouldn't tellhim specifically what's happening, but I was
like, I know what's happening,man. I mean, I I'm not
stupid. I know exactly what's happening. Okay, just take care of it.
And like a in a very crypticway, I was just saying to

(01:08:44):
him, and what happens. Thatgives those people opportunity to get their dignity
back, because if somebody is slackingoff, they're losing their dignity. If
they're charging you to do something andthey're not doing it, they're losing their
own integrity, their own dignity.They have self hey because of that,
whether they realize that they or not. So I give them the opportunity to

(01:09:09):
snap out of that mode and dothe right thing or leave on their own
without me having to fire them.And that's the way I've always run seales
X. And that's usually what happens. They either step up or they leave
and I don't have to deal withit. And yeah, sometimes I have
to take a loss by paying themextra, you know, paying them salary

(01:09:32):
for work that they're not doing fora few months. But eventually it's very
rare where I have to say I'msorry, things aren't working out. You
have to leave because either they're lefton their own or they they step up
to the plate on their own.I have to get that book, The

(01:09:54):
Way of Life slat Suit. Ye, of course, it's really tough to
read, Like I've gotten eight differenttranslations of it, and this one is
by Witter, byner Witter, andfor me, for me, this one
is the only one that I couldreally relate to, even though I've gotten

(01:10:15):
a bunch of different ones. Butyeah, it's it's eighty one versus and
it really speaks to me, andI've basically arranged my life around that mentality.
Yeah, so that's that's a lotof why I don't I do things
or don't do things the way Ido or don't do them. And I

(01:10:35):
love the way that you speak theway that I do or don't do them.
It's it's such a latsuit, rightbecause everybody knows them for the Art
of war. So I hadn't heardof this book. Oh okay, I
got the name wrong. Yeah,at the Art of War as soon as
oh, you know what, Yeah, I assumes it is the Art of
War. Yeah, I love isthe father of Daoism. He's the that

(01:11:00):
Chinese stage from five thousand years ago. Loud Too is the founder of Daoism.
Okay, Taoism is maybe where I'mconfusing loud Too because doctor Wayne Dyer
used to speak a lot about latsuis Am. I right on that.
Wayne Dyer has written a book whereit's interpreted each one of those eighty one
verses. Okay, and his isone of those translations that I actually do

(01:11:25):
like a lot because he goes intoit and explains that. But this translation
is like is written in poet poemform. I love poetry, so it's
just like I read it and Idig it. Really it's easy to read
then because it's more rhythmic. Wellmaybe I've read it like five hundred times,

(01:11:45):
so maybe it's easy to read now. But it's still philosophy, so
you still have to think about it. Yeah. I love that philosophy and
I love the whole you know,I want to just go back to because
I had a hard time understanding itat first. When you first said it,
but as you started breaking it downand I understood it. So I
just wanted to go back to itis believing the liar. And and so
when you broke it down and that, it made a lot more sense to

(01:12:08):
me of like, you know,what if if someone's going to lie to
you, rather than challenging them ontheir lie and saying, no, that's
not true. And here's why you'rejust like, Okay, sure, I
believe you. You know. Whatcomes to mind for me on this is
is how do you deal with thepeople who are saying to you, Hey,
Joe, listen, that guy's lyingto you or that lady's lying to

(01:12:30):
you, Like what you got todo something? Why don't you do something?
What do you? How do yourespond to them? I do something,
I do do something. I tellthem that I realized what's going on
without insulting them. M okay.So that is the I've made it abundantly
clear that I know that they're lyingto me without calling them a liar.

(01:12:58):
And I make it clear so thatthey know and that internal that works,
you know. I don't know,man, maybe I'm an idealist, but
for me it's worked. Yeah,for me, it really works. Over
yours good. Yeah, over theyears. People they just if they're not

(01:13:18):
the right people, they just leave. Yeah, I mean I buy into
that philosophy. I would say I'mvery similar in that sense. And that's
why I'm able to have such asmall company and have actually a team that
operates because I just trust that they'reworking. I trust them. They know
that we have two team meetings aweek. We meet Tuesday Monday mornings and

(01:13:41):
Thursday mornings. And outside of that, they're typically the ones who are touching
base with me. I touch basewith that and just say have a great
weekend, and you know, thanksand I appreciate you. Like that's typically
my text messages to them, butmore than more often than that, it's
them calling me and saying, hey, I'm working on this, can you
help me or something like that,which I'm always available for, but I'm
not checking in on them to dothat. And and I and part of

