This transcript is auto-generated and may contain spelling and grammatical errors.
Tyler Jorgenson (00:01.291)
Welcome out to business entrepreneur radio. I am your host Tyler Jorgensen. And today we have the honor and privilege and pleasure of meeting with an absolute legend in the marketing space. David Asarnow runs business nitrogen, their business growth and strategy consulting company who just happens to do marketing. And I’ve known David for years and known clients that he’s successfully helped and seen the impact he’s had on the world. So I’m so grateful, David, that you got you.
Decided now is the time to come out here on business radio and welcome out to the show.
David Asarnow (00:34.402)
Thanks, Tyler. I mean, it’s amazing after all these years of knowing each other that we’re finally getting together to talk like this.
Tyler Jorgenson (00:41.388)
That’s it, you know, sometimes the world just works in its own unique ways and we’re here now. So I wanna know David, when was that moment that you first realized you are an entrepreneur?
David Asarnow (00:55.394)
Well, I think I realized I was an entrepreneur when I was about seven or eight years old when I started, I wanted to buy things. My family didn’t have the money for me to buy the things that other kids were getting. So I started shoveling, literally going up to people’s driveways, houses in the winter and saying, can I shovel your driveway? And I said, just pay me whatever you want. And then I’d rake leaves and then I got a paper route.
Tyler Jorgenson (01:22.678)
Yes.
David Asarnow (01:23.31)
And then I washed dishes. was whatever I could do to make money I was doing as a kid and a teenager and as an adult. I was an adult. Yeah.
Tyler Jorgenson (01:30.657)
I’ll tell ya, yeah. And what? And as an adult, yeah, you do whatever it takes, right? It’s amazing how many of the entrepreneurs that I have on this show have a similar story, that they did the paper route, they did the, like, just whatever it took, whatever they could do in the neighborhood, that maybe, okay, I’m not gonna get an allowance, what can I do? And I think that problem-solving ability is at the root of what it means to be an entrepreneur. So I think it makes a ton of sense that that commonality exists.
What was your first real business?
David Asarnow (02:03.234)
My first real business. Well, I’m laughing because my first real business. Well, there’s fun, funny. Yes. My first real business, but I got a flash to something I have to share. I, when I was 14 years old, I bought a 10 speed bike for myself that I had been saving for years. I still have that bike to this day. hanging up in my garage. Okay. What, because it meant so much to me that I.
Tyler Jorgenson (02:15.043)
Let’s do it.
David Asarnow (02:31.726)
Back then, when I was that age, $118 was like probably buying a thousand dollar bike today, right? And I spent my own money and it was from washing dishes. So was my first real job? I just got a flash when you were asking me that question, my kid. I in college, it’s not a first real job, but it is a first real job.
Tyler Jorgenson (02:38.497)
Right, right.
Tyler Jorgenson (02:46.853)
yeah, absolutely. Love those flashbacks.
David Asarnow (02:56.526)
Before I graduated from university of Florida with a degree in advertising, I went to school for photography and I did photography on the side in high school. Um, and so my first real job was what helped me make money in college. And then I did it for a couple of years after college was a freelance photographer. And the way that I found people would, I would go to the, there used to be all over the radio model calls, you know,
come to the big model search and there was a thousand people would show up and I would bring up one portfolio, I had friends who take pictures of me so I could get into the show. But then really what I did is I went up to the moms, selling photography sessions over the next month to their doc for their daughters. And that was my first real, know, hustle to make money. I did it a couple of years. Is it real job? I don’t know.
Tyler Jorgenson (03:49.027)
Yeah, that’s a real business in terms of like a hustle. Maybe you didn’t have an LLC or a corporation, but man, I love that creativity of saying, it’s like the idea of the real money in the gold rush is selling pickaxes, right? And so it’s like, okay, everyone’s rushing over here to bring their daughters to the model search. I’ll go sell to them. It’s super smart. I love that. Oh yeah.
David Asarnow (04:05.517)
Yeah, totally.
