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Heart-Led Business Breakthrough with Michael "Buzz" Buzinski · The Heart-Led Business Show

• 0:01
  Speaker: Welcome to the Heart-Led Business Show, where compassion meets commerce and leaders lead with love.
• 0:09
  Speaker: Join your host, Tom Jackobs, as he delves into the insightful conversations with visionary business leaders who defy the status quo, putting humanity first and profit second.
• 0:20
  Speaker: From heartfelt strategies to inspiring stories, this podcast is your compass in the world of conscious capitalism.
• 0:29
  Speaker: So buckle up and let's go.
• 0:31
  Speaker: Let your heart guide your business journey.
• 0:36
  Tom Jackobs: Welcome everyone to the Heart Led Business Show.
• 0:38
  Tom Jackobs: Today, we're dropping some entrepreneurial wisdom nuggets with none other than the incredible Michael"Buzz" Buzinski a distinguished U.S.
• 0:48
  Tom Jackobs: Air Force veteran turned serial entrepreneur.
• 0:51
  Tom Jackobs: He's on a mission to abolish entrepreneurial poverty one savvy strategy at a time.
• 0:56
  Tom Jackobs: So get ready to soar with insights about heart led business ownership.
• 1:01
  Tom Jackobs: We're going to go head first into this inspiring conversation with the visionary marketer himself, buzz.
• 1:07
  Tom Jackobs: Welcome to the show.
• 1:08
  Michael Buzinski: Why, thank for having me.
• 1:10
  Tom Jackobs: It's so great to have you here.
• 1:12
  Tom Jackobs: I really am interested in your backstory coming out of the air force and going into serial entrepreneurship.
• 1:18
  Tom Jackobs: So I'm sure that the listeners are going to have a real treat today on the show.
• 1:23
  Michael Buzinski: So far, I'm like, just turned 51 here a couple months ago.
• 1:27
  Michael Buzinski: And so I consider myself now midlife, right?
• 1:31
  Michael Buzinski: And that could be like volume one as thick as the what is the what is one of the big classics I had just had in my head anyway the blue and the gray or something like that, or is that, I have one of those life stories are a lot, lots in it.
• 1:45
  Michael Buzinski: Yeah.
• 1:45
  Michael Buzinski: And the scars to prove it.
• 1:46
  Michael Buzinski: Right?
• 1:47
  Michael Buzinski: The first question is what is your definition of a heart led business?
• 1:52
  Michael Buzinski: I think a heart led business, It's rooted in the founder's passion, right?
• 1:58
  Michael Buzinski: What do they care about?
• 1:59
  Michael Buzinski: Because I don't think that you can really lead from the heart without passion.
• 2:05
  Michael Buzinski: And for me, when I originally started my company, it wasn't a marketing firm.
• 2:09
  Michael Buzinski: It was a recording studio.
• 2:11
  Michael Buzinski: Because I had a passion for music.
• 2:14
  Michael Buzinski: It wasn't until I realized that starving surviving off of starving musicians, that I couldn't live off of that passion.
• 2:22
  Michael Buzinski: That heart wasn't going to pump enough blood to the rest of my life to live the type of life I wanted to live.
• 2:29
  Michael Buzinski: So it wasn't until I pivoted into the next Um, viable market, which was small to medium sized businesses and working consistently with other small businesses that I just kept this growing passion for helping the SMB sector, because we're so under represented.
• 2:53
  Michael Buzinski: When it comes to the tools and the skill sets and the mindsets, there's, that's why there's so many consultants and guides and coaches and all this stuff because nobody teaches this stuff even in college.
• 3:06
  Michael Buzinski: I majored in Entrepreneurial man.
• 3:09
  Michael Buzinski: No, I'm sorry a small business management and entrepreneurship.
• 3:12
  Michael Buzinski: It didn't teach you nothing about running a business.
• 3:15
  Tom Jackobs: They had a major for that when you went to school.
• 3:17
  Michael Buzinski: The University of Phoenix, which is the business college.
• 3:19
  Michael Buzinski: I originally started with marketing because I had a background in marketing and I love marketing because it's people, right?
• 3:27
  Michael Buzinski: And so deep down, it's my passion is for helping people.
• 3:30
  Michael Buzinski: I took the Enneagram and found out I was a three wing two, which means I was, I'm a driver helper,
• 3:37
  Tom Jackobs: wow.
• 3:38
  Michael Buzinski: right?
• 3:38
  Michael Buzinski: So I have a lot of drive, but I love helping people along the way.
• 3:42
  Michael Buzinski: And
• 3:42
  Tom Jackobs: Great combo.
• 3:43
  Michael Buzinski: so that's part of my personality.
• 3:45
  Michael Buzinski: And when I originally did the recording started a recording studio, that was to help musicians, avoid what I had gone through as a recording musician in years past.
• 3:56
  Michael Buzinski: And I wanted to create an experience that was unlike the standard rubber stamp recording studio experience.
• 4:03
  Michael Buzinski: And so when we went to the SMB world and just realized how, underrepresented we were and why people looked.
