The Branding Doctor - Henry Kaminski Jr

SPEAKER_00 0:05

This is the Beyond the Story Podcast, a show that goes way beyond the story. And now Subestima I believe that's Mike Hugh. Thanks so much for that warm, warm welcome from my good friend, Mr. Michael B, the voice of our beloved Miami Heat. My guest this week, the branding doctor himself. I met this guy in San Diego. He's running around the hallways at a gig I had in San Diego probably three or four years ago called Traffic and Conversions. The guy was going live when live had just started. He's running around. He was bald like me. He was an East Coaster. And I said to myself, I gotta meet this guy. So we had a chance to connect over the course of the times. And I think we we had seen each other again at another TNC, but we had stayed in touch most definitely within the marketing circles and whatnot. So, friends, help me welcome to the show, the branding doctor himself, Mr. Henry Kaminsky. What's up, dude? What's going on, Seth? It's a pleasure to have me. I know, dude. I couldn't see, listen, I couldn't have said it better. You got a great face for radio.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

My wife thinks the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Especially just you've been home with her for two months straight, right? Goodness gracious. It's crazy, man. So, uh, how'd you get started with this whole branding thing? I see your work and it's outstanding. You've consoled some of my projects and branding in the past and really critiqued me. I remember you just raked me through the coals with the National MC Association idea concept logo that I thought was the best thing ever. And as you continue to bust my chops about it, which was like, dude, why don't you hire me to do this? But since you didn't, I'm gonna tell you what you're doing wrong. And as you did that, we were finding, we finally got to something that it was the microphone. That's what it was. Remember? You're like, the microphone's terrible. Like the microphone needs to be brought into 2015. I've never forget that, dude. And I'm like, this guy, I'm like, who's this guy? And then I go to your profile, look at your stuff. I go, oh, branding speaks for itself, ladies and gentlemen. How long have you been doing branding?

SPEAKER_01 2:08

So 13 years. I started as a graphic designer 13 years ago, and it was a one-man band. I used to do a lot of the nightclub flyers for New York and New Jersey clubs and Atlantic City, and that matured over the course of 13 years into a boutique branding agency. So now we're a full service agency, all virtual, which is beautiful. I have an eight-person staff, and we do everything from brand strategy to brand design to funnel design and build. And we've been doing this now for the past eight years or so, all in. And basically, when somebody asks me, like, Henry, what do you do? And basically, I tell them this I help you take your business and help it represent you in its true fashion. And with that, we're able to take you online and scale you, just like I did, how I was able to get the two Comic Club Award not too long ago for taking one sales funnel and generating over a million dollars with it and helping now my clients do the same thing. So, why is branding important? Well, it differentiates you from everybody else, and it's not just again your logo, your website, the identity, because I think when people think branding, they think, what does it look like? And the best definition that I've learned to just run with is by Marty Newheimer, who's a huge, huge in the branding space, wrote several books, and he says branding is that gut feeling people get when they interact with you, your product or service.

SPEAKER_00 3:36

Yeah, so true. Having a great brand is having great branding, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:41

Yeah, well, what do you want to be remembered by?

SPEAKER_00 3:43

Right.

SPEAKER_01 3:43

And how do you want to be remembered? Period. That's what that's what I say. If you want to look cheap, then go the cheap route. If your audience doesn't value the quality, then there's no sense of putting all this work and effort into quality. If you're trying to attract a premium client, then you need to be that. Otherwise, you're not going to connect with them on a subconscious level. And that's it right there.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

What kind of clients did you start working with when you first started doing this 13 years ago?

SPEAKER_01 4:12

So it was all nightclub promoters. Oh, okay. So they were my clients. And so I had a buddy who was a promoter himself, didn't want to do it anymore as far as design goes, because he was a graphic designer as well. And then passed me the baton, I started designing it for him. Then he gave me to all of his promoter buddies, and it just caught like wildfire. Those were my clients in the beginning, and then I started to get into restaurants, I started to get into fashion and salons, high-end salons would hire me. So eventually I got out of the nightclub industry. Plus, it it began it started to become a rat race. I started to get older, right? I wasn't going to the clubs anymore. And so I had to get out of that scene. And so I started working with restaurants and then salons, and then got my first big gig with Bon Jovi and worked with him for two and a half years.

