How Social Media Examiner’s Michael Stelzner Starts a New Business

CEO & Founder of Social Media Examiner – Michael Stelzner

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Social Media Examiner hit it’s industry hard in 2009 and made over one million dollars in the first year in business. (without selling ANYTHING for the first 4 months!) Michael knows how to start businesses, and what the key pieces and questions you need to ask. Listen in to hear step by step how Michael starts something new, and learn a bit about his new business nicknamed Project Torch!

Here are the questions Mike uses when starting a business:

Go to SocialMediaExaminer.com/podcast to check out his awesome podcast.

Thanks so much for listening!

Transcript:

Welcome to Eventual Millionaire. I'm Jaime Tardy and today we have Michael Stelzner on the show. I'm super excited. We have the man in social media on today. He runs socialmediaexaminer.com. He also has an awesome new podcast that you guys should all check out The Social Media Marketing Podcast. Make sure when you listen to this one you go and subscribe to that one too. He also has a book called The Launch: How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition and his blog has like 185,000 subscribers. I'm really excited to go through tons of stuff with him today. Thanks so much for coming on, Michael.

MICHAEL STELZNER:	Hey Jaime, it's an absolute pleasure to be on the show with you.

JAIME TARDY:	It's funny; I've seen a lot of interviews with you and I haven't heard sort of the pre-back story. Were you always set up to be an entrepreneur since you were younger or did you sort of fall into it?

MICHAEL STELZNER:	That's a great question. I think that I've always had an entrepreneurial spirit. When I was really, really young me and my little brother would sell worms to the local fisherman and we'd go in the back yard at night with a flashlight and pull up night crawlers and then we'd sell them in the morning. That was kind of like the first thing. When I was in college, way back in the day, I used to sell 5? inch floppy disks. I would buy them and then I would resell them on bulletin boards with little tear sheets where you could buy these things.

	I even had a software company that lasted for like two months called the Lissium Software which was just taking games that were open source free games and repackaging them and selling them. I had a lot of and I was also a video game developer as a kid. I actually developed a video game for the Atari 2600 and it was about to go live and I was about to sign a contract and then the company went out of business believe it or not.

JAIME TARDY:	How old were you; that's crazy. 

MICHAEL STELZNER:	I was probably 14 or 15 and I thought I was destined to be a video game designer. I went to San Diego State as a computer science major with the intent in 1986 of becoming a video game guy but back then it wasn't cool and they were all nerds with the tape on their glasses.

JAIME TARDY:	No, we're cool. I'm a geek too. No, no, we're cool. Be quiet!! That's awesome.

MICHAEL STELZNER:	So I switched to business and they were all preppy crazies and I said oh my gosh I am going over to speech so I ended up in the speech communication program and I've had a lot of businesses. As a matter of fact, I think what really started it all was when I was wrongfully terminated from my job back in the mid '90s and I was forced to go out on my own as a gun for hire and I started Stelzner Consulting. That was a creative services agency.

JAIME TARDY:	How old were you then?

MICHAEL STELZNER:	Gosh, I don't know. I was born in let's see, I was about 30. I was about 30 then.

JAIME TARDY:	Really?

MICHAEL STELZNER:	That's when I really started experiencing success because I had only been in the corporate world for a couple years. I had learned product marketing skills and I began going to working for a lot of big companies. This was back when web design was becoming popular and my company eventually did web design and I eventually started getting really big name clients and things really exploded. Eventually I went into White Papers and that was a whole space and I wrote a book on that and now I am in social media.

JAIME TARDY:	What I loved is when I was listening to a previous interview with you is that when you started Social Media Examiner you had only had about six months worth of social media really learning and I thought that was crazy to go start a business when you only, you were kind of an expert with six months compared to probably most of the other people, but still that's not very much. How did you even pick social media?

MICHAEL STELZNER:	My prior thing was the White Paper business and I was an expert in that. I was being paid a lot of money to write these documents for big business but there was a limit to how far Michael Stelzner could take himself. I knew when I started this new thing that it was neat to be in a space where I didn't know a lot and I thought to myself if I could take all the knowledge that I've gained over all the years of having different businesses and if I can instead shine the light on other people and give them a platform upon which they can showcase their expertise, and you got to realize back in 2009 social media was beginning to explode and that's when we started in 2009.

