Woody Woodward dropped out of high school at 16, was a millionaire at 26, and was broke by 27. Within five years of being nearly bankrupt, he built a $30 million company. Listen as he tells you his story.
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Resource Mentioned:
- Your Big Idea: Successful Entrepreneurs have One Big Idea. Follow JLD’s FREE training & you’ll discover Your Big Idea in less than an hour!
Success Quote
- “Defeat is not bitter unless you swallow it.” – Joe Clark
Business Failure
- Woody has an incredibly powerful story about failure – one that should not be missed.
Entrepreneurial AHA Moment
- I was mesmerized by Woody’s journey, and his AHA moment held me captive as well.
Current Business
- Woody takes us through MPS x A = $. It will make complete sense once you hear his explanation.
Small Business Resource
- Kajabi: A platform that makes it push-button easy to build membership portals and marketing funnels
Best Business Book
- As a Man Thinketh by James Allen
Interview Links
Killer Resources!
1) The Common Path to Uncommon Success: JLD’s 1st traditionally published book! Over 3000 interviews with the world’s most successful Entrepreneurs compiled into a 17-step roadmap to financial freedom and fulfillment!
2) Free Podcast Course: Learn from JLD how to create and launch your podcast!
3) Podcasters’ Paradise: The #1 podcasting community in the world!
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Full Transcript
John Dumas: Hire Fire Nation and thank you for joining me for another episode of EntrepreneurOnFire.com, your daily dose of inspiration. If you enjoy this free podcast, please show your support by leaving a rating and review here at iTunes. I will make sure to give you a shout out on an upcoming showing to thank you!
John Lee Dumas: Okay. Let’s get started. I am simply exhilarated to introduce my guest today, Woody Woodward. Woody, are you prepared to ignite?
Woody Woodward: I am fired up! Let’s go!
John Lee Dumas: Alright! Woody dropped out of high school at 16, was a millionaire at 26, and was broke by 27. Within five years of being nearly bankrupt, he built from scratch a $30 million company. And today, he’s going to show you how.
I’ve given Fire Nation a little overview, Woody, but why don’t you take a minute. Tell us about you personally. We want to get to know you. And then take another minute and give us an overview of what you’re doing right now.
Woody Woodward: Thank you, John. I am a very passionate person. Since I did drop out of high school at 16, I made a ton of money by 26, and lost it by 27 and learned how to make it back, my big thing is about overcoming obstacles, beating unbeatable odds. I’ve read over a thousand biographies, I’ve interviewed over 2,500 successful people, and in that process, I learned what I call, what’s called “Emotional Fingerprint.” That code, that secret thing that everyone has inside them that drives them to do what they do at their highest level. So what I’m passionate about doing now and what I’ve done with my business for the last seven years is taking that simple concept, turning it into a global empire, an international platform, teaching people about their Emotional Fingerprint, especially entrepreneurs, how to tap into that strongest inner strength.
John Lee Dumas: I love that. That’s just going to be a perfect lead in to our first topic, which is our success quote because we love getting the motivational ball running here at EntrepreneurOnFire. So Woody, why don’t you get that going with us? What’s your favorite success quote?
Woody Woodward: I heard a quote last night. I collect quotes. So here’s the one I heard last night. “Defeat is not bitter unless you swallow it.” It’s by John Clark. I love that because we all have defeat. We all have fear. We all have things that happen to us. But unless we swallow it, it doesn’t apply. So the second we swallow it and we start believing the negative things that happen in our life, then it starts to take root and take effect. But if we can push it aside and keep pressing forward, then we overcome those challenges.
John Lee Dumas: It’s such a great quote for so many reasons. Take us down to the ground level. How have you applied this quote, this mentality to your life?
