Make a go or no-go decision—then send “Congratulations” email.
Good Morning [Candidate’s First Name], thank you again for your time yesterday afternoon!
I am excited to give you a very warm welcome to the Predictive ROI team.
Katherine, Erik, Alex, and I thoroughly enjoyed our time with you yesterday and look forward to having your contribution to the work we are all doing.
I am preparing a formal acceptance letter that will detail initial responsibilities, internship duration, etc. I will email it to you on Friday for your review and approval.
But at this point . . . would Monday be a good start date for you?
And would you be able to attend our 8:45 A.M. kick-start meeting via Zoom?
Onward with gusto!
Ingredient #8
Kick off the semester-long internship.
After the candidate has accepted our internship, we bring her into our daily kick-start meetings every morning at 8:45. We all work on four issues:
1.My three most vital priorities for the day are . . .
2.What I didn’t get done yesterday but should have (not a judgment question—but an ask for teamwork)
3.This is where I need some help . . .
4.I do/don’t have available time today
Lastly, your probability of creating a solid internship program rests in your willingness to take vital projects off your plate and give them to your interns. I encourage you to put them on the front lines with clients and task them with meaningful work. They will love you for it, and you will continue to recruit rock star unpaid interns.
EPILOGUE
DON’T QUIT—WIN THE OSCAR INSTEAD
Congratulations on making it to the end of this book. I know it wasn’t easy.
But now you need to keep building the momentum and launch your own profitable podcast. The only way you can do that is to push yourself to think past the thoughts of quitting that will soon be crashing against you—if they haven’t already started. If you are feeling that right now—rest assured—that is the impostor syndrome just trying to steal your destiny from you.
Rather than quitting, my hope for you is that you will win the Oscar instead. I will illustrate the tenacity you need through this lesson I learned from Tony Robbins. It is a story you may already know—a story about grit, perseverance, and about being so committed to what you want to do—what you believe in—that you work desperately to create it.
The story is about Sylvester Stallone—one of Hollywood’s most successful actors. But Stallone didn’t have success handed to him; he had to earn it. He had to knock down obstacles and barriers to prove he was worthy. He had to starve, he had to endure hardship, he had to freeze in his New York City apartment, he had to go without everything, and he had to find warmth in the public library.
He faced more than 1,500 brutal and cruel rejections from talent scouts and agents. And yet, he did not quit.
Sylvester Stallone had been listening to some of Tony’s audio programs and really liked them. So Stallone did what any of us would do—he invited Tony over to dinner so they could talk things over.
Before dinner, Tony said to Stallone, “You know, I have heard your story from other people, but I would really love to hear it from the horse’s mouth. I don’t know how much is mythology or urban myth or how much is true.”
Stallone agreed to share his life story with Tony. He had always known what he wanted to do—ever since he was very young. He wanted to be in the movie business. Period. Not TV, but the movies. Being in the movies was an opportunity to help people escape the realities of their day. But more than that, it was an opportunity to inspire audiences.
Stallone’s drive—his passion—is what makes his movies inspiring. He helps audiences see how they could overcome unbelievable obstacles, because in his own life, he feels that he has done that.
For example, Stallone told Tony that when he was born he was pulled out of his mother’s womb with forceps. That’s why he looks and talks the way he does. With resolve in his voice, he said to Tony, “I really wanted to do this—to be in the movies. I know why I wanted to do it and I wasn’t going to settle for anything else.”
Stallone went out to try to get acting jobs. But it’s not like he went, “Yo, Adrian,” and the casting directors said, “Oh, wait, you’re a star.” In fact, the early years of Stallone’s career didn’t work out real well. He was alone, hungry, and grinding it out—just to survive.
Casting directors looked at Stallone and said things like, “You’re stupid looking; do something else.” They made fun of the way Stallone talked, and they told him that there was no place for him in the movies. They said, “You’re never going to be a star. You’re insane. No one is going to want to listen to someone who looks and sounds dopey, and talks out the side of their mouth.” Imagine if someone said that to you. How would you feel? What would you do? Would you quit?
Stallone received no, after no, after no . . . after no. He told Tony that he was thrown out of more than 1,500 agent offices in New York. Tony said, “Hey, wait a minute; there aren’t 1,500 agents in New York.”
Stallone said, “Yeah, I know . . . I’ve been to all of them five, six, seven, eight, or nine times.”
He then shared with Tony a time he had made it to an agent’s office at four in the afternoon and the agent wouldn’t agree to see Stallone. Stallone refused to leave. He stayed there all night until the agent came back the next morning.
His persistence paid off. He landed his first movie role. Tony said, “Oh really, I thought Rocky was your first movie?” He said this other movie that Tony had never heard of was his first movie. Tony asked him what character he played, and Stallone said, “Oh, well, I was in it for about twenty seconds, and I was a thug that somebody beat up because they made me feel like people hate your guts so you getting beat up will be a good thing.”
He did three movies like that but didn’t get anything more. Yet, he kept going out to look. He received only rejection, rejection, and more rejection. Did he give up? Did he quit? Heck no!