	This is just as Twitter was going crazy and Facebook was going crazy too. I noticed that the most popular stuff everybody was talking about, in the world of marketing, was social media so I thought okay let's go into that space. I had some friends who knew some things and they helped connect me with other friends who knew some things and we kind of all came together and we created a movement.

JAIME TARDY:	That's awesome. I love how you talk about a movement because that's what it seems like. It seems like you got huge really fast, when you went ahead and did this. Do you have any tips or any advice for someone else who is starting to try and do the same thing as you?

MICHAEL STELZNER:	Yes, the bottom line is you need to know what you do know and what you don't know and you need to acknowledge that there's certain things you may not know. Let's just say there's a space that you see as an opportunity to get into but you really don't know a lot about it. You better figure out how to know something about it. What it really comes down to is doing the kinds of things that you're doing, Jaime, with me right now. I'm guessing the reason why you started the Eventual Millionaire is because you wanted to talk to people that were successful so that you could figure it out on your own. Am I right?

JAIME TARDY:	You're smart, yes. Definitely.

MICHAEL STELZNER:	That's the reason why everybody does it. If by bringing together, just like you are bringing together all these successful people for your podcast, you are essentially building relationships yet at the same time generating really valuable content for a demographic audience. That's exactly what we do at Social Media Examiner. I took a camera crew with me to a trade show at Blog World and also to Marketing Props and we interviewed people like Chris Brogan and lots of other high profile individuals at the time and just did on camera interviews, 10-minute interviews with these people. 

	They've never ever even experienced anything like this. There had been nobody really in the social media space that had brought that kind of professionalism to the space before and they were blown away by it. Like you, I have an interview skill. Anybody can really do it. It's about building relationships. My piece of advice to anyone listening right now is that the most important thing to getting a business off the ground is to first develop relationships with people before you ever start.

JAIME TARDY:	That's huge. Let's talk about this because you said you started this back in 2009. A lot of people are probably going well that was when it was exploding so of course you just rode the wave of everything being huge. If you were to start something right now and I know you are sort of starting something right now, so if you were to start something now, in the competitive space that it is, I mean it is a lot more competitive, even though it's still only a few years old, but it's a lot more competitive than back in 2009, I want to know like step by step what would you do first, what would you do second, what would you do third for everybody?

MICHAEL STELZNER:	Let me tell you what I did before Social Media Examiner because I think this will give you some unique context. I realized that White Papers were a hot industry and I had written a couple of them so I had gotten my feet wet. A White Paper is a sales document that's used by businesses to sell expensive or complicated products and services. I began to do some research on the web and I said, "Oh my gosh look at all the other people that are writing White Papers. Forget it; I am not going to go down that road." 

	But then in my mind it clicked and I am like oh my gosh this is marketplace justification because what does it show me? It shows me there are others out here already having successful businesses just doing this one thing. What did I do? I reached out to all my competition and I said, "Hey I am starting something called The White Paper Source and I would love it if you would be willing to talk to me a little bit about what you do." You could call these people competitors but 2 out of the 3 people saw this as coopetition instead of competition. 
	
	What ended up happening is I created an entirely new industry called the White Paper Industry and literally trained thousands of writers around the world on how to write White Papers. White papers went on to become the most popular bar none marketing tool of the age because of the evangelism that I did. And of these 2 of 3 people, two of them went on to become very key strategic partners with me and one of them said forget it I am not going to work with you, you're the competition. Guess what happened to that guy? Nobody knows.

JAIME TARDY:	Yes, right!

MICHAEL STELZNER:	Do you see what I am saying? I didn't really know a lot about the White Paper business but what I did was I built really solid relationships with these people and then we were able to essentially create something that was a movement and all the boats floated higher as a result, including people that didn't want to work with us. But those that did work with us really reaped the benefits. So back to the original question, to someone who is listening right now, just realize that if you have an idea and you have some passion and you're excited about it and you truly have the right motives, you can essentially start now thinking about a year down the road and say in a year where would I like to be. In a year, I would like to have started maybe an online magazine with lots of writers writing about X. 

