Richelle Shaw: [00:00:00] Hey, hey, hey. So what did I learn from my mentor, Dan Kennedy? I found, I got noticed a couple days ago that Dan Kennedy is currently in Grave State and he’s currently in hospice. And it took me a couple of days just to wrap my head around, you know, how in the world could my personal mentor the man that taught me so much, how in the world could he be in hospice and oh my goodness.

I didn’t think I was really going to be, ah, I didn’t think it was gonna be as emotional as it has been. Because as I, you know, I sent in his tribute to him about how, you know, we went head to head all the time and we butted heads on so many things.

But politically, we don’t believe the same things. But he taught me so many important lessons [00:01:00] that I wanted to spend these next two weeks. I’m getting clear in sharing with the world all of the things that he taught me during the time that I spent with him. You know, he was the only person that, you know, how in the world could I invest $150,000?

I stopped counting after 150, but every time I learned so much more from him. Like, his favorite thing to ask is why would somebody, why would somebody ever do business with you other than everybody else that’s out there? And so he asked me that question about my telephone company, you know, and I didn’t know the answer.

Like I was like, well, I don’t know because it’s a commodity. And so once I went through his processes. And started really looking at ways that I could do this. He helped me really design a program so that we would stand out, [00:02:00] that people would want us and not any other telephone company. And that’s why they would choose us.

And so that question I ask every single person that I’ve worked with over the last 15 years, okay, well, why would somebody choose you? And it’s not being disrespectful, as I learned from Dan, you know, at first. I thought it was disrespectful. Like I was like, you know, well, they would choose me because, you know, and most people like to say, well, it’s because of my customer service and it’s because, you know, I do the best.

And that’s not why people buy. And that, I think was the biggest, biggest lesson that I had to learn is why do people buy? Why do they buy? You know they buy because you can solve a problem, not because you work hard and not because you’re the best and not because you’re the most expensive, and not because you’re the least expensive.

That’s not why people buy. And so that if you are focused on you when you’re building this business. Then you’re always going to have these roadblocks and you’re always gonna have [00:03:00] these problems. So I noticed that sometimes, you know, several folks get caught up in, well, you know, I’ve spent so much on my, fill in the blank, right?

I’ve spent so much on the certification. I spent so much on my college education. I spent so much learning how to do this. That I should automatically get a higher rate, and that’s not how you get a higher rate in your business. And that’s exactly what he taught me.

That’s not the reason why people will pay you more. People will pay you more because you can deliver a better result for the problem that they are having. Right? It’s not just because of who you are or because you went to a certain school or because you worked for somebody famous, that is not the reason why.

And so you have to create a way so that people are excited to hear from you and that you have to convey the confidence [00:04:00] so that your customer will know that you can solve their problem, and you have to make sure that they have the problem that you wanna solve. So one of the challenges, that I had even last week with one of my private clients is that they were so focused on what they do that they never thought to ask the customer what do they want, or here’s the other one is that they fell in love with the internet and on selling on the internet, and this was two weeks ago.

And so I said, okay, so you’ve drawn out this scenario of how your customer’s supposed to buy, but have you asked the customer, is this the way they like to buy? It’s a super this product is very sensitive, right? And so it’s one that people don’t like to really tell you the truth. They like to tell you the truth and confidence.

And so if you want to bring them into a group [00:05:00] coaching scenario. You’re gonna have a hard time doing that, right? So one of the things that Dan really taught me is to make sure that you’ve got the customer first. If the customer isn’t first in this thing, then you always, always, always lose and it has nothing to do with you and what you like.

Last summer I taught folks how to sell on Amazon, right? And they, you know, I had them do this exercise. During lunchtime, I’d have them go buy a product, you know, $5 or less, and then we would check to see if this was a great product to sell on Amazon. And nine times outta 10, they would buy something that they needed.

They would buy something that they liked, and I’d have to break the news to them and say, this has nothing to do with if you’re selling on this big platform, what you like has nothing to do with it. You need to sell what’s already selling. Right? And that was one of the fundamentals that Dan taught me.

