Creating Businesses By Finding Injustice in the World

Co-founder at RealDose Nutrition – Michael Lovitch

Join one of my mentors as we go through why and how he created multiple companies. It wasn’t from just a need it the market – it was about much more than that. Learn how he grew it to millions quickly!

Resources Mentioned in the Podcast:

• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Revised Edition by Robert B. Cialdini

Go to RealDoseNutrition.com and HypnosisNetwork.com for more info!

Thanks so much for listening!

Transcript:
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Announcer: Welcome to the Eventual Millionaire podcast - with your host, Jaime Tardy. Real talk and real advice from real millionaires, with a sharp focus on you - the Eventual Millionaire.

Jaime: Welcome to Eventual Millionaire. I'm Jaime Tardy and I'm super excited to have a good friend of mine, Mike Lovitch, on the show. Mike is a serial entrepreneur, he has a bunch of companies, and one of them is called RealDose Nutrition and another one is the Hypnosis Network. I'm super excited to have him on the show today. Thanks so much for coming on, Michael.

Mike: Thanks for having me. It's going to be fun.

Jaime: It's always fun interviewing a friend because we're going to go off on tangents. I have a couple of questions on how you actually got started - what was the very first business that you had?

Mike: The first one was the Hypnosis Network which sounds esoteric but it's a publishing company for psychologists who happen to do hypnosis. I was 34 and my wife had just told me she was pregnant and I had a sales job where I was travelling all around selling software and I was like "Well, I need to do something from home because this sucks," and I knew a lot about hypnosis because that's what I studied in grad school, more as a science, as a communication phenomenon, not as a new age, past life weird thing. I saw online that all of these people at the time were selling this crazy shit that hypnosis couldn't do with crazy promises that hypnosis could never accomplish and the people who were selling it got some sort of certification, because anybody and their dog could get a certification in hypnosis but it's not the hypnosis used by psychologists. I got angry - I'm kind of stuffy, I guess, because I grew up in an academic family so I actually respect people who do academics and study and validate research and things like that.

Jaime: How did you know that there as a market? You knew that the stuff that was out there was kind of scammy.

Mike: I knew I hated it. I was in sales and I got promoted to managing other people and some companies would say "You need to go to a Tony Robbins seminar with your group," and I went and I was like "Fuck this, this is awful. This guy doesn't know anything."

Jaime: Really?

Mike: He didn't know his stuff.

Jaime: Why do you say that? I want to talk about that for a second.

Mike: He's a hack. He's a motivational guy, he's better now but he had just studied something called NLP and acted like it was true but anybody who studies NLP knows that it's just kind of half true but he acted like it was true and it's not. NLP is useful and has some cool shit - I studied it but I didn't put a certification after my name and say that I knew anything, I studied it to learn some stuff. If you look at the academic research, some of it's right, some of it's not. They put a lot of words on things that already had names, which I hate. I hate it when people just open up any textbook and put a new name it on and act like they have a new thing.

Jaime: That's good marketing, right?

Mike: I don't like that, not when it comes to people's heads. I'm really sensitive to people with psychological advice who don't have a background in it. It's pretty weird. So anyway that pissed me. Anger kind of runs me. People say that's unhealthy but I'm run by things I don't like. I want good things, like I can say I want to start a hypnosis publishing company, but if it wasn't for all of this bad stuff I probably wouldn't have done it.

Jaime: I know that about you, it's interesting, you get super passionate about something and you're like "I'm going to change the world with that specific thing and make it better."

Mike: I'm more motivated by stopping the bad thing but you can't just stop a bad thing and not have a replacement. So I'm way more passionate about saying "Listen, you can do this without being a liar and you can do it right," but it's more about stopping that and giving smart people an alternative to something and that's why I keep starting things. Making it is great and showing that it works and having great stuff but I'm not the guy who's going to last and keep running it.

Jaime: You're like "This one I'm more passionate about now."

Mike: I would either have done this or been a cop. You need people who are going to stop bad stuff. Some people are like "I want to change the world. My mission is to impact whatever," and some people are like "I've got to get the bad guy," That's my motivation but I also want to create some good stuff for people but I will say that stopping the bad is more interesting to me.

