Entrepreneur Dale Beaumont on how to take 3 months off each year!

Dale

Yeah. Well, I think what I’m most excited about, even though I’ve done all one of other things and things I’m very, very proud of, I think I get the greatest amount of reward and satisfaction by helping other people to improve their business and in turn, improve their life. So, I get a lot of joy and satisfaction in doing that. Other things that I’ve kind of known for is the ‘Secrets Exposed’ series.

Tim

Well we’re going to come to those. You are racing ahead, my friend. You are racing ahead. I know you just came back off a bike ride around Thailand so you’ve clearly got that sporting thing happening right now but listen, I want to know then, you’ve kind of touched on, what’s you scoreboard? How do you measure how you’re going?

Dale

Well, for me, one of my strongest personal values is around growth and just making sure that I’m always continuing to take things to another level. I had a mentor when I was 19 years of age, I got called Michael Rowland and he said, “You either green and growing or you’re ripe and rotting.” And that means there’s no such thing as standing still in business. You can’t say to yourself “well the last 3 or 4 years have been good, I’ll just do the same thing for the next 3 or 4 years”, because if you keep doing what you’ve always done, you certainly won’t grow and you won’t even maintain your current level of result. You’ll actually start going backwards because everyone else around you will continue to grow. It’s called competition, it’s called evolution, it’s called change and it’s the one thing that is constantly moving and we can never stop. So for me, year on year, I want to be growing, I want to be learning, not only do I want my income to be increasing and making more profits but I also want to make sure that personally, I am embracing the wonderful tools that we now have like new technology, and I’m looking at expansion whether that be across Australia or now pushing globally as well. Just learning new things because I don’t want ever to get to the point whereby I just rest on my previous success, so I really love growing and taking things to another level.

Tim

Clearly, and you mentioned the income and that’s an obvious part of the scoreboard but how do you measure the more emotional areas? You can talk about growth into other countries, you can talk about adding new programs, you can talk about stuff, numbers, all that rational stuff. Is there a kind of, emotions much harder to measure, isn’t it? But I guess is it’s that feeling of achievement inside that you kind of look to at the end of each year?

Dale

Yeah. For me, I think of things in these 3 phases – you’ve got to build then live and give. For me, I’ve spent 12 years now building my business and have in turn, use that business to provide a wonderful lifestyle for me and my family to the point whereby we travel 3 or 4 months a year. My 6-year old son now has been to like 55 countries and we’re living in a beautiful home, we have all the cars and all the things that you would kind of want in a material sense, however, now, for me, my biggest drive and motivation is, well, once you’ve created this thing in business called surplus and you can’t spend all the money that you’ve make, then who do you want to help and how do you want give back? So, last year and this year, I did a charity bike ride through Thailand and this year, we’ve raised $180,000 to support the building of an orphanage in Thailand where most of the kids have HIV and for me now, my goal is, next year, I want to step that up and we did 180 this year which is good but next year, I want to do a quarter of a million dollars in funds that we want to raise and donate and then the following year, I’d like to step that up to half a million. For me, now it’s about what I can do to give back and that’s how I’m measuring things more and more these days, is how we can contribute and make a big difference.

Tim

It’s really interesting, Dale. Just before we came on air, I was responding to some posts in the Small Business Big Marketing forum and one of my members was talking about exactly that and he’s at the start of his business journey. He owns a vineyard and he just been approached by a charity to gives some money. He was feeling a bit guilty and he was kind of questioning like at what point, how do you decide who to give to? Should you give? Should you make it overtly and make it part of your marketing communication strategy that “hey, we support these causes.” What’s your kind of view on that because you’re the other in which you’re going, “Okay, I’ve got all I want. I’ve got the family, I’ve got all the material stuff and now I’m ready to just give back,” but what about those businesses who are listening who just thinking, “How do I integrate social responsibility into my marketing?”

Dale

I think the important thing to say there is that you can give at every single level and even when you’re starting, I think it’s a really good habit to get into, to allocate a percentage and it doesn’t have to be huge. It could be just 3% or 5% of the money that you make and to give. I don’t think that it’s “when I’m rich and when I’m successful and when I’ve got all this money, then only then I’ll give back.” Set a number, even if it’s small juts start somewhere and like if you’ve got a goal to increase the size of your business, you should have a goal to increase the size of what you’re giving as well, but I do also believe in the principle and you would have heard this many times when you get on an airplane, you know, you got to put on your own oxygen mask before assisting others and I do believe that you’ve got to make sure that, because you just can’t give, give, give and not be reinvesting back into your business as well.

For the first 7 or 8 years in my business, I’m very obsessed around growing wealth for me and for my family and about being able to provide them with. I’ve done that now and so, now it’s about “who else can I put on the oxygen mask and who else can I help to make a difference/” So, the key thing is you can start at any level and then just step it up as far as whether you want to let customers know. I think it’s important that you let other people know, not in a boastful way that “I’m giving all the money to charity” but I think it does help to inspire others to go, “I can do that as well,” I don’t think that it should be something you should shy away from but I don’t think it’s something that you should obsess over either, but I think it’s important for people to know that your business is one that actually cares about making a difference and you’re someone that’s proud to have that as part of your offering.

