Three messages before we get started. If you are a tech entrepreneur, don’t you have unique legal needs that the average lawyer can’t help you with? That’s why you need Scott Edward Walker of Walker Corporate Law. If you read his articles on VentureBeat, you know that he can help you with issues like raising money or issuing stock options or even deciding whether to form a corporation. Scott Edward Walker is the entrepreneur’s lawyer. See him at WalkerCorporateLaw.com.
And do you remember when I interviewed Sara Sutton Fell about how thousands of people pay for her job site? Lookay at the biggest point that she made. She said that she has a phone number on every page of her site because, and here is a stat, 95 percent of the people who call end up buying. Most people, though, don’t call her. But seeing a real number increases their confidence in her and they buy. So, try this. Go to Grasshopper.com and get a phone number that will make your company sound professional. Add it to your site and see what happens. Grasshopper.com.
And remember Patrick Buckley, who I interviewed? He came up with an idea for an iPad case. He built a store to sell it, and in a few months he generated about a million dollars in sales. Well, the platform he used is Shopify. If you have an idea to sell anything, set up your store on Shopify.com. Because Shopify’s stores are designed to increase sales. Plus, Shopify makes it easy to set up a beautiful store and manage it. Shopify.com.
Here’s the program.
Andrew: Hey, everyone. My name is Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy.com, home of the ambitious upstart. And what I mean by that is I do interviews with entrepreneurs who built successful companies for an audience of people who are too ambitious to just listen to music or watch “Family Guy” all day long or get lost in every “Lost” episode, even though those are all great shows. But they come here because they want to learn from successful people, how they built their businesses. And, I come here for the same reason. I just love talking to entrepreneurs about their companies.
Today I’ve got a buddy of mine, his name is Dan Bliss. He is the organizer of the Perfect Business conference. One of the things I wanted to talk to him about was how he got so many great names, so many successful entrepreneurs to come and speak at the conference.
I know from putting together interviews here on Mixergy that it is hard enough to just get somebody to spend an hour talking via video Skype from their office. He got them to actually come out to his conference. I want to find out about that.
I also read that he apparently bought the Hollywood sign a few years ago. Are you the right Dan Bliss? I didn’t know this about you, even though I’ve known you for a long time. You are?
Dan: Yeah.
Andrew: You know what, I am going to stop the intro. Why don’t we ask you about that, and then we’ll come back to the rest of it. You own the Hollywood sign? What does it mean that you own the Hollywood sign?
Dan: Everybody loves to ask that story, and it’s really fun. But, the original Hollywood sign was built in the ’20s. And in the ’70s it got torn down and rebuilt. Well, the original sign was thrown into storage. Well, there is a crazy guy that approached the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, and he said, ‘Hey. I want to buy it. Don’t throw it away. I want to buy it.’ So, he gave them ten grand for the Hollywood sign.
And he kept it in storage for 25 years. And I knew the whole story, because I knew the guy. And he just approached me with it. He knew I was an entrepreneur. I’m from Cleveland, he lived in Cleveland. He stored it in LA for all those years. And he said, “Hey, Dan. You live out in L.A. right now. You know anybody that might be interested in buying the Hollywood sign off me? Get it off my hands? I’m tired of paying for storage.” And I was shocked. So, I said, “I might be interested.” And we hammered out a deal, and there you go.
Andrew: Can you say what you bought it for?
Dan: Well, I paid more than 100 grand for it. But I know, Andrew, I know you like to grill people on the numbers, and I know that is your thing. But I paid a lot for it.
Andrew: Okay. All right. Fair enough.
Dan: I had some fun with it. I sold some pieces of memorabilia, and then I sold the whole thing to an artist who is now making artwork with it.
Andrew: This is the part that I really am curious about. The fact that you own the Hollywood sign, I think is kind of cool. And I can’t believe that I’ve known you for as long as I have and we’ve never talked about that. That would be one of the first things I would tell people.
But what is especially interesting to me, as the person who I was born to be, is you took pieces of the Hollywood sign and you sold them off to people as necklaces. You framed them. Actually, I just read an article in preparation for this interview and I got little bits and pieces of information from that article. Tell me what you did with the sign.
Dan: Well, it was one of those things. I actually paid my way through college selling baseball cards. So, I understand memorabilia. And that was way in my past. And, I loved it. So, when I got it, I thought, I’ll reach out to a lot of memorabilia people.
So, I approached the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce about licensing it. I needed to get it authenticated. So I got it authenticated and then we produced a (________) and I had a company that did manufacturing for me and we did framing and that sort of thing. And then I sold a couple thousand pieces of it, framed and matted. To me, it was really just kind of a fun project. It was just really fun, like you said, to say, “Hey, I own the Hollywood sign.” It’s really fun.
Andrew: What did a necklace or earrings go for with the Hollywood sign? In other words, if I wanted to wear a pair of earrings from the Hollywood sign, or a necklace, just so I could tell people, “This is the authentic sign.” What would it cost me for that?
Dan: Well, we made pendants, just little pendants with a star shaped piece of the sign in it. And it came with a little certificate. And we sold those for about 40 bucks. And then we sold the framed pieces of the sign for about 100. And then we wholesaled as well. But, we would retail them for about 100 bucks.
Andrew: Okay. All right. Cool. So, why don’t we talk a little bit about Perfect Business?
Dan: Okay.
Andrew: Just to complete my introduction and find out about what the conference is. And then I want to go back. And one of the things that I do know about you is that you are a scrappy entrepreneur. You and I have talked about the bars that you have owned. We’ve talked, before this interview started, about the events that you’ve put on. And we will go into a full, biographical interview. But help me continue this intro. Who are some of the people who spoke at the conference?
Dan: Well, last year was our first year event. And we were really excited with the quality of the people that we had involved. Richard Branson was certainly one of our anchor speakers.
Andrew: That is a big get, by the way. Richard Branson is not looking for publicity. He is definitely not looking to do conferences. And, I know it was such a big get because for the longest time, your home page was nothing but Richard Branson.
Dan: [laughs]
Andrew: It was like a big picture of Richard Branson and a little tiny logo somewhere in comparison. And you were smart to do it.
Dan: Well, you know that. He is an icon.
Andrew: One of my heroes.
Dan: Yeah. Of course. He is one of my heroes. And what is ironic about that is I met him because of the Hollywood sign. I actually approached him to see if he would be interested in buying it. And we got along real well, and he recognized that I was an entrepreneur. And we just stayed in touch over the years. That was a few years ago.
When I was putting the conference together, I thought, “You know, maybe he will do it.
Maybe I can talk him into speaking at the conference.” And I reached out to him and he said yes.
Andrew: Okay. Why don’t we use that as a teaser and I’m going to come back. And I won’t grill you about numbers because you told me you don’t like to be grilled about numbers. But, I will come back and grill you about Richard Branson.
I know you also had Tony Shay. Tony Shay is not that hard to get at a conference, because Tony Shay is a nice guy. He did my interviews here back when it was just me and a phone and three guys watching.
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: And, today, because Regis is having Internet trouble, it might be just three guys who are watching us live. But, tell me about some of the other people. The founder of Hard Rock Cafe, Isaac Tigrett?
Dan: Tigrett. Isaac Tigrett, yeah.
Andrew: This is why I can’t get Isaac here to do an interview with me, I can barely pronounce people’s names. They don’t belong here. They need somebody who can actually do a good job with their name. Sorry. So, tell people more about who he is.
