Creating An Emotional Experience With Your Customers by EntrepreneursRadioShow

THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

Episode 121: Bruce Poon Tip

Creating An Emotional Experience With Your Customers In this episode, Travis talks to successful entrepreneur Bruce Poon Tip. Bruce is a travel enthusiast and an industry leader that transformed his small company into an international travel company that not only caters to its clients but also tries to make a positive impact on the countries they're visiting. He also an author and wrote the New York Times Bestseller book Looptail which aims at helping entrepreneurs learn from his experiences and how they can achieve their own success through his vision and ideas. Travis and Bruce share their insights on how they grew their business and how other business owners can do it as well. Bruce believes that his business not only provides a unique travel experience for his customers but also benefits and affects the countries that these people visit. He feels his company has the social responsibility to create a positive impact on the countries that tourism should provide. Aside from that, he also gave his tips on how to achieve success, which include creating a purpose around why your business needs to exist in the world, and assuming a leadership that is adaptable and caters to the needs of your company. These and much more are what's in store in this episode of the Entrepreneur's Radio Show. TRAVIS: Hey, it's Travis Lane Jenkins, welcome to episode 121 of the Entrepreneur's Radio Show, a production of rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com, where my main focus is to teach you the tactics that will help you grow your business and serve others in a way that's meaningful to you. And then secondary I want you to see that successful people are really just average people that achieve extraordinary results. Now today I'm going to introduce you to Bruce Poon Tip. Bruce has built an incredibly successful business from nothing. And today he's going to share that story along with many things that turned a small start-up into a thriving empire, I mean thriving. Before we get started, I want to say thank you to Vinny for the 5 out of 5 stars on Stitcher. Vinny's headline says, "Straight fuel for the fire." Then he says that he loves the show and it helps keep the fire burning to get everything done that he's working on. Vinny, congratulations on the three separate businesses that you're working on right now. You must be an extremely busy man. I'm impressed especially since you're only 26. We need more people just like you brother. So, hang in there and keep up the great work. Congrats my friend. And of course, I want to personally say thank you for taking the time to write the review. I know it's a pain and very few people do that. So, I really appreciate that. So, thank you very much. Now, just in case

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

you don't know writing a review does help us reach other entrepreneurs just like yourself. The reason for that is iTunes and Stitcher believes that if you're leaving comments then the show must be valuable. Therefore, they'll serve it to more of their audience. So, if you have time and you find value in the show, I'd appreciate it if you'd go ahead and leave us a review and tell me how we're doing. And of course, I'll recognize you on air and say thank you. One last thing, you can take these interviews with you on the go, three different ways. There's actually many more than that but to keep it simple the three main ways is through iTunes, Android or Stitcher. Just go to rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com. You can look at the toolbar right there and it has iTunes, Android, or Stitcher. Just click on it, it'll take you directly to the show and you can subscribe there if that's what you want to do. So without further ado let's get down to business. Bruce, welcome to the show. BRUCE: Thank you, thanks for having me. TRAVIS: I know you're a busy man. I'm super excited that you took some time from your adventures to come hangout with us. BRUCE: Yeah, it's good to be here. TRAVIS: Yeah, I'm excited to hear the back-story. You've done some pretty impressive things in business. Can you share that with us? BRUCE: Well, I guess the main thing is I'm the head of the largest adventure travel company in the world now. And next year we'll be celebrating 25 years. So, I started the company when I was very young. TRAVIS: Right. BRUCE: And from that, we started the Planeterra foundation which somewhere along the way as we evolved we became more of a social enterprise where we stared doing international development and community projects that coincides with our trips. And kind of spearheading the whole movement towards sustainable travel. TRAVIS: That's cool. Define sustainable travel for me? BRUCE: Well, it's quite a wide definition. People define sustainable very differently depending on what's important to you. Some people think sustainability has to do with the environment. Some people think sustainability has to do with alleviating poverty in local people communities.

