Latest / The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson / Becoming an Entrepreneurial Warrior with Zachary Green
Transcript
- 0:00The skill set to start a company is drastically different than the skill set to run a company.
- 0:06Most entrepreneurs and founders fail because they don't get out of the way because they
- 0:12don't realize that the innovation and the visionary that you need to start a company to
- 0:16get investors on board to the excitement is not the same skill set to run a company that's
- 0:22moving.
- 0:23My concept of the warrior journey And by the way, warriors not necessarily a navy seal or
- 0:29marine.
- 0:29It's it's a mom working seeing a mom working two jobs trying to hold everything together to
- 0:34get their kids to go to a good school.
- 0:35A warrior is that person that works in the Starbucks because they can't afford an office
- 0:40and they're, you know, using every last penny they got into their us.
- 0:44Warriors are people that are engaged in struggle and conflict and grow from it.
- 0:493, 2, 1, 2, technician, liftoff.
- 0:57Ending small business failure.
- 1:00Welcome to the small biz chat podcast.
- 1:03With the number one small business expert, Melinda Emerson.
- 1:07Melinda's goal is to end small business failure.
- 1:10And she'll give you the information you need lady herself, Melinda Emerson.
- 1:22Hi, everybody.
- 1:22I'm Melinda Emerson's small business lady.
- 1:25America's number one small business expert and I'm so excited to welcome you to another
- 1:31edition of the small biz chat podcast.
- 1:34We have an amazing show today.
- 1:36Now here on the small business chat podcast, we talk about how to start and grow successful
- 1:43small businesses.
- 1:44And my guests have amazing insight to share from multiple angles.
- 1:48Now we think of the small bridge top podcast as a peer to peer mentoring opportunity for you.
- 1:56So I want you to listen close, take notes because my guests are going to give you
- 2:02invaluable advice that is going to help you take your business to the next level because
- 2:07here at the small biz chat podcast, our mission is to end small business failure.
- 2:13Now it's time for me to introduce my guest, Zachary Green.
- 2:17He is a serial entrepreneur.
- 2:19He is a veteran.
- 2:21He is a firefighter.
- 2:23He is an international best selling author, and he's the founder of MN8 Loomware, Foxfire, a
- 2:31company he grew from the trunk of his car into a $30,000,000 company in organic sales He's
- 2:38also the CEO of Warrior Enterprises LLC, and he coaches entrepreneurs around the science of
- 2:44growth that comes from challenge and adversity.
- 2:48He has been featured in numerous publications in Entrepreneur Magazine, and he was named
- 2:54entrepreneur by the governor of Ohio John Case.
- 2:58And for more information, you can go to warriorleader.us Zachary, thank you so much for
- 3:05being on the small biz shot podcast.
- 3:08Melinda, I can't tell you what a honor it is to be here.
- 3:11I've been a big fan of yours for a while, and I I can't believe I'm on your show.
- 3:15Alright.
- 3:16Now I want you to tell us your origin story.
- 3:19How did you start your 1st business?
- 3:22Well, you know, it goes all the way back to kindergarten.
- 3:25I always knew, I was different.
- 3:27I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur.
- 3:30The problem is my teachers didn't, appreciate my differences.
- 3:33They called it ADHD when you're in school.
- 3:37And I went to 7 different schools from grade school to or preschool to high school.
- 3:42Now it's funny because they call it multitask when you get out of school.
- 3:45And they're like, oh, this guy's a great multitasker.
- 3:47He's got great energy and everything.
- 3:50So I Always loved our country.
- 3:54Always just had a deep appreciation for the Marine Corps.
- 3:56I joined the Marine Corps right out of high school while I was still in college.
- 4:00And it was really, really difficult.
- 4:02And one of the things I realized going through boot camp and officer candidate school was The
- 4:08kids that really had it rough growing up, the ones that grew in the coal up in the coal mines
- 4:13in West Virginia with dirt floors, or the projects of Philadelphia or the slums of New
- 4:18Orleans, they thought boot camp was great.
- 4:20They got a nice comfortable bed.
- 4:22They got 3 meals a day, and I'm like, Where's my mom?
