[LEXIE LEE] The Married Entrepreneurs Podcast is part of the Practice of the Practice network, a network of podcasts seeking to help you market and grow your business and yourself. To hear other podcasts like Bomb Mom and Grow A Group Practice, go to www.practiceofthepractice.com/network. [LEXIE LEE] Welcome to the Married Entrepreneurs Podcast. This is Ron Lee. [LEXIE] I am Lexie Lee. [RON] We are professional counselors and serial entrepreneurs who are married [LEXIE] To each other. [RON] Thank you for joining us as we explore the business of life and the life of business. [LEXIE] Today, we have Mitch Russo. He’s an entrepreneur, podcaster and author who helps people significantly grow their business. Welcome Mitch. Tell us a little bit more about you. [MITCH RUSSO] Thanks Lexie. Yes, I’d love to. I started out with the software company in my ’20s. It was an idea I had and brought to a breakfast meeting with a neighbor one morning, and next thing we know we’re putting together a company. We started investing in that little company and we grew that from a breakfast table conversation to well, over a hundred employees and sold it for well over eight figures. So that was a, you might say a successful venture but I was I was done by the time I was 40 years old. I sold a company 44, I was out of work and had no idea what I was going to do with the rest of my life and so I started going back to the places I used to go in terms of my business meetings and groups and get togethers. A lot of people wanted to know if I could help, them help, them do what I did which is to help scale and then grow and sell their companies. So I did, I started doing that and I started working as an advisor at the time. They used to call us advisors or coaches, however else they might say. The bottom line is that I started doing it sort of casually, and then I started getting very serious about it. I started developing my own processes, my own intellectual property, if you will and then around that time, I got a call from an old friend, someone I had met through my software company named Chad Holmes. Chad and I had been friends and he asked me if I’d help him with his current company and I said, I would. As a result of doing that about, oh, maybe three or four months later, we found ourselves in a meeting with Tony Robbins. Tony, myself, and Chad decided that we had what might be the beginnings of a great new company and we keep talking. So for every Thursday night for, it’s about like six months or so, it wasn’t every Thursday night, but most Thursday nights Chad, Tony, and I would get on the phone. It would be about 10 o’clock, 10:00 PM Eastern time, sometimes a little later, and we’d just keep going. So those phone calls were wonderful. I cherished my memories of those calls because out of those calls was the birth of Business Breakthroughs International and Chad myself and Tony then organized and launched this new organization. I was the president of the company and grew rapidly to almost 30 million in revenue by the time Chad had passed away. Then from there I started once again, out of a job. I felt a little lost and not sure what I was going to do next. So I called a friend of mine. I said Jay, do you know Jay Abraham by chance? Jay’s a business growth strategist. I called and said, “Jay, what do I do? I don’t know what I should do next.” He says, “I don’t know, Mitch. But whatever you do, you must make sure that you do not let what you know go to the grave. You have to teach others.” I said, “Okay, well then how do I do that, Jay?” He goes, “I don’t know, but you’re just going to have to figure it out.” So bottom line is I decided to write and I wrote my first book called The Invisible Organization which was a little bit, be a little bit ahead of its time because the book was all about taking companies and going virtual, that was in, 2013. Now of course, that’s — [LEXIE] It’s very common now. [MITCH] Very common. Then finally, my second book, Power Tribes, which is the book that has launched me into the certification business, building certification. So what I do now is I help people scale their company, I help them build certification programs, I podcast, and I also have a software company for coaches. So I built a software platform because I couldn’t find one that suited my needs. I built it myself. That’s called Client Folio. [LEXIE] Well, and what I admire so much is that I think we’re all in that boat where we think someday, I want to retire. What you’re showing is we never really retire. We just move on to the next thing. But we have to be able to have the ability to scale so that we have that long term money. So when you’re looking at giving advice to people, what’s the biggest piece of advice that you start off with? [MITCH] Well, when I work with a client for the first time, I do something that is very unusual. What I’ve heard is unusual when it comes to working with business coaches is I don’t focus on business at all. I try to get to their core purpose, their core reason for living, their strongest and deepest need. Then I help them uncover that in a very simple process, which I have perfected over the years. Once we have that, then we build a business around that. If they already have a business, in many cases, we are going to use that business to fulfill their core purpose, core needs, even if they had not done it that way before. So that’s where I would start. [LEXIE] What is the benefit that you have found in starting with that premise? [MITCH] Alignment. I mean, the other