SPEAKER_00 5:00

Uh oh, you guys are neighbors right there in Jersey.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I wouldn't say neighbors, he's down south. I'm more northwest. But he hired me for two world tours. I actually have it's so funny. I actually have a CD. I have a CD that I designed for him not too long ago. That's awesome. I shouldn't say not too long ago. This was this was 2009. Wow. So this was yeah, this was close to 10 years ago. But you know, cover to cover, so cool, so cool to experience that.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

So he still uses you.

SPEAKER_01 5:28

No, no, no, not anymore. No, not anymore. But from that morphed into, well, how do I grow and scale my fan club? So we used to do a lot of work with his uh fan club. So uh his whole fan club design was our project and uh did that for a couple years, and it was it was so much fun. I mean, to work with those guys, there were some really cool perks involved too, which when he opened up MetLife Stadium, we got tickets, it was so cool. So uh big shout out to Matt, his brother, who basically made that connection and and did a lot of the facilitating with that project. So that was my big kickoff. That gave me the chops to really move into this full time and now go online because it wasn't all peachy. I'm not gonna lie. There I almost lost this business twice because of poor financial decisions, and my head was so far up my ass, I couldn't see what end was up. Yeah, because I I really let the success get the best of me. I did. And I pissed a lot of people off. Okay. Um, I was more of a what's the word, you know, a taker than a giver. Right. I come from a big Italian family on my mother's side. And I have an uncle who's extremely successful, big construction company, the whole family works for him. And I said when I get of age to make my own money, that I want to be the one nephew that does it on his own, right? And so I went to college and I That's a big Italian thing. Yeah. So my uncle got me a job right after 9-11 hit. That's when I graduated college. So there wasn't many people hiring. So with his connections, he was able to get me a job at a local hospital. And I worked there for eight years. And then as soon as the economic crisis hit, they were doing a lot of tightening up. There's a lot of shit hitting the fan over there. So I went to him and I said, Listen, I got this little side hustle as a designer, but I don't know if it's gonna be a sustainable business for me. I don't know if I'm gonna be able to live off of this. Right. And so I put my tail between my legs and I said, Maybe for the interim, I come work for you and I figure this out, you know, along the way. Maybe this is something that I'll enjoy. And he looked at me and he said, Henry, you know, your cousin Joe, his son, he was like, They they grew up with this. All his friends that work for me, like they went to school for this stuff. Like, what do you know about construction? And he was honest with me, right? And he said, I would hate to be that uncle that had to lay off because we didn't have any work. Or what if you F up a big job uh estimate or something like that, and it all comes back on you? That'll be a really tough conversation to have with you. So he says, I'll tell you what, let me talk to my daughter, let me talk to the VP, and I'll get back to you. It's worth the conversation. Well, Seb, two weeks went by, three weeks went by, and I got the hint. He never got back to me.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

Right.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

And you know what? That was the best thing he ever did for me. Sure. And I went back to my boss at the hospital and I said, you know what? Come first of the year, I'm out. And I went. And the first year I hustled my ass off and I generated like two $248,000 by myself. Wow. By myself. And that was the confidence I needed.

SPEAKER_00 8:54

You weren't making that at the hospital, were you?

SPEAKER_01 8:56

Hell no. No, hell no. So, you know, it was an interesting experience because I was scared, I didn't know what to do. And then, so what happens was once I started to pick up that momentum and get all that success, instead of my family being proud of me due to my actions, and my actions were more like, look at me, look at me. I did this on my own, look at me. They more or less resented that. And it was, I can't blame them because I did a lot of dumb shit back then.

SPEAKER_00 9:27

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 9:28

You know, I would I would rub things in people's faces, and that really pissed a lot of people off.

SPEAKER_00 9:33

Yeah. Still does today. What's that? I said it still does today. Yeah. In general, like you know, in general, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:41

So I had to go through that and feel that and experience that to get to a point in my life where business started to take a turn for the worst, but I didn't want to show anybody that I was sucking.