Tim

I agree. There’s philanthropy and there’s corporate social responsibility and I think philanthropy is “we do give without anyone knowing” that’s the premise whereas I think the corporate social responsibility is an absolutely value thing to integrate it as part of your marketing message, particularly when you’re a smaller business and that’s many people listening to this conversation, small business owners who got modest budgets, modest marketing budgets so you’ve got to make every marketing play works so yeah, interesting conversation. Now, Dale, I want to go back a little bit, mate. I want to go back to when you’re 9. Okay?

Dale

Okay.

Tim

We’re going right back there. Now, you’re a member of the New South Wales Gymnastics Squad. You’re training 34 hours a week and you went on to become then the National Aerobics Champion. Now, I don’t want to talk about either of those sports but they did teach you from what I can gather a lot. I don’t want to kind of interrogate each of these 3 things that taught you the value of discipline, hard work, having a coach and actually delayed gratification. There’s a lot in there, mate. Let’s first talk about; all the listeners already work hard. Whether they‘re working on the most important things that would be another question so maybe let’s talk about discipline. What do you mean by it taught you discipline?

Dale

Well, I think there’s a saying that you know, “You make your habits and then your habits make you,” and I think that’s really important to make sure of that. Discipline is about making a decision once and sticking to it, and having the ability to be able to follow through and another saying that I really love is, “Do the things you said you would do well after the mood you said it has gone,” because it’s very easy to sort of say, “Okay, I’m going to get fit. I’m going to do…,” you know this new feeling on motivate and you get out and you go for a run and maybe do it once or twice but then, you’re going to feel like one day, enough, just couldn’t be bothered, and the feeling is gone about being motivated and inspired to exercise but it’s when that feeling around motivation is gone, you still have to show up every single time and as business owners, we have to do that, we have to….

Tim

So, how do you that? That’s great. Your exercise example is a prime one. I also find that with my keynotes where you know, I make it but before I go on stage, I take this mindset that I want everyone in the audience to be just wanting to jump out of their seats, race back to their workplace and start implementing. Generally, they do, right? That’s the feeling they are in whether they maintain that feeling post of the conference that I’ve spoken at and actually do is another thing and I’m guessing, maybe 20% do of the 100% that felt motivated?

Dale

Yeah, I think when I referred t that saying that “you make your habits and your habits make you,”  so what I do is if I go, “This is important to me,” let’s say for example exercise or it could be checking your, you know, cash flow position or it could be making sure that I’m going to record interviews or write emails for my database, it could be whatever it is, if it’s important to you then  what I normally do is like to plan things in 3  months cycles, not from kind of week to week and so, with my personal trainer for example, I look through my diary and I know all the times that I’m  going to be travelling and the times I’m going to be running events and etcetera, so I gave him, “Here are the dates for the next 3 months,” and put them in the diary and that’s it, they’re locked in, give in to my trainer and that’s it. Now, I don’t have to think anymore, all I’ve got to do is just execute. I decided that it is important to me, it is now in my diary and therefore, I’ve got to follow through and stick to those plans.

Ideally, whatever happens, the only thing that would get in the way of that is my family. I got a call yesterday from Catherine saying, “Look, you got to come. You’ve got to pick Fin up in school,” so I changed some plans but other than that, I always follow through. If it’s in the diary, it has to be done. You’ve got to stick to it  because I made the decision once and it was important to me then so it’s important to me now and I got to follow through, otherwise, you’ll just end up practicing the principle of you know, this week, he will gets the oil and that’s a terrible place to be in business because you’re always chasing your tail, you’re spinning you wheels, you’re not actually moving forward.

Tim

We caught up a couple of weeks ago in Sydney and you showed me a calendar. I think it might be a bit; you had a number of calendars actually. You are a discipline planning machine, Dale. You had a social media calendar which I think from memory, kind of detailed what post you are going to make on a day, 3 weeks in the future. You knew exactly where you are going to be. You knew exactly what post will be relevant. Hope I’m not revealing all your secrets here, mate but I just thought, you touched all it then and I’ve tried to think about past guest who I had on… David Allen! He made a similar comment which is like, in all that planning, someone once said doing, “he must have to be thinking constantly,” and he says, “I have nothing on my mind because it’s all being captured elsewhere and when the time comes to action or implement it, it gets action or implemented,” but the opposite of that is many of us who are going, “Okay, I’ve got to do that next week.” And in an hour later, write off, “I got to do that next week,” and in an hour later, you know like that. It’s unhelpful thinking, isn’t it?

Dale

Exactly right. It’s a matter of making the decision once, putting in a diary and then not thinking about it. You don’t need to think about it. For me, I wake up in the morning, “Okay, what I’ve got to do today?” I look up at my diary, these were the priorities that have been set and now I just got to stick to the plan. I don’t have to waste valuable brain power by thinking about all the things that I need to do. It’s just a matter of just executing and the other thing is actually taking time out in this other thing that I got from that book “Getting Things Done,” that you’ve mentioned is around actually putting planning time in the diary, otherwise, your brain is racing and it’s going all the time because you’re constantly planning on the go. Put an hour aside and do all your thinking or your planning or your decision making and get whoever you need around you to do that, and then you don’t need to do it on the fly all the time because it just takes a lot of brain power and time so the idea is to think less but do more.

