Rob: I’m already on fire, John.

John: Yes! Rob loves business. He’s a four time CEO who attended his first board meeting at 16. He interviewed Steve Jobs and Bill Gates – we’ll have to talk about that later – and authored the book An Enlightened Entrepreneur. He recently led Hot Topic Media/Double Your Dating with Eben Pagan, past EOFire guest, and currently reinvents the job ad. Rob, take a minute, fill in some gaps from that intro and give us a little glimpse of your personal life.

Rob: Sure. You know, it all dates back to my dad. He taught me how to love business. He was fortunate enough to go to Columbia right after Warrant Buffet and shared the same mentor as him. So, I grew up on Buffettisms back when Buffet, if you mention Warren Buffet and that’s what you were into, you’d get your ass kicked in school because he was not cool back then. He was not known as a billionaire. But secretly, my dad knew he was going to do real well and he said, “Listen to this guy. You don’t have to listen to me, but listen to what Warren Buffet’s doing,” because they shared this Ben Graham mentor together. And, that set me on a journey of loving business, treating it like a game. You know, when I go on vacation, I’m still in business mode because I’m passionate about. I just love it. I think it can be enjoyable and should be for everyone.

John: Love it all. And Fire Nation, we’re going to be going back into Rob’s journey in just a little bit here. But first and foremost, Rob, today, 2017, what would you say is your area of expertise?

Rob: You know, I like to use the analogy, you know Bruce Jenner? Caitlyn Jenner now?

John: Yeah, totally?

Rob: As she is knows as, but back when she was he and Bruce Jenner, you know he was famous for – when I was growing up, he was famous for being and Olympic decathlete, which meant he was the best athlete in the world. And, that was kind of the definition of the decathlon and the winner of it. And, I always like to think of that with business and myself, which is you have to be good at a number of things, but you don’t have to be the best. So, the decathlon is, you know, 10 events in the Olympics, pole vault and running and shotput and all that stuff. You know how many events he won out of those 10?

John: Nine.

Rob: He won one.

John: What?

Rob: First place in one. So, you know, he got second and third here and there, and seventh and eighth. But, you know, he was competing against dozens of athletes. And you know, as we’re entrepreneurs, we’re athletes. Let’s not deny that. I mean, you have to be athletic to be an entrepreneur. I don’t mean physically, I mean the whole thing. Physically, mentally, spiritually. So, I always like to think of Bruce, now Caitlyn, and winning the decathlon in 1976 in the Olympics. And, you know, as a good entrepreneur, as a great entrepreneur, you need to be pretty good but not the best at a number of things. And, it doesn’t have to be 10, by the way. I’ve got a few. If you want, we could share that whenever you’re ready.

John: Yeah! Let’s go through a couple, and I think that’s super cool, you know, about how you don’t have to come first place in everything, Fire Nation. In fact, if you try to do that, you’re probably going to fail at the whole shebang. So, it’s all about the consistency, it’s all about doing good in those things to get that overall score. Now, Rob, take us through a couple of those.

Rob: Yeah. And if we had time, you and I could probably rattle off 10 and then some. But, to me, there’s three that I think it boils down to, that if you nail these three and you’re above average, then you’re going to be super successful. So, the first one’s selling, and I love this one because sales is a bad word to some people. It was to me. I used to be an editor – a journalist. That’s when I first got to meet Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, a bunch of other folks. And, I used to be on the editorial side. The sales side was the dark side. That was, like, you know, you’d see the head of sales was like seeing Darth Vader walking down the hallways. But, I learned over time, selling’s what makes the business. No sales, I wouldn’t have a job as an editor. So, I think selling is super important. I like to replace the word “selling to” for those who have any weirdness about it with things like “sharing,” “teaching,” you know, “showing” instead of just selling. Because, let’s face it. If you are passionate about something, you could sell anything. And so, you could also replace it just with passion. And, you know to sell well, you need to get clients. You need to get investors. These are all things that need sales skills.