- 4:25I miss my mommy because I was so spoiled.
- 4:28My mom literally laid my clothes out for me in my senior year of high school.
- 4:32So, like, this was a shock.
- 4:34And that started me this concept of this warrior transformation, what makes a warrior
- 4:39warrior, and it's iron sharpens iron.
- 4:42It's going through those challenge in that diversity to make he give you that rhino skin.
- 4:47And I got out of the Marine Corps in 1999, and a couple of years later, September 11th
- 4:53happened.
- 4:54And I felt tremendously guilty that I I turned my back on my brothers and sisters, and I
- 4:59wasn't serving anymore.
- 5:00At this time, I was climbing up the corporate ladder at Eli Lilly.
- 5:03I was doing brand development marketing for $1,000,000,000 brands, really learning a lot
- 5:08about sales and distribution.
- 5:10So I joined our local fire department and, became a volunteer firefighter and I got lost
- 5:15in a fire.
- 5:16It was a horrifying experience total blackout disorientation.
- 5:21And I wanted to invent a product that would help other firefighters see each other in the
- 5:25dark.
- 5:25And I developed this glow in the dark material.
- 5:28Started selling it out of the trunk of my car.
- 5:30Made like 5000 bucks in 6 months.
- 5:33Eventually went to a trade show, and in 3 days at the trade show, we booked a $100,000 in
- 5:38sales.
- 5:39The problem is that we was me, my myself and I, I had no more money because I just spent all of
- 5:45it.
- 5:45I had no way to produce those orders and I figured it out.
- 5:49I refinanced my house, maxed out my credit cards, took loans out, eventually, worked with
- 5:56a venture capital firm and, was able to grow the company to it to where it is today, but,
- 6:02boy, it was not a pretty, pretty site.
- 6:04It was a lot of lot of downs along those ups and it was a real whirlwind and I just learned
- 6:11so much through this process.
- 6:13Now I know a lot about your personal stories, Zach, but I I want you to walk us through sort
- 6:19of like you know, what happened when your business really started growing?
- 6:24Like, you had those problems up, oh, no.
- 6:26How am I gonna fill these orders?
- 6:28Then you got pretty big.
- 6:30And and what happened to you is a course of running your business when all that stuff
- 6:34started going on?
- 6:35Yeah.
- 6:35So there there's 2 things.
- 6:36First, I'll never confuse revenue with profit.
- 6:40I was just mentoring a guy today that that makes hot sauce, and he made, like, $25,000
- 6:46profit last year.
- 6:47And now he wants to get his product in every store.
- 6:49And I'm like, yeah.
- 6:50You're gonna make 3 or $400,000, and your profit margin will probably shrink down to
- 6:55single digits.
- 6:57And that may not be the right thing.
- 6:59The other thing is the skill set to start a company is drastically different than the skill
- 7:04set to run a company.
- 7:06Most entrepreneurs and founders fail because they don't get out of the way because they
- 7:12don't realize that innovation and the visionary that you need to start a company to get
- 7:17investors on board.
- 7:19The excitement is not the same skill set to run a company that's moving.
- 7:24My concept of the warrior journey, and we see this and by the way, a warrior is not
- 7:29necessarily a navy seal or marine.
- 7:31It's it's a mom working single mom working 2 jobs trying to hold everything together to get
- 7:35their kids to go to a good school.
- 7:37A warrior is that person that works in the Starbucks because they can't afford an office
- 7:41and they're, you know, using every last penny they got into their business.
- 7:45Warriors are people that are engaged in struggle and conflict and grow from it.
- 7:50And the warrior journey eventually will have a crucible.
- 7:53And the crucible is that crisis in your life that everything that you've prepared for up to
- 7:58that point is not enough.
- 7:59It could be a drug or alcohol problem.
- 8:01It could be a abusive relationship, or in my case, it was a business failure.
- 8:06And in that crucible, at the bottom of the crucible is the abyss, and the abyss has worked
- 8:10darkness and death and and sometimes even suicide lies.