thing is that I’m, I think Ron, you are also educated as an electrical engineer, so I’m educated as an engineer. So my whole life is around systems and tracking and performance. What I found was that when I did not track results people’s results were haphazard, if you will. They were good, some were not so good, but once I honed in, on this tracking system, I was able to perfect how people become successful. I built all of that into my software as well. So now when I work with a client, and once I go through this process of understanding deeply understanding who they are and what they stand for and what their core purpose is now, we then set a series of goals. We write a series of accountability questions, and we use those throughout our entire coaching relationship to make sure that they are hitting exactly the goals we had set out for in that very first meeting. [LEXIE] So one of the things that you mentioned that you’ve done is become an author, and you’ve taken those things, and you’ve been able to give us some wisdom. I wanted to talk a little bit about your book Tribe. [MITCH] Yep, Power Tribes. [LEXIE] Power Tribes. Tell me about that book. [MITCH] So that book came as a result of me building my very first certification program for Time Slips Corporation. We had a problem. We were a software company. We had tech support, we had a call center with tech support people, and the calls were taking longer and longer and the whole times were getting longer and longer. I said if we could just train some people in the field to help us, maybe we can reduce a call time and serve our clients better. So that was the beginning of this idea of let’s find some clients who are really, really skilled at time slips, let’s get them certified and then let’s help them find their own clients. That became the Time Slip Certified consultant program. It went from zero to 350 members in a matter of 18 months. Having done that, and again, remember, I’d never done this before, I’d never even heard of this before, but I just was searching for a way to fix a problem, having done that, I also turns out to have created multiple recurring revenue streams from certification and from the services that we were delivering to the certified consultants. Then it turns out that they became our third largest sales channel without me even realizing it. All of a sudden, they were selling our products. In fact, they were selling our support contracts and all of a sudden, now they were our third largest sales channel. On top of that, we had built a tribe. So the fact of the matter is that I did it twice. The first time I did it, I screwed it up, a bunch of lawsuit threats and stuff. Second time I did it, I paid a lot of attention to what I did wrong the first time and ended up creating a culture in this organization. That culture became the foundation of the company, and that culture turns out to have served them and us very, very well. In fact, to this day, I still hear from my time slip certified consultants from back in the 1990s, I mean, so the reason is because that bond was there. I sold the first 10,000 copies of time slips individually to people either on stage or I trade your booths over the phone. So I knew a lot of my first customers and I love that. I love that ability to have been able to know that. More importantly, I was very in touch with them because I was, I wanted to make sure I was serving them. I wanted to make sure that our software did exactly what they needed and if it didn’t, I wanted to fix it. [LEXIE] When I think of the idea of tribe and I think about being able to connect and that for true connection, there’s an element of vulnerability that needs to be in there for there to be true connection. Can you speak to that a little bit? [MITCH] I sure can. You’re so right. It’s so important what you just said, because another thing that I do when I work with a new client after we uncover, and we map their true purpose to their current work or to maybe even a whole new company, which has happened several times, we then do something also I think is unique. We build what we call their heroes journey story. Remember I’m a business coach. Why would I be doing something like that? Well, because the hero’s journey story becomes the foundation, their origin story, by which we attract others who are on the same path. So when you say get vulnerable, I mean, in my origin story, I shared how I was addicted to hard narcotics in high school. It wasn’t because I’m trying, I mean, I was afraid of sharing that information for many years. I was afraid that Tony might find out about that until when he did, he congratulated me, because look at what you’ve become from being a junkie back in Brooklyn. The point of the matter is that he’s right. I don’t wear it as pride. I wear it as experience. I think that once you share a part of you at the deepest level apart that maybe you wouldn’t think others should share, then they start to connect. They start to bond with you and what they’re doing, and what you’re doing is when you share an origin story is that you’re attracting people at every level of your origin story. So if you’re talking to the guy who’s still in the bar, who’s still drinking, who’s still fallen down and getting arrested, if that’s part of your history, that’s who now all of a sudden is paying attention. Then later in life, maybe you overcame that. That’s great. Now you’re struggling salesperson. Now you’re attracting that person. So every step along the journey, you are using your origin story