Death By Digital Marketing With Bryan Dulaney

We didn’t expect the conversation to go this way. Bryan Dulaney is an expert, at the top of his game but stopped the show to talk about a defining moment in his life. It was a flatline experience, it was death and how that has shaped the trajectory of his life ever since he came back. Bryan is recognized by Tony Robbins and Russel Brunson as “The Top 1% of All Marketers & Funnel Experts In The World!” He works with authors, experts, speakers, coaches and consultants on becoming king of category and sat down with us for some tips on how to maximize your online image and results. Bryan and his team of marketing and funnel experts have been increasing revenue and impact for businesses since 2006, generating well over $250+ Million in online and offline revenue for their clients, partnerships, and their own funnels and businesses. This show is not all about the money though, we get deep into work/life balance, checking out of tech and look into what gratitude means and how it can propel your success in life and business.

Thank you for listening!

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https://bryandulaney.com

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Listen to the podcast here

Death By Digital Marketing With Bryan Dulaney

Every time that I schedule an episode, I try to choose a guest that I have a genuine interest in. If I don’t know that guest, then I try to let my curiosity for them help uncover that recipe that has helped them get ahead in life. That part there is what I love to share with you. These are unique stories from everyday people and why we don’t need to be super famous to be super influential to the people around us. I’ve been studying the story of King David and Goliath and why David was chosen to be king, not because of his status but because of his heart and determination. If I can share a person’s heart and determination with you, it helps us all find our own pathway towards kingship.

I’m on a quest to find a marketing man who will help me get to know my business and will fully understand my goals. I flew to Sarasota, Florida to meet with one of the top 1% of all digital marketers in the world, Bryan Dulaney. He has teamed up with super big names like Russell Brunson and Tony Robbins and has helped many entrepreneurs with their funnel systems to help them become king of the category.

I need help with my marketing as we all do and with our content. He took a look at my product stack and helped me understand that part of my business. He’s a really talented guy and smart. I asked him if he would share some of his story and maybe a few secrets with you guys, but the conversation took an unexpected turn. We started to explore the meaning of his near-death experience that was caused while hazing or while attempting to join a fraternity in college. He talks about how it changed him into the man that God needs him to be.

You’re going to learn both strategy and wisdom here. I know you’re going to like this one. Please don’t forget to like these episodes, share them, and also subscribe. It seems small, but it helps the algorithms that help us grow, and it ensures that you don’t miss out on any new and interesting conversations. It also helps us to see that you like what we’re doing. If you do like our show, please share that good news with us. Here’s Bryan Dulaney. Enjoy.

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We’re talking about co-working spaces for people who are joining us. Regis is a well-known brand for co-working spaces. Have you done a lot of work with co-working spaces? Have you always used that?

I’ve always used that because they’re pretty much anywhere in the world. You can drop in. You don’t have to have a physical space, which is unneeded overhead. I don’t need all the overhead for what?

When do you typically meet people? Is it when they book appointments with you?

It’s primarily for working on sitting down and doing strategy sessions where we’re mapping out things or working with them on scripting webinars, challenges, or creating offers, and all of that stuff. That’s when we met.

I know some people who are marketing coaches who build a studio in their homes. I know you said you’ve got some studio presence in your home. Do you find it more convenient here because it’s closer to airports?

It’s closer to downtown and closer to the beach. It’s in the heart of the city. The hotel access is easier. I’m in the country. We’re out in the country. We could do it at the house in the studio, but then it’s not the same. It’s not as easy to go grab lunch, take a walk, get out in the sun, or get a little pattern interrupt and come back. Rather than being all locked up in the studio all day and heads down grinding, it’s good to get out and about.

It’s like we were. We were heads down grinding all day. Is that easy for you to do? You seem to be like a very detailed brain guy. It seemed like you love to get in the weeds. I’m sure that the strategy session that you gave me, how often do you do those?

I’ve done about 500 of those at this point.

How many per week do you do?

2 max a week, but it usually is about 1 a week, which is 4 a month. I don’t like to do many more than four a month.

For people who are unfamiliar with what we’re talking about, we’re talking about somebody going into this studio with you, which is a working studio, that wants to take their business or expert brand and they want to maximize that. They want to be able to find out exactly what it is. First of all, can they make money selling their information?

Typically, people come to us because they want to figure out, “How do I launch my business online?” or, “How do I bring my expertise online in a way that I can make 7 to 8 figures a year in business and serve people doing it?” That’s typically why people come to come to us. They might come to us because they’re like, “I want you to build out a webinar funnel.” Maybe they’re like, “I want to build out a challenge. I want to launch my book. I want to launch my coaching program or my mastermind,” or whatever it might be.

They all come in from different perspectives, but at the end of the day, the reason why we’re sitting down for a day is to get clarity around, “What’s the plan? What’s the blueprint here? What’s the specific plan for that person on what are their funnels? What are their offers? What’s their ad strategy to be able to have a 7 to 8-figure business?”

Are there certain industry types that contact you more than others?

You’ve got three different categories. You’ve got the wealth category, which is the business category. You’ve got the relationship category, and you’ve got the health category. We serve all three of those categories, but mostly business. It is for people who have a business opportunity offer. I serve more of those types of people.

What’s the rarest or the oddest type of opportunity that you’ve had?

There was a lady who came through who taught people how to set up stands selling watermelons and fruit stands and how to have a business selling fruit stands. She had set up 100 of these stands making $200,000 a month across multiple states. She had a bunch of kids working them. Her son paid for college by running a food stand. She makes $3,000 to $5,000 a week, believe it or not.

Lemonade stands still work.

I was like, “You got to be kidding me.”

Did you figure it out?

Yes. She was pretty successful. She’s not like a $10 million case study or anything, but it’s still a viable opportunity.

You made it super successful for her. She’s making money helping people set up fruit stands in their local town.

It’s a local business. It was all geared towards a local business and helping people set up fruit stands that make $3,000 to $5,000 a month, which you would never think would be a thing. Those people who have fruit stands are silently slaying it. They wouldn’t want you to know that they’re slaying it. For a lot of Americans, that’s life-changing income.

They have the ability to work for themselves, too. What’s interesting about that is that there seem to be so many riches and niches. How specific can you get and still scale? Scaling is a very interesting concept. It took me a while to learn this. I’m a very growth-oriented guy. My skillset is in growth. If I see something, I want to grow it regardless of what it is. I want to take it and magnify it. I want to make it bigger and do more of it.

The growth skillset is different from the scaling skillset because it seems to be that growth is more personality-driven, production-driven, and standard-driven. Scaling is more driven by architecture. How do you take what you did in one location on her fruit stand and make sure that works in other locations that you’re not present in? It seems like your skillset is more in scaling rather than growth because you’ve got a very architectural mindset. You even used the word architect in our session multiple times, which is a key term in scaling. What kind of advice bubbles up when we talk about scaling or when you’ve helped people scale?

