How To Build a Direct Sales Business with over 100,000 members like Steve and Pasha Carter - Episode 004

Steve and Pasha Carter are direct sales, financial, and lifestyle coaches. They hold individual records in direct sales, and together they’re one of America’s favorite business couples. They’ve helped thousands of people all around the world become financially independent, have built a multimillion dollar empire, and are the go-to experts for leaders who want to earn six or seven figures in direct sales businesses.

Time-Stamped Show Notes

[00:00] Welcome and introduction to Steve and Pasha Carter.

[01:24] Dinner with two famous people.

[03:45] Steve’s defining moment.

[07:54] Why Steve chose home business network marketing.

[08:56] Pasha’s defining moment.

[16:16] Things that block persistence.

[21:17] An unorthodox approach that has made a difference.

[29:19] It’s up to you to find success.

[31:04] Book recommendations.

[34:48] The best advice they’ve received.

[42:30] Advice to their younger selves.

Dinner with Two Famous People

If Pasha Carter could have dinner with two famous people, she’d choose Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama. “Oprah Winfrey would definitely be the first,” says Pasha. “She’s always been a mentor of mine. I’ve been able to be in small settings with her and learn so much, but I have not yet had dinner with her.”

Michelle Obama would also have a lot to teach. “When you are the First Lady of the United States for two terms, that’s a very unique experience,” Pasha says. “I would love to pick her brain to find out what it was like to not just run a business, not just run a team, but what was it like as a woman to help run our country?”

“I’d invite myself to both of those dinners,” jokes Steve Carter. Other than accompanying Pasha to her two dinners, Steve would also have dinner with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Bill Gates. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has a lot to teach about leadership. “I would want to know a person who has that type of leadership, that type of vision, that type of opposition facing him, and be able to lead people into a promise of hope,” he says.

As for Bill Gates, the reasons are monetary. “How do you become the richest person in the world at any point in time?” Steve asks.

Steve’s Defining Moment

People see the end results of success, without always realizing that success is an A to Z journey with twenty-four letters between the start and the finish. A low point in life may be a springboard to start the journey towards success. For Steve, that low point came when he could no longer pay his rent. He’d been living in a two-bedroom apartment with his brother, but after his brother and his brother’s fiancee got their own place, Steve was unable to find another roommate and keep up on his rent payments. “I’ll never forget falling behind,” says Steve. “I’ll never forget the humiliation that I felt.” When a sheriff came banging on his door to evict him, Steve knew it was time to step up and get to work.

Six months later, he was number one in his company and featured on the cover of the company newsletter.

Pasha’s Defining Moment

“I’ve had many of those,” says Pasha. One that she doesn’t talk about much came when she went home to visit her mother in her childhood home. “I knew that the house was old and getting in bad shape, but when I went home, what I experienced just took my breath away,” she says. Her mother’s roof was leaking, with buckets set out to collect the water. There was visible mold in the house, the air conditioner didn’t work, and Pasha wasn’t financially able to help. “It tore me up, because I’m looking at the person who sacrificed everything for me, and here I am as her child not being able to help her,” says Pasha. “That did it for me. That’s when I started to work harder than I’ve ever worked before.”

Pasha’s story also has a happy ending. When she and Steve became successful, they got her mother a house and fully furnished it for her.

Things that Block Persistence

During those low points, some people like Steve and Pasha are able to persist and overcome their struggles, while other people are unable to persist and sink deeper. One factor in this is analysis paralysis. They become paralyzed in fear and try to analyze what happened and how they got into their situation. “When you look at yourself as the victim, then you’re never going to become the victor,” says Steve.

Knowledge is also a factor. Someone in a terrible position who knows how to fix it can fix it. “But if you’re in a terrible situation and you have no clue how to get out of it, what do you do?” says Steve. “You have got to have a life coach, business coach, or mentor. We’ve always had those, and we still have those today.”

It’s also environmental. “I’ve mastered the art of putting myself in the right environment around the right people,” Pasha says. “If you want to grow to the next level and get higher, then you’ve got to surround yourself with people who think higher and have a higher vision.”