Dan: Isaac also lives in India. Isaac, as a matter of fact, is flying from India, all the way out to speak at the Perfect Business summit for free. Just because he wants to be a part of it. He is just an amazing guy.
Andrew: Alright. One more. One more person.
Dan: We got Jean Paul DeJoria, who is a billionaire four times over. He started two billion dollar companies. He started Patron, and of course, everybody knows him for Paul Mitchell. And both of those companies bring in a billion dollars of revenue a year. And they are privately owned.
Andrew: Let me see if I got this right. Jean Paul DeJoria?
Dan: Yes.
Andrew: I am qualified now to have him on. I will do research like you wouldn’t believe to have him on. That guy is incredible.
Dan: And he is a super guy. A super guy. He is just amazing.
Andrew: All right. So really quality people are coming in. I’ve heard from the attendees that it is a quality event. What is the conference about?
Dan: Well, the conference is about educating, inspiring, and connecting entrepreneurs. And we try to bring in people across all industries. You know, there is a lot of events out there that are very, very tech-oriented. And the one thing that we are very proud of is that we help entrepreneurs from all walks of life. And we will help people with brick and mortar businesses. Which makes sense as to why we would have Isaac be a part of the conference.
And we also have people that have inventions or products, typically that would need to take something to retail, manufacturing. And then we also do a lot of Internet and software entrepreneurs. But, a lot of them have commonalities. They all have the same start-up pains and growing pains. They are just different industries.
So, what we do, is we have speakers on our main stage that appeal to all of the different industry types. We have investors that talk, we try to bring in diverse investors to speak in an investor panel. Not just tech investors, but people that talk about scaling your business. And things like that.
Andrew: All right. Let’s come back to this and find out more about you as an entrepreneur .
Dan: All right.
Andrew: Before I dig in deeper about what you are going to give the entrepreneurs from the conference. So, scrappy entrepreneur.
Dan: Yes.
Andrew: Tell me about one of the first businesses that you launched.
Dan: There’s been a lot. I’ll tell you that when I got started and I was young and broke, I’ll give you a great example. First company I ever started was a house painting company. I wanted to get into real estate, and a buddy was a painter. So, we had no money. I was fresh out of college. A lot of debt. You know, that’s how it is when you get out of school. And, we literally had no money. We were driving around finding houses that needed painting and we used a reverse phone book and would call people, do estimates.
I would go in, be professional, I mean, I was college educated. So, I thought I had a leg up on other painting companies. And, I’d take the deposits. The first several deposits we got, we used those to buy ladders. Because we were flat broke. And we did that for a while and we did really well, but I hated it. I paid off my college debts, which I was so happy about.
It was summer, I paid off my debts. But, I wanted to do something else, so we started a restaurant. And we had no money. So, we found somebody that owned a restaurant that would be willing to finance two thirds of the acquisition price. And he even gave us a lease option on the building.
So, then we figured, “Okay. Where are we going to get the money?” I wrote a business plan. Got a couple of people to kick in a little money. I used credit cards. Financed furniture, financed carpet. I got a vendor to loan us ten grand. I said, “We’ll bring in your pool tables and pinball machines and jukebox, you’ve got to loan us ten grand.” So, just all of those types of things that you have to do as a scrappy entrepreneur. And then I ended up opening six restaurants after that.
Andrew: All right. Let’s take this slow and dig in deeper.
Dan: Sorry. I rattled it off pretty quickly.
Andrew: You did. You did. I used to, as a kid, listen to Howard Stern, and when a woman would tell a lesbian story, “Oh, let’s take it really slow.”
Dan: [laughs]
Andrew: “Tell me how you took one shoe off and then the other.’ And I am like that about business. Whoa. Tell me how you took one shoe off and then the other. Doing sales door to door I think is one of the best forms of training for a salesperson out there, because it takes a lot of guts. You get shot down a whole lot because you deserve to be and because you are getting just a rapid fire experience. Can you tell me something about what you learned doing that?
Dan: I’ve actually thought about this a lot, and I’ve written about it since is at that time, when you are really struggling and getting a whole lot of rejections in a row, I always remember Thomas Edison. Thomas Edison thought every failure is not a failure, but he positively identified one person that isn’t right. And that is what he thought of all of his invention failures.
So, every time I was so happy, I started checking people off my list, “Great. One more down.” And I was so happy I would knock them off. And that was the attitude I learned then. So, that still carries through to today whenever I have to get anything done.
Andrew: What about persuasion? I’ll give you an example of the kind of little thing that I am looking for. My dad at one point in his life was a wholesaler of women’s clothing. At one point in his life, he opened up retail stores. And, my job over the weekend, partially, was to take these little flyers and hand them to people in the street. Now, nobody wants to give a flyer and definitely nobody wants to get a flyer in the street.
Dan: Right.
Andrew: At least not where he was doing this store. But I discovered that if I looked people in the eye and I said hi and I handed this slip to them, they would pay attention and they would take it. And that little bit of persuasion that comes from just looking someone in the eye when you are asking for something has stuck with me.
Dan: Yup.
Andrew: Do you have anything like that that has stuck with you?
Dan: Wow. Well, I know a lot about flyering from my concert days, too. But, you are so right. That personal touch means the world. And it applies not just to what you are saying, but to segue back to what we mentioned before, when you are reaching out to people, whether you are cold calling or trying to nurture a business project, a business relationship with a company.
You know, I want to do a million dollar deal with this company, you’ve got to reach out to them. You are going to encounter secretaries and assistants. People that are lower on the totem pole than the executive that’s the decision maker. And what you said is exactly right. You’ve got to treat people right. You’ve got to make those people your friends. And be nice to them.
There is nothing worse than somebody that calls in and treats somebody disrespectfully and says, “All right. When is your boss going to be in?” You know? That’s not going to get any points. Because guess what? That person is going to relay to the boss, “Hey, this guy is a jerk. You can call him back if you want, but he was really mean.”
You are not going to make any friends that way. Whereas, if Susie the assistant loves you, she will go out of her way, if you joke around with her, she is going to put you in touch with the boss because you are her buddy. So, that is such a good lesson. And that is one of the reasons, I’m sure, that you are successful, Andrew. Just being a nice guy.
Andrew: [laughs] You give me too much credit. Eighty percent nice guy, twenty percent I yell at Regus and try to get them to give me my Internet access. Regus, if you are watching, and I did e-mail the PR person to say, “Look. My audience is now pissed at you. Please bump up our Internet.” That’s when the other 20 percent comes out, when I talk to Regus.
All right. The second thing that you said was you wanted to start, was it a restaurant or a bar first?
Dan: I got into the restaurant business, because the painting company, not only did I hate it, but to me, it was a service business.
Andrew: Yup.
Dan: So I was already at a young age without any real training, I realized there is no exit strategy if you have a service business, because you can’t sell that company. So, I thought, get into something tangible that if I have a business I can build it up and then I can actually sell it. And later I learned, as I learned about technology and angel investors and this whole world that those people like scalable businesses that have exit strategies. So, you learn along the way.
Andrew: Okay. But you told me that you found someone who was experienced, who helped get you started. What did he give you, specifically? He helped you with the rent, I think you said, right? With the lease?
Dan: No. No. In the early days, I didn’t really have any help. We just had to do it ourselves.