Jaime: Were you always like that? Before you started your business, when you were in sales, when you look back, were you always like that?

Mike: Yeah, I only worked for companies with software that I believed it. I was in the security business, not that it matters. The company that I worked for, we were encrypting government databases and all that kind of stuff, and there's a lot of crap. So, yeah, I usually worked for small companies that were better than the people who were in the market. I was kind of like "Yeah, these guys have a big brand name but they're not doing anything," so it was fun to work for a small company and help them out. It's not fun to help out big companies, it's fun to help out small people. You know, the people you know are great.

Jaime: Sticking it to the man, doing it right.

Mike: The people who are doing awesome stuff but they don't have a market, they're fun to help. The people who really know their shit are usually bad at self-promotion.

Jaime: Yeah, humble is a good thing unless you're trying to do marketing.

Mike: For the Hypnosis Network I found therapists who were real psychologists so I went to the only two real organizations and I'm like "Who's training all the other psychologists on hypnosis for X and who's the best?" and they were using academics and private practice so that's what I wanted. These people don't know how to promote themselves - they're known because they're great, not because of self-promotion. So all of these self-promotional certification whoever people who are out there, winning the game, the real people out there, nobody's heard of them, so my job is to get those people out there and that's fun.

Jaime: That's one of the reasons I do Eventual Millionaire. It's not about the people who write the books, necessarily - it's about the people who are in it right now and I want to know what's working for them, not this guy who's like "Hey, look at me, I did this thing," which I think is hugely important. But the interesting thing with yours is that you started doing this and you wanted to market and help people but you weren't a marketer beforehand so how did you learn the marketing in order to help these people with Hypnosis Network?

Mike: I was in sales and marketing is just sales. Like Joe Sugar was my idol - marketing is just sales in print. That's all it is. If you look at the corporate branders, a lot of their marketing isn't that great for direct response because they don't know how to sell, they're kind of missing the sales part of marketing, and then there are a lot of marketing books where my masters was in persuasion.

Jaime: That helps!

Mike: So I studied it and that's where I started studying hypnosis as a communication. We're all under hypnosis - it's communication and how we change people's minds.

Jaime: Which is extremely interesting. Give me some tips or advice, whatever you've got. I know you hate these questions but in terms of trying to persuade people. It's basic sales 101 but most people don't have this stuff and don't understand that so how can we get better?

Mike: The basics is, of course, Cialdini's "The Persuasion" book. I don't want to recite some of his book but that's the Cliff notes. Then it's just how you execute it. I would say that I think the social proof is more important than anything - that's in his book - and also whether they like you, it doesn't mean like you as a friend like you, but whether they trust you and whether you can talk to them like a human being or not. A lot of people underestimate people when they market to them. I think that people like to think that they're smart. My dad always said "People are a lot smarter than you think, just not in every area," so he said to be nice to everybody and smile, like I don't know how to fix a car - they might not know math as well as I do but they know this stuff, so everybody's smart in their own way. So just treating people with respect and if you talk smart with people you'll be surprised. So "Persuasion" is about being authentic and truthful and don't use any tricks, it has to be real, and that has worked for me. So I don't do a lot of weird, tricky persuasion things. I think tricking people for money is not a good pastime.

Jaime: I appreciate that. I hope everybody appreciates that.

Mike: A lot of people do that and that's all they talk about so I hesitate to talk about tricks. There are things you can do but I would not do them and you don't need to.

Jaime: Well I think that's the line, I think that's what's really interesting - learning this stuff, better marketing tactics and techniques, and getting better, because your conversion stuff is really interesting too - you don't want to sell something to somebody that they don't need or don't want, that's horrible, who wants to do that? But we want to get better at selling, so where's the line?

Mike: How transformational do we get? How much do we push people? If you want to sell something that's the next evolution for them then you first need to transform them into wanting to be bigger, wanting to be richer, wanting to be better looking, wanting to be healthier, so that is the question. So I'll do some of that to push somebody to want to be somebody different. More and more people are trying to get a little bit better at something for its own sake and that's really cool.it wasn't like this four years ago.

Jaime: Really?