An Unorthodox Approach

Many businesses have a set way of doing things, but Pasha recommends bending with the trends. “If you’re not flexible, if you’re not willing to do something a little bit different from what everybody else is doing, then you fall victim to growing at the same level that everybody else grows,” she says.

For example, Steve and Pasha have branded themselves instead of branding a company. No matter what company they are in, they maintain their brand.

Steve contends that success itself is unorthodox, because not many people get to that level. It’s up to each person to find it for themselves. “If you believe in yourself, there’s nothing that can stop you from accomplishing whatever you want to accomplish,” Steve says.

Book Recommendations

Pasha loves to read. “I like reading books that, when I finish, I feel like I’ve gotten another little seed planted inside of myself to help me grow as a businesswoman, a wife, a mom, a leader,” she says. She recommends The Conscious Parent: Transforming Ourselves, Empowering Our Children by Dr. Shefali Tsabary, How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich: A Black Choice by Napoleon Hill and Dennis Kimbro, and The Wealth Choice: Success Secrets of Black Millionaires, for which Steve and Pasha were interviewed, by Dennis Kimbro.

The Best Advice They’ve Ever Received

When Pasha was in sixth or seventh grade, she came home one day crying because of how mean the other kids in school were. Her mother told her to be happy that people were talking about her. “When people stop talking about you, that means you’re not doing anything,” says Pasha.

Steve’s favorite advice was from Pasha. “It is to always keep the lines of communication open,” he says. Always talk issues out and move forward.

Advice to Their Younger Selves

Steve would tell his younger self to do the right thing. “Any choices that would get you in trouble aren’t worth it,” he says.

Pasha tell herself to care less about what others thought. “Don’t worry about what other people think,” she says. “The only thing that matters is what you think.”

You can email Steve directly Steve@SteveCarterOnline.com find more about Steve at his website, and more about Pasha at her website.

To Learn more about their 2-Day Online course please visit SixFigureBreakthrough.com

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Discover Internet Traffic and Lead Secrets with Vince Reed - Ep. 003

Vince Reed built an online business in 2008 after losing everything during the mortgage meltdown. His business failed to earn a single dime for six months, until Reed shifted his focus to mastering internet traffic and leads. After building it up to be a multimillion dollar business, he sold it in 2016 and now operates as the CEO of several online companies, speaks all over the world, and helps entrepreneurs and business owners get more traffic by leveraging the power of the internet.

Time-Stamped Show Notes

[00:00] Welcome and introduction to Vince Reed.

[01:11] Dinner with two famous people.

[02:43] Internet Traffic & Leads: The Past, Present and Future of Internet Marketing for Entrepreneurs Who Want to Win.

[05:04] Starting his company.

[08:50] His unorthodox approach to marketing.

[12:00] Current marketing strategies.

[14:36] Mistakes that raise costs.

[19:01] Failure.

[22:55] Routines that contribute to his success.

[24:14] Book recommendations.

[26:45] The best advice he ever received.

[29:07] Advice to his younger self.

[30:30] Contact information.

Dinner with Two Famous People

If Vince Reed could have dinner with any two famous people, he’d choose President Obama and President Trump. He wants to hear both of their perspectives. “I think both guys are honestly brilliant in their own ways, and I’d be able to learn a lot from them,” he says.

Polarizing politicians get a bigger following, and this year Reed has taken a page out of their book by playing with edgier marketing. “It’s all about the attention,” says Reed. “Sometimes even negative publicity is good publicity.” That’s not to say that businesses have to be negative, but being unorthodox and edgy can get people’s attention.

Internet Traffic & Leads: The Past, Present and Future of Internet Marketing for Entrepreneurs Who Want to Win

Reed’s book came about after people kept telling him to write a book. “I focus on paid advertising, pay-per-click marketing,” he says. He had resisted writing a book because of how quickly technology changes, but after he sold his company, he felt it was time. “In my mind, I was writing it to every single entrepreneur out there who understands how important marketing and lead generation is,” says Reed. “If you have a business and you invest a single dime into paid advertising, I would say this book is definitely for you.”