He taught me about creating [00:06:00] urgency. Like you have to give people a reason to buy right now. Right now, not next week, not two years from now. Like, if it doesn’t solve an immediate problem, they’re never gonna buy it. So I give the example all the time of the gal that’s sold candles, right? And so she’d been in my program a little while and I asked her, you know, why would somebody ever buy from you?

Hey, Rashonda, nice to see you. Nice to see you Tanisha. Glad you guys are here. You know, why would somebody ever buy from you? Right? And she’s like, well, and I said, what problem does your business solve? Well, it gives people light. And I’m like, well, here’s your problem, is that there’s 50 other solutions that give people light, right?

So why will they buy your candle and what kind of urgency is there? You know, the one kind of urgency is if there’s no electricity, But it’s almost too late. How will you know when people need to buy? [00:07:00] How will you know then? So you need to really. Think through your business, where your business is and how to create urgency to buy from you.

If you don’t create urgency, then you’re never going to create an irresistible offer. And so that’s probably my favorite lesson that he taught me is how to create an irresistible offer. How to create an offer that people would say, oh my gosh, I can’t wait to buy that. I can’t wait to invest.

Whether it be a free offer. You have to sell just as hard as you have to sell an offer that’s low cost or a million dollar offer. So even in my book, “Jackpot” this one, this one here, it’s probably, this is my first one, so it’s always like my baby. In this book, I have a whole chapter dedicated to Dan Kennedy and what he taught me and part of in Jackpot, I talk about.

That it’s just as easy to sell a $500 customer [00:08:00] as it was to sell a million dollar customer when I was selling telephone service before I bought the company. And once I realized that, you know, it’s the same process, then it made it 10 times easier to actually come. And invest in the business and invest in starting it all on my own.

But it’s about creating an irresistible offer. What is it? It’s not just, Hey, buy my stuff. It’s not here. It’s 75 discounting. It’s about constructing an offer that really delivers the problem solving that you need. And if you’re not delivering that, then it will not work. And so during these last 15, 20 years, you know, not only did I invest a lot to be coached by him, but I ran a local meeting every single month here in Vegas where I taught his marketing principles and what he taught me how to do.

And then my life kind of changed a little bit and it made it harder. I am teaching some of his [00:09:00] principles and those that I’ve added on October 25th through the 27th. So if you’d love to come out to Speed Weekend, I’d love to have you. I’ve got an irresistible offer going on right now.

It’s a one day sale. It’s a two for one for $147. You get to spend three days with me and a few friends where you can really work on your business. It’s not, you know, two to three hours like. I teach you it, and then you do it so that when you leave Las Vegas, you leave with everything all together so that you can just implement and run over the next 90 days.

So we create the plan everything that you do step by step, and then you leave knowing exactly how to build your own million dollar business. So if you wanna come to that, you know, say yes and I’ll get you the link so that you can come and join me in Vegas. Several other things that he taught me about constructing your business so that it works for you.

So one of the things that I found with [00:10:00] teaching my monthly class every single month was, it wasn’t exciting for me because the. Most of the people who came to it because it was a very low entry, right? So it was only $30 to come and spend two and a half hours with me and included lunch.

Okay? So what a deal, right? But in this. They had no expectations to implement like I wanted them to implement all the time. Hey Teddy, how you doing? I am enjoying my day. Thanks. I wanted them to implement every single month and for some reason, like they felt like, oh, I’ll do that next month. I’ll do that next month.

And I don’t understand that, like I’m an implementer so that when I learn it, I just do it. I don’t sit back and think about it and Oh and have it on a list. I just do it. So I start before I’m ready I jump right in. And I didn’t understand that. So for me it wasn’t fulfilling. Then they would, you know, you [00:11:00] need to have these at night because this is inconvenient for me.

And then I got the, well, you need to have it in the morning because this is inconvenient for me. And so one of the great things that I learned from Dan Kennedy is that, you know, you need to do it when it’s convenient for you, Richelle, you run your business, not anybody else. I get to run it. So I get to create the dates.