(01:14:04):
why I asked you that question wasbecause that is some of the response that
I had gotten on some previous employeesof like, why aren't you doing this?
Why don't you do that to them? Why don't you tell them this?
And I'm like, I mean,I know what they're doing, and
uh, they know what they're doing. And eventually, I really am like,
I guess similar to you in thatsense. I'm like, eventually,

(01:14:25):
you know they're gonna get hung upon it, they're gonna have to do
something about it. And and theyboth did. One I did have to
ask to leave because that person wason salary and I needed to clear up
the space there at that point.But the other person was simple. It
was like, all right, here'shere's an option. You could be a
contractor for us. And it waslike, but why, And I'm like,

(01:14:45):
your life's gonna be easier. You'renot gonna have to tell me about
all this other stuff. You don'thave to tell me anything as a contractor.
You could just just send the leadin and then boom, we're done
your hours. Yeah, all that. So I found that. I found
that verse. But he talks aboutliving the liars. I don't know if
you know, I don't know ifyou want to get into that right now.
It's very true. Please, yeah, go ahead. So it's number

(01:15:08):
forty nine. It's verse number fortynine. And Wayne Dyer's book actually he
puts a chapter heading to these versenumbers. Wayne Dier does, and I
actually wrote his chapter heading for thisworse number. It's called Living Beyond Judgment.

(01:15:29):
So here's the verse. It says, a sound man's heart is not
shut within itself, but it's opento other people's hearts. I find good
people good, and I find badpeople good. If I am good enough,
I trust men of their word,and I trust liars. If I
am true enough, I feel theother heartbeats of I feel the heartbeats of

(01:15:55):
others above my own if I ifI'm enough of a father enough of the
song. You mentioned that you wrotethe heading for doctor Wayne Dyer, the
Wayne Dyers book. So this theLoud Suit. It's just it doesn't have
like a verse name, right,it's just a verse number. So this

(01:16:16):
is number forty nine, right,This verse was number forty nine, and
loud Sue's the way of life outof like I think it's like eighty one,
eighty guy, out of eighty one, this is number forty nine.
But what doctor Dyer did, whatWayne Dare did, is he gave each
one of those numbers a chapter heading, kind of the verse heading, And

(01:16:42):
for this heading he called it livingbeyond Judgment. So in that line where
it says, I trust men oftheir word, and I trust liars.
If I'm true enough, somebody's lying, they know they're lying, they're lying
then I mean, if they're delusional, psychotic, that's a different story.

(01:17:02):
But right somebody's lying. They canonly live with themselves with that life for
so long. For so long,Yeah, And I'd rather have them step
up, you know, and performto their promise and regain their integrity.
And that's how I buy their loyalty, rather than you know, kick them

(01:17:29):
out and buy their resentment. Iwould rather they step up. And then
you just said there too, whichI think is so huge, is that
that's how you buy their loyalty.I think you know, so often as
leaders, we're looking for respect andwe're looking for loyalty, and people are
asking for searching for loyal employees andwondering how do we gain loyalty? How

(01:17:51):
do we gain loyal employees? Ofcourse customers as well, but how do
we gain loyal employees? That's thestarting point. And right there, I
love that you use the word dignity. Is that you give them their dignity
back by by just believing, byletting them know, you know, it's
real you know it's going on,but allowing them to believe, allowing to

(01:18:12):
believe the lie. I absolutely lovethat. I want to just transition into
mindfulness here because it's it's in thesame realm of what you're talking about.
But you also said that you usemindfulness and as part of your management style,
and I'm interested in how you usethat with your team. Yeah,
I mean mindfulness for somebody that that'skind of like has an aggressive personality,

(01:18:42):
like not that aggressive, but assertive. Right, we've been through We'll come
from sales background. Right, weknow to excite people, listen to a
million sells audiobooks, sales books,read them, sales training. I used
to joke that through Oracle like gotlike a second master's degree in sales because
they they spend and other thing.This is back in two thousand. They

(01:19:06):
spend like between two thousand and twothousand and four, they spend like thirty
five grand putting me through different salescourses and so on. Plus the martial
arts background, plus kind of thespeaking right toastmaster's background, not shy from
communicating, and so on. Soit's it's really easy for me to overwhelm