Woody Woodward: Well, having dropped out of high school and not being able to learn how to read until I was 19 years, I felt like I had a slower start than most people. Now I’ve been an entrepreneur since I was a kid. I remember getting suspended from school, selling candy at school, and I sold my first idea at age 16 to Zumiez, and I’ve always been an entrepreneur, but I’ve hit roadblocks because of the lack of my education. So to me, statistically or in paper, I should be in prison or I should be working in McDonalds for a minimum stage. So I don’t believe in statistics because they’re all meant to be broken. All goals, all glass [ceilings] are meant to be broken. So to me, the whole concept of defeat is you’re only defeated if you stop. We’ve all heard that, but it’s 100% true. The second you stop and you believe your own story instead of rewriting your story, that’s when you’re defeated.
John Lee Dumas: That is such a powerful insight and your journey is so powerful. Take EntrepreneurOnFire back to a point in your journey when you failed or when you had a challenge or an obstacle that you had to overcome, and then take us through how you overcame that.
Woody Woodward: Wonderful, John. I’ll never forget at my senior year – so I dropped out of high school in my junior year. I had been hit by a car. I was into cycling and so I was out training and I got hit by a car and blew out my left leg and missed 30 days of school. And I was already in trouble at school. I was already on probation and I already had horrible grades. So I thought, “You know what? I got nothing else to lose. I’ll just quit school.” So I quit school. Then in my senior year, I thought, “You know what? I don’t want to be a statistic. I don’t want to be that guy.” I had an older brother who had gotten into drugs and dropped out of school, I had another brother who had gone on to get his PhD, so I had two different examples in my life. I saw what each road was leading to, and I remember saying, “Okay. I’m going to get back into school my senior year.” Well I was an entire year of credits behind. So I had to school in the morning for credit, and then I had to stay after school for night school for three hours to get more credit, and then I had to work from [5:30] PM to [9:30] PM to get a work credit. So I was doing this nonstop, day in and day out, exhausting myself. I remember one time turning in a book report in my mom’s handwriting because I was so tired I couldn’t transcribe in my handwriting. My teacher wrote on the report, “A+. Either give your mom or your girlfriend congratulations.”
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs]
Woody Woodward: It came to literally the last couple of weeks of school, and I was sitting on a bench with 12 other guys, and I grew up in the same house my entire life. I had been kicked out of two middle schools. So those two middle schools fed into my high school. So I knew everybody, everybody knew me. We all were friends. I remember sitting on this bench with 12 guys, and I went to school with these guys since elementary school, and every single one of them got up to get an award, either for scholarships or for academics or for sports, and I thought, what happened to me? These are guys I all played with in elementary school and middle school. What happened to me?
At this point, I still didn’t know if I was going to graduate. I was still a couple of credits behind. I remember saying, “Okay. If I am able to finish school, if I am able to actually graduate, the second I walk across that stage, all bets are off. We’re even again. We’re all equal. At that one moment in time, we’re equals.” So I pushed harder and harder and it came down to my last test in my History class. I studied for 24 hours and I said, “You know what? If you don’t pass this test, you don’t graduate.” We didn’t school pictures and we didn’t do cap and gown. I mean it came down to the wire on the last day. I stayed up all night, I studied and I turned in that report. I remember my teacher looking at that, taking a look at it and threw it in the garbage can, and I lost it. I started screaming at him, I was cussing, I was yelling, “How dare you?! I’ve worked day and night!” and I was yelling at him. And he said, “Woody, if I grade this paper and you get anything wrong, you don’t graduate. Go graduate.”
And so I literally ran out of class and called my mom collect on the payphone, “Mom, I did it! I did it!” I even get chocked up 20 years later now. I remember walking across that stage, and I had to borrow someone’s cap and gown to walk across the stage. I remember getting a standing ovation from my friends and it taught me a very valuable lesson. That regardless of your background, regardless of your education, if you put your nose to the grindstone, if you work harder than anybody else, there is no level of success you cannot obtain. It’s not about your parents, it’s not about your family, your sex, your race, your religion, your color. None of those things. Success does not care who you are. It only cares if you pay the price. So that lesson taught me about paying the price, and I’ve paid the price countless times since then.
