Brand message is always critical to any product or service, thereby, delivering it the right way is necessary for optimal business growth. Today, Scott Carson talks to Aaron Young, The Unshackled Owner podcast host and the big head honcho at Laughlin Associates. Aaron explains how personal relations and connections matter when building a business. From the simplest of handshakes to one-on-one interviews, he shows us how building relationships brings the biggest impact to your name. Join Scott and Aaron as they dive deeper into the importance of consistency in communication and delivering your message in a clear and influential manner.

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Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

Growing Your Business Via Handshakes With Aaron Young

I am always honored and always excited to have our guest. His companies are not only a sponsor of the podcast, but he’s a brother from another mother that we absolutely love hanging out with. He’s one of our favorite people to spend time with, whether it’s here or in person or at a conference or hanging out, having fun and talking life and business and all those stuff. It’s our good friend, Aaron Young, The Unshackled Owner Podcast host and the big head honcho over at Laughlin Associates up there who’s been helping entrepreneurs for 40–plus years by putting together their books and helping them create entities and doing asset protection, all that amazing stuff. If you’re an entrepreneur, which I know you are here at Note Nation, whether you’re listening on iTunes or all the ways that you read to podcasts or those out in our nationwide network of syndicated radio stations across the country. We are honored that you’re here, Aaron, and absolutely excited to talk about what we’re going to talk about.

It’s always fun to be on this show. It’s because we both do a lot of interviews. We both interview other people and we’re interviewed. When I’m with you, it’s like being in the family room a little bit. It’s hanging out with my buddy and it always ends up being a much more relaxed, fun conversation. With you and me, we never know where it’s going to go.

That’s the thing that we get feedback from our audience. I was in San Diego and we had an ex-LPGA professional who was at a podcast, an event that I was at and she’s like, “I read your show. I loved reading about Aaron Young. He was amazing and I was blown away.” I went back and actually read all the other episodes he was on. She even did a little video testimonial about you in the podcast and I sent it to you, then she went online and left a nice five–star review talking about you and it’s fun. That brings a lot of life out of these episodes is when you know the people you’re talking to, you can ask questions that are not only going to have a bigger impact. It’s the question beyond the question. We all get probably the same questions when we’re being interviewed on other podcasts and things like that.

For the audience, a lot of shows whether it’s terrestrial, radio, if it’s TV or if it’s a lot of podcasts, they want to know what questions do you want to be asked. They’re saying, “We’ve only got a short time. We want to promote you. You lead us by the hand.” I can do that but then that’s a commercial. That’s not the same as having a conversation that will hopefully benefit the actual audience and not just me. We’ve been around 40-plus years, 48 years with Laughlin. I’ve been buying and selling companies 36 years. We know that the way that we grow our businesses is by making something valuable for the audience rather than aggrandizing ourselves. It’s got to be something useful for them. I know what we’re going to talk about is something that a lot of people struggle with. Hopefully, we’ll inspire somebody to make a difference. If they’ll do what we’re going to talk about, their life will change.

Aaron and I, we’ve spent a couple of days in Orlando for the Mass Media Mastermind, which was awesome hanging out and having dinner and fellowship and talking business and life too. We were talking about what we are going to discuss. One of the big things is people get excited about their product, their service, their business. They’re their biggest cheerleader. You always have a habit of saying you may be the biggest fan, I know your business, but if nobody’s going to buy your business or tie into what you’re doing, you don’t have a viable solution to making money. Can we agree to that, Aaron?

Yes. You’ve probably heard me say this. People are always asking me because we’ve had some good luck. Over the decades, we’ve succeeded more than we failed. Bill says, “What’s the secret? What makes a business successful?” I always say, first thing is let’s make sure somebody actually wants what you want to sell. A lot of people spend an inordinate amount of time and money trying to force feed some product or service or book or podcast or whatever down the throats of the market, the community. They go, “I’m so passionate about it.” As a matter of fact, there’s a big software company called SAP. SAP has asked me to write a series of articles. The second article I am submitting to them is called Chase Your Profits, Not Your Passion.

