Tony: Are you ready for an open discussion with the best of the best and the best of what’s next? Welcome to the Tony DUrso show. Join in on a great conversation today with some of the world’s great influencers, as they showcase great advice and techniques that made them the game changers they are today, now here’s Tony DUrso. Tony: Welcome I’m your host Tony DUrso, we interview world-class influencers, celebrities and elite entrepreneurs and I thank you for joining us. We broadcast every Friday at 1 p.m. Pacific on Voice America’s Influencers Channel, and you can listen to all of our shows on your Android or Apple device go to TonyDUrso.com/mobile and get the app TonyDUrso.com/mobile. Today’s show is with Daniel Burrus and Akbar Sheikh, Global futurist and millionaire maker. Alright here’s some info on Daniel Burrus, Daniel is considered one of the world’s leading technology forecasters and innovation experts, his firm monitors global advances in technology driven trends, welcome to the show Daniel, it’s so great to have you on back again. Daniel: It’s great to be with you. Tony: Daniel a pleasure and once again a privilege and an honor to have you, and for some of our newer audience to refresh our memories I’m going to cover a little bit of the same ground, but first things first Daniel we’d like to know how did it all start for you, what’s your backstory? Daniel: Well I started out in a professional way started out teaching biology and physics, I taught for a number of years I really enjoyed it, I got educator of the year in my first year, but it was always entrepreneurial. I put myself through undergraduate school playing lead guitar in a rock band and we actually made money, and I ran the band and kind of like the idea of making money, which obviously you don’t do when you are teaching. I had an idea for an airplane design, so one summer since teacher’s have the summer off I built and test flew the design, it turned out to be fantastic and within 12 months I had 37 national locations, was an industry leader I mean it all happened fast. By the way I think one of the reasons it went so well was because I had never had a business course, what I mean by that is that I didn’t know all the things I had to do so I didn’t do a lot of those things and turns out a lot of those things you don’t need to do. And also two other things really helped me quite a bit, one is I knew I didn’t want to compete, the reason is I was an educator I didn’t know how to compete, so I skipped that I didn’t compete. I looked at what the competition was doing so that I knew what not to do, I did what they weren’t doing and of course I did a lot of innovation. So I had that one company and then well before the year was out I had an idea for another company so I started it in between, within two years I had four companies all of them were profitable and national leaders in the first year, turned out I had a knack for business but I missed teaching. I think Tony the two most important moments in a human’s life is the day you’re born and the day you find out why you are born, and I’m really blessed that I found out long ago why I was put on the planet and that is to teach and not tell, but to actually teach because to me that’s empowering. So I decided here’s how I put it to myself, I looked out in my life and I thought all right so I’m in my 90s at some point and I’m looking back at my life and professionally, if this is how I made my living and I was doing quite well at the time and this is my professional future am I happy, and the answer is no, it’s not really the answer. So I already knew this was not my future, and a lot of people when they decide to go a different direction take a long time to make it happen. But I believe once you realize the path you’re on is not the future, the sooner you get on the right path the sooner you’ll be happy again and doing better. So I could have probably spent two years selling those four companies and made a lot more money, but instead I sold them all within six months so that I didn’t have the baggage of them even though they were profitable and doing well, they were holding me back in reality because now I saw a different future. And I didn’t want to go back to teaching because I had already done that, and I never go back I always go forward, now I ride a Harley-Davidson and it doesn’t have a reverse, so I only go one direction. So I didn’t want to go back to teaching I wanted to go forward to teaching but I really didn’t know what that meant, and to figure that out what I did was I implemented a principle that I teach in my books and in my speeches, and that is take your biggest problems and skip them. So one of the things I didn’t like about teaching was the politics and all of the things that are associated with an educational institution like a university or even a school system, so I skipped that I decided not to work for one. I didn’t like the limitation of the classroom, there’s only so many students I can impact so I decided to skip that and make my classroom planet Earth therefore I didn’t have any limitation, and you get the idea. And I spent the year doing research because I didn’t want to just speak what am I going to speak about, and I knew that there were a lot of things happening in technology