(01:19:31):
people who don't have those kinds ofbackgrounds, especially like engineering type people that
they're more introverted and maybe shy,maybe even shy to even get on camera,
soft spoken this, and that Icould easily just overrun their opinions or

(01:19:54):
make them feel like if they spokeup, I could shut it down in
an embarrass way something like that.So I have to be extremely cognizant of
that, and most of the time, bite my tongue most of the time,
don't express the first thing that's comingto my mind, and a lot

(01:20:18):
of times just don't say anything atall as much as possible, because as
the head of a company, asthe leader of a company, when you
say something, people are like,oh, Joe said X, you know,
and it's like, okay, Soif it's wrong, I expect you

(01:20:40):
to shut it down. If it'snot going to work, I expect you
to just say, dude, you'redreaming. That's never going to work.
And these are the reasons. Butpeople don't say that to the head of
the company. And that's where youhave to be mindful. You have to
be careful what you say because alot of times people take that as like

(01:21:01):
the word and that's not the word. I'm treating them like peers, but
they're not treating me like a peer, So I have to be mindful of
that fact. If I'm not mindfulof that, then we could go down
paths that don't succeed. We couldtry stuff that are a waste of time.

(01:21:24):
And it's known that it's a wasteof time by my people, but
they're not saying it because I madethe suggestion. And so it's better if
I don't speak about those kinds ofenvironments. And even if I have something
an opinion that's really strong, Imight write a couple of lines and I
am to their manager and say,what about something like this? Would that

(01:21:48):
work? You know? And thenhe will bring it up and then they're
more comfortable debating it with him thanit would ever be debating it with me.
So I've given four guys to thisperson and he's managing them, and
we're all in the meeting. Ishouldn't be directly talking to those guys because

(01:22:11):
it's kind of freeze them. Thatnot it's not a power play, it's
just I don't want to freeze thembecause they're looking at me like everything Joe
says has to be and it's notthe case, they have that intimidations that
are hands on in the account,so they have a better sense I'm just
making a suggestion because I'm being extroverted, I'm being loud, I'm being whatever.

(01:22:35):
So I have to be very cognizantof that and just bite my time.
Yeah, because they're they're intimidated becauseof your position and your role in
the company, which which yeah,is obvious with with any company is the
owner says something, the CEO sayssomething, people are like, Okay,
that that's probably what we got todo. And then again living into the

(01:22:57):
philosophy, the Eastern philosophy of whatyou just said earlier, where I am
the manager, the manager says itto them, and then it's it's them
working with the manager, and it'sit's them seeing their own victory to that
point. So I love that howit kind of like ties back together as
well. And then of course notwanting to overwhelm people with all of your
ideas and all of your strategies andall of what you're digging into. I

(01:23:17):
remember Gary Vee talking or saying thisas a response to one of his Q
and a's where somebody said, asked, Gary Vee, they said, what
do you say to the employee who'snot willing to work as hard as you?
And he's it was something along thoselines, and he said nothing.
He goes, I don't expect myemployees to work as hard as me,

(01:23:38):
and and I'm bringing that back toyou and what you're just what we're talking
about here, because you're you're toiling, you're playing, you're you're and I
know this because I'm doing this too. It's like when when we start something,
a business or anything, there's there'salmost never a time that we're not
thinking about the business or how wecan improve it or learn or grow.

(01:23:59):
And so so of course when somebodycomes to us with something, we have
a ten we have ten answers forthem. Whereas for our managers or our
employees, they're here for nine tofive. And that's good. We need
people like that in our lives.I'm looking for more people like that in
my business. But that means thatthey have less answers. And so when

(01:24:20):
they have less answers, we certainly, as the owners of the company and
the founders of these companies, weoverwhelm them. And so it's important to
have that dialogue through different channels.And I really love how you brought that
up, of bringing that dialogue inthrough different channels and going back now to
mindfulness. And I want to goto meditation with you because part of that

(01:24:41):
self control that you're speaking to,as you said, you're assertive, aggressive,
and myself as well. And somany people feel that they can't change
who they are. They can't changetheir history of being an aggressive personality and
overspoken, outspoken personality, you know, the head of the class, the

(01:25:01):
class clowns, which is sometimes whatthe title is, and they can't change
that. And I certainly have changedthat through meditating. And I'm so I'm
interested in your meditation and your practiceand how that's changed your life. Yeah,
for sure. By the way,I found that verse before we move
to meditation, I found that verse. It's also a short one about the