SPEAKER_00 9:53

Right.

SPEAKER_01 9:54

So I eventually went down to zero and then to negative, and finally went to my wife and said, I can't do this anymore. Here's the current situation. And instead of, you know, throwing the laptop at me and saying, You go figure this out on your own, you got yourself into this mess. She said, Let's get to work. And that's how I got involved with Digital Marketer and then learned about click funnels, then was introduced to Russell Brunson. And as I continued to learn and study him, he kept talking about this inner circle program, inner circle program. And I was like, How do I get involved in that? And then when I realized it was a $25,000 investment at the time where I didn't have two nickels to rub together, I was like, How could I afford that? And then I started to think, like, well, let's figure this out. Let's go through the process and see what happens. So at the time he had like a $10,000 program, and I was able to finagle my way in there. I said, I'll give you five. And if I could pay this five over the next couple of months, you gotta you got another member. And he said, All right, let's do it. So I'll never forget it. I jump on a phone with him and I go through his Ignite program at the time, dating myself here, and I tell him my story, and he starts hysterical crying. I start hysterical crying. Don't mean to throw you under the bus, Russell, but it's the truth. This is what happened. And on the spot, he said, Listen, I got this book coming out. It's called Dotcom Secrets. I need some graphic design work. Could I hire you to do it? And I said, Absolutely. So he gave me six grand on the spot, and that was like 60% of my investment to him. He he like gave it back to me. All right, and then boom, I was like, Holy shit, here we go. There is a God. Yeah. So I worked with him for a couple of months, and then we there was no more work, right? So stayed in his program, learned everything about funnels and graphic and marketing and digital marketing, and figured out how can I apply my design skill set to digital marketing and branding and all this stuff, right? So I continue to listen to his podcast, and his podcast cover just really annoyed me as a designer because I'm I have that eye, right? And so I'm like, oh man, this podcast cover just doesn't represent the true value that he delivers on this show. So on a Sunday morning, I went and I just redid his podcast cover and I sent it to him in Facebook Messenger. And I said, I don't care if you ever use this, but this is a cover that really defines who you are, in my opinion. And he was like, Oh my god, this is awesome! Long story short, he disappears for a couple of months. He comes back and he says, Listen, we're doing some rebranding, and I would love to bring you on board. And uh it was the day before Thanksgiving, and he said, I would love to get you on boarded and and just have you redo, keep everything consistent, and just get everything aligned here at ClickFunnels. And so for the next two and a half years, I worked with him one-on-one to really brand ClickFunnels, and then eventually I was able to pass the baton to his internal team and they ran with it. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

And uh two and a half years, that's a good run.

SPEAKER_01 12:52

Yeah, so you know, and then his third year, he made his first hundred million with the company, so I was very excited. So that story will forever be in my entrepreneurial journey.

SPEAKER_00 13:02

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And then you later on became a comic club winner, right?

SPEAKER_01 13:07

So I took my design ability and skill set and said, how could I apply this to funnel design and build? And so at the time, I was a really good designer of funnels, but didn't understand the strategy behind them. And this is where I started to make some mistakes because I would jump all in. I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, I could design your funnel. But when people misinterpreted me when I said design, and it was my fault too, right? So when I said design, they thought like art architect the whole thing, like design it from strategy to build to you know, all that stuff. And I was like, I could just design it, like you have to have all that stuff done already. And so I lost a couple of clients because I I jumped too soon into charging, right? And I had to take a step back after I pissed a couple people off and say to myself, okay, let's learn the strategy first, then we can we could deliver a more solid deliverable, right? And so I partnered up with a strategist. I learned as much as I could from him, did some great projects with him, separated, and then said, I could do this full on my own. Uh, and then started to be really dive deep into strategy because I really loved it, and then said, okay, let me be the strategy, and then I'll build out a team to help me execute the strategy. And that's what I did. And and Russell actually helped me make that transition because I was nervous as hell to hire my first designer, my first project manager, my first copywriter, right? And so he helped me put those puzzle pieces in play. I had to connect them, but now we're an eight-person team and we, you know, we serve from strategy to full out execution. And I only work with like 10 clients a year now, which is fantastic. And it's been a wobbly journey, but uh a one that I would uh I wouldn't trade in for the world.