Starting His First Company

Reed was trying to hold on during the mortgage meltdown, but banks were going under on a daily basis. A friend who was a broker invited Reed to come on at his company because they needed someone to do FHA loans, the only loans that were being approved at the time. During his first week on the job, he submitted about 8 files that were all approved.

His home was in pre-foreclosure, he was leasing a car and the lease was going to expire in about a month, and he had no money. Those files had about fifty thousand dollars riding on them, money that would have saved his home. However, he then received an email stating that the bank couldn’t fund his deals. He had to call all of his customers back, one by one, and tell them. “It was just the worst day of my life,” says Reed. “I packed up my files, and at that point, I was just done.”

He couldn’t go home and tell his girlfriend that there was nothing left, so he went onto Craigslist immediately to find a new job. In the sales section, he found an advertisement to make money on Google. “And that’s where I always say the internet found me,” he says. The advertisement was for an e-book that taught basic Google adword strategies, and the author was selling people into a direct sales opportunity. “I could barely send an attachment on an email,” says Reed. “I was not computer savvy.” He went home and announced to his girlfriend that he was going to make millions on the internet. Instead of knocking his dream, she just told him to go do his research. “And that was literally the defining moment of my life,” he says. If she hadn’t supported him, he wouldn’t be where he is today.

His Unorthodox Approach to Marketing

Many people approach marketing by mirroring things that other companies are doing that appear to be working. However, they don’t take into account things that are happening beneath the surface, so mirroring doesn’t work. For Reed, it’s always been about practicing what he preaches. “It doesn’t matter what I’m selling. The key is to figure out what people are already searching for, and you be there in front of them,” he says. So he puts an advertisement out, and when someone responds to it, he instructs them to Google themselves. When they do, the first thing they’ll find is a video of Reed speaking directly to them. Instead of just preaching to them that he can get them traffic, this approach shows them the power of what he does.

Current Marketing Strategies

Reed does a lot of consulting with a lot of different companies in a lot of niche markets. “Nine times out of ten, the companies are overspending by a lot,” he says. They may spend thousands of dollars on radio or television ads when they could be leveraging the internet for a fraction of the cost. It doesn’t help matters that many internet marketers who claim to be agencies aren’t skilled at producing. “But if you find the right person, hands-down, I believe online is always going to be more cost-effective and more targeted than pretty much any other medium out there,” he says.

Instead of spending $500 on widespread marketing, for example, Reed recommends taking $200 of that to put out free education. Then spend the other $300 specifically targeting the people who took advantage of that free education. Those people already know you and have already gotten something valuable from you, so the conversion rate is higher.

His Best Advice

The best advice Reed ever received was to set only one goal — to break each of his records from the day before.

“Obviously not every day is going to be better than the day before. There’s always going to be ups and downs,” he says. “But if you focus on the numbers and pay attention to them like it’s gold, I guarantee you that you will quadruple your revenue.”

If he could go back in time and speak to his younger self, “I would tell myself to fail faster or to think bigger,” he says. He’d tell himself to get a mentor quicker, and to realize that he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.

Contact Vince Reed

You can find Reed’s book on Amazon and engage with him on Facebook.

Subscribe to the podcast on GOOGLE PLAY or iTunes

New Paths to Success with Nathan Chan, CEO and Publisher of Foundr Magazine - Ep. 002

Nathan Chan is the CEO and publisher of Foundr Magazine. He’s on a mission to crack the startup code for himself and he’s not interested in hearing from folks who walked the conventional path of working your way up from the bottom. He’s on the Unorthodox podcast to talk about his road to success, his unconventional book and the unconventional route of using Kickstarter to validate it, and what he’s learned from failure.

Time-Stamped Show Notes

[00:00] Welcome and introduction to Nathan Chan.

[02:24] Foundr V1.0: Lessons From the Greatest Entrepreneurs Today.

[05:10] Choosing Kickstarter.

[06:00] Chan’s unconventional journey.

[08:30] Common themes among entrepreneurs.

[10:45] Aha moment.

[15:14] Learning from failure.

[18:40] Finding a mentor.

[22:49] Serve first, ask later.

[25:47] Daily routine that contributes to his success.

