Using Relationships To Grow Your Business 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 122: Simon T. Bailey

Using Relationships to Grow Your Business In this episode, Travis interviews Simon T. Bailey. Simon is a successful entrepreneur, author, and CEO of Brilliance Institute, Inc. Through hard work, perseverance and creating key relationships, Simon became one of the most trusted and sought out business leader in the industry today. His speaking engagements and books has been a vital tool for millions of individuals that he has reached all over the world. Travis and Simon share their knowledge and expertise in this interview as they talked about various concepts and practices that contributed to their success today. Through integrity and building longlasting relationships, Simon was able to jump-start his business and make it successful in just a short amount of time. He also shared the key moments that shifted his business such as learning to share opportunities with other entrepreneurs, nurturing personal and family relationships, and never taking things personally when it comes to business. These insights and so 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 122 of the Entrepreneur's Radio Show, a production of rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com. Today I'm going to introduce you Simon T. Bailey. Now, Simon is a brilliant man on many levels. On top of being a complete blast to spend some time with. Before we get started, I want to say a quick thank you to Phil Olsen from the UK for writing a review on iTunes and given us a 5-star rating. In the review, he said this was a first business entrepreneur podcast that I've listened to and any others now have a lot to live up to. Fantastic show. He especially enjoyed a specific episode that he's referring to. He highly recommends. Phil, thank you my friend for the great feedback and taking the time to write the review. Just as a reminder in case you don't know, writing a review does help us reach more entrepreneurs just like yourself. So if you have time and you do find value in the show, go ahead and leave us a review at iTunes or Stitcher and let me know how we're doing. And then of course I'll read your review and thank you on air. One last thing, before we get started, there's three easy ways to take these interviews with you on the go while you're driving or working out, which is iTunes, Android, or Stitcher. Just go to rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com, look right there on the menu, and all three of those are on the menu for you to click on, take you directly to the show. You won't have to look them up or anything. So,

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

now that we've got all that stuff out of the way let's go ahead and get down to business, what do you say? Without further ado welcome to the show Simon. SIMON: Hey, glad to be with you. TRAVIS: Yeah, I'm super excited. Hey, do you mind giving us kind of-- you've got an interesting backstory, do you mind sharing that back-story with us? SIMON: Yeah. I grew up in Buffalo, New York. Go Bills, this could be the year. Sorry, had to get that plugin for Buffalo. TRAVIS: Don't worry, I'll edit that out. No, I'm just kidding. SIMON: So I grew up Buffalo, went to school in Atlanta, my parents called me after my freshman year in college. They said, "We don't have the money to send you back for your sophomore year, nor do we have money to bring you back home to Buffalo but we do love you." So, I dropped out of school, moved into a drug-infested community though I was not on drugs. It was all I could afford at the time. I got a job at a hotel making $5.10 an hour. You know the story. I eventually did go back to the school. It was on the 10-year plan. It took me 10 years to finish my undergrad and graduate degree. And then eventually got on with Disney, and decided to leave Disney to go out on my own about well over 11 years ago. TRAVIS: Nice. SIMON: It's been a fun journey. TRAVIS: Yeah, and you had a pretty successful career at Disney so what possessed you to leave a successful career and venture out onto your own? That's kind of a dangerous move, right? SIMON: So, the back-story is I got a call one day from a journalist from Florida Business Trend Magazine. And whenever you worked at Disney, Mickey Mouse rule number 1 is you never talk to the media unless authorized. Well I wasn't authorized but I decided to talk to the guy. So he said to me, "Where do you see yourself 10-15 years from now?" I said, "I see myself as the President and CEO of the Walt Disney World Resort. And eventually the Chairman and CEO of the Walt Disney Company," and he puts it in print. TRAVIS: Did that get you in trouble? SIMON: Dude, did it get me in trouble? Man, my boss calls me in the office, because the article comes out, page 12 Florida Business Trend Magazine, and in fact you can still Google it to this day. And my boss calls me in the office he's like, "Dude, what were you thinking when you did this interview?" And I said, "Larry, I work at this company whose motto is, 'If your heart is in your dreams no request is so extreme. Copyright © 2012, 2013 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