SPEAKER_00 15:00

Yeah, it seems like it worked out all right. You know, you've got a good solid brand now, pun intended. Uh, you've learned some lessons like how to not be an asshole. Like that's a valuable lesson. I learned that one too. You know, to check your ego. So a couple couple components of, and we talked about this on your show earlier this week when the whole mental health side of things comes. Because this mental health was it's in the thick of this story, right? And when I say mental health, it is the emotional roller coaster that you experience as an entrepreneur of like that meme that you see. The life of an entrepreneur. This is awesome. This is great. This sucks. I suck. This is amazing. I'm totally gonna make it. I give up. I hate this. Oh my God, I'm totally the best, right? That's the life of an entrepreneur. But in the midst of that, you know, the the transition from going to the hospital to your uncle just ghosting you to finally figuring it out on your own, but you know, leaning into your ego to spread the word to your family about and them going, hold on a second. And just like that, you know, I always say when I started Social Buzz TV in 2010, I'll never forget. I told my family, you guys better get on board with this because this is what's happening. And they're like, don't fucking tell us what to get on board with. That was early on, though, 2010, and I kind of was doing nothing for two years. So after a while, you're not doing anything. Your family specifically may not be taking you the most serious, right? It's kind of like, yeah, we'll believe it when I see it. My family, they believe that I'm going to be ultimately successful. That's the end result, right? Do something significant to change the world, make people's lives better, and get filthy rich in the process, right? So um, but but it's not always like that in the beginning, especially with your family. Your family is there, it's the less of two, you know, it's it's it's it's a it's a double-edged sword, I say. One is they're there because they love and support you, and they're gonna tell you that all your ideas are awesome, and that's a huge problem. Huge, right? So that it's not always good to bounce all the ideas off family per se. Um, but but at the same time, they're the support system to say, hey, no matter what, we're here to support what you're doing and all your crazy ideas, right? Um when we look at the at the at the at the mental health aspect of the journey of an entrepreneur, I don't think that you can read a book, watch a YouTube video, or or talk to anyone to be able to get some insight about what you're about to go into when you make that jump. That jump is, boss, I quit. I will never do this ever again. That's an interesting transition that takes place. I'll never forget the day that it happened to me. Ever. Because I never went back. Once you make that jump, you can't go back. I actually I stand corrected. I went back a couple times with some odd-end deals because you got to do what you gotta do, but they never ended up handing out. Why? Because I'm a terrible employee. That's why. Yeah, terrible.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

Yeah, me too.

SPEAKER_00 17:45

I show up late, I'm insubordinate, you write me up, I'll write you up, you know. So it's yeah, I'm I'm terrible with it at with the process. But at the same time, and like I always continue to say, mental health, depression is not an illness and it's not a condition that, and neither is mental health, in my opinion. My my opinion of mental health, depression, whatever it contains under underneath the umbrella of mental health, is something that we all and we all have, will, and will continue to experience throughout life. It is our response, not a reaction, big difference there, right? It's our response to ourselves on what's going on up here. And the reason I bring this up, well, number one, I want to shed like massive spotlights on the mental health conversation. I just don't think enough of it is happening. And it just intertwangles in the entrepreneur marketer space. And no one's immune, right? But specifically in the entrepreneur marketer space, I think it rings the most true, specifically because you know, we we are lunatics, right? Like marketers, entrepreneurs, or nuts. You got to be a little crazy to do this. You know what I mean? Um, but I don't know how I started the initial thought process with starting to talk about mental health. I think it was the whole family aspect because I remember when I first started, they were like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, Bob, now they're my biggest fans. Um, I knew that was true when they my first book came out, you know, five years ago when they were all in the front row, my mom, my daughter, my sister, you know, everybody's right there. I got a room full of people. Um, it's an interesting journey when it first when you first start, though, with your family, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 19:23

Oh, yeah. I mean, I've had I've had I heard through the great find that a few of my family members thought I I was a drug dealer because they said, How the how is Henry driving around in a Range Rover selling business cards? Business cards. Because I was in, I was doing a lot of print. Right. I was doing a lot of print back then, right? So these nightclubs would would print 10, 15, 20,000 flyers, you know, that I designed. And so there was a lot of money in print back then.