So, I think number one, you’ve just got to be super good at selling. And that means that if you’re not a natural sales person, you must be going after something you’re passionate about, because otherwise, you’re not going to be able to sell it. No one can. Steve Jobs said that. Any sane person would give up if they keep failing. It’s like I say, if you’re passionate, it keeps you going. So, that’s number one. And, gives you – by the way – if you keep selling, gives you that ignition. Are you ready to ignite John?

John: I’m prepared!

Rob: Yeah. You know, the ignition is that passion that keeps you going. And so, I really believe in that and sales being a top three there. Number two – and this was specific advice I got from Steve Jobs when I asked him at All Things Digital at the Four Seasons hotel with Eben Pagan, past guest. He and I were sitting together and it was a rock star moment. He’s sitting on stage with Bill Gates. They hadn’t hung out for many years. They’re bitter enemies and they’re on stage, and couple of us got to ask some questions, and Eben and I kind of turned to each other. And, he had paid for my ticket, but the way. I was partners with them and he had paid for my ticket. I said, “You want to do it or am I going to do it, Eben?” He said, “Ah, go for it, Rob.” So, we had to be fast by the way. People were ready to – you know, there was only a handful of questions to answer. And so, basically my question was – you’ll love this – I said, “Hey, Bill and Steve. I’m sitting here with my buddy Eben. We’re entrepreneurs. What’s the best entrepreneurial advice you can give us?”

And they said a bunch of things. Steve was a lot more articulate about this. But, the second advice I’ve got for you, which is what Steve shared that day with us, is you’ve got to be a good talent scout. So, number two is you’ve just got to be a good talent scout because you can’t grow this yourself. That’s a solopreneur. You could be a one-man show, one-gal show. But, if you’re going to grow and scale your business, you’ve got to be a talent scout. So, sales, number one. Good seller. Number two’s talent scout.

And then finally is number three is what I call the flywheel. You got to have a secret sauce business model to your business. You don’t have to know immediately because if you’re passionate about it already and you start to explore it, you’ll find it. But just like you, John, I haven’t explored yours fully, but you’ve got something or you wouldn’t be most successful entrepreneurial podcast. I hadn’t heard of you and then Christine Kriner on our team said, “You’ve got to go look this up. It’s the number one podcast for entrepreneurs.” And, I looked it up. I was hooked! And that’s a flywheel because you already did something where you didn’t even have to sell me directly. Someone else did it for you. How’s that for sales?

John: Love it!

Rob: For all I know, maybe you weren’t even a good salesperson, but your story was so good and your product was so good that it worked. And that meant to me you had a flywheel going. Everything was clicking and it was taking off and to me, that’s number three. So, selling, be a good talent scout, and then, have your secret sauce flywheel.

John: Wow. Love that. And Fire Nation, we could literally stop this interview now with all those value bombs that have just been dropped. I mean, sales, talent scout, flywheel, let’s take a step breath. Take a deep breath, Fire Nation. What do you have in your business that’s working with those three things? What do you have that’s not? And you can figure out some things to work on, and maybe when you know what’s working, pour some ignitor fluid on that. Now, Rob, you have quite the journey. I mean, being on stage with Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Eben Pagan’s a dear friend of yours, I mean the list goes on. Sounds like you’ve led a pretty blessed life and I’m sure in a lot of ways you have. But, that doesn’t mean you haven’t had your struggles, too. So, take us, take Fire Nation to your worst entrepreneurial moment to date. And Rob, tell us that story.