• 4:11
  Michael Buzinski: this is now, this is back in the early aughts where technology, we didn't have Canva that could make you look awesome in a couple of clicks, right?
• 4:18
  Michael Buzinski: You had to have professionals who knew how to use the tools to make you look good.
• 4:23
  Michael Buzinski: You had to have people who had the, you didn't have chat GPT to help you create the best copy.
• 4:29
  Michael Buzinski: You didn't have all these tools now that that have democratized the creative aspect of business and the strategic aspect of marketing.
• 4:37
  Tom Jackobs: That's fascinating.
• 4:38
  Tom Jackobs: You either had to build the skills yourself to do all that stuff or hire a very expensive person to be able to do it for you.
• 4:48
  Tom Jackobs: So it's like a no win for the small business.
• 4:51
  Tom Jackobs: Now when you see that change in terms of just in current day, in terms of the tools that are available to SMBs versus, the fortune five hundreds?
• 5:01
  Michael Buzinski: I think that the there's democratization of tools out there.
• 5:05
  Michael Buzinski: The problem is that a hammer in the hands of someone who is not a carpenter is not going to do a very good job.
• 5:16
  Michael Buzinski: And so we still have a gap.
• 5:19
  Michael Buzinski: So I tell people now, knowledge used to be power, right?
• 5:22
  Michael Buzinski: Remember when it's like knowledge is power, learn as much as you can, right?
• 5:26
  Michael Buzinski: Now, knowledge is free or at least 20 a month.
• 5:31
  Michael Buzinski: If you want to go like chat GPT pro or something like that, or Claude or whatever AI you're using, right?
• 5:36
  Michael Buzinski: Gemini now I think is free if you have Google workspace, right?
• 5:40
  Michael Buzinski: So the knowledge is free.
• 5:41
  Michael Buzinski: You don't even have to spend time learning it anymore.
• 5:44
  Michael Buzinski: Just ask for it, right?
• 5:46
  Michael Buzinski: Problem is experience and wisdom.
• 5:48
  Michael Buzinski: That's not free because you can't get the experience and you need the experience without doing the work, right?
• 5:56
  Michael Buzinski: And I going through and getting the cuts and doing the reps and however you want to talk about it.
• 6:01
  Michael Buzinski: But the crazy thing is that if you don't have the wisdom or the experience or experience creates wisdom, right?
• 6:06
  Michael Buzinski: So it's like you have experienced knowledge equals wisdom.
• 6:09
  Michael Buzinski: Without either of those experience or wisdom you don't know what questions to ask.
• 6:15
  Michael Buzinski: you don't know what knowledge you're looking for.
• 6:17
  Michael Buzinski: So all the knowledge in the world is at our fingertips, we don't know how to ask the right questions.
• 6:24
  Michael Buzinski: And it's something that I've actually, looking at, cause I use a bunch of different types of AI in my work now.
• 6:30
  Michael Buzinski: And it's funny because I look at what other people are doing with AI gives me ideas of like how to ask better questions, but I won't know what questions to ask unless I had the amount of experience that I have today.
• 6:47
  Michael Buzinski: And that's where I think the transition of the next revolution is create, I don't know if you can create the wisdom, right?
• 6:58
  Michael Buzinski: Like people can tell you what to do, and they can tell you why you should do it.
• 7:02
  Michael Buzinski: But it's like when we were kids, your parents would say, you probably shouldn't jump off the trees.
• 7:07
  Michael Buzinski: You're gonna, you're not gonna want you're not gonna like your knees when you're in your 60s if you keep jumping out of those trees.
• 7:12
  Michael Buzinski: But you don't have that experience.
• 7:13
  Tom Jackobs: we have
• 7:14
  Michael Buzinski: They have
• 7:14
  Tom Jackobs: to experiment.
• 7:15
  Michael Buzinski: that experience.
• 7:16
  Michael Buzinski: So you're like, eh,
• 7:17
  Tom Jackobs: Let me try it.
• 7:18
  Michael Buzinski: about.
• 7:18
  Michael Buzinski: I'm different.
• 7:19
  Tom Jackobs: Let me try this out.
• 7:21
  Tom Jackobs: Absolutely.
• 7:21
  Tom Jackobs: Even if it's a franchise.
• 7:23
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah, even
• 7:25
  Michael Buzinski: It works different.
• 7:27
  Michael Buzinski: So we don't even listen to the wisdom when it is given to us.
• 7:31
  Tom Jackobs: the franchise owners say their business is different from the other franchisees.
• 7:34
  Michael Buzinski: Yeah.
• 7:34
  Michael Buzinski: Oh yeah.
• 7:35
  Michael Buzinski: Our location is
• 7:36
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah, very easy.
• 7:37
  Michael Buzinski: My team is different.
• 7:39
  Michael Buzinski: Our culture is, I'm like, get it, but the fundamentals of business, the fundamentals of marketing, the fundamentals of finance, they're not different.
