Christine Schlonski [0:02]
Hey Gorgeous. This is episode number 145. We have the wonderful Steve Gordon back on the show today.

Steve Gordon [0:10]
Hi, this is Steve Gordon, you’re listening to Heart Sells! Podcast with Christine Schlonski. Enjoy.

Christine Schlonski [0:15]
Well, in the last episode, Steve already shared with us how to become an unstoppable CEO. This episode we are going deeper into the exponential network strategy. What can you do to have a big impact in the world to create your tribe, and to get the business results you are looking for so that you can spend less time on business development and more time on what really matters? Because this is what Steve Gordon helps service business entrepreneurs create that they leverage their marketing systems. He is the best selling author and founder of, The Unstoppable CEO™, and the host of the wonderful podcast, Unstoppable CEO™. Steve has written over 400 articles on marketing for service businesses. So you want to know what’s next. Stay tuned. Well, I’m so excited to have you back on the show, Steve. Thank you,

Steve Gordon [1:12]
Christine. I’m just excited to be here and had a great time in the first episode.

Christine Schlonski [1:16]
I know and I love the advice you gave us. Erase the word podcast, do an interview series, kind of take it easy, but do something, build relationships, because sales, marketing, having a business it is all about relationships. The better you are in building these relationships, the more success you will have. Because people then want to support you. They are on a mission with you. I love that you shared the link for our listeners to actually download your kind of blueprint, your book. Let’s see again where people can get that to get their copy.

Steve Gordon [1:57]
Sure. The book is called The Exponential Network Strategy. We’ve put up a page just for your listeners if they go to https://unstoppableceo.net/heartsells and there’ll be a link on that page to get the e-book and the audiobook. They can dive into it from there.

Christine Schlonski [2:19]
Awesome. I also love that we had the conversation that you don’t need to make it complicated with a book. You don’t need to write 1000 pages, smaller books will do as well if you deliver great content your audience will love you for every single piece you are putting out there.

Steve Gordon [2:38]
Yeah, and with books, I’ve seen people struggle for years with books. Myself, I tried to write two books before I actually finished one. Those first two attempts ended up in the garbage can because they weren’t very focused and I didn’t have a good process in place for writing them and I thought it just was a bigger project than it needed to be. When I ultimately wrote my first book, it’s more of a traditional business book, it’s, I don’t know, 150, 200 pages, something like that. I was able to write that in 30 days.

Christine Schlonski [3:21]
Wow.

Steve Gordon [3:22]
It’s about 35 or 36,000 words, and I wrote an hour or so a day, and roughly 1000 words, a little more than 1000 words a day, which is not a lot. In the grand scheme of things, you’re going to write a book, you’re gonna have to get comfortable with writing somewhere in the neighborhood of, close to 1000 words an hour most. I think most people can do that if you know what you’re going to be writing about. If you think about it, well, if you’re doing 1000 a day you can get a full-size trade paperback done in a month. Now, I tend to prefer writing shorter, smaller, more focused books. I find people enjoy them more because convey is one important idea very quickly. That usually means that the book is somewhere in the neighborhood of about 10,000 words. Well, if you’re writing blog posts, that’s somewhere between six and 10 blog posts depending on how long your posts are. You don’t have to make writing a book more complicated than it actually needs to be. I had a client who we were encouraging him to write a book. He went off and he did it and calling this a book is being rather generous. He wrote 12 typed pages in Microsoft Word, 12 pages. We formatted it as a book and I think when we got it down into like a book format, it was more like 25 pages. I mean, it was pretty thin. But it was a book. It did the job. He got clients from it. Don’t think that you’ve got to go away into your writing cabin for 18 months while you crank out the next great business best-seller. That’s not the purpose of it.

Christine Schlonski [5:13]
Yeah. I think the purpose is always connecting with people, supporting people to make their dreams come true. Because if you help them make their dreams come true, they make sure that they help you make your dreams come true. I think that’s such a wonderful way of seeing things and it makes life easier and more fun.

Steve Gordon [5:34]
Yeah, very much so, very much so.

Christine Schlonski [5:35]
Yeah. So you’ve been in business for so long. Do you remember, in your life in general, the very first thing you’ve ever sold?