To me, scale is you’re taking something that’s working and scaling it. You are creating more volume. You are bringing more people through the process. The superpower that I’ve built over the years is launching campaigns. Beyond that, when we get into scale, it’s really about whether you can go from a $5,000 budget to a $50,000 budget. Typically, you’re not going to do that in a week.

When you say budget, do you mean marketing budget?

Advertising budget. If you go from $5,000 to $50,000, you’re not going to typically go from $5,000 to $50,000 right away. You’re going to go $5,000 and $15,000 or $10,000 then $20,000. You’ll get up to $50,000 once the numbers shake out. Scaling to me is adding more gas on the front end to bring more people through the back end. That’s how you bring more volume into the business.

The key component for me is you need to be optimized before you scale and you have to optimize as you scale. There’s not this concept of you’re never going to stop improving. You have to embrace kaizen, which is a constant improvement when you scale and certainly, especially when you scale, in my opinion.

People who are thinking to themselves, “I can take the thing that I’ve done that I’m an expert at and make money at it,” it seems like that formula is very specific.

Another thing I want to say about scale is let’s say you’ve worked with twenty people privately. Scale is being able to work with 20,000 people. That’s scale.

Not privately?

Not privately, but digitally.

It takes architecture to do that because you’ve got to break down what are those key performance indicators. What are those things that got somebody from point A to point B? What’s the thing that launched them? What’s the thing that really gave them that powerful surge into success?

It’s a different mechanism. You go from working one-on-one to working one-to-many.

It’s a different leadership style, too.

That’s correct.

Have you noticed people who have done this well, those who have not done it well, and what archetypes work better than others or what skillsets work better than others?

I have noticed people who work a lot of one-on-one or have done a lot of one-on-one selling, it’s different when you’re selling one-to-many. That’s a very different animal. Your energy’s different.

More performance energy, you mean?

Yes. When you’re selling one-to-many, you’re on almost a stage. Imagine getting on a stage and communicating with an audience. Whereas when you’re one-on-one, you’re not going to be that fired up. You’re not going to be that intense.

It’s more intimate and more personal.

It’s a little bit more neutral. It’s a little bit more of a conversation like this.

It’s low-key.

That works really effectively in one-on-one, but that doesn’t work at all in one-to-many.

Why doesn’t it?

You have to create motion. You have to create movement. It’s got to be exciting. It’s an example of getting on a stage. If you showed up that way on a stage in front of an audience, they would fall asleep. When you’re one-on-one, you can talk one-on-one. That other person that you’re talking to can’t disengage very easily. In a group, the person can slip away, fall back into their seat, and fall asleep easily because they’re checked out. They can easily check out. Whereas one-on-one, you can’t check out. You’re either in the conversation or you’re not.

The thing is if you’re in a theater watching somebody on a stage, it’s impolite to get up and walk out. If you’re on your phone, we’re talking about a digital stage here. It’s very easy for somebody to check out and move on to the next stage.

That’s correct. You’ve got to keep the energy flowing. You’ve got to take people on what I call a rollercoaster, not a flat line. You can’t let them flatline. You got to take them on a ride. That brings in emotions, like emotions of excitement and emotions of sadness. You take them on a journey through sharing stories.

Where I’m from, we call it spinning a yarn. You tell the story of somebody else’s success or your success and create that eager want in somebody. You take them on a little adventure. That hopefully ends in a reward for them. How long have you been at this?

Over seventeen years. I started in 2006. I got into it as an affiliate because I was in college working on my Master’s degree. I was a part-time personal trainer making $15 an hour on the side.

A personal trainer where you were helping people get buff?

I was helping people lose weight, get shredded, and build muscle.

What attracted you to that industry?

I enjoyed it myself. I enjoyed the training. I went to school in college a little bit and went for one semester on Anatomy and Physiology. I realized there was no real career there that made any money. I was not interested in it.

I can’t remember if you said it in your breakout session when I met you. Did you finish college or not?

I finished school, but I dropped out of my Master’s degree when I realized I had made more than my teachers in three days and they made all month.

That’s what it was. That’s what I remember you saying.

I bailed on that because I figured I’d print cash on demand through the internet. That was being an affiliate. It was selling other people’s stuff. I didn’t have anything to sell, so I had to find stuff to sell that people wanted, and then I had to drive traffic to it.

How did you find that stuff?

I learned a lot at that time, and this was 2006, about how to drive free traffic. I was in a place where I was borrowing money on student loans, making $15 an hour part-time. I certainly wasn’t a trust fund baby, so that didn’t happen. That wasn’t my situation. I was in a place where I was hungry for knowledge and information. A year before that, I had stumbled on personal development and realized, “Where’s this been all my life? Why weren’t they teaching me this in school?”

On that journey of falling in love with personal development and consuming myself with it, I modeled Tony. Tony said in the first couple of years of his journey, he read every book, CD, and anything he got his hands on. I was like, “Success leaves clues. I should probably do that as well.” For two years, that’s what I did. I then stumbled into internet marketing. I saw these guys who were talking about how they were making money while they slept, making these great incomes, and impacting people’s lives and doing it all from their computers. I joined a 30-day challenge, believe it or not. It cost me $1 to join. I bought my domain name. In seven days, I had a sale came through of $750. I had an email. It was like, “You made a sale.”

What was it? What’d you sell?

It was software plus education. It was a $2,000 product. I made a $750 sale as an affiliate.

You were driving traffic to somebody else’s product.

That was it. I didn’t even spend a dime on advertising. I ranked in the search engines for the product name keyword because I figured out how to do SEO at the time, which is Search Engine Optimization. It was ranking in Google.

Did you read how to do that?

I watched videos on how to do it. That was the 30-day challenge. The 30-day challenge was how to drive traffic through sales primarily using search engine optimization. I watched the video and implemented it. In seven days, it said, “You made a sale.” It was for $750. I was like, “This is amazing. This is awesome. If I can figure out how to do this once a day, I’ll make $250,000 a year from the comfort of anywhere in the world.”

You figured out how to do it.

I was all pumped. I was telling my roommates. I had roommates at the time. We had an apartment in Lynchburg, Virginia. I had two roommates. They were like, “I’ll believe it when it shows up. Let me know when it hits your bank account.” They were like, “That sounds like a bunch of BS.” That took me about 30 days to have it show up.

In the meantime, I was like, “I need to figure out how to do this. I need to figure out why this happened,” because I had no clue. I had no idea why it happened. I ultimately believed that it was God-led. God allowed that to happen or had that happen on my behalf to get me into the industry. From there, I started studying everything I could about how to reproduce that every day. I wanted to get that once a day so I bought courses. I would spend $1,000 here and $2,000 here. I would go to even events. I was like, “I got to figure this out.”