• 7:47
  Michael Buzinski: How you approach them, that's fine if you want to, but you cannot get around the fundamentals and that's, and as entrepreneurs, we're rule breakers.
• 7:56
  Michael Buzinski: We don't follow rules anyway, right?
• 7:58
  Michael Buzinski: So when people give us the wisdom, we're always like, Yeah, that sounds like the hard way of doing it.
• 8:04
  Michael Buzinski: I'm going to find the easy way.
• 8:06
  Michael Buzinski: Cause that's, we were always looking for the easy button, which is what makes us entrepreneurs, right?
• 8:11
  Michael Buzinski: If I can create the easy button, I can now sell the easy button.
• 8:14
  Michael Buzinski: I make my, I make life easier for somebody else.
• 8:16
  Michael Buzinski: I give them a shortcut somewhere.
• 8:18
  Michael Buzinski: That's an easy button, right?
• 8:19
  Michael Buzinski: That's what we do.
• 8:20
  Michael Buzinski: And in B2B, that's where I live is in the B2B businesses.
• 8:24
  Michael Buzinski: There's only one thing you're doing.
• 8:25
  Tom Jackobs: And it's the same for B2C.
• 8:26
  Tom Jackobs: You're solving a problem that somebody has basically with your solution, with your easy button.
• 8:31
  Michael Buzinski: Yeah, and B2C in marketing, they talk about you're either solving a problem or creating or guiding somebody to their aspirations.
• 8:39
  Michael Buzinski: Now, in guiding to the aspirations, there is a blockade keeping them from what they're aspiring to have, to, be, right?
• 8:47
  Michael Buzinski: That's the problem.
• 8:49
  Michael Buzinski: But they don't see it that way.
• 8:50
  Michael Buzinski: They just say, I want to be this.
• 8:52
  Michael Buzinski: And so they sell them what they want, give them what they need, which is solve problem.
• 8:56
  Michael Buzinski: Right?
• 8:56
  Michael Buzinski: And B2B, I want to be a 10 million company, but we don't see that when we talk about is I'm what's, how's business going?
• 9:03
  Michael Buzinski: Right now I'm trying to get past this thing.
• 9:05
  Michael Buzinski: That's the problem.
• 9:06
  Michael Buzinski: We look at problems because we attack problems.
• 9:09
  Michael Buzinski: Our goals are always here, but we're it's good Stephen Covey, like start with the end in mind.
• 9:13
  Michael Buzinski: First things first.
• 9:14
  Michael Buzinski: So we're always at the first thing.
• 9:16
  Michael Buzinski: What is the next first thing?
• 9:18
  Michael Buzinski: We're not worried about, somebody says where do you want to see your company in five years?
• 9:21
  Michael Buzinski: Yeah.
• 9:21
  Michael Buzinski: I want to be at 10 million, but that's not what I'm thinking about today.
• 9:24
  Michael Buzinski: I'm thinking about today of what do I have for, what are my next five meetings?
• 9:28
  Michael Buzinski: And how are, how is that going to make today a productive day amongst the thousands of days it'll take to, for, before I see a 10 million a year.
• 9:36
  Tom Jackobs: And when we step back just a little bit to the questioning, and I like that what you were saying earlier about it's the, we don't necessarily know the question to ask.
• 9:48
  Tom Jackobs: But I think what I'm seeing and I think what I heard you've say was that we're getting better at asking some questions and what I see in the future anyway, is that's how we're going to grow and asking people more questions.
• 10:05
  Tom Jackobs: And I think that's for me anyway, that's really from the heart as well, because now it gets you really concerned about that other person and understanding what they're doing, but also concerned about, what's our problem that we're trying to solve and do we have the right questions to ask to get the right answer.
• 10:23
  Michael Buzinski: And I think it comes down to curiosity.
• 10:25
  Michael Buzinski: My wife and I have a, we do a little self guided couples retreat every year.
• 10:30
  Michael Buzinski: We go over our core values and we started this, we've been married for about five years now.
• 10:37
  Michael Buzinski: So we've been doing this for three years now, with this really long list and it keeps getting short that the list gets shorter as we get more focused.
• 10:44
  Michael Buzinski: And one of the things is be curious.
• 10:48
  Michael Buzinski: 'cause if you can stay curious, you'll find the right questions.
• 10:53
  Michael Buzinski: you might ask the question and it's funny'cause you can actually do it with ai.
• 10:57
  Michael Buzinski: What question should I be asking?
• 10:58
  Michael Buzinski: If I want this knowledge,
• 11:00
  Tom Jackobs: Ah yes.
• 11:01
  Michael Buzinski: if I want to do this, right?
• 11:03
  Michael Buzinski: And it'll tell you I need to know this.
• 11:05
  Michael Buzinski: And I, and so what I just copy that into a Google doc and I answer all the questions and I give it back to them.
• 11:10
  Michael Buzinski: And guess what?
• 11:11
  Michael Buzinski: I get an infinitely better answer.
• 11:14
  Michael Buzinski: And that's with my wisdom 20 years in the business, right?
