Rhino Monthly Magazine - March 2018

Volume VI • Number 3 • March 2018 • $97

GENIUS

IS MAKING THE COMPLEX SIMPLE

THE POWER

OF FOUR WORDS

HOW DO I FEAR THEE?

LET ME COUNT THE WAYS…

expert interview with

Brandon Barnum

KING OF REFERRALS

March 2018

ABOUT STEVE

About the Publisher, Steve Sipress If you want to grow your business slowly – or just maintain it as is, you’ll have to do that all on your own.

www.SteveSipress.com

But if you want dramatic growth in your income and lifestyle, then Steve’s out-of-the-box and time-tested strategies and tactics could be the keys to your dreams, as they have been for thousands of other small business owners and entrepreneurs over the past 35+ years.

www.Facebook.com/SmallBizHelp

www.25Kin25.com

www.Linkedin.com/in/SteveSipress www.Twitter.com/SteveSipress

You can benefit from Steve’s coaching experience and expertise to revolutionize your business by booking your very own world-famous, one-on-one, Guaranteed $25K In 25 Minutes Strategy Session by putting in your request at: www.25Kin25.com. *Steve gets far more requests for these life-changing sessions than he can fulfill, so make sure that you mention Rhino Monthly Magazine when you request your session.

Steve is a successful and award-winning serial entrepreneur, who has created and built nearly a dozen successful companies of his own, and he can help you do the same – more quickly and easily than you’ve ever imagined. In fact, you can immediately use plenty of his simple and powerful strategies and tactics that work especially well in this current emerging economy.

You can discover the basics of Steve’s powerful “The WOW! Strategy™: How To Solve All Of Your Sales And Marketing Problems” by watching a short video at www.SteveSipress.com.

Steve is a celebrated author, speaker and business coach who has established profitable businesses and helped thousands of ambitious and aggressive business owners, entrepreneurs, executives and sales professionals all around the world. He has written numerous newsletters and articles on sales and marketing for a wide range of publications and has appeared on radio and television, helping millions of people along the way.

For over five years, Steve was the #1 “Dan Kennedy Certified No B.S. Business Advisor,” and was Runner-Up out of 25,000 members for 2010 GKIC Marketer Of The Year.

If you want the very best, hard-hitting, no-nonsense, caring advice and help you can get, then “Straight-Talk Steve” could be exactly what you and your business need most.

Whether you’re a current or future business superstar, Steve can help you get exactly where you want to go as quickly, easily and powerfully as YOU want – with massive results both short-term and long-term.

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When we first started, I was terribly in debt and we were just a few months away from bankruptcy. We started seeing a boost right away in our business, we took what Steve’s given me and we just started implementing and implementing, and it’s just totally transformed my business.

Steve has helped me with my laser focus, he helps me implement, he’s taken my business to a whole new level. We went from a half a million dollars to a million dollars in two years. It’s just an incredible experience to know that where you think you’re just dead and things are horrible, to now anything is possible. I can see taking this to a whole new three or four types of businesses -- it’s going to be huge.

Steve is all business, he is an unbelievably smart, brilliant man. I can’t say enough about him. Everything he’s told me, I’ve made so much money it doesn’t matter what it costs. They don’t make enough money in this world that somebody could pay me so I would stop listening to Steve.

Steve is the exact reason why I have a retirement fund now. It’s probably illegal how much fun I’m having!”

Jon Bockman

Owner, Bockman’s Auto Care Sycamore, Illinois

GENIUS Is Making T he Complex Simple

By Steve Sipress Doesn’t it drive you crazy when people try to make themselves sound smart by using big words and complicated sentences when they don’t have to?

It should, because that is actually the exact way NOT to sound smart.

Don’t just take my word for it. One of the world’s all-time geniuses, Leonardo Da Vinci, said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Albert Einstein put it this way: “Wisdom is making the complex simple – not making simple ideas complex.”

I’ve been helping business owners and entrepreneurs with their marketing and their advertising for almost my entire adult life, and I see way too much of so-called experts constantly over-complicating everything. I have always taken it upon myself to do the opposite – to make the complex simple. www.SteveSipress.com I RHINO MONTHLY

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March 2018

GENIUS IS MAKING THE COMPLEX SIMPLE

That why I founded The WOW! Strategy™, which is a very simple concept, and the solution to ALL advertising and marketing frustration and problems for business owners and entrepreneurs. Just those three letters – W O W – are all any business owner needs to get results.