John Lee Dumas: Man, that is a powerful story, and I really am looking forward to continuing this journey. So let’s continue this journey, Woody, and let’s go into the other end of the spectrum, which is an aha moment. At some point, you must have had an aha moment that just really took you from graduating high school to this multimillionaire at the age of 26. Can you take us through that portion of your life? The aha moment you had and how you turned that moment into success?
Woody Woodward: Yes. What happened was so I made money and by age 26, and this was in 1999. That was the whole Dot-Com, Dot-Bomb era. So I had taken my company through the public offering stage, I had my shares, I sold out to my business partners. They got leveled by the market so I didn’t get paid and I got leveled as well. And then in about a five year period of time, we built a mortgage company in seven states and we were doing about $30 million dollars in revenue. And then in 2005, I saw the writing on the wall. I thought, “This bubble is going to burst. There’s no way we can sustain this again.” So I thought, there’s no way I’m going down again. So in ’05 – and the market was still going real well. We were still making a ton of money, but I said, “You know what? I’m out.”
So I got out August 1st of 2005, and I thought, “You know what? My story is not original. I know countless people and I have read countless stories of men and women who didn’t have an education, who didn’t have success, who didn’t have any resources, who have now become a household name like Disney and Ford and Steve Jobs and countless other people. So I said, “You know what? I’m going to write a book about them.” So I wrote my first book called “Millionaire Dropouts: Inspiring Stories of the World’s Greatest Failures.” In the process of writing that book, I read over a thousand biographies of elementary school, middle school, high school and college dropouts, trying to find out what was their secret to success, what allowed them to beat the unbeatable odds. Even though I had gone back to school and I graduated high school, I went to a year of college and failed at that miserably and left. So I’ve dropped out of both high school and college, so I was definitely qualified and certified to write that book.
In writing the book, I came across a quote that changed my life forever. It was a quote by Dr. John Dewey that said, “The deepest urge in human nature is the desire to be important.” I thought, there’s no way that quote is true. There’s no way I want to be more important than my family or more important than my city or more important than my neighbor. So I thought, “Oh, I’ll prove him wrong.” Now he’s been dead for 56 years, but I’m going to go prove him wrong anyway. So in the process of trying to prove him wrong, I ended up proving him right. I interviewed 2,500 people and I found that every single person I interviewed had seven unique characteristics that made them feel important. When they validated that feeling of importance internally – meaning for them, by them – they were able to beat anything. They were able to overcome any challenge. That’s where I discovered and built the foundation of Emotional Fingerprint. That we all have these seven unique characteristics that make us feel important. When we validate those versus looking to the world for validates, we have courage and we have strength and we have ability.
John, if I can use you as an example, when you were in the military and you sacrificed for our country, you did it for a unique feeling of importance, but you did it internally. You didn’t do it for the money, you didn’t do it for the praise, you didn’t do it for the validation. You did it because you had an internal drive, and because of that internal drive, you were very successful at it. That same drive took you to San Diego to start in real estate. That same internal drive allowed you to beat unbeatable odds. That same drive allowed you to have the number one show on iTunes. And as you continue to validate that internally, you continue to get the outcome you want to have. The second we fail is when we seek external validation. We seek other people’s praise, other people’s acceptance, recognition or acknowledgment. You look at the great men and women in our country, you can look at celebrities, you can look at sports figures. You can look at Lance Armstrong, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, people who started looking for an external validation – Dennis Rodman, for example, and he started to fail miserably because it’s sustainable.
So probably the biggest aha moment I’ve ever had in my life, besides the fact of marrying my wife, was the fact that everybody has this feeling of importance, and that consciousness of internal versus external changes everything.
John Leaae Dumas: Man! That is powerful, Woody! One thing that I’m just so intrigued by in that whole entire aha moment that you’ve had, you read over 1,000 biographies. That is just truly incredible. Can you just talk about two or maybe three really quickly that just really stood out to you because of their story and maybe share why they stood out to you?