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

And some people believe in sustainability as a combination of the two. So, people define it differently. Even people who go travelling sometimes thinks human rights are issues in terms of sustainability and some people think it's animal rights, that the animals are important to them. So, sustainability really to me is about local people benefiting when it comes to travel and tourism because travel is growing so quickly and more and more people are travelling. It's cheaper and easier to travel today. TRAVIS: Right. BRUCE: And local people aren't benefiting and tourism is kind of doing the opposite thing in that it's become a more inclusive, there's more all-inclusives than ever before, cruise ship industry is growing. And people aren't actually spending locally, and people aren't benefitting from the growth in tourism. So that's not sustainable to me. TRAVIS: Okay, that completely makes sense. Hey, give me the back-story, because you've built this business to some pretty serious levels. And our listeners are entrepreneurs. And I just feel like it's instructive for people. I think so many people believe that either you're this incredibly gifted businessperson or you're not. And you know the truth is really a great businessperson is developed over time. And so, that's why I think the story of how you got there and kind of the bumps and bruises along the way really define who you are. And so, do you mind sharing that story? BRUCE: Yeah. First of all I think entrepreneurs are-- there's different types of entrepreneurs. I think that people kind of define entrepreneurs into internet billionaires. It's become quite sexy to be an entrepreneur because when I was young there wasn‟t 27-year old billionaire. So entrepreneurs are defined very differently and I think the first thing that people have to understand is where they fit into that category. People who own franchises are owned, coffee shops or small businesses, those are entrepreneurs of one kind. And there's people who work under the confines of a big corporation like Federal Express or IBM. And they're entrepreneurial in their thinking, and thinking out of the box, and really driving innovation. And that's just as entrepreneurial. But there's just a smaller group of people that really drive industries, change industries, and put new products in front of people. And those entrepreneurs are very different, and those are the ones people always think that they want to be but it's a very small group of people and it's not for everybody. For me I started out to change the way people looked at their holiday time. What I wanted to put travelling back in 1990. There was no options for me, you either took a coach tour, went in all-inclusive resort, or you went on a cruise ship, those were the options. Or, you got a guidebook and did it yourself. And so, when I went travelling I didn't

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

really want to backpack but I have no choice. When I went out backpacking I saw that there was this group of people in the middle, caught in a wasteland in the tourism industry that didn't necessarily went backpack but they were young professionals with disposable income. But they wanted more of a cultural immersion type experience. They want to see countries for what they really are. Experience the people, kind of have that kind of cultural exchange experience and meet people along the way. And that didn't exist in the tourism landscape at the time, and that was kind of my vision. But going from that to being the international brand that we've become. We have people from 160 countries book trips with us every year. We don't have any kind of dominant country where our passengers come from so. We've become truly an international brand. And the idea that someone in Germany will book African safari with a North American based company is the magic that we create every day. So it's a brand that means something to people. And over time my leadership has evolved, and the idea of exporting tourism has had to change because the landscape in the business world has changed as well. When I started there was no internet. I didn't even have a fax machine when I started. TRAVIS: Right. BRUCE: I used to write letters to make hotel reservations to hotels. So, we've evolved as the world has evolved. Business and society have been living parallel of each other and they've always done so. So, as society changes or as the tools in business change, they follow each other. And the world has changed so dramatically, whether it's first the internet which took away that element of surprise for people because suddenly you just can search anything in any destination. And you no longer just have that mystery of having a guidebook and landing in a new destination. So, the industry changed so we have to change. TRAVIS: Right. So, has business drastically changed for you over the last 10 years maybe due to the proliferation of the internet? Because it's so easy to do business all around the world these days. BRUCE: Yeah. My experience obviously is specifically the travel industry and how people have changed, how they research travel, right? So, in the last 50 years it's changed dramatically with the internet. Because there's two things that have changed my business. And I think most businesses is the information age and the social revolution which I call. So the information age, the idea that people have more information and everything available at their fingertips changed the way people research and the way people decide on where they want to go. Now, in the last 10 years, which is what your question is about the last 10 years, it's the internet but it's more of a social side of the internet. The way people communicate, the way people make their decision,

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

and the way people engage with brands is very different. And it's changed the landscape because all the tools to engage customers today are free. TRAVIS: Right. BRUCE: So the idea of iconic brands spending $100 million on ad campaigns isn't happening as much anymore because people are engaging with brands very differently. And we've got a highly engaged customer, and we sell life-changing experiences. So, we have a greater opportunity we engage with our customers than someone selling books, or someone selling shoes, right? So, the social revolution, it's happened out say one of the last 7 years has changed the way we've done everything. And the main thing being engagement of customers and delivering exceptional customer service. TRAVIS: Yeah. I was going to say what you do has a high potential for becoming viral on a social platform because people love to share their incredible experiences with all their friends. And then that has a natural path that leads to back to you guys as well, right? BRUCE: Yeah. That's the main-- I should say, it's amazing what some businesses are able to engage their customers with like-- If you look at companies like Netflix which does amazing job at-- Video streaming is the most unsexy thing on earth but they engage people to their brand through social means. And we changed people's lives. The trips that we offer people who take our trips, it's such an emotional purchase. And so we have an amazing opportunity. So, I always say the world has changed in my favor in many ways because we are such an emotional product. And 20 years ago when we engage customers it's such 1-way conversation with advertising in newspapers, advertising in magazines, call for a brochure and book a trip to Thailand. But now we can show video, we can engage in conversations, you can talk to past travelers. There's so many ways in which you can engage customers. TRAVIS: Right. How do you go from 0 to 1,350 employees? Just to give people perspective, that's a pretty big group of people there. Was it a fairly easy path for you? What were the ups and downs? BRUCE: It's been a long one. People often ask and I said, next year we're celebrating 25 years. We started in 1990. And it was a natural path and was certainly organic. And we've certainly arise in the last 10 years that we've become really dominant in our space, in the small group adventure space. But we've had to evolve and we've had to continually innovate. And we've had 25 years of double-digit growth. So, we've been like a 25-year start-up.