Rob: Sure thing. I was running a business called Express Doctors. We had an idea for folks who were traveling from overseas coming to the US, if they get sick, it’s kind of tricky how to get covered healthcare wise when you’re in the states if you’re coming from overseas. And so, I met a couple and we got into business together and formed Express Doctors. And so, it’s basically a house call doctor. You know, someone’s in Vegas visiting from London or Russia, wherever they were coming from. They get sick and say go into the emergency room, they can have a doctor go right to them. So anyway, I was CEO, I was running the business, and eventually, I realized I don’t know what the heck I’m doing. I had no healthcare background. I was passionate about starting a business, but I really didn’t know the domain. So, I found a guy who I thought would be a lot better as a CEO, and I went, recruited him – got to be a good talent scout – brought him in, and then started to tell some of our partners, investors and friends and stuff like that about the change. And boy, this one guy, our biggest investor at Express Doctors, he called me up before I told him, and he ripped into me for not giving him the news first.

He was the biggest investor and he said, “I shouldn’t have to hear this from someone else, Rob.” Some other guys called him, like, another investor and, you know, I just waited too long. And, he said something to me that really has stuck with me because it’s kind of going to sound weird and counterintuitive. He said, “Rob, bad news is good news and always over communicate it. Over communicate information and you’ll be in good shape, especially if you’re an authentic, good, honest person.” And, I’ll tell you, John, I had nightmares, like Soprano style with Tony Soprano cutting off my head. Dude, that’s how intimidating this guy was. And, that was really my worst moment. It was the biggest mistake I made where someone called me out and really reprimanded me and –

John: You know, can you kind of expound on that though? What does that mean that even bad news is good news or bad news is good news?

Rob: You know, over communicate. Like, if you ever are thinking, “Should I tell someone this?” Tell them for chances are – now, you might have to frame it, script it, which I do a lot of. Boy, especially if you’re dealing with delicate news and information, I script everything out. You’re laying off someone? You better script it out. That’s why by the way, guys, Trump laying someone off with a letter, it’s like, “Come on, buddy. Bring them into your office. Have a high bandwidth conversation. Jesus!” That’s my other tip, by the way, is communication. The more sensitive, go higher bandwidth. In person’s the best. Don’t do a email. Phone calls maybe or video chat’s next best, but don’t write a letter when they guy’s down the hall from you. So, over communicate. Even bad news can be good news is the point this guy’s making. And you know what? It sucked at the time. I remember the quote and I use it all the time.

John: Yeah. Over communicate, Fire Nation. I mean, you just have to share the knowledge whether it’s good or bad; it’s got to get out there. And, I’m a huge fan of that, a huge believer in that. And Rob, you’re such a good story teller. So, I want to kind of take the essence of the last story where you really took us there and shift it into one of you greatest ideas that you’ve had to date – one of your aha moment. And take us to that moment in time, Rod, that you had that aha moment, and then kind of walk us through how you turned that idea into success.

Rob: Well, you know, I was thinking about this because I know you ask some of the same questions of your guests, and I couldn’t help but think a little bit as I was listening to some of your interviews. And, I’ve got a strange one. It isn’t the biggest win ever and I’ve had a handful of aha moments, fortunate enough to have a few. I had one where I saw the internet when it first was coming on board, I was lucky to have a front row seat, I was writing for tech magazines. Our readers told us the internet was going to be big. And, I decided I’m just going to go for it. I left my company and said, “You know, I love music. So, I’m just going to launch a music website.” So, I launched a business called MoJam. It was like a TV Guide for concerts. You could look up who’s playing where. Super cool. And, then, I found a guy who was doing a better job. So, I traveled to upstate New York and talked him and his partner into selling their business to us. I had a few shareholders with me. A few investors.

We had nothing. They already had a website up, different name and subtraction, but I sold them on the vision and I believed it. I was into it. I was going to make this much bigger than the two of them could do on their own. I was super confident about it. They were a little bit on the technical side, not as experienced in sales and marketing. So, acquired that company, all stock, got two great people, got some great intellectual property, a website, part of that got a domain name. And, I remember – a valuable one. A couple of them, actually. And I remember a year later, we needed a little extra money to float the company, and I went to sell that name. Calendar.com. That was the name. And, I went to go sell that. Instead of raising money for investors, a little easier to just go sell the thing. So, I found a buyer, $300,000. And, so then, the guy says, “Okay, you need to fax me your wire instructions and some other forms and stuff, banking info –” And I didn’t have a fax, you know. We weren’t that big a company or anything. I had to go down to this local P.O. box. You know those P.O. box type stores?