SPEAKER_00 19:53

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 19:54

And so, you know, I my my father had a 77 Lincoln Continental, he had a 74 green booger green Chevy pickup truck with a camper cap on it, and he had he still has that truck to this day, right? And I said, and I when he would drop me off at dates or girlfriends' houses when I was in high school, I would make him drop me off down the block because I was so embarrassed. Right. And I said, when I come of age or when I have the money, I will have a nice car. And I've I've just been a car buff my entire life since I was able to afford them. And uh my wife wrote my wife rolls her eyes. Uh I had the same thing. I've I've had four of them now.

SPEAKER_00 20:38

Oh, you like your Range Rover guy, huh?

SPEAKER_01 20:40

Yeah, so um, but you know, with that said, it's it's just a thing of mine. Like people like my cousin, uh my my buddy loves to fish. He spends like $900 on a reel, right? And I'm like, Jesus, Mary, you know, like I wouldn't spend $900 on a reel, but people wouldn't spend the money that I spend on a car. It's the same thing, right? So um it was just one of my one of my things that I love to do, and and I really enjoy cars. So, but when I when you hear that from family, it's discouraging because you're like, really? Do you not have that faith in me to do? Or is that how you really feel about me? But I I had to let that go because it wasn't serving me. And I knew that they didn't mean it.

SPEAKER_00 21:23

Like I know they didn't mean it to out of a place of harm, right, right, right, right, right.

SPEAKER_01 21:28

Yeah, yeah. So I I just let it go. Like those things don't don't don't bother me anymore. And as you get, you know, to have to be an entrepreneur, you have to have some really thick skin. And I didn't have that back in the day. I was very insecure. You know, I was very, very insecure. Growing up, divorced parents, you know, going to school with rings around my collar and getting laughed at, you know, getting bullied, because I'm not a big guy, you know, but I'm I I I turned out to be a stocky guy. But I mean, I wasn't a big guy on the playground. So uh to get pushed around was very easy. Easily and um you know that sticks with you, you know, as you get into your older life, and that's why I think mindset and personal development is so important because you have to shed that past, you don't have to bury it, yeah. But like if it doesn't serve you anymore, you gotta move past that because like what are you what are you carrying that with you for? Sure. Right. And so I just left that up again. I went through therapy, both family and personal, like one-on-one. Yep. I went through all that stuff. I have a mindset coach to this day that helps me stay clear clean up here because without her, you know, I'd be running around doing silly things, sure, you know. But eventually I started to say, okay, well, you can't be reliant on these people. You can't be, they can't be your crutch your entire life. Like, you're not gonna have Mandy forever, you're not gonna have your uh your therapist forever. So like you need to get saddle up and and and become a man. And so now I just scaled back on all that stuff because I realized that I'm really good at what I do, I'm confident in what I do, I'm confident in myself. And confidence doesn't come from outside, right? It comes from inside 100%. And that's what that's where I learned that my business coach, you know. Uh he was like, Henry, you you you have this wonderful father, you have a beautiful wife and son and dog and house and this. Like, what are you what are you chasing? Yeah, because I kept chasing something, sure, like nothing was ever good enough. I never celebrated a win.

SPEAKER_00 23:46

Right, right, right, right, right, right.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

And so I took a step back and I said, okay, I need to get grounded here before I step forward. And so I really scaled back on everything that I was doing. I went from like 50 clients a year to 12. And I think uh 2009, uh 2018, I only had eight clients and surpassed what I did in revenue in 2017 with 48. Wow. So it was wild to see that transition. And and then you just mature. How'd you do that? But I don't raised my price and dialed in on what mattered most, which was the infrastructure of my team, the infrastructure of my business, so the processes and the systems uh and my qualification process. I do not take everybody that comes my way. And people say, like, make it as simple as possible for them to get to you. Yes and no. Like, yes, I put out a lot of social media content, and that's the the easiest way to get to me. But to get on my calendar, there is a gate.