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

TRAVIS: 25-years of double-digit growth, I love it. BRUCE: Yeah. We've grown 40%-- We're on another growth curve, we've grown 40% every month, month over month kind of since January 2013, I believe so. TRAVIS: That's insane. BRUCE: Yeah. So as a company we do a lot of things right. But it has a lot to do with the momentum and how we look at business. We don't look at business traditionally. We believe what we're doing is more of a movement in terms of getting to believe that their holiday time is precious. And a week on the beach at an all-inclusive resort is not the way to see any country. And when someone gets off a cruise ship they never talk about the destination, they talk about the food and they talk about the ship. We want to kind of help people discover more kind of passion, purpose, and happiness that has been lost over the information age with travel. TRAVIS: So let me give you some perspective from my side about what you do. BRUCE: Sure. TRAVIS: Not your business but the industry that you're in. So, I've been in business about the same amount of years as you and early on, me and my wife, when we got to travel, we would go to resorts like you were talking about and we might spend a week on the beach, right? And as 3, 5, 7 years passed, me and my wife we talked about it and we couldn‟t hardly remember those vacations, right? And so, we started doing something different when we went on those vacations. We started seeking experiences. And so the experiences were maybe renting 4wheelers, and when we're in Mexico and going up the mountain and eating tacos up at-- We're at cloud level and doing some incredible things like that, right? And I still remember those vacations 15 years later almost as clear as a week after I took them, right? BRUCE: Yeah, for sure. TRAVIS: And so, we instantly saw that it made the experience of our traveling much more memorable, much more dimensional, everything. And so, from that point forward, even like we'd go to New York, I'd find a local that can afford to spend time with us, we'll pay him, and he takes us everywhere because he lives there, right? BRUCE: Yeah, sure.

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

TRAVIS: And that was my way of kind of figuring out how to do a lot of thing. I've always would've loved to have somebody like you handle these things for us because a lot of times we got to get our feet on the ground there and then figure it out, right? BRUCE: Sure. Your motivation has been creating the experience for yourself and wanting to see something different. You created the stories that you'll tell your grandchildren. TRAVIS: Right. BRUCE: But what you also might not know that you've also contributed to is you've also gone to another country, spent money, and you've distributed your wealth. Wealth distribution is a big part of what we talk about in our business model. You've hired locals, small restaurants, you've maybe taken a local bus, gone into a craft market to buy your souvenirs as opposed to buying them in a resort gift shop. TRAVIS: Right. BRUCE: And that money has been spread and you've created happiness locally by local people benefiting from you actually being in that country. TRAVIS: Oh yeah. BRUCE: And that's what defines sustainability. At the same time you've also created memories and special experiences for yourself, and local people are benefitted. And that's really the key, to know what we're talking about and in terms of that movement. And even if it's not with us, we're constantly talking-- one of our big sayings in the office is if you can't travel with us, travel like us. Because we want people out of the 40 poorest countries in the world tourism is the second largest form of revenue next to oil. So, travel has the ability to transform lives, and to change, and have a positive impact on the 40 poorest countries. But it can't be done behind the walls of a resort that's owned by a foreign holding company that just sucks the money right out of the country, and local people aren't benefiting. TRAVIS: Right. And you're really not even getting the experience when you're in other countries and you're walking along the area where all the tourists are, with a fanny pack on and a camera. You're not seeing the real place. BRUCE: No, if you knew the industry of building these ports, these countries that cut these deals with the cruise ships to build these manufactured ports for ships to arrive, they create a

