Get Patrick's Book here: yourstandisyourbrand.com

 

(Order NOW and get complimentary access to Patrick's live presentation of YOUR STAND IS YOUR BRAND at GeniusX®: The  $100,000 Mastermind).

 

Ollie:

Hey everyone, how are we doing? Very warm welcome to another episode of the Ecommerce Freedom podcast. So today I have a very, very special guest by the name of Patrick Gentempo, and Patrick's book, Your Stand Is Your Brand, is something that I believe most new entrepreneurs need to read at some point on that journey.

 

And what I want to do today is talk to Patrick about how you can build a brand, how you can build company values, and build a vision for your company that goes beyond just the fluff that you hear sometimes coming out of these company, corporate boardrooms, but make it something substantial and how can you actually build this stuff into your business to make your business stronger and actually change the types of decisions you make day to day.

 

Patrick, it’s really awesome to have you here. How are you doing today, man?

 

Patrick:

I'm great. Thanks for having me. Good to be with you.

 

Ollie:

Oh, you're very welcome. So what I'd love to do, first I usually do with guests is I'd love to hear what led to you writing this book.

 

Patrick:

Well, it comes from, you know, over two decades of entrepreneurial experience. I've started 16 companies and to be clear, they don't all work. But, I built multiple multimillion dollar businesses and scaled them over some years. I used to do a lot of business training and I would travel around the world lecturing to audiences of entrepreneurs.

 

I'm in a different phase of my life to some degree now. And I felt, just.. I had all this information I used to give out new audiences to tens of thousands of people. And I'm not talking about it live anymore, much of the things, to some extent. But I still would like to have people have access to the information. So I think, in part, that's one of the things that motivated me to write a book.

 

For years I’ve had a lot of people ask, do you have a book? Do you have a book? And I'd say no, you know, I don't make my living really lecturing. I don't make my living writing books. I built companies. But I decided that maybe at this point it's time for me to share a little bit more to a broader audience, the experiences they've had and hope that it will serve them in some way.

 

Ollie:

Love it. And that's fascinating. So you mentioned you've launched 16 companies. Can you give us a couple of examples? What type of businesses have you started? Which ones worked? Which ones failed?

 

Patrick:

Yeah, so the highlights, I think, are such that I started.. Well, let me go this way. So academically, by training, I'm a chiropractor. I went to school to become a chiropractor. So my first business that I got at school was a chiropractic practice.

 

While I was doing practice, I saw a challenge or problem facing chiropractors in so far as some of their examination process. I felt very often I was selling a product. I wasn't sure I was delivering. I couldn't really quantify the things that were important to me and ended up co-developing diagnostic technologies of which I got some patents.

 

So I found myself in another business, developing this diagnostic technology business. And that is a business I ran as a CEO for 23 years. I scaled it over time. By the time I exit the business in 2011, I think we had about 8,000 clients on six continents that utilize our technology.

 

But out of that company spun off other businesses like that, I noticed. So we had the technology side and the technology development side, but I noticed that it wasn't the technology that got the result in these doctor's offices. It was who the person was using it, meaning they needed training, certain personal development training, certain business training.

 

So we spun off varying things, that were businesses that were related to the central business but you know, really, were new development, new areas, et cetera. From there I had also developed a wellness business. We put up about 300 wellness licensed wellness centers and franchises. Again, technology was involved in that. We had some patents on how we're doing that. But a lot of this, you know, came around when some of the upheavals happened in the world like it is now.

 

So I just want to, incidentally, as we're having this conversation, I will, during the course of our conversation, reference what's going on in the world right now with the CoVid-19 pandemic. And I've shepherded businesses through many of these types of challenges, although I think this one's a little bit different than others.

 

But you know, through dot-com bubble of 2001, 9/11, you know, it was a big, big issue. Big downturn, big disruptor. 2007, 2008, the collapse of the banking system worldwide. That was a major disruption. Now this one.

 

So I've seen this movie before. I think there's some nuances here that are different, I think there are some common things. So I'd like to not ignore that and maybe we'll have a little bit of a conversation and to tease everybody a little bit.