Tim

Yeah, I love that. Okay, now one of the other things that all your time in gymnastics and aerobics world taught you is the importance of having a coach. Tell me about that.

Dale

Well, yeah. Just for me, it just makes so much sense. It’s obvious as a gymnast, there’s 2 ways to do anything. One is through trial and error, and the other is through following a recipe of someone else that has been there and done it before. Every professional athlete knows this because if I wanted to be at elite level gymnast and I want to do it myself, it could take me 30 or 40 years. Now, in sports, you don’t have 30 or 40 years. You’ve got 10, maybe 15 if you’re lucky. So, the only way you can press 40 years’ worth of learning into 10 years is by having a coach, someone that has taken hundreds and hundreds of athletes down that path before and knows what works and knows what doesn’t and can show you the actual formula or recipe for success. Every athlete knows this that’s why every athlete has a coach but very few business owners, probably less than 5% have a coach or a mentor or someone that has been down that road hundreds of times before and knows how to save you a lot of headaches and time and money. Now, of course it does cost for a coach or for a mentor however, what most people don’t realize is you’re going to pay for your education in 1 of 2 ways. You’ll pay for an upfront or you’ll pay for it by mistakes and you’ll pay it for by ignorance, and that’s a lot more costly. I have always had coaches and mentors throughout my business career and that’s the only reason why I’ve been able to get to this position having built many successful businesses is because I’ve been able to go up to people and ask them questions and ask them for their advice. You can do it through books, you can do it through CDs, DVDs, podcasts or you can do it through attending live events and seminars, and that’s another thing. In other book about time management or productivity, it’s called “7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” and one of the habits says, “To sharpen the sword, to sharpen the axe, and…”

Tim

I love that one.

Dale

Yeah, we could talk about that for half an hour,

Tim

Yeah!

Dale

The principle there is that if you working with a blunt axe, you’re only working on 20% or 30% of your effectiveness and the most business owners are lack that beef they don’t want to take time out of their business because they’re too busy working in their business to get out of it. So, prioritizing actually coaching sessions or mentoring or educational or learning is really, really important to do that and for every hour you invest in that, I think you get 10 hours back in increased productivity, not in the short term but over the medium to long term.

As one quick example, I published a series of books called the ‘Secrets Exposed’ series which we published 15 books in the space of 3 years, and to do that, I got some mentoring from a guy called Mark Victor Hansen who wrote the series of books called ‘The Chicken Soup for the Soul’ series. I was able to take that information and it cost me about $6,000 to fly to America and to attend his workshops and to buy all his CDs and DVDs. It cost me $6,000 but the next 3 years, I’ve sold over 250,000 books and if I was to be very conservative and say that I only make $3 profit per book, that’s $700,000 return from a $6,000 investment and I honestly believe that if I hadn’t had done that, I would still be 5 years later trying to figure it out myself. Why would you if someone else has already done it?

Tim

That’s a great story, Dale. I only just want to get a bit deeper there because you’re a self-confessed personal development junkie? Other successful people and I’m guessing to when you’re talking about coach/mentor this is not necessarily one on one, this could be as you said, going to The Chicken Soup for the Soul fellows’ conference, training course, it could be reading a book, you mean coaches and mentors can take many forms, yeah?

Dale

Absolutely, and sometimes you take lots of ideas and blend them together and form you own opinion based on 5 or 6 other people. You don’t have to follow one person blindly, it’s not like you’re worshipping someone or putting someone else on the pedestal but it’s learning from everybody, taking it, filtering it through your brain what you want and then making your best decision.

Tim

Past guests, successful business owners like you who’ve been on the show have also been self-confessed personal development junkies, David Warren from Sydney Tour Ships comes to mind. He’s spent $100,000 plighting down a river in Fiji with Tony Robbins, you know, like this guy, but his business is cranking it and what I’m interested to know and this is a discussion that’s happening again in the Small Business Big Marketing forum right now is that and there are some coaches in there. It seems to leave a bad taste in people’s mouth when the personal development/life-coach business coach discussion happens and I get there, like sports people who just have them. They couldn’t perform that elite level without their coach and I’m just wondering why so many small business owners either defer or decline the idea, this idea of a coach/mentor.

Dale

Yeah, I really don’t know. I think a lot of business owners by nature are independent thinkers and they like to be the boss. Now, there’s a time to be the boss and when you’re at the office you got to take charge but sometimes people they just have their blinkers on and they just take it way too far and they end up making a lot of dumb decisions that they don’t need to if they just spent an hour talking to someone that’s done it before. That could save you weeks or months of time. So, it’s not about being you know, like I don’t want to be the hero, I just want to get stuff done, I want to grow my business…

Tim

Can I suggest just put it out there that maybe the coaching industry has gone about marketing itself the wrong way? There is a lot of cringe attached to it.