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

Western environment for people. And just outside of the walls of those ports people don't have basic medical services and access to clean drinking water. So, there's just so many things wrong. And I don't want to turn this interview into a political interview about travel, but I'm just saying that that was also my eureka moment in business. TRAVIS: No, I've had the same thing. BRUCE: I thought there's got to be a tipping point. TRAVIS: Yeah, I've had the same the thing and I know exactly where you're coming from because when you get off the beaten path, we've gone up the side of mountains and you see people, a whole new level of poor. Kids playing in water that smelled so bad that we didn't want to drive through it very fast. And again, I agree with you that I don't want to turn this into a political message. But what it does is it changes you from the inside because you see some things from a complete different perspective. At one time I could speak quite a bit of Spanish, I'd lost almost all my Spanish. But after being outside the walls and living in their culture for a couple of days almost all my Spanish came back instantly. And living in this culture, eating as they do, driving as they do, all of that stuff is hard to quantify. BRUCE: Yeah, that's exactly what we feel that we sell. We don't look at ourselves as travel company. I think that's also, when I talk about the brand we've created, we have this amazing responsibility and great opportunity everyday to change people's lives. And travel just happens to be that vehicle. What you're saying there is how it changes you and there's something different. That's that noble purpose of travel that I always talk to people about that, that you grow because you have a greater appreciation for what you have and you go home stronger, you go home more knowledgeable. It also gives you a great appreciation for other cultures of the people. And one of the grander things I talk about quite often is travel, there's no faster path to peace in the world as people getting to know other cultures and other people. And getting to know how other people live around the world. Because there's a lot ignorance that causes a lot of violence around the world. But people getting to know each other know how each other live. And how other people live on the world is a great developer of peace. And travel can just be that vehicle. And I really believe that. And we started our purpose and our message of what we wanted to accomplish as a purpose-driven business, travel was our vehicle to create that change. TRAVIS: Right. It definitely changes you inside. It's hard to be compassionate about something until you've seen it, smelled it, touched it, and then your eyes are open. It matures you. It's kind of like maturing as a young individual as you have more experiences in your life, you mature. Copyright © 2014 The Entrepreneur‟s Radio Show

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

Well, the same thing happens when you travel and you see different cultures. It matures you in a way that's not visible but to other people that have gone through the experience, on some levels they can pick up on it. BRUCE: You always grow when you take yourself out of your comfort zone. We all know that. And I think that the mainstream travel, the goal is to create that Western environment so you have all the comforts of home. And so, you don't really feel like you've ever left home. I just don't understand that side of travel. And so, when we started back in 1990 we actually had in our brochure. If you want the comforts of home we suggest you stay at home. If you pay us to go to Africa or Latin America and you felt like you never left home we really didn't do our job because you've never really seen the country. And taking yourself out of your comfort zone is really what life is about. And that can be that ability to grow and experience something new. TRAVIS: Right. So, take me back to the business metrics. What do you feel like are the key aspects? I completely understand the mindset of you and your company so far. But give me some of the metrics of business. What do you feel like the key elements are for other business owners. What can they take away? What are the 3 things or 4 things that you feel like were critical to your success? BRUCE: Well, there's a few things. First, you have to create a purpose around why your business needs to exist in the world. And there's many different types of businesses and sometimes people are creating businesses in an industry that's already flooded, and you're going to somehow do things faster or cheaper. But you know, in terms of really be innovative and different, you have to have a purpose, and what your purpose is. And then from that you have to wrap that around core values and what your core values are in order to achieve success in your business. And what's important to the people to attract the right people. So you have to get all those things right first because when you bring in your first employees and you bring in the first people that now represent your brand they have to fully understand your purpose and you have to wrap that around your values. TRAVIS: Right. BRUCE: And then, once you do that you have to be able to hire and fire based on those values and that purpose. Because quite often people come to want to work for you and they don't fit your culture and they don't fit what you want to do. But they might be able to do a good job or bring business, so it's really tempting because they can bring customers or bring partners because they have great experience.