Unfortunately, the world is full of charlatans who like to make things overly complex, so they can constantly sell new shiny objects and/or charge outrageously high fees to confused and overwhelmed business owners.

Do you really think your role as the leader of your business is to have to keep up with all of the neverending changes with every single social media site, or to watch dozens of videos to learn how to use the latest, greatest piece of software, or to learn how to become a master copywriter and ad designer?

Of course not. Your role is to cast the vision for your business, and then get the right team of people to plan effective strategies and implement everything you need done for you and your business to grow and prosper.

I’ve focused on making the complex simple in my own businesses for over 30 years, and I’ve helped thousands of other business owners do the same. It’s a great feeling to help hard-working business owners breathe a sigh of relief and take a big weight off of their shoulders, get their time back, reduce their stress, and start to enjoy running their businesses more than ever before.

Perhaps most important of all, it’s great to help business owners keep more of their hard-earned money in their own bank accounts, instead of constantly overpaying for overly-complicated solutions to their problems that are simply not necessary.

You deserve simple solutions that work and that you can understand, so you always know when they’re working and when they’re not. Don’t fall for the tricksters who want to fool you into giving them your money by over-complicating things.

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PERHAPS MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL, IT’S GREAT TO HELP BUSINESS OWNERS KEEP MORE OF THEIR HARD-EARNED MONEY IN THEIR OWN BANK ACCOUNTS, INSTEAD OF CONSTANTLY OVERPAYING FOR OVERLYCOMPLICATED SOLUTIONS TO THEIR PROBLEMS THAT ARE SIMPLY NOT NECESSARY.

As the world continues to grow more and more complex, it’s more important than ever that you take the right steps and get help from the right people to keep things simple and effective.

To find out more about Steve Sipress and how he can help you have more fun and make more money with your business, see the Inside Cover Page.

To get new moneymaking strategies and tips from Steve and other top business-building experts from around the world, go to:

RhinoDaily.com or LessonsLearnedFromDonaldTrump.com

MANNY’S BLOG

March 2018

How Do I Fear Thee?

Let Me Count the Ways…

Do you have any phobias?

Sure you do. An irrational fear or two is part of being a welladjusted individual, and all my readers are highly intelligent, extremely rational, perfectly normal people who get their advice from a blogging dog, so...

Me? I don’t have many of the garden variety phobias like fear of spiders, fear of small spaces, fear of public speaking, or fear of heights. I do have cynophobia (fear of dogs) with an asterisk; I’m afraid of encountering dogs who are cuter than I am.

I don’t even have vehophobia (the fear of driving). Even though I’ve seen the “Toonces the Driving Cat” cautionary tales on “Saturday Night Live,” I think I could handle getting behind the steering wheel if necessity demanded it. (My dense friend Chauncey is less confident with motor vehicles. He thinks “Lyft” has something to do with using the rest room.)

I mostly have more obscure phobias, like the one where you’re deathly afraid that someone else in the family will yell, “Shotgun!” first and get to hang their head out the front passenger window. That’s called “stagecoachfright.”

No, honestly, I don’t know the technical name for that debilitating fear. I wish I could identify all my nonstandard phobias by their appropriate names, but phobia names are always based on Latin and I don’t speak Latin. It’s a dead language. And I don’t mean dead in the good way. You know, it’s not exactly like you can roll around in “Veni vidi vici.” Here are some of my more amusing phobias: fear that artifact-collecting Indiana Jones will come 1. The out of retirement and dig up my collection of bones in the back yard.

fear that some hard-nosed disciplinarian at Purina will 2. The rename Alpo’s Come & Get It dog food as Sit There And Think About What You’ve Done.

fear that I’ll travel south of the equator and 3. The embarrass myself by chasing my tail in the wrong direction.

fear that those meddling geniuses at General Motors 4. The will come up with a self-fetching stick and put me out of business.

fear that the FDIC will impose heavy penalties for 5. The withdrawals from garbage cans. fear that I will get in trouble with some of my hot6. The tempered friends because I’m given a T-shirt that says, “I’m With Rabid.”

fear that some joker will replace my dog tag with one 7. The that says, “Kick Me.” fear that if the Mexican border wall gets built, it will be 8. The equipped with screeching alley cats all along the length of it.

There are a lot of different therapies available to me, but I’m most intrigued by hypnosis.

“You are getting sleepy. Your eyelids are getting heavy… heavy…”

Oh, no! That leads up to a whole different fear … the fear that even my eyelids can force me to go on another doggone diet!

