Disclaimer: The Transcript IsAuto-Generated And May Contain Spelling And Grammar Errors
Intro: 00:00 From ABC News Radio, KMET 1490 in Southern California, this is BizNinja Entrepreneur Radio, with your host, Tyler Jorgenson.
Tyler: 00:14 Welcome man. How are you?
Dana: 00:15 I’m living the dream, man. I’m excited to hang out with you.
Tyler: 00:18 I’m excited as well and I’m excited because every time I turn around you write another book. This is book number seven.
Dana: 00:26 I don’t know.
Tyler: 00:29 Ish. Yeah. Oh, for 10 are we over 10 I think we’re close to it. Yeah. Okay. Amazing one. I think that just the fact that you generate content that quickly and efficiently is remarkable, but that’s not really the main thing we’re going to talk about. So the main difference to talk about is your, your newest one, the truth about business. Let’s get right to the nitty-gritty. Why are you still writing books?
Dana: 00:51 Okay, so two reasons. First, I pretty much, this is like a summary of how not to run a business and how not to waste lots of money. So number one, reason number one, I wrote this is because I wasted literally $250,000 on crappy courses and programs, coaches, agencies, freelancers, employees, yadda, yadda over the years. So that’s reason number one. Reason number two is because this is actually the prequel to my other book. So every modern book now has a prequel. So this just kind of sets the foundation. It’s almost like The Dream 100 Book. It kind of hits you as you’re running and it’s like, oh my God. Right? Like, and it’s, it’s like wow, this does a really good job of laying the foundation and showing you what not to do, if that makes sense.
Tyler: 01:42 Okay. Yeah it does. And so for The Dream 100 Book, most people at that point, for it to really be effective, their business already has to be in motion. They already need to know who their people are. Right? Like the concept of being able to target your Dream 100 is that you already know who is influential in your business or you know what type of people your business is. So does this go back to like even before that just how to even approach your business?
Dana: 02:07 Yeah, even goes as far as like in the intro you guys will see, I talk about like I remember on watch shark tank obviously. Right? Yeah. A lot of times they would have, um, they don’t do it as much anymore I think, but they used to have the entrepreneurs come up that would pitch the sharks and they would fail miserably and specifically Mr. Wonderful. Would it enlightened them in his way to know that they aren’t a business, they’re just a product or they’re just a service. Right, right, right. It kind of explains how and why that is. And then I even go as far as showing like how the top 1% runs their business. Okay. Which isn’t everything just the difference of, yeah. It’s pretty shocking. Like the feedback has been a little bit aggressively like awesome for us. Like people saying, yeah, I wish I wouldn’t have spent the 25 grand on the coach I did this year. I wish I would have just read this for a dollar.
Tyler: 02:59 Okay. And now you’re not opposed to people hiring a coach. It’s just about when you hire them, like what the compensating factors or what are the things that have to happen before that’s the right thing for someone?
Dana: 03:09 Yeah. So, well, first of all, I’m actually pro hiring a coach and that kind of thing, but I think that’s chapter six. I literally show people how to be scam proof. So like there’s two little words that I’m not going to spoil it, but there’s two words they need to ask every single human being they ever worked with, including potential business partners, potential coaches, potential employees. There’s ask two words and you’ll never have a bad situation ever again. Oh, I’m so bad at keeping [inaudible].
Tyler: 03:40 And that’s in chapter six about the sketchy grew lie. It’s how to sniff out and find this sketchy guru. Yup. I’m excited. I’m gonna have to read it. Okay, so that’s, I mean obviously it seems like each chapter is kind of a mini-book in and of itself that each chapter has a really important point. What’s one of those points that you are willing to share before people go and get the book, which they need to do a bizninja.com/truth.
Dana: 04:02 okay, so I’ll give probably one of the biggest nuggets cause that’s cause I really liked you. And so first of all guys, this book is a dollar for digital version first-ever digital version I’ve ever released of any book because it’s that important. I want everyone in the world to be able to get it [inaudible]. Second of all, there’s an audio version as well included with the physical bundle in case you want to get that. And it’s only 27 bucks for the bundle. You get to start listening immediately too. So I’ve made it a no brainer for everybody. It’s not too grand, don’t worry. Right? All right, here we go. So you ever watched the documentary, the founder? I haven’t. Okay. If you have two hours to waste on a Saturday night, watch that. It’s actually really entertaining and good. So it kind of shows the background and story of how McDonald’s was created and what happened behind McDonald’s. So here’s the deal. This is the playbook on how to run your business, like the top 1% and of course they don’t want us to know that they’re doing it, but you’re gonna know.