- 8:14The longer you stare into that abyss is the great philosopher Neechi said, the eventually
- 8:19the Vis will stare back.
- 8:20And if you don't get out of that soon enough, it's almost impossible to get out of it.
- 8:25My abyss was the fact that I was selling so much product but we weren't focusing on cash
- 8:32flow.
- 8:32And again, being the ignorant visionary, not listening to my CFO who's like slow the sales
- 8:38down, because there's this cash conversion cycle, and that's the time it takes for you to
- 8:43spend money to get profit.
- 8:45Just because you sold a product doesn't mean you're getting paid.
- 8:48You still have to get paid.
- 8:50Sometimes they extend payment terms.
- 8:52Sometimes they don't pay you at all.
- 8:53Sometimes you gotta sue to get paid.
- 8:55And in our case, we had these massive deals that were 30, 40, 60 day terms.
- 9:01And I go on vacation.
- 9:03I get a call from my CFO, and he says, Zack, I'm sorry, and I've listened to Laurie earlier
- 9:08that she said as Kenneth, CEO on vacation.
- 9:11I hadn't been on a vacation in 5 years.
- 9:13This is my first vacation.
- 9:14I'm like, I'm checking off.
- 9:16This is gonna be great.
- 9:173 days into the vacation, I get a call from my CFO saying that we're 3 days away from
- 9:21bankruptcy.
- 9:22We're gonna have to liquidate the company.
- 9:24I would have lost my house.
- 9:26I owed over a $180 American Express.
- 9:29I would have had to declare bankruptcy.
- 9:31My wife that was a very successful OBGYN when we started the business stopped working to
- 9:36because the business was doing so well.
- 9:38We were in trouble, and I had a panic attack.
- 9:41Thought it was a heart attack, but it was my body's way of saying, hey.
- 9:44It ain't working.
- 9:46You gotta make a change.
- 9:47And what happened for me is to get through your crucible, you have to conquer what got you
- 9:52there, and you have to transform and change.
- 9:55My transformation was resigning as CEO from my company, from my baby that I created, that I
- 10:00grew, that I nurtured, firing most of my leadership team that were my dear friends and
- 10:05people that helped me along this journey, bringing in a new CEO and giving him the rights
- 10:10to roll to the company.
- 10:12And by doing that, we went from literally a couple $1,000,000 a year in revenue to almost
- 10:18within months 10,000,000 plus dollars a year in revenue.
- 10:22And then I as the founder focused being more of the visionary, more of the spokesman, more of
- 10:27the the the name and the face of the company.
- 10:30And and I told him.
- 10:32I said, the 2 things I want, I don't wanna know who's getting hired and fired, and I don't
- 10:36wanna know how much money's in the bank.
- 10:38I wanna just focus on what I do best.
- 10:41Well, you know what?
- 10:41I I just wanna applaud you because it takes a lot of dog on courage to do something like
- 10:47that.
- 10:48I mean, really, to recognize your own human limitations and say, you know what?
- 10:54It's not worth me try kill myself learning this on the job.
- 10:58Let me bring in another professional and step over to what I really do best.
- 11:03And I think there's a lot of business owners out here I'm so grateful that you just told
- 11:07that story because I think there's a lot of people who are out here having panic attacks
- 11:12and they still having them.
- 11:14Because they weren't smart enough to get help, to get professional, you know, to use their
- 11:19accountant as a business adviser, like, to you, to listen to their attorneys like you know,
- 11:24these people are trying to help you, but sometimes I think sometimes as as business
- 11:29owners, we had to fight so hard to grow our businesses that we think we're right.
- 11:34You know what I mean?
- 11:35Like, and it's like and it's hard.
- 11:37It's hard when you get humbled in a situation, and then you have to look at yourself and
- 11:42realize, and who's always at the scene of the crime?
- 11:45You.
- 11:45Right?
- 11:46So you have to step aside and and I just I just wanna applaud you because That took a lot.
- 11:52I I can't even imagine what it went through to see somebody else sitting in your big chair in
- 11:57in your old office.
- 11:58I mean, that had to be tough.
- 12:00But wow, you know, look at how much you benefited from doing that.