• 11:18
  Michael Buzinski: But even if, but if the person who was just starting out the first year of business did the same thing?
• 11:26
  Michael Buzinski: I want to create great homepage for my website.
• 11:31
  Michael Buzinski: What questions do you need to help me write the best copy?
• 11:35
  Michael Buzinski: It's gonna give you a list, a laundry list of things to answer, and some of them you're gonna go, of course.
• 11:39
  Michael Buzinski: Ooh, I didn't think of that question.
• 11:41
  Michael Buzinski: Do and now it's gonna give you that.
• 11:43
  Michael Buzinski: Now what it's giving you is a synthesis, a synthesization, a synthesis, I should say, of all of the stuff that, all of the websites out there that are, that have talked about what you do.
• 11:56
  Michael Buzinski: Okay, so it's not going to be original, but if you gave that to a marketing consultant, you're shortcutting the amount of time it takes for them to start from scratch.
• 12:06
  Michael Buzinski: And I think that, that ability to be able to come to the guides are not going anywhere.
• 12:11
  Michael Buzinski: Consultants aren't going anywhere.
• 12:12
  Michael Buzinski: Fractional executives and fractional leaders are now more coming, are booming right now.
• 12:19
  Michael Buzinski: People who come into your into your company on a contract, but they're acting at a part time basis, but giving you full time value, right?
• 12:29
  Michael Buzinski: Because we're able to leverage our wisdom and get things done.
• 12:32
  Michael Buzinski: We already know.
• 12:33
  Michael Buzinski: We got, we have our frameworks.
• 12:35
  Michael Buzinski: We can get in there and get things done fast, right?
• 12:37
  Michael Buzinski: And that, I think, is the speed in which things get done is what AI all the new tools that are being put in, right?
• 12:45
  Michael Buzinski: the novice's hands is helping because now they're learning faster, they're trying more things quicker, they're avoiding some of the mistakes if they're stay curious.
• 12:56
  Michael Buzinski: What happens if I did this?
• 12:58
  Michael Buzinski: This or this could happen.
• 12:59
  Michael Buzinski: Oh, what are the ramifications of each of these?
• 13:01
  Michael Buzinski: And just be curious.
• 13:04
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 13:04
  Tom Jackobs: I found that the more that I use AI and am curious, it's helping me with my personal relationships as well.
• 13:12
  Tom Jackobs: And business relationships by now I'm more curious and asking more questions as well of the people that I run into.
• 13:20
  Tom Jackobs: And it's Yeah, I love that.
• 13:21
  Tom Jackobs: Be curious.
• 13:22
  Tom Jackobs: I'm going to put that on my, my my core values as well.
• 13:28
  Michael Buzinski: And the funny thing is, and I understand when you say it's making it you, it's making you a better communicator in that when you're asking a, I always describe AI as a 6-year-old child who has all the knowledge of the world, but no understanding of it.
• 13:45
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 13:46
  Michael Buzinski: So you can ask it anything you want.
• 13:48
  Michael Buzinski: It doesn't understand anything, right?
• 13:49
  Michael Buzinski: So then when you're asking questions, your brain already creates so much context before it speaks.
• 13:55
  Michael Buzinski: And it's assuming that the person you're talking to or the group of people you're talking to understand the context in which you're speaking.
• 14:02
  Michael Buzinski: So sometimes we talk to AI like we talk to people we already know and the results show us.
• 14:10
  Michael Buzinski: The pitfall of the holes in our communication.
• 14:14
  Michael Buzinski: And so what you're, so what I'm hearing you say is listen, when we're, when we want to get good data back from AI, we got to ask really good questions and not just in the right questions, but a complete question.
• 14:27
  Michael Buzinski: creating the context, being, and slowing down a little bit.
• 14:31
  Michael Buzinski: So many people are like, I just want to type it in and get it.
• 14:32
  Michael Buzinski: It's if you spent three minutes, like creating the right set of questions, will get an hour's worth of output like that, but you gotta be curious.
• 14:45
  Tom Jackobs: I was just working on a project on just, I like programming, but I don't program, so I was creating this dashboard for the company and in Looker Studio, and I have no idea how to use Looker or BigQuery and SQL.
• 15:00
  Tom Jackobs: But chat GPT knows how to use it.
• 15:02
  Tom Jackobs: And so I was just like, how do I run a query for this?
• 15:05
  Tom Jackobs: And this is my table and all that.
• 15:07
  Tom Jackobs: But it was, it gave me somewhat good information.
• 15:11
  Tom Jackobs: I had to like tweak and.
• 15:13
  Tom Jackobs: What I think that's doing is creating more knowledge for me then and experience in terms of, Oh, okay.
• 15:18
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 15:19
  Tom Jackobs: And now I'm able to create graphs and Looker without asking chat, for advice on how to do it.
• 15:24
  Tom Jackobs: And this, I think that's
• 15:26
  Michael Buzinski: Exactly.
• 15:26
  Michael Buzinski: Exactly.