That it works for me, not the dates that it works for everybody else. I get to create it. Right, now I’m still delivering the things that they want, but I have to make sure that I’m happy in the business. If I’m not happy, then how am I able to really build it to the million dollar level that doesn’t happen?

Right? So you have to create it so that it works for you. I wanted a business where I could take my kid to school every day, where I could pick her up every day, and where I could be at every single one of her volleyball practices and her volleyball games. And so I constructed a business that works for me.

And so one of the things that I [00:12:00] loved about Dan Kennedy is that he taught me exactly how to do that. How to have full-time income with part-time work, how to work really hard. For a short amount of time so that the money would come back over and over and over again. So then he helped me construct an information marketing business so that I could sell what I knew.

One thing about the telephone business is I had 52 employees. It’s crazy 52 employees that were there every single day. My payroll was 250 grand every two weeks. So half a million dollars, half a million dollars. That’s a lot and so I wanted to create a lifestyle business that didn’t require me to be around 52 people that I didn’t love.

You know, I liked some of them, but I certainly didn’t love all of them. They weren’t committed. You know, I used to tell the joke about I had a one day, I had a late afternoon meeting and. I’m rushing back to the [00:13:00] office so that I could get, you know, a last email sent out so I could take care of some things.

And my entire staff was at the light I’m turning left to go into my office and they’re at that same light going home. Like they thought that because I wasn’t there at the end of the day that they could leave early.

So, you know, several of them didn’t get to stay after that because, you know, nobody loves your business as much as you do. Nobody, I don’t care. Your brother, your sister, your cousin. You know, my mother at one time, I had to fire her. She was working with us. Nobody loves your business as much as you do, and Dan Kennedy taught me it’s okay to be a renegade.

It’s okay to say, you know what, I require you to do these things and if you don’t do those things and you don’t get to work for me. I also paid more than everybody else in the industry. I paid my employees top dollar even though [00:14:00] they couldn’t get paid that same if they worked for somebody else.

Why did I do that? Well, because I was paying for their loyalty. I was paying to get them to be as committed to the businesses I was, even though they weren’t that committed. Right. But he taught me, you know, here’s how you take care of them. Like, I never cursed at my employees. You know, I had a private of a client who called his employees like bad names.

And I’m like, dude, you can’t do that. I mean, they are there to get a paycheck. And when you realize that your employees are there to get a paycheck and a paycheck, only then you realize, okay, this is how we need to be. You know, whether you buy them lunch every day, whether you call them mean names, they’re there to only get a paycheck.

And if you are there to provide, you know, ways so that they can make money, then they stay. They don’t stay for any other reason because as soon as you can’t provide money for them, [00:15:00] or benefits for them. They leave. They stay for, you know, some that are, your friends might stay for a little bit, but at the end of the day, they need to go on and do other things.

So Dan helped me, like separate myself from my employees. He helped me, you know, design a business that worked for me that would allow me to take my kid, allow me to be at every single one of her games and allow me to still generate all of the income that I needed to. And so, you know, one of his really big things is price elasticity.

So exactly what I said, it’s just as easy to sell a $500 client as it is, to sell a $5,000 client. When I owned my agency and I was helping entrepreneurs actually doing the work for them, I targeted physicians. Right? And, you know, no, I had to. Talk to them about, I’m not the marketing girl. The marketing girl gets a thousand dollars a [00:16:00] month.

I am a leader and I’m going to transform your practice if that’s what you want me to be, and they go, Ooh, you know, your price is just, you know, I didn’t think it was going to be that much. Well, of course, because you’re used to hiring the marketing girl, but I am a leader and this is what I do. I transform businesses.

And so now I get. You know, $10,000 a month, not $1,000 a month, and a piece of the pie in the end. Because if I wasn’t there doing the work, then you wouldn’t get to the place where you needed to be. And that truly Dan helped me do that. He had a course called Advanced Coaching and Consulting, and this probably.