- 12:05Now when when you decided to turn things over and bring in a CEO, How did you do that?
- 12:10Like, how did you search for somebody?
- 12:13And and how much did you tell him about how much trouble you were in when you were
- 12:16searching for him?
- 12:18Well, I think they kinda knew, and that's, you know, both the curse and the blessing of having
- 12:23investors and other people on your board is sometimes they can ethinks differently than
- 12:27you.
- 12:28The analogy was used earlier by Laurie about this being your baby.
- 12:31It is.
- 12:32And I'm sorry.
- 12:33You cannot disconnect the fact if you're a founder, that that's your baby, and it will be
- 12:37your baby.
- 12:38And to compare it as as a parent, you've got a kid that's really messed up and everyone else
- 12:44could see that your kid is abusing drugs or doing bad things or something, but you he's
- 12:49your baby.
- 12:50You can't see anything that's wrong with them.
- 12:52And eventually you have to give your baby up to maybe to college or to kick him out of the
- 12:58house or do whatever.
- 12:58And it's the most difficult thing that you could ever do, but at the end of the day, the
- 13:02way that that kid is gonna get saved is for you to step away and allow somebody else and then
- 13:08to take their wings and fly.
- 13:10And a lot of businesses owners will never do that.
- 13:12And, you know, we've all heard the numbers of, like, 80, 90% of businesses fail in 10 years.
- 13:18I would venture that the main reason that happens is because of the founder doing
- 13:23something and not allowing that succession plan to come out.
- 13:28I would, 100% agree with you.
- 13:30Businesses go out of business because people don't build a plan.
- 13:34They just that people don't plan to fail.
- 13:36They fail to plan.
- 13:37And then they forget to keep planning.
- 13:39That that's one of the biggest things I tell people.
- 13:41It's like, look, You know, when is the last time you really looked at your business
- 13:47strategically and not being in reactionary mode, but being in strategy mode.
- 13:51Like, thinking about what you want to have happen in your business versus letting your
- 13:55business sort of, like, happen to you.
- 13:57Right?
- 13:58Now How many companies in in 2020 thought that everything would be the same 2021 2022.
- 14:06Right.
- 14:06Hello, COVID.
- 14:08Things changed a little bit.
- 14:09Right?
- 14:10Now I'll tell you, we did the best business we ever did in the history of our company in the
- 14:13year of COVID because we were able to pivot very fast and adapt, but there's a lot of the
- 14:18companies that never made it out.
- 14:20Oh, absolutely.
- 14:21There were a whole bunch of companies that got caught flat footed completely.
- 14:24So didn't know how to sell online, didn't have an email list, didn't have really good systems.
- 14:30Didn't know how to use technology effectively.
- 14:32I mean, it it just it just took the knees out from up under so many people.
- 14:38Now I know that out of all of this that you've learned, you created another business, right?
- 14:43Warrior Enterprises LLC.
- 14:45Tell us about how you went from, you know, transitioning into a different role in your
- 14:51company to decide deciding that you wanted to coach and mentor other entrepreneurs?
- 14:56I think it's amazing if you read Greek mythology or old, old stuff, even biblical type
- 15:02stuff that they all have the same characters in that journey.
- 15:06You always have a hero, you have kinda like the the love of the hero.
- 15:11You've got the support of the hero, but in almost every one of these journeys, you have a
- 15:15guide.
- 15:16You have that person that's coaching the hero of the Socrates, the somebody, the Plato that's
- 15:20saying do this or do that.
- 15:22I've been the hero on this journey for a long time.
- 15:25Now the good thing about being the hero is you get all the awards and you get all the
- 15:28accolades and all of that stuff.
- 15:29But the other thing is you get a lot of scars.
- 15:32And you get stabbed in the front.
- 15:34You get stabbed in the back, and it hurts.
- 15:36And what I told people is the best analogy I had in my business is Nothing feels better than
- 15:42a nice warm bath.
- 15:43But if half the bath is boiling water and the other half is freezing cold and you get into
- 15:48it, it's not comfortable.
- 15:49That's what entrepreneurship is.