John: Yeah, totally.

Rob: And, I went down there and there was a guy I remember. I asked him where he was from. He was from Pakistan. It was his family business. And, they had a fax machine – he was smoking a cigarette – and some P.O. boxes. It was in an edgy neighborhood in the Mission district, San Francisco. And, I remember handing him a piece of paper saying, “Can you fax this?” And it has $300,000 on it and with our routing information. And, I’m just hoping this guy doesn’t look at it because I didn’t know if I’d make it out of that neighborhood.

John: He makes one phone call and you’re like, “Why is all the people in here right now?”

Rob: You know? So, he takes the piece of paper from me, the form with the 300K on it, he looks me in the eye, takes a drag of his cigarette, and I’ll never forget. He just slips it into the fax machine without even looking at the fax machine. He has been doing this all day. And he just sent it out and, you know, we got the money wired in later. And, it wasn’t the biggest deal we ever did, but I said, “Boy! Acquired a company for all stock and suddenly there’s $300,000 in our bank account, cash. What a wonderful world.”

John: Wonderful world that we live in, Fire Nation. Now, Rob, speaking of a wonderful world, let’s fast forward to today in this world that we live in right now. What are you most fired up about? What gets you super excited when you jump out of bed in the morning?

Rob: Easy. OnGig.com O-N-G-I-G. So, we’re reinventing the job ad, as you mentioned earlier. In effect, hundreds of years ago, they had the Help Wanted ad in newspapers. That’s how employers would post jobs. And then, the internet came along, and really the employers just slapped these jobs onto the internet. A bunch of text and need a software programmer now and a .NET developer. Whatever it is. Here’s the responsibilities. So, we looked at that and said, a hire is again, talent scouts – Steve Jobs. He only gave two tips to me and Eben that day. One was "be a talent scout." Attracting talent is tough. And so, when I looked at this job ad that hadn’t been reconsidered since it was slapped on the internet back in the early 90s, I said, “We can do better than this.” So, what we did was, we allow employers to add video, pictures, what it’s like to work at the company, the culture, chat, the recruiter or the hiring manager and the candidate can chat on the page – on the job ad live. It brings the job ad to life. There are all sorts of other bells and whistles to it. And, we’re reinventing the job ad with OnGig.

And, you mentioned Eben Pagan. I was fortunate enough that he invested another great personal development coach, Ramit Sethi, one of my favorites out there. I Will Teach You to be Rich, I think, if I got that right – his book.

John: That is right. Past guest of EOFire as well.

Rob: Man! Is there anyone –

John: Who haven’t I interviewed? Well, unfortunately, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are not on my interview list.

Rob: I’ll send you notes. I’ll share my notes. But, very blessed that Ramit and Eben, two of my favorite, smartest business people, both invested in OnGig. And, were taking one new investor by the way, John, if you’re interested.

John: Whoa. Hey. Send the prospect sheet. No joke, brother, you know? Let’s do this.

Rob: And, we’re super psyched about OnGig. We think of a job opportunity, it should be a Super Bowl ad. Every job is a million dollar transaction, I like to say. It’s worth a million if you get the right person. You’re going to pay them a million dollars over the years. And, did you know that the best hire out of the next hundred hires, if you’re a big Fortune 500 type company, the next best hire of your hundred is worth to your company on average $32 million a year.

John: Geez. Come on!

Rob: If you get the superstar. $32 million. One out of a hundred, and all you need to do is get that one out of a hundred. You’re pretty much set. That’s how big a hire it is. So, we can do better than just text slapped onto the internet. That’s what OnGig –

John: Yeah. Well, good stuff. I’m really excited for you. And, we’re going to talk post interview, Rob, because if Eben and Ramit are in, I’m interested. I’m actually going to be going on a vacation with Ramit coming up here at the end of July. We are going to Guatemala because we’re both big contributors to Pencils of Promise. And actually, myself here at EOFire, we built three schools with you, Fire Nation. With your support. Anybody that bought our Freedom Journal. And so, we built three schools in developing countries, one of them being in Guatemala. So, myself and Ramit are heading down to Guatemala in July, which will be fun.