Mike: From like 2004 to 2008 the internet marketing community was all about money. I think the first people who got into IM were the carnies. Maybe I'm a carnie, I don't know, but a lot of guys who owned car lots, those were the original group that came in so that's what it was like - and I would take some techniques from them and I had some drinking buddies in bars but I would never do what they did but what they did was pretty interesting from a theoretical point of view. So it was really, really bad and I would say that 2014 is a different world, not meaning that there aren't scammers anymore but there are a lot fewer of them, there's this whole consciousness thing. There will always be scammers but it used to be that everything was a scam and now I wouldn't? say that, there are a lot more good people out there. Like your generation, you're what I call the new wave, are a lot better humans than the people I hang out with.

Jaime: Yes! I'm a better human. That's what I've been working on this whole time.

Mike: You guys are better folk.

Jaime: That's actually really cool. I just interviewed  a guy named Matt Wilson who owns Under 30 CEO, I don't know if you know him or not, he's a really cool guy, he's younger than me, so maybe I'm included in his generation, but he was talking about how they value authenticity so much that we get turned off in seconds by somebody who tries to sell to us, which I think is a huge evolution of growth so we don't get screwed over by people who are trying to hurt us.

Mike: There's better people but then you still have the people who sell to 80 year olds. There are good people, like you have Brian Kurtz who owns Boardroom.

Jaime: We just interviewed him; I love him.

Mike: He's a great friend. We've done a lot of partnerships together.

Jaime: Oh, nice.

Mike: He does it right but it's a very different way he communicates with his crowd. My crowd is like 45-60 so it's a very different way but these people are on Facebook, are doing social media, kind of. I'm 44 so I include myself in that so I use it and my crowd is different and you guys are a whole different world, I'm not even going to try to mess with you guys, I don't know what you guys think.

Jaime: Wait until we get older!

Mike: People always say this is the biggest sin in sales but I disagree - I think you should market to yourself. I think you should be passionate about what you're selling. I always sell something I want, so I guess I'm not a pure marketer, I don't consider myself a businessman at all, business is just what I have to do to do things, I don't really like it but I do it because it's better than other things. Do you know what I'm saying?

Jaime: I do. I've heard you say this before and I think it's really interesting. Let's dive into that, because a lot of the people who are listening right now want to be entrepreneurs. Some of the people in my audience are stuck in day jobs and want to quit so being a business owner and an entrepreneur is their thing and you're like "I can be a successful business owner and not really care about business whatsoever."

Mike: Everybody has their own process. I didn't go to business school. In college I was like "What's wrong with you? How could you be 18 and not taking philosophy?" So I always looked at people in business school as weird but, I'm opening my mind, I guess people really are into it at a young age.

Jaime: I was a philosophy minor and knew nothing about business so, yeah, I know what you mean.

Mike: How in the world can you be doing that? You should be taking biology or some interesting thing. Business is something I couldn't have learned in school anyway. I just don't look at myself that way. I know some people in my peer group who are entrepreneurs and they're way better at business than I'll ever be because they're diligent and they care. I do it because I have to do it and I try to partner with people to do that stuff. I've always had a partner because if I was by myself it would not work very well.

Jaime: Did you know that about yourself before you got into business?

Mike: Yes, because I was in the corporate world for a little bit. I got promoted to manager and I hated it. I just wanted to sell my stuff. Let me go and do what I want to do; I don't want to manage people. I knew I wasn't going to be a great manager. That's the Peter Principle - rise to the level of your incompetence. Companies make big mistakes when they take a sales guy and make him a manager, unless they're a natural leader. It doesn't mean they can manage people.

Jaime: What sucks is that it seems like that's the only path there is - if you want to do this, move up to the next level. But that doesn't work if it's not your strength at all.

Mike: Keep them happy. People work hard when they're happy. I'm more of a sales guy that way - I want to be by myself, I don't like writing structures for people and I don't like thinking for other people and that's what it takes.

Jaime: So did you get a partner for Hypnosis Network right away?

Mike: Oh, yeah.

Jaime: Tell me about that.