- 15:51It's the highest to highs, but that doesn't balance out the lowest of lows.
- 15:55And so what I wanna do is I wanna be now the guide in the story.
- 15:59I don't wanna be the hero anymore.
- 16:01I wanna show the hero how to avoid those arrows that are coming at them, how to take the right
- 16:06path.
- 16:07How to do the things that I did right and not do the things that I did wrong.
- 16:12And that really is where my passion is now because My join, I'm I'm working with several
- 16:18companies right now ranging from very small startups to very significant size corporate
- 16:23Fortune 500 type companies.
- 16:25When they win, we both win.
- 16:27When I win, it's just me.
- 16:29And there's just something I don't know if it's that I'm a parent now or whatever else, but
- 16:33they're so much a better feeling when you can coach somebody to be successful than just do it
- 16:38all yourself.
- 16:40I totally agree with that.
- 16:41I mean, I remember when I made my transition to being the small business lady.
- 16:46Oh gosh.
- 16:4713 years ago, don't tell anybody.
- 16:49But, I mean, it it was different.
- 16:52When I went from just making it about me versus making it about my mission, everything got more
- 16:58clear to me when I did that.
- 17:00So I can completely appreciate that.
- 17:02And I know that you say that there are three questions that every entrepreneur should ask
- 17:08themselves.
- 17:08What are they?
- 17:10Yeah.
- 17:10It's real simple.
- 17:11So the first one is have you solved a problem in a unique and elegant way?
- 17:16At the end of the day, you're not selling features and benefit you're solving problems.
- 17:20And some of the best entrepreneurs are the one that solve problems that you didn't even know
- 17:24you had.
- 17:25Okay?
- 17:26The second one is you have to have an unfair competitive business advantage.
- 17:30Not illegal, not a ethical, but unfair.
- 17:34We're very small.
- 17:35You can, you know, quantity becomes a quality when you're talking about money and you're
- 17:41talking about people.
- 17:43We don't have that option.
- 17:44And I go back to one of my favorite stories of all time of David and Goliath.
- 17:49David beat Goliath, not because he was stronger.
- 17:51He beat him because, a, he didn't do what Goliath said to do.
- 17:56And, b, he used his strengths against Goliath's weaknesses.
- 17:59His unfair advantage was his speed and his tenacity.
- 18:04So that's the other thing that I tell people is you've gotta really have an now what is an
- 18:09unfair I'll tell you right now.
- 18:11It ain't a patent because most small businesses spend so much time focused on the patent.
- 18:16They don't realize that it's not worth the paper written on unless you have probably 7 to
- 18:21defend the patent.
- 18:22Exactly.
- 18:23You just you got a great lawyer and you defend it.
- 18:26All the judges gotta do is wake up on the wrong side of the bed and check this box instead of
- 18:30that box.
- 18:30Now did you just lose all that money?
- 18:32You're paying the money for that other company.
- 18:34And by the way, the person probably violating your patent has a whole freaking office full of
- 18:38attorneys that are on salary that will just grind you down.
- 18:43Spend that money on advertisement on e on on SEO and on all those other things.
- 18:48The 3rd and most important one gotta have kick ass sales, marketing distribution.
- 18:53I mean, it's gotta be awesome.
- 18:55It doesn't matter how good your product is.
- 18:57It matters how good your branding your marketing freaking bottled water.
- 19:01It's 100 of 1,000,000,000 of dollars.
- 19:04It's free.
- 19:05It's water, but it's marketed, and it's branded, and it's distributed by guess who are
- 19:11the 2 main butter, ones that have water, Coca Cola and Pepsi.
- 19:16You know, the pet rock.
- 19:17You guys remember that back in the seventies eighties.
- 19:20It's a freaking rock.
- 19:22It made 1,000,000 of dollars because it was in a cool, well, box.
- 19:25And they had commercials about have your rock play with your friend's rock.
- 19:28The snuggie, thumpest idea ever.
- 19:31$1,000,000,000 brand because they had great marketing distribution.
- 19:35So if you can answer all three of those, I don't care what your performance look like.
- 19:40I don't care what your finances look like.