Rob: Yeah, we got more in common even than I thought.

John: Oh, for sure, brother.

Rob: That’s great to hear. Please say hi to him.

John: Fire Nation, you think Rob’s been dropping value bombs? You’re right. And more coming in the lightning round, so stick around. We’re going to take a quick minute to thank our sponsors.

Rob, are you ready to rock the lightning round?

Rob: Let’s do it!

John: What was holding you back from becoming and entrepreneur?

Rob: Nothing. My dad just conditioned me to – you know, I like to call being an entrepreneur, it’s like the campsite rule they keep you when you go camping first – at least, good people if you’re hanging around with them. They say, you know, “Leave the campground as you found it,” right? I like to think as being a good entrepreneur, just to tweak on that. Leave the world not only as you found it, leave it better. And you’ve talked about this. I’ve heard this – a couple of your guests. And so, my dad wired me to want create and build something, and I was fortunate in that to love business. And, that’s what you’re doing. You’re creating value and making this world better. And that’s what all your guests are doing, what you’re doing and Ramit and Eben and all these great people. So, I felt propelled into this world.

John: What is the best advice you’ve ever received?

Rob: You know it’s a quote. I didn’t receive it directly, but I heard it from one of my favorite bands, the Grateful Dead. And they said, “We’re not the best at what we do, we’re the only ones that do what we do.” And I love that quote because I think in this world where we’re exploding in numbers and websites and just population and literally, anyone could do anything and solve any problem at this point. It’s just endless. That, you’ve really got to specialize and you’ve got to be unique, and you’ve got to be yourself. And, you know, the Grateful Dead also were famous, Jerry Garcia, one of my big heroes said, “You know, we’re kind of like licorice. Not everyone likes licorice, but those who like licorice, they really like licorice.” And so, you know, be unique, focus on your unique ability.

John: You know, I look back to 2012 when I launched EOFire, this podcast, and I was not the best podcaster by a long shot. But, guess what? I was the only daily podcast interviewing successful entrepreneurs. And that’s it. If you wanted a daily show, and obviously a lot of people did, I was your only stop. I was the one stop. So, what is it that you, Fire Nation, are going to be “only” at? Crush it. What’s a personal habit that contributes to your success, Rob?

Rob: You know, I work at it every day, and I’m still working for that perfect day. Lou Reed’s got that great song, Perfect Day. Drinking sangria in the park, a bunch of other stuff. Of course, he’s also got a song called Heroin, so, you know. It’s not all positive. But, my perfect day, I try to focus on every day and I decided one simple way to look at it is just bookend it, which is, you’ve got to wake up feeling good, right? If I could wake up feeling good and then, if I could fall asleep feeling good, that is a perfect day. And so, there’s a lot that goes in between. But, I’ll tell you, you just invest some time into making sure you fall asleep feeling good, which means, not too much caffeine, not too much meds, drugs, alcohol, any of that stuff. And then, get a good rest and wake up feeling good. To wake up feeling good, you’ve got to make sure you’re doing something good in life, you’ve got to be taking care of your body and everything else. So, at times when I don’t have a lot of time to write down my goals, sometimes I just write that down and I say, “You know, fall asleep feeling good; wake up feeling good.”

John: Can you give us an internet resources like Evernote that you really like?

Rob: You know what’s funny? This is a little bit old school and inside baseball, maybe, but I am obsessed with looking at the key words that people are searching on on the internet. So, I happen to use SEO book, the keyword tool. It’s free. You just register for it. And, I look at what people are searching on because those are the problems to solve in this world. So, it’s right there and it’s free. What a wonderful world.