Mike: Cam is a great guy. He set up all of our finances, he's super honest, he's creative that way, he did all of our inventory. I found a designer but he made sure the package happened, all of that stuff. in 2004 there wasn't anything doing what I wanted to do in marketing so we built our own software program, our own affiliate software, our own tracking software, our own testing software, and all I had to do was tell Cam what I wanted. I would be like "Here's what I want to do and here's why. Here's what we're doing," and then he would work with the developer we had in-house and it would happen.

Jaime: He's an implementer. Nice.

Mike: It would have killed me if it was one-on-one because I would have been "I want it done!" and bugged him. I need somebody to be in between me and the people sometimes because I'm impatient. I think we all are but I'm exceptionally impatient.

Jaime: You? No!

Mike: So I need a partner to buffer between me and the people.

Jaime: How do you find a good partner, though? I've interviewed people who have had business divorces and it's not pretty.

Mike: I've been lucky not to have anything terrible happen but I've had personality conflicts and stuff like that. I don't know how you do it. I've been lucky in the sense that not of our partners have done anything nefarious so I don't know how you deal with that, I'm not the expert. After a while that happens so as long as they don't screw you over. It just happened to me, I didn't have a process to go out and get a partner.

Jaime: My business coach was like "You need a partner, Jaime," and you even told me. You gave me advice.

Mike: I think you should get drunk with your partner at least four times before you partner with them.

Jaime: Alright, I'll write that down! Step one.

Mike: Because you really can't have conversations with people until you've broken down some stuff and there are going to be tough conversations. Really tough ones. So you've got to be comfortable to say "Let's go and get smashed together and work this stuff out." You've also got to find out if they're  a mean drunk.

Jaime: I love your unconventional means.

Mike: I'm not a partner expert.

Jaime: I have to get them drunk ahead of time, okay.

Mike: You need to have this really deep relationship. If you haven't noticed anything bad about the person, something's probably wrong.

Jaime: There's nothing bad about me, come on! I think that's the interesting piece, though. I'm constantly putting my feelers out for partners and stuff like that but I am so "But it's mine! I don't think this is a good idea." So I'll just get a bunch of people drunk.

Mike: You might have a personality where you get a minority partner. You don't need to have it 50/50.

Jaime: That's the advice you gave. I really appreciate you saying it on here too. It doesn't have to be "I built my company. Here - you can have half of it," because that seems a little crazy.

Mike: No, you don't have to be full partners. You're used to being on your own.

Jaime: Keep them down there - I'm on top! So how did you go from Hypnosis Network to RealDose Nutrition? How did that transition happen?

Mike: People were surprised that that worked and then our bestselling product was this weight loss product by Dr Temes, it was amazing, and all it was was a diet adherence program - no fat in your diet with hypnotic powers. It just made it more likely that you would follow a plan that you had decided on or were given so we made it for that purpose so that it was diet agnostic. It wasn't "Here's what you do," session two was all about picking a plan to follow and then it was about adhering to it. So what happened was this guy named Joe Mercola - he was a big deal at the time - started promoting it and then all of these doctors and people like Mark Hyman - he's a New York Times bestseller - promoted it and then the fitness crowd got into it. All of those people who sold diets and told people to do things.

Jaime: You were the package that could go around every diet.

Mike: We realized that they would sell that on the backend, the plans, and then we'd get commissions from them. That was our breakthrough hit and then these doctors started hiring me. Anyway, everybody does it now but nobody at the time, in 2005, was doing this like I was and I knew the channel guys so I knew how to work the channels. It's just basic channel sales skills but nobody knew that.

Jaime: Because you had a very specific background.

Mike: It's channel sales and software, it's the same. Find the customer, find something of value to give to the customer and you can give them a cut. It's that simple.

Jaime: People don't think of this stuff, though. It's super simple but it's hard to see.

Mike: So people hired me and I don't know what happened. People started listening to me for some weird reason. I'm a supplement junkie - my mom has had me on supplements since I was a little kid. She's a Ph.D. physiologist and she would sneak wheat germ onto my spaghetti - she's one of those people, "Take this, take that," so I was already indoctrinated and then when I saw, I'm not going to mention any names, but when they were formulating they weren't doing it in a way that I liked.