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

TRAVIS: Right. BRUCE: It's not worth it on your culture if they can't represent your brand and your culture. And then through that it's leadership. Leadership is the next step, because leadership has to go hand and hand with that. But your leadership has to be able to be adaptable. Because entrepreneurs are notoriously self-centered and they have unnatural level of confidence because you also need that as an entrepreneur. But at the same time being a leader is a very difficult job because you have to continually self-evaluate. You have to continually look at how you can get better and stronger every day, and that's a painful process for someone who is someone who's generally self-centered and overconfident. So, that leadership process is a constant growing. You have to be able to constantly grow. You never reach a pinnacle. And it's a constantly painful process. So, leadership becomes-- defining what type of leader. The easiest type of leadership is leading by example. Where you have everyone that you hired in the room. You work hard, they work hard, they see how passionate you are so they're passionate. That's really easy. But when you start getting employees that you never meet or don't have contact with on a daily basis, that becomes more of a coaching type of leadership because you now have to coach other leaders. But then when you become a multinational and you have people all over the world that might work their entire careers with you and you'll never meet them, that leadership is very different. And that path to leadership wrap around your original purpose and your original values is what shapes you which allows your company to grow. When your leadership stalls your company will stall. I've seen that over and over because I've had my own plateaus, peaks and valleys and plateaus, in my own development as a leader. But as you get older you get wiser, and as you get more people you get better people. And they put demands on you to continually grow and develop as a leader. And then love what you do. I know that's really cliché and people hear it all the time. I was speaking at our conference a few years ago with Donald Trump but he even said love what you do. And I thought, well that's such a canned answer but if you love what you do you'll never work a day in your life. And that's really what's contagious with anyone who touches your brand. Because it rubs off on all the people you recruit and you retain within your business who also relay that positive energy and that message to your customers. And then your customers feed off that too because everyone wants to be part of that kind of infectious energy. And so, it's that kind of circle that I believe that drives businesses outside of traditional ways of measuring business success, which is obviously topline growth and bottom-line profitability. TRAVIS: Right. So, what I hear you say is you feel like there's kind of 3 stages of leadership. Would that be fair?

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

BRUCE: Yeah. And there might be another one, I just haven't reached it yet. TRAVIS: All right, good point. BRUCE: So, I know where I am right now. TRAVIS: Right. It's always easier looking back and kind of reviewing that, right? It's crystal clear. You know one thing that is a common denominator with all successful people that I interview is they're naturally-- well, I should say naturally because I don't know if that's true or not. But they all have the 80-20 Principle in common with each other. They're really good at getting crystal clear on the important 20% and not worrying about the other 80% of business that they could have, right? BRUCE: Yeah. TRAVIS: And you're clear on that, right? BRUCE: Focus is everything. Focus and execution are the two keys for entrepreneurs. Because when you start out you to be focused, right? But when you become successful you even have to be more focused, because opportunities are falling out of trees, everyone wants a piece of a successful company. And you have to be more focused and not be distracted by bright, shiny objects because there's so many of them in your path. TRAVIS: Right. And I mentor a lot of businesses that are wanting to get to the million and beyond mark. Number 1, it's a little dangerous to focus on just top line growth because a lot of times top line growth is more of a vanity number. And bottom line growth is really, of course, where the important stuff exist. Because I've ran a business that generated a million dollars and netted virtually nothing. And so, that's a major problem. BRUCE: Oh yeah TRAVIS: Right. And so, there's a lot of critical aspects to running that business like you mentioned. But most of them lack the focus. The focus of the client, their ideal avatar, and then making sure that everything they do speaks to that avatar or multiple avatars, ideal people that they serve. And so, without that focus they're all over the place and they're not able to consistently produce profitable business.

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

BRUCE: Yeah. It's very hard in the initial stages because when you set out with a purpose and you set out with ideas on how you want to start a business. But at the same time you have to pay the bills until your business stabilizes. And so, those first 3 or 4 years is when you have to be focused as possible. TRAVIS: Take anything just about. BRUCE: But a lot of people have to end up having to take anything and then they get distracted. TRAVIS: Right, I completely agree. Do you guys use Google, Facebook, paid traffic and things like that to generate a lot of your revenue as well beyond just the free social stuff? BRUCE: Yeah, you mean like pay-per-click and that kind of marketing? TRAVIS: Yeah, exactly. BRUCE: Sure. Because our product specifically, people will go to the internet and search very specific terms and keywords. So, our industries is catered to that. So we've certainly spent-- We get presence all the time from Google, so I think we're a big, large travel customer for Google. But it's a combination of the two things. We do want to get people's eyeballs as their research mode for their travel. And Google is, or online, or-- the web anyway is where people are going. So we have many ways in which to attract people's eyeballs, whether it's viral or social means, or whether it's actually attract through search terms. It's kind of an all-encompassing marketing program. But our goal is to get our products in front of people and give them that option. Because when you say you want to go to Peru or Machu Picchu, there's many different options and many different ways you can see it. We want to just be one of those options that you would consider. TRAVIS: Right. So yeah, I would imagine the majority of your paid traffic comes through Google then, right? BRUCE: Yeah, a big part of it does come to Google, but globally we go through all kind of different ways. And as well with affiliates that attract-- we have literally hundreds of thousands of affiliates that bring traffic to their sites and then on to us. TRAVIS: Right.