I then realized one day, “I didn’t get my second-degree black belt in Taekwondo by watching YouTube videos. That’s silly.” I went to the dojo three days a week even when I didn’t want to. Eventually, I got my 1st-degree black belt and eventually got my 2nd-degree black belt. I had a sensei. I was like, “I need a mentor. I need to find someone who has the results I want. I need to pay them to coach me privately to tell me what to do and when to do it. I have to stop this journey of self-education. I need to find someone who has the life I want and the results I want.”

I found a dude from Australia who was making multiple six figures a month as an affiliate. He also had a service business. I talked him into coaching me because he didn’t even have a coaching program at the time that was like this. I had bought a product through him and as part of the bonus was a one-hour consultation session for free. That was the bonus for buying the thing through him. He was an affiliate. I bought that through him and got the session.

He mentored me and coached me. I was like, “I need more of this.” He was like, “I don’t sell anything. I don’t have an offer like that.” I’m like, “What is it going to take to get to make an offer like that? What do I need to give you to have more sessions with you like this? This is the ticket. I want the life you’ve created.” He had a bunch of kids retire from a $500,000-a-year corporate gig. He had his own business. He was able to do pretty much whatever he wanted. I was like, “I want that life.”

Was he game for it?

He was. I talked him into it.

What’d you come up with?

It was $5,000 at the time, which was a lot of money for me at the time.

No doubt.

That was a lot. It was a stretch. It was a nerve-wracking decision, but I was like, “This is my key to freedom here.” I talked him into it. He started coaching me, and then I launched a campaign. I spent $500 on advertising. I made $20,000 in sales and $10,000 in commissions in about 3 days.

What were you selling?

I was selling a $2,000 product. It paid me $1,000 as an affiliate.

How’d you find that product?

There was a network of sites that would list offers that were launching. It was like a directory of offers that were upcoming product launches. I found an upcoming product launch. I got in line with it. He taught me to find products that had over a $500 commission per product. That had $1,000, so that was a check. He said, “You want to create a bonus package for people to buy through you. Give them a reason to buy through you and not go through someone else. By buying through you, they’re going to get all this other extra stuff for free. You give them a reason to buy through you rather than going directly through the product owner themselves.”

It’s interesting because you didn’t own anything to bonus people on. How did you come up with a bonus?

I don’t even remember what I came up with. It has been years.

What do you think it was? Was it somebody else’s product?

I probably gave them some consulting time. At the time, that’s probably something I would’ve given them. I remember the funnel. I remember building the funnel. Back in the day, we used a platform called Xsite Pro. It was a website builder. That was the best thing at the time. It was a little bit better than building HTML pages and WordPress sites.

How long did this take place where you’re selling other people’s products?

For a couple of years. Within that timeframe, within about a year, I found a product I wanted to promote that was a water ionizer. I contacted the company. I said, “Can I sell your stuff? I’d love to send you buyers.” They were like, “You can buy them for $1,000 and sell them for $2,000.” I was like, “I’m going to send you buyers. You’re going to send me a check for $1,000.”

The owner responds at this point. He was like, “That sounds awesome but we don’t have the systems for that. Can you help us dominate our competition? Can you help us completely market this thing and position ourselves as the dominant or the best product in the market?” I was like, “Yes. I can do that.” I tapped back on my mentor and I was like, “Can you help me land this client?” because I’ve never had a client in my life. I was trying to be an affiliate for this company. I wasn’t even looking for a client and it converted into a client. It ended up being an $8,000-a-month client. They were my first client. I never had a client before. At that point, I was still in the college realm. I was still in Lynchburg, Virginia.

What was it about that ionizer that you thought was going to be the ticket for you?

I love that product. There was a doctor in town in Lynchburg who was bottling the water. I would go and buy the bottled water. I would go and get it. It was alkalized water, not alkaline water. It was alkalized. There’s a difference that a lot of people don’t know about. Alkalized is usually done through a machine. Within 24 hours of drinking it, if it’s not out of the machine and drunk, it loses its alkalinity. A lot of that alkaline water stuff is BS.

It made me feel so good and energized. The doctor had blood work before and after of how it was improving people’s blood. I felt great. They were showing case studies of horses drinking more of this water. It breaks down the structure of water so it’s easier to digest. It’s stickier, if you will. I loved it. That’s what compelled me to promote it in the first place. It was a $2,000 product, so I was like, “I can make $1,000 a sale.”

It would alkalize your own water.

You’d drink the water and it would alkalize your system or your body.

I mean the ionizer.

The ionizer would alkalize the water to be at a certain pH and your body is able to break it down because it was broken down.

You were passionate about the product personally. That makes a difference. Here you are and you got personal results with it. Were you using some of your personal results and passion?

In my marketing? No. I never got around to marketing it from that perspective. His objective was, “We want to dominate our competition.” We ended up building out review sites. We ended up doing a lot of different things to position that brand in the search engines. His objective was to dominate Google, YouTube, and Yahoo. He wanted to be the number one place that people point to. Our job was to build out all the review sites and all the websites and then run the advertising. There was a consumer review brand created. To this day, he is one of the top guys in the industry. He did over $20 million in sales.

What’s interesting is that you became this outsource or this contract marketing service for him. Certainly, his business won. Certainly, you won. You were introducing this new concept to people. That’s very pioneering. That’s pretty amazing. What was the next thing or the next stepping stone for you?

From there, I was doing a lot of affiliate marketing. I was doing $2,000 a day to $3,000 a day in profit promoting other people’s stuff. It was on autopilot. It was fifteen minutes a day. I check my stats in the morning. It was a lot of very automated business. I was promoting a lot of weight loss offers, resveratrol, acai berry, and free trials. They were paying out $45 to $55 a free trial. Every person that would take a $4 or $5 free trial, I’d get paid $45, $50, or $55.

I ran traffic through Google ads and through Yahoo ads. Believe it or not, Yahoo Ads did very well. I was making $2,000 a day selling resveratrol on one keyword on Yahoo only. We were tracking every keyword, so we knew. On that one, it was only the product name that was profitable on Yahoo. There might’ve been two other words that were semi-profitable, but everything else was a dud. You would spend $1 and make less than $1. Whereas the product name itself was you spend $1, you make $2. I was like, “I’m putting in $1 and I’m getting $2 out.” It was dollar in, dollar out. It was automated.

It was a basic review site. I owned at the time Resveratrol Ultra Reviews. The name of the product was Resveratrol Ultra. I reviewed five different products on the page and people would buy all of them, which was weird. You’d think people would buy the first one because this is the best one. Believe it or not, I’d get commissions from every single company, but the majority came from the top one. I wasn’t profitable on Google so I didn’t run any of the Resveratrol Ultra ads on Google. It was all through Yahoo ads at the time, which is owned by Bing. It was great.