[27:38] Podcast and book recommendations.

[29:04] Contact information.

[29:28] Unorthodox challenge.

Nathan Chan

At Foundr, they produce a lot of content around entrepreneurs, startups, marketing, and what it takes to build and grow a successful business. Publisher and CEO Nathan Chan started Foundr about four years ago while he was still working his IT day job. Now he’s cracking the code of building a successful business.

Foundr V1.0: Lessons From the Greatest Entrepreneurs Today

The team at Foundr likes to produce content in different forms. “I get a bit of a kick out of just doing fun projects and also really listening to our audience and seeing what people are asking for,” says Chan. Although Foundr is a digital magazine with plans to start printing soon, people were requesting a physical version now.

“We’ve been lucky enough to interview some of the greatest entrepreneurs of our generation,” says Chan. So he decided to take the best of the interviews and compile them into a beautifully designed coffee table book called Foundr V1.0: Lessons From the Greatest Entrepreneurs Today.

“There’s no such thing as a business coffee table book,” he says. “I just thought it would be really cool.” So to validate it and see if anyone would want such a book, he decided to crowdfund it through Kickstarter. “It’s made a really, really great body of work and I’m really, really proud of it,” he says.

Chan’s Unconventional Journey

“I’m on the mission to build one of the largest entrepreneurial brands in the world that impacts the lives of tens of millions of people on a weekly basis,” says Chan. “That’s my mission, that’s what I obsess about. That’s what we all obsess about as a team at Foundr.”

Four years ago, Chan was working an IT job that he wasn’t passionate about. He was interested in marketing and business, and decided he wanted to create a business magazine. “I looked at the landscape of business magazines and I felt there wasn’t really a publication out there that I could relate to as an aspiring entrepreneur,” he says. He started his magazine as a passion hobby for fun, but it evolved into his mission. “I just really love helping people, I love creating impactful products and services that help people as entrepreneurs.”

Foundr started as a digital magazine, but is now a fully-fledged media company.

Common Themes Among Entrepreneurs

The common themes Chan has noticed among entrepreneurs are relentless discipline, a thirst for improvement, and an interest in self-development. “They’ll never give up,” says Chan. “They just focus and just grind day after day until they get there. Failure isn’t an option. They might fail, but they’ll keep going.” If they don’t have the answers, they’ll figure out who to learn from or where to read about it.

Chan’s Aha Moment

Chan didn’t have a single moment, but rather a series of things that happened to him and shaped him. At his IT job, his boss once asked him to walk around multiple floors of the building interrupting each person’s work to ask if they needed any IT assistance, because she felt the team lacked confidence that IT would help them resolve issues. When he refused, she brought him into the office and gave him an absolute spray, treating him like a piece of crap. He almost cried, and he decided he’d never let anybody have the opportunity to speak to him like that again.

Another time, he caught the train to the city to go to his job. A hundred people or so were in each carriage of the train, but it was dead silent because nobody wanted to be there. “Inside of me, I knew somehow that I was destined for so much more, that I was meant to do more than what I was doing,” says Chan.

He was also frustrated and getting sick and tired of doing work that he didn’t enjoy. When he went on a trip to Europe for six weeks, he knew he didn’t want to go back to his job.

Learning From Failure

Within the first four months of starting his business, Chan was sued for trademark infringement and had to change the name of the business. “That was really a difficult, traumatic time for me,” he says. “I had no money, and being sued is pretty scary stuff. There was nothing I could do but just push through.”

He had a great mentor who helped him work through the lawsuit. “Having incredible mentors is very key,” he says. “Having people who can support you that have been on the journey that you’re about to go down can really help you move forward.”

Chan believes there’s something powerful in learning from other people’s mistakes and tapping into their experiences. “That’s been incredibly key for me,” says Chan.

Finding a Mentor

Entrepreneurs can pay for people’s time as mentors from sites such as coach.me and clarify.fm, or they can build a support system through networking and surrounding themselves with smart people. When you find mentors through networking, you must always serve first and ask later. “Do something for that person where you don’t expect anything in return, or do something for that person and then know that you may be able to, in the future, ask them for some advice,” says Chan.