(01:25:26):
leadership. Please you're up for that, of course, So it's number seventeen.
Verse number seventeen. It says aleader's best when people barely know that
he exists, not so good whenthey obey, when they obey and acclaim
him, worst when they despise him, fail to honor people, they fail

(01:25:49):
to honor you. But of agood leader who talks little when his work,
when his work is done is aimfulfilled, they will all say we
did this ourselves. Mhm. Yeah, I'm gonna buy this book for all

(01:26:10):
of my whole team. Yeah,I mean it's again. Over the years,
I've tried reading this for people andpeople. You know, it takes
time to think and absorb this information, you know, So I don't expect
that anybody that you give it tothey're gonna gobble it up. You gotta
break it down. So it's justthe way I you know, hopefully,

(01:26:35):
it's the way that I continue tolive. It's the method that I use.
And it's funny enough, it's calledthe way of life. So in
terms of meditation, I learned reiki. So reiki is kind of the equivalent

(01:26:59):
of so the there's the yoga partof it, which is associated with the
breath, which is pranayama. Andwhen you do pranayama, you bring a
focus to your mind because you're controllingyour breath. Your breath, Like you

(01:27:21):
can not eat for forty eight hours, you'll be fine. You're not gonna
die. Okay, you cannot drinkfor a day and you'll be severely hurt,
but you know, it might takea day or two for you to
you know, but with breath,you need every single breath. You can

(01:27:44):
hold your breath for a couple ofminutes, maybe five minutes if you're a
deep sea diver or whatever, slowdown your heart rate, your yogi,
whatever it might be. But thenyou're done. It's over. So the
breath. We're doing something like twentyone thousand breaths I think a day,
or it's eighteen or twenty one thousand, some outrageously high number of breaths that
we do every day, and alot of times everything can be controlled with

(01:28:10):
the breath or anxiety levels. Alot of diseases they are associated with shallow
breathing, you know, hyperventilation.Hyperventilation hurts the amount of carbon dioxide that
you get in your blood, andthe carbon dioxide is opening the vessels.
Its function serves as opening up theblood vessels so you get more blood through

(01:28:32):
to your extremities and everywhere. Sothe breath is really important. So even
if somebody is like, oh,I can't I can't meditate, man,
I tried a bagillion times. Ican't meditate. I don't want to meditate.
Even if they say that say,okay, that's fine. Don't meditate,
but do some breath stuff. Controlledbreathing, okay, four count breathing.

(01:29:01):
Okay. There's like, there's aguy in our academy who's kind of
overweight, and he's he's a newguy's just started a few months ago.
And I could hear him breathe sohard, you know, because you just
pian is hard. So and Isat down and I said, his name

(01:29:24):
is Lion. I said, Lionman, let's have a chat. Okay.
I want you to download this kindof app that's a metronome app.
Okay, like a piano metronome.Yeah. Yeah, And on a fore
count, I want you to inhaleand excel so in helle two three or

(01:29:48):
exhale two three four in heale twothree or exhale two three and I want
you to do that for five minutesin the morning and five minutes at night.
This is like two weeks ago.And the other day we were doing

(01:30:12):
he was doing rounds. He wasdoing roles, and I couldn't hear I
couldn't hear him gas out like that. And I was like, afterwards,
I said, what's going on,man? You seem to not gas out
today because he used to like dolike get a little bit during warm ups.
He was like, you know,it's like, dude, calm down,
you know. So even if peopledon't meditate, they could take up

(01:30:34):
some pranayama yogic breathing practices as simpleas a forecount, even that one.
Even if they just do that oneright there, which is the simplest one,
there's nobody on the planet that can'tin hell on a forecount and excel
on a fore count. And youdon't even need to hold. You don't
hold at the top, you don'thold at the bottom. You're just in

(01:30:55):
hell two three four, excel twothree four. That's it. You do
that, you automatically start palming yourself, you're meditating, you're adjusting your breathing,
and you're just a better, allaround, more efficient person. So
that's that's pranayama. That's the yogicbreathing techniques. And I do the twelve

(01:31:24):
count. I could do like thetwelve count for ten minutes, which is
only two breaths, like twelve counttwelve in Heald twelve Excels twenty four.
So it's almost only two breaths perminute. Okay, So you're slowing down,
you're breathing, you're slowing down thenumber of breaths you're taking. I