People say, “I’m passionate about this. This changed my life and I want to change other people’s lives.” I’m like, “I’m glad you’ve had a life-changing, life-transforming experience.” Whether it was something horrible like the death or divorce or an illness or something great, you learned a new thing or you found a new diet or you learned to do exercise. Whatever it is, it doesn’t mean anybody else gives a rip. When you try to force it and nobody responds, you should go, “Maybe because I liked it doesn’t mean there’s a big crowd of people with their money in their hands waiting to give it to me.” I believe to get passionate about what you’re doing, no matter what it is, figuring out how what you’re doing that actually makes money is helping other people get passionate about that. Out of your abundance, you can pursue the things you’re passionate about.

No truer words were spoken. 

Long answer and true story.

In our business society, this goes for whether you’re a real estate investor, you’re an entrepreneur and stuff like that because we’ve got a lot of obviously note investors and real estate people here. A lot of people that are coming into doing their own thing from the workforce and things like that, they think about putting something together and launching something but they don’t have success because they rely maybe on a social media, they rely too much on one thing like, “I had the best pizza in town. I don’t need to market because I had the best pizza in town.” If nobody’s showing up to eat your pizza or showing up and then knocking on your door, you don’t have a business. That’s what we were talking a little bit before, some of the things that people can do to really help them drive their business and go from there. 

Let’s go to that. I said to my wife, I put up a video that I thought had some good points. I was trying to give people something useful to think about. There were 30 likes but only one comment. I said to her, “If I put a picture of one of the grandkids and a goat up on Facebook, I’ll get 900 likes. If I say something that’s actually not salesy but business related, useful content, not cute but useful, you get crickets.” Anybody that believes they’re going to explode their business by posting things on Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn, I’m not saying it won’t give you greater exposure to people but that’s not a linear track to success. Use social media to be top of mind, use social media the same way you would use a billboard along the freeway where people don’t need a lawyer that minute. They don’t need to go to the game that minute. They don’t need to come to the sale that minute. You’re making them aware of it.

That’s the way they use social media, top of mind awareness. It’s not going to drive a ton of sales. This young generation right now don’t want to pick up a phone. They don’t want to go out the door. They want to do everything in the safety of their cell phone. They wonder why they have either no success, marginal success or flash in the pan success. It happens but it doesn’t endure. You were mentioning before we started something you’ve been doing locally that you hadn’t been doing before, but that’s making a difference.

Going back to what you’re talking about, going and meeting people and obviously talking with people, whether it is talking with people. Actually having a conversation, not a text message, not on social media, but actually getting on the phone and talking with somebody or a Zoom call or meeting somebody for coffee is still one of the most valuable things that you can do.

 

Leaving the building.

Leaving the building, maybe going to an event where people are at and actually shaking hands. I’ve been traveling that much. I am headed out to speak in Atlanta. The thing I love doing is I’m here in Austin. I love this city. There’s so much great to do. I have virtually zero footprint of connections here. I’ve no network here in Austin because for the last 5, 6, 7 years, it’s always been across the country. I wanted to build a better network here locally. One of the things that I’ve been doing outside is I want to deal with serious entrepreneurs and people that are very serious about their business. People that are going to invest in their business because they’re likely to become a client of ours or invest with us or do something with us.

I was like, “Who do I need to talk to?” I started thinking back to that. There are a lot of these different meetup groups. I don’t want to go to a meetup group for the most part. I talked about this in earlier episode about how BNI, Business Network International has been really good. I jumped on the website and I pulled up 40-plus groups here in Austin that meet in the mornings or for lunches, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursdays and occasionally some on Friday. I’ve been getting my butt out of bed, rolling out at 7:00, fighting traffic and living in Austin, which is this worst middle-sized city in the country for traffic.

It’s pretty bad traffic.