	What don't I know? Who knows what I don't know? Figure out a way and once you figure out who those people are then ask yourself what could I possibly do for those people that would be received as a gift and not as I want something from you. Maybe it's you start a podcast like what you're doing, Jaime. Maybe it's you start a blog. Maybe it's you go to trade shows and do interviews with these people. Who knows? There's just so many different things that you can do but the idea is to start building and developing your network that you have right now. Everybody has a network. If you look on LinkedIn, you've got a network. If you look on Facebook you've got friends. 

	When I started Social Media Examiner, I said who do I know that knows social media and there were three names that came up. Denise Wakeman from the Blog Squad, Chris Garrett who is the coauthor of the book Problogger with Darren Rouse and Jason Falls who is Social Media Explorer. 	Jason Falls it turned out was one of my fans back when I was the White Paper guy because he wanted to learn about White Papers. Chris Garrett is from the world of writing and he knew me because of that world and Denise had interviewed me once and that was the connection that I needed. 

	I started developing the relationship with these people and Denise said to me there's a conference in San Diego, you need to come to it, there's this gal named Mari Smith who is going to be there. I went out of my way and I stood in the hall for 20 to 30 minutes waiting for Mari Smith to stop talking to other people and I said, "Hi, my name is Mike Stelzner and I came here just to meet you. I'd love to interview you." Now I have a very solid relationship and Mari Smith was one of the key people that helped my organization grow. So you can see kind of how it can be done. You're very intentional and you're very focused. Jaime, you met me on a rooftop in New York City and that was like six months ago. Now we're interviewing so isn't that fun? That's how it works.

JAIME TARDY:	Perfect. What I am wondering too is going back to the White Papers or for Social Media Examiner, did you know in advance that it was going to be huge? Did you have this grand vision of exactly what it was going to be or were you just sort of testing the waters and seeing where things might go?

MICHAEL STELZNER:	In both cases, I knew. In the case of White Paper Source, I knew that if I could, my goal was to self publish a book on White Papers but to have a baked in audience and I did. I had like 25,000 people on my newsletter about White Papers and I had the portal that everybody went to. I had a plan. The plan was to get other people to write articles, distribute those articles via newsletter and then eventually get those up on a website and then eventually have a forum on it and then eventually publish the book and the book would be a bestseller and it was, you know what I mean, and then take it from there. And then do conferences and classes and speaking and corporate training. That's exactly what I did. 

	With Social Media Examiner, I had a very similar plan. I knew exactly what was going to happen, I knew it was going to be at least four months before we promoted anything so that there truly was a movement. I knew that I was going to come out with a book. I knew that if I could go into a super crowded space like social media and become one of the princes, not one of the kings, but one of the princes, in a very short period of time, in a super crowded space, that I would be able to come out with another book that would be a huge hit because I will have done it twice.

	The thing is a lot of people do say to me, Jaime, well look you're successful because you are on a hot trend ? social media. Well I say who else has done it? I can't think of anybody. There is Mashable. They were there first, but there is no one else doing what we're doing. Yeah, there are some smaller sites that are out there but don't let the fact that it's a hot trend and don't let the fact that there are lots of people doing it stop you because I came in and essentially took this marketplace by storm and nobody knew who I was. I remember walking around with a microphone with this little thing on it at a trade show walking up to a booth with the CEO of Technorati and asking to interview them. We were three days old and on the iPhone the woman says who are you with and I said socialmediaexaminer.com and she is all oh Richard here is Michael Stelzner from Social Media Examiner. Richard was their CEO at the time. I'm like hi, nice to meet you, can I interview you?

	It was just really all about perception and we spent a lot of effort also creating a really cool design too. One of the things, when you start, and I know I am doing a lot of talking so cut me off, but when you start, you got to overcome the who are you objection, Jaime. You do a good job at this. You've got a really nicely designed cover art for your podcast and you're new and I'm new, but in the grand scheme of things, if you have a really professional design, people will assume that you've been around forever and they've just missed you. I can't tell you how many times when you're only six months old people said, "Oh I have been following you forever; I love you." In reality, it was a month and they just assumed I have been around forever.