But when you wish upon a star it makes no difference who you are,'" but obviously it does here. And Travis, it's funny today but it wasn’t that funny back then. TRAVIS: It's much funnier now, right? SIMON: Oh my goodness. So I got a call from one of the senior vice presidents who reported directly to the President. And the senior VP was my mentor, sponsor, the guy that really looked up for me. And he's like, "Dude, you're about to be toast. Do you need me to go to the President on you?" And I was like, "No, I'll be fine." And so, human resources showed up about an hour later asking to sign a piece of paper that went into my personal file. And they didn't fire me right away that day, but let's just say I heard the footsteps coming about a year later. And I thought it was to try my best interest to leave on my own accord. TRAVIS: That stinks, because like you said if that's their motto, and they run a really great business. They're incredible for customer service and stuff, so that surprises me. SIMON: Yeah, I think it was just some of the senior leadership at that time that I reported up to that was a little bit miffed. TRAVIS: Right. So tell me about the transition. How smooth was it for you going from the corporate world to eating what you kill manner of speaking? It's kind of a dangerous thing because you're obviously making pretty decent money here. How do you make that transition and how long before it became a successful venture for you? SIMON: So, the transition actually was not bad, because what I realized I had started creating my exit strategy as soon as everything happened. So about a year out I started working on the strategy of like, "Okay, I got to do something. And I floated a resume out on the street. I got four job offers and turned them all down, because what I decided to do is make a list of relationships that I had built over about a 15 to 18-year period. And I had a list of about 75 names. And so, when I hung out my shingle February 1, 2003, I just started dialing, and say, "Hey, here's what I'm doing now. I can do consulting, training." And I didn't make it past name 25 before the phone started ringing. So it took about 6 months for me to kind of get on my feet. And I told my wife. I said, "Hey, we got 2 years to make a go of this." And within 6 months we were off and running. And it was probably the best decision I ever made to become an entrepreneur and to go out on my own. TRAVIS: Oh, it's fulfilling on a whole new level, isn't it? SIMON: Totally. Because for us there was no plan B, it had to work.

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

TRAVIS: Right. What I like about this story, and what I perceive from my side is not only did you have the hustle and the foresight to plan this out. But also, I think a lot of that quick transition was based on more than likely the integrity and the relationships that you'd built in the past. And people knew that you could be trusted and that you were an asset, right? Is that a fair analysis? SIMON: Yeah, totally. And people believed in my brand. TRAVIS: Right. And so, it's very easy to hire someone when they believe in you and they know that things are going to get done, even if it's a new venture and it's a little shaky starting out. If the person is highly trusted, then that puts all of those fears and the common concerns that prevent sales to rest, right? SIMON: Totally. And you know what's interesting, you say that because I realize it even now, relationships are the currency of the future. I would not be able to do what I'm doing now if I didn't have relationships in place. TRAVIS: Right. Yeah, and we're in an interesting time to where there's an opportunity for a thousand Oprah's instead of one Oprah's or one Howard Stern, or whatever your thing is. With technology and with everything that's going on, there's an opportunity for so many sub niches these days now that you really can build a following and some incredible relationships. And the more relationships you have, the more financial success you normally tend to have. SIMON: Yeah, totally agree with you. TRAVIS: Kind of a hand in hand thing. SIMON: I totally agree with that. TRAVIS: So, take me through the transition beyond once you get things up and running, how do you scale the business and what were kind of the turning points for you that made the business successful at a higher level? SIMON: Yeah, what I clearly realize that there's only so many days on the calendar that I could be on the road speaking. So what we quickly-- And this is something that I learned at Disney. People were coming to Disney Institute where I was the sales director because of the content. So what I realize is I needed to take a book, hire an instructional designer who had a master's degree in instructional design, and we took the book and blew it out into a half day, full day curriculum. And then, we had to go and find trainers who we could teach our methodology, and we had an opportunity come up within the first year with me being in business from a hospital that wanted me to help them with their patient satisfaction training. And so, we literally went in and got a 3-year contract with them all because I quickly realize if