SPEAKER_00 24:49

Good.

SPEAKER_01 24:50

Right? And you have to you have to be that way because you can't just take I used to take projects for the money, not for the not for the project or the result, and that was a huge problem because those projects became disasters. Yeah. And so now when I qualify the client and make sure that they are a good fit, the quality of my life and the quality of my business and the quality of the result that I deliver is completely different. I said this on Sam Bakhtiar's podcast yesterday. I said the quality of your brand will determine the quality of your client, and the quality of your client will determine the quality of your life. 100%.

SPEAKER_00 25:31

Yeah, it really will.

SPEAKER_01 25:32

So I I want a better quality of life. So I want a better quality client. And then I want a quality, I want a better quality brand. So I worked it backwards, and and that was the result. So lot of lot of ups and downs, you know, a lot of ups and downs throughout my life, but now I feel like it's it's sort of humming at at 30,000, 40,000 feet. And now I just I just like the way it is right now.

SPEAKER_00 25:59

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 26:00

And it was funny. I was on Mike Dillard's podcast not too long ago, and he was like, Well, tell me, tell me a little bit more about this business. Like, is this thing scalable or are you just like a consultant? Right? And you're like, right? And I was like, Mike, it's as scalable as I want it to be scalable.

SPEAKER_00 26:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:19

And you know what? It was funny because I think he was like, he wanted me to be like, well, no, it's not, and I'm not okay with that. Where I was the exact opposite. I was like, I love working with 10 clients a year. I love the life that I live. I'm cool. Right. There's people like you, Gary V talk about this all the time. Like there's people at 40k a year.

SPEAKER_00 26:39

Yeah, happy as fuck. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 26:40

Right. So who cares? Right. Right. And so that's where I've um I've settled in, and I realize if you break that down, really what we found was we're able to serve four people a quarter at a really high level, like a really deep quality level. And that's all we that's all we want to do. So that's my benchmarks every quarter is we need to get four people to work with. That's it. Love it. And that's right. And it's or even three people. And and and we're we're we're good. So that's sort of what we're doing. But now with with the world changing and going through this COVID crisis right now, and and looking at how people are interacting and how people are marketing, I think what I'm focusing in on now is how to position. That that positioning statement needs to be tweaked now because it is no longer uh nice to have to be online, it is a necessity. Right, it's a must to build your business because a lot of people got caught with their pants down during this COVID thing. And I'm I'm sad to see some of them not be able to recoup and come back. And a lot of people got flushed, you know, got washed out into the ocean. And I don't want to see that. I don't want to see that happen. So I will work with the folks that are really serious about building a solid brand, scaling it online, and that want to make this world a better place. You know, I didn't get into my backstory, but when I was a young kid, my mother, God rest her soul, would tell all her girlfriends this story how I was her miracle baby, and that it took her 16 years to have me. And Seb, as a as a as a seven-year-old kid hearing that, I thought girls were pregnant for 16 years. I didn't understand what she was talking about. But she she tells me that I I find the story. So when my parents got married, they wanted to start a family, they couldn't because my mother couldn't get pregnant. Medicine wasn't it wasn't what it is today. So these two knuckleheads tried for 16 years to have a child. I don't know about you, but I don't know if I would try anything for 16 years and continue to fail.

SPEAKER_00 28:59

Right.