(01:31:47):
love breath work. I do thatduring my meditation is I do breath work,
and I like to do I personallyenjoy it's a strange thing to enjoy.
I enjoy holding my breath. It'slike, I literally do the breathing
count that you're talking about and similarones with breathe and holds and short holds

(01:32:10):
in order to work my way upto being able to do a really long
hold. And I get into I'mlike, I'm just gonna do one more,
like I'm meditating and I'm like,I just just want to do one
more. It's like it's like adopamine rush for me, right. I
mean the ultimate goal for the Pranayamawhere the truly adept Yogi's the way they

(01:32:31):
do it. The guys that Iwas sitting in the caves, they do
four count in, fourteen count holdan eight count out. So I mean
that's really tough to do. Yeah, I can do one of those,
maybe, you know, two ofthose maybe, but but anybody can do

(01:32:51):
four count in four count out.Yeah. I was gonna say, you
know, after this, I'm gonnabe trying to I guess, are a
sheet that teaches you how to workup to those numbers in about a year.
Yeah, there's there's a sheet thatyou could you could work up to
that patually. I'm also interested ifyou could just share what the app was

(01:33:14):
that you pulled up, just sothat our listeners just a metronome map,
just whatever went on there. Okay, cool, So yeah, let's get
into the reiki. We don't needto spend much time there then, Yeah,
it's just a free metrono map.The reiki is kind of the the
chi and the Chinese they call itchi. Everybody has heard about that.

(01:33:39):
They do keep chigong and like taichi, you know, the energy manipulation,
and the the Indians they call itpranayama, and the Japanese they call it
reiki, and reiki has Actually theroot of reiki is too goes back to

(01:34:02):
this energy medicine, which I've readthat it goes back to the method that
Christ was using for his healing.So there are these symbols that you visualize
and you like draw them. Thisis going to get a little esoteric on

(01:34:27):
the roof of your mouth with thetip of your tongue as you're visualizing them
and you say them in your head, you don't say them out loud.
And then these symbols they trigger likethis the universal energy to just channel through
you. And when I get thatenergy, I instantly fall asleep. So

(01:34:48):
when people are like, oh can'tI couldn't sleep. I woke up,
I couldn't fall back asleep, Ihave a really hard time, like I
have to be compassionate. Obviously Ido my to be compassionate, Yet I
have a really hard time relating toit because as soon as I do reiki,
instantly I'm a sleep So for meeven to get get through one cycle

(01:35:13):
of reiki. So reiki you havelevel one, level two, and level
three, and each level has threeof these symbols, except for the third
level, you only use two ofthem. You don't use the third one
because that's for transmitting reiki to anotherperson. But long story short, in
order to go through the three levelsof reiki, it takes about three minutes.

(01:35:34):
It doesn't take long because it's justeight symbols effectively, right, and
you're just drawing them and you're visualizingthem and you're sagging them in your head
for that three minutes. A lotof times I fall asleep so many times
that like in the morning is whenI do it. When I when I'm
waking up, it takes me likeforty five minutes to just complete the one

(01:36:00):
cycle because I've fallen asleep so manytimes. Also, I'm you know,
sitting up in the daylight doing itin a seated position. But if I'm
laying down in bed trying to doreiki, it's like a light switch.
So there's that meditation that I doday and night, and then the Pranayama
meditation, and then the niche andBuddhism, which is something I practice.

(01:36:27):
There's a chance. It's based ona load of sutra and that chance is
basically it's said that you could getenlightenment in one lifetime by just chanting that
one chance. And so that's areally cool chance. It's not and yekio,

(01:36:49):
you might have come across it,or you might come across it in
the future. Could you say itagain a little slower for us? It's
mioho renge kyo. So when youchant it, it becomes it becomes kind

(01:37:09):
of like a hum. It becomeslike and what does it mean, it's
it's the so and and In Buddhismand the Load of Sutra, they say
that the cause and effect, whichis the you know, the source of

(01:37:30):
everything that happens in life. There'sa cause, there's an effect that could
happen simultaneously when you chant this,so that the direct translation is something like
acknowledging the power of the load ofSutra is what it is the direct translation.