Gosh, in 2007 changed my life. I was like well, how do you, you know, fix the ones that didn’t follow you? And he’s like, you just have to get rid of them because here is how you lay out this process. If you are going to be a coach or consultant, you have to do it this way. And now [00:17:00] that’s the only way that I teach folks that if you wanna be a coach and a consultant. You cannot be their friend.

You have to design this business so that it works for you and they need to comply. If they don’t, then they’re not going to implement. They’re not gonna be a good client for you. It’s just not going to work. And so that probably was one of my absolute favorite classes that he ever gave. It was extremely expensive.

I think I paid almost 10 grand to go. There was only like 50 people in the room. But man, changed my life. Absolutely changed my life. And so this guy, you know meant so much to me, even though he made me so angry sometimes. But he definitely showed me, you know, step by step how to build a business.

Here’s what’s funny is that I had already owned a million dollar business before I met, but I didn’t own, I mean, the business owned me. [00:18:00] I owned a million dollar business, but the business owned me, and so Dan taught me how to not allow the business to own you and how to own your life, and how to create irresistible offers and to create things that not only worked for me, but it was delivering what customers actually wanted.

And that changed the world, changed my absolute, absolute world. So I just wanted to make sure that I shared with you all, you know, everything that I got to learn. You know, even if there’s the roller coasters in business, all from me not following the principles that he showed me. If I’m totally, you know, upfront and honest, you know, even reading his newsletters are so funny, you know, cause they probably once a quarter they had do this, do this, do this.

Right. But every month, It was about [00:19:00] programming us to keep buying from him. And you could say, that’s crazy. You could say that’s like, you know, that’s kind of Jim Jones’ cult-ish. But if you are not creating that culture in your business, then that’s when you don’t get to have repeat customers, right?

And so he taught us, you know, how to speak, how to talk to our existing customers to make sure that they’re coming back over and over and over again. I ran a local mastermind here in Las Vegas that I ran for 12 years, people paying me every single month that were in this mastermind. And I had two that were there from the beginning to the end.

Two that were there from the beginning to the end because he taught me how to build a culture and not just build a business. Right. How to build followers. People that have still been with me, I mean, even coming out to Speed Weekend, you know, I pre-sold out. Like of folks who [00:20:00] have been to every single MDE Live.

Every single million dollar equation event that I’ve done, they come out because he helped me build a culture like he taught me. So much about, gosh, about, you know, about delivering information and how you deliver the information.

Copywriting, you know what to say, what not to say. Conversion, what is really important? How much can you actually spend about experiences. You know, I changed so many of the experiences at my telephone company to be like, so fun. People talked about fresh note, start telephone every day. Like they even, they got bumper stickers. They put them on their cars. Like, you know how shocked I was to drive around town to see bumper stickers from a prepaid telephone company?

Like, who wants to tell people that they’re at a prepaid? Phone search, like people laugh now if you have a cricket phone or a metro phone. You know, they were excited about [00:21:00] having a fresh start phone and it’s ridiculous about all the things that he taught me to do and the way to present it. Right?

Is that I didn’t present that I had a telephone company that was prepaid. You know, I was able to create a compelling headline, which is what he taught us how to do. So that my headline is, I’m going to ensure that you never, ever have to worry about disconnecting again. And they were like, what? How can you guarantee that my phone won’t ever be disconnected?

Well, cause you’re gonna prepaid cause you’re gonna pay me before it’s time and I’m gonna give you a flat rate. So you’re gonna know exactly how much your bill’s going to be every month. Cause that’s your problem is that you keep, you know, hanging it with services that you get. This, oh my god, bill. You know that one where you get it and you go, oh my God, I didn’t know that it was that much.

You know, it’s not like power. It’s not like the power services or your gas bill in the winter. This is should be flat rate. This is what you get. I was one of the pioneers of flat rate [00:22:00] service. The reason why you have flat rate with your telephone service right now is because Dan Kennedy helped me developed flat grade services, so I am honored to have been a student.

I am honored to have been attached to him which is why I told you that I wrote, you know, the whole chapter about him in my first book, jackpot. I am honored to still teach his principles every time that I teach the million dollar equation. You know, he didn’t lay it out like I lay it out, but I think it’s always like the synthesis of the principles that are done.