• 15:27
  Michael Buzinski: I always tell people that AI will get you 80 percent of the way there.
• 15:32
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah, exactly.
• 15:34
  Tom Jackobs: Cool.
• 15:34
  Tom Jackobs: So we have skipped over, what is your business and why do you consider it a heart led business?
• 15:39
  Michael Buzinski: My business is Buzzworthy Marketing and we are a strategy first marketing firm that works with B2B service based businesses.
• 15:46
  Michael Buzinski: So any business that's working with another business and it didn't start out as a heartfelt, it started out as a means to an end business.
• 15:55
  Michael Buzinski: Because as I was saying before, my heart was in music.
• 15:59
  Michael Buzinski: But the bills were being paid by production, media production for small businesses.
• 16:04
  Michael Buzinski: for 13 years, I lived most would call entrepreneur poverty.
• 16:08
  Michael Buzinski: I grew a multi million dollar company over a 13 year period, wasn't a millionaire.
• 16:15
  Michael Buzinski: I wasn't even a hundred thousandaire.
• 16:17
  Michael Buzinski: I was in entrepreneurial poverty, millions of dollars coming through into my company, but none of it, or not at least not enough of it coming.
• 16:24
  Michael Buzinski: And it came from my 1980s upbringing.
• 16:28
  Michael Buzinski: My, I'm a Gen Xer.
• 16:29
  Michael Buzinski: And I had a father who was an MBA, had an MBA in business administration.
• 16:34
  Michael Buzinski: And so I understood corporate mindset, right?
• 16:37
  Michael Buzinski: Cause that's what he knew.
• 16:39
  Michael Buzinski: That's what he would talk about.
• 16:41
  Michael Buzinski: And so I grew a business for growth sake because I was under the impression that once it gets to a certain size it'll start taking care of me.
• 16:49
  Michael Buzinski: And that leads to burnout, right?
• 16:51
  Michael Buzinski: Entrepreneurial poverty will burn anybody out, right?
• 16:53
  Michael Buzinski: And it was in 2018 when I realized that I was on a hamster wheel.
• 17:02
  Michael Buzinski: And I sat in the foyer of my brand new building.
• 17:05
  Michael Buzinski: I had the building for maybe a year and a half.
• 17:07
  Michael Buzinski: A 13, 000 square foot facility.
• 17:09
  Michael Buzinski: We'd spent a quarter million dollars with, from the studs in brand new bathrooms, brand new everything, glass walls, blah, blah, blah.
• 17:17
  Michael Buzinski: We had it all full creative agency.
• 17:18
  Michael Buzinski: So we had video, audio, print shop, the whole nine yards, right?
• 17:23
  Michael Buzinski: And I sat there and I'm like, Oh, I built it.
• 17:25
  Michael Buzinski: And I could spend another five to 10 years digging myself out of the debt and lack of profit.
• 17:32
  Michael Buzinski: That I had built around me, or I could burn it to the ground and start over tomorrow.
• 17:41
  Michael Buzinski: And I thought about it and I'm sitting there going, okay, now I'm 45 years old at the time.
• 17:46
  Michael Buzinski: How put me at 50 years old to dig the, dig myself out of this.
• 17:50
  Michael Buzinski: And I decided no, I burned it to the ground.
• 17:54
  Michael Buzinski: And it was something that was the hardest thing in my life.
• 17:58
  Michael Buzinski: I've been in, I've been through POW survival school.
• 18:02
  Michael Buzinski: I have almost died on planes that were on fire.
• 18:05
  Michael Buzinski: I've gone through some shit.
• 18:06
  Michael Buzinski: This was harder.
• 18:08
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 18:08
  Michael Buzinski: Because there's the ego.
• 18:10
  Michael Buzinski: There's the, at the time I was dating my now wife and we had just gotten into a relationship a few months earlier.
• 18:16
  Michael Buzinski: So I was basically putting that in jeopardy because who wants to go through stick around with a guy who's basically looks like he's dive bombing and he's doing it on purpose, right?
• 18:26
  Michael Buzinski: I had my first nervous, not nervous breakdowns panic attack.
• 18:30
  Michael Buzinski: I had no idea.
• 18:30
  Michael Buzinski: I thought I was having a heart attack as a panic attacks.
• 18:33
  Michael Buzinski: Never had one of those before.
• 18:34
  Michael Buzinski: I was in deep depression, fighting fighting the urge to dive into alcoholism.
• 18:39
  Michael Buzinski: All of the things because I had failed.
• 18:41
  Michael Buzinski: In my mind, even though I made the decision.
• 18:44
  Michael Buzinski: I failed.
• 18:45
  Michael Buzinski: And I gave everybody an opportunity to do, to follow, but nobody wanted, because my thing was this, I'm like, I have to do 180 degrees.
• 18:52
  Michael Buzinski: And it's like, what is the biggest thing that I don't like?
• 18:55
  Michael Buzinski: And it was the building.
• 18:56
  Michael Buzinski: The thing that everybody told me I needed to own.