SPEAKER_01 29:00

So around 1979, early 1980, they go in for a small pro my wife goes uh my wife, my my mom goes in for a small procedure. Shortly after that, I'm conceived and here I am. So when I hear that story, and I'm like, holy shit, look at the perseverance, look at the refuse to give up attitude, look at the just the go-getter in both of these individuals. Yeah, that was embedded in my DNA from the very beginning. And then when I was two years old, I almost die due to poor nutrition. I lost all the salt in my body. I don't know what the hell was going on with them, with them two. But my wife, my mom comes into my my room, I'm in the crib, blue and unresponsive. They rush me to the hospital, the doctor tells he's got no sodium in his body. So they they pump me full of sodium, they get me back to life. And then when I hear that story, I say to myself, Well, like I'm I feel like I'm here on borrowed time at this point. Yeah. So that has really that that created a lot of drive in me to become very risk tolerant and to never lay down. Like I got punched in the face plenty of times physically, not through business. Right. You know, I used to have a mouth when I was a kid, you know, and there were some bigger kids on the block that didn't tolerate it. Right. Right. But I I was just a scrappy kid that would always get back up and I would come back after you, and it wasn't pretty. I didn't win every fight, but I just never. Yeah, I just didn't give up. And you I tell people all the time with this COVID stuff, like I we have team meetings every Monday morning, and I tell my team, like, there's no option. We're not not getting through this. Right. Right. What am I gonna do? Cut lawns? What am I gonna do? I'm gonna work at the mall if I have to, but there's no not getting through this. We're gonna get through this, we're gonna figure out a way, and and we're gonna get on with it. You know how many times I almost failed when the economy was perfect?

SPEAKER_00 31:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:23

I could go, I could go on for days, but you well, this is the time.

SPEAKER_00 31:26

I mean, this is the time that that leaders rise up. Exactly. That's you know, we see what Pete Vargas is doing with his whole rise up challenge, it's just unbelievable. He's had 40 of the most stellar speakers on the planet um in his Facebook group. We had Marie Forlio yesterday just jiving about where we're at with all this, and then she told the story of how she she she came up with the name Figure Outtable. And it was a story of her mother checking her when she was young because her mother would fix everything, Miss Fix It. And uh, she was replacing the tiles in the bathroom one morning because one was broken, and uh she had this little radio that broke, and the next project was to try and fix that radio, so she came home the next day and the there's parts all over the kitchen table as her favorite radio. She's like, Mom, what happened? The thing break, what did you do? And she's like, It's not working, but I've taken it apart and I'm gonna figure it out. And she goes, Well, do you know anything about radios? And she looks at her and she says, Listen, everything is figure outable. And Marie said, I was mind blown from that second forward, and like, what a great name! And what a great name for a book at in times like this. Everything is figure out. You need to have her on your show. I do, I do.

SPEAKER_01 32:38

I'm trying to work that angle. She was busy with her book launch. I was trying to get her on for the book launch, but um my numbers weren't where they were, where they are today. We're getting 73,000 downloads a month now on my podcast. So, you know, I'm gonna put together a little presentation and send it to her team.

SPEAKER_00 32:54

Yeah, well, she just the book's out. She's still in like book launch mode, and then and then B School is reopened again. Yeah. So um, yeah, just get on it with her team. That's the best, that's the best way. I told you I I had her on a couple years back, but that's because she was my uh my hotel neighbor at uh TNC one year. She was like four. Yeah, I was headed down to a production meeting and I was like four doors down, and I see a girl that looks like her, it was like seven o'clock in the morning in ripped jeans and Adidas shell toed Adidas, like only Marie can rock at 7 a.m. in the morning. And uh she was with somebody on her team, and she said, uh, doing a pretty good jab job up there. I'm like, uh, you're doing a pretty good job at life, okay? So and uh anyway, we took a quick selfie. She was on her way to the airport, she was living a day early, and I said, I tried to get you on the podcast a couple years ago, and I got a big fat no, and it was right when B-school started, and she goes, Oh, we're in a good space, we're about to open an enrollment again, and um so just get in touch with my team, we'll make it happen. And that was about three months after that we made it happen.

SPEAKER_01 33:52

Oh, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 33:53

She's a busy girl, but she'll get it done if she can get it done.

SPEAKER_01 33:55

And she's from Jersey, too.

SPEAKER_00 33:56

So that's exactly why I thought about that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:59

And I'll make it a lot of it. We gotta make this, we gotta make this happen.