 

I'm just going to say also that I believe we're going to see in these coming months the greatest wealth transfer in the history of humankind and people really need to be paying attention. There's a lot of somewhat scary things going on and some pretty big opportunities happening.

 

So, anyways, in that business was another business that we created. Then when I sold the company in 2011, I created a holding company with my wife called Action Potential Holdings. And we started varying projects and invested in some companies. And the holding company probably had seven or eight or nine ventures in it. Some, again, like these technology platforms for varying verticals that didn't really work so well. You know, we invested some money over time. It just never caught traction.

 

And we've done other things, which is my main business activity now, which is called Revealed Films, where we make docu-series that we put online and market online to a worldwide audience. And that company is one of the most successful companies I've gotten involved in.

 

So, so it's been a wide range of things from practicing chiropractic to making movies and everything in between. But what I can tell you is that the business principles that need to be applied are the same no matter what kind of a business that you're in.

 

Ollie:

Love it. And yeah, that was the first thing I was going to say. Very wide range of businesses. And it's funny, I've had a few guests on who've been entrepreneurially active for a long time. And it's always fascinating, the wide range that a lot of entrepreneurs experience. Whether you're running -- I had someone on who once produced a Broadway play -- whether you’re doing that or whether you're doing tech for chiropractors, there are certain things that stay the same and that need to work.

 

So maybe we should start then with something I said, before we hit record and we're having a talk before we started, was my attitude previously till recently towards values, company values, and vision. And I've always thought to myself, you know, this stuff's just fluff stuff that companies just say to they can look good to the public.

 

So why, first of all, is it not fluff and how do you do it the right way?

 

Patrick:

So every company that I start, starts with creating core values and then a statement of purpose that comes out of this core values. And you aren’t wrong in so far as there are a lot of companies who go through the exercise

of doing this, but then they put it in the drawer and nobody ever looks at it again. Nobody thinks about it again. It's like, okay, check that box. We did that exercise one weekend.

 

And as I say, it's kind of like the trick. They plan themselves as compared to something that really becomes a guiding compass for the company and how it's built. And you can point to so many companies that do it that way. And then there's other companies that actually adopt this approach toward things in and succeed with. And I'll give you an example.

 

I was on a conference call once with Tony Hsieh, who was the CEO of Zappos that built that company basically to a company that was operating on a very low level and I think losing money when he took over and he built it to a $1 billion company then I believe sold to Amazon for something like $1 billion or more.

 

And, you know, he's asked, so how did you do that? How'd you take this company that was kind of like struggling and build it into the company that it became? And he said, very simple. We got together, we created 10 core values for the company and we energized around them every single day. And I mean, that was literally his answer to how he built a billion-dollar enterprise and sold to Amazon.

 

And you can go, if you look at the famous Markkula document from Apple, you know, the three guiding principles that basically I would look at as three core values that they adopted back before Apple was Apple.

 

And you literally can look at that document today and still apply to Apple as the most valuable company in the world as it was when Steve Jobs was operating out of their garage and this guy Markkula came in and said, you know, you've invested a quarter million dollars in Apple and said, here's basically our guiding document for how we are going to present ourselves to the world.

 

And so, in the book I give many examples on different scales, but ultimately the theme is that, I call the book Your Stand Is Your Brand. And the reason that I make that statement is that you need, any business needs to stand for something. They have to have a reason to exist.

 

If you don't have one, nobody cares about you. Then what happens is you're chasing opportunity. Oh, I could make money doing this. Oh, I could make money doing that. And there's no bond, there's no brand, there's no anything that has any value attached to it and certainly no traction that you can build on.

 

There’s a difference between saying I'm laying down a foundation and building on it as compared to saying yeah, I'm on the sand and I'm risking, do any chance thing that I can to make a little bit of money here and there.

 

And I think this is a big part looking at today with what's going on in the world with this pandemic and how people are reacting in the fear that it's gripping the throat of the world. And at the time of this recording, seeing literally the world economy collapse and now the prospect of governments printing, you know, untold hoards of money and sending, and trying to solve the problem.