(01:37:53):
But effectively, when you're chanting thischant, your your belief is that
you're creating both cause and effect atthe same time. So you're melting your
karmade again, it gets esoteric,but effectively, what if I say effectively
one more time, you toast mastersis kicking in. Yeah, my toest

(01:38:13):
Master's training is kicking in. Sowhat happens is because the human body is
mostly made up of water, andsound vibrates through water. When you chant
this chant, it's affecting all ofthe water in your body and it's bringing

(01:38:35):
it in sync. So when youchant this chant multiple times in a row,
like let's say, do ten minutesof it, five minutes of it,
then when you're done, you feelyou feel completely like everything is in
sync. It's it's the vibrations thatwe're getting, that it's creating, the

(01:38:59):
vibrations that it's creating, is thinkingthe the the water in your body.
Yeah, that that makes really greatsense. It's it's incredible as we go
down these paths of mindfulness and selfawareness and and all these different religions and
beliefs and breathing and yoga and it'sand and cultures and how you when you

(01:39:23):
when you go and and we startpaying attention to the mind and to the
body and internal our internal organs,we realized that, like we can really
control a lot of our outcomes throughhaving self mastery and and uh, it's
just incredible and I'm so happy thatyou were so able to bring all of

(01:39:48):
this to this to this show today. I certainly was not expecting us to
go down as path, but Ido know that when we first started talking
before we jumped on and you mentionedand Buddhism, you said it just in
passing and then Brazilian jujitsu, Iwas like, Okay, we're gonna have
some fun today. And fun forme is exactly what we just did there.

(01:40:12):
It's it's really really incredible. Ilove how you are and by the
way you know you got upset withyourself on saying would you say facilitate?
I think it was or effectively Iget on myself because I could hear it
all the time. I go,I go, I love how you said.
I love how, And I'm like, I wonder if my listeners probably
go, Michael's gonna love what hejust said. It's kind of my way

(01:40:36):
of transitioning. But anyway, soso since you dinged yourself for toast masters,
I guess I'll ding myself too formy crutch word. But I do,
I really do love how you bringthis, uh self awareness. Let's
let's just call all of everything thatyou just talked about there the Eastern philosophy
and everything the self awareness into yourbusiness and how you've been able to use

(01:40:58):
that self awareness and in terms ofthe bootstrapping and overcoming challenges all the way
into growing into into learning and discoveringwho you are as a business owner and
being able to now have a teamof employees and managers who are self reliant
and passing that onto them because youand I both know that there's no way

(01:41:19):
that they're not learning from this.They may not be absorbing it the same
way as you're you. You absorbit, but they're learning from it and
they probably carry that into their ownlives and all the people that they touch,
so it just transcends to so manyothers. So I really am,
I really do love it because Imean, it's what I try to do
in my businesses, and it's it'sthe way I try to live my life.

(01:41:40):
And I was writing down the booksthat you mentioned, and of course
they're all going to be in theshow notes. We're going to have to
put those in there. Latsu andsoun Sue and the other books and doctor
Wayne Dyer's books. Another great sourcefor me nsure in Buddhism. It's actually
pretty prevalent in the US that wereorganizations called s g I. So the

(01:42:02):
website is s g I US adot com g I And what's the what's
distinct about this organization is that itdoes not have monks, so there's no
clergy, so it's just a directIt's it's this chanting and then a lot
of study of They give you materialwhich is very positive and hopeful, and

(01:42:30):
it's all about kind of peer basedhelping overcome difficulties, helping your peers,
chanting for them chanting with them,chanting for yourself. So it's a pretty
cool organization. I really like ita lot, and I'm a huge fan
of it. So yeah, andso as I always do, I like

(01:42:53):
to conclude with with maybe, AndI know we've gone through a few mantras,
but a mantra or quote that youlive by, and I'm sure that
you have many, but maybe yourfavorite for today, all right, And
I know you're cycling through all ofyour favorites. No, I'm just I'm

(01:43:17):
just looking at a mantra that's sittingon my desk. A monk handed this
to me, like I'm peer thirtynine. If you can see it,
I can, Yes, work smoothly. Lifetime piece. Piece just works smoothly,
lifetime piece. You know, theidea is a lot of times we

(01:43:41):
come to a decision and we makea sudden decision about it. We're like,
go, go go. We're inthe West, man, you can't
be sitting on your hands. Let'sgo, let's go, let's go,
come on up with it. Alot of times that's the wrong approach.
A lot of times things resolve themselves. A lot of time times you don't
need to open up a chatterbox aboutit and panic people and god knows what