Finally Stallone realized that it wasn’t working. So he changed his approach. He was desperate. He was starving. He couldn’t afford to heat his apartment. His wife was screaming at him every day to go get a job.
So Tony asked him, “Well, why didn’t you go out and get a job?”
Stallone said, “Because I knew that if I got a job, I would get seduced back, and I would lose my hunger. And the only way that I could do this was if it was the only choice—and that I had burned all other bridges. Because if I got a normal job, pretty soon, I would be caught up in that rhythm and would start to feel okay about my life—and I would feel that my dream would just gradually disappear. And I wanted to keep that hunger, keep that hunger burning. Because hunger was the only thing that I thought was my advantage.”
Stallone said his wife didn’t understand that at all. They had vicious fights. It was freezing; they had no money. One day he went to the New York City public library because it was warm. He didn’t plan on actually reading anything, but he was hanging out there and sat down on a chair near where someone had left a book. It was the poems and stories of Edgar Alan Poe.
Stallone started reading it and totally got into it. How Poe had lived, how he died, what really happened, Stallone studied all of the details. Tony asked him, “Well, what did Poe do for you?” Stallone told Tony, “Poe got me out of myself. He got me to think about how I could touch other people—not worry about myself so much. And that made me want to become a writer.”
Stallone began to write screenplays but nothing worked, and he and his wife were still broke. He didn’t even have $50 to his name. But finally, he sold a script called Paradise Alley. Big success! He told Tony he sold it for $100 and that felt like a ton of money. Stallone was so thrilled and thought, “Yes, I am on my way.”
Unfortunately, selling that script actually never led to anything (although he did produce Paradise Alley many years later
). Stallone kept going and going and going and going. Finally, he was so broke he sold his wife’s jewelry. He said, “Tony, there are some things in life you should never do . . . and that was basically the end of our relationship.”
She hated his guts so much. Broke, they had no food, no money, and the one thing Stallone loved most in the world was his dog.
This is where the story gets really good. It is painful but a great illustration of why you should never quit.
Stallone was so broke he couldn’t even feed his dog. It was the lowest day in his life. He stood outside a liquor store and he tried to sell his dog to strangers for $50. Finally, one guy negotiated with him to buy his dog—his best friend in the whole world—for $25.
Stallone walked away from there and just cried. Heart wrenching. But he still wouldn’t quit.
Then providence set in. Two weeks later, he was watching a fight between Muhammad Ali and Chuck Wepner, who was getting bludgeoned but kept on coming back for more. He wouldn’t give up. And Stallone had an idea. He started writing as soon as the fight ended, and he didn’t stop. He didn’t sleep. He wrote the entire movie script in twenty hours straight.
Right then and there. He saw the fight. Wrote the movie. Whole thing. Done. Stallone told Tony he was so excited that he was shaking. He really knew what he wanted. He knew why he wanted it. And he took massive action to get it.
But now that he had the script to Rocky, he still had to sell it to an agent. Some read it and said, “This is predictable, this is stupid, and this is sappy.” Stallone said that he wrote down all the things they said and that he read them the night of the Oscars when they won. The greatest revenge can sometimes be massive success.
He kept going and trying to sell it and no one would buy it—and he was still broke.
But finally, he met two agents who read the script and believed in it. They loved it, and they offered Stallone $125,000 for it. Wait! What? Tony told Stallone: “My word, you must have been out of your mind.”
Stallone definitely was. But he said to the agents, “Just one thing though, guys—you have a deal based on one thing. I gotta star in the movie.” They were like, “What? What are you talking about? You’re a writer!” Stallone pushed back, “No, I’m an actor.” And they said, “No, no, no . . . you’re a writer.” He pushed back to them again, “No, I’m an actor. That is my story . . . and I’m Rocky. I gotta play Rocky. I gotta play the starring role.”
They said, “Look, there’s no way that we’re going to pay you $125,000 and take some no-name actor and stick you in the movie and then throw our money away. We need a star. Take it or leave it.” So, as Stallone left the room he said, “If that’s what you believe, then you don’t get my script.”
Again, this is a man who was dirt broke, and $125,000 was more money than he had seen in his lifetime. Yet he walked away, because he knew his destiny and why he was committed to it.
The agents called Stallone a few weeks later, brought him back to their office, and offered him a quarter of a million dollars for his script, but he still couldn’t star in his own movie. Stallone turned it down. The agents came back with their final offer of $325,000. They really wanted this script. But Stallone said, “Not without me in it.” They said no.
They finally compromised, and they gave him $35,000—as well as a revenue share in the movie so that Stallone would share in the risk with them. The bottom line for the agents was that they didn’t think the movie would work so they were not willing to spend a bunch of money on it.
They invested only $1 million to produce Rocky. It grossed $200 million.
But here’s where it gets really interesting. Tony asked Stallone, “So what did you do? Even at $35,000, it’s not a quarter million but it’s still a lot of money when you don’t have $25. What’s the first thing you did?”
Tony figured Stallone went out and partied or something. But he didn’t. He told Tony that he went to that liquor store where he had sold his dog and stood there for three straight days hoping the guy who bought his dog would come back. He wanted to buy back his dog.