Dale

Sure. And people do have taken it in a way too far and it’s not about, I don’t like when I say I’m a committed student of personal development, I’d put my hand up to that. What I’m saying as self-development junkie…

Tim

Your words when we’re talking yesterday

Dale

Yeah! I’m happy to put myself in that box but it kind of makes the assumption that you’re kind of like almost like a cult following someone blindly and you’ll do anything that they tell you.

Tim

Yeah. Correct.

Dale

That’s not the case.

Tim

It also says that it’s the means not the end and I know for you, you’re looking for the end. You’re not living this life to go to the next personal development course.

Dale

Absolutely. There’s a time to learn and there’s a time to earn as well so there’s been times when I’ve said, “That’s it. For the next 6 months I’m not going to any courses or seminars, I just need more rubber on the road and I’ve got to implement and get stuff done.” A junkie is always looking for the next hit, the next hit. I wouldn’t say that but I’m committed to continual growth so therefore, I will keep investing in that area.

Tim

Love it, mate. Now listen, one last thing that you learned from that whole sporting part of your life is this concept of delayed gratification. Can you tell us about that? You touched on it earlier but what’s that saying to me you just got to put in the hard yards in order to enjoy the blue skies.

Dale

Yeah. As an employee and most people before they go into business, they have us work first as an employee and I remember it was work, get paid, work, get paid, work, get paid, work, get paid. However, when you enter in business, it’s work, work, work and there might not be any pay, then you go work, work, work and then you get paid and you got to thank God for that, and then  you go work, work, work, pay then hopefully, work, paid, work, paid, and then the benefit of business is you get to a point that where you get paid, paid, paid, paid, paid, paid, paid, like 50 paid in a row and you go, “Wow!” so that’s the benefit and you’ll end up over time getting paid a lot more for the work that you’ve done and I won’t talk about myself too much here but in the last financial year, we probably earned equivalent to 10 years or maybe even 20 years of someone’s salary in one year.

Tim

Wow, who’s salary? There are lots of salaries out there.

Dale

What’s the salary? This is called the average Australian salary.

Tim

Okay, yeah.

Dale

So, we’ve got paid a lot more for the work that we did but there were times whereby I was up to 1, 2, 3, 4:00 in the morning working away and getting paid nothing and sometimes, you can think yourself, “Well, why am I doing this? I’m not earning anything.” Yes, you are. You’re just going to pick up that check in 6 months’ time or 10 months’ time or 2 years’ time, and you’ve got to have that foresight to stay in the race and to keep going and to really stay committed and understand this idea of delayed gratification. It’s not going to happen overnight but you’ve got to stay focus and committed.

Tim

If that’s not also, I mean it’s bigger than just going, “Okay, I’m just going to keep working hard because it will come.” It is about working smarter.

Dale

Exactly. It is about working smarter and it’s about changing your approach if something is not working. There’s a lot of things that I have done really well but there’s also a lot of mistakes that I’ve made and…

Tim

What’s the biggest one?

Dale

Wow.

Tim

I started off by asking what are you most proud, ashamed is the wrong word but what do you reflect back on and just, “Come on, jeeez… really, did I do that?”

Dale

Yeah. I think I would have just loved to have been doing what I’m doing now, probably easy,

Tim

It will, really hind sight’s wonderful, Dale.

Dale

A hind sight is a wonderful, wonderful thing and there are certain businesses that I would have loved to invested in at certain times and I told my clients 3 years go, “Look, you should be getting on to that cloud-based accounting and you should get into Xero business but I should have bought shares in Xero 3 years ago.”

Tim

Having no shares but done unbelievably well.

Dale

So I was kicking myself to say “why was I recommending it without taking a position” but yeah, what was the question then?

Tim

Well, I’m just interested to know what you’re least proud of. I mean, we’ve all missed by the worst to asking the best straight at a cheapest price but what about something in kind of way that you’ve just kind of thought that, “I just did the wrong thing. I really kind of mocked up there.”

Dale

Yeah. There’s so many different things that I have made as mistakes but if I didn’t make them I wouldn’t have that lesson and I wouldn’t have got onto where I’ve got onto now but look, I’m pretty happy with my position overall, where I am now and I’ve still got a lot of time in my side and things that I want to achieve so it’s about taking everything that I’ve done and keep moving forward.

Tim

Yeah, fair enough. Well, let’s talk about moving forward because then, at the age of 19, you did write your first book, ‘The World At Your Feet.’

Dale

Yep.

Tim

And you co-founded I guess, what is your first business, Tomorrow’s Youth International. Sounds like a very early 90s name to me, that one.  What was that all about? Why did you all of a sudden go, “That’s the business I’m going to start”?

Dale

Well, when I finished school late because I learned to value of having coaches and mentors like we discussed through sports, I decided to go right there and go, “Okay, well, I want to find coaches for life success, for business, for creating wealth.”  And so I went to a lot of courses and seminars at the age of 17, 18, 19 and I have so many people come up to me saying, “Wow, if only I’ve learned this when I was your age” because most of these people were in their 40s, 50s and 60s which seemed at that time, these people are like ancient.

Tim

Careful.