JAIME TARDY:	Forever. Is that really step one? I know you said to get clear on who these people are. So give me step one and then it sounds like step two is probably design and really setting yourself apart that way. Is that what you were saying?

MICHAEL STELZNER:	Yes, I mean step one really is to just take your idea and soundboard it I guess. Let's back up for a second. I'm working on a brand new something and step one is to talk to people that you trust and say, "Hey this is my idea." These are people that are going to tell you the unvarnished truth that aren't going to just kiss up to you and say oh you're beautiful, I love anything you do, Little Danny, you know.

JAIME TARDY:	Great idea.

MICHAEL STELZNER:	People that are really going to tell you the reality of it and if you start talking to enough people that you trust and respect and they say oh my gosh you're onto something, which is exactly what happened with Social Media Examiner, then that's kind of the little bit of fire under your bottom that you need to get started. That's the first thing is to soundboard it. Really the second thing is to take a clipboard and go to the middle of nowhere and just start writing down all of your ideas and start asking yourself where do I want to go, who do I want to be. As a matter of fact, somewhere around here I've got my clipboard and some of the notes for this new project that I'm working on.

	I'll tell you what the questions were. They were pretty cool. These are the kind of questions I think are important to ask. What do I want to achieve? Seriously just imagine it has already happened. What do I actually want to achieve? Where do I want to go? Why do I want it? What are my underlying motivations? Can others rally around the vision? What perceived problems am I addressing? What does it look like once I have accomplished it? What am I lacking today and what can keep me from accomplishing my vision?

	These are questions that are seriously big questions and this might take you like an hour but I just literally have this place that I go to every time I am about to start something and I answer these questions.

JAIME TARDY:	I love that. I'm going to make sure I write all those down in the show notes so people can just copy and paste them for their next thing too. That's huge to be able to actually sit down and then do something with that. That's the other thing. I think there's a lot of people that are just starting. They're like oh I have really good questions and they start writing and then don't do anything with that. What's the next step with looking at that stuff and doing something with it?

MICHAEL STELZNER:	The next step is to write it up and share it with people and talk about it with just a few trusted people and just say, "What do you think?" Do you think this sounds good? Is it something you can rally around? What are my weaknesses? For example, this new project I am working on which I code name Project Torch. 

JAIME TARDY:	Which sounds awesome, by the way. That's a cool name.

MICHAEL STELZNER:	What am I lacking today? Relationships with key industry influencers. This is something that with this new project I don't have yet. This is something important for us to know what are we lacking and why start if you know that you have this problem. Instead you got to address this problem before you start. Therefore, in this particular case, in the case of Project Torch, which has absolutely nothing to do with social media, I am needing to develop these relationships with these people in this industry that is an industry that is totally different than the one I am in right now.

JAIME TARDY:	I need to stop you on that because that is extremely impressive because you started in White Papers and you didn't just do something else in that same niche. You went totally new and different into social media but now you have all these contacts in social media and you're like okay I am going to go start something brand new, need new contacts, need new everything, which is sort of starting from scratch, which is really interesting because that sort of levels the playing field for everybody that's listening to go well he is starting from scratch and in the same place maybe where I am right now. That's really interesting. What made you decide to pick up and switch completely?

MICHAEL STELZNER:	I was at, you'll appreciate this because you have kids. I was at Disneyland over the summer and I took my three girls there and we had a lot of fun and I was so bummed the Indiana Jones ride was broken down, because that's one of my favorites, and while I was there I thought to myself the last time I was here was eight years ago. Just to give you some context, eight years ago my youngest wasn't even thought of, my middle daughter was an infant newborn and my oldest daughter was only three and she barely remembers any of it and I thought to myself my God, eight years have gone by. 

	Over those eight years, what have I been doing? Social Media Examiner and the White Paper business and I've just been moving really, really fast and I thought to myself, if I don't start what I am going to start next, it's going to be maybe for the next generation. It may be that my kids might not be able to enjoy this. You know, Jaime, I was on another interview recently with David Simon Garland and I said to him, "Sometimes there are moments in life that force us to ask the question why are we doing what we're doing." Typically those moments in life happen either when there's some sort of a death in the family or 9/11. You know, one of these kind of we're shocked out of our normal way of living and we're asking what will we do next. 