 

And, you know, there's going to be deep reverberating implications to what's going on right now. And having been through a bunch of these, what I see every single time is that there are people that come out on the other side of it, very wealthy, very well established, and very strong businesses. And I see people that get wiped out during the course of it.

 

And I can tell you that the people who make it through, there's many things I can cite, but they have something that is very clear to them, clear to every stakeholder of the business - meaning its employees, its suppliers, its patrons and customers. It’s something that is tangible and real and those values will dictate the actions of the business.

 

Through this crisis, there have been people calling me left and right saying, oh, what do I need to do? What should I do? What do I need to do? And I say, you're asking the wrong question. They say, what should I do? Meaning, maybe they are solo-preneur, you know, and they have their own business with a few contractors. Or I have people calling me with large businesses, you know, what should my business do? How did you navigate 2008? Did you do this? Did you do that?

 

And what I keep saying is, you're asking the wrong question. The question isn't what should you do? The question is who should you be right now? That's the question. Because you have to decide who to be before you know what to do. And so that's the whole point of having core values, having purpose. It tells you who to be. And once you know who to be, then you can take action on what to do.

 

But you know, two different businesses with two different values and two different purpose that they have, and different culture, community following.. They shouldn't be doing the same thing. It's who are you, you know, how do you show up? And that's why the book we subtitled, How Deciding Who to Be (NOT What to Do) Will Revolutionize Your Business.

 

What's really interesting to me is, you know, you can't predict this stuff. I mean, you know, the contract for this book was signed three years ago with the publisher and you know, if somebody said, what's the perfect time for this book to be in the world? I would have said right now during this pandemic.

 

So, because people need to ask that question and they didn't understand how to first of all construct your philosophy. It's very, very important ‘cause your core values don't just come out of the air. You have a certain view of reality.

 

I think the one thing that I've taught that's different than just about anybody else in the world that I'm known for is philosophy. But I'm not an academic philosopher. I'm a practical philosopher. How to use critical thinking, organize it, and then put it on the ground and turn it into money and profit.

 

And philosophy is the most practical thing a human being can hope to embrace, it's the most practical thing a business can hope to embrace. So you have to understand philosophy, its branches, and then how to apply them in a practical way to your life and your business. And that's the one chapter in the book I say that's a little bit heavy lifting. You're gonna have to engage your brain when you read that one. But if you do, it's gonna pay off for the rest of your life.

 

And so, from your philosophy though, which gives you your view of reality and in part like, you know, what do I believe, which is the first bridge in metaphysics, why do I believe in epistemology? Then your core value starts to be merged because you're starting to shape your thinking, your understanding in the world and what kind of a lens you look through. And as I tell people, the core values of your business need to be aligned with your own personal core values.

 

I mean, you can't show up in a business every day that you don't share the values of, but at the same time, they don't need to be identical values because your business is its own entity. You're like a Frankenstein creating your own monster here and it's going to have a life of its own at least if you want to a stable business.

 

And, you know, most of my practice I sold many, many years ago is still in that town, still serving the same people. The businesses I've sold along the way are still out there working because they weren't me. They were me at the start. I created their values. I created their purpose so that if I get hit by a truck, the business should keep going. It has its own life that I give it.

 

So this is.. when you talk about core values as a corporate exercise, just to sound good, oh, honesty, integrity and I’m not saying anything's wrong with those values, but people say them, but then they don't practice them.

 

In my case, I'm saying that these fundamentals - every business needs to have, and when you put them in place and you live them every day, you're going to see some magical things happen in that business.

 

Ollie:

Love it. And it's.. I guess it's a little bit like, then.. I watched your Ted Talk recently. By the way, if you're listening to this and you haven't seen Patrick's Ted Talk, definitely go check it out. And it's a little bit like, then everybody has a philosophy, right? But if you don't decide what your philosophy is, then, I mean you almost get one by default. Is it the same thing with a company?