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

BRUCE: The way people do business these days, it has changed so dramatically, but it's been motivated by the way people research brands and the way people consume. That's changed. TRAVIS: Yeah. Affiliates is a whole new level of things that a lot of businesses don't even know exist about the affiliate thing, which is really incredible. You know something that is-- I own multiple businesses and Google has been the dominant player for me for years, well, ever since online marketing. And Bing is a far, far second. Bing probably does 10%. But as far as paid traffic, Facebook is starting to eclipse Google for me. BRUCE: Yeah, it's funny, I actually just got some statistics last week about how Facebook can get you-- We have over a million followers on Facebook, which is very large for a travel company of our size especially. And literally in the last 6 months it's gone through the roof. Our engagement is like 40% up, it's the number that I was looking at, 45% up I think from going through Facebook onto finding out about products or booking our products. So, yeah, It's all social. It's funny, even TripAdvisor. TripAdvisor has seen as something that's been so negative for the hotel industry because people only right negatively when they stay at a place. They won't go and put something positive when they have a good experience. But even that's driving the industry. TRAVIS: Yeah, I think the paid part of Facebook, just the organic part for you is always going to be a dream. But the paid, using it the way that it really should be used, there's so many metrics right now that you can pull with Facebook that you can't do with Google. BRUCE: Yeah, I know. TRAVIS: Where you can target very, very specific people. So, the amount of targeting is unbelievable. And Facebook's kind of the sleeping giant for a lot of people. Most people just maybe will promote a post or something, but it's much deeper than that. And so, some really incredible things going on there. Hey, let me ask you, what book or program made an impact on you related to business that you'd recommend and why? BRUCE: I read a lot of books, so there's tons of books that have impacted me. One that stands out in my mind would be Primal Leadership. I don't know that you've heard that book. TRAVIS: No, I haven't. BRUCE: Daniel Goleman. Primal leadership was a big one for me. It's about emotional intelligence, and it's really the rise of a modern leader that has a higher level of emotional

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

intelligence. When you look back at the tradition, the evolution of leadership when you look back in the 80's and 90's of that kind of that Wall Street kind of leadership, with a Braveheart follow me into battle type leadership. Leadership today through the kind of social tools and social evolution that we're kind of all experiencing is leadership is very different. Primal Leadership was way ahead of its time I thought in terms of understanding how emotional intelligence place such an important factor in leadership. And leading people, and getting people to understand what your business is. And following your brand or following your business, whether it's an employer or a customer on how compassion in leadership is such an important part of modern leadership. It's not a new book, it's quite an old book but it was way ahead of its time. I think it's very relevant now to how leadership really works today. TRAVIS: And so, to make sure that I've got this right P-r-i-m-a-l? BRUCE: Yeah. Primal Leadership. TRAVIS: Okay, Primal Leadership, all right. Something that struck me early on in my career as an entrepreneur is someone had made the point, and I don't even remember where it came from but it made sense to me as a leader. And they were talking about that a man would not give his life for a million dollars but he'd give his life for a piece of metal in defending his country. And that speaks to some of the leadership skills that you're talking about. It's being able to lead people in a way to where they'll walk with you through fire. And a lot of people don't understand that. And so, they may try to crack down on someone and they had not built that relationship with that person. And I see a lot of people misunderstand this and therefore can't ever keep anybody working for them. BRUCE: Yeah. When you look at our industry, we have an industry that has a 35% average turnover in the tourism industry for companies in terms of stock retention. We're less than three. TRAVIS: Oh wow. BRUCE: So, that's how you engage your employees isn't very different on how you engage your customers today because they're all intertwined. It's all out there in the social world, right? So understanding people-- Customer service driven companies have always been understanding of the age in where you are everything for the customer. You tell us what you want and we'll supply it. But that now expands to anyone who touches your brand because when you look at the people that drive your business they're equally important as customers. And so when you kind of start blending those two things together is when you created an amazing company that's capable of extraordinary things. And then using social tools as well to Copyright © 2014 The Entrepreneur‟s Radio Show