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

we were going to scale we need to have 3 to 5 trainers on the bench that could help us do that while I was out working on other rain making activities. TRAVIS: I like that. And so, you're focused on bringing in business and you've got a team or you're building out a team that's delivering the goods. And so, it eliminates kind of that vicious cycle when you're just making money speaking. Is that right? SIMON: Yeah, correct. And we did that for a number of years, and then we did a rinse and repeat. We had another client showed up and because we kept ownership of our intellectual property, we were able to repurpose it for another client. And for about 5 years straight we had consulting deals lined up. And I was able to use the consultancy examples of what we were doing real-time as case studies in a lot of the keynote speaking that I was doing. And then the book just became a business card. And obviously we've written seven books since then. But what I realized along the way that the books were just a value add, just another revenue stream that we would sell into whatever we were doing. TRAVIS: Clever. What you're explaining from my perception is a sales funnel. SIMON: Yeah, totally. TRAVIS: And it's really kind of a sales funnel before the vernacular of a sales funnel came along. And so, who is your audience that you were selling to? It sounds like you have several different groups that you were selling to. SIMON: Yes. So, health care, banking-- banking, finance was a huge area for us. Hospitality industry believe it or not was another area just because of my 20 years of experience working for Disney and different hotel chains. Those were kind of like our 3 buckets that we played in. And that was very, very lucrative for us. TRAVIS: And so, what were you teaching them? SIMON: So, they would bring us in to, number 1 do customer service training from literally the C suite all the way down to the frontline. Depending on the size of the organization. And then after we did the customer service piece what we quickly realized is a lot of times companies want to implement customer service but where everything kind of falls apart is leadership is not brought into it. So we step back and say before we do anything we have to get by with leadership. So we started doing leadership training, then we went into team training, then we got to the customer piece. So we move the customer piece to the end because we have to make sure leadership and their team were all on the same page. TRAVIS: I like that. And I've had first-hand experience to where the customer service and the leadership are not bought in on the same thing and it's a nightmare, right?

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

SIMON: It is. TRAVIS: It's two people speaking two different languages. And I've seen it in a multiple of situations even when soft words being implemented into a business to try and improve customer relationships. And the customer service team doesn't want to make the change, right? Yet they don't come out and say that they don't want the change, they just do things to sabotage or scaling it up. SIMON: You know it well, that's it. And you spend all your time chasing your tail, trying to get everybody on the same page. TRAVIS: Right. Even down to griping, to cajoling, to threatening, to fire-- And you've got to go to the core of it and get down to what the real issues are and try to get everybody on the same page. And it's really kind of a frustrating process unless you have somebody that understands how to get around those issues. SIMON: You know, this is about 10 years ago and I was working with this one consulting client. And this is way before undercover boss. And I actually went undercover and worked in the hospital behind the scenes and just to kind of get a feel for the culture. And so, one day, I was just back in the area working and somebody said, "Well, you know if they want anything they just go crying to daddy, and daddy gives them whatever they want." And I was like, “whose daddy?" And he was like, "You know, daddy's the president of the hospital." So I had to meet with the president on Monday and I just gave the feedback and I was like, "You're daddy, and whoever screamed so loud just get what they want. You got to shut that down. That cannot work. Close the adult day care center." And he was shocked, but he knew it was true. TRAVIS: Right. And a lot of times-- now I'm speaking from my personal experience. Unfortunately in my own business when we just built our business into this big monster where the some of the key people were the ones that decided that they were not going to let these changes happen. Although they wouldn't tell anybody that. Yet, when meetings were over they were immediately undermining everything that was going on. It was frustrating, it drove me crazy. And the corporate world and building a business that ends up becoming very corporate mindset is a complete different animal from growing a small business. We've reached a level to where we had-- We were a construction company in this specific industry and we had more people in the office than we had out of the office for a construction company. And just so the corporate posturing and things that happen is incredible. SIMON: Amazing. TRAVIS: Yeah. And so, I guess it just takes someone with your experience and level of understanding to know how to navigate these things. When you say training the leadership and customer service training,