to bring in more of your ideal prospects. Then those people get to know you and want to work with you. [LEXIE] It’s so true that they connect when they see your vulnerability. How do you get them to be vulnerable? [MITCH] I ask them, it’s that simple. I mean, first of all in the masterminds that I ran years ago, I don’t do that now, I’m a member of masterminds, but one of the first things we would do is we would say, okay, everyone, one at a time, go around the room and tell us the worst thing you’ve ever done. I tell the story of, basically in high school, of my drug addiction and the things I did around that, and others would stand up, people smart, brilliant individuals, high levels of performance, wealthy in today’s dollars and all that say, yes, I was in prison for two years for robbing a gas station. I mean, this changes the way you see another person. It rips the persona apart and instead of the veneer of a personality, you see the real person. [LEXIE] It makes me think of one of my favorite quotes, “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure that you seek.” [MITCH] Exactly, exactly. I love that. [LEXIE] So in thinking about building a tribe, if our audience who are married entrepreneurs are wanting to build a tribe, obviously reading your book, what else would you say like if you’re starting from nowhere, how would you start? [MITCH] Well, I have a podcast called the Tribe Builders and what we do is we interview people who’ve done it and who are community creators. The common theme is a very simple idea. The common theme is to simply feel incredibly passionate about something. Then once you feel incredibly passionate about something, create your manifesto. What is a manifesto? It’s a simple document. It basically says, I don’t want you and I do want you. I want to repel those who don’t resonate with my message or my mission and I want to attract those who do. That’s a manifesto. Write your manifesto, then put it out there, see who shows up. If nobody shows up, then fine, be passionate, but you’re going to be all pretty much alone or find a way to share it in a better way. Find a way to communicate what you really want, communicate your passionate in a more prolific way and then you’ll see what happens. That’s a good start. [LEXIE] I love that. Do you have some advice on platforms to start with? [MITCH] For people building tribes? [LEXIE] Yes. [MITCH] Well the standardized tools that we all use are fine. I mean, if you use Gmail or Click Funnels or any of the things that we use today, if you’re a page builder like Click Funnels, or, I mean, it almost doesn’t matter. Where it becomes important is when you are working with others. In other words, if you are coaching others, then you need a very specialized piece of software and Shameless Plug that’s the software I created. It works. It does the job. It’s the only software I know of that basically does as much as it does for as little as it costs and at the same time ensures that the client’s success is now something that you can control as opposed to hope. [LEXIE] So I’m going to allow you to further have this Shameless plug. Tell us a little bit more about what your software does. [MITCH] Sure. The name of the product is Client Folio, and it’s spelled Client F-O-L-I-O. Client Folio sits on your desktop while you are open with the Zoom meeting and allows you to take notes. It allows you in another box to put in the homework. You can set up your next meeting, you can select the accountability questions that you want your client to answer. You can set goals and track them every single week with a graph so you can see visually and exactly how they’re doing. Then at the end of the session, you decide what you want to share from what you’ve created and you click two buttons and you can send that homework and save your session. When your client gets their homework, there’s a login, they log into their client portal. Once inside that portal, they see all their past sessions, all their notes, all their homework, all their accountability questions, and can answer them, all their stats, and they can enter their goals and stats as well, and one graphs. They can ask their coaches questions without having to bother them by calling or using email, which we all get 300 messages a day now. So I don’t rely on email for hardly anything anymore. I really need to stay as far away from email as possible. That’s why I built it into Client Folio. So that’s in essence what it does for about 20 bucks a month. [LEXIE] Well, it sounds like it’s an awesome organization tool, because I think that’s the thing that we struggle with so much, is being able to keep up with things in a paperless way. [MITCH] Exactly. Everything’s on one screen, that’s another big deal. I was doing this with Google Spreadsheets and Evernote and all these other different programs scattered all over five screens. On the bottom line was that I really couldn’t manage it after a while. I mean, I was spending half an hour trying to consolidate all these different screens into a single Gmail email to send to the client and then they didn’t have a login. They couldn’t see other than what I told them what it was. [LEXIE] I think that is part of our struggle in moving completely paperless is that all of these logins and keeping track of okay, which app is taking care of that product for me. So I love that you’ve been able to integrate all of that to make it okay, it’s one log in, we can communicate, I can keep organized and it really is a time saver. [MITCH] Yes, it