- 19:42Show me those.
- 19:43I'll build a team around that to make you successful.
- 19:46But if you can't answer those 3, there ain't much we can do to help you other than try to
- 19:51figure out how to answer those 3.
- 19:53That is some really good advice.
- 19:55Why do you think it's important for every entrepreneur to face a little bit of adversity?
- 20:00So I had this incredible honor a couple of years ago.
- 20:03I got selected personally by president Obama to be one of ten people to represent the United
- 20:08States at the global entrepreneur summit.
- 20:10We had 40 countries representative with 10 entrepreneurs from 40 countries.
- 20:15On our panel, we had Mark Zuckerberg.
- 20:17We had Travis Klocknick.
- 20:19We had the founder of Uber and all these things in there.
- 20:22Question came out was that exact question that you just asked Melinda.
- 20:26And why does it have to be so darn difficult early on.
- 20:31And every one of them said universally, it needs to be that difficult when you're working
- 20:36out of your garage work because It's only gonna get harder.
- 20:39As the great philosopher, Big East Small smalls once said, mo money, mo problems.
- 20:45And I'm telling you, man, it is so spot on in business.
- 20:49You just keep adding zeros on to your problem.
- 20:51So as these guys were talking about the struggles of just making payroll and they had
- 20:55two or three people.
- 20:55And then he's like, add to when I got $3,000,000,000 of revenue on what we're doing
- 21:00here.
- 21:00But in that struggle is where you grow that rhino skin.
- 21:04And that struggle is where the warrior starts to train.
- 21:07And it's interesting when I was in Marine boot camp, which is arguably the hardest boot camp
- 21:11there is not just probably the US, probably anywhere.
- 21:14Every week, it got harder and harder of the training, but it felt easier and easier.
- 21:20And the reason why is because it was so difficult those 1st early weeks that you
- 21:25started to get used to this getting up 4:30 in the morning, working out, getting yelled at,
- 21:30getting harassed, and all this other type of stuff.
- 21:33It's the same thing.
- 21:34There are no shortcuts.
- 21:36It's gonna be hard.
- 21:37It's gonna be difficult.
- 21:39Now why do you think that people, as business leaders, need to transfer form and change in
- 21:45order for their businesses to grow.
- 21:48You are the business and the people that you work So the people that you start with are not
- 21:52the people you're gonna finish with.
- 21:54When you start a business, you don't have money, but what you do is you have energy.
- 21:57And so you're gonna get a lot of people with a lot of passion but aren't a lot of talent.
- 22:01And how do you know that?
- 22:03Because they'd be working for companies to pay a hell a lot more than you could pay them if
- 22:06they had the talent.
- 22:07Alright?
- 22:08But they love your idea.
- 22:09They're following your why.
- 22:11But as you start to move up, there's this concept of regression to the mean, which
- 22:16everybody starts to regress to what the average is.
- 22:19If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room.
- 22:23I know I done a good job.
- 22:25When I walk into my board meetings and I'm the dumbest, most least qualified person in the
- 22:29room, I'm like, yes.
- 22:31You know, then I know that I've I've got something going on good there.
- 22:34So that that's the first thing is you gotta evolve and change, and you're gonna get better
- 22:37and stronger, but you're gonna have to constantly swap out the bench and start moving
- 22:41those c players and bringing in b players and a players and other type ones that you can afford
- 22:47because they're gonna bring with them a wealth of resources and knowledge The one thing that
- 22:51you can never ever compromise on, though, is the values of the company.
- 22:56And that's really the goal of the founder is to make sure that the values are intact because as
- 23:02things grow, you'll start to lose your values.
- 23:04And that's the one thing that when I do interview people that are working for me, I'm
- 23:08the last person to interview them, and all I'm looking for is fit and making sure that there's
- 23:13somebody that I would enjoy working with, and they're not gonna ruin it because you can take
- 23:17someone that's highly talented that doesn't match your values.
- 23:20They will ruin things very, very quickly.
- 23:23I couldn't agree more.
- 23:25You know, it's almost like how everyone used to say that culture each strategy for breakfast.