Woody Woodward: Yes. So Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin everything – I mean Virgin Mobile, Virgin Records, Virgin Atlantic. You guys know who he is. Well his book, “Losing My Virginity,” was one of the most inspiring books I had read because it talked about how hard his life was growing up. On the way home from a family trip one day, his parents wanted to teach him how to swim. So they literally pulled the car over, opened the door and threw him in a river. Just dropped him in a river, trying to teach him how to swim. He was starting to drown so his aunt had to jump in the river to save him. Then another time, his mom wanted him to go see his grandma. She gave him a couple of bucks for food and his bicycle and pointed the direction and said, “Oh, it’s about 25 miles that way. Go find her.” I mean his whole life was just go do it. There’s no excuses. You need to do this. Go do it. So when he dropped out of high school and then when he created his first business, it was the same thing. It was that go get it attitude. Just do it. It doesn’t matter. You just go out and you do it and you do it.
I felt a kindred spirit within that because growing up not knowing how to read, I didn’t know how to really do anything. I didn’t know what I could do because I just believed what other people told me. I just thought, well I’ll do it until I make it happen. I had enough of the pattern of doing enough things to making it happen, and he did too. Now obviously, he and I have completely different levels of success. But that’s the great thing about when you read biographies. You never compare your success with somebody else’s. You just compare what attributes of skill did they have that you want to have that you can refine because dollars and cents don’t matter. I mean I’ve made and then lost two fortunes in my life, but they just don’t matter. What does matter is the skills set you can learn from other people.
The second person is Harriet Tubman. She broke away from slavery, underground railroad. Her story is so powerful in that when she ran away the first time, her two brothers who went with her got scared. The brothers got scared and turned back. She freed so many women and men from slavery. She actually went back years later, got her mom and dad, got her brothers. She couldn’t read either. She fell asleep under a wanted poster with her picture on it and could have easily been killed. It just goes to show you once again that you don’t have to have education. You don’t have to have the perfect environment to succeed. You just have to pay a price.
John Lee Dumas: Those are two books now that are going to be high on my list. So Woody, have you had an I’ve made it moment?
Woody Woodward: Yes. One of my favorite questions, John, when I ask people – because I’ve interviewed a lot of people as well, as you know – is I always ask them, when you knew you made it, what was the one thing that you bought just for fun to celebrate that?
John Lee Dumas: Ooh, I like that question.
Woody Woodward: I had the chance to interview Tony Robbins and he bought a Phantom Rolls Royce. I interviewed a couple other very successful people and they always seem to be cars, they all kind of bought cars. And so when I had made it – I’ve loved cars since I was a little kid and I’ve had 22 cars in the last 17 years of my marriage – but the car that I love the most was a custom-built Dodge Viper. A Dodge Viper is really unruly and fast to begin with, but then we custom-built it up to 900 horse, 062.9 [Unintelligible] 217. The thing I loved about that car is it represented my life because I’ve driven Ferraris and Lamborghinis and other exotics, and they are all amazing vehicles. I mean they’re a piece of art, and the problem with them is they’re not unruly. Meaning they’re so custom-built that you can’t really fail in them. But on a Dodge Viper, they don’t build them with traction control. So they purposely have decided that you got to learn to drive that car. That car at a 100 miles an hour on the freeway, if I shift gears, I’ll spin the tires and throw it sideways. So it teaches you how to use this unruly machine. And so I’ve owned two of them already and going for a third here soon.
To me, that’s what life is. Life doesn’t come with traction control. It doesn’t come with steering. It comes with just balls out to the walls, do what you want, make it happen and floor it until you make it. And that to me is what that car represented. And so I’ve loved it, it’s been a blast and I’ve had a lot of fun with it.
John Lee Dumas: Well, I love that answer and I love that analogy, and I really like your twist on that question. I may have to use that in a couple of upcoming interviews, “When you’ve had your I’ve made it moment, what was the first thing that you bought?” So thank you for sharing that with me. EntrepreneurOnFire for me, it’s about the journey, and I just love to hear that you are enjoying the different milestones that you’re hitting along your journey. It does really sound like you are appreciating the journey for itself, and not just for each success that you’re making. Do you find that to be the case?
