Interviewee: I was born to ignite, buddy.

Interviewer: Yes. Brandon is an investor, entrepreneur, author, and podcast host of University of Young Entrepreneurs. Having invented arctic stick, and buying a tristate ice distribution ship at 22 years old, he recognized the main obstacles of getting started: lack of funds, and resources. Brandon launched the University of Young Entrepreneurs to help support other entrepreneurs and assist them with getting their ideas funded. Weekly, Brandon appears on TV across the country, promoting crowdfunding campaigns to the masses. Brandon, take a minute, fill in the gaps [inaudible] [00:00:37]. Give us a little glimpse in your personal life.

Interviewee: A glimpse in my personal life. Well, I grew up in a small town in northeast Iowa of about 750 people. I was born an entrepreneur. My dad sold ice for a living, and I saw what it’s like to run a business. Well, when I turned 22 years old, I bought that company out. But like you said, I learned the main obstacles for taking anything to market, or starting a business, and lack of funds, and lack of resources. That led me to doing a podcast, and it led me to creating courses, and it got me really obsessed with crowd funding. And I had invented a product called the “Arctic stick” back here, three and a half years ago, and while developing that product, I had funded it myself – extra jobs and everything else.

I hit that brick wall, I did a kick campaign to raise the money, had success, had [inaudible] in 25 states, and 10 different countries. I noticed the problems with doing a crowd funding campaign: what people did wrong, and what was right. And I got obsessed with studying the market, and I wanted to help others, so I studied the market, wrote a book on the whole thing, and ended up going on TV across the country, and now I’m on track to becoming the top crowd funding expert in the world. And here I am, talking on your show, John.

Interviewer: Love it. And fire nation, if you recognize his voice, the reason is because, like all 33 guests during this 33 day freedom campaign, Brandon is a past cast; episode 1108. So he actually is the most recent past cast. But I will say, after that interview, and just hearing Brandon, and it just being so obvious to me that this guy knows what he’s talking about with crowd funding, and you heard it from his own lips, he’s on his way to becoming the authority figure in the world on crowdfunding. I said, “Dude, can we talk? Like, can we talk next weekend?” And you said, “Absolutely, we had a great conversation.”

I told you about the freedom journal, and my idea to turn it into a kickstarter campaign because we’re doing some great things with different reward levels, and me, personally donating $25,000.00. Every time we hit a funding level to build a school in a developing country through Pencils and Promise, and you just said, “Hey, there’s a lot you need to navigate with all of that. Like, you have a lot going on. Let me take this on. Let me show you to the Promised Land. Let’s launch what will turn into become the biggest crowdfunding/kickstarter campaign of launching a book in the history. Eric Reese is in our site at 566K, let’s break through that wall.”

After that conversation, Brandon, I knew that you were the right guy to bring on the team for this. And it’s been awesome working with you, brother.

Interviewee: Boom. Exactly, I couldn’t have said it better, man. That’s exactly what we’re doing.

Interviewer: Now, one thing that I kind of want to get into a little bit is the campaign that we’ve been creating together. I want to go into the different parts in your journey where you set and accomplish goals. I want to get into that in a minute. But kind of break down you how tackled this campaign as a crowdfunding expert, a little differently than you’ve tackled others. What has been unique about this?

Interviewee: Well, the biggest thing is well, obviously, John, you have an audience, and a very unique opportunity. It’s just looking at the whole process, and what are your goals, and that’s the biggest thing. At the beginning, I said, “What are your goals, John? What do you want to do?” And based off of that, we set our specific goals of what do we want to do with the campaign, how we can measure it, make it very attainable, obviously. I am looking to do huge things. And then just figure out the timeline. We had a timeline going from the beginning months out.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Interviewee: So certain dates we had to get our video done. We had to get the [inaudible] [00:04:22] figured out, we had the content and the page. And we meet the guidelines, and if we follow through with that, that’s how you have success with crowdfunding. It’s doing the work ahead of time. I call it the forethought process. And then, figuring in all the logistics because, once you go, obviously when a campaign’s live, it is insane. The thing is, you can’t plan. You can plan so much, but there’s going to be things that come at you that you can’t plan at all, and you’ve got to be ready to take it on as soon as it comes at you, like an entrepreneur.

So that’s the process working with you. And it’s been great. It’s been one of the best things I’ve ever done. But the biggest thing – and like for setting and accomplishing goals, you’ve got to set your goals, and what you actually want to achieve, and then figure it backwards. What do you need to do to get to the steps? Set your daily goals, set your weekly goals, your 10-day goals, quarterly goals, all the way up to 100 days. As a crowdfunding campaign, I always say it’s about three months, so it’d be roughly, 100-day goal.