Dale

Yeah, I know, that was back then but anyway, so I thought to myself, “Wouldn’t it be cool if all these great stuffs around success and motivation–”

Tim

Can I just say, I mean, you’ve told me this story. I was quite distraught with, I mean these are people who were…

Dale

Yeah, a lot of people are coming up to me with tears in their eyes because they had lived a life of regret. They lived a life of saying, “I wish I did this and I wish I did that.” And now they didn’t so much have time on their sides so they are looking at me, fresh-faced and starry-eyed thinking, “Wow, it’s so great you’ve got all this information at your age,” and so, that inspired me to go, “Well, I’d really love to be able to help more young people.” so I started to run courses. The first course that I’ve ever ran was at a youth drop-in center and we had 3 people come along to my very first seminar and the numbers kind of grew, and we’re teaching things like goal setting, leadership, communication skills, money, management, how to work in teams, how to turn negative thoughts into positive thoughts.

Tim

You’re teaching this?

Dale

Yeah. At the age of 19, we started and it was fantastic. We grew that over a period of 6 years.

Tim

Where’s all the knowledge coming from?

Dale

Well just going to courses and learning at myself, filtering through my own values and beliefs and then teaching it and making in it a way that’s kind of fun and exciting for young people so at our events we had smoke machines and laser lights and we had like a DJ and we upload movie clips, and we just made it really, really fun and in a way that young people would really connect with. We had bean bags and stuff like that.

Tim

Can I just pull you up on a point that you said, you filtered all that learning, you then filtered through your own set of values and beliefs and I think that’s really interesting. One of the exercises that I do with people inside the forum is just going through with their brand character, getting very clear on what their brand is all about and part of that is understanding what are those 3, 4, 5 guiding principles that really determine how you go about things in your business life, in your personal life? You come across to me, Dale, as someone who is crystal clear on a set of values and beliefs and do use it actively in all your decision making. Am I right?

Dale

Yeah. That was a very important process for me to go through and I’ve done it both personally, what are the things that I value and then I’ve also done it with my wife as well because it’s bad having a set of shared values as well and knowing what are the things that she values and I value and where do we differ because that’s going to create some conflict if we haven’t got an understanding of each other’s guiding principles and then we’ve also done it for our company as well and then align that company values with our personal values and  now, we make a lot of business decisions based on that and that’s how we recruit, that’s how we incentivize staff, it’s how we let staff go if we need to. There’s really the backbone of our whole culture. It does get a little bit woo-woo and I can suggest a few people…

Tim

I love woo-woo.

Dale

to have interviews. But it is very powerful and it did help us to make some major decisions in our business. We looked at our values and go, “We have to do this,” or some other decisions, we looked at our values and go, “This is not taking us to where I want to go. This is not who we are.” And we’ve said no to other things so it really helps you to guide your decisions.

Tim

It is powerful and I use the analogy, when you’re confronted with a decision and maybe when you meet someone for the first time, it maybe when you’re confronted with your opportunity to do something new in your business, bring on a new partner or a new product range or whatever it is, you get just that internal feeling that the plates aren’t meeting. You know, there’s one higher or lower than another, they’re just not meeting and you get that sense of this is not right. At that point, you either choose to listen to it or not. I know certainly in my life there’s times when I haven’t listened to it and as a result, it hasn’t turned out as I’ve wanted it to and that’s because I didn’t listen to my values.

Dale

Yeah, absolutely.

Tim

It’s a great exercise to go through, Dale. Now in 2005 and I’m fascinated by this. You created the Secrets Exposed series where you spoke to successful people. Got up close and person with them and as a result, created a series of 15 books. Now, this is a little bit close to my heart. I too have spoken to a hundred, as of this interview, 175 successful people. I haven’t turned it into a series of books, it’s on the to-do list but tell me about how you did that.

Dale

Yeah, so I always, like we speak of it at the very beginning, believe in the value of having coaches and mentors and then I asked myself the question, “This principle is important yet why don’t people have coaches and mentors and get advice from others?” I concluded that for a lot of people, they either don’t know how to go about it or they’re intimated around going up and asking people for advice, it would be time consuming, so I thought, “How can I make it easier for people? What about if I went out there and did all the hard work? What about if I–”

Tim

You’ve identified your ‘why.’ That’s really interesting, just there is a kind of great list and you’ve kind of done it from a point, you know, your why.

Dale

and I thought if I go out there and do the hard work, interview people, put it together in a book and make it accessible to anyone at $30 instead of hundreds and hundreds of dollars, thousands of dollars flying all around the country and getting interviews with 15 or 20 people per book, that would take people months and thousands of dollars but they could get it instantly in for $30. I thought that will be a great product, help a lot of people and at the same time, if I did a really good job then it would benefit me as well. First year, we published 2 books and the second year we published another 2 books, and the third year, once we got all our systems right and we kind of ramp things up, we published 11 books in one year which yeah, I don’t believe any other Australian author has ever did 11 books in one year before.

Tim

Not yet, not yet. Tell me what’s the structure of the book? I mean, is this literally question-answer? How many guests per book and what’s the structure?