now this is long time ago now, thirty-five years ago now back in the 1983-84 timeframe, and I knew that there were lasers, I knew that there was the internet now again there wasn’t the web but there was something called the Internet, there was even emails very few were using it all the universities, but they did exist back then. And I knew they were fiber optics which existed back then, digital was in its beginnings back then in other words I could see back then, way back then that we had the underpinnings of a major revolution taking place, and I wanted to understand. So I took a year and because I was young I spent 12-14 hour days, six and seven days a week for a year deep diving into finding out what is going on in biology, chemistry and physics in all areas of technology globally, so I just started reading and classifying and organizing and it was amazing. And I told very few people this but I’ll share it with you right now and that is, towards the end of that year I had a true epiphany, I mean I actually saw the future, I saw that iPhone digital camera future with Netflix and all that I saw that, way back then it just all of a sudden was there and what am I going to do, run out in the street and say I saw the future that isn’t going to work, so I thought well I’ll just start speaking and writing about it. And back in 83 I’ve got to tell you right now there were not very many people interested in the future of technology, let’s face it the first mac was just coming out in 1983, most people were just using link frames, so there wasn’t a lot going on in tech in that kind of context. So what I did is I made it really interesting by working with a company to develop a very advanced robot and it was an amazing robot if you’re interested I’ll tell you more about it, but just to kind of finish this story up so it doesn’t get too long it already is kind of long anyway, I had a robot and started talking about the future and I really only used the robot for about six or seven minutes at the end. And I figured the key was I just had to be better than the robot, and luckily I was and the robot attracted people to hear me, then they started realizing how valuable what I was talking about was for them and I ended up doing a couple of hundred paid speeches that first year, and I’ve been given at this point about three thousand all over the world, and I’ve been doing consulting, I’ve written seven books and so on. So it’s been a wonderful ride and that how it all began. Tony: Wow what a story, very refreshing point of view, you made me laugh and chuckle on several of your things, I just love the way you’ve approached everything, I love the way you’ve looked at your vision from the future looking back at your life as to what you would expect and how you would expect to be. In fact, I have a book called The Vision Map and that’s part of the process but we would digress on that, and I love the fact that you ride a Harley and all these things this is such cool I think I want to switch the subject of this conversation, but I know we shouldn’t. Daniel: No I understand, by the way there’s one other thing that I think would be germane that I think it’s really important that I had left out of that, it just came to me now I think it’s important. And that is when I left teaching to start my first business I didn’t know anything about business and I was doing well with teaching, so in other words like anybody facing change I had a fear, and most people don’t want to talk about fear but I think it’s important to address the elephant in the room, which means we all have fear because we’re all humans. And my fear was failure, because let’s face it I didn’t know anything about business, I had an idea but that doesn’t mean it’s going to work and I was leaving something I enjoyed behind me to do it. So what helped me Tony is I got an insight and I thought to myself hey you know what I got more than one fear here, I got a bunch of fears, why don’t we put them all out on the table and see what I got here. And it turned out that the bigger fear than failure was for me the fear of regret, the fear of being an old person regretting that they didn’t do all these things, and I decided I’d rather do them and fail than regret and not even try. So the insight that I’m sharing here I actually think it’s a pretty powerful insight, and that is you whoever it is whether it’s you Tony or anyone else, when you’re trying to change you’ve got some fear but there’s more than one, why don’t you lay them all out and you might find a way, a pathway forward. Tony: Daniel totally agree, rather to have and well even a fail than to not have tried at all I presume is part of it, but also it’s also a matter of courage the fact that you just want to go out there and try. I did that with my podcasting I could have continued studying and doing all sorts of stuff, but I’ve read through the tutorials that I could find and I just went on and winged it and I made some mistakes, I made a lot of mistakes and I guess that’s why we’re both PhD’s in the school of hard knocks. Daniel: Well you just said something that is an important thing because we both did the same thing and that is, you can’t eliminate failure, but remember I said in starting all my companies and I’ve started a few