John: Google Trends, SEO Book, I mean, these are just great tools to see what’s trending in this world. What’s happening? What questions are people asking? Why not provide the solution for them? And Rob, to join your book An Enlightened Entrepreneur on our bookshelves, what would be another book that you’d recommend?

Rob: You know, my favorite number one business book – and if you look up Rob Kelly, entrepreneur, Rob Kelly’s favorite business books, you’ll see about 20, but on the internet. I’ve got the number one if I had to pick it, is a book not a lot of people talk about. It’s called Poor Charlie’s Almanack by Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s right-hand man. And even though my dad taught me to study Buffettisms back when I’d get my butt kicked in high school and middle school, his partner, Charlie Munger, is even a bigger hero of mine because Warren was just focused on being the best investor in the world and he won. His partner, Charlie Munger, had a little more balanced of a life, still a multi-billionaire. A little bit better of a family life, a little more philanthropic early on. I like Charlie’s style. He wrote this book Poor Charlie’s Almanack, and if you like business – I love business – this book is just beautiful stories teaching you principles and mental models in business with wonderful illustrations and big brands like Coke and Disney and others to illustrate and teach you how to excel at business.

John: Well, I’ll tell you, if Charlie would be a little more philanthropic and turn that $57 beautiful hardcover, which is the only way that you can get it, into a $9 Kindle book –

Rob: You’ll put it up?

John: He’d make a lot of people happy, you know? Hey, listen. I bought the book. I love it. I’m a huge Buffet, Munger fan. So, I have the book. I love it. It’s literally like a coffee table book for me. It’s right there. I just know that a lot of people stay away from it because of the price tag, which I just wish was, again, if they could just make it on Kindle or maybe even like an audio book. Like, you should let the people know, Rob, I’m willing to just go ahead and create the audiobook of Poor Charlie’s Almanack and they can keep all of the funds, all the money and just put it out there and let’s get this out to the world because it’s such a great book. It’s such a great message. And Fire Nation, I know that $57 book isn’t in some of your budgets, so we’re working on it for you because it’s amazing. And Rob, let’s end today on fire, my man, with a parting piece of guidance, the best way that we can connect with you and then we’ll say goodbye.

Rob: You know I’m on LinkedIn. Look me up there, and then, OnGig.com is what I’m working on right now. And, you know, just find me any of those ways. My email is Rob@ongig.com. Shoot me an email to say hello. I might have to have my assistant filter through it, but I will get back to you if you can share something uniquely awesome that you’re working on, happy to help best I can.

John: Or, just in the subject line, put “I heard you on EOFire.” That’s all you need to do, Fire Nation.

Rob: Yes! Do that. I will look at that. I’ll filter using Gmail, and that thing will have a nice purple color to it.

John: Oh, yeah. How about orange? What about orange? That’s on brand.

Rob: Oh, you know what? Shame on me. Orange for On Fire. See if they can do a two-tone orange and yellow and really lock it. You’ve got one of the best-looking websites, by the way, around.

John: Thank you. I work hard on that, you know. I use HeatMap. So, it’s a converting website, too, because I’m always testing what people are doing on the websites because that’s key. You know, I have some certain calls to action. Everything’s a funnel in my business. That’s why we generate seven figures of revenue every year. An Fire Nation, you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You’ve been hanging out with RK and JLD today. So, keep up the heat and head over to EOFire.com. Just type Rob in the search bar. His show notes page is going to pop up with everything that we’ve been talking about today. These are the best show notes in the biz. Time stamps, links, transcripts galore. And of course, head directly to OnGig.com to see what they have going on. It’s a cool website, and I’m going to dive more into that as well after this interview. And, email Rob@ongig, that’s O-N-G-I-G.com with the subject line “I heard you on EOFire” and he’ll have a nice little orange and maybe even two-tone yellow flame on there.

And Rob, thank you for sharing your journey with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we’ll catch you on the flip side.

Rob: Keep crushing it, John.