 

Patrick:

Yeah. I mean the company has a philosophy. So here's the thing to understand right now. Anybody, if you're hearing my voice right now.. No. Two things. Number one, you have a philosophy. There's no escaping it. You have one. The only question is if you defined it in a conscious, rational and disciplined way or let it kind of accumulate in your subconscious, which is not serving you because there's probably a lot of contradictions in there that are taking you down.

 

And your business has a philosophy, again, whether you'd defined it or not is a separate issue. So the practical use of philosophy is highly critical. Everybody's got one, every business has one. And it can either be the greatest tool for your success or the biggest detriment to your success because you haven't organized it.

 

Ollie:

That's fascinating. So I think what everyone's asking right now in their heads when I'm asking is like, yes, we need core value or we need purpose. We need a philosophy as a company and as an individual. How do you develop a really solid company philosophy?

 

Patrick:

So, you know, obviously within the context of the time frame that we have, I could speak to it briefly, but I will say that this is one of the reasons I wrote the book because I used to do workshops on this where I could take people through an exercise. And since I don't do that anymore, the book can do that for you.

 

So the answer to the question is that, you have to start asking yourself the right questions and that's where it really starts with. When you say, okay, and I used to do this every so often, I would do these things I called mountaintop masterminds ‘cause I live out in the mountains and people would come in, companies would come in and spend a day and a half with me.

 

They paid a very, very premium fee for it. I would take them through the exercise that I'm describing now and the question that you're asking, but they would show up and say, okay, it's your point, Oliver, here's the core values. Here's our purpose. We have this for our company.

 

I will tell you, I've done several of these, not a single one of them survived the process. When we got into every single one of them, if I can, if I'm allowed to use the profanity – it was bullshit. It was just la la land. Nothing very real, nothing deeply held. It was just, oh yeah, we got together, we spend a few hours a week, you know, we came up with these things and we like it and we posted on our wall and so on.

 

And as I start looking at the company, looking at their hiring practices, looking at their marketing copy, looking at their website, looking at just every aspect of how they operate and how they message and how they interact with each other.. I look at the core values and say, these are all bullshit. You know, here's ABC and D of how you are operating and how you’re messaging and how you're interacting and these values aren't being applied.

 

And it's not that the values are right or wrong. They're either applied or they're not. And it was funny cause the most recent company were young entrepreneurs, they have a successful online company. They're doing well. They're growing. They're excited and they thought they had this really nailed. I mean they came in very, very confident and I was happy for them.

 

I thought it would be you know, I said, okay, good. This will make the process go faster. And then they left. They said, you know, what we had was like, it felt like the kindergartener’s understanding of this, but what they left with was something that was a real company that whether it was doing $1 million a year or $100 million a year, those core values were going to hold up. That purpose was going to hold up.

 

So the idea, I guess, the saying or answering the question about how do you know, how do you get this going? It starts with a blank sheet of paper and there's two things.

 

Number one, really getting out of your mind, out of your brain, and your thinking, how you really see the world. Number two then if you already have the business, you have to contextualize that with how you're actually operating every day and seeing if these things line up or not.

 

So sometimes what I do, we ask people to resist the temptation. I talk about core values, I teach them a little bit about philosophy and understanding how to create a view of reality and have an organized view of existence, you know, and I've been studying philosophy for 30 years and I still study it constantly because it's like a never ending thing.

 

You don't ever, you might even master it to a degree, but you're never done. You can keep refining it. So I pull out of people kind of how they see the world, why they exist, what do they care about? And once I start to get some sense of some values out of them, then I'll go in and I'll go through a series of company values. You know, go right online and like Zappos, I mentioned Apple, the Markkula document.

 

I mention there are other companies out there then I find out what do they admire, who they identify with, and let's look at their values. And then once we start to look at a bunch of them, you start to see what really sticks as far as saying, oh, that one makes sense to me. I like that one a lot. Oh, we have to pop that one, etc.