Luckily, there’s a lot of group around me here that are a 10, 15-minute drive but some have been an hour. The beautiful thing is I have made over 300 connections in the last few weeks. I’ve gone to 3 to 4 group meetings that have anywhere from 20 to 60 people at it and going and networking a little bit early, pressing palms, getting business cards, but doing one more powerful thing is a follow-up with people. Using social media or some of the tools to follow up with people. The beautiful thing is they give you the roster. People go, “I get business cards.” If you’re a guest, you grab a business card but most of these groups, 90% of these groups give you a placemat with a person’s name, their business, their focus, their phone number and their email about 75% of the time.

Could they make it any easier?

Exactly. What’s sad is I’ve gone and I’ve handed out plenty of business cards. I’ve got people from the groups who have responded to my email because I’ll send out a personalized email. I actually took a little bit of time to film a short one-minute video or a two-minute video and I use that as, “It was great meeting you at a BNI meeting.” If I don’t have an email address, I go through my text messaging service instead of a bulk text message but it looks like it’s personalized to them because I took the time to input their first and last name. It can be personal. It’s led to fifteen meetings of people wanting to come in and meet or jump on the phone or talk business. Other people aren’t doing that and I’m seeing other guests that got my card but I’m not getting phone calls or follow-up or anything and it’s sad.

I’ve got a drawer back behind me here. I have a guy that I know from high school who takes old teachers’ desks and mix them into these little nightstand things. I’ve got this thing, I always think I look like I’ve got my school teacher desk behind me because of the drawers. Anyway, I’ve got one of those drawers back there full of cards all over my desk, stacks of cards and mostly a very poor follow-up. We do put them in to an email database. We do send lightweight stuff out to that group to see if we can get them to come join in a deeper way. It’s very ineffective without the personal touch. My dad, Richard Young, was a sales guy for a trucking company. My dad’s going to be 80 here. These companies are no longer in business. For many years all the time I’m growing up, he worked for two different companies, Transcon Truck Lines and PIE, Pacific Intermountain Express, but it’s said PIE. That’s what I remembered. It was the PIE truck.

My dad was a sales guy for them for his entire career of 40 years. He said to me a million times, there’s no replacement. There’s no alternative or there’s nothing that will do as well as getting out and meeting the people. You said going out to these BNI things, you can meet people and shake hands. In his case, he had to go knock doors and meet the terminal manager, “Who’s in charge of shipping and who do I take out to lunch?” You had to build a personal relationship. That’s back in the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s but we say it now people work with those that they know, like and trust. The way that you get to know, like and trust another person is to be with them, to break bread with them, to have a cup of coffee or a lunch with them. That’s how you do it.

I have somebody that joined my group. You know this group, Scott, the Inner Circle. This woman joined the Inner Circle and she had written a book. She had a good corporate career. She’s now pushing 60, single, trying to figure out how to stay relevant, stay fresh, go out and do something entrepreneurial. She called me one day and she said, “I don’t know, Aaron. I’m beside myself. I’ve done everything that the gurus have told me to do. I’ve written a book. I’ve gone to all these events, I’ve hired a coach, I’ve done all these things, but I have no revenue.” I said, “How many prospective clients are you talking to each day?” She said, “None. I don’t have any prospects.” I said, “How many targets are you out there trying to talk to, to make them a prospect?” She goes, “What do you mean?” I said, “You have to talk to people.” She goes, “Where would I talk to them?” I said, “Do you ever go to the grocery store?” She does make-overs to help you dress for success, mostly women. Change your hair, your make up, your clothes to fit your personal brand so that you show up like somebody important showed up in the room.

She goes, “No, I’ve never talked to somebody in the grocery store line, the bank or wherever. Sometimes I don’t even leave the house during the day.” I said, “How about if you did this? You go out, you always look sharp when you go out. What if you were talking to somebody or you saw them, you said, ‘I love your shoes. Where did you get those shoes? Your hair is amazing. Who cuts your hair?’” Whatever is true, ask a question and start the conversation and say, “This is what I do for a living. I know what I’m talking about when I say that color is perfect for you. Good for you. Who helped you do that? What I do is I help people make sure that everything in their wardrobe gets them noticed every time. I have a free thing you can download. Would you be interested in that? Let me get your card. I’ll send it to you.” I said, “All you have to do is start doing it.” She goes, “I’d be too afraid.”