Woody Woodward: Oh, 100%. I’ve met too many people who’ve been ridiculously successful financially, but have lost their souls along the way. There are many successful New York Times bestselling authors, if you were to look at their lives, it’s in shambles. They don’t live what they teach. I’ve known these men and women personally. It’s very disheartening to me because to me it’s all about integrity of your message. Do you live it? Do you honor it? Do you support it? And it’s too easy to make money. See, the funny thing about money is there’s only one true way to make money, and that’s a calculated risk. The rest are techniques. Stocks and bonds are techniques, real estate is a technique. Even multilevel marketing is a technique. Getting a W2, getting a job, that’s a technique. You’re risking eight hours a day for a paycheck. So there is only one way, and that’s a calculated risk.
So making money is not the issue. The issue is how do you live after you’ve made it or how do you live as you’re making it. See, to me, my wife and I, all we ever wanted was a certain lifestyle. Not a certain amount of money. A certain lifestyle. We want freedom, we want happiness, we want to raise our kids in an amazing country. We want to be religious, we want to have faith, we want to have strength, we want to have integrity. So to me, if you live those things along the way, then the other things are just bonuses. If you make some money, that’s a bonus. If you make some new, great friends, that’s a bonus. Being able to talk with you on the number one radio show on iTunes, that’s a bonus. Right? It’s really about how do you live along the way.
John Lee Dumas: That’s powerful, Woody. Let’s use that power to move into the next topic, which is your current business. You have a lot of exciting things going on right now in your business, and I just want to let you talk about a couple of them. Share with Fire Nation some things that are just really exciting you right now.
Woody Woodward: The thing I’m most passionate about right now is our membership site. We have the membership site at NoMoreTherapy.com. I love words and so I look into words all the time. The word “therapy” means treatment. Yes, there are a few percentage of people who actually need treatment. People who have severe addictions to pornography or alcoholism or other things. They need treatment. But for the rest of us, we need a strategy. So I don’t believe in a therapist, but I believe in a strategist, and I am a strategist to help people get from where they are to where they want to be, and the technique that I use is Emotional Fingerprint.
So if you go on to NoMoreTherapy.com, it’s about 35 minutes of free training. You discover your Emotional Fingerprint. I ask you specific questions, you type in those specific answers, and it’s a wonderful tool that you can get free. I give it away free all day long. But at the very end of that 35 minutes, if someone wants to be part of the membership site, then they get access to the weekly phone calls and the 60 videos and the 50 PDFs. That’s what I’m passionate about because my one-on-one coaching, I charge $1,000 an hour. I’ve always been the Neiman Marcus of coaching, and I thought, how do I become the Walmart of coaching? How do I help the masses? And so that’s what that website allows us to do and it’s been a blast. We’ve had a great success with it.
John Lee Dumas: Membership sites are just a great way to go because exactly what you were saying, it’s helping the masses. That’s one thing I love about EntrepreneurOnFire, is that I can literally pull up my demographics every day, every week and see that this show is being downloaded in over 100 countries by over 100,000 unique downloaders every single month and it’s just insane to see these numbers and see the locations – in South America, in Africa, in China and Australia. So it’s just really fun to be able to offer this across the medium in this really leverageable, scalable world that’s just now exploding with smartphones and tablets and Wi-Fi everywhere. Are you seeing this kind of passion just running with your membership site and what you’re able to offer to so many more people?
Woody Woodward: Yes, absolutely. When we did our last book deal, it’s called “Your Emotional Fingerprint.” I’ve written nine books now. So there’s a 7-book series called “Millionaire Dropouts” we did, and then I did another book, and then I did Your Emotional Fingerprint. You can get that at Amazon and everywhere else. We ended up picking up 11 different countries, so it’s translated in 11 languages, and we found that foreign countries were actually paying more money for the book royalties than even the United States. We found out on our membership site, we’re picking up countries everywhere, and we are now a global community. Those entrepreneurs, I find it very close-minded to think that, “Oh, I only want to sell in the US. I only want to manufacture in the US. I only want to US this, US that.”