 

So once we go through that process, now there's a sheet of, I don't know, maybe 20, 30, then we start to whittle down and get it down. It really should be somewhere between five to 10 core values on average. You know, sometimes people are a little bit less, sometimes people go a little over, but I like to not see more than 10 and maybe, you know, maybe somewhere between seven and 10 and then then choosing a number one core value.

 

What is that North Star? If you only could have one, which one is it going to be? And then once we go through all this and then we start to get a sense of purpose. Purpose is why you exist. I mean why does your business even exist in the first place? And the answer can't be so I can make a lot of money. That's an effect. Not a cause. Which I worked through in the book, in what I call the 5-P Expansion Sequence.

 

Every company I've started, I used the 5-P Expansion Sequence and it serves me well. It's a really good model. But I guess in the end,  like I said, this can go on for hours trying to answer the question I'm trying to get to, it's short in a short time span.

 

But in the end, once you start to identify these things and you solidify them, that's when I go into the war room mode and say, okay, now let's look at your company. Let's look at how it's running and see how it compares to these core values. And pretty quickly you start to see areas you have to fix if you want to live these values and this purpose.

 

Ollie:

That makes a lot of sense. Right. So really it's about seeing how you see the world and just seeing if your business marries up to it. And I love what you said about other companies, seeing which you admire and which you don't admire. That's such a good starting point just to.. ‘cause there's a lot of people that are gonna see that blank sheet of paper and be like, well, I can't even think of one right now. Right? So that's a great place to start.

 

So what I'm curious about is, what if you're just like a really tiny business? Like let's say you have a.. well, I teach Amazon, I sell on Amazon. Let's say you have an Amazon business. You're one person and you just sell spatulas, for example, right? Picked a random product out of the air. You just sell spatulas on Amazon. Can a kind of company, that small, making that much of a ripple, have values?

 

Patrick:

It has to. Or, I'll even go a step further. It does have values. The question is have they been identified? So in other words, you, if you are selling spatulas right, on Amazon, it's a really great example. So this is kind of mundane because there's different kinds of entrepreneurs, right?

 

You have cause-based entrepreneurs, right, that basically got into what they're doing because they're activated about a cause that they want to go to work on every day.

 

You have a passion entrepreneurs where there's just something that they just feel passionate about, which is similar to a cause-based but not the exact same thing. I think that [inaudible] talks about this in his book and it's a really, really good distinction. You have a lot of passion around for something.

 

And I've been kind of a part of many of these. You might have the entrepreneur who just loves business for business’ sake saying I love being my own boss. I love starting businesses. I like running my own business cause not everybody likes tech.

 

But now you have to have business values, right? And now that you have to, you do have business value. So if you're saying, hey, I'm not out here to save the world by selling spatulas on Amazon, but through what I do, I want to do a couple things. I want happy customers who like what we do and I want to make a profit doing it.

 

So right there, you're telling me about.. there's values baked into just those two simple little statements, having happy customers - cause you don't want unhappy customers - you don't want a bunch of returns on your Amazon business, do you? That wouldn't do good for you. So you want people to be happy with the product you're providing with - you know, the way that it's shipped, all those things that go along with Amazon, you want high ratings, right?

 

So there's certain values you have to have in certain ways that you have to present your product from a marketing perspective. Why would one spatula company make more money on Amazon than another? And you probably know this better than I do. It’s because the way that they're presenting the product.

 

There are some people who have great products but they're horrible at their marketing and their copy, they probably don't have any of the things I'm talking about as far as core values. Nothing's represented. There is a brand, it's just a commodity.

 

And you don't want a commodity business because you know, they live in, you know, on an alternating basis all day long. So the question is, if you want.. let's say you had that Amazon spatula business today, you're selling a certain amount of spatulas. There's copies on, there's copy on that page. There's something that you can reveal to people. Imagine if you weren't just another seller on Amazon, but imagine if you had a purpose as a company, and I'm making very trite things up.

 

Imagine if your purpose was the path that the happiest customers on Amazon, meaning they like doing business with you more than anybody else that they buy from. Imagine if you had a purpose to provide the highest quality products for value. Again, I'm just kind of making things up. I would imagine that there's no guideposts here.