Oh well, back to the drawing board – except that brings up my fear of being blamed for the “Number Two” pencil! *Sigh*

Manny (full name Emanuel or “Dog With Us”) brought non-stop joy, affection, and energy into the lives of Steve and Michele Sipress for over 13 years. He also shared his wit, humor and insights with readers here every month.

Thankfully, as he got on in years and knew that his time on this Earth was growing short, he poured himself into his writing, leaving many, many columns behind, so that his fans can have the continued pleasure of being entertained and enlightened by him for a long time to come. He is no longer physically with us, but his memory lives on…

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expert interview with

Brandon Barnum KING OF REFERRALS Steve Sipress: Brandon Barnum, what a fantastic pleasure it is to have you here on The Rhino Daily Podcast!

Brandon Barnum: It’s my pleasure.

Thanks for the invitation!

Steve: So many people just love referrals. I say that with a little caveat, because I do know one person who says, “I never take referrals, because they expect too much, and they complain too much, and if I have a problem with them, then I lose my other customer who referred them, and blah, blah, blah. I say,

“Whatever, dude. People love referrals!”

So it’s fantastic to have you on here, because you are the President of Refer. com. First of all, how’d you get such an awesome URL: Refer.com?

Brandon: I wish I could tell you the story, but because of an NDA [NonDisclosure Agreement], I’m not allowed to. [laughter] Let me just say that we acquired it, and it was a hefty price to pay.

Steve: Love it! So you could tell me, but you’d have to kill me. Okay. [laughter]

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Then I will move on. And I’ll get right into it, just assuming that everyone loves to get loads of referrals, and I know that you teach something called Referral Partner Blueprint. Now we only have you for a few days here on The Rhino Daily Podcast, but if you could massively condense the teaching, and at least get us started with that, I just think that would be awesome. Can we do that?

Brandon: Yeah! Let me start, we’ll see where we go. The first thing that people need to understand is that most business, especially for

EXPERT INTERVIEW

individual professionals – that’s who we serve primarily, is the attorneys, accountants, mortgage professionals, realtors, painters, plumbers – all of those individual professionals, who get most of their business by word of mouth recommendations… Some have fantastic marketing programs, and that’s awesome, but there’s a lot of research that shows referrals are the way to do business. In fact, Harvard came out with a study last year, saying 84% of B2B sales start with a referral. 84%. So if you’re in the B2B world, you gotta be working by referral.

One of the reasons it’s so effective is that other research shows 90% of people trust recommendations from people they know. People are four times more likely to buy from you when they’re referred. So I get your outlier’s concerns, but for the mass majority of the professionals out there, their business comes by referral. They just don’t have a system in place to generate those referrals consistently.

Steve: You really hit that nail on the head. I’ve tried to get that through to my clients and prospects for years.

People love referrals, and if you’ve been in business for any length of time and you’re not getting referrals, there’s usually something wrong. You do a lot of marketing and advertising and stuff to ramp up, but once you get going, it’s kind of a barometer of the success of your business, of the quality of the product or service that you provide, that you are now pretty much all word of mouth. And yet people tell me, when I ask them, “What’s your system for referrals?” I just get the deer-in-the-headlights.

meetings, where they come home with a stack of business cards, but really are any of those their ideal targets, their ideal prospects? And then a lot of grunt work with all of the follow-up. So for the most part, most business owners I know just skip the whole thing and don’t even do it.

Brandon: Yeah. It makes sense, right? If you’re going out there to meet strangers, then you’re going to meet a bunch of strangers. We’re all for networking, and it’s a great way to meet your ideal target, whether that’s your prospects or your prospective referral partners, so long as you do it intelligently and with a plan of action in place. And most people don’t.

They just show up, have a cocktail, meet some random people, and they don’t have a strategy.

One of the biggest tips I’ll give your listeners right now: If you’re going to a networking event, be crystal clear on who you want to target, who you want to meet and connect with at an event, and then let the organizer know. Ask them if there are any… Let’s say it’s a CPA that you’re looking to connect with, or an estate planning attorney, ask them if they know of any that are part of the organization or coming to the event, and

March 2018

then get them to make the introduction for you. That way, you’ve already got implied trust right from the get-go. So that’s one simple tip.

Steve: A pure gold nugget right there, folks! If you need to press the rewind, you ought to go back, listen to that, write it down word for word. I get all kinds of people telling me, “Oh, I want referrals,” but they don’t know how to get them.