Dana: 04:54 So here’s the gist of it. So imagine a company like McDonald’s. Everyone would think that what business are there in their restaurant, right? Well, reality is they’re not. McDonald’s is actually the business they’re actually in is they’re the number one real estate, I guess, portfolio in, I think at least America, if not up there in the world, they’ve got $30 billion worth of real estate. How’d they do that? So that’s the real business they’re in. They are disguised as a restaurant. So let’s like break it down from top to bottom. And I actually break this in the book. I show this via a visual aid call, the value ladder. So essentially what happens is McDonald’s owns primary, let’s say, everywhere in the world. How did they do that? [inaudible] cause a Franchisee to want to [inaudible] have their own McDonald’s, which means they pay lease every single month for that building to McDonald’s corporation.
Dana: 05:46 Right? And the reason McDonald’s corporation is so genius in having [inaudible], they’re a franchisee run them restaurant there is because it’s the best tenant ever. McDonald’s pay their lease every month. They get, I think they’re like seven-year leases or 15 sometimes up to 15-year leases and they’re never a dollar shorter or you know like it’s the best tenant on earth. So essentially McDonald’s corporation has gotten $30 billion worth of real estate paid for by the folks that are paying to become the Franchisee to run the restaurant on the front end of it. But at the end of the day, they’re not in the restaurant business and no other restaurant could even dream of competing with McDonald’s because they’ve got 30 billion in the bank that they could unload at any point in time. [inaudible] put pump cash back into the front end offer, which is the restaurant. That’s how the 1% runs businesses.
Tyler: 06:32 So how do we take that away? How does that apply to the other 99% so they can start thinking more like,
Dana: 06:38 yeah, all right, this is for the little guys. This is for us. This is how we do it. Okay. So back in my freelance copywriting days, I niche down and I, you know my story, but for those listening you’re watching, I would niche down and I worked with Amazon sellers. So that was my sort of my world and I had a $10,000 Amazon cooperating optimization service. And so what I figured out was like the majority of people couldn’t afford that or like in just jump into bed for 10 k. So I had a down sale or a smaller thing, which I call the thing that sells the thing. I did a $500 listing audit. So essentially what I do is I’d take 30 minutes, I’d do a screencast recording of a video of their listing and showing them where I would make changes, but I didn’t actually do the changes.
Dana: 07:23 So I’ll charge 500 bucks for that. Okay. So the majority of people that got those audits would end up buying the 10 k service. Cause they’re like drinking the Kool-aid, they’re loving it. It’s like awesome. Right? So it was the thing that sold the thing. Here’s how you run your business. Like the top 1% my competition, the next most expensive person that did a listing up in the optimization service are pictures still on the wall here. Too. Ugly to show you guys. Um, I have a capitalist pictured on, come on. Yeah. So she, it was charging $500 for what I was charging $10,000 for it. So essentially she was competing against my front end offers. So at any given time I could reduce my listing audit down to 100 bucks and totally undercut and take her out. Kinda like McDonald’s sells cheeseburgers for a dollar. Like other restaurants can’t do that, right? Because that was my front end offer that she was competing against with her core offer. So right. Figure out what your core offer is and then make that way more expensive, add value and then have a front enough or that’s their thing that sells the thing and compete with everybody else’s core offer with your front end offer. That’s how you play the game. Like the 1%.
Tyler: 08:33 So the way I see some people get that backwards is before they figure out what their core offer is, they go and they try to create low barrier offers. And I feel like that’s the fastest way for people to actually run themselves out of business because now they don’t have the backend offer, but they’re just going and getting leads for, you know, $7 books. Like you’re selling a book for a buck. I’m guessing that’s where you’re trying to make money, right? So that having a value ladder is incredibly important. And I think the most important part to start with is what is the core offer? What is the back end offer? What’s the big thing yourself?
Dana: 09:06 I completely agree with you. Absolutely. And if you’re just beginning to like in that scenario where I’m 10 k like the premium option and then the next person is 500 like, come in at a thousand. If you’re new, like, you know, like come in at 2000 and uh, you will have to take some time to build trust and to be able to close the sale. But I completely agree. You’re not going to survive very long trying to make money off of a $7 thing or what have you, unless you have a large audience already established or you’re selling on the back end of it.
Tyler: 09:38 Yeah, that’s for sure. Yeah. McDonald’s would not make very much money if I, if they only sold $1 cheeseburgers. Right? Yeah. And they wouldn’t even make as much money if they didn’t, also have the real estate. So they see the big picture and they still find ways in the middle to optimize and still make the restaurants profitable.