Andrew: What I am trying to figure out is how did you get these, you didn’t have very much and you got all of these assets. You got the vendor loan, you got help with the real estate. I just want to find out how you made those deals happen when you didn’t have any experience in the space. You didn’t have much of your own money, and you are really needing to put every piece together.
Dan: The truth is, sitting down and brainstorming. What I do is I pull out a legal pad and I start writing down all of my ideas. If I want to fund a business, and I don’t have any money, I will start writing out all the places. Obviously, it starts at the top with credit cards and getting friends and family to invest in your company. But, that is two lines on a sheet of paper. You start writing down ideas. And then you start coming up with really stupid, wacky ideas that make no sense at all. And then, you will actually get through that hump and you’ll actually come up with some really good ideas again.
And you just start thinking about things. For example, we needed carpet. We went to a carpet store and they would only give us $2,000 in credit. Well, we need $5,000 in carpet. We found another store that gives $3,000 in carpet. And we started asking a whole bunch of questions and then we learned that they both order from the same mills. So, we made sure they ordered from the same mills so the carpet would match. And then we got credit from two places. But, it’s just about asking questions.
For example, we found the vendor who gave us ten grand. I went to other bars and other vending equipment, they always have a little metal plate on them, as to who the owner of that vending equipment is. So, I just went to a bunch of other bars and wrote down the names of the vendors that served the area and then I called them all. And said, “Hey we need pool tables and we need a jukebox and we need bar top video games.” And they said, “Well, we got them.” And I said, “You know what? We will let you in if you loan us 12 grand.” And they said, “We will give you ten.” We said, “Great.”
So we got them. So, I don’t know. You’ve just got to think outside the box and be scrappy. And do whatever you have to do to get it together.
Andrew: All right. So you got it together. You are up and running. You opened day one. What is it like? Were people rushing in because you had a good location or did you have to do something else to get them to come in?
Dan: Andrew, we had a terrible location. [laughs] We had to bust our butts to get people in the door. We had to be scrappy. We had to advertise. This was back in Cleveland. We did an event, we talked to radio stations and did a live remote from our place. And they brought down a Cavs player, a Cleveland Cavs player and an emcee and they did a live event. And we went over to the mall and passed out flyers and ran ads in the paper. And you do everything you’ve got to do to get customers in the door.
Andrew: What was the most effective way?
Dan: Well, a couple of things. We ended up doing a wing night that was massive and we promoted the hell out of it and we just lost money on wings. We did three cent wings and we would pack them in the doors. While people were there, we encouraged them to come back on Friday.
And then later, when wing night was so rocking that we didn’t have to do a thing for it, we started giving away a free TV on Mondays. And our manager thought we were idiots. And they said, “You are giving away a TV for no reason.” I said, “The TV costs us 300 bucks. And we are bringing in five grand a day on Monday when before we did the TV we were bringing in 800 dollars.”
So, it cost us 300 dollars to give away a TV. And all week, everybody comes in the restaurant and they see the big TV up on the shelf with a sign that says, “Come back on Monday. You could win this.” And that’s all we did. So, find your gaps and find where you need to generate new revenues and then push there. You don’t promote your peak, you promote your off-peak.
Andrew: So, every guy who has been in a restaurant, I think, just about every single one of us, has sat there and said, “I’d like to do this. I’d like to own a restaurant at some point.” What are the harsh realities that we miss after the second beer when we are fantasizing like this?
Dan: There are none. It’s an easy business.
Andrew: Really?
Dan: Everyone says how hard it is, and they are just not businesspeople. Most people that get into the restaurant business come from a cooking background. That they care about the food, or they are a bartender. And the truth is, if you are a businessperson, it is not a hard industry. It’s really not. It’s really simple. You know your margins, you know your (________), you know your overhead, and you’ve just got to put butts in seats.
You just get people through the door. Do whatever you have to do. Nothing kills me more than seeing a small business, whether it be a retail business or a restaurant or a bar, where the owner is sitting there in the business bar-tending themselves. Or they are sitting there, twiddling their thumbs, wondering where the customers are. And the customers are out there. You just have to go get them.
Andrew: You are in Los Angeles. You know what the hot places look like. They are just packed with people and they are all beautiful people and there are long lines. And if there aren’t lines outside, then it is just people sort of spilling out of there. Inevitably, there is one door over, or a few doors over, a place that is just sitting there, empty.
What are those guys, who are just sitting there empty doing that makes their place so much worse than standing outside of the hot place?
Dan: Usually, it’s marketing. A lot of times, there is a lot of psychology to it, of course. But, there is also a lot of dynamics to the business space. There is so much psychology to the people’s first impression when they walk in the door. Usually, the layout means so much, and lighting, and sound. And I haven’t even mentioned the food.
But, when you walk into the door, you have to have the illusion of demand. So, literally, if a place feels like a gymnasium when you walk in, and people are only sitting around the perimeter and there is 20 people in the place and the place seats 400, you are going to think, this place is bombing.
But if the place is laid out differently, and when you walk in the door, those 20 people are right inside the door when you walk in, you are going to think, ‘Wow, this place has a little buzz.’ And it is just because of intelligent design. The architecture and layout of the place is critical. And I have seen architects win awards for creating a beautiful restaurant and then it fails, because they don’t understand the restaurant and bar business.
They understand how to make the place pretty. But, there is so much involved in the human aspect of your customer experience when you walk in the door.
Andrew: All right. So, you are not a guy who had a background working at restaurants and planning out your career in restaurants.
Dan: No.
Andrew: How do you know this stuff? I feel like in the Internet, because everything is so new, everybody is figuring it out for the first time and growing as their business grows. But that is a mature industry, when we are talking about restaurants, bars.
Dan: Yeah.
Andrew: How did you figure this stuff out?
Dan: You know, just being an inquisitive person and asking questions and analyzing. I spent a lot of time, literally spending time at my own place, not bar-tending or working in the kitchen, although I’ve helped with those things because I need to understand those parts. But, the real experience is watching your customers. It is not asking them. If you ask them, they don’t even know what it is. It is watching them.
And if someone walks in the door, and they look around, and they turn around and leave, there is an opportunity missed there, and you need to know what that is. I mean, I’ve never done it. But, the smartest thing to do would probably be to chase that person down and say, ‘Why did you turn around and leave? What was it that caused you to leave?’ And then you will get a real answer.
The same thing applies to the Internet business. I am new to the Internet, and like you said, it is not a mature industry. And people are always trying to figure out new business models online. And I am, too. You are too. You figured out the Internet business, the e-mail marketing business and all that sort of thing a long time ago. And, it is just about being an inquisitive entrepreneur.
A real entrepreneur is a person that is constantly trying to learn and improve. And I think that there is such a thing as a businessman that is not an entrepreneur. To me, that is a person that owns and operates a business that is just effectively a manager. And to me, that is not a real entrepreneur.
Andrew: I see. Yeah, and I see them a lot at the brick and mortar places.
Dan: Yeah.
Andrew: These are the guys who have got a job for themselves. They own the job. They don’t have anyone else yelling at them, but they still have a job. They can’t really take vacations.
Dan: Yeah.
Andrew: So, you managed to outgrow that. That one location where you just have a job for yourself. How do you manage all the people and all those locations that you had?