Steve Gordon [5:46]
The first thing I sold was a large consulting project. My first business, we were in a tiny little discipline of engineering called Geomatics. Part of what we did was we created digital maps back when that was relatively new. This is before Google Maps existed and all of this other stuff. We would create digital maps for county governments here in the US where we map out all of the property boundaries so they could use in their GIS or Geographic Information System. Our little firm, I think we were 10 or 12 people at the time, I’d only been there for about a year. We submitted a proposal to the county where we were located for this project, and to map all of these property boundaries electronically for the first time. We were up against about a half dozen, very large national and international firms. I mean, you want to talk about David versus Goliath and this whole process, but we had an advantage, going back to the word relationship that we’ve talked about because we were local firm, we had been building relationships with all of the people who were advocating that this work be done. It was a fairly ground of groundbreaking is the right word, but it was very, very new. So they were sort of trying to sell the powers that be that controlled budget that this needed to happen. We’re doing that over a course of several years. Over these years, we built a relationship with them. We help them sort of spec, what the project should look like. When we came in and submitted our proposal and went up against all of these larger firms, I mean, the larger firms did well, they had experienced that we didn’t have, their qualifications we didn’t have but ultimately, we won. We won because we had relationships that those other firms didn’t have. If you looked on paper, we were not the most qualified firm. If you just simply looked at the number of credentials we had, which in that case mattered, and the experience we had, we weren’t as qualified as the others, but we had the relationships, we understood the project better and we could demonstrate that and we won. I gotta tell you, that was probably one of the key moments in my career because seeing that success gave me just tremendous confidence going forward.

Christine Schlonski [8:28]
I love that story. Yeah, it’s always once you made a sale, and you really feel you’ve done something great because you’re now supporting, whatever you sold the person, the company, the government. It is such a beautiful feeling. Because now, you get to step up in your own game, you get to prove what can be done and in your case, even though you didn’t have some credentials, but you had the relationships so people were seeing the potential in you and your colleagues. I really love that. I think it’s so inspiring for entrepreneurs who might be struggling or just starting or even thinking about starting their own business. Once you can establish that relationship, once you have something somebody needs, you can put it in a book, in a podcast, in a conversation, and you can really step up into the spotlight so people can actually see you and have the opportunity to speak to you.

Steve Gordon [9:32]
As I think back to that particular sale, and the things that came after it. It really, took me from being on the technical side of that business to very quickly being on the sales and marketing side of that business. We were using content marketing in the 90s. We would go and give speeches and presentation anywhere we could speak on the topic to the right group of people, we would go and do it. Within a couple of years, our firm and me and one of the other principles in particular, we had really become recognized as kind of the thought leaders in that little industry for the group of people we were trying to influence, which in our case was all over the state of Florida here in the US. It didn’t take all that long to accomplish that. We went from being, like I said before, sort of the best-kept secret in our market to quickly being the front runner and the name everyone knew. I think that’s the advantage of any kind of media platform. Whether it’s a podcast, or you’ve got an email newsletter, that where you share your insights or you go and give speeches, however you do it. Having a media platform where you can share your unique worldview and help educate the people that you want to be a hero to on the problems that they face and the impact of those problems and then educate them on the solution or at least the path to the solution, you very quickly will build a following, you’ll build up a group of people that get excited about the fact that you’re offering them a way forward out of some situation or work toward some opportunity that they really want.

Christine Schlonski [11:39]
Yeah, that’s so true. Again, it is a relationship and it takes some time to build. It’s not, as we talked about in the other episode, except the frontal cast and get pitched. It’s really putting in that effort. I just love that even though as an entrepreneur, we all fail at, but we also succeed. You only have to succeed a little bit more than you fail to be successful and to keep the company running. That was your professional sales story, so what was the very first thing you ever sold in your life? Do you remember?

Steve Gordon [12:20]
Wow, that’s a good question. I think the first thing I sold was, I was in the Boy Scouts. We had to sell popcorn, door to door to raise money for a trip. I’ll never forget, I was just frightened as I could be to go knocking on strangers doors and trying to sell them something but the first time I got an order, boy, that was just the greatest feeling. You sort of had all the adrenaline from knocking on some strange person’s door and having to talk to this grown-up who was a little bit, maybe a little bit intimidating, but then, getting the order and finding that most people were pretty gracious and welcoming. I don’t know how much that influenced me later. But I do recall that being kind of a, for me personally was a big confidence boost to be able to go and do those sorts of things. I was young too. I was probably, I don’t know, eight or nine or 10 years old.