	Other times, it's just the realization that we won't be here forever and it's the realization that and sometimes it's kids and even if it's other people's kids, it's when you don't see their kids for like two years and they are like two feet taller. You're like oh my gosh. I'm at the point right now where there's something that I always wanted to do that I am not doing right now. While I love what I am doing and I will continue what I am doing, this something new that I am calling Project Torch is where my true passion lays and it wasn't until I went to Disneyland that I realized it.

JAIME TARDY:	That's an incredible story. I love what you're saying that time passes either way whether you are doing those things that really matter or not, which is huge. I'm really excited to find out what this is because if you've been passionate about this forever, disregarding White Papers and Social Media Examiner, I really want to know, which I am sure we won't get you to divulge on this interview, even though it would make a great interview, let me just say.

MICHAEL STELZNER:	Someday in the future.

JAIME TARDY:	I'll have you back on. Maybe you can release it. I think that's really huge. It matters to you and that's why you are going to go ahead and pick up again when you don't really have to. I mean you are doing well with Social Media Examiner and all that. It's more a passion project. That's awesome.

MICHAEL STELZNER:	With the White Paper business I was extremely successful. I had businesses, all the biggest businesses in the world - Microsoft, Fed Ex, Dow Jones, Motorola - they all wanted to work with me. They were lining up to work with me and when I started Social Media Examiner it was an experiment but it became so big and so exciting and I loved it so much that you know what I did? I went and I deleted the website for the other business and shut it down.

JAIME TARDY:	Why?

MICHAEL STELZNER:	Because I just wanted to just say I am done with it. I had ranked No. 1, No. 2, No. 4 and No. 6 and No. 7 for key phrases on Google for this particular thing that I was doing and I deleted it. I cannot tell you how refreshing and rewarding it was. It was kind of like moving to a desert island and not having any of the trappings of the past. It was exciting.

JAIME TARDY:	Don't do that for Social Media Examiner, when your other one gets serious.

MICHAEL STELZNER:	I won't, but you know what, back then I had the fame and it was all about me and it was all about everybody wanted me and there was no limit to where I could go because it was all about me. Now it's not about me anymore. It's really about helping others and most people, for the first few years, didn't even know that I was the guy behind Social Media Examiner unless they happened to hear me be interviewed somewhere because my name was completely nowhere really obvious to be found. They just assumed whoever was writing the article for the day that it was their website. I loved it that way.

JAIME TARDY:	Really, I am seeing the picture of your little social media guy. I'm like is it supposed to look like, no it's not suppose to look like you. You're not on the site at all, which is really interesting. I remember when Rich started introducing us. I'm like who's he? I don't really know, I haven't seen him around, which is sort of amazing because you have a ridiculously huge website. It's not as though we shouldn't know who you are. Really interesting.

MICHAEL STELZNER:	It was kind of nice; it's kind of nice to separate the person from the brand and there comes a time where in every business when you are the brand, you will hit a glass ceiling that you can no longer go any higher on and you will always have people that want you, you, you and it's so nice to be able to have a brand that is not tied around you, as a person, and that is much more scalable and it's a lot easier to get people to rally around. If this was Michael Stelzner's Social Media Examiner, do you think that we would be what we are today? I don't think so.

JAIME TARDY:	That's a really good question. Let's actually, I know I want to get back to the step by step in a just a second, but let's get into this, because a lot of people, even David, I was chatting with David Simon Garland the other day because I am talking about how to interview down at New Media Expo and he was saying put more of yourself. If you want to interview, if you want to be this person online, put more of yourself, pictures of yourself, not just drawings that sort of thing, which is interesting because what you're sort of saying is separate that and making it more of a brand and then you're just sort of the guy behind the brand. What do you suggest for new people starting out? Maybe they want a podcast or a blog or something like that.