Like there’s so many folks that are out there now. Back in the day, you know, I used to sit at the table next to Ryan Dice, that’s, you know, that owns Digital Marketer. Russell Bronson was across from me. I’ve got pictures with all of them. You know, everybody who’s doing something really powerful online, descended from this man.

And I’m really excited. They said [00:23:00] he’s getting better after reading and listening to all of us, give him praise. So I’m still praying for him. I pray he comes outta hospice. I pray he makes an amazing turnaround cause. There’s still so much left that we don’t know that he has inside of him.

So I am really praying that he makes a turnaround and that he gets better because he is probably one of the smartest men I’ve ever known. He taught me so many things and now I get to live my dream because of him. And I am absolutely grateful.

So I’m gonna go cause I hate to cry on camera. That’s so not cute when your nose get red and everything else. But if you haven’t gotten a Dan Kennedy book lately, you need to go grab one. If you need one, I’ve got a couple of free ones, so if you say it. Yep, let me know. I can send them to because I always [00:24:00] had some.

You know, that’s what I do when I’m restless or when I’m looking for an idea, is I go back and I re-read all the stuff that I learned so that I could be ready. All right. So I love you for free, see that he started the ripple of all great leaders. We follow that is the truth. I mean, he really did.

He’s a young man. That’s what’s so upsetting is that he’s only in his sixties. He’s not old, you know, I used to call him the cranky old man when he wasn’t even old. He was just older than me, you know, because I was, you know, I got to be, you know, the only female African American public utility owner in the nation.

You know, and he encouraged me to tell people that all the time, cause I was like, ah. He’s like, you have to tell your story. You have to tell it every single time because there was new people who never heard it. Like he, you know, there’s just so many things that are so fundamental that now I just do because of him.

And he’s amazing. He’s crazy. Don’t give me, but he’s amazing. So no more tears. Go get it. But like I [00:25:00] said, I’ve got a couple of books if you need one. My favorite was the “Ultimate Marketing Plan”. That’s when he really taught you how to build a marketing calendar. All things that I’ve been teaching, all things that step three in “The Million Dollar Equation”.

The “Ultimate Marketing Plan”, probably one of my favorite, favorite, favorite books. You know, the Ultimate Sales Letter and ah, you know, I liked it, but “The No BS” books are, are truly. You know, hands down fabulous. You know, his thought processes of how the business should go, I mean, like, he was the last one to even get a cell phone and have email.

He didn’t give it to us, but I know he had it. You know, the only way that we could communicate with him was by fax. And this was like up until like now, like you still can’t like call him and be like, Hey, I need to talk to you. You still have to fax it over to him, and it goes to his assistant and like he taught us how, all of those things so that we were always protecting our energy and protecting our time because you don’t get that time back and that [00:26:00] just.

Man, like he was amazing. So I love you all for free. Hey, if you wanna though, come out to Vegas and come to MDE live speed weekend, the easiest, fastest way to grow a seven figure business, I’d love to have you there. Just say yes. I still have openings. I’ve got like two coaching spots left, so if you’d like to be privately coached by me I would love to coach you to build your own seven figure business.

And if you just wanna say, hey, you know, say hey let me know and I will send over my link so that you can see it. Ah, you’re pulling my book off. Ah, thank you, thank you, thank you. “Million Dollar Equation” I know always fun. You know, nine steps to building your own million dollar business in three years or less.

So that’s fine. Pep look Pep, come to Vegas, Chicago to Vegas. There’s flights every single day. There’s five or six. You can still get a discounted one. Well, if you’re not speaking at your own event, but if you are not busy, you should come out and hang [00:27:00] out. Well have a great, great time. I get to hug you again and we can just work on your business during that time.

So if you’re not doing anything, I’d love to see you in Vegas, October 25th through the 27th. All right, love you all for free. I’ll see you. Bye. Or I’ll see you tomorrow. I think tomorrow I’m doing something else. Talking to you all again. Okay. See you.