We rehearsed the words and I said, “I want you to talk to ten unique people live every day.” “I don’t even leave the house.” “You have to leave the house then.” What happened was she started selling her product because she talked to people, because she complimented them, because she sent them something useful and free. They’re like, “That’s cool.” “Maybe if you talk to 30 people, one of them will buy your $5,000 full meal deal. Can you live on $5,000 a month?” “Yes, I can.” “If you talk to ten people a day and you talk to 50 people a week, you talk to 200 people a month and out of that 200, you get six people to pay you $5,000, now you’re successful.” You’ve got to go see people.

One of the things that I love the best, Aaron, is you are a master of this. You and I go places together. One of the most interesting stories that I want to share is we were in Disneyland. We jumped on the Monorail. You started talking to this family, a mother and her daughter both wearing ears and something on their shirt. I remember you struck up a conversation with those two people and that has developed into something over a couple of years because you stayed in contact. You started off by asking what they were doing. I don’t want to take any more of the thunder. I’m letting let you tell the story.

 

That’s an interesting story that you would bring that up. It’s sweet because she and I messaged on Facebook. You invited me to come speak at something. It was there at Disney, we went to that candlelight processional. You and I were walking together. We went to line up in this enormous line for that thing that Whoopi Goldberg hosted. You were leading all of your participants, but I was standing with you. You turned backwards to talk to the guests. I looked to the person in front of me who is this nice woman in her twenties and her mom. We started visiting and they were Disney nuts like me. She had graduated from Duke University and was working for Abercrombie & Fitch and wasn’t happy in the way her career was going. We started talking and then when the line started to move 40 minutes later, that was the end of it. We didn’t see each other again. The next night at the Magic Kingdom, at 1:00 in the morning after shopping and closing the park down, we’re down on the monorail. Here’s the weird thing. Fate is freaking weird. We got on the monorail, you, me and Steph and it smelled really bad and somebody left a dirty diaper in that car. We got out and went to the next car and there was nobody in the car.

You, me Steph, a father, mother and this 27-year-old daughter, the woman and the daughter that we’d met the night before at a different park, what are the odds of ending up in the same monorail car at a different park, at 1:00 AM on a different day? Those are unbelievable odds. I’d given the daughter a lot of career suggestions. The dad said to me after we landed at the Polynesian and we’re walking out, he grabbed me and pulled me back. I thought he was going to reprimand me for being a 53-year-old man, talking to his 24-year-old single daughter. Instead, what he said was, “I’ve always told my kids to be open, be friendly, have conversations with people. You never know who you’re going to meet. We googled you the next day after my wife and daughter met you and found out that you own these companies, that you do all these things that we do. We’re blown away. I want to thank you as a dad because you provided proof to my daughter that the advice I’d given her all these years could introduce her to somebody who could help in her career.”

We started texting and emailing after that and she quit her job at Abercrombie and she applied for a new job out here. They were back East and they applied up in Seattle and she got a job at Nordstrom as a buyer. We stayed in touch and then she invited me to her wedding. She sent me a text and said, “We bought land to buy a house.” She sent me a picture and said, “Look at our new puppy.” The point is she’s kept me informed at every part of her life and asked for counsel on every part of her career since the day we stood in line at Epcot. It’s become this cross-country friendship with a very interesting girl who’s married to an interesting guy who’s in a senior job at Amazon. She’s a senior person at Nordstrom and doing things and taking risks. She decided that she was a good Pilates person. I said, “Why don’t you teach classes?” She said, “I just like to do it.” I said, “Would you like to earn some extra money?” She goes, “I would like to teach.” She’s now teaching multiple classes a week at a place near her home. These are little things where your life can be altered by a chance meeting if you open your mouth.