Daily Routines That Contribute to Success

“I use my calendar to schedule absolutely everything,” Chan says. “If it’s in my calendar, it gets done.”

Another good habit and one of the values at Foundr is to do what you say you’ll do. At the start of the year, they set out all of their goals for Foundr, and they accomplish 80-90% of them.

Unorthodox Challenge

Chan’s challenge is a high-stakes wager. “If you’re looking to achieve a goal, tell one of your best friends that, and put $500-$1,000, a ridiculous financial wager on the line, and get that best friend to keep you accountable,” he says. “If you don’t hit that goal, they get to keep the money.”

Contact Nathan Chan

You can find Nathan Chan and Foundr by visiting the website.

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Subscribe to the podcast on GOOGLE PLAY or iTunes

Unconventional approaches to innovation, consumer insights and trends - Interview w/Erin Mays and Kalyn Rozanski - Ep. 001

Erin Mays and Kalyn Rozanski had unorthodox educations that led them both into the world of consulting. They founded Ebco together and haven’t looked back. They’re on the Unorthodox podcast to discuss Ebco, how their different backgrounds help them succeed together, the evolution of higher education, and what they’ve learned from failure.

Time-Stamped Show Notes

[00:00] Welcome and introduction to Erin Mays and Kalyn Rozanski.

[00:34] Mays’ unusual education combination and background.

[03:23] Rozanski’s unorthodox education and background.

[07:27] How their different backgrounds help them succeed.

[09:56] Ebco.

[12:00] The evolution of higher education.

[16:11] How millennial buyers and trends are changing the game.

[17:47] Aha moments.

[20:12] Daily routines that contribute to their success.

[22:16] Learning from failure.

[24:32] Book recommendation.

[25:14] Unorthodox challenge.

[28:05] Contact information.

Erin Mays

Erin Mays came out of UCLA with the unusual undergraduate combination of Anthropology and Design. The ability to make her own choices in college was beneficial to her. “When you’re in high school everything’s very prescribed, but when you get to college you can start deciding what interests you,” she says. “You start shaping your own trajectory.” When something doesn’t feel right, the ability to let it go and move in a direction that creates passion for you is important.

She wanted a field that combined Anthropology and Design, but had a hard time finding it. “So I searched around and found this career of design strategy, design research. (I) was really excited by it,” says Mays. She worked for an awesome product design firm for about six years before moving on to a much larger company, then moved from client consulting to internal consulting. When that move turned out to be a bad fit for her, she left and started Ebco with her business partner, Kalyn Rozanski.

Kalyn Rozanski

From the time Kalyn Rozanski was in the eighth grade, getting into a top school was her priority. She structured herself so she could graduate in the top 10% of her class, taking honors and AP classes, and graduated with a 4.2 GPA. She could go anywhere she wanted. “What I found though is that I was really lacking passions for any of those traditional career paths,” says Rozanski. “They were very limited in their thinking, in my opinion. So I started looking at other types of schools and I found FIDM.” Rozanski completed her two year training and then signed on for a third year advanced program, in which she got to travel the world and work for real clients, including Torrid and Hot Topic. “It was a pretty exciting experience at that time in my life,” says Rozanski.

One of her instructors was a trend expert and taught Rozanski about looking at macro movements and doing research outside of the fashion industry. She was taught to think differently, be action-oriented, and make herself valuable to her job.

Combining Their Educations

Mays’ degree gives her and Rozanski a bit of clout and status, even when a project has little to do with her areas of study, while Rozanski’s experience in action-oriented environments impacts the entrepreneurial trial-and-error aspect of their business. Rozanski has been turned down for jobs that she was qualified for due to her lack of a traditional degree, however, there is a tipping point where experience does count for more than education. Combining the two has been good for Ebco.

Ebco

“Ebco is a trend and innovation pipeline consultancy,” says Mays. “We work with large companies (in) all sorts of disciplines within these large companies to look at the macro trends, both inside and outside their category.” They help companies (e.g. P&G, Starbucks, Bertolli, Ragu, GSK, Tupperware and many more) understand what’s shifting in the world in both the business space and culturally so they can understand what products and services they need to deploy in their next generation. “It’s very consultative, it’s very research-based, it’s really exciting work, and we’ve been really fortunate to work with really amazing companies,” Mays says.