- 23:29And I think fit will will, you know, fit an an alignment of values will will ruin a business
- 23:37or grow a business depending on how well you hire.
- 23:40What is the best business advice anyone's ever given you?
- 23:43It's real simple.
- 23:44It's, it's hard to win.
- 23:48It's easier to give up when things get tough.
- 23:50That's easy.
- 23:51All you gotta do is say I'm done.
- 23:53If you're gonna stick it out and you wanna re mortgage your house to keep the company alive
- 23:57and fire your friend and go through all that other stuff, that's the hard stuff.
- 24:01But, you know, to the Victor goes to the spoils.
- 24:04And I think the greatest pieces of writing ever meant, and I'm not gonna take the time to say
- 24:09it, but please Google the poem man in the arena by Teddy Roosevelt.
- 24:14That poem is the poem is should be the Bible of all entrepreneurs, and it basically talks about
- 24:21if you're in the arena, at least the fact that you tried and even though you're scarred in
- 24:25your battle and your bloody, You've at least done something.
- 24:28Not the people that sat in the cubicle farm that used to work with that told you you're an
- 24:32idiot for leaving the big cushing company go off on their own.
- 24:36Because even if you fail, you at least dare greatly and you experience something that they
- 24:41never knew how to experience because they didn't have your courage.
- 24:44Alright, Zach.
- 24:45What's your favorite podcast?
- 24:47Business wars.
- 24:48It is absolutely fantastic.
- 24:50They have very professionally put together, very well produced, and it goes into, all the
- 24:58wars with big companies, famous companies, and the just fascinating.
- 25:02Love it.
- 25:03Alright.
- 25:03What is your favorite business app?
- 25:07No question.
- 25:08I was using it on the break in between your guests.
- 25:11It's fiber.
- 25:13It's the gig economy.
- 25:14You can literally get a whiteboard explaining our video for 5 or $10.
- 25:19I saw other ones from big advertising companies that were $20,030,000.
- 25:24You can get websites, logos, brochures.
- 25:28It is Unbelievable.
- 25:30Love it.
- 25:31And then, Zach, what's your favorite old school marketing tip?
- 25:34Don't sell features and benefits.
- 25:36Sell solutions to your clients' problems.
- 25:40I love it.
- 25:40I love it.
- 25:41Exactly.
- 25:41Sell solutions.
- 25:42People aren't buying stuff.
- 25:43They're solving problems.
- 25:45What's your favorite business book?
- 25:47I'll go even older school than Laurie and go with Iron Rand Atlas shrug.
- 25:52It is a very, very long book.
- 25:55It's a very intense read, but it is the bible of entrepreneurship Capitalism and what makes
- 26:03America such an exceptional country.
- 26:06Love it.
- 26:06Love it.
- 26:07Listen.
- 26:08Thank you so much.
- 26:09Melinda, I'm sorry.
- 26:10I wanna change my favorite book is becoming your own boss 12 months by Linda Emerson.
- 26:16Unbelievable book.
- 26:17I highly advise it for anybody that's watching this.
- 26:20I love it.
- 26:21I love it, Zachary.
- 26:21Thank you so much for being here.
- 26:23I think we have all learned a great, great deal from you And I just appreciate so many things
- 26:30about you.
- 26:30Thank you so much.
- 26:32Check out his book, Warrior Entrepreneur.
- 26:34And thank you all for joining me for this episode of the small fish chat podcast.
- 26:39If you're still working on your digital pivot, please check out All of our offerings over at
- 26:43Small Bizlating University, you deserve to make the money that you need to make online.
- 26:48And we've got all the tools over there to help you with it.
- 26:51And the last thing I wanna tell you is I wanna leave you with this.
- 26:54You never lose in business either you win for you learn.
- 26:59Thank you so much, everybody.
- 27:02Thanks for listening to the small biz chat podcast with Melinda Emerson.
- 27:07Subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and join us next Wednesday for more
- 27:12fantastic information and interviews.
- 27:15You can find more sources and small business success strategies by visiting Melinda's
- 27:19website succeed as your own boss.com.
- 27:23Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next week.