since then that have done well, you can’t keep from failing. The key is and it’s another principle I teach and that is to fail fast, because first of all I can’t afford to fail slow I need to fail fast and secondly I want to learn from those failures, because the faster I’m failing the faster I’m learning. I remember when I first started being a strategic advisor to the Joint Chiefs in the Pentagon, and one of the things that I found out is that they don’t like failure, they only like success and they just keep doing things to keep the things that aren’t working, they just keep trying. And I ask them a question, I said are the biggest lessons that you’ve learned in your life did they come from your successes or from their failures, and they all agree that it came from their failures, that’s where their biggest lessons in life came from. And I said well then if you’re not allowing anyone to fail you’re not learning anything, it sent a really powerful message to them because they started realizing failure wasn’t the enemy, it’s how long you’re taking to fail. Let’s face it if you’ve got a business and you’ve ever hired somebody, didn’t take long for you to know this wasn’t a good fit but now you might have gone another year or two before it finally blew up and it’s where you already know within a day or two, why didn’t you just fail fast and by the way it was not helping them or you to hang in there, so let’s fail fast. Tony: Very sage and wise advice there Daniel. Tony: This is the Tony DUrso show, just ahead the chat continues with Daniel Burrus and Akbar Sheikh, global futurist and millionaire maker. But first it’s time for us to take a short break, see you back here in just a moment. AD: This is The Voice America Influencers Channel, be inspired. 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Intro: You’re listening to the Tony DUrso show with key influencers, we’d love to hear from you via email, be sure to send questions and comments to Tony@TonyDUrso.com, now back to Tony and his guests. Tony: All right we’re back on the Tony DUrso show, today’s shows is with Daniel Burrus and Akbar Sheikh, global futurist and millionaire maker. Daniel is a strategic adviser to executives, helping them to develop game-changing strategies based on his proven methodologies for capitalizing on technology innovations. He’s the author of seven books including the New York Times bestseller ”Flash Foresight” and his latest book The Anticipatory Organization”, alright and now back to the chat with Daniel. Tony: We’ll go out of context a little bit because I didn’t want to talk about your book but since it’s brought up, when do we say enough is enough, when do we pull the plug, we’re in a relationship, we’re in a business, we’re an entrepreneur, we’re working for our corporation and it’s just not going right but we of course were basically good people we want to give it the best go, we want to keep at it. Back to relationships we hear people having trouble for years and years but sticking with it for the kids, when is enough enough, do you have some wisdom on this? Daniel: Well yes I think what I would share is that first of all hope is not a strategy, if you do what you’ve always done you’ll get what you’ve always had is an old statement, and by the way from a business context if today with exponential change taking place, if you do what you’ve always done you’ll actually get less of what you’ve always had. But back on a relationship basis I think it’s worth trying all sorts of different things, but you’ve got to realize that a person’s personality is probably not changing, they’re going to be what they are, and if they haven’t changed by now they’re not going to be. So you have to ask yourself is this giving me the best life possible or not, and a lot of people do stay together for some reason like the kids or something else, but when the kids all they are doing is observing a horrible relationship, what kind of relationship do you think they’re going to have and what impact is that bad relationship having on them in the first place, maybe they would have been better off if you weren’t together. So again I think you try obviously, but at some point you’ve got to realize either I’ve got to decide to just make peace and live with this or I’ve got to make some changes because it’s not only a better life for me, it’s actually a better life for the other person as well and everyone else involved, because if one person is unhappy I’ll guarantee you everybody’s unhappy. Tony: So true and I want to tie in your book on this because of the subtitle, your latest book is The Anticipatory Organization, and the subtitle is how to turn disruption and change into opportunity and advantage, and sometimes change can happen very fast and not to be silly or whatever but when it happens it’s changed, it’s done, it’s disrupted, sometimes it’s not necessarily something we can control but usually we can see it coming, but let’s take it from the point of view of change has occurred, it’s happened, I’ve seen businesses overnight just fall apart and drop. So how can we learn from this and how can we read the signs better to see what’s coming and so forth? Daniel: Well that’s really good, you know what the book is called The Anticipatory Organization but