I was thinking of a story when I was a young kid on a recruiting trip in high school, this has been a relationship. It’s now been twenty-plus years recruiting trip to East Texas State University when they recruited me to play football there back in the day. I go there, if there’s a game going on, I’m talking, I’m sitting on the sidelines, I’m talking to people. There’s this older guy, short little guy talking there and we get to talk about football. I asked him, “Did you use to play?” He said, “I played here back years ago when you were probably born, it was the year ‘77. Where are you from?” I go, “I’m from Corpus Christi, Texas.” He’s like, “If you ever get out of school and need a job, I run Durham Transportation,” which is this nationwide school busing company all across the country. “If you ever need a job, feel free to reach out to me.” A year goes by, I still could touch base with him. I reached out for him. He immediately called me back. He’s like, “If you go in tomorrow and talk to this guy, they have a job waiting for you.” They totally created a whole job for me.

That paid for a year of school. I thanked him, kept in touch with him. When I transferred universities, we stayed in touch. He sent me a graduation gift when I graduated college back in 2001. We still communicate every once in a while via social. He’s getting a little older but he’s been a guy that I reach to every once in a while to talk with. He’s like, “If you’re getting tired of what you’re doing, I’d love to bring you on board.” I’m like, “I don’t think you can afford me.” Anyway, that all comes from conversations and that’s what I want people out there to think about. It’s all about getting yourself up and actually opening your mouth and telling people what you do and then listening to them, communicating and then spreading the network one person at a time, a lot of times.

The second part to that is have something worthwhile to say. You and I meet a lot of people and especially as speakers, people perceive us as being potential affiliate partners with. They’d like us to invest in something they’re doing or whatever. You have a certain image and people come to you for things. A lot of times when I meet somebody for the first time, they’ll kick into all this buzzy conversation. They’re using all these cool buzzwords to describe what they’re doing, what the industry is. Usually, the more complicated and sophisticated that the words they use, the descriptions they give, the more I think, “They probably don’t have any money. They’re probably starting up, they’re probably broke.” Why? The wealthiest people that I’ve ever met can describe in kindergarten-level words very quickly exactly what they do.

I met a guy at a very small private, conference in Palm Springs one time and he and I sat together and ate lunch. He had a personal net worth of little over $2 billion, but his company was worth over $20 billion. He was a guy probably in his 70s, big guy, big man, kind of a John Wayne dude. I said to him, “I know the story that you told earlier, but if we’re meeting right now, here’s my question. How did you become so successful?” He said, “I made braces that didn’t hurt people’s teeth.” How simple is that? “I was an orthodontist and I learned how to make braces that didn’t hurt people’s teeth. I’m the number one provider of braces in the world.” He’s personally worth over $2 billion. Another guy, a billionaire said, “I graduated from UCLA and borrowed some money from my dad to build an apartment complex. Ever since then, I’ve built about 300,000 units and that’s how I became a billionaire.” That’s simple. If you get complicated, people go fuzzy and they quit listening. Is that true?

It’s totally true. It’s the whole KISS Method. Actually, our number one downloaded episode here is the KISS method: Keep It Simple, Stupid. I talk with people all the time, they’re way up here. I’m like, “No offense, you need to talk to where most of your audience is.” They’re like, “I have to lower my intelligence. They’re stupid.” I’m like, “You’re not going to have any clients. You can keep talking above people and be broke or you can simplify it down and talking layman’s where people are going to understand your services and then go and make money that way.” The thing is people get over-complicated and stuff like that. When I was a banker, I was one of the top bankers with Chase Bank because I was able to simplify services out and we would get new financial advisors that roll into and they would go into this pitch with my clients, my account holders about the PE ratios and all this stuff. People gloss over and I literally stopped presentations. I got written up for this one time like, “No offense, you need to go ahead and leave because you’re confusing my client. A confused mind is a no mind.” 

They’re always going to say no.

You want to get that message crystal clear. You want to share what you’re doing. More importantly, ask questions of the other people. I’m always a big believer that if you come from a servant leadership, ask what people are doing. If they are great people, they’re going to turn around and ask you what you do. 