 

How do you decide which spatula you're going to sell? How do you decide? And I know that, you know, when people go into Amazon businesses, they look at the marketplace, they look for opportunity in that marketplace. They see mundane items that sell all the time and they realize that they can make deals with manufacturers of these products, become good marketers and sellers on Amazon, know how to get that whole system aligned so that they can have regular profit.

 

I understand, I'm not in that business but I understand generically how it might work. But in the end, everything that I'm saying has some values baked into it. It's got some vision that's attached to it. It's got desired outcomes that it's looking to create. And once you have that spatula and that's going well, well next thing you might want is measuring cups. And next thing you might want is third product. And the fourth prognosis product you're going to add.

 

There's something that's going to help you decide which products, something that's going to help you decide how they're going to be represented. Something that's gonna start building a brand that people can bond to. And the stand that you're taking, which is the values and the purpose that you have, is going to dictate all of those outcomes.

 

So I would say that if you want to stay small and be, you know, have a single product and Amazon and eke out, you know, part-time living, making a little extra money, you don't need to do any of this stuff I'm talking about.

 

But if you want to have a real business that can grow, that can sustain, that can give off profit, that can bring on employees as the scale starts to increase, all of those things require core values, purpose, and then beyond that, operating principles that can build an enterprise to a higher level.

 

Ollie:

Love it. You nailed it man. And thing is, does now, especially now there's an increasing number of Chinese sellers who were just sticking the stuff that they manufacture in China and just sticking it on Amazon and just selling it cheap, and it's becoming, it's making the marketplace more competitive ‘cause they can sell stuff cheaper.

 

But the one thing they won't have is they won't have those values that you can develop as a local business. Are you really dedicated to good customer service, dedicated to providing good products in that niche..

 

And this stuff is exactly how you can make yourself stand out. So I'm really.. I think this stuff is really, really valuable. So what I want to do.. I want to move the conversation on to the current situation now. And obviously if you're listening to this, you're thinking about the virus all the time.

 

Patrick, I'm sure you are. I'm washing my hands like obsessively at the moment. I don't know about you, but, you know, we're inside, a lot of us have to stay inside. We can't skirt around the topic. This business is, you know, this virus is going to have an effect on our business.

 

So how does this stuff apply? How does having core values, how does having a really strong solid philosophy, how you operate, how does this stuff apply when the economy is not doing very well?

 

Patrick:

It applies in so far as having to take a stand. And let me explain, in closing the loop on the Amazon businesses you are saying, ‘cause it's not a dissimilar thing. These two things are very much related. When you say, hey, I'm competing with the direct from manufacturer pricing that they're putting up on Amazon, and it's getting very commoditized.

 

What if the spatula manufacturer who's undercutting you on Amazon, what if on your page you said, my company or this company, we are taking a stand. We recognize that the Amazon marketplace is being flooded by Chinese manufacturers who are not customer service-minded, not quality-minded, not whatever-minded, and are just throwing cheap stuff up here to sell to you. And we're taking a stand because we don't think that's the way that anybody should be treated or anybody should want to do business.

 

If you are more interested in having a relationship with a company that cares about its customers, that is, is thinking about how to add value to their customers in any possible way, and are more interested in doing business with somebody like us as compared to somebody who will just try to throw the cheapest piece of plastic out there that they can, then you're our customer.

 

So this is what taking a stand means. It means saying, in other words, what we're saying is, if you're looking for the absolute cheapest bachelor on Amazon, we're not it. And be willing to say that as compared to trying to compete with that, you've got to take your stand and say we're not the cheapest. We're not going to be the cheapest and I'm not going to spend my life competing on price on every commodity that I want to sell.

 

It's not the kind of business, those aren't my business values. That's the business value of the Chinese manufacturer. Their business value is give you the cheapest thing we can. My business value is serve the highest value I can at a fair price.

 

So some people only care about price, they're not my customer, and I want them to know that the second they land on my page. And for the people who care more than about price, but will spend a little bit of extra money to have a higher quality experience, that's my customer. That's my values. That's what's going to keep me in the game because I'll never compete on price with China.