MICHAEL STELZNER:	It really depends on what you want. At their core, some people want fame. I'm not there, I've had that, I'm done with that, you know what I mean? If you want fame, then sure enough put yourself everywhere on it. I'm not against it either. I mean Pat Flynn has done a beautiful job of this, right? Pat Flynn has his picture of him and his son on his Smart Passive Income website and he is doing a great job resonating with that target audience that he is trying to reach. I think there's something to that but I don't think it's necessary.

	In your case, it just depends on what you're trying to do. Like if you're a consultant and you're trying to sell your consulting services, well then it makes a lot of sense to have your name tied to it. Like I was Michael Stelzner's Writing White Papers Blog, you know, and that made a lot of sense because I was selling Michael Stelzner's services. But everybody often times starts that way because that's the path of least resistance. But once you've done it and once you've realized that maybe you're overstretched or everybody wants you and you just freak out. That happens; maybe you have a panic attack. 

	That may come because you can't manage it and many of us can't. You may decide to start anew and you may decide to start something that has a lot more people that are supporting it like Social Media Examiner has about 100 writers and lots of people that are behind it and contributing to it and it's not about one person. It's not about pumping up that one person's brand. It's about a platform for all. It really depends. If you want to become the watering hole where everyone in your world comes to learn, then you have to separate yourself from it and that's what I wanted to do with Social Media Examiner. I wanted to be the watering hole.

JAIME TARDY:	That's a key point too. I loved how you said at the very beginning it's the path of least resistance. So some people that might be new, that is the path, you already did it once, you didn't have to do it again. You did something completely difference, so I think that really distinguishes which one people that are listening might want to go through. Tell me, so you've got your paper, you're figuring out what your weaknesses are like okay that's one thing I definitely have to work on. What do you do from there?

MICHAEL STELZNER:	Then you come up with a consolidated vision and it's a paragraph. I can't read it to you because it would give it away. It's a simple thing like, here I can code a little bit of it. Project Torch helps solve the question posed by ______.  So help solve this question posed by this audience. We do so by empowering this audience to effortly create impactful ______ with ______. I can't really go into details. The result is fill in the blank.

	You have to just create something really simple that's like your vision that people can rally around and then you just stick it up on the wall and it helps justify all decisions that you make. I'll give you a contextual example. In the case of Social Media Examiner, I knew that what I was building was going to be huge and five attempts to purchase Social Media Examiner happened. One when we were only 60 days old. I turned down every single one because I had a clear vision.

	Mark Zuckerberg is another great example with Facebook. His vision was to change the world, in not so many words, to make a more open world. It justified saying no to Yahoo to the $1 billion offer because he knew what his vision was. When you have your vision, when things come by, you can quickly classify them as supporting or distracting.

JAIME TARDY:	You need that though too because there's so many decisions that you have to make every single day, especially as a new business owner, that having that there to guide you is really important.

MICHAEL STELZNER:	We have not fundamentally changed at all since the day we launched because of the vision.

JAIME TARDY:	Really?

MICHAEL STELZNER:	Yes, we are exactly the same as we were back then. The only thing we've done is we've expanded into different areas like we have physical conferences now. We have our own social network now called The Networking Clubs and we've expanded a lot of these things but we are fundamentally the same as we were when we launched because the vision is crystal clear and despite the thousands and maybe even tens of thousands of requests that we got from people wanting to do things with us, because our vision is crystal clear, it was very easy to say no.

JAIME TARDY:	Thank you. A lot of people, especially a lot of business owners that I talk to, need to make sure they are paying attention to that, what you just said. That is what they guide by so that way they don't have to do, because when you split yourself in this many different directions, you don't get anywhere.

MICHAEL STELZNER:	Yes, and I guarantee you, Jaime, you know what I am talking about, how many people have approached you wanting to do things with you or wanting you to do things with them? You know the choices that you make are critical because it's going to have an impact and ripple down the road because everyone watches and once you open that can of worms you can't put them back in the can.

JAIME TARDY:	My blog was asked to be purchased after it was 60 something days old and I was like I just started, no! But yes, it is one of those things which is really interesting. Tell me from there. You've got that crystal clear vision, you really are excited; you know that it's pretty much a really solid idea because you've gotten feedback from it, what do you do from that? How do you figure out what to do first and that sort of thing?