I started going to events. I ended up making an iPhone app. We started iPhone apps in 2008. We built a platform called Gas Hound, which would find the cheapest gas in any location based on your geography. We built an app for that. You could be anywhere in the world, any city, or any town and pull the app up. We partnered with a guy in our Greek class. He was an A-plus student. He was really good at Greek. He was a web programmer. We had him learn how to program apps on an iPhone because the iPhone app developer kit came out.

We partnered with him to learn how to do it. He studied a book that was thick in two weeks and started developing the first app, which is the Gas Hound app. In 2008, we had it live on the Apple Store. Not that long after, Apple allowed developers. That was back in 2008. We continued to develop more apps and then eventually, I was like, “I want to build a personal trainer for your iPhone. I want the iPhone to do everything but lift the bar and yell at me.” I’m like, “I’m a personal trainer. I’m tired of writing on paper. I’m tired of writing 3 sets at 65 pounds. I’m tired of doing that. It should be on my phone.”

The idea was you go into the app and tell the app, “I want to lose weight. I want to build muscle. I want to burn fat.” There were three selectors. It would randomly and dynamically give you a workout every time you went into the gym. It was dynamic. It’s not the same constant. That’s the thing with training. You have to confuse your body and not be so repetitive.

I ended up needing to raise $10,000. This was before the affiliate business took off or around the same time. I don’t remember. I needed to raise $10,000 because the guy needed $10,000 to develop the website and develop the app. What was fascinating about the whole thing was he was like, “I need $10,000,” and I’m like, “I’ll go get $10,000.” Within a week, I had $10,000 to show up in my life, which was awesome. God sent me a guy.

The week I realized I needed the $10,000 to develop the app and website and launch it, my brother had a friend come over. I was telling the vision about the app. He was like, “I’d love to invest in that,” and then off and away we went. We developed the app, launched the app, and started selling the app in the App Store.

That’s cool. Did you do good with it?

It was okay. There wasn’t a lot of info on how you market and sell iPhone apps. We were pioneers in this space. In 2008, the developer kit came out. Nobody was developing apps. There were no courses on apps. There was nothing. There was a manual about how to develop apps and it was written by a programmer. There was no marketing on apps.

It wasn’t even easy to read, probably.

He was super tech techy. He could get it. After that or while that was going on, I ended up moving to Aspen, Colorado, and partnered with a guy. He wanted to do affiliate marketing. I was really good at affiliate marketing. He was like, “I got the money. How about I fund it and you do the work?” I was like, “That’s a great idea.” I partnered with him, this guy named Frank, in Aspen, Colorado. I was living in Aspen, Colorado, which was an awesome place in the summer and the mountain in the winter.

I did affiliate marketing. His goal was to do $40,000 a month in affiliate commissions. He had already built a big real estate business. He was a real estate developer. He built hotels and condos and owned gold mines. The dude has been around forever. He was in Aspen in the ‘70s so he capitalized on that growth. The guy who owned Simon Malls, he built him a $25 million house that he sold to him. It was epic stuff. He was like, “I want to do affiliate marketing. I want to relax. I want to hang out with my kids and my wife. I don’t want the stress of managing all these employees.” I was like, “I’ll do the work. You spend the budget. We’ll split 50/50 and off and away we go.”

I was in Aspen and I was working on launching my own product. At the time, it was called Traffic Tsunami. Mind you, this was about 2008. My idea at the time was to take all these traffic sources like Google, YouTube, Facebook, and ads. My idea was to take all these different ways in which to get traffic. At the time, everyone was selling a $2,000 course on each one. I was like, “Why don’t we take all these things, wrap them into one product for $2,000, and have it be really actionable?”

It could be like, “If you want to advertise on YouTube, here’s exactly what you need to do.” Cut the BS. Strip it off the BS and be like, “Here’s the practical guide. If you want to get traffic from YouTube, this is what you need to do. If you want traffic from Facebook, this is what you need to do. If you want to get traffic from SEO, this is what you need to do. If you want to get affiliate traffic, this is what you need to do.” I had ten different traffic sources. Instead of paying, my idea was you could go pay $20,000 by buying 10 traffic sources from all these different experts or you could buy this 1 product to help you get a flood of traffic to your business.

Did it work?

I spent eight months flushing it out. My partners were a part of this high-level mastermind. They went off to this mastermind. I wasn’t invited because it was husband and wife. You couldn’t bring a third party so I never got to go. While they were gone, this was full of a room of all these people who owned traffic products. In 2008, they gave them advice. They said, “I don’t think we need another traffic product in the market.” They didn’t want a competitor or another competitive product in the market. There was one dude who was in real estate. He was like, “You should probably let him try that. All of these people are your competitors. They’re naturally going to say that.”

Think about it. In 2008, TikTok didn’t even exist. Instagram didn’t even exist. Think about how many traffic platforms didn’t even exist and these guys were saying, “There are too many traffic products in the market already,” which is hogwash. They were influenced by that and it kiboshed the whole project. I had the funnels built, email sequences, and the whole thing. It was this serious master plan that I had. At that point, it was a pivotal moment for me. I was in my twenties. I was like, “I really want to build a brand. I want to build my own database and my own brand. I don’t want to be an affiliate forever.” Affiliate business is great to get started. It’s not a long-term asset. You don’t own anything.

Do people still do that?

People still do it. It’s a great place to start, but you don’t have a brand. You’re not going to sell an affiliate business. You might sell an affiliate network, but you’re not going to sell an affiliate business. There are no assets there. You could build a list, but there are no products that you own. You don’t have any control. He was in his early 60s. He was practically retired.

For him, it was like, “That’s cool,” but I was like, “I’m in my twenties. I’m not going to build a career here. I need to build a brand and move back to Pennsylvania to be with my family.” My sister was giving birth to twins at the time. I was like, “I should be around for that.” From there, I had to regroup and figure out, “What’s the next chapter of my life going to be?” The affiliate thing was not where I wanted to spend the rest of my life focused on.

It’s interesting because you’ve got all this talent, success, and far more money than your peers. If there was probably anything you wanted to do, you could do it. You had mastered the art of being able to, print money. It didn’t really seem like money was a motivator to you. It almost seems like the next challenge was the next motivator for you. You found a really cool opportunity with the traffic product, but you weren’t in control. Somebody else said, “You can’t do this.” Was that tough for you? Was that a driver for you? Was that hands up in the air like, “Screw this.”

I’ve always been someone where if you say no, I say, “Watch me.” I’ve always been against the grain. If you tell me to go left, I’m going right. I’ve always been wired that way. I’ve never let no get in my way.