 

So I think that example is an important example to understand the virtue of taking this in. And that's why I say your stand is your brand.

 

So getting now to the crisis, it's the same thing. A lot of people are running around dark alleys, arms waving, oh my God, the world's coming to an end. And there's some seriously bad stuff happening, not to me, you know, and again, now I'm giving you opinion. Okay? So we have to separate the effect.

 

My opinion is that we're way, way, way overreacting to the Corona Virus. We're way, way, way overreacting to CoVid-19. I believe that our political leaders’ values are completely screwed up. Yeah. We sit and we talk about values and politics. Those two things almost don't go together, right? We're dealing with, you know, I don't have a lot of respect for most of our politicians. There's some of them, I think are like… most of them are thinking about just how to get elected next term.

 

They're not thinking in principles. They're not thinking in purpose. They're not thinking in values and they make decisions and policies that impact us all that are debilitating. They're completely irresponsible. As my mentor taught me. They said that politicians are accountable to good intentions. Businesses are accountable to reality.

 

There's no way I could spend year after year after year and just use a bunch of debt to keep my business going. I would have reality would set in and I'd be out of business yet, you know, our governments can just print money at will, tax us and our children, our grandchildren, and continue to put us deeper and deeper debt, putting more and more strain on us.

 

But their intentions are good. So therefore, they get reelected. So I think that, what you have to decide right now is in this circumstance, who do you need to be?

 

So, for example, as the crisis is hitting and if you have a business, who are you going to be in this business right now? Are you going to go hide? Are you going to just run for shelter and let the storm ride itself out? And if you think that that's the right thing for you to do, I'm not telling you you're wrong, but you just have to decide who you want to be.

 

Who is your audience? How do you want to stand in front of them? What messages are you gonna put out in front of them? We certainly are going through.. in my businesses, there's a lot of reorganization we have to do right now based on what's happening. We have to be very cognizant of it. But we who we are, we know what our values are.

 

And so when I set the vision, I said, here's what's going to happen. We have to reorganize. We have to pivot. But this fall we're going to be a bigger and more profitable business than we are today. So do you see that as a purpose, a short term purpose between now and the fall?

 

Do you see how that informs my thinking? Rather than saying, okay, well, then how do we shrink right now and hope to ride the storm out, I'm saying, how do we reorganize and actually see profit in the circumstance on higher levels?

 

And what that's going to require is that we have to serve our audience in a better way, a more robust way like we never had before. And that's how we grow. So let's start to think about and get creative on how are we going to do that?

 

So for me, I'm taking a stand and I'm taking a stand saying that I'm not going to let the Corona Virus derail my life, my ambitions, my dreams. I'm not going to buy into the fear and the panic and help to fuel that because that's what people are doing. They're basically spreading fear and panic more than they're spreading the virus.

 

So anyway, that's the way that I'm looking at it. And I will tell you, you're gonna all be looking at back on this a year from now, two years from now, three years from now, you're going to say, oh, some people got really wealthy through this because they did X and I didn't.

 

So I think it's time for a gut check. If you're an entrepreneur, it's time to get activated. Entrepreneurs solve problems. They're not a part of the problem. They're the solution. So start thinking about how to be a solution to this problem and you're going to get wealthy.

 

Ollie:

Love it. So the ones who are probably gonna come out better off after this crisis are gonna be the ones who did take a stand. Right?

 

Patrick:

That's right. Take a stand and mean it. Don't just take a stand as an affect, that never works. When you take your stand, you mean it.

 

Ollie:

Love it. So one thing we talked about briefly before we started the interview was for a lot of business owners, especially new business owners, they're worried that if they do take a stand and they're thinking, okay, yeah, you know, I need to represent something, I need to stand for something. I need to have values.

 

What if it comes across as a bit polarizing? What if I do take a stand then, you know, I'm talking to 20% of the world now and I'm not talking to 100%. Isn't that going to be less sales for me? Isn't that going to mean less profit? What would you say to someone who's worried about being polarizing?