Interviewer: So I love all of this, and one area that I really struggled with going into this, Brandon was like, if I go the kickstarter route, what does it even look like? What do I need to do for a timeline? And what are these reward level things? And that’s actually where I personally believe we just knocked it out of the park.

Interviewee: The synergy, man. The synergy of ideas.

Interviewer: The synergy of ideas was so huge, and you – I remember when you first told me; you said “John, we should have 35 different reward levels.” I said, “Dude, you are crazy. Like, how about five? How about one buck, two books, three bucks, five bucks, 10 bucks?” And you’re like “No, you are crazy. We are going to do 35 reward levels, and they’re going to be awesome.” And just actually, a couple of days ago, you and I put the finishing touches on the 35 different reward levels. And the beautiful thing about them, Brandon, is number one, all 35 are awesome. Number two, they are just there, and there is a reward level for every single person that’s listening right now.

If you are just absolutely at ground zero, as far as having no money in the bank, we have a four dollar reward level for you that will get you going. Or if you’re just saying, “I want to hang out with JLD for an entire day, and just get my mind blown, and have my business explode,” there’s a $10,000.00 day with JLD level, and then there’s everything in between. And one of my favorite ones, Brandon, that you and I cooked was 60 people would jump on this specific reward level.

Interviewee: Yeah.

Interviewer: Are going to set and accomplish their number one goal in one hundred days, and then I’m going to bring them on EOFire, and talk about that. This is just an example of three. There’s 35 epic reward levels like that. What are your thought processes behind the reward levels we kicked up?

Interviewee: It’s just been great working with you because sometimes it’s hard when you work with people, to come up with ideas. And I’m always thinking big, and with the ideas that we threw across each other, the brainstorming session – like, the moments we were like, “Woah, yes.” And the value in it because by me [inaudible] [00:07:28] exactly, like, we put these goals together, and these [inaudible], I personally want them. [Inaudible] Especially in the podcasting world, I mean, everybody would have them.

But for any entrepreneur, like you said, they have them at the four dollar level, all the way up to $10,000.00. And every one throws more value than you could ever imagine. And it’s a no brainer not to get it during the campaign because you’ll never get an opportunity like that again.

Interviewer: Brandon, you actually claimed one of the highest reward levels already. We will put two of them out there, and you snagged one, so now there’s only one left now. But it was to have me come and speak at your event, and this is your event, fire nation. If you’re filling an event, I will come in keynote, and speak, and obviously, do what I can to promote the crap out of your event. And you gobbled up one of those. Take a second here, and tell us a little bit about that event that I’m going to be keynoting.

Interviewee: Yeah. I’ve got to say thank you, John. You’ve done a great job for helping me get the word out, and the people that have reached out from all over the country. This is part of one of my huge goals that I’ve done, the Young Entrepreneur Convention. I had that idea, and within 100 days I created something like – I always said like the Steve Jobs, that we’re in the garage, and all of a sudden, we’re like this huge company. Well, I created this idea, and within a month, I had over a dozen people working with me.

Interviewer: Wow.

Interviewee: And it’s like, “What did I create here?” And then, people from all over the country are sponsoring us, that we’re creating an event in Des Moines, Iowa, April 22nd, and 23rd. And it’s going to have one of the largest pitch competitions in the country. We’re going to have speakers like you there, which is going to be awesome.

Interviewer: Yes.

Interviewee: Yes. And we’re going to have entertainment, live band, DJ, music, exhibitors, we have a fashion show. And there’s a bunch of things like [inaudible] [00:09:19]. But it’s going to be jam packed full of knowledge, and experience, and everything you need to take your business and lifestyle to the next level. I mean, John, I’ve been to events all over the country, and like an entrepreneur, when you see a problem, you see something you’re not happy with – I wanted to solve that. I wanted an event that spoke to me. So I found people like me, and we co-created a movement. And here we are today, Young Entrepreneur Convention. You’re going to be speaking at it.

Interviewer: Awesome. Where can Fire Nation find out more?

Interviewee: You can go to youngentrepreneurconvention.com, and you can get tickets there for the event. It’s going to be one you don’t want to miss. Obviously, John, you’ll be there, some other cool people, Ken Shamrock, the world’s most dangerous man, Des Woodruff, a very smart investor, and we have Jeff Hoffman, the founder of Priceline. I’ll be speaking. And we have some other big name speakers announced too. It is a no brainer; you do not want to miss it.

Interviewer: yourentrepreneurconvention.com. Open the link up in the shownotes Fire Nation for you. We’d love to see you in Des Moines, which by the way is a beautiful city. Beautiful. So Brandon, when we were chatting a little bit earlier, you were talking about how when we were coming up with the idea on the timeline for the Freedom Journal, we wanted it to be specific. We wanted it to be measurable. We wanted it to be an attainable goal. And I do believe that taking out Eric Reese as the number one kickstarter for book launch ever, is attainable, so we are staying in that attainable realm.