David Asarnow (04:13.102)
they brought it right to me and all I had to do was walk up and say hi to everyone and say, I show you my portfolio? And everyone said yes. And it worked. I got kicked out of a lot of competitions, but it worked for me back then. That was my first job. What happened though after that is I went in the corporate America. My grandfather,
Tyler Jorgenson (04:22.356)
Yeah, easy pitch.
Sure.
David Asarnow (04:39.298)
became an entrepreneur when he was 50 years old and I grew up in his business. was orthotics and prosthetics. And he offered it to me when I was 17 with one caveat that he was sick with cancer. And he asked me, the only thing I asked him, you’d be willing to take care of your grandmother for the rest of her life. Should something happen to me? And, frankly, at 17 years old, that was too much for me. And I wasn’t willing to take that. So.
Tyler Jorgenson (05:01.377)
Yeah, that’s a big burden.
David Asarnow (05:06.966)
I grew up in his business. mean, he took me from, he called it detailing doctors, but there were sales calls. mean, I’d go with him on sales calls on every vacation break, summer, et cetera. I was with him. And so I learned a lot on watching him build his business. I got involved with everything from cleaning wheelchairs to hospital bed deliveries. learned a lot about people, how people treated you when you’re home, when you’re coming in at a truck. it’s interesting. You learn so much about.
human nature. And it was a great lesson. Now, it was his suggestion. He said, you need to go get some skills and training. And the best way to do that is have someone pay you to learn on their dime. He said, you’ll go forward faster if you’re willing to do that. And I did. I went into corporate America. I’ve never been involved in professional sales. I became one of the top three out of 300 sales reps in the first two years with the company. I went to another company.
became the top region manager. And then that company was a 50 year old, $68 million company that gave me an opportunity to start a new division. And I treated it as if it was my own business. And I was able to grow that to $45 million in five years. So that wasn’t my first entrepreneurial venture, but it was me honing the skills on someone else’s dime, testing marketing strategies, sales strategies, leadership strategies, management strategies.
Tyler Jorgenson (06:17.795)
And I was able
Tyler Jorgenson (06:32.086)
Yeah.
David Asarnow (06:35.426)
And it gave me an opportunity where I became the president CEO of the first all digital portrait studio chain franchise. we ended up, were hiring and I said, no, let’s turn the tables. Let’s buy the company out, rebrand it. You will buy out the private equity company, give them stock in the new company, some cash. So they got something back, but they had the upside. We rebranded it, made it profitable.
Tyler Jorgenson (06:35.555)
and this gave me an opportunity where…
Tyler Jorgenson (06:58.851)
that’s something back when they had the upside. They it, made it profitable, sold the story, became a top 15 franchise in five years. And that’s when I realized I wasn’t an entrepreneur. Because back then, we were doing, we were like in the headlines that was featured in it in my 30s.
David Asarnow (07:03.094)
sold the story and became a top 15 hot franchise in five years. But that’s when I realized I wasn’t an entrepreneur because back then we were doing, we were like in the headlines. was featured as in my thirties as one of the young guns of franchising. And I was in magazines, I was speaking and it was awesome. And then I saw the market shifting and I knew that we had to do something differently.
Tyler Jorgenson (07:19.427)
and I was in the back seat and I was speaking and it was awesome and then I saw the parts and I knew that had to do something different.
David Asarnow (07:30.924)
I came back from a board meeting and they’re like, no, we got to stay the route. And that’s when I realized I wasn’t an entrepreneur and I resigned. called.
Tyler Jorgenson (07:41.215)
Meaning within that company, weren’t the business owner. You couldn’t actually make the big decisions.
David Asarnow (07:46.966)
Up until then, was making all the decisions and I realized then that I knew we had to change. And I get bored and five years, it’s funny, I’ve been doing this 15 years now, but I keep reinventing who I am with my business today because otherwise I’d be… So I resigned and they said, what are you going to do? Why? What are you going to do? I said, I’m going to be a motivational speaker. They’re like, what?
And the funny thing is I still never been a motivational speaker, although I probably a little motivational I speak, but I did get an opportunity to speak for Tony Robbins and Chet Holmes and became Tony Chet’s top closing business speaker. so I did that for a few years and then 15 years I’ve been doing business nitrogen. So I guess I’d have a real entrepreneurial venture now.