Jaime: We understand that that's your nervous tick. "That's something that I don't like!"

Mike: There are all of these ingredients out there that you hear about, like "This does this and this does this," but what they don't tell you is that getting it from this place, from this piece of soil in this country, extracted in this way in this ratio in these conditions at this dose, that's what got the result. So then they go out there and a lot of big sites you see will say "Look, we have whatever," it could be anything, "and according to the research it does this and this. It makes you whatever." What they don't tell you is that they're not getting the stuff that was studied. You can know anything about gardening or horticulture and know that getting it from this soil is different from getting it from this soil and there are different strains and extracting with alcohol is different to extracting with ethanol - it's just basic stuff. Then, if the dose is 300mg per day how are you going to guarantee what 100mg does? So, anyway, that angered me a little bit, the more I was doing it, so I just thought that nobody would do it right so I was like "Well, I'll do it."

Jaime: "I have to." Of course.

Mike: I had a partner with another supplement company that wasn't doing it the way I wanted and he always wanted to partner with me on a separate company and I said I would do it but I would do it this way and then Dr Steve Sisskind, who's my third partner - we were looking for doctors to help out and he came on and said "I'd like to buy into the company because no one else is doing this, this is amazing." - he bought into it, we started it and it took off. It wasn't tricky marketing, it was just that nobody had ever done anything proven before. Now it's cool because there are two or three people out there doing what we do with different names so there is competition in a way but I'm glad that we're not the only ones anymore. It's cool. It's kind of eaten into some of our money but it's still cool.

Jaime: They're changing more people's lives.

Mike: I'd rather that than lower standards. Now it's not just us.

Jaime: Because we're still all after the bad guys.

Mike: Right. Then I met some other people who I know are doing it right, which is cool, but they just weren't marketing it well. So I ended up meeting a lot of good guys.

Jaime: And they can see how well you're doing, marketing it the right way.

Mike: You can see the good guys so it's kind of cool. So we're not the only people doing it with science. Other people are doing it and some people were doing it before us, they just weren't talking about it well and we just knew how to market, so it's a good thing. That was also started out of anger, like "Come on, this is crazy that people are doing this!" And then that Amazon thing that happened after.

Jaime: I don't even know what that is. I said I was going to ask - what is that thing that you're drinking out of?

Mike: This is the secret to my success. It's an $8 carafe from Target.

Jaime: It's just huge so you can drink more'

Mike: I put my water and branch chain amino acids and some lemon into it and some other stuff and it just sits here all day to keep my dopamine going so that I'm motivated.

Jaime: It's just this huge. Okay, good to know. I shouldn't show you my coffee. I do have water. I have these glasses and whenever I drink out of them everybody thinks I'm drinking out of a flower vase.

Mike: It does look like a vase.

Jaime: But yours is better. I'll check it out at Target.

Mike: Rubber made.

Jaime: Rubber made. Good to know. That's everyone's action item for the day!

Mike: I'll get out all my clothes too.

Jaime: So what year was RealDose Nutrition started?

Mike: Three years ago, almost to the day.

Jaime: Really?

Mike: We had the concept in June of 2011 and then in August we had our first affiliates.

Jaime: That's really quick, from June to August.

Mike: We were doing over $1 million per month before the first year was over. Not the calendar year.

Jaime: Would you say that was because you were the new guys doing it differently or was your marketing just amazing?

Mike: Mike Geary did his first animated doodle VSL ever for marketing purposes and then, of course, it was a race to see who would be the first to do one for something else. We were one of the couple of first people to come out with a 30 minute doodle art edutainment video for a supplement. It would have been hard to sell our product without being able to explain it. We were able to explain how we did it. These things were expensive because they were expensive to make but we could explain why they were so expensive and why they needed it. Now they're everywhere. You have to do new things now but that was very revolutionary at the time. In 2005 or whatever you could have something that would last a year but those days are over.

Jaime: Tell me about that. I think what's interesting is that you have to be creative, like you are, knowing that this has to go in this market and it needs to be talked about in this way, but you still need eyeballs. So you had this amazing video - how did you get eyeballs to look at it and did it just take off on its own?