 

Dale

There’s an average of 16 in each book, some got a couple more, some got a few less. Each person is about 5,000 words per person. It’s a question – answer format and there’s a bio at the beginnings so you get a detailed background of the person’s history and what they have done and their accomplishments and then it’s a question and answer format but unlike other books that I have read that simply take took audio interviews and then had them transcribed and then printed, each of what I call contributors, each of these mentors actually wrote the answers, typed the answers to their questions and so the answers are a lot more potent and a lot more thought provoking because they literally had to write the words and think about every sentence that they put down on paper. So the end result is a very powerful read even though the books came out a number of years ago. Now, a friend of mine just read one of my books the other day and said, “This is still just as relevant today as what it was 5 years ago. The information in here is fantastic.” So I tried to get rid of any stuff that would date the book and it is a fantastic read. They’re available through my website or I think they’re also on the iBooks store as well. If you just type my name, Dale Beaumont, and you do a search, you can find the books there. You can get them online and then we’ll post them to you or you can get the digital version and put them on your iPad.

Tim

You’re way ahead of the content marketing curve, Beaumont.

Dale

Yeah! I was and yeah but now it’s a matter of repurposing a lot of that content now. You know, YouTube and iTunes is really where it’s at. Books are great but people are reading a lot less these days but they’re still consuming information through other channels.

Tim

That’s interesting. We talked a lot about repurposing on this show. Have you repurposed those books? Are they for sale through audio books now? Have you turned them into videos series? How have you repurposed them?

Dale

What I’ve done is definitely turn them into all the digital sort of platforms and so you can get it on Amazon through the Kindle and you can get it too on iTunes, etc. but still in print form. I’m now going back and interviewing a lot of people and turn them into audio interviews because they originally wrote the material, I didn’t have audios. I have all of their written word so now I’m going back in interviewing people and putting them into audio. Most of them now, I’m just, either people buy the books and some of the books have been given away for free on my website as downloadable gifts as well. Content is still just as relevant and valuable but now, because I’ve got a great program that comes after the books. I’m happy to give a lot of that material away now and just use it as a way to build the database to help others.

Tim

I’m reminded yesterday I had a webinar for forum members with Andrew Griffith. He’s also a prolific small business author in Australia and he last year gave away 5,000 books.

Dale:

Yes.

Tim

He talks about it being a glorified business card and you know, for the cost of a book, the actual unit cost of getting that book to market of $2.53, it’s not unusual for that to then win him contracts in the tens of thousands of dollars if you get that book into the right hands. Just like yesterday, I’m reminded of just how powerful a book is and in fact, the whole wiping out was breaking thorough a thin kind of limiting beliefs that stop many of us from putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard as is it these days.

By the way listeners, I’m talking to Dale Beaumont. He is the founder of BusinessBlueprint.com which I want to talk to him about now because that’s kind of way you’ve taken it. It’s where you are now. He started it in 2010 and our listeners are going to be really interested in this. You have created 400 step by step training videos. You’re prolific and you’ve got 100+ one-page process maps that are just really helping any business owners get it right.

Dale

Yeah! It’s a fantastic progress. How it sorts of started was because I have done all these books and created some good income but I’ve done it really very cleverly with using systems and automation tools and having a good database and email marketing, and all of these, sort of what I call now as ‘smart tools’ and people keep asking me questions, “Dale, how are you doing this and how are you doing that?” and so, I just used to invite people around to my office and I’d run these little workshops where I teach people the stuff that I was doing and they was blown away and amazed and said, “Oh, can you teach me more? Can you teach me more?” so eventually, I decided to put on a few free events which went really, really well. People just love them and I was just teaching as much as I possibly could about everything that took me years to figure out through trial and error. I wanted other people to just know what to do from the very, very beginning so they didn’t have to go through that same process that I did. People then said, “What else can we do? How can we work with you?” so I then in 2010 created a program called ‘Business Blueprint’ and it starts with–

Tim

Because you’ve done it, you have a number of programs, is there a point where you just draw a line on the sand and then you say, “Okay, it’s now clear what my next move is.” And so for example, in a way you put to rest Secrets Exposed and it’s clear now that this thing needs something like a Business Blueprint is what I have to do. Is it a really concerted decision? –that’s not the right word, like a definite decision or it just kind of happens?

Dale

Yeah, it’s definitely a decision but I make it like a little decision and look for validation and then make a bigger decision and look for validation and then if I practice the principles from the Lean Startups also known as creating your minimum viable product, just to make sure that people actually want it. There’s a saying that I love and that is, “If you sell people what they need, you’ll almost always fail. If you find out what people want and give it to them, you’ll almost always exceed.” And so, that’s really what I do is find out what people wants, so I put something out there and people respond like, “This is kind of interesting,” and then do it again and again and just keep getting bigger and bigger. I was just letting this direction of Business Blueprint. So many people wanted to access my knowledge and also get access to training videos that I had produced now and all of the nuts and bolts and the sort of nitty-gritty stuff of business, how to upload to YouTube or how to use Google Analytics or how to do split testing on your website, so these are things that I had to learn for my own business since I created step by step training videos at the beginning for my own staff, around how to do all those key processes within the business but then so many other people saw what I was doing and love them and said, “Can we have those training videos for our staff and how can we get access to what you have built?” and so that’s what led me to creating Business Blueprint and it’s something that I totally love. It’s the business that I would be doing if I did have $50 Million because I love business, I love education, I love giving back and helping others so I’m really passionate.