 

Patrick:

I'll give it to you in a short clip but, uh, to me the profits are in polarization and see, the thinking that you have - is the exact opposite. Not that you have, but that you shared as an example, is the opposite of what's true.

 

If you don't stand for something, you fall for anything, nobody's following you. So the reality is, and I've seen this over and over again, no more polarizing the subject that we are engaging in, the better we do.

 

And that's because it is very defining the people who are aligned with you, they become fanatics. They're aligned with you because you're taking their side and the people aren't aligned with you, well, they're not. That's okay. It's not a matter of how big is my audience. The question is how activated are they? How engaged are they?

 

It's quality before quantity. So the basic saying is this, never take opportunity over values. Well, it's a bigger opportunity if I do this. But if it's not aligned with your values, don't do it. It will hurt you every single time.

 

You have to know your values, take a stand on them. And then I tell people, when somebody shows up on your website, they should know, hopefully within about 10 seconds that they belong there or not. And if they're confused, you know, like the adage is, confused minds don't buy.

 

So either they show up there and they get it, and they see it and they connect and they're in, or they show up there and say, ah, this isn't me. And they're gone. That's really good.

 

Ollie:

I love that. And this is why we have hundreds and hundreds of mediocre products on Amazon that just don't sell because you look at the listing, it's very informative. There's some writing on there, but they could have just copied and pasted it from any website, you know?

 

And so when you do take a stand, when you make something more polarizing and ready, you stick your neck out and say, listen, this is what I'm here for. Like, I'll leave it. Like you say, you attract more customers and not less.

 

Patrick has been an absolute pleasure. I really, really enjoyed the interview today. Let's talk about your book. Your Stand Is Your Brand, it's already released, right? And people can get it on Amazon. Is there anywhere else they can go to grab it?

 

Patrick:

Yeah, I think if you go to the book's website, which is yourstandisyourbrand.com, I have links to all the booksellers. There are, you know, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, I think Waterstones, which I think is in the UK, right? And there's also a bonus that we're giving with the book.

 

Once you place your order, if you can, then take that order number and put it in with your email in a box on the website, and you'll get the bonus which is, I know you may or may not know Joe Polish's Genius Network. Genius X - I'm a member of that, but the Genius X is $100,000 mastermind meeting. Everybody in the room pays $100,000 a year to sit in that room to be a part of that mastermind.

 

So these are really successful entrepreneurs. And Joe had me come in and do a one hour presentation live on Your Stand Is Your Brand, you know, and go through basically the chapters of the book and explain it and bring it to life. And then I think what was even more valuable than that is the questions they asked at the end. Because when you see how these people think and the type of questions they ask, it teaches you something.

 

So that got recorded, the videos there, with the Q&A section. So we have the video, the audio of that, and the transcript of that. So when you buy the book, once you have your order number, put that in, and then submit for the bonus. And we send you all the bonus materials also, which is what I just described. And to me, you know, those people pay $100,000 a year to be in that room. And you know, by the book, I think it'd be the best $20 you ever spent.

 

But then, after you buy the book, get the bonus, and get to share what these people who spend a hundred grand to be in that room, get what they got. So you can go to gentempo.com - my last name - or yourstandisyourbrand.com, they both lead to the same place. You get the book there and then apply for the bonus and we'll be happy to ship that off to you.

 

Ollie:

Love it. Awesome. I think that's a no-brainer. So yourstandisyourbrand.com, you can grab the book and you can get that amazing bonus as well. Patrick, it’s been really fantastic having you on the session today. Thanks so much for being so generous sharing your wisdom and really can't wait for people to listen to this and share it.

 

Patrick:

It's been my pleasure. I really appreciate the work that you're doing and you know, like you, I love entrepreneurs, I love people who take responsibility for their own outcomes and go to try to add some value in the world. So if somehow this helped them, it makes me happy.

 

Ollie:

Likewise. Awesome. Patrick, thanks so much, man, and I'm sure we'll catch up soon.

 

Patrick:

Thanks.