Always, if you show interest in them and they’re the person you want to work with, they will reciprocate by asking about you. People like to hear the sound of their own voice. People like to talk about themselves if you can get it out of them. Not everybody is like me. If you put a nickel in me, I’ll keep going. Most people like you to ask them questions and they will answer. It’s very critical to keep it simple and to make it always about them. Not, “Here’s what I can do for you, but what is it you want? We have an answer for that. Do you want to earn more interest? Here, we have this. Do you want greater access to your money? We have this different thing. Do you need to have a line of credit to do this? We have several kinds. Do you want it secured or unsecured? You want bigger or smaller?”

If you ask questions, they’ll walk themselves right into what you have to sell as long as it’s going to be valuable for them. The last thing we want to do is sell something to a person and they don’t end up wanting it because then they’re going to say negative things. They’re going to want their money back. They become a headache. We want to give people what they need, not more, not less, just serve them in an honest way and then they’ll stay our client forever. I love the definition. One of the definitions in Webster’s Dictionary under client says, “The client is one who is under the protection of another.” My job isn’t to get everything I can out of my client. My job is to protect my client. If I protect them and help them get to where they want to go, they will be delighted to give me a tip. They’re going to say, “Thank you very much.” They’re going to reward me with money and with word of mouth. You struggle to get that in any meaningful way in a digital format.

That’s the thing that I see popping up. It’s the sell or buy. That’s why I think the power of Gary Vaynerchuk’s book years ago, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, comes in so handy because you’ve got to give and ask questions before you expect to get. The thing is I would like to try to refer people out as best as I can like, “You’d be a great fit here for this person. Let’s connect the two of you guys together. You need to talk to this person. Let’s connect you with this together because there’s some corresponding or cross-referencing businesses that can help each other and stuff like that.” In turn, people then get back to us because we’re able to help them out and expand their business and do other things.

 

They see that you’re concerned about them. This is made famous in the original Miracle On 34th Street when the Santa Claus starts referring the people at Macy’s to Gimbels, their main competitor, “The price is better on that toy at Gimbels. You should go buy it there.” The marketing department freaked out. Mr. Macy said, “This is perfect. We’re being honest with the customer. Now, we can redo our pricing.” If we put our customer’s ads out and say, “Yes we have it, but you might be able to save a little bit if you go to the neighbor.” You then take away the doubt, you take away the, “I wonder if it’s cheaper at Gimbels. Maybe I’ll go check there before I buy at Macy’s.” If you’d let them know, maybe they’ll go to somebody else or maybe they’ll go, “This person has been honest with me. They’ve considered my needs over their own. That’s who I want to work with. That’s who I want to be with. I trust them now. I know, like and trust them and I’m going to do more with that individual.”

We pride ourselves at Laughlin Associates on selling. We don’t want to undersell and leave them not protected, but we also don’t want to oversell and then have them wonder, “Why am I paying for all this stuff for? What is all this do?” I want my customers to have exactly the right thing, no more, no less, exactly what they need for this moment in their business. As they grow or shrink, we will adjust appropriately. If we give them what they need, there’s a reason our renewals rub right up against 90% year-after-year. The reason is because the customer knows why they have what they have. They’re using what they have and they know what the next steps are if they hit new milestones. That’s how you take good care of people. You give them an honest information, honest service, you talk to them. We have a high tech. There’s a way we can service tens of thousands of clients. We had this conversation in a meeting. We talked about, “Here are the actual experiences we’re having with clients. This is how often we’re actually getting on the phone. This is how often we’re actually doing a deep dive into providing services for them. Why don’t we change the program to fit what’s actually happening?”

I said, “It’s great if we say this is our preferred protocol.” If we all of a sudden stop making the phone calls to the clients every month, if we stop sending the monthly questionnaires, if we stop having a regular, predictable and not spread out by three months, which can be a lifetime as long as we keep the high touch, I’m okay with relying on our technology to do more of the heavy lifting. As soon as we go away from high touch and depend only on technology, we will see our renewal rates fall into the toilet. People, even if they’re busy, we want them to know we’re here when you’re ready. They’ve already bought. We’re not selling, we’re serving now. I want them to know we’re here whenever you need us. We’re ready.