Tim

Obviously, one thing you didn’t mention about Business Blueprint or in any detail is that you did bring your tribe together. In fact, you showed me some wonderful photos the other day of an event you had on a large cruise ship but off and out of Sydney and went out for 3 days and sailed around and came back. Now, knowing you like I do, Business Blueprint in the form of 400 how-to videos and 100+ sheets of step by step processes, there’s no real emotion there and you seem to me is someone who likes to see people be their best. Am I right?

Dale

Yeah. Well, I really believe in bringing the best of life with also the online together, online-offline so, we have 4 live events. We have got clients now from right across Australia, also New Zealand and we have a few clients from Singapore as well, and we get together face to face in a live event 4 times a year. We do that every 90 days.

Tim

Is that your true love of Business Blueprint?

Dale

It is because something really special happens when you’re in a room of like-minded people. There’s some, in a way they have believe in all of the woo-woo stuff, you know?

Tim

Yeah, yeah.

Dale

Definitely rooms have an energy and when you’re around highly motivated people that are just like buzzing, something changes inside you when you just start seeing bigger than what you may be seeing right now. We have different parts of the events where people come up and share their success story. There was a guy, just at our last event, came up and he talked about how he just won a $200,000 contract for his business and everyone gave him a big round of applause and then he explained how he actually did it, and people are writing down notes, “Oh, I can do that in my business. This is fantastic.”

Tim

Isn’t it funny like that energy, that dynamic that gets created? You’ve apologized almost a couple of times for the woo-woo and I’ve done it on the show numerous times, like, sorry to get a bit woo-woo on you but I think we got a little bit more credence to that woo-woo, and what do we mean by woo-woo?

Dale

Yeah, sure.

Tim

It’s just that kind of shift in energy, that stuff that happens when you lean in and really commit to doing something. As talking yesterday on this webinar that if you’re, using content marketing as an example, it doesn’t give you a quick hit. If you create content today, you are not getting inquiry tomorrow but over time, if you really do lean in to it, not only you’re going to inquiry but other things going to happen to your business. New partners will approach you, the media will approach you, you’ll get speaking opportunities and that’s the woo-woo, and you’ve just kind of got to believe in that, don’t you?

Dale

Yeah. People have all the information in the world, and they end up doing nothing. Most of these people end up professors at university and never build any business for themselves. They have all the knowledge but they’re just not motivated to do it. On the other side–

Tim

Hello to all you professors.

Dale

If you’re out there.

Tim

Yeah.

Dale

Probably not even listening to this because you’re already full of brain knowledge and you don’t need to learn anything else. Anyway, on the other hand, if you have all the motivation but no information about how to do stuff, that’s not helpful either but you do need both. Mindset is very important. Having the right motivation, being inspired to actually do something is really where it’s at and there’s a lot of…there’s a guy called Mat Church that came along and spoke at one of our events, and he talks about, “there’s all different things we have to measure in business – return on cash, cash fund analysis and all these stuff, all these numbers.” He said the most important thing that you should be measuring in your business if you’re a small business owner is the sparkle in your eyes. Do your eyes sparkle when you talk to someone? Because people are blind to what you’re selling, they’re buying you and if you are dull, if you are just like your knuckles are dragging on the ground every time you go to work, you’re not going to inspire anyone and you’re not going to make any sales. No one wants to be around you, so the most important thing is, are you motivated? Are you inspired? Do people feel better when they’re in your space? If the answer is yes to that question, business is going to grow. If it’s not, then your business is going to go backwards.

Tim

I love that. I love the sparkle in the eye criteria. We’ll add that to the scoreboard. If you could create some little machine, Dale that does that, give you a sparkle rating that will be really good.

One thing you’ve been very good at and to all service providers listening right now, listen up in particular because you have been very good at taking the intangible and making it tangible and we call that in the trade ‘productizing.’ And I don’t think enough service providers do that. You’ve done it by books, courses, events and I think that it’s this whole concept I’ve heard you say before, one of the things you’re all about is how you can replace yourself. You’re constantly asking yourself how can you replace yourself and clearly, turning your knowledge, because I guess the opposite of what you’re doing now would be you just doing one on one the whole time.

Dale

Yeah. If you put me in the box of business coaches and I do help other business owners but most coaches would work with maybe 8 to maximum 12 clients at any one time. Right now, I’m working with 350 clients and I’m still able to provide a massive value and impact to those people because I’ve built a leveraged coaching model, because I’ve done a lot of the hardworking taking my knowledge and putting it into tools. Some of those online step by step training videos, I’ve got 400 of those now. Also, I got over hundred one-page processes maps and flowcharts. We’ve got book summaries that we have. We got audio books summaries that people can access to as well. I’ve got about 75 other frequently asked question videos. All the questions that people ask me, I pull out a camera, I answer it. I put it up on the website and people can search for it and they can find answers to those questions, or if they email us, we just say, “Hey, we‘ve got a video on that. Here’s the link, check it out.”