• 19:00
  Michael Buzinski: My own building so that I could pay myself rent.
• 19:02
  Michael Buzinski: And then that's what would make me rich, blah, blah, blah.
• 19:04
  Michael Buzinski: That was the biggest pain point in my life was that building is sucking the everliving energy out of me.
• 19:10
  Michael Buzinski: It's just a lot of work.
• 19:11
  Michael Buzinski: It's a big building.
• 19:12
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 19:12
  Michael Buzinski: And it's an older building.
• 19:13
  Michael Buzinski: So it had, it needed a lot of things, even though we had all the new things from the studs in all the things were, that are between the sheet rock and the cinder block outside.
• 19:20
  Michael Buzinski: So we had, leaky pipes and roofs and electrical issues, all this stuff.
• 19:26
  Michael Buzinski: So anyway, with all that said.
• 19:28
  Michael Buzinski: I said you know what, I'm not going to start a business.
• 19:30
  Michael Buzinski: What if I just go become a CMO for a midsize company?
• 19:34
  Michael Buzinski: I can make a quarter million dollars a year and not worry about anything.
• 19:38
  Michael Buzinski: And then we spent a week up my CV, which was like four pages long.
• 19:42
  Michael Buzinski: And my, and I hadn't written a resume in 25 years.
• 19:46
  Michael Buzinski: Cause I was in the air force for 10 years and I'd been in business for 13.
• 19:50
  Michael Buzinski: So 23 years since I'd had to do anything with that.
• 19:53
  Michael Buzinski: And so we get all done with it.
• 19:54
  Michael Buzinski: And my Heather my girlfriend at the time, now my wife.
• 19:58
  Michael Buzinski: She's I don't think you, I don't think you could get a job you couldn't work for somebody.
• 20:03
  Michael Buzinski: You couldn't do a nine to five.
• 20:05
  Michael Buzinski: You're not a nine to five guy.
• 20:06
  Michael Buzinski: And it goes back to the idiom of entrepreneurs will work a 60 hour work week.
• 20:11
  Michael Buzinski: So they don't have to do to work a 40 hour job.
• 20:16
  Michael Buzinski: And and I look at it and it's you're right.
• 20:18
  Michael Buzinski: I'm an entrepreneur.
• 20:19
  Michael Buzinski: I can't fight this.
• 20:20
  Michael Buzinski: So we threw that out the window, but we went through the exercise, right?
• 20:25
  Michael Buzinski: Which I think was good for me because it showed all of the things that I had accomplished.
• 20:29
  Michael Buzinski: The awards.
• 20:30
  Michael Buzinski: The case studies, the, all the thing I'd stood up a professional football team.
• 20:35
  Michael Buzinski: I was the CMO for that.
• 20:36
  Michael Buzinski: It was the first of its kind in Alaska and all these other things.
• 20:39
  Michael Buzinski: So re energized me.
• 20:41
  Michael Buzinski: But then it was that like, what in my heart, what is going to keep me happy in rebuilding?
• 20:47
  Michael Buzinski: Because you don't just burn something in the ground and then like front, like from the ashes, the Phoenix rises.
• 20:52
  Michael Buzinski: It sits in an egg and it has to incubate and it has to peck itself out.
• 20:56
  Michael Buzinski: Then it's got to learn to walk and then it's got to grow its wings and then it can fly.
• 20:59
  Michael Buzinski: And then it might, light on fire.
• 21:00
  Michael Buzinski: And now we have a Phoenix, right?
• 21:01
  Michael Buzinski: That's like in business, it doesn't happen that way.
• 21:05
  Michael Buzinski: And so I, I just followed my heart.
• 21:08
  Michael Buzinski: And one of the things was, is that I needed a business that worked for me and not the other way around.
• 21:13
  Michael Buzinski: And I needed to be doing the work that made a difference.
• 21:18
  Michael Buzinski: And one of the things that I'm a patriot, obviously.
• 21:21
  Michael Buzinski: And one of the things that I was like how can I, now that I'm out of the service, serve my country?
• 21:28
  Michael Buzinski: And so I started looking at what do I do well?
• 21:31
  Michael Buzinski: how can that serve the country?
• 21:34
  Michael Buzinski: I looked at all of the people that we were, that we'd worked with.
• 21:37
  Michael Buzinski: We were working with 300 companies a year.
• 21:39
  Michael Buzinski: And they were, they ran the gamut.
• 21:41
  Michael Buzinski: E commerce, brick and mortar retail, business consultants, government contracts.
• 21:46
  Michael Buzinski: We did all of that stuff, right?
• 21:48
  Michael Buzinski: I'm like Who do we help that then impacts that we can leverage that impact on the economy.
• 21:53
  Michael Buzinski: And one of the things that's interesting is that 90 something percent, or now back then it was like 92% of all new jobs was created by the SMB small to medium sized business.
• 22:03
  Michael Buzinski: Right now it's 73% but still 73%, almost three quarters of all brand new jobs created by small to medium sized businesses.