Dan: Well, that’s a good question. That’s hard. That is actually one thing that I struggle with. I am a bit of a workaholic and one of the mistakes I made, I am human, everybody makes mistakes, is I had opened a whole bunch of restaurants and bars, and they were all different themes. And they all have different operations. Two of them were concert venues. And they are all complicated businesses that I had to relearn and reevaluate each time.
Whereas a lot of people that open a restaurant, they figure out the secret formula, and those become the successful chains. Or those turn into franchises, because they have figured out the secret sauce. It is hard when you operate a lot of things. You’ve got to meet with your managers on a regular basis and find out what’s wrong. Because when things are great, you just need to try to maintain that momentum.
When things are going bad or even when they are going well, you need to find where there are opportunities for improvement. So, it is just a matter of finding people you trust and staying in communication with them.
Andrew: All right. I want to transition away from this industry. But, before I do, I’ve got to ask you the question that I would have wanted my adult self to ask back when I was a teenager. The guy who owns the restaurant gets a lot of dates? Gets to date all the women in the place, pretty much?
Dan: [laughs] You know what? It’s funny, that I didn’t really exploit that. I will tell you that my business partner did.
Andrew: Okay.
Dan: I was so focused at work. I was so busy analyzing what was going on that I wasn’t really fun to hang out with in my own places. Because I was so busy keeping an eye on things. And not to watch my staff and keep them from stealing, because I had managers to watch them, but I loved working on my business. And I just loved looking around and looking for ways to improve it and make it better. So, yeah, I’m just like that, and I get consumed by things.
Andrew: Okay. All right.
Dan: But if someone were to want to take advantage of that, yes. There is a lot of opportunity.
Andrew: There is a lot. I will hit you up later for your business partner’s contact information. We will do a special Mixergy interview. We won’t talk about the business. We will talk about the dating behind the businesses.
Dan: Yes.
Andrew: But, for now, let’s transition away from this. What happened to these locations?
Dan: Well, I decided, I did it for six years, owning restaurants and bars. And, I hit 30 and decided this isn’t really what I wanted my life to be. I really just wanted a better legacy than being a person that sold a lot of beer, frankly. I wanted to give back. And I had helped a lot of entrepreneurs start businesses and people were always asking me for help, particularly in the restaurant and bar business, that’s what I knew. And, at some point, I decided I wanted to do something else.
So, I just got out of it. Sold everything and this was all back in Cleveland, and moved to LA. I just decided I didn’t want to be in Ohio. I wanted to be in Los Angeles. Moved out here and literally started over. So, it was a little scary. And I didn’t even know what I wanted to do when I first moved out here. But, I just knew I wanted to take a different tack. And here I am.
Andrew: The events that you were talking about earlier. At what point were they? At what point did you do that? After the restaurants?
Dan: Yeah.
Andrew: After the bars?
Dan: Yeah, well, back when I was in Cleveland, again, I had two concert venues. And at one point I took the initiative to start organizing large music festivals. And the first one we did had 300 bands perform in it. And we booked 20 venues all over Cleveland. We literally booked every venue in town. And, we got all the radio stations involved and got all the print media involved. We flew record label executives from California out to the music festival and I did a number of these. And I started also running them in Dallas.
So when I moved out to L.A., I still, actually, was running a couple of music festivals in Cleveland and Dallas for about two years. But, those were just run off events and then I walked away from that as well.
Andrew: It’s really hard to get anyone to come out to a live event because there is a lot of commitment involved, a lot of work involved in doing it. And also, risk. You go all that way and you don’t have a good time, or nobody else is there and the whole thing is blown. How do you make sure, back then, before we talk about the conference business, back then in the entertainment business, how did you make sure that people came out?
Dan: Well, that is a good question. I feel that with our advertising, we really made sure to convey the bigness and excitement of the event. We used a lot of real creative and guerrilla marketing tactics to promote our music festivals. We engaged all the musicians to promote the event. We obviously had a lot of media involved.
Andrew: Can you be more specific about the guerrilla tactics?
Dan: Well, I am going to have to mention this. There is a whole attitude in the musician world, where musicians hate the philosophy ‘pay to play’. Because there is a lot of venues that will actually tell a band, ‘We are not going to let you play on our stage unless you buy 50 tickets or 100 tickets from us.’ And we didn’t believe in that philosophy. I’m an entrepreneur, so I don’t have a huge issue with it, but I know a lot of musicians do because they are artists.
So, we knew that we couldn’t do an event and force bands to do anything. So, what we did is we ran festivals and would book all the bands but we wouldn’t tell them what time they were performing and we gave them a bunch of tickets. And we said, “You don’t have to sell any tickets. You don’t have to sell any. Don’t sell a single one. You are going to get to play in the music festival. But, the more tickets you sell, the better time slot you are going to get and the better stage you are going to get.” And then we would reward them. A week before the event we would count their tickets and see how many they sold.
Andrew: [laughs]
Dan: So, we had an army of performers promoting the event in addition to all of our media. So, that was really effective.
Andrew: What else was effective? I like that. That is a clever technique. What else?
Dan: You know, literally, the key is to get some really credible media partners. And, sometimes it is hard. Especially when you are doing a first time event, it is really hard to get. If you are in a market in that sake, it was really hard to get the local alternative weekly or a radio station to get on board without us writing them a big check. Because that is what they want. They want you to spend money on their radio station or spend money in their paper.
So, it is really hard to get them on board. You have got to be very convincing and compelling. And tell them, “Look. This is really going to be just this fantastic event.” And get them excited about it. And if you can get them on board, that is one of those things that snowballs. Because, you not only get the media value that they provide for you, but you also get everybody that you are working with. Everybody else that you are working with. You get sponsors and you get all the other attendees. In our case it was the musicians as well.
You get them more excited about it, because they see the credibility of, ‘Hey, this radio station is involved. Its got to be a great event.’ You know?
Andrew: Okay. All right. So, you decided to give all that up. And to move to California. What do you do with the events? Can you sell events? You said that you wanted to get away from the service business because you couldn’t really build equity and sell it.
Dan: Well, in that case, my former business partner, such a good friend of mine, he is practically a brother. I literally just gave him the company. And, so he has continued to run it.
Andrew: Is this the guy who was going out and dating women while you were working hard? He now has the business? You gave it to him?
Dan: Yes.
Andrew: All right.
Dan: [laughs]
Andrew: Again, we’ll schedule an interview with him at some point in the future. Alright, so you come to California, like so many people who come to California with an idea that you are going to get big somehow. What is the first thing that you do? The first business that you get into?
Dan: Well, again, I was still running the festivals. And, at that point, I also, within a year or so after I moved out here, I bought the Hollywood sign. So, that was a fun little project. I also did a couple of entertainment related projects that I produced and distributed on DVD. But, I was just exploring a lot of different industries. And, I learned a lot doing the DVD production.
Because now, one of the things we do at Perfect Business is we produce a lot of great video content. And we interview a lot of great entrepreneurs. And we are very capable with the video production.
Andrew: I saw that actually. Paul Orfalea.
Dan: Yes.
Andrew: When he was running Kinko’s, the guy was quiet, like a church mouse, you couldn’t get him to talk.
Dan: [laughs]
Andrew: He was on the cover of Forbes magazine. No picture of him. I think they did a drawing of a guy with curly, kinky hair.
Dan: Yeah.
Andrew: Which is where the name Kinko’s came from. He wasn’t saying a word.
Dan: Paul is a great guy. Have you met him?
