GROW 2020 Interview: Mike Michalowicz

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We're so excited to have Mike Michalowicz back with us on Black Belt Selling. Mike is the only speaker from GROW 2019 that we have invited back to the stage in 2020. Mike has been an entrepreneur his entire adult life. He had some great successes early on, but it also set him up for his greatest failure.

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I wiped myself out financially just out of pure arrogance, tons of ignorance. And it turned into the darkest period of my life. I lost my home, my possessions. I did not lose my family and that's the only thing I had left and was devastated and gone. Went through two years of depression actually.

That period of time set Mike up on a mission, a life's purpose, to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. The day you start your business, the world thinks you're wildly successful. You're a millionaire. You sit at the beach drinking margaritas. The reality is we're not making money. We're working ridiculous hours. We're under constant stress. In this gap is what he calls entrepreneur poverty and living it. His life's mission is to now fix that, to resolve that.

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I committed to just being this arm of the shoulder guy because even though it may be similar concepts to someone else, if it's relatable, it becomes much more actionable I feel.

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At this Grow Retreat, Mike will be talking about Pumpkin Plan, his recent book. It is a methodology to grow your business healthily and organically. That's the part many people miss. We want to grow our business, but we think that it requires investment that we have to run those Facebook ads, that there's certain processes we have to do, that sales is an extraordinary effort and what he found, ironically or interestingly, is that there's a faction of pumpkin farmers, these colossal pumpkin farmers that grow these massive gourds and they follow a simple modification to the established process.

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They change things by about 5% and the pumpkin responds with organic explosive growth. There's a parallel that in our business it's actually a small element, made of 5% change, that position our business to catch this wave of momentum and grow on its own. So at the Grow Retreat we are going to go through this process. It's about five major steps we're going to discuss that will, if you follow it, and it's easy to follow, it's only a small change. You follow it, you will see healthy, organic, explosive growth of your business. This is what Mike has done in his own businesses.

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I've had a blessing now of growing multiple businesses, and doing it again and I run and own a few multimillion dollar companies now. And we've always used this process as the foundation for healthy, organic growth. And I know it works because I live it.

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Most businesses will find that they have multiple negative customers or bad customers, customers that have a negative effect on their income. Think about how many customers you have that are distracting, difficult to deal with, manage. For many businesses it's one, two, maybe even a handful of customers. How many customers do you have that are extraordinary, pay you top dollar, are dying to do business with you, are extremely loyal to you. Probably less than the bad customers.

That's the normal kind of breakdown. There's a handful of these sub customers and there's maybe one great one. Well the Pumpkin Plan, the realization was that this is the normal makeup of businesses and the process to attract bad customers is just as simple as it is to attract great customers.

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So we changed this process. Something we do subconsciously that attracts bad customers, we revert and redirect to great customers.

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Can you imagine your favorite best customer ever? If you had two copies of them or four or five or 10 I bet you'd have major impact in your business. If GE gets 10 clones of its best customer, GE more than doubles its revenue for the year. It's extraordinary growth for any size business, small businesses, the same thing. So at the Grow Retreat we're going to go through the process of cloning your best customers. Interestingly, it's something that subconsciously we'll often do with our bad customers. We're going to stop doing it there. We're going to redirect it and get more great customers and drive that revenue and profitability.
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We're in business for two reasons. One is for financial freedom. Another one is that you do a vocation that brings you joy and happiness. The majority of our waking hours are spent working. So if it brings us joy and financial freedom, we've won. Sadly, most businesses don't achieve financial freedom and people are stressed out beyond belief. So we're going to address those two elements. We're going to maximize your profit and revenue, and as importantly, if not even a little bit more importantly, we're gonna maximize your joy factor, the people you love to work with. So you love going to work.

Mike is currently writing another book. Listen to the podcast, come to the Grow Retreat and learn more at mikemotorbike.com