• 22:10
  Michael Buzinski: I'm like, okay, so how can I help who, which SMBs can I help?
• 22:15
  Michael Buzinski: Will that then will create a leveraged impact B2B.
• 22:21
  Michael Buzinski: Because if I help a B2B firm grow, that means that they're helping enough other businesses grow.
• 22:29
  Michael Buzinski: So now there's two sets of jobs that are created and those jobs in the SMB sector.
• 22:35
  Michael Buzinski: Those are Living wage jobs.
• 22:38
  Michael Buzinski: A very few of them are minimum wage jobs, right?
• 22:41
  Michael Buzinski: These are not franchises we're working with.
• 22:43
  Michael Buzinski: We're working with consultants.
• 22:44
  Michael Buzinski: We're working with CPAs.
• 22:45
  Michael Buzinski: We're working with professional services.
• 22:47
  Michael Buzinski: We're working logistics.
• 22:48
  Michael Buzinski: These are big dollar companies creating big dollar jobs.
• 22:52
  Michael Buzinski: And so that's where my focus is now is I can help.
• 22:55
  Michael Buzinski: I can be one of the people that helps build out, build back up, or I should say, our middle class to helping other businesses who serve other businesses.
• 23:05
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah! I love that.
• 23:06
  Michael Buzinski: That's where my heart is at.
• 23:07
  Michael Buzinski: It's, and so it's, and I think that heart led business has to come from not just your passion and where your heart is, but that has to meet what you're good at.
• 23:18
  Tom Jackobs: Yes.
• 23:19
  Michael Buzinski: And you've seen people, they start a business.
• 23:21
  Michael Buzinski: I want to help the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 23:22
  Michael Buzinski: What kind of experience do you have in that?
• 23:25
  Michael Buzinski: I don't.
• 23:26
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 23:26
  Michael Buzinski: How are you going to help them?
• 23:27
  Michael Buzinski: I'm going to hire people and help them.
• 23:29
  Michael Buzinski: So who are you going to hire?
• 23:30
  Michael Buzinski: People who know how to do that.
• 23:31
  Michael Buzinski: How do you know they know how to do that?
• 23:33
  Michael Buzinski: If you haven't done it, at least at a rudimentary level, how do you know if anybody else can do it?
• 23:40
  Michael Buzinski: Cause they say so?
• 23:42
  Michael Buzinski: Spoiler alert, people lie on their resumes.
• 23:45
  Tom Jackobs: We'll find out six months later when nothing gets done.
• 23:49
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 23:50
  Tom Jackobs: I have a guest on the show that, that kind of explained that really nicely.
• 23:53
  Tom Jackobs: It was like three, three circles can coming together in the middle and it's, your passion, obviously you need to have that passion.
• 24:01
  Tom Jackobs: You have to have the knowledge on how to do it.
• 24:04
  Tom Jackobs: And then most importantly, there needs to be a market for you to offer that service or that product too.
• 24:11
  Tom Jackobs: And when you have all three of those together, that's, in his definition was a heart led business and one that will not just survive, but thrive as well.
• 24:21
  Michael Buzinski: Oh yeah, for sure.
• 24:22
  Michael Buzinski: Believe me when you start a recording studio in Anchorage, Alaska, and realize that right at the time that the home recording studio becomes as affordable as to record one album in a professional studio.
• 24:38
  Michael Buzinski: You learned that the market just went away.
• 24:40
  Michael Buzinski: Small market just disappeared.
• 24:42
  Michael Buzinski: So very small
• 24:48
  Tom Jackobs: Maybe Nashville?
• 24:48
  Michael Buzinski: and then the viability disappeared.
• 24:51
  Tom Jackobs: Maybe we can do Nashville, Tennessee or LA or something like that.
• 24:55
  Michael Buzinski: Yeah, exactly.
• 24:56
  Michael Buzinski: And and at one point I was married in the service.
• 24:59
  Michael Buzinski: And that was, I was going to get out and follow my wife to whatever duty station she was going to be in.
• 25:04
  Michael Buzinski: And I was going to be an audio engineer.
• 25:06
  Michael Buzinski: That was the original plan.
• 25:07
  Michael Buzinski: But then we ended up getting divorced before I got out.
• 25:10
  Michael Buzinski: She went her way.
• 25:11
  Michael Buzinski: I went my way.
• 25:11
  Michael Buzinski: And I stay, I wanted to stay in Alaska because I came from California and I, technically joined the service to get out of California.
• 25:19
  Michael Buzinski: So I was like, Oh, I ain't going back there.
• 25:21
  Michael Buzinski: There's nowhere else to go.
• 25:22
  Michael Buzinski: So I put, and I love it, Alaska.
• 25:24
  Michael Buzinski: I lived there for 17 years.
• 25:25
  Michael Buzinski: It was, it's a gorgeous state.
• 25:28
  Michael Buzinski: if you haven't been go,
• 25:29
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah, I definitely want to.
• 25:29
  Tom Jackobs: That's on my bucket list.