(01:44:05):
ways they start thinking about things thatyou say. So just if you work
smoothly and just calm down, thenyeah, lifetime piece. Fantastical, fantastic,
Yeah, lifetime piece. I meanfor me, I work with a
coach and we've been working through whatI want out of life, and I

(01:44:30):
mean we've come to that answer.Fine, that question finally, it's taken
a long time of what do Iwant? You know, when you first
when you first get into business,when you first get into coaching, it's
like, well, what do youwant accomplish out of this? I want
to make ten times more money?Why do you want to make time?
I want to own a Lamborghini?Okay, you know, how are you
going to feel when you get allthat stuff all right and you start start
realizing some realities of it, allof you know, does it match my

(01:44:55):
integrity? And then it's a ThenI went through the transition of okay,
you know, the question is,okay, well who do you who do
you need to be? Who doyou need to become for the person you
want to be? And the wayI had translated that was was, well,
I need to go buy a newcar, and I need to go
get suits and I need to youknow, because that's the person I want
to become, is a successful businessowner, right. And I've started to

(01:45:18):
realize that all of that, whatis the purpose to all of that?
And it's essentially my happiness. It'sessentially I just want to be happy.
And when you when you look atit, it's like, and what you're
saying, it works smoothly. LifetimePiece. I mean, that's it.
It's like, we just want tobe happy as people, and we work
towards all these goals. They're wonderfulgoals, and I'm sure all this these

(01:45:39):
material things are wonderful to have andto own, and they're great experiences.
But at the end of the day, it's about the happiness for me and
and you know, lifetime Piece foryou and and so I think that it's
such a great mantra to live by. So I appreciate you bringing that to
the show today. Yeah, ofcourse, my pleasure. The happiness is

(01:46:00):
internal. Yeah, so it's insideall of us. And it's funny.
There's this happiness coach in San Francisco, Amy Coajet, and she said stay
away, she said, don't allowfour things to impact your happiness. People,

(01:46:25):
places, things, and circumstances.So I've been teaching that to my
kids. I say, PPTC,people, places, things, and circumstances.
Don't let those four things affect yourhappiness. You know, when you
look at happiness, if you disconnectedfrom those four things, then the only

(01:46:48):
thing that leaves is just you.It's internal fantastic. Well, before we
wrap, just how can people reachout to you? Of course, as
I always say, this will bein the show notes, but just for
our audio listeners here, what areyour handles and websites that everybody can find
you on? Sure? I meanI'm on you can find me through the

(01:47:10):
sales X website and so my emailis Joe at salesx dot com. And
we offer a free kind of consultationaudit. We have this thing called an
x audit where we look at someone'sGoogle Ads account and we do an audit
and then we provide like a slightpresentation which serves as their Google Ads business

(01:47:36):
plan. It tells them exactly howtheir structure is, how it should be,
what are the things they're addressing,what are the things they need to
address, what are the results thatthey're getting and what they're leaving on the
table, what their potential is.And so we do that free of charge.
And if someone needs us to takea look at their Google Ads account

(01:48:00):
and provide a next audit, thenthey can just shoot me an email or
go through the website and send themnote and we'll take care of it.
Very cool. This has been awesome, And of course you have a LinkedIn
profile. I certainly visited that sopeople can find you there as well.
Very awesome. Thank you so muchfor coming on the show. This has
been an amazing experience. Same here, same here. Thank you, thank

(01:48:23):
you, thank you so much.Yeah, it's been It's been a lot
of fun. We've covered a lotof esoteric topics as well, which is
not typical business chat, but Ienjoyed it. Thank you for listening to
The Michael Esposito Show. For shownotes, video clips, and more episodes,
go to Michael Esposito Inc. Dotcom backslash Podcast. Thank you again

(01:48:44):
to our sponsor dan ten Insurance Services, helping businesses get the right insurance for
all their insurance needs. Visit Dentendot io to get a quote that's d
n T dot io and remember whenyou buy an insurance policy from Danen.
You're giving back on a global scale. This episode was produced by Uncle Mike

(01:49:05):
at the iHeart Studios in Poughkeepsie.Special thanks to Lara Rodrian for the opportunity
and my team at Mike Lesposito,Inc.

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