We want it to be relevant to what I’m trying to do at EOFire here, as an entrepreneur that has inspired you, fire nation, to make your entrepreneur leap, and to have great success. And of course, we have to make it time bound, as well. So that was the five levels of what we do when you first open the first pages, fire nation, of the Freedom Journal, we teach you how to set a smart goal step by step, by step. Now Brandon, all of these are important, we get that, they’re all part of the pieces of the pie.

But if you could only choose one of the [inaudible] [00:11:27] just to break down for us right now, which one do you want to speak to, to Fire Nation? Do you think it’s going to be important for us as we set and accomplish goals?

Interviewee: It’s specific. I say that because people, they set goals, and – a great example, a lot of people be like, “I want to become a millionaire by 30.” And they don’t really set specifically what they have to do to get there. What specifically do you have to do? So you need to make it very clear of what that goal is, exactly. I mean, what does it look like? How will you feel? You have to be very specific on your goals, and if you’re not specific, you’re not going to reach them. So being specific is vital when you’re setting and accomplishing your goals.

Interviewer: I love that. An example I’ll throw out is that people say all the time, “I want to lose weight.” Of course we want to lose weight, but you’ve got to go through the smart goal like, how much weight do you want to lose? And how much time? It’s got to be part of that process. You have to start with specificity. You have to be specific. And Brandon, you shared a lot of good stories on EOFire episode 1108. What I want you to do now is tell us a specific story of a time that you actually set and accomplished a goal. Walk us through that story. What did it look like?

Interviewee: So this is timing. It was so funny, timing is everything.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Interviewee: So John, when you came on my podcast show for University of Young Entrepreneurs back – I think it was – we recorded July 31st. And I had spoken with you, and what I did is – obviously, you gave me access to the [inaudible] of the Freedom Journal. And I set a goal. And at that time is when I was basically going through the brainstorming of Young Entrepreneur Convention. While I set the 100 day goal to create a community, create a group of people, and create this company, and raise a bunch of money, and I used the Freedom Journal, and day for day.

You know, I always set goals, but I never really set them that specific, and actually set taking time out of my day to set them for each day because as entrepreneurs, we have crazy lives.

Interviewer: Crazy.

Interviewee: Sometimes, you set a goal for the day, and you don’t even remember what it was. I had to look back sometimes. That’s how crazy my life is. But it holds you accountable because it’s proven when you write something down, you’re likely to achieve it, and you say what you’re going to do for that day. Like me, when I say I’m going to do something, I have to do it. So when you get towards the end of the day, you’ve got to do whatever it takes to achieve it. So if you have that mindset every single day, like I did, I would achieve goals every single day, every week, to months.

That’s my hundred days. I had achieved the goal I set. I created a huge community – hundreds and hundreds, and even close to thousands of people from all over the country, coming to events – committed to coming to the event already. And also, a team that’s going to create a big company, and already, John, this is what blows me away, I have people from California, Boston, Omaha, Badenville; people that are reaching out, and they want to do the same thing in their city. So we plan on taking this across the world; franchising it.

And how did I get to that point with the Young Entrepreneur Convention? This is just 100 days, let me tell you because, I sat and accomplished my goals, and not to be salesy, but I’m telling you, the Freedom Journal helped me do that, and I thank you for that. That changed my life. And I believe everything happens for a reason, and us meeting and then leading to that has changed my life, and I’m very thankful for what it’s done. So my advice is, for one, get the Freedom Journal, but set and accomplish your goals every single day, and stick with it, whatever your goal is.

If you don’t reach it in about 100 days, you just didn’t follow the Freedom Journal. I followed it. And now, I’m here to tell the story.

Interviewer: I love it. And that’s the reason why I’m going to be stamping a JLD guarantee on the front of this journal that says, “Hey, if you actually set a smart goal, and follow the hundred day Freedom Journal, and you don’t accomplish your goal, money back. Money back guarantee. It’s so fool proof. It is a process that is proven by people like Brandon, people like myself, and other beta testers that I’ve used. There is simply one reason that you don’t accomplish your smart goal in 100 days, and that’s because you didn’t do it day to day, to day.

And if we can’t commit to a little bit of time in the morning, and a little bit of time at night, every single day for 100 days to commit a goal, then we don’t want it bad enough, and we don’t deserve to accomplish it anyway. So Fire Nation, it is just there. It is out there. Now Brandon, before we dive into the freedom rounds, real quick, what is that one thing that you are most fired up about right now?