• 25:30
  Tom Jackobs: I'd love to do one of those cruises that goes up.
• 25:33
  Michael Buzinski: Oh yeah, those are awesome.
• 25:34
  Michael Buzinski: I took the ferry up with my vehicle, which was like a poor man's cruise.
• 25:38
  Michael Buzinski: Yeah, there's a solar deck, a solarium on the top of the barge or not a barge, but the for the boat.
• 25:44
  Michael Buzinski: And and so it was windy up top there, the whole nine yards.
• 25:47
  Michael Buzinski: You guys didn't have the money.
• 25:48
  Michael Buzinski: I was still in the military, so I didn't have the money to buy the cabin.
• 25:51
  Michael Buzinski: So it was basically get one of a military grade sleeping bag and sleep on a lounge chair underneath the solarium top.
• 26:00
  Tom Jackobs: Which is outside.
• 26:01
  Michael Buzinski: And they had people had tents that were bolted to the deck.
• 26:05
  Tom Jackobs: No way.
• 26:06
  Michael Buzinski: Oh yeah.
• 26:07
  Michael Buzinski: yeah.
• 26:07
  Michael Buzinski: And those things were just like, I was like, I don't know how you're going to sleep in that.
• 26:10
  Tom Jackobs: Done that before.
• 26:11
  Michael Buzinski: That's just too much noise.
• 26:12
  Michael Buzinski: But yeah, it was fun.
• 26:13
  Michael Buzinski: I have some great pictures from that.
• 26:15
  Michael Buzinski: There was a, that was a three day trip from Northern Washington to a town called Haines.
• 26:22
  Michael Buzinski: Which is in the far it's like a corner of the South Central And I had to drive from there up into Canada and back down Highway 1 back and that was another, so that was like a 12 hour drive.
• 26:35
  Tom Jackobs: Oh my gosh.
• 26:36
  Michael Buzinski: From there to get to Anchorage.
• 26:37
  Michael Buzinski: But
• 26:38
  Tom Jackobs: Oh, geez.
• 26:38
  Tom Jackobs: Just to get your car there.
• 26:42
  Tom Jackobs: Oh, that's
• 26:43
  Michael Buzinski: They paid for it, so I was like, all right.
• 26:46
  Tom Jackobs: Cool.
• 26:46
  Tom Jackobs: Buzz, it's been great chatting with you, but we've come to that time, unfortunately, but tell us a little bit about how people can learn a little bit more about your business and get in touch with you.
• 26:57
  Michael Buzinski: Sure.
• 26:57
  Michael Buzinski: So one of the things that I've done during the COVID years was wrote a book called the rule of 26 and teaches small businesses how to utilize their website to double their revenue.
• 27:06
  Michael Buzinski: Anybody who's listening to your show can go to ruleoftwosix.com.
• 27:11
  Michael Buzinski: And I offer a free copy signed copy of the book.
• 27:15
  Michael Buzinski: All I ask is that you pay for the shipping and handling.
• 27:18
  Tom Jackobs: Very nice.
• 27:19
  Tom Jackobs: That's great.
• 27:20
  Tom Jackobs: We're going to link all that up in the show notes as well.
• 27:23
  Tom Jackobs: So thank you for that.
• 27:24
  Tom Jackobs: I'm sure the listeners will love that.
• 27:26
  Tom Jackobs: I'm definitely going to take you up on that offer and you can ship it to California instead of over here to Taiwan.
• 27:38
  Michael Buzinski: I now have two employees in California, so it was like, yeah, but yeah, most of my family has moved out of California.
• 27:45
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 27:45
  Michael Buzinski: last couple of decades.
• 27:46
  Michael Buzinski: But yeah, I, it's a great, it's a great state to visit now a days.
• 27:50
  Tom Jackobs: Yes.
• 27:51
  Michael Buzinski: So,
• 27:51
  Tom Jackobs: Cool.
• 27:52
  Tom Jackobs: Thank you so much for being on the show.
• 27:54
  Tom Jackobs: I certainly appreciate it.
• 27:55
  Michael Buzinski: Oh, I appreciate you having me.
• 27:56
  Michael Buzinski: Thanks so much.
• 27:57
  Tom Jackobs: No worries.
• 27:58
  Tom Jackobs: And thank you listeners for listening and watching the show today.
• 28:02
  Tom Jackobs: I certainly appreciate that.
• 28:04
  Tom Jackobs: And if you could make your way down to the show notes, that'd be great.
• 28:07
  Tom Jackobs: And you can see all the links to everything that Buzz is doing in his business and support him and what he's doing, because obviously the more help small businesses get, the better we all get.
• 28:19
  Tom Jackobs: And then if you could do me a solid favor, and that would be to give the show a rating and review that helps spread the word and helps other people find the show.
• 28:28
  Tom Jackobs: So until next time, lead with your heart.
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: You've been listening to the heart-led Business Show, hosted by Tom Jackobs.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: Join us next time for another inspiring journey into the heart of business.