Dana: 09:55 Absolutely. And actually I don’t have the exact numbers, but in the last decade for sure they really were hurting because everybody went into this health conscious thing. Right. So the thing is is like restaurants like subway that aren’t making money on real estate, they’re making money on the sandwiches are dying fast because people can’t, they don’t want $5 subs anymore. Like they don’t want a loaf of bread. Like that’s not healthy. So McDonald’s for the longest time was like breaking even if that, probably a lot of them were losing money, but it didn’t matter because they had the $30 billion to keep them afloat for years. And now they’ve kind of figured that out and they’ve got, they’ve changed up their front end, their restaurant, and now it’s cranking again. But that’s why they were able to survive and sustain.
Tyler: 10:41 So their backend offers what gave them staying power to kind of, to be able to have time to pivot and make adjustments to the market. Exactly. As you’re writing this book, you’re, you’re pumping through, you’ve got 16 chapters, right? And you give a little bit of a teaser. If you go to the book’s website, which you can get to easily by going to bizninja.com/truth, you go there, he gives you a preview of the first eight chapters, but there’s a lot more and you’re going to have drawings this time. So I’m super excited. I left, I did them all myself. No, you guys, I mean, come on. These are, these are Picasso’s, but it’s like a third grader did it?
Tyler: 11:16 Yeah. So obviously, you know, people need to buy the book. It’s a dollar to get the digital copy. It’s not like it’s going to be, you know, hit him in the pocket book very hard. Tyler’s not going to get rich off that affiliate link guys. Um, I want my 22 cents, but tell me like what you, you said you’ve been getting some really overwhelmingly positive feedback. What are some of the things that people are telling you? Like what are the big takeaways? What are the highs people are experiencing?
Dana: 11:41 Oh Man. So I think the big thing is like clarity on how like zooming way out like 30,000 foot view of like what their business needs to look like over time because we all get so up in the tactics and like this is working right now. Like w and then we feel like we’re getting yanked around, right? Like, so it’s like it zooms way out and it’s like, oh, that’s how the whole puzzle is supposed to look. So I guess it’s Kinda like trying to put a thousand piece puzzle together without the picture. Right. So that plus just so for those that are familiar with the value ladder, like it’s, I expound upon that to the point where it’s like unbelievably like holy crap cause there’s a back side. Okay. It’s crazy. So I mean the devil side of value, a lot of people begin crazy over and then just at the end of the day, it’s just like the ability to know what your finish line should look like in your business because people always say, oh start with the end in mind. It’s like, okay cool. But like what does that mean? You know? And like it’s just gives you clarity on what the hell you’re doing.
Tyler: 12:44 So you take a lot of these anecdotes that exist in business, like begin with the end in mind, which is phenomenal. Yes. If you’re just reading the anecdotes, if you’re just reading the Instagram quotes, right? If you’re just reading like tweets as your philosophy book, right? You’re missing the meat of the story. So your, your chapters in each part of this book are filling in those, the meat of the story and explaining, okay. Beginning with the end in mind, looks like this and here’s how you, here’s where you messed up with it once and here’s how you figured it out. Right? So you’ve gone through a lot of different business, you’ve done copywriting, you’ve done E-commerce, you have a coaching program and a like an inner circle type thing out of all of the ones you’ve done, what’s your absolute favorite business? And let’s go from there and then I’ve got to follow up.
Dana: 13:24 Okay. So I’m glad you brought that up cause I kind of forgot one of the sort of themes of this book is, I’ve basically made at least a million dollars and pretty much four types of businesses that you can run, which you just suggested like coaching, slash consulting, e-commerce, physical products, digital info products, and then a service. Okay. So I’ve done that four times. I don’t recommend that there’s an easier way to just pick one or two. But, um, uh, essentially I just go through how I did that in all four types of businesses throughout the book. But I would say my favorite is it’s gotta be the coaching consulting because coming off, like going to live events, as you know, your speaker at [inaudible], which you brought the heat, loved it man. So much fun to have you seeing the impact that way is so much better than you know, doing to me physical products or what have you.
Tyler: 14:15 Okay, cool. So you’ve done a bunch and you’ve, you know, for you what you found that brings you the most fulfillment and enjoyment is being able to help other people find their success, right? And find their path. And I think that’s the crux of why this book is even exists, right? Is that you wanted to find a way that you could reach more people and help them take their first steps in business. So Dream 100 is one of my favorite books. It’s one of the books I recommend to everyone along with, I have like four books, right? So four hour work week dotcom secrets, Dream 100 and then the other one that comes from, uh, that, that Dream 100 comes out of that I just totally blanked on. But it’s a from Michael Masters. No, not Michael Masters. Then that’s ready. Fire. Aim is is number five, but number four is that Dream 100 even comes out of oh, ultimate sales machine. The ultimate sales machine. Right. Those four with ready, fire, aim as a fit. They’re pretty powerful. This may have to either. Is this going to replace one or is this going to become number five?