Even when my parents would say, “You can’t have this,” I’d figure out a way like, “How can I get them to say yes?” I’d always wanted some stuff as a kid and my dad would say, “Do you think money grows on trees?” I’m like, “Yes. It’s made of paper, so it does.”

Weren’t you the guy who sold Jolly Ranchers in junior high?

Yes. In fifth grade, I sold Jolly Ranchers. It was sometime around that period of time, fifth grade or somewhere around there. I talked my mom into going to the pharmacy and buying a box of Jolly Ranchers. I didn’t have money as a kid.

She was your private equity investor.

I said, “Can you buy this box and out of the profits, I’ll pay you back?” Before you knew it, I was rolling into school with twelve boxes of Jolly Ranchers and selling out every day. I was not even bringing books anymore. I was the candy man.

The principal or something said, “You’re not going to be able to do this anymore.” He told you no.

The principal came back and he was like, “You can’t do this anymore. This isn’t a for-profit institution.” Being a smart Alec that I was, I was like, “I’m giving the kids what they want. They don’t want what’s in your vending machines or else you’d be sold out like I am. Why can’t I give them what they want?”

What’d he say?

He shut it down and said, “You can’t do that here because we want them to buy our stuff.”

The first time somebody shut you down, they shut you down because they were afraid of competition. That was the second time in the chronology. The first time was this principal. He shut you down because of some idealistic reason. There are these people telling you no. Regularly in your life, people tell you no when you’ve succeeded or when you’re onto something. Is there an instance when somebody said no and you hadn’t proved the concept yet, and then you went and did it anyway?

Yes. There have been several times in my life where I’ve gotten a no. I would say yes to the answer.

Did your wife tell you no before you met her or was she an easy sale for you?

She didn’t say no at that point. At that point, I was pretty clear about what I was looking for in a relationship. I was in my 30s at this point. I had gone through all the dating stages of life.

You were done with that.

The way in which we met was rather unique. We dated for two years and then eventually, we got married. I had never really had a no with her. That wasn’t the case with her. I have had situations in my life where I was onto something and I got a no and figured out a way to prove them wrong in a way.

With me and my wife, it was a different situation. It was all no in the beginning. I had to eventually do the takeaway. It was more of a give-up on my end. It was like, “I have done everything I can do to get this girl to fall in love with me and it hasn’t worked.” I’d moved on and then she was like, “I do like that guy.” That’s how we built our relationship. At what point did you realize that you wanted to start helping other people?

Liberty University is where I graduated and got my marketing degree and went on to get my Master’s. I fired my teachers because I was making more than them in a couple of days than they were making all month. When I was there, I was pressing into what my purpose was. Why did God spare my life? I died in 2003 and came back to life. I was in a coma. That’s a whole other story.

You have to stop and tell a little bit of that story.

I was at Slippery Rock University. It was my second year. This is right outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I wanted to get involved and do something because school wasn’t challenging enough. I was like, “Fraternity or student government? This fraternity sounds more fun.” I had a couple of friends who were in one of the more prestigious fraternities. They were the most academic and the most athletic. They weren’t the hardcore partiers. They were a little bit more in the middle. With a fraternity life, at least in college, you have the guys who are all roided up. You had a fraternity like that. You had a fraternity of these guys who are crazy party animals. This group partied, but they were more athletic and more academic. They were pretty well-respected on campus.

I was going through hell week, which is an infamous fraternity week. It was dramatic as you can imagine. It was an emotional rollercoaster where they beat you down like the Military. It’s very Militant. They’re talking down to you. They were activating as much negative emotion as humanly possible. Let’s put it that way. I’m not beating you with anything, but it is emotionally abusive. It was dark. It was pitch black. It was interesting emotionally.

Were you naked standing in a bucket of cold ice water or something?

I wasn’t. They didn’t do anything, but there were grown men crying by the time they got done with this situation. Out of 7 of us, there were at least 3 of them who were sobbing, tearing, and crying out loud.

People left and quit.

None of them left. None of our guys bounced. They stuck through it. They were pretty tough. It went from that to celebration. Typical of Big Brother night in every fraternity, at least the ones that I know of, is you do a celebration with your big brother. You drink the alcohol of choice of that big brother that got passed down from the big brother before. It’s this tradition.

I found myself at the apartment of one of the brothers. We started there before we went off to one of the fraternity houses. I started with, “Drink these five shots,” and before you know it, I blacked out and found myself waking up in the hospital the next morning with a doctor rushing to my bedside. He was like, “He’s alive.”

That was after five shots.

The conclusion was I had to fit the vodka in less than 30 minutes.

It started with the five shots and you didn’t know what happened after that.

It was five back-to-back and then something happened after that that I don’t remember. I woke up in the hospital with a catheter in me. It was not pleasant and a little uncomfortable.

I’ve been there.

The doctor said, “Your blood alcohol level coming in here was 0.39. 0.40 is dead.” I called the parents the night before and said, “Your son’s going to be either dead or brain dead for life. I’ve never seen anyone with this severe condition live, let alone even be able to comprehend what I’m saying. There’s no other explanation but you’re a living miracle. God must have a plan and purpose for your life.”

That was a big turning point in my life. It was like, “I need to surround myself with different people. These people aren’t a good influence in my life. Number two, I need to seek out why was my life spared.” I went on this journey. It was a two-year journey of deep, immersive personal work and spiritual work where I was searching for my purpose.

What kind of work did you do?

I, first of all, transferred from a secular school to a Christian university down in Clearwater, Florida called Clearwater Christian College. I went to study pastoral studies. I didn’t necessarily want to be a pastor, but I wanted to immerse myself in the scripture. I figured that was a good place to put my mind. I transferred out of there because they were super fundamental and had tons of stupid rules. I transferred to Liberty University.

Jesus came to go against the rules and turn theology up on its head. Many people don’t like Jesus because of the whole religious thing, but he was this rebel guy. The more you study and learn about Jesus, the more of a beautiful leader that emerges that I love to follow. Did you discover that, too, in that?

For sure.

Going to that Christian university and finding the legalism, did that make you closer to God?

Yes. It allowed me to see the legalistic side of religion that was repulsive. I realized that’s not the environment I want to surround myself with. I don’t want to be in a rules-based religious community. There were great people there, but a lot of them were there because their parents went there and they were forced to go there. That was what I found. A lot of them were pastor’s kids. The school doesn’t even exist anymore, so they didn’t have a very successful model.

I transferred from there to Liberty University. During Spiritual Emphasis Week, which is when Liberty University brings in pastors, missionaries, and business leaders to pour into the student body, that’s when God revealed to me what he wanted me to do and what my purpose is of why I was spared. At the time, all I got was, “Share your story and help other people share theirs.” That was the word I got. That was the prompting or the moment of divine clarity in that moment of deep spiritual prayer, meditation, work, and scripture. I was surrounding myself with other people in this conversation of spiritual things. It was awesome, but I had no idea what that meant.