So I’m constantly very obsessive about asking myself questions, “Will I ever have to answer this question again? Will I ever have to teach someone else this?” and if the answer is yes, I spend the next extra half an hour or whatever it takes to make sure that I capture that so that 50 other people could benefit from that information and I don’t have to take that time and explain it one on one.

Tim

It’s funny that just before we came on air, I was marking around with Google Hangouts. In fact, one of my 4 members, Tom, very kindly put a form in a video in the forum using Google Hangouts explaining how do you use Google Hangouts to answer frequently asked questions, and wow! This is one of the limiting beliefs I talk about with small business owners is that I think everything in this new world of marketing, everything is hard, it’s technical. Honestly, creating that video on Google Hangouts was so easy and you literally use 3 or 4 buttons, completing 2 fields then recording it. Once you hit stop, it uploads to Google and you have got a video on YouTube because it’s connected and I mean this is powerful. To your point of if you are being asked to question over and over again, you did these videos in Business Blueprint that will explain you how to do it and there’s also the option opportunity to just go and use something like Google Hangouts, a free tool that has a lot of traffic attached to it.

Hey Dale, we’ve gone so over time and I just can’t believe it because this has been a very, very marketing gold just dripping from the headquarters of Small Business Big Marketing, really. I want to finish by asking you, does anything scare you?

Dale

Yeah.

Tim

You seem like a pretty tough guy.

Dale

Yeah. I think because I’ve done lots of different courses, I think I’m pretty definitely got it, you know? I have a healthy amount of confidence but not in a way that I see myself being above anybody else but I’ll back myself, I’m confident in my own abilities. I suppose what scares me is not really achieving my full potential because I believe that I’ve been given this mind and this body and this voice and this brain for a reason, and I want to just be able to know that I did the best that I possibly could know with it. So for me, it’s not so much about…in competition, as a gymnast, it’s about competing against other athletes and becoming number 1 but for me now, I just want to compete against myself and do the best that I possibly can.

Tim

Do you have moments where you actually go, “Oh geez, I don’t know whether I’m going to get there where I want to be.” Is there a little kind of butterfly moments?

Dale

For me, I’m always like, “I’ll figure it out.” I talk whenever I need talk to, I read whatever I have to read, I just know that I’ll get there, not in a way of like the secret I’ll just attract it into my life and all of those just happen, that’s like no, I’ll get out there and I’ll make it happen.

Tim

Right, that’s woo-woo. What’s wrong with the secret?

Dale

You’ve got to follow through and you got to put in the hard yards and you’ve got to actually make it happen and it’s not going to you know, just thinking about going to the gym doesn’t make you fit. You got to show up, you got to pick up the weights, you got to do some reps.

Tim

You’re going to show up. Right there, sure do.

Dale

But the other thing that I do that I’m always conscious of is it’s about success and achievement but within the limitations of. That if you just obsess about that area of how I can grow my business and achieve all of my personal financial goals, that’s acting like I’m an island and I’m not – I have a wife. I have kids. I’ve got responsibilities at the office and extended family, people that I love and I care about, so it’s how can I achieve my personal goals but within the limits of making sure that I’m still there for everybody else as well. I suppose in a way, I have relaxed off on some of my other goals like I know that with great success does have a lot of challenges. If you look at the divorce rate of billionaires and the number of dysfunctional relationships that they have and they don’t talk to their kids anymore, so you got to be careful to say that yeah, it’s one thing to look at someone and go, “Wow, they got a lot of money and they are super successful,” but if you look at some of their other areas of their lives, such as their health, relationships, family, it’s terrible. It’s not about having it all, it’s about having what really matters and deciding what’s important to you and make sure that you do everything you possibly can in balance as well so you’re not letting any balls drop.

Tim

Do you ever get to giggle?

Dale

Yeah.

Tim

What makes you giggle? I love the giggles. I love the release of endorphins that it gives me. What makes you giggle?

Dale

What makes me giggle?

Tim

Because not everyone giggles, right? I mean, we laugh but the giggling is laughing uncontrollably.

Dale

Yes.

Tim

Tears running out the eyes.

Dale

Yeah.

Dale

Woo-woo. We’re just in this charity bike ride which is great last week in Thailand and we had 29 people who are all entrepreneurs and business owners and we–

Tim

Middle age men in lacquer?

Dale

Yeah and some women as well. Over half were ladies who are just great. We had so much fun together. We got like-minded people together and are able to make a few jokes and poke fun at people and everyone understand that we’re just having a laugh. It was great. We laughed constantly and we had just an absolute blast.

Tim

Oh you got to do it.

Dale

I love hanging out with my kids as well. They say the funniest things

Tim

Yep.

Dale

That also makes me laugh big time.

Tim

Good on you, mate. Well Dale, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Thanks for taking us behind the scenes of your journey at the ripe old age of what are you? 33.

Dale

32 at the moment. That’s wrong.

Tim

Sorry, mate. I thought you were older.

Dale

We’re getting there.

Tim

Love it. Dale Beaumont, BusinessBlueprint.com is where you’ll find him and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this conversation and I look forward to having you back on this year when you started your next empire. Thanks, Dale.

Dale

Great. Thanks, Tim.