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

how is it? I get the training and getting everyone on the same page. Can you go deeper and talk about how you actually manage to get people on the same page? SIMON: Yeah, so the first thing when you start with leaders every leader, he or she has their own agenda as to what they want to do, how they want to make their mark. So it's really understanding how they're wired, number 1. Number 2, once you understand where they're trying to go you then have to say how do you intend to get there and what do you need, what's missing, how do we ensure that they have emotional intelligence. Because you're going to have really bright leaders but they're emotionally clueless as to how do they connect with their team that really drive the results that they want. So you really have to spend a lot of time in getting into their head to understand their mindset. Then the third thing leaders at that executive level is then say, "Okay, here's what's in it for you." Because if they know how it's going to benefit them then they're all on-board. And helping them understand how it benefits them ties to performance, ties to obviously a bonus if they're bonus-driven. But also ties into what's on the CEO mind and what's going to make them look good in front of that CEO. So it kind of becomes almost like reverse psychology where you're helping them understand how to accomplish something as if it's their idea. And it's really influencing them in such a way where it doesn't come off contrived, it doesn't come off disingenuous, but it comes off as "here's what's going to help you be successful in this culture. And here's why we need for you to really step up because everybody's looking to you for leadership." And then once we kind of get those things understood, we then have to work through how is this leader in doing and relationship with their peer leaders. Because you may have operations totally bought in but they may not like the person in marketing, or supply chain, or customer service. So you got to make sure they're all cohesively speaking the same language and they really want to support one another. And then finally, you then say, "Okay, here's how we would like to take it to your team, what do you think is the best way to disseminate this information?" So you have some leaders that will say, "I want to take my top 3 to 5 lieutenants, or my key lieutenant or my key champions who really have my mindset and I'd like for you to now spend some time with them. Telling them here's what it is, here's where it's going." And what we generally do, we say, "Okay, we're not going to do it. We're going to have you stand up in front of them and you tell them why this is important to you." Because if I'm just the outside consultant say, "Hey, here's where true north is", people are like, "Yeah, whatever. What does my leader say?" So then we kind of script that leader and give them the talking points. They can put it into their own vernacular to share it with their lieutenant. And then we say to their lieutenant, "How do we roll this out to your team? What does it look like?" And then all of a sudden what we discovered where people have input they take ownership of. And now that they've had input into what this piece looks like we then go forward to the next lay-in. And those are the people who are closest to the customer.

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

TRAVIS: Right. I've seen a really interesting study where they had these group of people, and they've done it with really large numbers of people where they had them build some little, small trinket-y thing that was really kind of insignificant. But virtually everyone kept it because they created it. SIMON: Exactly. TRAVIS: And to the outside person they would see it, they would maybe think about throwing it away but the people that created it coveted it and they carried it with them. SIMON: Right. TRAVIS: And that's a lot of the psychology of what you're talking about here, right? SIMON: Totally. TRAVIS: Now, what was your method for getting down to the core and figuring out what the leader or what the key people's motivations were? SIMON: Well, first of all, to find out their learning style. Secondly, find out their appreciation language, how do they like to be recognized. And then the third thing is to celebrate what they did right and coached what they did wrong. And focusing on just those three things really helps drive it into the organization and builds out the culture. TRAVIS: Oh, that's brilliant. Those three things are worth the price of admission of this whole interview here is getting tactical ways to getting to the core of what makes someone tick. That's really brilliant. SIMON: Exactly. TRAVIS: Looking back, and over the trajectory. Because everything makes perfect sense in reverse, right? What were the pivoting moments that really sent you and your business on the trajectory that you are now. That maybe you believe were the defining moments of your business so that people could take and convey those lessons into their own situation. SIMON: Yeah. I think there are three defining moments. Number 1, I got rejected by 13 New York publishers and LA publishers when I came out with my book. And I kind of took it personally, but then I kind of just let it go. And I realize that if I was going to get bigger I had to get better. So, I focused on getting better in the writing, better in delivery, better in whatever we were executing with customers. And as we got better all of a sudden an opportunity presented itself where I was introduced to one relationship that connected me with all the publishers in the world. And now I came in because the person who introduced me had the leverage and the power. And they introduced me as the person that they believed and everybody fell in line and said, "What do we need to do to get me a deal?" So what I Copyright © 2012, 2013 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