MICHAEL STELZNER:	In the case of Project Torch, it's about identifying people that have the knowledge that the audience is interested in. This involves, in our case, going to bookstores and looking at who the bestselling authors were in this particular category. This involved looking on iTunes to see who the podcasters were. This involved looking at blogs and finding blogs that seem to have a similar mission to what we're doing so that we can begin to develop relationships and we will leverage what we have right now to do that.

	If you watch very carefully, there's hints everywhere that has been going on and will continue to be going on. Some of the guests that we will be bringing on to the Social Media Marketing podcast will be hints as to what's to come. 

JAIME TARDY:	You're making a challenge for us.

MICHAEL STELZNER:	It makes sense to leverage what you have to use that to build the relationships down the road because it's very easy when you have a platform like you do or like I do to reach out to anyone in any niche and find an angle that's appropriate for your audience but at the same time build a relationship for what you're doing next.

JAIME TARDY:	Smart man. That's what I am talking about in how to interview. It creates relationships better than anything I've ever known which is amazing; great that you're doing it too.

MICHAEL STELZNER:	It really does.

JAIME TARDY:	Perfect. The one thing that I am noticing, as you are talking to us, is that your mindset is like as soon as I decide I'm going to do it, it's done. I think that's really interesting. When we're going through you're like I have the crystal clear vision, I do this, I do this, I do this. There's no ooh I don't know if it's good enough. There's no and of course we're on a podcast so it's easy not to.

MICHAEL STELZNER:	Of course that stuff happens; I'm human, but at the same time, what if Steve Jobs said, "I'm really not sure the world is ready for a phone that allows you to touch all these apps?"

JAIME TARDY:	My coveted iPhone.

MICHAEL STELZNER:	What if Walt Disney said, "You know what, there's already amusement parks in Europe. We don't need them in America." Do you understand what I am saying? What if Pixar said, "You know what, we don't need computer animation, let's just stick to the good old fashion stuff." If there wasn't people that were willing to push the envelope and take the risk, with the understanding that they might fail, then we wouldn't have innovation. Address the fact and accept the fact that this could fail. 

	Social Media Examiner was an experiment. I was fully prepared for it to fail. If it failed, I am fine, I keep my existing business operational. If it didn't fail and it continued to grow, I shut down that business. With this new thing, if it fails, well it'll fail but I know it won't. The reason I know it won't is because once you do this long enough you kind of know how to do what you do and you get in the path of just applying all your knowledge and expertise into new areas.

JAIME TARDY:	Do you ever get uncomfortable though? It seems, like you said, you're going yeah I'm just going to do it. Do you do things? Especially with this new, you've done it two times before, this new project, are you getting out of your comfort zone at all or does it feel like it's old hat now?

MICHAEL STELZNER:	It's always a new experiment. It's just like anything else. It's an adventure. It's like I've got this natural curiosity to see what it is going to be like. It's kind of like a lot of people that retire and they get into art. For the first time, they pick up a paint brush and they realize oh my gosh I've got this latent talent I've never developed and I did it when I was a kid and all of a sudden you get these artists developed because they decide to go out and just try it. I don't even remember what you said with your question, but I hope I answered it. I don't know if I did or not.

JAIME TARDY:	It's just really interesting the way that your path goes. It seems like you're just ready to go gung ho no matter what. It seems like that's the type of guy you are no matter what.

MICHAEL STELZNER:	I am that kind of guy. Once I am sure of what I want to do, I say, "Let's do it." I'll give you a quick little example. Back when I was the White Paper guy I was going to do a physical conference and I had done other smaller conferences. I reached out to all the big high profile writers in this space like Robert Bly and Peter Bauerman and Steve ****, who are all the big writers and I said, "I want to do something in Chicago and I want to do a conference and Bob Bly who has written like 50 books said, "I don't want to go to a conference. Every time I go to a conference everybody feels like they own a piece of me because they bought a ticket."

	I said, "All right Bob, let me get back to you." I decided all right why don't I do a virtual event. Because he said no, I said all right well let's do it online. Let's do a virtual event online and what was born was Copywriting Success Summit and Copywriting Success Summit became White Paper Success Summit and Social Media Success Summit and Facebook Success Summit and Small Business Success Summit. It has been the core business model that has funded everything. Pretty exciting huh? 