Interviewee: I’m fired up about having you at our event, John; that is going to be awesome, and putting that event together. But the big thing I’m doing right now is – I mean, crowdfunding. Like I said, I’m on track to become the top crowdfunding expert in the world. We have courses out, we help people, and the things that come my way every single day is amazing because, there’s people out there that were just like me, that had that drive to go after their dreams. And when I can help them do that through raising money, a kickstarter [inaudible] [00:16:56], that’s a dream come true. So crowdfunding is what my passion – I live, I breathe – that is my baby.

Interviewer: Love it. And one more time, the link to the entrepreneur convention.

Interviewee: youngentrepreneurconvention.com, that’s youngentrepreneurconvention.com.

Interviewer: Fire Nation, we are about to enter the freedom round, but before we do this, take a quick minute to thank our sponsors. Brandon, are you prepared for the freedom round?

Interviewee: I am prepared for the freedom round, John.

Interviewer: Why do you feel most entrepreneurs fail to set smart goals?

Interviewee: I believe it’s because entrepreneurs, we are a different breed, and we have so many things going on in our life, and we look at the shiny objects, and everything we’ve got to go for, but we get sidetracked, and we don’t so much focus on the moment. So we have so many things coming at us, we don’t take the time to actually specifically sit down, take the 10 minutes, 20 minutes out of our day to set your specific goals. And you can – I mean, within a few weeks, months go by, and you look, and you didn’t achieve your goals. So, the problem of just getting sidetracked, and too many things coming at you at once.

Interviewer: What is the one action that you take daily, Brandon, that brings you closer to accomplishing your goals?

Interviewee: Well, I have the same routine every single day, the power of habit that I have is waking up, working out, meditation. But then, the biggest thing is setting and accomplishing my goals for that day. So figuring out exactly what I want to accomplish for that day.

Interviewer: So how important is accountability to you when setting goals?

Interviewee: Accountability is everything. We should always have an accountability partner. As in the Freedom Journal, that gives you the accountability, but it’s big to have somebody hold you accountable for achieving your goals.

Interviewer: And side note, by the way, this is really exciting news. I just got word from my developer that the Freedom Journal app just got approved in the iTunes and Android store brand.

Interviewee: Boom. Yeah.

Interviewer: This is taking it to the next level, brother, where it’s going to be a nice little friendly accountability partner for you, Fire Nation, on your journey. It’s a completely free app that’s beautifully designed, and it’s just there for you to hold you accountable. It’s an accountability partner. Now Brandon, the Freedom Journal, you’ve gone through it, and appreciate your kind words about that, and I also want to point people to your killer book, “Keys to the Crowd,” which I’m actually holding in my hand right now – the physical copy. And if you have any desire, Fire Nation, to learn more about crowdfunding, being a kickstarter [inaudible] [00:19:35] or any crowdfunding platform, this book is a must read.

So again, it’s “Keys to the Crowd,” by Brandon, our great guest here. And of course, we will link that up in the show notes pages. But besides those two books, what’s one book you think would really help Fire Nation on their journey to setting and accomplishing goals?

Interviewee: Probably two books. I always see the same one everywhere I go. The biggest one is “Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg. It’s the power of doing things consistently, having a habit every single day; that’s big. But the by far, the best book in this world that’s changed my life, and has influenced millions is “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill. You have to read it. If you haven’t read it, please read it. It will change your life; it changed mine. And read it multiple times a year. It will be a game changer for you and your life, and your business.

Interviewer: Well, Fire Nation, I know that you love audio, so I teamed up with Audible, and if you haven’t already, you can get an amazing audio book for free at eofirebook.com. And Brandon, I want to end today on Fire Brother with you sharing a parting piece of guidance, the best way that we can connect with you, then we’ll say goodbye.

Interviewee: You can find me at brandontadams.com, it has my blog and my podcast, and everything else. You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram at brandontadams18. If you want to attend this awesome event, and see John and I in April, youngentrepreneurconvention.com. My biggest advice is this, as people, we all have the gift, we all have – we’re put here, on Earth, to do something great in life, and not all of us use it. My advice is figure out what your gift is, your passion, what do you love to do? Focus on it, and spend the rest of your life doing that. And if you do that, you’re going to become the most successful, happy person this world has to offer.

Interviewer: Love that message. Love that theme. And Fire Nation, you know this, you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with, you’ve been hanging out with BTA and JLD today, so keep up the heat. And head over to eofire.com just type “Brandon” in the search bar, his page will pop up, you can hear his last episode, 1108, where he just crushed. You can obviously hear this episode again; you can get the links to everything we’ve been talking about today. Brandontadams.com is a direct link to his website, and of course, youngentrepreneurconvention.com is where you can go to come hang out with me, and Brandon, and other rock stars in Des Moines.

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