At first, I thought I was going to go dorm to dorm and I was going to share my testimony of how I restored my relationship first with my relationship with God and then second, my relationship with Dad. I believe God gave me a formula, which I wrote in my first book. That was really about unlocking the ability to hear God speak, at least for me in my experience going through that process. Before going through that process, I wasn’t able to hear him. After going through the process, it opened up. It was like the Heavens opened up and I was able to begin to hear.

When you say hear from God, for the benefit of people reading that maybe don’t have a spiritual relationship, was it a feeling in your spirit?

It’s more of an inner prompting. It’s more of an inner voice, if you will. It’s not audible. It’s not like we’re speaking.

It wasn’t, “Don’t go that direction.”

It’s not like that. It’s like an inner dialogue that is like a prompt or a gut check. It’s the only way I can explain how to relate it to anything.

I always ask because everybody’s different. Everybody hears from God in a different way.

It might be pictures. That’s another thing. God began to give me visions of stadiums of people where I was releasing a message to them. It was between the combination of pictures, promptings, or words or phrases. It was either one word or it was a phrase of words, or it would come as a rush of ideas that I couldn’t contain and had to get out of me. That’s what happened.

Before going through that process, I got forgiveness and love, forgiving those that hurt you in life. I had to go through that. Before that, it was like being stuck in a room in chains. I was in the corner stuck and in complete bondage. That’s the way that I relate to harboring bitterness, anger, and frustration against another human.

Forgiveness unlocked hearing from God?

Forgiveness is what unlocked it.

I’ve been studying Job a lot because of the situation that I’ve been in in life. God has talked to me about studying Nehemiah. I told you that God has called me into doing more for people in business, being an apostle to them. He said, “Will you go and tell them that I love them and not to give up?” Every chance I get, I try to do that.

He unlocked this message for me. It was when you were in anguish for God and you wanted to do something great for God and build something for the kingdom or anguish for something that’s not being done. In Nehemiah, because of the enemies of Jerusalem, the walls were destroyed. When Nehemiah found out about it, he was in anguish and wanted to rebuild the wall. How does a cupbearer of a king rebuild a wall for one of the greatest cities in history? It’s outlined for you in the book exactly how to build something great for God.

He had me reading Job. Who are you without anything that you have? Do you still love and trust God if you have nothing? If it’s just you and God, what do you do? Do you curse God and die like Job’s wife told him to do or do you hang in there faithfully? The next part of that is 1 Samuel, which is the king making a message. Those three books together are a great trilogy on how to be a king after God’s own heart.

In Job, what I realized was that I never got this on the first pass. Job is this storybook tale of a guy who lost everything. That’s how a lot of people approach it. If you ever are in an emotional place of loss and you read Job, it is a tough read. It’s a tough read anyway. What I realized at the very end of Job was when his friends were sitting with him for days and giving him the worst advice on the planet. When he needed the best advice on the planet, he received the worst advice on the planet. His friends were telling him, “You’re this way because you’re a sinner.”

In the end, when God spoke and corrected Job’s thinking, Job’s faith was tested, but he stayed close to God. He was lamenting constantly on, “Why is it this way?” until God finally came in and said, “Where were you when the foundations of the earth were laid? What right do you have to question me on why I do things?” In the end, God made Job’s friends who gave him the bad advice come to Job. Job had the choice to forgive them or not.

Keep in mind that these are friends who sat with Job for seven days before any words were spoken. How bad off was this guy if you were going to sit in a room with somebody and take seven days to be able to say something to him? You’re going to continue to give him bad advice. God made those friends come to Job and Job forgave them. It was only then that everything was restored for Job. It’s this massive message of forgiveness. I don’t think a lot of people catch that. I didn’t either. I wanted to say that that’s fascinating to me that the forgiveness message is what unlocked God speaking to you.

God showed me a process that I had to go through with forgiveness in my relationship with him and then also with my dad. After that, the floodgate opened of downloads, I call them, or promptings.

I call them downloads sometimes.

After that, it was like, “Now I want you to go share this and get this message out to my people.” The first thing I did was I thought, “I should go dorm to dorm and share my story.” It was only male dorms. I was like, “I’ll go to a male dorm and then another male dorm,” but they had a curfew at Liberty. I thought this was a great idea.

I went to the head of the school, like one of the major deans. I was like, “This is my vision. God gave me a vision.” They shut it down because it was policy. It was like, “We need everybody to be in their dorms.” I was thinking to myself, “You don’t even know. I know guys that are sneaking out of the dorms. They’re bailing out. They’re rolling out their window. They’re over there sleeping with the girls in their girl dorms. What do you mean? I can’t go and tell my testimony? You have the illusion of control. I’m trying to do something good and you won’t allow me to do it.”

What’s worse is they want the illusion of control, too. I’ll be darned.

That was another moment where someone said no. Fast forward, I’ve had my opportunity to share my story pretty publicly on the internet to get to far more people than I could’ve ever gotten through a dorm.

That’s beautiful. Is God still speaking to you in your business?

Yes. What I’ve found is that it takes being mindful and being receptive and willing to hear and engage in a conversation. It’s seldom a 2×4 across the forehead. It’s normally not that. If it gets to that point, that means typically, I’m not listening and I need to be where I need to be. To me, it’s a constant and never-ending conversation of, “Do this. Do that.”

It is like, “What are we going to do today together here?”

It’s different every day. Some days, it’s loud and clear, and other days, it’s quiet.

It’s the same with your spouse or your kids. There are routine things that happen and one day fades into the next. There are some days that you’ll never forget.

For me, I like to go places. When I hear God the most is when I am able to get away from technology. I’m able to get really present and be in nature. For me, that’s some of my most epic moments with him. We’re eliminating the distractions of our culture, which is so prevalent. There’s so much noise. It’s easy to get busy and easy to not listen. I try to find a time where I disconnect from that. I put myself in environments where I’m not bombarded with tech and not bombarded with noise to be able to hear. At least that’s my role. It’s being intentional about getting a word.

I remember when I went to Hawaii a couple of years back and I got word as soon as I landed. It was a very clear moment that I wanted to capture, and I captured it. I wrote it down in my journal. I’m really big on journals. I spent the whole month in Hawaii after that point. I hadn’t gotten a word the entire time. It was the last day before we were about to fly out. I went out to the ocean by myself and I was crying out. I was praying, “Give me a word. I want that word.” I was probably out there for a couple of hours.

It wasn’t until towards the end of that that I dropped something under my spirit which I captured and wrote down immediately. It was interesting. I went there that whole time being there. Usually, the downloads are heavier there. I don’t know why. If you get it out of the normal grind and away from tech, that’s when typically they come more freely.