Tyler Jorgenson (08:32.566)
Yeah, very cool. you launched Business Nitrogen. Who do you serve? Who do you help in that business?
David Asarnow (08:39.054)
We’ve had an opportunity and an honor to serve so many companies thought leaders. Today, we work a lot with two interesting niches. I like to work with clients who really have a unique strategy, unique positioning that can differentiate themselves from anyone else. So whether it’s business to business, but then their clients buy their product or service and it’s like a subscription or the people can come back and do more.
I can then help their clients sell their unique product too. So it gives a double opportunity to serve and help people build, and scale. So that’s really what we’re focused on today. But we’ve worked with some of the big name thought leaders as you know, over the years.
Tyler Jorgenson (09:21.665)
Yeah, absolutely. And so, you know, what perspective do you think that you gained when you went and did do that corporate America thing? How does that that experience help you run your business today?
David Asarnow (09:35.022)
structure, understanding that you have to have systems, realizing, and something my grandfather told me when I was younger, I said, how do I know I have a company? And he said, when you have an employee, he said, that’s how you have a company. You’re not a promotion, you’re not just one off. that was, it was easier for me to realize when it.
I went off and finally, when I left Tony and Chet and went off on my own, the first thing I did was hire an assistant. So that way I could start, build, grow and scale. And the interesting thing is the person that I hired 15 years later is still with me today.
Tyler Jorgenson (10:20.379)
that’s cool. I love when that kind of stuff happens where you get to kind of create and build together. you know, you’ve through that 15 years, I’m sure you’ve had lots of ups and downs. What’s one major challenge that you came across and that you had to face and how did you overcome it?
David Asarnow (10:29.355)
you
David Asarnow (10:34.712)
How many of those challenges do we want to talk about?
Tyler Jorgenson (10:37.217)
You know, whatever one just feels right today.
David Asarnow (10:40.622)
Well, the first one that happened was, I was in Russell Brunson’s book, 30 Days, and he talked about, you he told about a story where someone said, if you had 30 days to lose everything, what would you do? And you ever get that pit in your stomach and your heart like, oh gosh, I’d been there before. And I was, and I was that, it,
It got so bad that…
I actually had to go ask my young teenage daughter if I could borrow her babysitting money savings so we could pay the mortgage.
And I remember it like it was yesterday. She said, dad, will you pay me back? And can you imagine like a 14 year old having that conversation? mean, that was, that was probably one of the lows. Um, but what happened from there is I went and thought, and I collected it myself. went down, I live in Atlanta and I went to the Chattahoochee river.
Tyler Jorgenson (11:41.57)
Yeah.
David Asarnow (11:52.768)
And I just sat there and I’m like, what the heck happened? And I realized something. was folk because I had so I had it’s like interesting. You have so much success. You just stop for you forget where it really comes from. And you start focusing on the ego so much. And I was, did have a lot of gratitude. And when I started appreciating everything that I had, things started like almost instantly shifted.
Tyler Jorgenson (12:19.895)
Hmm.
David Asarnow (12:20.238)
And I got clear and focused on who I could serve, how I could serve, what I needed to do. And in less than 30 days, generated, six figures in revenue. And it went up. Now the next big challenge that we had, a lot of people had, 60 % of my business, disappeared almost overnight during COVID. And I went to my team.
Tyler Jorgenson (12:44.002)
Mm-hmm.
David Asarnow (12:49.43)
and had a conversation with them. And I said, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know if you guys are willing. I’d want to keep everyone around. Are you willing to work half time? Because I’ll figure out how to pay this until we turn it around. And everyone but one person said yes. None of them worked half time. They continued working full time. And within four months, I was able to not only
get back higher than we were before, but pay everyone back what I owed them and then some. that they didn’t ask for it, but I did it and I could. so having that one of the things that, and that really meant something to me as an entrepreneur is when I, I mean, I cried when I realized my team was there supporting me that much and they were in on this and not that meant that.
Tyler Jorgenson (13:25.411)
That’s a big deal. That’s cool.
Yeah.
David Asarnow (13:46.86)
That meant so much to me.