Andrew: I haven’t met him. And he is in California, near where I lived.
Dan: Yeah. I can introduce you. He is a great guy.
Andrew: Right on.
Dan: He has got ADD, and I say that in all the best way. He is like a go, go, go, go kind of guy.
Andrew: I think he says that. I think he says openly that he has ADD and he also says that he had learning disorders. I think he can’t read because of them.
Dan: Yeah. But, you know what, though? He has got such common sense.
Andrew: Yeah.
Dan: Such a common sense kind of guy. And, he just thinks about it and says, ‘OKAY. Well, this is the right approach.’ And he just knows the right thing to do.
Andrew: I am going to recommend that book. Paul Orfalea’s autobiography if you guys are looking for a book to read. In fact, I am going to actually suggest that you get it on audio book. There is something about the reader. I forget who read it. I don’t think it was him. But, there is something about the delivery that adds to the story and it is really worth getting.
So, where was I in this story? You were trying different businesses. Can you talk about maybe one failure? One business that you tried, that you had a lot of hope for, and it didn’t go anywhere?
Dan: I think I had failures along the way. And for the most part, we have overcome them. Whatever the industry was, like our first concert business, we bought that place and we were broke in three months. And, we had almost lost it. You know? And it was really hard and a difficult learning curve to make that business survive.
One of the businesses I would say was a failure was we had started a magazine called Spot Magazine, which at the time, I was so proud of it. Because it was my way out of the bar business. So, we started a weekly magazine and we got it up and running. We got every business in town advertising with us. Including the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. We had beer companies, movie companies. It was an entertainment weekly, basically.
And, everything was huge. And then I started having issues with an investor that had backed the company. And he literally pulled the plug on me. And at the same time we were going through a really rough time and we were only three months old. So, we are going through all those periods when my persistence always allows me to succeed and overcome that.
Andrew: How did you overcome that?
Dan: Well, I didn’t. That was something that became a failure because it was one of those things where we literally weren’t able to put out an issue of the magazine. And we were a weekly. And the minute you do that, you’ve lost credibility. And, it was one of those things that was out of my control and it crushed me. You know how it is. When you start a business, you are emotionally so invested in it.
And that was something that really just upset me for a while. But, for the most part, my view on every business is you can overcome whatever it is.
Andrew: How did you get past it? It is really hard to recover from a failed business emotionally. I think a lot of entrepreneurs, maybe even most, recover from it. It is not something that takes them out forever. But, I wonder how they do it so that I can understand the next time it happens to me and happens to my audience, I want them to understand, how we can do it faster, by learning how you did it.
Dan: Well, it’s hard. I mean, I have got a very good friend of mine that lost his business. And he had a business partner and they had ethical issues, and it caused him to lose his whole business. And since, he has practically given up on life. He hasn’t ever really put forth energy into something else again because he is scarred. He is hurt.
So, anybody that is going through a tough period, you have to understand, the learning experience, what you gain through that, can be applied to anything going forward. And you can recognize patterns or you can recognize character issues with your business partner. There is always things to gain from a bad experience. And, you know, all you have to go is get the momentum again.
Get the momentum again, and get excited about something again, and then you will forget about it. And then you will look back on it and think, that was really hard, but I am glad I got past it. But you have got to suck up and just get back to work.
Andrew: I know where we got lost. I was talking about Paul Orfalea . . .
Dan: Yes.
Andrew: . . . and forget to get back to the DVD production business.
Dan: Yes.
Andrew: You guys do beautiful videos on Perfect Business.
Dan: Thank you.
Andrew: How many people go into putting together one of those videos? Like the interview that you did with Paul Orfalea?
Dan: Well, generally we have done two types of videos. We have done webcasts which we did for a long time, but we haven’t been doing recently. We had a contract with “Entrepreneur” magazine and we were producing webcasts for them every week. And then we also produce interview style videos. And generally it is a two person or three person team. Depending on the interview. And we will go out and interview them.
We take great pride in lighting and sound and making sure the production quality is really high. Because what we find is a lot of things online that is some guy at a desk, you know? Bad lighting and bad audio and something we take pride in is production quality. So, we have got a very good camera and very good lighting and audio. And we invested in that and we have a good team. We don’t have someone that knows how to use their camera phone. [laughs]
Andrew: Can you monetize that? Is it worth the money? Is it worth the investment?
Dan: That’s a good question. It is something that we use as an anchor for our website, for a draw. Much like you use live interviews like this. We used our recorded stuff as an anchor to get people engaged in our website. And get people coming back. So you have new content. And people these days are very video-centric. They really prefer videos over reading something long. So, we used it that way.
Andrew: I see. Can you talk more about how it helps bring people in. I can tell you that for me it adds credibility. To come to your website, it carries a lot of credibility with me when I come to your website, when I see, I am going to keep saying his name, because it is fun, and whoever is listening to us, is going to hear me say Paul Orfalea. And if you try it one time, you are going to say it five times around the house right afterwards. It is just a fun name to say.
Dan: Yup.
Andrew: But, I see Paul Orfalea and I go, “He is not easy to get. He is an impressive entrepreneur. He is on Perfect Business. I trust them a little bit more because he trusts them enough to be on the site.” But, that doesn’t necessarily translate into repeat traffic. It doesn’t necessarily translate into registrations. Can you talk about what it does translate into?
Dan: It is like you said, and a little bit like I said earlier, in terms of credibility. It is both credibility, because people see quality people involved, and they think, “Well, this has got to be a good place to be. He wouldn’t be involved if it wasn’t.” That’s value. That is value to me. You know, you and I, I think are both very giving in helping entrepreneurs.
If somebody asks me for help, I help them. That is just the way I am. And I know you are the same way. That is a part of our way of giving to our members on Perfect Business. And we don’t charge for that interview. That is something that we give for free.
And as we continue to engage with our members and give them great content, over time, when they need something that we offer as a premium service, they are going to use our service, because they feel like they have gotten value from us. They trust us. And we have built a relationship with them.
Andrew: Let me take a moment to thank the paid members of Mixergy who do pay for these interviews. I am one of these scumbags who actually likes to bring in some money by charging for my interviews. Dan, thanks for helping me make money by giving me this interview, which I will sell in the future.
Dan: Yes. I am sorry about that, Andrew.
Andrew: No, I don’t mind it. I don’t mind it at all, really. I want you to be as open as possible.
Dan: Our different business models, you are asking me. But, we also have premium videos that we charge for.
Andrew: You jerks. How dare you. No. Even if you want to disagree with me, disagree with my sponsors, do what you want. What is most important is that we are as open as possible here.
Dan: Andrew, I think you are the best, and you know that.
Andrew: Alright. Thank you. All right. Let’s see. What else do I want to know here? Let’s go back to Richard Branson.
Dan: Okay.
Andrew: How do you get Richard Branson to come in and headline your conference?
Dan: I always say it was charm. I don’t know. It is just a matter of just being passionate about what you are doing and communicating that very clearly. And that is the same with everybody that spoke there.
Andrew: I could communicate very clearly what I am doing with Richard Branson all day long. He is not necessarily going to come and join up. You told me that you had a friendship with him before. That that led to it.
Dan: Yeah.
Andrew: Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Dan: Well, I don’t know what else there is to say. I approached him, and as a matter of fact, that was a few years ago that I had met him, and over time, I’d send him e-mails asking him for something, asking him for advice on something or just staying in touch with him. And literally that’s it.