Christine Schlonski [13:30]
Yeah, but what a great experience and I love like how you, I could still feel how you felt like the excitement and the adrenaline coming up. I think we all have those moments where we remember these big important victories, so to speak, that gave us the confidence boost to keep going or to change direction or to try something new. Knocking on stranger stores can be quite intimidating. It’s like making an offer now, for so many people, they feel scared. There’s nothing really to be scared about, because the worst thing that can happen is getting a, “No.” There’s nobody going to come through Facebook, LinkedIn, whatever platform, the phone, and shake your hand or grab you by the shoulder and scream at you. I feel that once people get over it, and they can actually go back to such an important and great experience, they can build emotionally on that. I would always suggest when you’re not feeling in your right state, think about these moments. Think about selling the very first thing you’ve ever sold or somebody saying, “Yes”, or giving you a chance and then go with this energy into the next conversation.

Steve Gordon [14:53]
Well, I think it’s important for folks to understand, particularly when you’re starting out, it’s hard to picture this. But everyone that you are hoping to sell to is running around right now and they are looking for someone to provide leadership to them in some area of their life or their business. Not in necessarily all areas, but in some areas, and for the people that ultimately you’re going to serve, they’re looking for leadership in the area of their lives that you impact. If you kind of approach with that mindset, that way, they’re out there, they’re looking, they have this issue, they may not understand it fully. My job to educate them because I’m the leader. They may not be fully aware of all of the side effects or the consequences of the situation that they’re in, but it’s my job to educate them because I’m the leader and they may not know how to take the next step or even that there is the next step towards a solution available to them. But I’m going to let them know what that is because I’m the leader. If you take that approach, and sort of, it’s almost like putting on armor. It’s like you’re putting on your suit of armor, and you’re going to go take leadership for the people that you want to do business with, and that you want to impact. For me, that mindset makes it easy to overcome all of the other challenges because you now begin to tell yourself, “Well, these people need me. They’re depending on me to show up and to do the work that I’m here to do.” Part of that work is to go out and market effectively so that I can tell them, “Hey, here’s the solution that you’ve been looking for. Follow me.”

Christine Schlonski [16:57]
Yeah, I think that’s so important. As an entrepreneur, you’ll need to lead yourself and when you lead yourself then you can lead others. I think showing up each and every day is leading yourself, to show up, to write your blog, to do your Facebook Live or your LinkedIn or Instagram, whatever, whatever your method is to communicate with people just showing up and showing them the value. Show them what you’ve got. Help them in whatever challenges they have, maybe daily or weekly, and show them that what you’re talking about will ultimately lead to building that relationship because you gave first. Said also something that you noticed when you gave first, that in return there was so much more to come your way.

Steve Gordon [17:48]
Always. It’s not something that I’ve noticed just at the beginning when I started but I’m astonished at what comes from generosity. I don’t ever approach it from the perspective of, “I’m doing this to get something”, but it always amazed me what comes back from that. The problem, I mean, you hear people talk about this all the time, and you can get a little bit, we’re metaphysical with it, but, you know, I’m sending these signals out to the universe and all that stuff. I’m a little more practical than that. I like to observe things and then kind of take stock of my experience. I know that when I act in that way, where I’m just giving value whenever I can. I’m always looking for ways where I can give, almost give value exponentially. Things like podcast and webinars and books, those are ways for me to be able to give value to a lot of people that I couldn’t do one on one. I always look for those sorts of opportunities where I can leverage but whenever I do that, I always get far more back than I put it. I don’t know where it’s coming from. I don’t know when it’s coming. I don’t know who it’s coming from. I’ve learned just not to care that much about any of those details, but just trust that it’s going to happen. Get out and share your message. If I didn’t show up today to do this interview with you, there would be all of your listeners who wouldn’t have heard this message and for some of them, it’s going to be an important message for them to hear I hope. Some of them may say, “Not for me”, and that’s okay. But you’ve got to find a way that you can show up again and again and again and again, and then again, and share your message because the people that need it are out there.