Tyler Jorgenson (13:48.567)
Yeah, it’s a big deal. didn’t, I mean, that was a really wild time. I, I remember sitting with my team doing a similar thing like, Hey, I don’t know what’s going to happen 90 days from now, but for the next 90 days, we’ll figure it out together. And, and, you know, it, the business, really evolved a lot during that stretch. And, and, you know, you either had to move with it and make adjustments or get buried. and I think that the longer you’re in business, the more that you see that that’s just, that happens all the time.
It’s not just those big moments of when something like COVID hits, but it’s every once in a while there’s algorithm changes or industry changes or AI comes out and hits us and you gotta be adaptable. You gotta be changing, you gotta be moving.
David Asarnow (14:27.659)
Okay.
David Asarnow (14:32.872)
You know, it’s interesting. I was part of some business groups and other entrepreneurs and everyone was just cutting their staff like crazy. And they’re like, you got to cut hard, cut fast, cut deep right now. And I said, that doesn’t feel right to me. Like, were you going to put yourself out of business? I said, maybe. And, but I chose to do it my way.
Tyler Jorgenson (14:49.986)
Yeah.
But you still did it in a way that, had a lot of great transparency, right? You communicated, you set an expectation. You didn’t just, cause some, you know, leaders instead of communicating, we’ll just hide and just say, yeah, everything’s fine, even though it’s not fine. and that’s a tough balance to, to, you know, how transparent to be as a leader. and it sounds like your side is, Hey, I’m just going to share it all and we’re going to figure it out together.
David Asarnow (15:08.809)
Thank
David Asarnow (15:15.912)
My daughter tells me I share too much sometimes, but…
Tyler Jorgenson (15:18.051)
Yeah, daughters tend to think that, that’s fair. You you’ve been working in this industry a long time. You just brought up Chet Holmes, who I’ve worked with his daughter Amanda and their company and I absolutely love Chet’s teachings in the ultimate sales machine in Dream 100. For listeners that may not have ever learned that stuff, what are some of the best things you learned from working with Chet?
David Asarnow (15:45.816)
What are some of the best things that I learned working from CHET? Well, the interesting story is I actually attended one of their webinar trainings when I was the CEO of that company that I mentioned that I resigned from. And I was at a speaker training. I’ll get to the answer. I was at a speaker training and Ted Miller was the vice president of sales and marketing. And he was, came to this.
Tyler Jorgenson (16:07.875)
You’re alright.
David Asarnow (16:14.19)
70 person speak to sell speaker training, talking about what they’re doing. He says, has anyone been on one of their webinars? I raised my hand. He asked me, what my name was and he remembered my company remembered what we did. And he came up to me afterwards and he said, could come speak for us. And I said, no, I’m going to try to do it on my own. And three months later, I called him up and say, Hey, is that opportunity still there? And so anyway, I ended up doing that until after Chet passed away.
So what did I learn from Chet? You know, one, Chet built a company that was all about serving others. And one of the things that I realized is how to actually workshop with people at scale and one the many in a group setting and how to tie that in different people’s successes and helping them future pace and see
what is really possible in their life and their business when they take action. Now with Chet, it’s not about doing 10,000 different things. It’s about getting clear and focused and doing the seven things 10,000 times. And that’s one of his quotes, right? And so, you know, it is putting in the systems and the processes. It is putting the right people in the right position in order to do it. It’s all about testing and trying new things. I mean, one of the things I still to this day,
ask clients, how many effective marketing methods do you have? I mean, not how many different marketing methods, but how many effective, which means they actually produce results for you. And most people have one, two, and if they’re lucky, three. And one of the things that I still do to this day is let’s try something new every month. And here’s why. If we try 12 things over the course of year, do you think one of them is going to work? Yeah.
Tyler Jorgenson (17:58.024)
yeah.
David Asarnow (18:11.886)
And if you’re doing one thing that’s working really well and you find over the course of a year, something else that works equally as well, you can double your business. If you’re doing three things while you add one more, guess what? You can grow your business 25 % just by adding one more effective method. So it’s how do you take these complex strategies and break it down into simple methods and let people see that growing your business is not about fancy.