And I felt that I was imposing by asking him, frankly. You know who he is and how busy he is. He has got all these companies that he is involved in. And I was so shocked when he said that he would be interested. And it didn’t even happen right away. One of the first things that happened was he said he might be interested and then he forwarded me to a couple of his people.
Because they wanted to make sure that this was going to be a quality event. So they grilled me. They asked me 50,000 questions.
Andrew: What kind of questions?
Dan: Specifically, what type of conference? What type of attendees? Where is it going to be held? What other speakers are going to be there? All the aspects of what topics we were going to talk about. Whether or not he was going to give a formal presentation or whether it was going to be a Q&A. Which I was really fortunate, because I got to do a fireside chat with him on stage. And, it was a blast. It was really cool.
Andrew: Okay. Let’s take the clothes off really slowly here. Let’s go back.
Dan: Okay.
Andrew: You and he meet how?
Dan: I reached out to him specifically about buying the Hollywood sign.
Andrew: Oh. You own the sign, and you said, ‘Hey, Richard Branson, wouldn’t it be cool if you owned this sign?’
Dan: Right. I thought he could benefit a great deal, because he loves big publicity stunts. I didn’t know what he would do with it. All I knew was that he could probably get a tremendous amount of PR. Richard Branson buys the Hollywood sign. I didn’t know if he was going to try to rebuild it or slap a Virgin logo on it. I didn’t know what he was going to do with it. I just knew that he might have a great idea to get a lot of publicity with it.
And he thought about it for a while. And then he told me he was going to be in LA. And, so I went and met with him and I only met with him for literally four or five minutes. That’s all. And he said he would think about it. A couple of weeks went by and I reached out to him again. And he said, ‘You know. I’ve been thinking about it. I don’t know what I can do with it. I don’t know.’ So nothing came of it. But, I gained the relationship.
Andrew: He meets you in person for four or five minutes?
Dan: Yeah.
Andrew: Where do you guys meet?
Dan: [laughs] I met him hastily before he was to speak at the Virgin Megastore at Hollywood and Highland.
Andrew: Oh. So you are just meeting at a coffee shop there?
Dan: No. He told me to meet him literally right before he walked into the event.
Andrew: [laughs]
Dan: Listen. This is great. It was raining out and there was scaffolding because they were doing construction on Hollywood and Highland and he told me to meet him out in front of the Virgin store because he knew once he got in he was going to be swarmed because he was going there for an autograph signing. So, we met and it was literally under the scaffolding. And he came running through the rain, no escorts or anything. He comes running through the rain and meets me and then we just stopped and talked. And then we walked in together and then of course everybody started swarming him. And I said, “Okay. Well, I will just talk to you later.” And then I left. But, it was just awesome.
Andrew: That answers my second question, which was how did he limit the conversation to just the few minutes that he has available? You know? I can’t get people off the phone sometimes after a half hour. He has got you for five minutes. That explains it. He does it when there is some urgency to end that conversation so it comes from you.
Dan: Yeah.
Andrew: All right. That is the days before Internet or after Internet? How are you staying in touch is what I mean?
Dan: No, this was Internet. This was 2002, 2003, I’d say.
Andrew: Okay. So you are e-mailing him to tell him that you have the Hollywood sign. You are e-mailing him to stay in touch afterwards?
Dan: Yes.
Andrew: By the way, questions like this are why people pay to sign up for my interviews.
Dan: [laughs]
Andrew: What was he wearing when you met him? [laughs] No. Okay. So, you are staying in touch with him by e-mail, you are pinging him with business questions and he answers your business questions?
Dan: Yeah. Andrew: Interesting.
Dan: Yeah. He is a super guy.
Andrew: All right. So you are staying in touch this whole time and then you have this conference and you say, “What the heck. Let’s see if Richard Branson will headline it.” And he says yes.
Dan: And I will be frank with you, I had been talking about doing the event and I didn’t even know I was even going to do the event until he said yes. I was scouting venues and deciding where we were going to do it. And then we had the venue pretty much locked up and I approached him. And of course he is asking where it is going to be and I am like, ‘Well, I don’t know.’ So, real quickly I had to go tentatively book and get a couple of holds on a couple of venues, because he was my anchor. Everything built from there.
Andrew: Wow. Hang on, let me have the lighting guy adjust the lighting here. Just like you, we have a staff here. Hang on, lighting guy? Perfect. Oh, wait. Lighting guy? There. I got one of the Regis office lamps. Thanks. People keep saying they can’t see my eyes.
Dan: Yeah.
Andrew: You know what? It is so much more fun to do an interview with a friend. I feel like I can relax a little bit more. And even though the Internet sucks for the live audience, at least you and I have a good connection, so I can have a conversation with you like a human being instead of, “Dan, break, break, here’s my question, over.” And then wait for you to respond and then I have to wait for the lag to stop so that I can hear your response. And then ask a follow up question. Usually these Skype interviews are a little bit tougher.
Dan: Yeah, you don’t look like (________) or anything.
Andrew: [laughs] You look clear too. So, I will thank Regis for that when I complain about the lack of Internet for uploading. You guys started out at Perfect Business as a social network and now you seem to have moved away from the social network and are focusing more on the conference business. Why the transition? Talk a little bit about that.
Dan: Well, I can’t say we have that much. I mean, we have added the event aspect as a vehicle to draw people in. We are also gaining new content for our website and it kind of becomes a platform for us. And I think in the long term it can become just an amazing anchor. And we have explored doing lots of smaller events. And then, for now, we are just going to focus on doing one big event a year and just making it amazing. And again, positioning ourselves to being a site and a service for all types of entrepreneurs as opposed to just for tech entrepreneurs.
Andrew: So you are saying that the social network for entrepreneurs still exists. This is just the main event right now, the conference. And the conference is bringing people in to the rest of the site.
Dan: Yeah. Yeah.
Andrew: How many people are you getting in to join the network on a regular basis?
Dan: Well, when the conference is coming up we get a lot more. We get a lot more. We had thousands of members signing up and it is funny. It kind of goes back to my experience in the bar business. We used to do these events. And we used to, instead of advertising on a steady basis, I learned in that industry, you are better off putting all of your eggs into one event a month. And do one big event a month and then you will get residual benefit the rest of the year. The rest of the month in that case. In this case, the rest of the year, because this is such a big event.
So, our services, frankly, have gotten better and grown and we offer a lot of networking capabilities on our website. And entrepreneurs thank me on a regular basis for all the help we provide them.
Andrew: The main revenue, is it coming from the conference or coming from somewhere else?
Dan: It is probably about 50/50. The conference has gotten so big that it is becoming bigger than the website, I think, almost. I’d have to look at it, actually, Andrew.
Andrew: Okay.
Dan: I don’t know yet. I will tell you after the conference whether it is going to be a bigger part of our revenue.
Andrew: Is this considered grilling? Lately I’ve been getting a lot of flack for apparently grilling and asking questions that are too hard. Is this considered too hard? Because I have been backing away from questions that are too hard.
Dan: No. It’s fine. You are making me assess it. [laughs]
Andrew: All right. So when we were kids, here is what we would do. We were dorks. Not tech dorks like some of the entrepreneurs who I meet here. They were coding up games at six years old. I had no interest in that. But here is what we did do. At about 12, my cousin and I would go sit at the local falafel stand. And we would just enjoy our falafel and talk and count how many people go to the front of the line, what do they buy, and roughly we try to estimate how much money the falafel stand was making. I love falafels.