Mike: We had a little luck because I knew everybody in weight loss and I had a reputation. A lot of people don't like me but they do know I won't lie. A lot of people run away from me in a room sometimes but they know I'll tell it how it is so we had a lot of trust there and we had a lot of people willing to test it and it worked off the bat with affiliates and then we bankrolled it and we had enough play money to make it work and they kept making it better and better. Things have changed but back then Google was big and Facebook was coming on, Yahoo! and Bing and all of that, and we were buying banners and e-mail lists and that?s how we started these five channels.

Jaime: Interesting. So what do you do now? You said a lot has changed.

Mike: We still buy e-mail lists and we still buy banners but if you look at the ratio it's moved to Facebook, number one, then native, then Google.

Jaime: Really? Why?

Mike: Google lost their standard. We were great because we were the only weight loss people Google were allowed to advertise because we were sure of our science so all of the weirdoes were gone and we had it to ourselves. Facebook came along as competition and Google allows all kinds of crap now so it was harder for us. In 2008 Google cleaned house but then they un-cleaned house because all of those scammy green tea fake review sites are everywhere now. There are guys doing this crazy illegal stuff and Google doesn't seem to care. So there's less Google search now and it's moved to social media. Facebook is harder now but we like it the harder it is.

Jaime: Because it keeps out the scammy crappy people.

Mike: I like rules. I like FDA rules, I like bans, because as long as you do it right you don't have to worry about that.

Jaime: Nice. Where do you see things going, then? So Facebook is hot right now and everybody is super excited but do you know what might be coming up?

Mike: From the media buying perspective?

Jaime: Give it all to me, Mike! Whatever you've got.

Mike: In the current state of affairs native is doing well but there's no way that's going to last because it's so full of crap. Native means if you're on one of these news sites like CNN and it says 'Around the web." That's native. Outrank does that for the news sites and they actually have standards and you have Tabula everywhere but that's how a lot of these publishers are advertising and you can do very well. Tabula is trying their hardest to get better at standards. It's working really well now.

Jaime: I'll be on my phone and I'm like "I'm on the web," and you're like "Well that's scam, scam, scam," so I don't click on any of them.

Mike: But people do. Edutainment works - an article or a video, there are a million ways, however you want to do it, there are a million little things you can do. Where it's going is going to be interesting and you never know until you see it pop. I really think it's all going in a good way towards better and better content and the way we're doing it will probably go away but that's fine because our customer base is going to be more referral and share based and people are smarter now, they're going to go to multiple sources. It's also community based so you have to have something that really works. The problem online is with all of these fake review sites that can hurt everybody. We have a bunch of people who create sites to try to sell one diet pill and we'll be on there and they'll give us 3.5 stars. They may not get it right but they're hard to fight. So I don't know where it's going to go. You never really know until it happens. I do know it's going more towards content amplification. The thing Is, that's what I was thinking about today, it used to be not what you do but the way you do it. Now there are like 20 million ways to be successful. There's no one way - you can do the podcast, the app thing, the Abel James thing, and sell your content, you can do what we do and buy media. Media buying is going to predict to buy now so it's a more intelligent platform and you have to be really quick. All media buying is whether you survive while you lose money until you figure out what works.

Jaime: Tell me more about that because a lot of people don't understand media buying in general.

Mike: A lot of people buy media that doesn't work and then go "It doesn't work!" Nine out of ten things we try don't work. You've just got to lose less money on those nine than the money you make on the tenth.

Jaime: What's your system for testing? Because I know you?re hardcore on this stuff.

Mike: I test like crazy. We always try new channels whenever they come up. We have a guy who runs all of that and he has to answer to us so I just look at the PNL and if we lost money that day I just go "What happened?" and he explains. You always have to be creating the thing that gets you there - a banner or whatever - and be testing those. There's landing page testing, we use split testing all the time - you do get a sense of it and it's always different for different industries in different channels. How long do you give it? How long do you keep testing those banners?

Jaime: That's the thing, especially people who are new to this don't know that, or they try Facebook ads and they drop $500 and make no money so they suck.