That’s a beautiful thing, it’s the high touch aspect of following up with what Debbie and the whole team there does on a regular basis, “What’s going on in your business? Let’s help you make sure. We need the disclosure there to make sure your books are up to date.” We had the Magnify Your Wealth in San Diego. You’ve got 125 or 130 people come into it. That’s the beauty of your event out there that you host twice a year for those interested. It’s that high touch of being able to communicate and touch base with all the other professionals, the accountants, the attorneys, the estate planners, the CEOs, CFOs and the investment guys as well too, to see what the options are for you. Also to make sure that people do the right thing and aren’t putting more on their plate or more than what they need to protect themselves. I have seen firsthand witness of people coming in to the event who think they need this huge entity set up and stuff like that. It’s like, “You don’t need that right now. That’s overkill. Let’s work you into that but let’s protect where you’re at now and then build something out.” You don’t need an atom bomb, you just need a flyswatter.

Thank you for saying that because it would be disingenuous if I said it. It’s a big deal in our culture to figure out what somebody needs. The reason we do what we do at that event and the reason we limit the number of people who can come is because we know that business owners may go casually talk to a lawyer about something, then six weeks later or three months later, they are in a conversation with maybe an accountant or a financial planner. Later, they’re talking to Scott Carson about non-performing debt. Later, they’re talking to somebody else about Facebook ads. They’re getting all these little dribbles of information but there’s no context. There’s no holistic way of putting a plan together.

We thought if we could bring all the legal accounting, financial, investment, a little bit of personal development, a little coaching, podcasting, all these things. We have Tracy Hazzard who is going to be talking about podcasting. I’ve also got a multi New York Times bestselling author who is the branding specialist for Entrepreneur Magazine. She’s going to come and talk for fifteen minutes about understanding and creating a personal brand so that you are showing up in a way that makes sense to the world. In addition to C-Corp versus LLC and corporate compliance and how to grow a company that is bigger than you and how to invest in oil and gas or non-performing debt or turnkey real estate or self-directing your IRA or domestic and international trust foundations, employee stock option trust.

We talk about all stuff. If I say all those words, your audience has already zoned me out because they’re like, “I don’t know what that stuff is.” When you’re in one place and you hear it in a logical way and then you sit down privately with multiple experts and put together a plan, that’s the ultimate meeting, the people getting to know them, reading and then helping provide precisely what they want, not what you’re trying to say, “One size fits all, run to the back of the room and buy my program.” This is saying, “Let’s tailor-make the exact right thing for you.” We only do it twice a year in that format in San Diego at Magnify Your Wealth Summit. We do it every day at the office where we get the right people on the phone and get a plan built. I’m going to have something cool to explain how I’m trying to throw jet fuel on what we’ve been doing great for 48 years, how we’re going to expand and enrich the experience. I can’t tell yet. It’s a big secret.

The beautiful thing is that you’ve got some expansion plans and some great stuff that are great for people and that’s why I wanted to bring you on monthly. We’re glad to have gone monthly as long as you want to be coming on monthly. It’s definitely a good thing because it’s a valuable asset besides the nuts and bolts of note investing as the business side of things, the foundation side of things. We always talk about how if you want to begin with the end in mind or where you want to grow, you still got to put a good foundation in place. For those of you that are reading that maybe don’t have an entity or are looking to start something, a great resource that we’ve never talked about is the Laughlin USA YouTube channel that Aaron has done a great job of filming a ton of videos, a ton of intro stuff on, to entities and things like that. It’s a great place to learn. As he said, not one size fits all. Everybody’s got their own custom thing, but take an opportunity to go there. There are tons of great videos with ton of views. Subscribe. We helped Aaron grow that from 444 subscribers to over 500 subscribers.