SPEAKER_00 34:01

Right, right, right, right, right, right. Um, well, we're out of time, but before we before uh we're gonna wrap up this episode, uh we're gonna uh we're gonna play a little game called Pod Dex. It's not even really a game, actually. Are you familiar with Pod Dex, Henry? No, what is this? Poddex are there? The interview deck contains 50 unique conversation starting questions to help you take your podcast interviews to the next level and keep your audience entertained. All brought to you by my friends at poddex.com. My buddy Travis, I met him in Orlando a couple weeks back. Brilliant idea. He took a deck of cards and made them interview questions. There's also several other decks for interviews, uh, interview deck uh version two. Uh episode ideas, uh what if scenarios. So really cool ideas because I get this question a lot. As you know, we help people start podcasts and they're like, great, what am I gonna talk about on my podcast? Well, grab yourself a box of uh or a deck of pod deck cards. You can buy like three different ones. It has like a set for like 39 bucks. The best part about it, you can utilize uh my promo code, which is podcaststuck. That's plural podcast suck, as in if you don't have one. Podcast Suck will give you, I don't know, 10, 20% off your deck of cards on it, but grab one, poddecks.com. I'm gonna show you how they work right now because I'm gonna randomly ask Henry, the branding doctor, some great questions here. You ready, Henry? Go ahead. All right, let's see here. Should I shuffle them? It's like a deck of cards, you know. Placeia bats. I gotta get some uh I gotta get some casino uh sound effects going on in the background there. So I can you know they shut, they shut they shuffle well. They shuffle well. All right, let's see here. Let's just dig in here and get a random card. Drum roll would be nice too. Right? If you could ask one person one question and they had to answer truthfully, who and what would you ask?

SPEAKER_01 35:51

If I had to ask one question to one person and they had to answer it truthfully, and they had to answer it truthfully, who and what would you ask? You know, this goes back to I would go back to my family. I would I would actually ask my mother this question because I heard my father's side of the story. I want to get my mother's side of the story. What happened? When was where was the breaking point in their relationship? I've never I my mother's my mother's been dead for four years now, and I never asked her that question, and I wish I could have. So I would ask her that question, like where did it start to break?

SPEAKER_00 36:39

Sure. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 36:40

That that that's one question.

SPEAKER_00 36:41

Yeah, because there's three sides to every story, right? There is. Alright, cool. We got time for one more here. That was a great answer. Uh which talent would you like most to have?

SPEAKER_01 36:53

Talent?

SPEAKER_00 36:54

Yes.

unknown 36:55

Oh man.

SPEAKER_00 36:56

Would you most like to have? There we go.

SPEAKER_01 36:58

Yeah. Um negotiation. Negotiation. I would want I I I I practice this and study this more than anything.

SPEAKER_00 37:12

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 37:12

Like more than my design skill set or branding is negotiation. I think when you can influence and negotiate at a at a supreme level, uh you you will tailor the life that you've ever that that that you that you dream of.

SPEAKER_00 37:27

True story. Very true story. Well, that uh that guess that means that pod decks are done with here. Big shout out to Travis and team over at poddecks.com. Make sure you pick up a deck. Henry, you definitely need to get, I need to introduce you to Travis. You need to get some pod decks for your show. Yeah, I'm down. That'd be awesome. Genius idea. You well, you gotta come back, uh, come back again. I'll come back to your show. You come back to mine. We're we're we're we're making some moves here. We're trying to figure out what those moves are. So I'm excited to see what uh what's to come here. I'm uh I'm I'm I'm more excited that we've stayed in touch this whole time. And uh you're rocking and rolling, I'm rocking and rolling, and I'm confident we're gonna make some moves together here. But it's great to to call your friends.

SPEAKER_01 38:05

I love your energy, dude, and I love how you've have you've always progressed. You know, you're what's impressive about you is that you don't lay down either. And that's why I think we're we connect, is because I I see that drive in you and I see that that passion to want to help people. Sure. And I can align with that and I feel that. And I just want to say thank you again for having me on the show and and keep doing the great work that you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 38:30

Thanks, brother. You do the same thing. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the Beyond the Story Podcast. Be sure to appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. Signing off from the podcast, launchlab.com studios. We'll talk to you next time.