Those hypnotic rhythms are not there. You’re free to breathe.

I’m not on my phone. You’re able to breathe. You’re able to remove the clutter, the distraction, or the noise.

It seems to me like you’re in a highly competitive business. We talked about this in our session. I’m in a highly competitive business. There’s a lot of noise. You’ve got to be good at cutting through the white noise. What are some breadcrumbs that you can leave people who are reading this that say, “I want to cut through some white noise in my life, or get more business, or be better at marketing without revealing any trade secrets.” What are some things that somebody could take away from this episode and say, “I’m going to implement this tomorrow.”

Getting into an attitude of gratitude is something I talk about in a book that I’m going to eventually publish called Morning Rhythms. It’s like morning rituals, but it’s more of a rhythm. It’s more of a dance. It’s getting into a space of gratitude and being thankful for what God has put in our lives and what he’s doing in our lives. It’s getting into that attitude of gratitude and appreciation. I found that it’s also a way to break through and cut through the noise. We’re in a place of gratitude and an attitude of appreciation and gratitude. Plus, the day goes so much better.

That’s the best thing that you can do. I talked to my son. My middle son is the kind of guy who is always looking for the worst-case scenario. My dad’s a little bit the same way. He’s always thinking about, “What if this happens?” We need people in society that have that thought rhythm because those people build bridges. We need those people to be able to figure out what’s the worst that could possibly happen because we need them to prepare for the worst.

If you’re on a trip and going across the country, you want somebody like that in your life. The downside for those people is that they’re always thinking about what’s worse. An attitude of gratitude is going to help them. I have to be honest with you. There are times in my life when I’m tired of hearing that. I’m sure other people are because how is this attitude going to change anything? How is me stopping and being thankful for anything? I need to do the work. I need to check these boxes and get on the next thing. Stopping and being thankful for something, how is that part of my business plan?

I have found the older that I get, I really count my blessings. It gives you the fuel to go check the boxes and go do those things without the yang. The yin is so much more destructive to your mind and body. It puts me in the right state of mind. It gives me a positive energy to move into the future. How do you handle moments that are not great, the shitty experiences, if you will?

I’ve always been someone that when a moment is tough, it can take you out or you can move forward, grow from it, and look at the positive. You can look at the positive and the negative. You can look at the negative from the lesson, but you need to eventually move on and get out of that low vibration or negative energy, or else, you’re not going to create very well in the future. I found that gratitude is one of those things that reset.

Do you honestly focus on this daily or weekly?

Daily, for sure.

This is a routine for you.

It’s a daily ritual.

Do you have something written that you say every day, too?

It’s not written out at this point because I’ve done it for so long. I started this many years ago as well when I started my personal development journey. It’s all the things that come to mind like, “What am I thankful for? What do I appreciate? What am I grateful for?” You’ll find that when you start with the simple things like eyes to see, ears to hear, a home, a car, or feet, you start to be thankful for the things that you have. You’ll find that you have a lot more to be grateful for than you realize.

People in our lifetime didn’t have indoor plumbing. People that you know who raised you at a time in their life didn’t have indoor plumbing or somebody in their age demographic. I also hear a lot about when it comes to racial tension between White people and Black people. I hear White people say, “I didn’t do anything, so why are people mad at me?”

Racism works both ways. I would say to people it’s easy for us to forget that in our parents’ lifetime, African-American people had to drink from a different water fountain and go to a different restroom. That’s not too far away. It wasn’t that long ago. We’re living in a world where grace is necessary, especially in topics of racial tension. Grace is necessary for ourselves as well. Gratitude will put you in a place where you’re prepared to be grateful.

I also found that when you’re grateful for a little, you receive much. Gratitude is contagious is what I have found. If you look at the things you’re grateful for and you’re continuously grateful for things, I have found that there are always more things to be grateful for that show up in my experience of life. I’ve found that it’s a snowball effect. When I’m grateful and I verbalize it out loud, it is not something I do in my head but speak it out loud, there’s power in speaking out loud.

There’s life and death in the power of the tongue.

That’s right. I have found that when I engage in that way, I find more things to be grateful for.

That’s cool.

Disconnecting as well, like disconnecting from technology, getting out in nature, and getting grounded is pretty easy if you stick your feet on the soil. That’s a good way to reset the energy within the system of your body. That’s another big thing for me. I like to go to the ocean and get in salt water and get in the sun. That’s why I love living in Florida. I can get grounded pretty quickly.

I started doing some of that stuff. All of the things that you’re talking about were first really introduced to me when I started going to Tony Robbins’ live events. You have met Tony Robbins. You did marketing for him. He said publicly that you’re one of the top 1% of the marketers in the world. I would go to his events, which were in these beautiful places. I would go lay in the ocean and try to focus on gratitude. I’ve heard you tell stories about when you were in Business Mastery, Platinum Partners, and then even Next Level when you’re alone in a room with Tony Robbins and he’s like, “What is it that you really want?” He’s asking you what you want and a lot of people don’t know what they want.

He consistently asked that question. Even in a high-level private mastermind that you can’t even pay to be in the room, he was continually asking the question, “What do you really want?” He is even speaking with people who are in the room who are at a very high level.

What changes? Why do you think he keeps asking that question?

You evolve. We evolve. As you become a father or as you become married, what you want changes as you have children. At least for me, what I wanted as a single man was different than when I became married. When I had kids, what I wanted changed dramatically. Things shift in a good way. It’s about getting clarity about what it is you want.

A lot of people are not clear. It’s hard to hit a target when it’s fuzzy. A lot of people run around trying to hit fuzzy targets. They are missing because they’re fuzzy. He consistently asked the question, “What do you want?” to help people dig deeper into why are they doing what they do every day. Do they really want that outcome that they’re producing in their life?

It seems like you really help people get what they want in life. You’ve got a long track record of taking somebody’s expert brand and scaling it. I looked at some of the pictures on your website and some testimonials. You got some great testimonials. It’s got to feel good to help people succeed at that level and get them to that benchmark. That’s life-changing money and life-changing influence. It’s a fun benchmark. I don’t think people who go out for the Olympics want to do it for the money. I don’t think they want to do it for the fame. They do it because they love the sport. When you’re working with people, can you tell when somebody wants to be famous or when somebody wants to make money?

I can.

Does that affect you in any way in your desire to help them or your plan for them?

It’s not always spoken, but it’s an undertone where you can tend to tell if someone’s in it for the money. Typically, someone who’s in it for the money doesn’t last long. You’ve got to really be in this business, especially in the expert business, the self-education industry, or the knowledge business to care about people and the results that they want in their life. You have to be contribution-driven from a values perspective. You have to be driven by contribution to be in this business for any length of time.