Mike: It's simple arithmetic. All the platforms reward you for high click through rates so then your click is lower and you can back out. There are all of these variables so you just wait for a winner. But then you've got to know, like on Facebook something will be hot for a week and then it goes away, whereas on Tabula it can last for months and Google can last forever. So different things have different lifespans and what works on Tabula might not work on Facebook so you have all of these things and it can be a mess so you've got to hire someone who's organized to watch it for you.

Jaime: So that's my question. I've never really done paid traffic at all and I'm looking at all of this stuff and talking t you a lot and I don't know the best ways to do this because it seems crazy. If someone was just getting into this do you suggest they g That's the thing, especially people who are new to this don't know that, or they try Facebook ads and they drop $500 and make no money so they suck.

Mike: It's simple arithmetic. All the platforms reward you for high click through rates so then your click is lower and you can back out. There are all of these variables so you just wait for a winner. But then you've got to know, like on Facebook something will be hot for a week and then it goes away, whereas on Tabula it can last for months and Google can last forever. So different things have different lifespans and what works on Tabula might not work on Facebook so you have all of these things and it can be a mess so you've got to hire someone who's organized to watch it for you.

Jaime: So that's my question. I've never really done paid traffic at all and I'm looking at all of this stuff and talking t you a lot and I don't know the best ways to do this because it seems crazy. If someone was just getting into this do you suggest they go and find a Facebook guy that knows this stuff really well and just do it or should they figure it out on their own?

Mike: What we've always done and what I've always done is I try to find the best. There are a lot of good Austin guys. Julian, over there, is in Austin.

Jaime: Julian? Okay, you have to introduce me to some guy named Julian here in Austin.

Mike: He's the best re-targeter I know. Re-targeting is a science. People think you just follow someone, that's not how it works - you have to follow them intelligently. So we paid him a pretty fat retainer for just two months for weekly calls. In two months you can learn everything and then you're gone. Sometimes you bring them down for a day and there are weekly calls. That's usually a good way to kick off.

Jaime: So it's useful for you or your person to know this stuff. It's not like you totally abdicate and you're like "You do this stuff and I don't touch it."

Mike: No, you've got to talk to your team. I sit in the room and watch and act like I understand.

Jaime: So you're just like "Okay, cool, awesome."

Mike: I'm going to look at all of that. I did that when I was young.

Jaime: But should people do that? Someone who's just getting into it - should they really dive deep into how that stuff works?

Mike: Yeah, otherwise no one will work for you, but as quickly as possible you want to hire someone else. They're different skillsets - the entrepreneur skillset is not necessarily a media buying skillset. You want someone who's really good at math, who never gets tired, likes to work, does not like to socialize - you do not want socializers because these people just look at numbers, this is not the same personality.

Jaime: That's awesome. I just met Zach Collins who's here in Austin, he works for Facebook, I don't know if you know him, and he's like "I'm a numbers guy." I'm like "Yes, you are. Crazy numbers guy."

Mike: So you've got to understand it theoretically. It is hard at the beginning, I understand, but just know that you're going to burn out if you keep doing it.

Jaime: But if you can learn enough to have it start to work a little bit for you. I think people give up because they try and there's both the learning curve that they have to learn but also the testing part and they don't know what's going to work so their learning curve is more than most people.

Mike: And it changes every four months.

Jaime: That's the thing - so how is anyone who's new to this going to know?

Mike: There's a guy, and I'm not saying he's the best but I follow him and we all follow him. I paid for his membership on Facebook.

Jaime: Who?

Mike: Jon Loomer. I don't even know the guy. We actually did this with someone else similar on Facebook and they were amazing at it but we could probably teach this, well I couldn't, but he's always on it. We pay a monthly membership to find out what's new because he's on it and he seems so intelligent and has good references. So something like that, where you get somebody who's on it writing a good blog like that. It has to be a Facebook guy, a Tabula guy.

Jaime: Because they'll know the newest, the coolest and the latest tricks.

Mike: Like Gary Marshall does Google AdWords. Just that. He's really great at that.

Jaime: I love how opinionated you are.

Mike: I bought Gary Marshall's course back in 2005 and I learned AdWords from a book when we didn't have any money.