Yes, I believe in our country. I’m a patriot through and through and I believe in supporting our country, but we’re a global community now. Let’s not be selfish. Let’s help other countries grow because as they grow and they have more money, they buy our products. So to think that we can live in this small [thing] where we want to manufacture everything here and we only want to sell here, you’re limiting your belief, you’re limiting what can be. So I’m a huge fan of a global community. I’m a huge fan of reaching out, yet still being patriotic simultaneously.
John Lee Dumas: You’re doing some incredibly great things, Woody, and before we move into the Lightning Round, which is the last round of this interview, I’d love to just make sure that we are covering everything that you want to cover as far as what you’re doing. Is there anything else?
Woody Woodward: Yes. There’s two more things I want to cover real quick.
John Lee Dumas: Awesome! Please do.
Woody Woodward: And they kind of apply to your life as well. One of them is called “Relationships to Riches.” Now if you look at the word “riches,” it’s defined as resources. So it’s really “Relationships to Resources.” If you want to make more money, if you want to have a greater impact, then you have to tap into your resources, and those are the people that you know. One of the things that I do is I don’t have a Facebook page, I don’t have a Twitter page. I used to. I maxed out the 5,000 that I could on Facebook, and then I thought, you know what? It’s not generating more revenue for my company. Now everyone has a different business model. Well what I did, I looked at it, okay, where have I made the most amount of money? I had made the most amount of money dealing one-on-one with people, connecting on a real level.
So I deal with what’s called the interview process, and for the entrepreneurs who have a business model that this will apply, this will create more revenue for you than any advertising. I’ve done infomercials. I’ve done three of those. I’ve done full page ads. I’ve owned my own radio show. I’ve done all the other type of marketing. But I found that the interview process is by far the most rewarding and the most profitable. It’s simply that I spend on average $23.97 on taking someone to lunch, but in that hour of taking them to lunch, I interview their Emotional Fingerprint, I trade value for them, I help them understand the challenge that they have and I help them with solutions, and in the process of me trading value for them, they then open their rolodex to me. They’ll say, “Oh, Woody, you know who you need to meet? So and so. Oh, you know what you need to do? You need to so and so.” What happens is you build your relationship capital and you’re able to make a bigger impact and a bigger difference.
John, you’re doing the exact same thing. You bring on incredible entrepreneurs. But now you have friends around the country. When you launch your next book, every one of us will market your book for you. All 100,000 unique visitors will market your book for you because you created value for the masses, and that is called Relationships to Riches.
And so what I did is I created a Relationships to Riches card system. So if you go on to myemotionalfingerprint.com under Products, there’s a card system there, or if you go on nomoretherapy.com at the end of the membership site, you get the card system referred. So what I wanted to do is I created the card system since I’ve written so many books about what’s the “funnest” thing I can do. Oh, let me give your listeners a quick bit of advice. Here’s one of the funnest things you can do for your business. Whenever your business gets stale, I have this one simple question, and the question is this – what is the craziest thing I can do for my business right now? By giving yourself that permission to think that wildly, you’ll be astonished at what you will do. I’ve done a movie, I’ve done three movies, I’ve done three infomercials and nine books, all of them started by that simple question. What’s the craziest thing I can do right now? I thought, “Well, man, I’ve never done an infomercial. Let’s do an infomercial.”
So I created this card system of helping people with Relationships to Riches – how to trade value in other people’s life, how to identify their Emotional Fingerprint, how to validate it internally. So they just play this card game with themselves, and then there’s a separate deck for somebody else and they can do it. So you’re creating this interaction. It’s really fun. Instead of having to read a 300-page book, you can do it in a card game. So that’s one of our other products I forgot to mention that we’re really excited about.