	You got to just decide to go with it and when you hit a barrier then you decide to move left or right but don't give up on the vision and that's what I did. I decided I was going to do an event but because Bob Bly said forget physical events, I started virtual events and now look what happened.

JAIME TARDY:	You never know.

MICHAEL STELZNER:	More than 20,000 people have come to my virtual conferences and we probably are able to have some of the largest paid virtual conferences in the world.

JAIME TARDY:	Thank goodness he said no, right?

MICHAEL STELZNER:	Yes, absolutely.

JAIME TARDY:	Imagine where you would be. Excellent. I know we have to start wrapping up in just a minute. Are those the steps? Do you have any one last step of what we should do once we have the vision, once we are really paying attention to that vision?

MICHAEL STELZNER:	Yes, I think it's important to hire a good graphics designer and to create a piece of art that maybe would be the mast head for the future website and if you look at everything that I do, like all the events, we do have an amazing art. Our website has amazing art and just by developing that piece of art and showcasing that piece of art to people that might want to get involved with it, it shows people that you're serious. It's like wow, this is stunning is the hope, when they look at that piece of art and they'll be like I want to be behind that.

	Once you've got a little bit of a track record behind you, because you've done other things, it's very, very easy to essentially show other people what you've done and have them rally behind you and go with you and sometimes a little piece of art is all you need. I mean we could talk all day long about this kind of stuff but my hope is that someone listening right now is saying to themselves all right maybe I should talk to some of my friends that I really trust and just share this crazy idea that I have in the back of my head and maybe even talk to people I know are skeptics. If they all say all my gosh you're really on to something, then maybe I should just take a half an hour to an hour and drive to the middle of nowhere with a clipboard and start writing down what my vision is.

	Then just slowly but surely keep working on it. Do not stop. You need to have momentum. One of my concerns is if I don't keep working on Project Torch I know I'll get distracted by other things so I am forcing myself to have milestones that I am trying to reach regularly so that I can keep moving forward with it.

JAIME TARDY:	Good to know you get distractions too. Perfect.

MICHAEL STELZNER:	Big time.

JAIME TARDY:	Good. To wrap up, because I know you have to get going to, the last question I always ask is what's one action that listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of a million?

MICHAEL STELZNER:	Man I practically answered it already with the last one.

JAIME TARDY:	Do what you just said!

MICHAEL STELZNER:	One action that I would suggest you take this week is to literally just grab a clipboard and a piece of paper and say to yourself where do I want to be in five years and write it down with a pen and write out as much detail as you can. What I want you to do next is ask this question, act like you've already been there and you've achieved it in five years, say, "What did I do just before I achieved it?" Let's say the goal is to become a millionaire or let's say the goal is to have a New York Times bestseller or whatever. What did I do just a month before that happened? Let's say it was this. Let's say it was got on Oprah, I don't know. What did I do to get on Oprah? Just start working all the way back to the present and guess what you'll have ? a map!

JAIME TARDY:	Perfect. I love that. Thank you so much for coming on today. Tell us where we can find you online. I know you're in tons of social media places. Go ahead and tell us where we can find you, where your podcast is, so we can download that too.

MICHAEL STELZNER:	SocialMediaExaminer.com/podcast. You can find me on iTunes, Stitcher, everything and SocialMediaExaminer.com is where you'll find everything. By the way, thank you, Jaime. This was really fun. I mean I don't get to talk about this kind of stuff very much and I really do hope that people take some of this stuff to heart and actually make something happen.

JAIME TARDY:	Definitely. Guys, leave a comment and let us know how much you live Mike and what the next steps are that you are going to be doing and if you actually did write out anything, give us some updates on that too. Thank you so much for coming on, Mike. I really appreciate it.

MICHAEL STELZNER:	Hey, thank you.

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

Tags: Business Growth, business startup, Michael Stelzner, millionaire interview, Project Torch, social media, Social Media Marketing, Startup

Categories: All, Business, Business Model, Entrepreneurship, Millionaire Interviews, Relationships, Visioning

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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