And you’re speaking my language with The WOW! Strategy™ – the first “W” stands for the “WHO” – you gotta know WHO you want to do business with you before you do anything else. So that was a great piece of advice, and I can see why your Referral Partner Blueprint is helping so many people.

Brandon: It’s massive, and we love it.

In fact, at Refer.com now we are the World’s Largest Referral Network, with almost five million business owners and professionals as our members.

So I just love it. That’s my job as President and Chief Referral Officer, is just empowering and impacting professionals every day.

Steve: And isn’t it true, or am I wrong here, that the more connections you

Brandon: [laughter] Yes! Totally true!

Most people don’t have any system, so I think they rub the magic genie lamp and just hope and pray and wish that referrals are just going to magically come to them. And sometimes they do.

Steve: Well, they do a lot of grunt work.

They just incessantly go to networking

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March 2018

EXPERT INTERVIEW

People are four times more likely to buy from you when they’re referred. So I get your outlier’s concerns, but for the mass majority of the professionals out there, their business comes by referral.

have, the more likely it is that you’re going to find the right, ideal referrals?

Brandon: There’s no doubt about it, and especially when you A-S-K to G-E-T. Steve: Is there a three-year-old in the room here? Wait. What did I miss? [laughter] Brandon: You know, Steve, this was a lesson given to me by my mentor, Mark Victor Hansen, Chicken Soup For The Soul author. When I met him back in 2004, that was one of those lessons that he taught me early on, that I said, “You know what? I’m going to do exactly what he’s teaching me.” And, in fact, that’s the reason I asked him to be my mentor.

At the time, it was one of the scariest things, because here I am asking this guy who sold 500 million books if he would personally mentor me. But he did.

Because I asked.

came out on May 31, 2005 – three days after my intended goal.

and educational guests to your members.

So it’s awesome.

Steve: Ah! You missed the goal! What’s the matter with you? [laughter] I have that book somewhere here. Now I have to go get it, and read about Brandon Barnum right there in the book! Who knew?

Steve: I appreciate that, and you’re of course buttering me up like crazy on my own podcast. But we’re not here today to talk about me. I appreciate that. Here it’s all about you. So tell me… We’ve pretty much come to the end of today.

We’ll have to take what we’ve gotten today, which is some golden nuggets from Brandon Barnum. We got started with the Referral Partner Blueprint.

Can we go on with the second part of it tomorrow?

Brandon: And I’ll tell you what, Steve.

That’s one of the other things that we teach, is the power of authority. That’s why I really love what you’re doing, because you put yourself in that position of authority by being that thought leader, that teacher, that’s bringing entertaining

Steve: Great story! I have to tell you that Mark Victor Hansen, every time I’ve spoken with him, he speaks so fast, and his brain goes a million miles a minute, I couldn’t even understand or remember anything he said later. So good for you to remember it, and to take action on it.

Brandon: Well, I took everything that he taught and just tried to put it into the core of my being. One of the other things that he challenged me to do is to get really clear on all of the things that I wanted to do in my life. So a week after meeting him, I was over in Hawaii with my wife, I wrote out 365 different goals, very specific things that I wanted to accomplish, with a target achievement date, and one of those things is that I wanted Mark Victor Hansen to write about me in a book by May 28, 2005. A couple of months after that, he calls me up one day and says, “Hey. Robert Allen and I are writing a follow-up to The One Minute Millionaire called Cracking The Millionaire Code. Would you mind if we wrote about you in the book? That book

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Brandon: Please. Let’s do it.

Brandon Barnum is the President and Chief Referral Officer at Refer.com, the World’s Largest Referral Network with nearly five million business owners and professionals in over 200 countries. Over the past 23 years, Brandon has mastered the art and science of referrals and has dedicated himself to helping business owners and professionals achieve breakthroughs by applying his Referral Partner Blueprint – the very same strategies he used to increase his personal income by 10 times when he was a single dad back in his twenties.

Since then, Brandon has generated over $500 million in referred transactions, and has been featured on NBC, CBS, ABC, and Fox, as well as the best-selling book Cracking The Millionaire Code by Robert Allen and Mark Victor Hansen. Brandon has created partnerships with numerous global organizations, including Prudential Real Estate and ActionCOACH, along with influencers that reach over 80 million people and generate over two billion impressions.