realized is you never take things personal, it's always about business, and how do you get better. That was probably one of the pivotal moments in business for me. The second one, there's a guy named Joel Novak who is a mentor to me. He's a former investment banker from Wall Street, did deals between a billion and $2 billion. Harvard MBA, Columbia law grad, Special Ops in the Marines, and he's 75 years of age, great guy, and he took me under his wing. And one of the things he constantly drilled in my head. He said, "Did I ever tell you about the Harvard case study? And a famous case study." I'm like, "No, tell me about it." And he says, "You know why the railroad industry never really dominated all of the industry?" And I said, "No, why did they miss it?" He said, "Because they saw themselves in the railroad business. Thus when the airline industry came along. The airline industry saw themselves in the transportation business. So he says, "You have to look at your business and don't see yourself in the motivational speaking business, you're in the content distribution business and how you think about positioning, what you do every day, every way, everywhere." And that little trigger sees myself a content producer and not just being segmented was just an interesting moment. And then probably the third thing that really became the opportunity for us, we have been talking with Microsoft for many years and had a relationship with them that even dates back some 20 years ago with a particular person. And we kept in contact with this person. And just over a 20-year period, holiday cards, birthday cards, text messages here and there. And all of a sudden we got a call from them within the last 6 months and they said, "Listen, we're having our Microsoft worldwide partners conference, 12,000 of our best customers from 136 nations. We would like for you to come and be one of our key individuals that shares your expertise on an emerging leadership." And we met, and that one opportunity has now opened up several opportunities globally. We got connected to some other people in technology space. And one of the ideas that came out of that was how do we begin to look at what we offer in a micro content format and digitize it, and begin to leverage different platforms. And the thing about perseverance, and you never know what a relationship would lead to. Those would be 3 moments that I believe have kind of shifted our business. TRAVIS: Oh, I love those. You know, I like the fact that you're candid about taking it personal. Again, there's this perception with a lot of people that have yet to have the level of success that they want to believe that everybody else that has achieved that level of success has not gone through some of those things. It's hard not to take some things personal when you've poured your heart and soul in it, right? SIMON: Totally. And especially when my wife and I have invested almost a half a million dollars back into our business over a 10-year period. And we're kind of like, "What in the world?" And then, we just had to take it on the chin, suck it up, what have we learned, and move on. TRAVIS: Yeah, And I've had days where I didn't deliver to the level that I wanted and it just hit me so hard that I just had to go to sleep. I was taking it so hard that I needed to just curl up in a ball and lick my wounds for a little while, you know. And the next day brought new things to me. But what I love so

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

much about that is you use that as an opportunity to get better. You got real with yourself. And you said, "Man, I'm going to get better." And I've gone through that same cycle where I've poured my heart and soul on something and I'm not getting the results I want. And it's just killing you. And you've got to turn it on yourself and say, "What am I not doing right?" and commit to getting better. That's a wonderful thing. Wow, those three things. The changing the way that you look at things as far as a content provider, I've gone through that same evolution myself to where-- I'm a content provider, and for me I don't need to monetize everything. For me it's about just reaching and helping as many people, and I know that the same thing is true for you. And what happens is, is there's a form of serendipity that happens and it's happened in your story that you've explained to where you end up getting connected with incredible people like this man that is your mentor, that has shared these things. That's what happens when you constantly give, teach, and all of these things, great things start happening in ways that you could've never graphed out on a piece of paper. SIMON: I so believe that. You know why? One of the things we started doing is we now have clients that say we dealt with 5 years ago. And they'll call us back to bring us in for some other work. And now, we give it away to other people who maybe have not been doing what we've been doing as long, or have. And we just refer on to them. We just had a call last week to be a part of a huge 8-figure RFP. And in my heart of hearts I said, "You know what, this is not our lane, this is not our area of brilliance." And I told the person who is the main contractor, I said, "Here are 2 subcontractors that I know will do an amazing job for you. And I can't tell you how good it felt to make that introduction, to let it go, and to not worry if they're going to send me some on the backend, it was never about that. It was about what goes around comes around. And it just felt good to give it away, to refer it on, instead of trying to say, "Okay, how can I do this, how can I scale it?" I was like, no, that's not our lane, and it's okay. TRAVIS: Yeah. Good things come from that. And I know that to a lot of people that seems cliché or hokey, but it really does happen. You just need to be prolific and you need to just give it without any conditions. And it comes back your way, it's just a matter of time. But I think the key part of this is being prolific about it, right? SIMON: Totally. TRAVIS: Hey, what book or program made an impact on you related to business that you'd recommend and why would you recommend it? SIMON: Wow. So, the book I really want people to get a hold of is a book called Practically Radical, and it's by Bill Taylor. Bill Taylor is the co-founder of Fast Company Magazine. But what he did with Practically Radical, one of the statement he makes is that people can look at their industry and they sometimes see it the way they've always done it. But it's businesses that sees something totally different that become the game-changer in the industry. Copyright © 2012, 2013 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