Dana: 15:12 Oh my gosh. I’ll have to let you decide. What would you say it’s most like which of those books I listed? It’s probably [inaudible]. It’s like got the practical like wholly implement this now of like.com secrets and the dream a hundred book, but it’s got like, oh my gosh, that’s what’s really going on of the ultimate sales machine. What was the first one you said again? Four hour workweek. Yeah. Yeah.
Tyler: 15:38 So you kind of, you kind of merged them and then said, okay, I’m Dana, this is my experience, this is what I’ve learned. Now you’re also, you have a phenomenal network. How many of the stories in the book are stories that you’ve pulled from other people’s experiences?
Dana: 15:51 A ton. Probably at least a dozen. So I mean I’m talking about major, like these are conversations that private masterminds or private like high level one on ones that I’m kind of letting [inaudible] the greater population know about. So I got stories about like pretty sure I talk about you in there. Got Russell Brunson, Alex for Mosey, Brandon Poulin like these are people that own the fastest growing companies in America. Like it’s stuff that you have to pay a lot and you have to spend a lot of time to earn the right to discover that. I’m giving.
Tyler: 16:23 that list of people that you just mentioned. One thing I know about them all is that they didn’t all succeed the first time, so they failed forward, they learned fast and every one of them I’m massively impressed with how quickly they learn and adapt. And I think that would be my lesson to everyone here, right, is if you’re hearing stuff that you’ve heard before, it’s probably not a knowledge issue at that point. It’s an application issue. And they say that a wise man learns from his mistakes. But I’ll tell you what, and even wiser man learns from the mistakes of others. And I think that’s what Dana has put together is the book of wisdom, of learning from the mistakes of others so that you can fast track your own results and a, so if you haven’t already while we’re talking, if you haven’t already grabbed the truth about business, please go to bizninja.com/truth and get yours. Dana, give me one major takeaway that you want people to get in the first 10 minutes that they started getting read in the book.
Dana: 17:14 I think. Oh Man, first is so they’re gonna just have a different lens on business. So like if you guys that are watching, listening, if you’ve ever been in a situation where you wondered like, Huh, how are they doing that? Or why are they doing that? Like that’s gone now. You’re going to have a level of understanding of how business functions and why and what people are doing. Like you’ve never had, like it’s not something an MBA would give you literally like 12 years in the trenches of like figuring it out is essentially all put into this. And who narrated the book? Of course I did. Okay. I was just checking. Yeah. And I’m the audio version. I would highly recommend getting the audio physical bundle because I went on rift and rants and it’s five and a half hours of straight thunderous goat love and gold man. So
Tyler: 18:04 how long, how long did it take it? It’s five and a half hours. But how long did it take you to record? Five and a half hours. You just pressed go and didn’t stop.
Dana: 18:10 Yeah, no, I actually did over two days ‘cause I almost passed out. Yeah.
Tyler: 18:14 Yes. I’m like, it’s gotta be exhausting. I know like doing a 30 minute interview can take a lot out of you. Well
Dana: 18:20 yeah, when you’re used to just hang out with your goats and stuff. You’re not used to talking for five hours at a time.
Tyler: 18:27 That’s amazing. All right guys, I’m going to put a pin in it here. There are a few of you on here live. Thank you so much for working through the technical difficulties to get here. We’re going to post this in the FHL group and a few other places online. It is also going to hit ABC News Radio and be available on BizNinja podcast so you can find that at bizninja entrepreneur radio.com so guys, what I really want you to do is think about if this book that would cost you $1, even if there’s one lesson in there that could propel your business forward, is it worth that $1? And I think the answer is yes. So please go to bizninja.com/ truth and click the button to get yours today. Dana, I really appreciate you, man. Any last mic dropping words of wisdom?
Dana: 19:08 Well, first of all, it’s always a pleasure man. Really appreciate you and guys, Tyler’s not making anything off of this. He’s just donated an episode for you and gotten you to access to this resource, which is going to change your life. So please take advantage of that. I just wanted to say thank you, Tyler. You are awesome and you live the Dream 100 and you do it the right way, which I really appreciate this inspiring and fun to watch you and thank you for helping everybody and let’s get together soon.
Tyler: 19:35 Yeah, let’s do it. Alright guys, thank you so much for tuning in. And, don’t forget, it is your turn to go out and do something.
Outro: 19:43 Thank you for listening to BizNinja Entrepreneur Radio with Tyler Jorgenson. Please make sure to subscribe so you’re first to hear new interviews and episodes. If you found this podcast to be valuable, please share it with a friend. Don’t forget to visit our online talk show at BizNinja.com to claim your reward for listening to this show.