sure is. [LEXIE] Good deal. Well, tell us a little bit about this journey into writing because when I think about becoming a writer for me, I think lots of writers’ block and how do I get this idea out of my head? That was a transition for you. So talk a little bit about what that was like. [MITCH] Okay. So when I first decided to write The Invisible Organization, that was my first book, I started just to write and write and write. I would call them in my mind, I’d say, well, this is going to be a chapter and this is going to be a chapter. So after almost 18 months, I looked over everything and said, this is terrible. This doesn’t even make sense. I basically hit the delete button on most of it. What I then discovered and I probably, somebody smart probably told this to me, but I don’t remember who or when, but I discovered that I needed to figure out what the book was going to be first. Once I understood what the book was going to be, the next thing I did and I do this with clients as well when I help them write books, the very next thing I do is I map out in 10 bullets, the exact contents of the book. So we go through what I would consider the normal thought process for how to create a book and we name the chapters in advance. A minimum is 10. Usually there’s 15 to minus 22, 23, whatever it may be. We just write the title of each chapter. Now at this point when we have this outline, if you will, we start thinking about going back to the beginning, which is what was the purpose of the book? What should this book be called? What names are available as URLs. In other words, we go through this research process of trying to figure out well, okay, I now have a very clear picture of what the purpose of this book is. So with The Invisible Organization, the purpose of the book was to help people transform their brick and mortar companies to digital virtual companies. In Power Tribes the goal and purpose of the book is to create profitable, recurring revenue streams through certification. Once you understand the purpose, then you write the chapter heads. At that point the other thing is about the author, the table of content. So the stuff that’s almost mechanical, but the most important thing is getting down the purpose of the book and then a summary outline of what each chapter will be. [LEXIE] So in some ways it’s very similar to how we started this conversation in what you do with your clients and having them talk about what is important to them, what is the purpose and then everything seems to flow from that? [MITCH] Yes, exactly. Because ultimately why spend time and energy on something that, where the purpose is not clear when at the same time, you’re hurting yourself? Whenever you work in an area where you are not completely in resonance with that area, you are hurting yourself. Relationships, all these things are part of the resonance process that you must respect. [RON] Do you see, how do you get your, do you use a vulnerable story? So in other words, with each one of your chapters of your book that you’re coming through do you use some a story to get people to show I’m going to be vulnerable within this chapter in order to show what you’re trying to get people to get to? [MITCH] Well, there’s many types of books, so we’re not talking about a romance novel here. We’re talking about a business type of a book or a blueprint type of book I’ve written. So in many cases I share the about me section. Like in my book, I read all about my history with drugs and it’s in the about me section. In the beginning I introduced a purpose of the book that’s in chapter one or the intro. So the reason I wrote this book is because X, Y, Z, and this is the reason I wrote this book, is because I had to struggle through creating something like this before. It took me a lot of tries and got me in a lot of trouble. So I figured I would just document this so you don’t have to go through what I did and I’m going to show you how to do it very quickly and efficiently. [LEXIE] So I can see throughout what you’ve talked about with your work, that organization’s important to you, the element of vulnerability in order to attract your tribe, the people who want to connect with you and then living it up in your purpose, your purpose in sharing your knowledge with others. Mitch, I really appreciate you coming and visiting with us today and sharing your story. Can you tell our guests how they can find more information from you? [MITCH] Yes, it’s real easy. Just go to mitchrusso360.com. mitchrusso360.com is sort of like a landing page that has all of my websites, including my travel photography, which is now going to be, I guess they’re starting to sell it now. So it’ll be fun. [LEXIE] Well, and we didn’t even get a chance to talk about that. So maybe that can be something for our future show. We’ll have all of your information in the show notes as well. We’ll have all of your information in the show notes so the guest can find you there. Again, thank you so much for coming today. [MITCH] My pleasure. Thank you. [RON] Thank you, Mitch. [MITCH] You’re welcome. [LEXIE] Thank you for listening. Time is our most valuable resource and we appreciate that you shared your time listening to us. If you enjoyed our show, please rate us or give us a review. You can share this episode with someone that you think may benefit. You can find more from us at marriedentrepreneurspodcast.com [RON] This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or any other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.