TRAVIS: Right. SIMON: And he introduces this term called vuja dé, which is seeing things for the first time. And it's phenomenal, great book. TRAVIS: I like it. I've never heard of that. I'm going to definitely add that to my list. And so, vuja dé, that's kind of the reverse of dé javu right? SIMON: Yeah. And he talks about vuja dé in his book, Practically Radical. TRAVIS: Very cool. What's one of your favorite tools or pieces of technology that you've recently discovered, if any, and it doesn't have to be anything new but something new to you, that you'd recommend to other business owners and why? SIMON: I highly recommend mobilebizacademy.com. And the best way to describe it, it's an iTunes for business leaders, small businesses who are saying, "How do we get great content and an 8 to 10-minute format where you have world-class teachers on the edge of where things are going." So for instance they've got Dr. Jennifer Kahnweiler who teaches introverted leadership. Not every leader's an extrovert. So as an introverted leader how do you think about that? And she just walks you through, here are the how-to steps, mobilebizacademy.com. TRAVIS: Very cool. And now all of that is relegated to 10 minutes you say? SIMON: Yeah, no more than 10 minutes, and it's an audio interview, kind of like what we're doing. And it's kind of like a give and take. So you'll have like, "Oh my god, this is a person just talking--" No, it's an audio interview where she's being interviewed and ask questions, she's just in the moment. And then, what's cool about it, they have a 5-page PDF that you can download where you can go deeper into the content. TRAVIS: Very cool. What quote would best summarize your belief or your attitude in business? SIMON: Failure is not final, failure is only feedback. And feedback is the breakfast of champions. TRAVIS: Amen to that. How old are you Simon? SIMON: Forty-five, forty-six in a couple of weeks. TRAVIS: Wow, I'm 48 so I got you beat. SIMON: Yeah, right. We come from an era when failure was a bad thing, right?

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TRAVIS: Oh, totally. Failure meant you were an idiot, failure meant that you were less than. And failure now is just test mode, right? You're testing, testing and refining. SIMON: Yeah, totally. I was interviewing a guy for my last book, and his name is William Lazarus, and he has a motto where he teaches in his company, "Make mistakes faster. Fail faster. Let's get through it and move on." I thought that was so cool. They even give out a failure award. Because he wants to encourage people to get out on the edge and try something. TRAVIS: Right. It's not that bad. Making little failures here and there, there's a couple that can be brutal. But boy, the lessons-- I didn't become a really great business owner or entrepreneur until I had my butt kicked super hard. I was this boy wonder for the first 10, 15 years of business and really had some incredible successes. But I've become a real rock star entrepreneur once I had my rear handed to me and thought that my life was over. And had to completely build it back. I was lucky enough to build it all back in 18 months. And then I realized that I do have some superpowers, but I gained those through going through the fire. SIMON: Wow. TRAVIS: One final thing, do you have any special superpowers that you can share with us? SIMON: You know what my superpower is, is realizing that I've got to build my life around who will be crying at my funeral, and for me that's family. The man that I am today is because the woman who stood beside me, sometimes in front of me, who believe in this crazy journey. And our kids who at the time when I started Daniel was 4, Madison was 18 months. Daniel is now 15, Madison's 12. And I realized that that's where my power lies. A happy home I believe creates a happy business. That if you're really effective at home you can be effective in business. Now you have some people who dispel that because you have a lot of people who've been billionaires and have built big businesses, and they've gone to 3 or 4 divorces. I'm not trying to judge anybody, but I know as it relates for me is just having that family unit intact works for me. TRAVIS: Yeah, I completely agree with you. Hey, how do people connect with you? SIMON: Shiftyourbrilliance.com, all of our information is there.

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

End of Interview TRAVIS: Excellent, wonderful, thank you very much. Remember that you can find all the links to the books and resources mentioned in the show, even a transcription in the show notes, just go to rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com. Before I close the show today my quote comes from me, and the quote reads, "Don't be afraid to stand for what you believe in even if that means standing alone." 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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