The last thing I want to cover – and I want those who are listening, get a pen and a paper. This is going to be very profound. It’s extremely simple. It takes about a minute to two minutes, but it’s ridiculously profound in the effect it will have. It’s called “My MAPS system.” So on the left hand side of the paper, write “MPS.” That stands for Message, Product or Service. So all the people I’ve interviewed, all the businesses I’ve owned, and John, attest to this if you will, every business can be categorized as one of the three areas. Either it’s a message business, it’s a products business or a service business, or all three or all two.
John Lee Dumas: Absolutely.
Woody Woodward: Does that make sense?
John Lee Dumas: 100%. Yes.
Woody Woodward: Okay. Well, what’s missing on a treasure map is X. X marks the spot. So on the right side of MPS, put the letter “X.” So what’s also missing is “A,” which is audience. So it’s MPS x A = $. So I’ll walk you through it real briefly. When you think Oprah Winfrey at her highest level on her talk show, she had millions and millions of viewers, so she had an enormous audience and she created a network of over a billion dollars. You take a schoolteacher who has an audience of about 30 students and her income is only going to be about 60 to 70 grand a year. So if you take away audience, all you have is PMS. You’re stressed, you’re anxious, you’re frustrated, you’re exhausted. If you take away MPS and all you have is audience, you have YouTube. All they do is sell [high balls]. They sell advertising. That’s the only thing that they have to sell. So you have to have a combination of Message, Product and Service times your Audience equals your income. But here is where most entrepreneurs make their biggest mistake. We’re innovators. That’s why we’re entrepreneurs. And we love our product, we love our message, we love our service. We’re so passionate about it that we forget to ever build an audience. Frankly, Kevin Costner is a liar. If you build it, they will not come.
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs]
Woody Woodward: You have to focus on audience. So doing the interview process of taking people to lunch, finding people who have audiences – and John, once again, you’re a master of this. You’ve found people who have audiences who refer back to the radio show. So now every single month, you increase your viewership. You’ve done this MAPS system and that’s why you’ve had the success you have. Most people though, and especially entrepreneurs, when they’re so passionate, they forget about the audience. So what I did about six months ago is I only focused on my audience. I already had my product, service and message. I didn’t need to do another product. What I needed to do was find a bigger audience. So I do what you’ve done. I’ve done tons of radio shows, I’ve met with corporations, I’ve met with charitable organizations, and now our audience is absolutely exploding. So then, what happens is your income starts to explode as well. Your net worth is directly tied to your network.
John Lee Dumas: I could not agree with you more, Woody. To use myself as an example, people are always asking me, “John, how did you get such explosive growth and go from zero downloads to over 100,000 a month so quickly?” and I said, “Listen, I launch a new podcast every single day with an amazing, successful and inspiring entrepreneur.” So every single day at [6:00] AM, I’m sending that entrepreneur an email saying, “Hey, guess what, Woody, your podcast just went live and you rocked the mic. You have an amazing message. Help me share this message.” So EntrepreneurOnFire is using a new amazing entrepreneur every single day to leverage their audience, to share with my audience, and by combining the two, it’s just an amazing snowball effect that just multiplies every single day.
Woody Woodward: Absolutely. That’s the way to do it. It’s Relationships to Riches. It’s Relationships to Resources, finding the audience, and the great thing is it doesn’t matter what product, service or message you have. If you’re selling widgets, if you’re selling computers, if you’re selling real estate, it doesn’t matter. You all need an audience. So find out who has your audience because there’s two ways to get an audience. One is buy, the other is borrow. So buying an audience is paying for Google AdWords and paying for radio shows and paying for newsprint and magazines. The second, which I believe is far more leverageable and far more profitable is borrowing an audience. So on this radio show right now, you’re borrowing my audience because of course I’m going to shoot it to everybody that I know. They’re going to listen and say, “Hey, I really like EntrepreneurOnFire. I’m going to sign up for that podcast.” So you’re leveraging other people’s audience by creating massive value. So by you interviewing me, you created massive value for my audience, and in return, my audience will create massive value for you. That’s how the true win/win synergy happens.
John Lee Dumas: Absolutely, because it’s a complete win for you to come on and expose yourself and your amazing message to the already audience that exists at EntrepreneurOnFire.