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

get that out as part of your brand. We often say it, our culture is our brand because people relate to our people and our culture as much as they do our product. TRAVIS: Yeah, great point. Hey, what's one of your favorite tools or pieces of technology that you've recently discovered, if any, it doesn't have to be brand new but new to you, that you'd recommend to other business owners and why? BRUCE: Yeah. I just wrote a book over the course of last year, Looptail, my book. And I typed it on Evernote. And prior to that I've never heard of Evernote but I had an editor that was asking me to link up with him, because I wrote so much of my book on planes, on iPads, on my phone, in customs lines. I literally wrote about 20,000 words in lines on my tapping with one finger on my phone. And it pieced together all of my thoughts. And then my editor could add thoughts, and it links all my devices up together. Evernote has just become-- And so I learned how to use it and it's such a powerful program in terms of organizing your thoughts. Because we all live in a wired world too. We have multi devices and you write things in one place and then they're not in the next. And then you also have executive teams where you kind of share information, share documents, and share pages. Evernote to me is something recently that I've discovered that has been a really powerful app. And as well as app-- not only an app on your phone but it's also a program on your computer. And you can take it everywhere. And another thing is I learned over the course of the last couple of years as well was I talk, and not everyone probably uses this, but the traditional Dictaphone that people used I would say in the old days. I started just recording thoughts. Because your mind is always racing, you constantly have thoughts, and I started using iTalk I guess it was about 3 or 4 years ago actually. Because I just used to just write stuff down, but you'd still miss stuff because you don't always have a pen, you don't always have a paper. And then you lose it and you can't keep track with lots of little notes all over the place. There's stickies everywhere of thoughts. And iTalk is the way you can just speak into your phone anywhere when you have a random thought because I have them all over the place. TRAVIS: I do too. BRUCE: You're walking down the street. But I want to remember it later in context to something else. And Evernote just files all those thoughts based on just by titles and keeps them there forever. And I kind of go through every couple of months and go through past thoughts and make them relevant to what I'm thinking today. I often have read stories about how the Beetles used to write songs and have paper all over their houses, and little recording devices everywhere. So when they thought of it too they could write it down. There's a famous story of

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

Paul McCartney waking up in the middle of the night with Yesterday on his mind. And he actually called it Scrambled Eggs. And he wrote down Scrambled Eggs as the tune as he wrote down. But if they had iTalk, my goodness, who knows how many songs they played. I'm sure they forgot more songs than they wrote. TRAVIS: Exactly. How much more prolific would they have been, right? BRUCE: And I think entrepreneurs do that all the time. People who have active minds forget more than they remember and those ideas get lost. And iTalk, I use it all the time now. And you quite often see me walking down the phone observing something and I put my smartphone close to your mouth just whisper something that I want to remember later. It could be a saying, it could be a unique conversation. I hear someone on a shuttle bus or something, and I just want to remember it to kind of put it in context later to something else I'm doing. And it just kind of harnesses my ideas. And I lose less. And I always thought that too, that I lose more ideas than I actually-- And between Evernote and iTalk, those two things have really harnessed a lot and I'm trying to constantly harness it and utilize my ideas as much as possible. But I constantly lost or forgot them. TRAVIS: Yeah. You and I would belong to the same club because I do the same thing. I'm out for a walk or whatever, and I'm talking into my phone. BRUCE: Yeah. TRAVIS: I'm constantly listening to something and then I-BRUCE: And it can be a just little sound byte and you title it and you have a whole list of them. It was odd for me at first, speaking to myself in a phone, I had to train myself to that because I did think that was kind of odd. But once you start doing it and you start organizing your thoughts it's very powerful. TRAVIS: Yeah, I completely agree with you. Hey, what quote would best summarize your belief or your attitude in business? BRUCE: Probably something about leadership and innovation are probably two big things in terms of for me in business. There's that famous quote about leadership is the art of getting someone else to do what you want done because they want to do it. That's back to that emotional intelligence, that primal leadership that I was telling you about that leadership is about getting people to do what they want to do. And in the end it kind of meets your goals...

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TRAVIS: Right. BRUCE: ...as a business or as a person. But also innovation, like Steve Jobs once said, "Innovation is the difference between a leader and a follower." Because there's lots of companies out there. But the ones that truly put new products in front of people innovate are really the leaders, and what drive our economy forward is really what drives business forward and evolves the way we live. And innovation is clearly that differentiator. And that's really how I think about leadership and business. TRAVIS: Yeah. I think that even ties back to the point that you made about creating a purpose of why your business exists rather than creating a „me too‟ business, innovate, create something that's different, and you'll be able to own your space, right? BRUCE: Yeah. It's cool they focus so much on the product for years. And you have to have a good product. When I talk about these messages, you have to have a great product. But that's the price of admission. That can't be why you exist, right? TRAVIS: Right. BRUCE: Because in the modern world today someone will be able to do it cheaper and faster. TRAVIS: Yeah, good point. BRUCE: And if there's two products that are equal in the eyes of the consumer who looks at two products and might not look as deep but sees two products as equal, the social on will always win. The social one will always be the one that the consumer engages with. So, that old business model of being a master of your craft and having that best product, you have to have that, but it can't be what you hang your shingle on about why you exist anymore. TRAVIS: Great point. BRUCE: The customer wants to engage with customers and if you want repeat customers you want to attract the best people. You want all those things in businesses to have traffic, best customer… you want all those great things they teach in business school. It's not just about the best product anymore. And there's been so many examples of that over and over again. How it goes beyond that, and your purpose drives that engagement to want a customer first to track them to want to purchase, and then purchase again and again, and then tell their friends.