That’s a personal challenge because I know a lot of people need to see what Aaron is sharing there and you’ll understand, not only hearing him in all of these podcasts he’s been on with me once a month, but also seeing that he’s truly got a big heart to help you succeed. He has done a great job teaching that. There’s a lot of confusion out there about what people think they need, what will work for them, a DBA versus an LLC or an S-Corp, all that stuff. There is much great stuff on the YouTube channel. It’s Laughlin USA is the YouTube channel, check it out. Also please do yourself a favor and check out the Unshackled Owner Podcast that Aaron’s a host off. He does a great job. Plus, you’re interviewing some your Inner Circle members. You are coaching students, sending clients on there as well to Aaron. It’s a great stuff to subscribe to and read to if you’ve got some free time.

Thank you, Scott, and thanks for that. It’s interesting to me because there are videos on there that have many thousands of views, but our subscribers are low and we haven’t done a great job of promoting that it even is there. That means a lot to me. You’re always a great example of how to use multiple platforms to reach more people. I put out a video where I invited people to private message me on Facebook after they watched a video and it’s on YouTube and it’s on Facebook and probably LinkedIn as well. I said, “Private message me and if I can help you, I will.” The interesting thing is I get a lot of requests for connection that way from far away, not the people that I’m normally seeing. I’m in London at least once a year giving speeches. I got invited to go to Oxford University and go speak. I’m super excited for that.

When I’m hearing from people in Romania or I’m hearing from people in the Czech Republic or I’m hearing for people in Spain or from Argentina or from the Emirates, that always blows my mind when that comes in. They want to get away from the video and they want to have a conversation. It goes right back to the theme of this show, which is get out and meet the people. Keep it simple, stupid. Keep it simple, sweetheart. Keep it simple and you’ll be amazed. You’d be amazed at the contacts you can make, the business you’ll get and the relationships that will last for years as we’ve discussed by having a good, simple human interaction. Have a conversation with somebody.

What it’s all about is those conversations, the masses to getting to those one-on-one conversation. I’d love to challenge everybody out there reading this. Let’s take a look at how many one-on-one conversations you’ve had in the past week or the past 30 days, and then start tracking that in 2020. Are you having one-on-one conversations on a daily basis? I guarantee when you look at that, you’ll see a completely exponential growth in your business. If you start tracking that, how many conversations with new people are you having on a weekly basis? As my friends say, “How many pitches did you give this week?” I don’t mean going out and pitch, but having conversations to share what you’re doing, whether it is in front of 30 people in a BNI group or it’s out talking to sober people at 1:00 in the morning for the most part. You’ll be amazed at what that leads to in long-term and how you can expand your network one quality person at a time.

It’s a great conversation, Scott.

 

As always, same here, Aaron. I absolutely love visiting with you. Give Michelle a big hug for me. Thank you for always and being a guest here and also everything you do.

It’s my pleasure. See you, Scott.

For the audience, go do something. Challenge yourself. Go subscribe to Laughlin USA on YouTube. Help me hit that goal there. It’s a personal goal. I challenged myself to help the people that are on here and I want to help because it’s such great, valuable information out there. Go do that. If you’re interested in a more intense conversation with somebody at Laughlin, you can always check out CorpVeilProtection.com and reach out to somebody there or via phone on that website. Go do something. Take some action. Make something happen. Go out and take action. We’ll see you at the top.

Important Links:

• The Unshackled Owner Podcast
• Laughlin Associates
• Business Network International
• Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook
• Magnify Your Wealth
• Laughlin USA YouTube channel
• CorpVeilProtection.com
• http://www.GrowIn2019.com
• https://laughlinusa.com/

About Aaron Young

Aaron Young, is a lifelong entrepreneur,  trusted advisor to CEOs and business owners and creator of The Unshackled Owner a program for entrepreneurs looking to build a business and not just a glorified job.

Aaron is Chairman/CEO of Laughlin Associates, a 44-year-old company that has helped over 100,000 entrepreneurs start, grow and profit from their business. This has given Aaron an ideal vantage point to observe common mistakes and successes in businesses from Main Street to America’s largest yacht broker from medical professionals to manufacturers to investors. For over 34 years, his experience founding, acquiring and directing multi-million dollar businesses as well as working as an officer for a publicly-traded, multi-national, sets him apart from the crowd as a voice of real-world knowledge and authority.

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