Woody Woodward: Yes.
John Lee Dumas: That is just going to be a perfect lead in to my favorite part of the show, which is the Lightning Round. This is where I get to ask you a series of questions and you come back at us, Fire Nation, with amazing and mind-blowing answers. Does that sound like a plan?
Woody Woodward: Let’s rock and roll! Let’s do it!
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs] What was holding you back from becoming an entrepreneur?
Woody Woodward: Actually, nothing. Because I was an entrepreneur at a very young age, selling candies in school. So I think what really held me back was my own belief system when I got into my 20s, not knowing how to read, not having education. That’s what held me back, believing that I was “stupid” because I had the grade point to prove that I was stupid. So the only thing that really held me back after I was already successful was just my own belief [of some of my past].
John Lee Dumas: What is the best business advice you ever received?
Woody Woodward: It’s all about relationships. Zig Ziglar, who just passed away, said if you help enough people get what they, you’ll get what you want. I think all businesses are rooted in relationships.
John Lee Dumas: I could not agree more. Do you have an Internet resource like an Evernote that you’re just in love with right now that you can share with Fire Nation?
Woody Woodward: Actually, I don’t. To be honest, I use tech where I need to, but I’m really in front of people every day.
John Lee Dumas: It’s all about the relationships.
Woody Woodward: Yes, and I don’t spend much online or I don’t have a lot of [Unintelligible]. I just don’t. You know what? Here’s one for you. If you want to have a membership site, my favorite platform is Kajabi.com. When I discovered them, I had spent tens of thousands of dollars on building websites. But with them, I paid $200 a month and I can custom change my website all the time. So my entire platform now is on Kajabi.
John Lee Dumas: Wow! That is a great resource. If you could recommend one book for Fire Nation, what would it be?
Woody Woodward: The classic “As a Man Thinketh” by James Allen. One of the greatest books ever written.
John Lee Dumas: I love it. We will link that, as well as everything else we were talking about, in the show notes today. So Woody, this is the last question. It’s my favorite, but it’s kind of tricky. So take your time, digest it, and then come back at us with an answer. Imagine you woke up tomorrow morning in a brand new world, identical to earth, but you knew no one. You have all the experience and knowledge you currently have right now, your food and shelter is taken care of, but all you have is a laptop and $500. What would you do in the next seven days?
Woody Woodward: Oh, that’s easy. I’d take that $500. I’d divide it by $25 so I could end up taking 20 different people to lunch. So that would be about a month’s worth of interviews and taking people to lunch.
John Lee Dumas: Yes.
Woody Woodward: I would use my online computer to go and google whoever is the biggest player in my neighborhood, in my city, which charitable organizations need the most help, and then I would take 20 different unique people to lunch. And within 30 to 60 days, I’d be back on top.
John Lee Dumas: Man, that is actionable advice, Woody, and you’ve given us actionable advice this entire interview, and we are all better for it. Give Fire Nation one parting piece of guidance, then give yourself a plug, and then we’ll say goodbye.
Woody Woodward: The bottom line is this – success comes and goes, but the people in your life stay forever. The relationships that you build, the quality of life in which you live, will change your future projection of where you’ll end up. So the bottom line is this – treat people with respect. Love them, appreciate them, validate them. Simultaneously appreciate, love and validate yourself. Have that internal passion, have that internal drive. And as you do that, you will create the world you want to have.
John Lee Dumas: Powerful, Woody. Give yourself a plug.
Woody Woodward: I would highly recommend, discover your own Emotional Fingerprint. Go to nomoretherapy.com. Share with other people, not because I want more people on my membership site. Because I want you to know what it feels like to be internal. I want your spouse, your friends, your coworkers, your bosses, I want them to know the power that each and every individual has, and that’s internal validation. It only comes, that I’ve discovered, through understanding your Emotional Fingerprint at nomoretherapy.com.
John Lee Dumas: Awesome! We will link that up in the show notes as well, Woody. Thank you for being so generous with your time, your expertise, your experience. Fire Nation salutes you.