It’s not about throwing more money here there. It’s about continuous improvement and testing. And if it works, great. If it doesn’t, shift, modify and adjust what you’re doing, but try something else next month.
Tyler Jorgenson (18:58.113)
Yep. I love that. Yeah. It’s amazing how many people that I talked to maybe have one effective, right? They’re testing a bunch of things or they’re doing things, but like they’re not tracking right, or they’re not. And then once they get it going, they stop looking around as like Russell Brunson used to always say, like entrepreneurs have this issue where they hit one success and instead of taking the show on the road, they, they, they like, now they look for the next thing and instead of keep doing it. And so, you know, sure.
David Asarnow (19:25.944)
guilty of that too. all, it’s called shiny object syndrome and Russell is by the way very guilty of this too.
Tyler Jorgenson (19:28.129)
Yeah. How do you fight it? big time. Yeah. And so to me, it’s like, OK, you can fight that, you know, try to get yourself to stop doing that. Or you can just set systems in place to make sure that when something does work, it gets replicated and it gets expanded and it gets, you know, people that are better at staying focused can apply in those new tests every month. Right. Like, but it just has to be a priority.
Yeah, who are some people in your entrepreneurial life that have really impacted you?
David Asarnow (20:00.12)
Well, I’ve had a lot of people. I have had a lot of people. mean, almost every month I get impacted by someone new. And the funniest thing is you never know where you’re going to learn some of the best strategies. know, Chet impacted me. He gave me an opportunity. Well, Ted gave me the opportunity because someone had laryngitis one day and they were launching out a new
how to hire a superstar salesperson. got a call two hours before this brand new webinar that I’d never seen, to, to present it. And I did not follow the script at all. In fact, you know, I really did not follow the script, but I closed 75 % on this webinar, a $3,000 sale. And, Mitch, who was the CEO of the company.
spoke to me afterwards. said, I don’t know where you were going, but whatever you did, you closed everyone. he said, Chet wants to speak with you. And Chet and I had a really good conversation. And he gave me an opportunity when he was sick with cancer to speak live when he, because he couldn’t. And so that was almost like a dream that I got. That was my first time actually going out there and teaching and training in front of groups. And then I remember him saying, these people aren’t going to buy anything. but
you’re wasting your time on it and I’d sell 45,000 and he’s like, okay, maybe you did okay there. And so, and that was a coaching consulting. So we’d speak for free, but then we would sell coaching consulting or his ultimate business mastery system, which was awesome. And so I learned a lot from chat. Tony was one of the first mentors that I had. remember when I was 22 years old, one of my friends went to work for Tony.
Tyler Jorgenson (21:36.364)
Right.
David Asarnow (21:53.038)
And invited me to the first seminar. I said, one day, one day I can see myself on that stage. didn’t realize that I’d actually be doing things with him, but, you know, mentors, it’s like, what can we learn? I, you know, I had a lot of speakers, as I was working as a CEO, I started doing things on weekends to learn how to speak and go to seminars. I volunteered with a lot of different people.
Uh, that gave me opportunities to come on their stage, whether it was, there MC or speaking in training? You know, it got me a free trip to Necker Island because I added value to someone and they joke, what can we do for you? said, bring me to Necker Island on your next trip. And they did. So a lot, a lot, a lot of, a lot of great things. So mentors.
Tyler Jorgenson (22:41.729)
That’s cool. That’s cool. That’s all my bucket list. Yeah.
David Asarnow (22:48.652)
I mean, I just went to an event with Patrick that David that I’ve never been to any of his things. Just seeing how he thinks and how he operates and how he builds a sales team gave me a different perspective. So the way I look at it is we always should be learning. We should always take one good thing from anything that we read, anything that we do, anything that we listen to and say, how can I take this one thing and make my business or my life better?
Tyler Jorgenson (23:17.259)
Yeah, I think that that was something that I learned from Tony Robbins early on ready. I think he calls it can I constant never ending improvement? And I think it’s great. So many times we think, well, when I do this, I’ll have made it or when I hit this goal, I’ll have made it. And it’s like that. That’s not it, man. It’s about always getting better. A friend of mine, Pedro’s coolian says never peak, right? Like never. We’re not done, right? You just got to keep climbing, keep growing.