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

TRAVIS: Yeah, great point. Almost all old business models have been obliterated with everything that's going on these days are completely changed. BRUCE: Yeah, I mean, there's examples all around you. One of the greatest ones in recent times is the rise and fall of Blockbuster. TRAVIS: Right. BRUCE: They just didn't innovate fast enough. Blackberry, the famous Canadian story. TRAVIS: Kodak. I was fore by Kodak. BRUCE: Kodak, their leadership position have them believing that they were untouchable. TRAVIS: Right. BRUCE: As I said, this little streaming company Netflix singlehandedly brought down Blockbuster by just thinking and engaging their employees so differently, and engaging their customers so differently. And then there was obviously, the technology solution which people are engaged with. Amazon is another prime example of that. TRAVIS: Yeah. Well you know, Kodak pivoted with Kodak Zi8 handheld video camera. And I thought, "Good for them, they're pivoting. I'm glad to see an old company pivot and try to innovate." And next thing you know apparently they waited too long to innovate and ran out of cash. BRUCE: Yeah. The whole time, they're great that you bring up because the whole time they just thought they were untouchable. They had this belief that people wouldn't move away from their brand, they were just too powerful. Toys 'R' Us is another good example of that. Levi's, I don't know how old you are but when I grew up would you wear any other jeans but Levi's? TRAVIS: No. BRUCE: And they lost their market dominance by being so overconfident and they stopped innovating. TRAVIS: Yeah, being one-dimensional to a certain extent. Yeah, I completely agree you. Hey listen, how do people connect with you? And also, if they wanted to learn more about possibly

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

booking something with you guys, or just finding more out about it, well, what's the links, where do they go? BRUCE: There's all kinds of ways. We're G Adventures, so you can go to gadventures.com. You can communicate with us on Facebook or Twitter. They're all under G Adventures. You can also look at my book. My book was a New York Times Bestseller in the last September. TRAVIS: Excellent. BRUCE: And I have a website for the book, the book is called Looptail, and looptail.com is also for the book but you can also go to on to Amazon or go on to any bookstore. So that's another way in which you engage and learn more about the business. And once you experience our product or read my book, tell your friends, get social.

End of Interview TRAVIS: Excellent, wonderful, thank you very much. Remember that you can find all of the links to the books and the resources mentioned in the show in the show notes, even the transcription. Just go to rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com. Before I close the show today, I'd like for you to think about committing to two things that will help fast forward your success. I mentioned this a while back although I think it's worth repeating again. And the first is find a mastermind where you can be surrounded by the people that have an entrepreneurial mindset. So that you can help eliminate those negative self-limiting thoughts. And also focus on constant, forward, bold progress. Some of the most creative, innovative ideals will come from being around these type of people. Now these people need to be outside your friends and your family circle, does that make sense? The second is find a mentor that's already achieved what you've dreamed of and see if that person will personally mentor you and your business. So that you can quickly navigate your way to that next level and beyond. Trust me, it will cut years and years off of your journey if you're willing to do those two things. So, one last thing before I close the show today I want to share a quote with you from Denis Waitley, and the quote reads, "Happiness cannot be travelled to, owned, earned, or worn, it's the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude." This is Travis Lane Jenkins signing off for now. To your incredible success my friend, take care.

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

How We Can Help You We know that finding someone that you can trust online today is hard and that so many “so called gurus” are self-‐appointed and have never really even done what they teach you to do. That‟s exactly why we created the Double Your Profits Business Accelerator. This is an exclusive offer for our fans at a fraction of its normal cost. Here's what to expect. We'll Schedule a 'One on One' private session, where we'll take the time to dive deep into your business and tell you what is missing, so that you can have your best year ever! We'll do this by performing a S.W.O.T. Analysis. This tells us your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats within your business. This will be an eye opener for YOU, for several reasons, however some of the most common reasons are. As the 'Business Owner' it‟s difficult to see the big picture of your own business because you‟re in the middle of a daily management. And you are too emotionally involved to completely impartial. This is a common problem for EVERY business owner. It doesn‟t matter if you are a one-man army, or an army of 150, the problem is still the same. Travis Lane Jenkins Business Mentor-Turn Around Specialist Radio Host of The Entrepreneurs Radio Show “Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs That Grow Your Business"

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