I’ve been in this for seventeen years. I’ve seen people come and go. The big guru type, celebrity type, and expert type brands have come and gone. They are an expert in this one day and then they shift for the tide and are an expert in some other random thing that comes along the next day like AI. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry is an AI expert.

You’re right. Somebody wants to sell the next hottest thing. It’s the thing that nobody knows anything about. It’s the thing that everybody needs information on. There’s this new informational product that they can sell that they have no competition. It’s going to change. At the beginning of your career when SEO was a thing that nobody knew anything about, you took some time and learned about it. You were able to help people, but first, yourself.

First, I did it. Before I ever taught it and before I ever started educating about it, I went out and produced results for myself. Eventually, I produced results for others. Eventually, I got to a place where I was like, “People would probably want to learn this information. I can help more people I can scale by creating products, books, and programs that I can help get in more people’s hands.” That was the journey for me. I went from being an affiliate to running a service-based business and then helping people produce results.

There’s only so much time for me. The only next evolution is, “How can I have more people at a lower rate and get a piece of me?” There are only so many work days in the year. I can only work with so many people, so I’ve got to create leverage for myself but also leverage for the people to be able to work with me. As your demand goes up, your price goes up. You can only work with a limited number of people.

I always challenge people to think about their legacy. I’m like, “What is your impact in the world going to be in 100 or 200 years from now?” Zig Ziglar and Napoleon Hill, these people are still impacting people’s lives. The twelve disciples are still impacting people’s lives on a daily basis. They did certain things in a certain way, which inevitably produced certain results. People are still learning from them.

I like to challenge people to think, “In 100 years from now, how are you going to still be impacting people’s lives when you’re no longer here?” You can pass that down to your children and they can pass that down to their children. Most people are not very strategic about it. They’re not thinking, “How can I pass on my knowledge, my skills, my expertise, and my values?” We got to be a little bit more conscious about that.

I would rather think about how my life is going to impact someone else’s life 100 years from now than hope and wish that maybe one day, someone’s life will be impacted or on the flip side, be like, “Who cares? I’m gone.” That’s a really selfish way to look at life when you are like, “Who cares? I’m gone.” The reality is your life is going to pass on regardless. It’s how long is it going to get passed on.

There’s no money in passing on your values, which is why a lot of people don’t do it. Good parents do. Discipleship is parenting. The goal is to make yourself obsolete. Your goal is to become a fond memory or a loving memory. What you’re talking about is much more than that. You’re talking about not just becoming a fond memory but becoming an ideology that continues on.

I’ve heard some people say you should write your obituary. To me, that seems like a waste of time because I’m always focused on living, what I want to grow, and what I want to do. I don’t want to think about what I’m going to leave. I’m so enjoying living even with all the challenges and the struggles. My ambition has always outpaced my ability.

My poor wife is like, “Why can’t you stop and enjoy now?” I really have to stop myself because I’m always focused on growth and the next thing. I’ve been resistant to writing my obituary, but you’ve said it in a way that sparks a desire for me to do that. What is the impact going to be in 100 years? All of us maybe should take some time to do that.

You look at Napoleon Hill. He wrote that book, Think and Grow Rich, years ago and people are still reading it every day. He’s still impacting people’s lives. That’s one great way to capture lessons. I think about my dad. He passed on and went to be with the Lord. He taught me there’s no such thing as can’t. There’s only, “I can,” and, “I will.” He wanted me to get work done. I’m like, “I can’t do that. Mulch the yard? I can’t do it. Cut the grass? I can’t do it.” There is no such thing as, “Can I?” There’s only, “I can,” and, “I will.”

That’s the mindset I take in business. There is no such thing as, “I can’t.” There’s only,” I can. I will.” There’s no such thing as failure. Failure isn’t final. It’s an opportunity to pivot. If you look at anyone who’s super successful, they’ve pivoted out of every situation. The reason most people fail is because they take themselves out of the game and stop. They’ve made a failure final. They’ve stopped and used excuses to blame outside circumstances for their situations when they played a role in that. They need to own that or they don’t grow. My encouragement is even if you fail, that means you’ve learned some lessons. Take the lessons learned, move on, pick up your feet, and keep moving forward. That’s the only thing you can do. There’s really nothing else you can do.

What’s next for you in your business life?

All types of things. I have some new books coming out. We’re launching a certification, a protégé certification, where we’re going to certify people to do what we do. There will be different levels of that.

Is this your dojo?

That’s right.

It’s the Bryan Dulaney belt. I love it.

We’re doing a summit. I’m going to be interviewing about 100 experts who have launched 7, 8, and 9-figure expert brands. I’m excited about that. I’ve got some really great interviews lined up. We’ll be launching a collective virtual summit with learning what lessons they’ve learned on their journey to breaking through that 7-figure, 8-figure, and even 9-figure. We’ve got some nine-figure guys that I’ll be interviewing and talking about what were the secrets to their success on their journey. Eventually, I’ll condense that down to probably 33 different chapters from the 33 best interviews out of the 100 or 120 interviews that I’m going to do.

That’s cool.

That’s another campaign. That’ll be fun to do. I love doing these types of things and learning about what makes things tick. There’s no one way. There are ways, models, and frameworks. We all have our own unique fingerprints. That fingerprint needs to be inserted in your unique brand or else it’s not successful. For people who copy other people, there’s no originality to it. You’ll only go so far being a copycat.

This whole idea of modeling other people, you got to eventually grow out of that. Eventually, you have to grow up. You got to be able to stand on your own feet and be able to be original and unique. I found that’s what it takes to really be playing this game at a high level. You are inserting your own uniqueness into the world. People are attracted to you like a magnet because you are willing to be different.

I love that. In this world of AI, authenticity is going to really shine. I’ve heard a lot of people say that and I agree with it. How do people get ahold of you if they want to begin to learn from you?

They can go to BryanDulaney.com. They can check out all the stuff that we have going on. Get a copy of the books. We sell these books for free. We say, “Cover the cost of shipping to get it to you.” It’s free, but we ask you to cover the cost of shipping to get it to you.

I love it. It’s good talking to you. It’s good to get to know you. Thank you for your time for this and also the work session. I learned a ton. It’s going to be a lot of work, but it’s going to be a lot of fun because I’m not afraid of hard work. It will be great to have rocket fuel for the people that I want to serve. Thank you. I’m excited to be in alignment with you on that. Also, one more time, you said no to death. What do we say to the god of death? Not today. It was good being here.

Important Links

• Bryan Dulaney
• Think and Grow Rich
• https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/worleyrealestatenetwork
• https://WorleyConsulting.textretailer.com/qc/tlkA3RcG9W
• https://Vrolio.Typeform.com/worleynetwork