And we were crazy. Because we assumed that the hour we were in the store represented every hour of the day and that day represented every day of the week. So we had bad numbers. But, it makes me think, do I just do how many people came over to the conference times the ticket price to figure out the revenue? No. That doesn’t work here. That is the kind of math that 12 year old Andrew Warner would do.
Dan: Right.
Andrew: Because there are discounts, there is no way to figure this out.
Dan: Yeah, and there are multiple revenue sources.
Andrew: Let’s be honest here. It is not that there is no way to figure this out. I just don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable. And I don’t want to make my audience feel uncomfortable as much as I want to do that. So, let me be up front, too. Guys, I am getting a lot of flack for asking questions that are apparently too harsh on the revenue. I am not going to ask Dan anymore about that. I am not even going to bring it up.
But, I am going to ask you in the audience. Come back to Mixergy, and give me feedback on this. I want a representative pool. Not the person who is just really pissed off that one moment that I ask the wrong question, but the average person. Come back and give me feedback on that. Am I asking questions that are too pushy? Am I asking questions that are not pushy enough? Whatever. Does the lighting guy need to be fired? Is it too schticky or do I need to stay with the facts?
What else do I have? Dan, I have another note here that I forgot to come back to. Flyers.
Dan: Yes.
Andrew: You said that you learned something about flyers when you were in the event business. Can you tell us something about that? What did you learn?
Dan: When you are giving out flyers, and you do it marvelously, I am sure, just by addressing people personally. But, you have to make sure that there is an element of scarcity when you are giving away flyers. So, if you have the politeness and you add an element of scarcity, if you have got a handful of 3,000 flyers, the minute the person walks away, they are going to throw it in the garbage. If they think it is your last one or they think it is much more important than that, then they will treat it with more respect.
Andrew: Oh, I see. So, don’t have that big stack of flyers that came straight from Kinko’s or the local copy shop and hand out one at a time. You are saying have just a handful at a time in your hand. Pass them out and then go get a little bit more.
Dan: I will give you another suggestion.
Andrew: Hit me.
Dan: You know what people will not throw away more than a flyer. Give them a ticket. Actually print tickets and don’t put free on it. Put a price. So even if your event is free, put a price on it and give away the ticket. “Oh my god, I got a $20 ticket.” And they will cherish that. Especially if you are not holding 100 of them when you approach them.
If you have only got a few and you say, ‘Hey, I am not going to use these. Would you be interested in my tickets?’ And you give away two at a time. They will be more likely to use them than throw them away.
Andrew: I love that. I could listen to stories like that, to techniques like that all day long. Forget NPR and (________) all news station. If you just give me the all business techniques station, I would listen to that all day. Do you have any more? How do I even ask an interviewee if he has any more techniques like that to share?
Dan: Oh, wow.
Andrew: Because that kind of spooks people.
Dan: I am always looking for ideas like that. You discover things like that by trial and error, asking questions, and just watching things. I will give you another one we did.
Andrew: Yup.
Dan: We opened a nightclub on the second floor of a building and we had a great location. So we would always get people, they would always come up the stairs. And they look in, and if it is early in the night, they would turn around and leave. And we are like, ‘Ugh.’ They come up and the place is empty. It is because we aren’t busy yet. Of course if they came later we would be busier. But, why couldn’t we get that person to stay and buy a beer? Because if we get ten of those people to buy a beer, now we are busier earlier and then no one is ever going to leave.
So, we actually stole an idea from Walmart and hired greeters. So people would get to the top of the stairs and we would greet them. We would high five them. We would give them Mardi Gras beads, whatever it would be. Just to say, “Hi. Thanks for coming.” And now they feel too ashamed to turn around and walk down. So, they would buy something. Just a little trick we picked up.
Andrew: I love that. I am telling you, these guys who fantasize about buying restaurants, all they think about is how they are going to sit back and order all the drinks they want for their friends and be the big shot.
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: The guy like you who is coming up with ideas like that, that is what I love. Alright. How can people see you in person and shake your hand and maybe you will have another one of these stories for them?
Dan: Well, I would say the best bet is to come to our conference. We have this amazingly huge conference taking place at the Palms in Las Vegas. So, make the pilgrimage, get in your car. It’s two days. It’s October 7th and 8th at the Palms in Las Vegas and you can go to PerfectBusiness.com/summit to get tickets and to find out information on the event. And Andrew, I can give all your people a discount code, if you’d like.
Andrew: All right. How much time do we have until the conference? When is the conference?
Dan: Well, the conference is October 7th and 8th.
Andrew: Okay. We have enough time.
Dan: Time to book tickets and book a hotel room. And we have got a deal with the Palms for discounted rooms, so I encourage everybody to come. And if you enter 2010 as your promo code, 2010, you will save 50 bucks.
Andrew: 50 bucks.
Dan: You will save 50 dollars on your ticket.
Andrew: How do we get 75 bucks for the audience?
Dan: What’s that?
Andrew: How do we get a discount of 75 bucks for the audience?
Dan: [laughs] Oh man, you are killing me.
Andrew: [laughs]
Dan: You are killing me, Andrew. Now you are grilling me.
Andrew: Now I am grilling you?
Dan: Alright, I will tell you what.
Andrew: No, I know what. Let’s do it for the first . . .
Dan: I’ll take care of you Andrew. We can do that for your people. Because I know your people are quality entrepreneurs.
Andrew: All right.
Dan: I will create a password that is Mixergy1. Just enter that as your promo code. Mixergy1. You will save 75 dollars on your tickets.
Andrew: Mixergy1.
Dan: And just for the record, we’ve got two ticket price levels. One of them includes lunch and personal coaching both days and the other one is obviously you are on your own for lunch. So people are encouraged to do whatever they can do. Mixergy1. I will write that down as soon as we get off the air. And I will make sure I set it up for you within a half an hour.
Andrew: All right. Right on. I have no idea whether this audience is going to be responsive to anything. But, I want to test this, and if we are going to test it, let’s test it on a conference and a person who I really like and who I really believe in. So, Mixergy1 is the code. I promise you people this isn’t me doing my infomercial where at the end I say, “Let’s give them a super good deal,” that I already planned ahead of time with Dan.
Dan: No. No. You just put me on the spot, but that’s okay.
Andrew: [laughs]
Dan: No, Andrew, and by the way, I hope you can make it. I mean, again, I’d love you to be there if you can make it. We are going to have 60 speakers. It’s going to be amazing.
Andrew: Let me hear the other names of the speakers. Who else is going to be there?
Dan: Well, obviously I mentioned Jean Paul DeJoria. He is worth four billion dollars. Started two billion dollar companies. We already mentioned Tony Shay, who everyone knows from Zappos. He is all over the place these days.
Andrew: By the way, if anyone does go to Vegas, I think you can see Tony Shay anywhere. But, if you are in Vegas, whether if it is for this conference or something else, take the tour of Zappos. I so regret missing that. They will take you in their office. They have got a whole party in there apparently everyday.
Dan: [laughs]
Andrew: I hear it is fun and it is inspiring as a way to work. So, check it our.
Dan: Yeah.
Andrew: How about one more guest?