Christine Schlonski [20:00]
Yeah, I totally agree. Woohoo — or not I’m always amazed by what comes my way. Because when you give, you don’t expect that person to give right back at you. That’s like that. I think that’s the old way of thinking that scarcity. “I’m inviting you to my party so you have to invite me to your party. I’m giving you a gift. Now you have to give me a gift”, kind of thing. I think that’s a pretty limiting belief and mindset, if you’re just there to give, what goes around comes around. At some point, one person will decide to support you, and they don’t expect anything back. I just think that it’s so beautiful once you adapted that mindset because it opens so many doors. It makes life so much more fun because, at the end of the day, it’s about contribution, I feel and the more you can contribute the more you can give, the more fulfilled you will be. The nice add-on is that people also support you on your way, even though if you haven’t calculated it. I’m often surprised when people reach out that I’ve never read the name or I’ve never seen alike or stuff I posted and then all of a sudden, you get this beautiful message. You just think like, “Wow, where’s this coming from?” Building a relationship with somebody you didn’t know was in your environment. I just love that, that you mentioned the giving piece and the practical piece of the woohoo stuff. So it’s working.

Steve Gordon [21:47]
Yeah, it worked for me for my entire career.

Christine Schlonski [21:51]
Awesome. Well, what’s working as well as that you are giving to our community such a great book and an audiobook. People can get get the paper copy on Amazon. But you have created a link extra for us. So do you mind repeating it, please?

Steve Gordon [22:09]
Absolutely, they can go to https://unstoppableceo.net/heartsells. When you go there, you’ll find a link to download the e-book of, The Exponential Network Strategy. There’s an audio version of it and I don’t know if I mentioned it before, there’s also a video version I had. One of my clients actually interviews me kind of chapter by chapter through the book. However you like to consume it, you can get it there and the paperback is available, but to get that the best way to do that gets it on Amazon.

Christine Schlonski [22:45]
Okay, well, that’s very cool. What would you love to leave our listeners with, to finish off this wonderful episode?

Steve Gordon [22:54]
Well, I think of going back to where we started in the first episode. If you’re struggling with sales, the vast majority of the time that starts because you don’t have enough opportunities, you don’t have enough leads. That creates this feeling of scarcity and stress and desperation. That’s the thing to focus on. That to me, for folks who haven’t yet hit the six-figure mark or who are in the low six figures and looking to grow, that’s probably the number one thing to focus on. That you’ve got to get the number of opportunities up. Once you do that, almost everything else becomes easier. I see so many people get caught up in doing all kinds of other things that aren’t going to get them over that one big hurdle. You get over that hurdle and you’ve got good lead generation and you have a flow of people. You can then, now by the time to solve lots of other problems in your business. That didn’t matter as much beforehand. But until you get over that hurdle, and you’ve got a good flow of clients, you’re just going to struggle.

Christine Schlonski [24:17]
Yeah, I totally agree. So make it easier for yourself, implement a strategy where you can show up to the right people where you can connect, where you can build relationships. And then make that offer to have the conversation with you or to join your tribe or whatever it is, podcast, newsletter, write a book, but get yourself out there more. Awesome. Thank you so, so much, Steve, for all the wisdom you shared with us. There were so many golden nuggets. I can’t wait for your next book to come out, hopefully, at some point soon and to share even more of your message. Thank you so much.

Steve Gordon [24:59]
Thanks for having Christine has been so much fun.

Christine Schlonski [25:02]
This is so true as far as not just the strategy, but something you really need to do to become an unstoppable CEO. You really need to show up as a leader. Because the people you serve, they need what you have. So you need to educate them, you need to get them into your system, you need to serve them. You need to build these wonderful relationships, so that you can really leverage your business, that you can have the impact in the world that you want to have, that you also can make the money you want to make so you can pay for your dreams. I think Steve said it so beautifully in this episode all the things he had done to really have the impact and how it took off once they stepped into the right place at the right time. This only happened because they showed up. You also want to show up by subscribing to Heart Sells! Podcast, by tuning in to all the amazing guests that are featured here, to the variety Fridays where I share my wisdom with you or answer your questions or give you amazing resources. But for now, hop on over to https://christineschlonski.com/ find the podcast tap with the show notes, with the transcripts, with all the amazing resources we talked about. Make sure you are staying tuned for the next episode. Have a wonderful day wherever you are in this beautiful world and I’m saying bye for now.