David Asarnow (23:24.323)
Mm-hmm.
David Asarnow (23:42.958)
The problem is if you think once you’ve said I finally made it, that’s usually when you start declining.
Tyler Jorgenson (23:48.321)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You’ve settled it or something. Something’s happened. I don’t know many people that have said that and then kept growing and kept doing well. Yeah, that’s tough, especially in business. It’s life and personal progress and business is like walking up a down escalator. At the minute you stop going, like climbing, it just brings you right back down to the bottom. Yeah, that’s it. What’s something that you’re really excited about right now in business?
David Asarnow (24:08.854)
He just got to move in progress forward.
David Asarnow (24:16.895)
I’m excited about AI. I’ve been excited for a couple of years now. And I remember a conversation I had with my team. said, either we are going to master AI or we won’t exist any longer and we’ll be replaced by people who do. Who knew that that was going to be so true? And it is. So we’re doing a lot of today.
We have business nitrogen. I’ve launched out an AI conversational voice and messaging AI company. and we’re building AI agents. So for clients these days, we, know if we, we’re, if we can help people master AI will be a valuable resource for them. So today we’re helping people bring, build their marketing playbooks, their positioning, their market and building like we would do when we bring on a client.
It would take 60 to 90 days to build all this out before we would do the marketing is the automation, the webinars, et cetera. So we we’ve productized that, but we’re helping people create their own AI sales and marketing, AI agents and bots. So that way they can get very high level quality landing pages, emails, promotions, ad copy. It’s all on brand story, all on brand message following.
playbooks that we’ve assembled and put together that they can then utilize on a monthly basis. So that’s really where I think things are going for us as a company, besides serving the clients and the niches that we serve.
Tyler Jorgenson (25:52.215)
Yeah, awesome. Yeah, I, it’s always good to see that people are staying on top of this. I think it’s a very, there is no question to me that AI is here, right? There’s no pretending it’s not at this point and it’s only getting here faster and growing faster than we even expected. But, as we get close to the end of this, I want to make sure we hit on something because I know that you like me believe that life is not just about business, right? It’s about relationships and experience.
David Asarnow (26:10.253)
Yes.
Tyler Jorgenson (26:21.025)
What is one item on your personal bucket list that you’re going to accomplish in the next 12 months?
David Asarnow (26:25.646)
It’s funny, I have to book the flight, but we’ve set the time. I was invited by my son who’s 24, soon to be 25 years old. said, dad, how would you like to take a father and son trip? And we like hiking together. So when he was home last time, we hiked the highest peaks in the Smoky Mountains. A couple of weeks ago, we went up to the Appalachian Trail in Georgia and he said,
Tyler Jorgenson (26:53.741)
Very cool.
David Asarnow (26:54.702)
Dad, why don’t we go hike the Himalayas? And so I’m doing a 14 day trek through the Mansoola circuit, which goes up to 17,000 feet high, 14 days with my son. And that’s sort of a bucket bucket list type item. And we’re so I’ve been training every day for it right now. Because I’ve got four months.
Tyler Jorgenson (27:08.547)
Wow.
Tyler Jorgenson (27:15.683)
yeah.
Tyler Jorgenson (27:19.127)
That’s good.
David Asarnow (27:22.912)
almost four months to the day before we do it.
Tyler Jorgenson (27:25.953)
That’s going to be awesome. I’m so excited to keep an eye on that experience. Where should people go if they want to learn more about you?
David Asarnow (27:33.182)
Want to learn about me? You can go to businessnitrogen.com, davidasarno.com or on Instagram, real davidasarno.
Tyler Jorgenson (27:42.975)
Awesome. David, thank you so much for coming out on the show, sharing a little bit about your experience, the people that have impacted you. I know you’re also making impacts behind you and that’s what I love about the ripple effect of this world we live in. So thank you so much for coming out on the show. To all my biz ninjas, wherever you’re tuning in, listening, watching or streaming, it’s your turn to go out and do something.