On the third day the guy walked by. Stallone couldn’t believe it. And there was his dog, too! Stallone looked at him and said, “Sir, you remember me?” It had been about a month and a half since he had sold him his dog.
The guy said, “Yeah, yeah, I remember.”
Stallone said, “Look, I was so broke; I was so starved. He’s my best friend; I’m sure you love him, too . . . but I gotta have him back, please; I will pay you $100 for the dog. I know you paid me $25; I will give you $100.”
And the man said, “Absolutely not, no way. It’s my dog now; you can’t buy him back.”
And Stallone said to Tony, “You know how you say, ‘you gotta know your outcome’? Well, I knew mine, so I kept changing my approach. I offered him $500 for the dog.”
The guy said absolutely no way. Stallone offered him $1,000 for the dog. The guy said, “No amount of money will ever get this dog for you.”
Tony asked him, “So what did you do?” Stallone said, “I knew my outcome so I decided to take massive action. I just kept changing my approach until I got my dog.”
Tony asked him, “So what did it cost you?” Stallone said, “$15,000 and a part in the movie Rocky!”
The dog in Rocky, “Butkus,” was Stallone’s real dog. That’s the dog he bought back for $15,000.
If you’re committed, there is always a way. You just have to keep changing your approach.
You were meant for greatness. You are instilled with an abundance of talent and gifts. Please don’t let something so small as fear—or your circumstances—limit all you were meant to be.
As my mentor Don Yaeger says, “Greatness is available to all of us if you are willing to do the common things uncommonly well.”
Don’t ever quit!
APPENDIX
SUCCESS STORIES FROM BUSINESS OWNERS
Each person’s definition of success can and should be different. The word success is a difficult word for business owners to define. Sometimes having models or examples to consider—or insights from a mentor—can make all the difference in sorting out the outcomes that matter.
The business owners I interviewed for this section are using their podcasts to grow revenue, expand their platform, and build their nation of true fans. But what I found so compelling during these conversations was that while each had similar goals, they also had their own personalized strategies to get there. My hope for you is that their stories will help you gain clarity on your vital priorities and, most important, how you define what a successful podcast looks like for you.
John Livesay, host of The Successful Pitch
John is a funding strategist who helps CEOs craft compelling pitches that engage investors in a way that inspires them to join a start-up’s team. He partners with Judy Robinett at Crack the Funding Code, which gets founders funded fast. He hosts The Successful Pitchwith investors around the world. As I noted earlier, Inc. magazine calls John the “Pitch Whisperer.”
Q1: Give us an overview of your podcast and the advice shared during a typical episode.
John: I was helping tech start-ups with their pitch and they kept telling me, “This is great. I definitely need help and what I also need are warm introductions to investors now that I have this great pitch.” I kept saying, “I don’t do that. I don’t know any investors.” Enough people kept saying it to me that I thought maybe I should follow my own advice, and that is if your customers and clients are telling you something that they want and are willing to pay for, then maybe you should figure out how to get it for them. My podcast was my way of building up my network of investors so I could introduce my clients.
But, before I even started, I had to overcome what I call the “Three Faces of Fear.”
When I get afraid to do something outside of my comfort zone, I need to put a face on it; otherwise it’s just so overwhelming and so fearful. For me, the first fear was the Fear of Rejection, where I would s
ay to myself, “Well, what if I invite someone to be on my podcast and they say, ‘No thanks,’ or ‘Let’s hear several other episodes before I accept.’ I’ve learned from being in sales for the majority of my career that the key to rejection is you just cannot take it personally. I take it one step further and tell my clients, “Never reject yourself.”
The second fear I had to overcome was the Fear of Failure. When you’re starting a podcast or a business or anything, the Fear of Failure will knock on your door and say, “What if you invest all this time and all this money and nobody downloads an episode? Won’t that be humiliating? Won’t that be a waste of time and money?” Luckily for me, one of my guests was Jay Samit, who wrote a book called Disrupt You. In it he writes, “Failure is just feedback. Keep going until you get a zombie idea so great it won’t die.”
Then the third fear is the Fear of the Unknown. The list of things I didn’t know about starting a podcast was a mile long, including what microphone do I buy? How do I edit this thing? How do I promote it? What questions should I ask? I’d been a guest on many shows, but I’d never hosted one, and it’s very different being on the other side of the mic. I found the number of technology things overwhelming, and I thought, “That could be the thing that stops me from doing it.” Then, I found someone who does it for you. Collaboration is the secret to overcoming the Fear of the Unknown.
Q2: Why did you start your podcast and what are two or three of the biggest impacts it has had on your business?
John: It separates you from everybody else. When I used to go to events, and people would say, “Oh, what do you do?” I always said, “I help start-ups craft a pitch and make introductions to investors.” Now, I say, “I host a podcast where I interview investors who share with me their criteria on what they look for when they hear a pitch. The response is now, “Oh. You’re a journalist?” That was a big ah-ha for me. That part really changes how you position yourself.
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