Dan: Oh, okay. I am going to mention a couple more. I am going to mention Isaac Tigrett, he founded both the House of Blues and the Hard Rock Cafe. He is a legendary icon. And the other one I wanted to mention, and I think a lot of your viewers will appreciate this, is Aaron Patzer, the founder of Mint.com, who is a scrappy guy himself. And he used open source software to build Mint.com. Within three years, he sold it for 170 million dollars. And that is just such an inspiring story for a guy that was working in his kitchen. In three years, they have an exit that big on a tech play. And he is a great guy and he is going to be there speaking and talking about what got him there. And we are going to pull back the curtain on him, you know? We are going to grill him a little bit.
Andrew: Let me ask you something. You’ve gone to conferences, you have gone to events.
Dan: Yes.
Andrew: You don’t want to just be the guy in the audience. You want to somehow connect with the speakers on stage.
Dan: Yup.
Andrew: With the guys who are going to be legends or the guys who already are legends, like Tony Shay or Richard Branson. These guys are legends. Richard Branson, by the way, is not there this year. The other guys are there this year. I want to connect with all of them if I am at a conference. Do you have any techniques for how to do that? How to reach out to those people who are on stage and just build a relationship with them instead of watching them like someone watching a movie?
Dan: Well, I’ve got several suggestions. One is get there early and attend our meet and greet on Wednesday night. Okay So, the meet and greet on Wednesday night will allow you to meet a lot of the speakers up close and in person.
Andrew: Okay. I want to take this slow, too. So, you are in the meet and greet.
Dan: Yes.
Andrew: Whether it is this conference or any other conference, you want to connect with these guys. There is so much you want to say.
Dan: Yea.
Andrew: Starting with, “Oh, I have been a fan of yours forever.”
Dan: [laughs]
Andrew: How do you make it useful? How do you actually ignite a potential relationship there?
Dan: Well, you know what? You are going to love this. One of the big things people have to do is first of all they should know something about the people they want to meet before they arrive. We have got bios on all the speakers on our site. They can read about them. They can look them up and the Internet is beautiful that way. So know who you want to talk to.
And approach them and you know what? Everybody just wants to talk about themselves. And you can’t do that. You are much better off approaching them and saying, ‘Hey. You went to USC. That’s great.’ Engage with them as people instead of thinking of them as an object that can help you get from point A to point B. Don’t use everybody as a stepping stool.
So, I think the key is to meet people and just be yourself with them and genuinely be interested in them. This applies to everything, not just attending a conference. But when you talk to people, if you can think of ways to help their business, you will get much further along instead of saying, ‘Hey. Will you give me money? Hey, will you help me with this?’ If that is where you come from out of the gate, these people get that all day long. If you approach them and say, “Hey, look, I would love to work with you, because I think my business can do a lot for your company.”
Or if you approach them on a human level. If someone approached you and said, ‘Hey Andrew, I love what you are doing on your website. I think the interview you did with Paul Orfalea or Dan Bliss was fantastic.’ You are going to be much more appreciative and much more willing to engage in a conversation with them. Because not only do they know who you are, but they are engaging with you personally instead of saying, “Hey Andrew, can you help me with my whatever.” It is much more genuine.
Andrew: By the way, that noise people might be hearing in the background is construction. They have been doing construction in this Regis office as I am in here. By the way, I remember that technique of talking to them about something that is not directly related to business. It is a great idea. I keep forgetting to do that myself. I remember once there was this guy on the Howard Stern show when I was a kid. Who somehow was a party crasher who would get together with people like Schwarzenegger and build relationships with them.
And Howard said, “What are you doing? How do you even do this crazy stuff?” He stopped talking about sex for a moment to talk about that because it was so fascinating. The guy said, “You know what I do? I research what they are into that most people don’t know about. That side passion that is not what they are known for.” And for Schwarzenegger back then, people didn’t know that he was into cigars. This guy went and talked to him about cigars. Apparently, Schwarzenegger just loved it. Had so much in him to talk about cigars that he built a relationship with this party crasher.
Dan: Andrew, do you know Harvey McKay, the author?
Andrew: Yeah.
Dan: I think one of the things that he talked about in his books was he had a list of 53 items I think that you should know about your clients and customers and people you want to work with. Including their child’s names and their child’s birthdays and where their child is going to college. People love that. Especially when you talk about their kids. But, you can’t do that in a manipulative way, though. But, it is a good way to get to know people and I think people need that. Especially if it is somebody that is really, really successful that is always getting swarmed by people. You have got to engage with them in another way other than just being demanding.
Andrew: All right, one more thing. I interrupted you with my little factoid from the Howard Stern show. One more way of connecting with one of the stars at a conference?
Dan: Yes.
Andrew: What have you got?
Dan: Well, I will tell you that you need to bring a lot of business cards. I don’t think there is that much more than that. I mean, another thing that we are doing at our conference, though, is we are going to be having one on one coaching. We are going to allow people to do five minute pitch sessions with investors and with entrepreneurs. And then we are also doing 15 minute coaching.
So, that won’t get them to meet the big speakers. But, it will be a way to engage someone in a very personal way. But, what you actually hinted at earlier is people need to have their message clear. So, when you do finally have the opportunity. Once you do engage with that successful person, that speaker, or you engage with anybody, frankly, you should be ready with what your message is and you better be clear. So you should know what your business is and what you need to say and say it quickly and not labor on about background stuff. You just need to get to the point. What is your business? What is the market?
And what is your solution to what problem? And what is your credibility for you and your team? And if you can say those four things, you are going to be golden.
Andrew: Yeah, you mentioned Harvey McKay earlier. I still remember his answer to that. Because for his whole life, he had a response to ‘What do you do?’ And I remember it now. He used to say, “I run an envelope company. I write books. And I am a runner.” And he would specifically say those three things, because with one of those things, he could connect to just about anybody.
Dan: Yeah.
Andrew: Dan, what is the website for people who want to go check it out?
Dan: PerfectBusiness.com/summit. You can go to PerfectBusiness.com directly, but the summit page is PerfectBusiness.com/summit.
Andrew: Perfect. And use Mixergy1. Dan will tell me and report back to me to let me know if my audience is going to go check it out and check out the conference. We will see how responsive they are.
Dan: All right.
Andrew: Dan, thanks for doing this interview.
Dan: $75 off, courtesy of Andrew. So make sure you thank Andrew.
Andrew: I negotiate your behalf. Everything must go. First three people only. Maybe we should do that.
Dan: Your membership to Mixergy is paying for itself, everybody.
Andrew: There you go. Thank you. All right. Thanks a lot.
Dan: All right, thanks Andrew.
Andrew: Thanks, Dan. Thank you all for watching.
Dan: Bye bye.
Andrew: Bye.
This transcript brought to you by www.SpeechPad.com.
Sponsors I mentioned
Shopify – Remember the interview I did about how the founder of DODOCase sold about $1 mil worth of iPad cases in a few months? He used Shopify. It’s dead simple and very effective.
Grasshopper – Don’t make the mistake of comparing Grasshopper with other phone services. Check out their features and you’ll see why Grasshopper isn’t just a phone number, it’s the virtual phone system that entrepreneurs (like me) love.
Walker Corporate Law – Scott Edward Walker is the lawyer entrepreneurs turn to when they want to raise money or sell their companies, but if you’re just getting started, his firm will help you launch properly. Watch this video to learn about him.