Mays recommends going straight to where you are comfortable. She and Rozanski had both worked with large companies and were comfortable with that, but decided to start small when they launched their own business. That wasn’t their strong suit. “As soon as we let that go and started working with the real large companies, we started seeing a lot of success,” she says.

The Evolution of Higher Education

Mays and Rozanski would love to work with a higher education company. The constantly shifting rules and regulations coupled with the changing trends of students who want to avoid crazy student loans or can’t have traditional schedules and need alternative experiences makes the field interesting. “This is an industry that’s ripe for innovation and to evolve a bit with consumers,” says Mays.

Recruitment for higher education is also a concern. Rozanksi wouldn’t have gone to FIDM if the FIDM representative hadn’t called and followed up with her. “I think the customer service points are really crucial, especially when someone’s making that big of an investment,” Rozanski says.

The educational needs of the students are also evolving. “They actually have a degree now in Social Media,” says Rozanksi. Exploring what the next generation degree offerings should be is huge.

Aha Moments

For Mays, her aha moment came when she went internal in her previous job. It was such the wrong fit, so she decided to leave and start her own company in an area she was passionate about, in a space where people would respect her opinion, and in an environment where she could really be involved in what her future looked like. It was an unorthodox approach to her career and came highly unrecommended, but it has worked out well for her.

Rozanski felt like she was being held back at her previous job. She was passionate about trends, but the company had stopped pushing that as one of their services. “So I decided to start doing it on my own, started getting consulting jobs doing it, started building my own client base, and ultimately just realized that there was a huge market and a huge potential for it,” she says. “There’s no reason why, if you’re really passionate about something, that you can’t just go out and create it yourself.”

“All the tools are there,” Mays adds. “Sometimes you have to move money around a little bit or be smart about it, but everything’s there for you.”

Habits That Contribute to Success

“We check in with each other,” Mays says. They check on the status of the business, money, things they need to do that day, and things coming up on their schedules. “It keeps your brain going and keeps you on top of what you need to be doing.”

Each morning, Rozanski makes a list of ten outrageously good things that could happen to her that day. “It’s really just to change my mental state before the day,” she says. It keeps her energy high so when opportunities arise, she’s not in such a negative mental space that she can’t see it.

Learning from Failure

“We had a major fail in hiring someone,” says Mays. “We got really caught up in what she said she had to offer. Her personality was super infectious.” She turned out to be a pathological liar. “We learned a lot. Our interview process is much more serious, we have people who interview with us talk to more stakeholders, we check backgrounds a lot more thoroughly, we review work samples a lot more thoroughly.”

They’ve also stopped letting people dictate their process. They respect people who have been in the business for a long time, but it should be a mutual relationship. More experienced people tend to challenge them on their boundaries and process. “You just have to really stay true to yourself,” says Rozanski.

Unorthodox Challenge

“It’s unorthodox just to do what other people say not to from the get-go,” Mays says. Her degree, leaving her job, and starting a business with children and while living in an expensive city was all unorthodox, but she did it. “If you really want to make something happen, the decision is most likely going to be unorthodox.”

“Anytime you think you should do something, you should really question that,” says Rozanski. Maybe you feel like you should go to a traditional school or get onto a traditional career path, but those are beliefs that are set during childhood and aren’t necessarily true. Challenge whether or not it’s true that you couldn’t get another type of job or that there are no jobs in your desired field.

Contact Mays and Rozanski

You can send Erin Mays an email, send Kalyn Rozanski an email, or email Ebco directly. You can find out more about Ebco on the website.

Do something unorthodox today!

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Welcome and Introduction to “Unorthodox: The New Road to Success” Podcast - Ep. 000

In this podcast we do a short introduction on what to expect from "Unorthodox: The New Road to Success" Podcast. Meet our founder Ben Chaib and understand why he started this show.

We look forward to helping you build your People, increase your Performance and Profits!

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