Get your beautiful, personalized Referral Card for free by going to: Refer.com

Steve Sipress The WOW Strategy™ Creator

To find out if The WOW! Strategy™ Results Group could be right for you, go to:

www.SteveSipress.com/results

Jon Bockman Sycamore, IL

“Steve is all business. He is an unbelievably smart, brilliant, brilliant man. I can't say enough about him. Steve has put probably more, I would say, thousands, and thousands, and thousands of dollars... I mean, I probably can't even put a true figure on it, because it keeps coming back, and keeps coming back, just more and more money all the time.”

“One suggestion that Steve gave me, well, without question, put $300,000 more in my bank account. And we are going to be using it forever. This is not a one-time deal. We’re going to be using this idea that Steve helped us with... and we’ll be using it until it doesn't keep working like it is. And so, the value over time could literally be way over even the $300,000 number.”

Mary Forte Bensenville, IL

Keith Lee Seattle, WA

“He's helped me learn how to market my business, and today I can say that we're more successful than we've ever been… I needed to learn how to market the business better to create more revenue, and that's what Steve has helped me with. The financial difference is considerable. We've probably close to doubled our revenues. We're on track now to do another close to $500,000 more than we did last year. So that's awesome. I do owe all of that to Steve.”

THE POWER Of Four Words

By Neil Kristianson This post has nothing to do with email...and everything to do with life.

My wife Jennine and I stayed up until 3:30 this morning watching the U.S. play the gold medal match in curling. I love curling. It’s my favorite winter Olympic sport.

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If you know anything about the U.S. team, you know we suck.

Dead last in 2014. Second to last in 2010. This year and both of those years, we’ve had the same skip

THE POWER OF FOUR WORDS

(captain), John Shuster. He’s been sooooo bad in the Olympics that he got benched mid-tournament in 2014 and his name has become a verb in curling circles. To “Shu” = to choke, to not live up to your potential.

March 2018

His journey reminds me of so many people I’ve met in life who suddenly believed they could and everything changed.

The power of believing four words:

“I HAVE A CHOICE.”

Ouch!

This year he started out the same old Shu. We were 2 and 4 after our first six games. Almost dead last again. But then things changed.

On February 19th, John says he woke up and said, “You know what? I have a choice. A choice to rewrite my story.”

From that moment on, he was a completely different person.

A different leader. The first few games they were rudderless.

Bickering and arguing. But John stepped it up and took control.

They never lost another game.

Including the gold medal game against Sweden, the number one team in the world.

It all ended with a high-pressure shot that John made. He didn’t choke. In fact, he was kind of smiling as he made the throw.

His journey reminds me of so many people I’ve met in life who suddenly believed they could and everything changed.

Neil Kristianson built his remodeling business from struggling to super-success by putting automated systems to work. He sold that business, and now he helps other business owners navigate the details of setting up their own systems, specializing in automated email marketing, so they can experience their own similar success stories.

Get Neil’s Triple Loop Autoresponder email series for free by going to:

RhinoDaily.com/email

The power of believing four words: “I have a choice.”

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RHINO MONTHLY Volume VI Number 3 | March 2018

CONTENTS:

1

Genius Is Making The Complex Simple

3

How Do I Fear Thee?

Let Me Count the Ways…

By Steve Sipress

www.SteveSipress.com/magazine

8

The Power Of Four Words

By Neil Kris�anson

Manny’s Blog

4

INTERVIEW WITH

Brandon Barnum King Of Referrals

Publisher Steve Sipress Successful Selling Systems, Inc. 20701 N Sco�sdale Rd Ste 107-509 Sco�sdale AZ 85255 (p) 773-236-8134 (f ) 847-232-1535 Ques�ons? Comments? Sugges�ons?

w w w.AskSteveSipress.com

Layout & Design Bobbie Miltcheva www.33graffics.com

Publisher’s No�ce: Copyright 2018 Successful Selling Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduc�on of any part of this work beyond that permi�ed by Sec�on 107 or 108 of the 1976 U.S. Copyright Act without permission of the copyright owner is unlawful. Neither the author nor the publisher make any express or implied warran�es concerning the legal or ethical appropriateness of any of the marke�ng documents, materials or instruc�ons in or enclosed with the magazine and/or your use of the same. If in doubt about the appropriateness or legality of any materials or instruc�ons, you should obtain competent guidance, just as you would with any marke�ng documents, materials or marke�ng plans you have develop ed or would develop on your own. In the interests of disclosure, we want to b e op en ab out how we may, from time to time, make money from this mag azine.

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