Jaime: That's awesome. So you really do invest in your own learning but thankfully you now have the cash flow so you can have someone else do it and you don't have to worry about it.

Mike: You try to build a business and, in my opinion, the most important part of a business is the creativity and the message. That's what we're all here for, is to create things and messages and be out there in the ecosystem. Find a stock trader to buy your media buyer.

Jaime: That's what Zach used to do, which is funny, he's the numbers guy.

Mike: It works. Find an out of work stock trader who has a good record and teach them media buying.

Jaime: That's crazy. That's awesome. We have to start wrapping up in just a second. I really appreciate you coming on the show and I know you're going to be in Austin soon so we'll be able to hang out. What's one action listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of $1 million?

Mike: I was thinking about that as I was walking my dog this morning because I'm in a phase where I'm reflecting a little bit. Stop everything you're doing for just a day or two and look at it critically. I also think it's counterproductive if you follow psychology - this positive thinking bullshit has to go, it's hurting people, this is not good and the research proves it. Positive thinking is not great for success, it's bad. I was talking to Todd Herman, he coaches Olympians, and positive thinking does not cut the mustard. Most people aren't real with themselves. They look at their plan and go "What's wrong with it?" don't think negative, don't look in a rearview mirror, a car might be there, so most people don't look in their rearview mirror to see if there's a car and they change lanes without looking. So I would say stop what you're doing and take a day or two and get with a friend who's real critical, the friend that everybody says is a negative Nancy, and just beat the shit out of it, but get them to stop after a day or two. Define an amount of time to beat the shit out of it and just kind of look at things. So do it, actually take the time out to be negative for a day or two and look at everything, really look at all of the problems that could happen, and then take three days and figure out how to fix them and then start over. Nobody takes the time to just have a negative day.

Jaime: That's a really good point.

Mike: Define it and know that you're going to come out it. Then you can have fun. That guy, I don't know him but I read his book, Ryan Holiday, he's in Austin I believe.

Jaime: Yes, he is.

Mike: I don't know him but I read his book, the "The Obstacle is the Way" book, so you're going to find all of these obstacles, well make them the way. Don't be scared of finding out this real stuff that's bad. That's where you're going to get rich, is you're going to find these problems and that's where you have your way. Be creative.

Jaime: That's a huge point. We are so busy not being negative, meditating and feeling better, focusing on all the good things.

Mike: Depression and all of that, there's a reason for it. Things that we have don't just come - they have evolutionary benefits. Usually depression is a sign that you have to change something.

Jaime: What a surprise! That's why I keep you around, Mike. You always keep it real. Tell me how it is.

Mike: You can't mask stuff. That's how you get disease and that's how you get pain for no reason and all of that - it's repression. "Happy, happy, happy," doesn't work. You've got to deal with it.

Jaime: You've got to actually take some time to look at it. Which sucks, don't get me wrong.

Mike: You can have fun bitching about it. You can get some whiskey out.

Jaime: Alright, next time you're in Austin!

Mike: I've got to create a whole business around this - negative days.

Jaime: This is perfect for you. This is so your brand, Mike. Everybody already knows this about you, it's perfect.

Mike: I could get paid to make people feel bad. That's really good.

Jaime: I love this. Thanks so much for coming on the show today, Mike. Tell us where we can find more about you and all of the stuff that you do online.

Mike: The supplement company is www.realdosenutrition.com and then the hypnosis programs is just www.hypnosisnetwork.com.

Jaime: We'll link up all of that and maybe on social media I'll take pictures of you and me having a negative day or something like that.

Mike: I've still got to figure out the social media because that's where I'm like an old man. I can market on it. Now I need to go to you.

Jaime: Alright, you help me with a negative day and you help me with that. Thanks so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it, Mike.

Mike: Thank you.

Announcer: Thanks for listening. You can find out more great information like this on EventualMillionaire.com.

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Tags: Business Building, business startup, media buying, Mentor, Michael Lovitch, millionaire interview, Multiple Business, Startup

Categories: All, Business, Business Model, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Millionaire Interviews

Hi I’m Jaime. Each and every week I bring you the top business advice from the people who know best.

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