organizations are filled with people, in other words I would like us all to be a lot more anticipatory and a lot less reactionary, because that’s the corollary to it. So normally we wait till a problem happens and then we try to solve it, yet how many times have we all said to ourselves I knew that was going to happen and of course I would respond by so why did you let it. So what I’m teaching people to do is to a methodology to predict problems, both personally as well as professionally, that are going to happen before they happen, so that you have the chance to pre-solve them. As well as to predict the changes and even the disruptions that are going to disrupt you, before they hit there’s a way to do that, in other words it makes disruption a choice. I was just giving a speech yesterday in Washington DC and I said disrupted or disrupter you are going to be only one or the other but you do have a choice, and frankly the choice between the disrupted or the disrupter, I’ll pick disrupter any day. And we think of disruption as a negative thing, yet I’m sure Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon doesn’t see disruption as a negative thing, a matter of fact he loves disruption because he’s creating it. What I’m getting at here is I would like all of us to become positive disruptors, which means instead of looking for the change or the disruption to unseat us from our little world and mess us all up, I would like us to be positive disruptors so that we’re creating something better than it is today. Whether it’s a relationship that’s going nowhere and not working why don’t you disrupt it in a positive way, and it’s either going to go up or it’s going to go down but it’s just drifting along in no where’s Ville is not a great thing. When it comes to business you look at a brick-and-mortar retail right now which is being disrupted by Amazon and the others, the reality is a lot of that brick and mortar is boring, it was boring the salespeople didn’t know anything about the products and you go in there and it was hard to find anything, let’s face it it wasn’t all that great, so I think it needed to be disrupted in this case in a positive way. So instead of brick-and-mortar retail being about chopping it’s going to be more about the experience, and it’s going to be less about buying and more about shopping, because you might buy it later. In other words there’s a future of a brick-and-mortar it’s just not the old future, and there’s a future for a relationship but if it isn’t working the old future why just keep living it out. Tony: Very good points and speaking of that I only know one maybe possibly two people that I’ve ever met, and I’ve interviewed hundreds of millionaires, billionaires in training and so forth, only one for sure had what I would consider a very perfect life no failures, no catastrophes just a great life and it to this person, aside from that everyone else has had a fight and learn. So now that brings up a very good point and that the point is just about everybody in this world comes to expect unpleasant news as just a way of life, we’re all faced we hit failure, a catastrophe, a bad news, something we saw or didn’t see comes about and with your method shall I call it your book, your instructions, what you teach the good news there is that you can get us better prepared and teach us how to anticipate change in disruption. So I’d like to focus on, we talked about this from a couple of facets I like to focus on how to anticipate it, how to see it coming, what kind of signs can we look for on things like this? Daniel: Okay, well you brought up something really important I’ll address very quickly and that is, you can’t anticipate and predict everything, so therefore it’s good to be agile. Agility is reacting quickly after a problem occurs, reacting quickly after disruption disrupts and agility everybody thinks the game is all about agility but it’s kind of like a two-sided coin. I want you to be good at agility, there are unexpected things that happen and you should be able to react to it quickly. But what I’m giving you is the other side of the coin which is very powerful and that is the anticipatory side, and again so that you can keep problems from happening and you can turn change and disruption into advantage. And the key to that is learning how to separate what I call the hard trends that will happen, they’re based on future facts from the soft trends that might happen, they’re based on assumptions that may or may not happen and they carry a lot more risk. So if I can define and by the way it’s not that hard you can it, if I can define a bunch of hard trend future facts and related opportunities, what you have found is something very powerful and that is certainty in a seemingly uncertain world. See right now it seems like everything is uncertain what’s going to happen with the elections, are we going to get a different president when it’s time to vote again, what’s going to happen with Social Security, what’s going to happen with our 401ks, what’s going to happen and go on and on. But you see uncertainty doesn’t empower me to make a bold move, uncertainty does not make me write a big check and if you’re a student wondering what degree to get, uncertainty doesn’t help a lot. On the other hand certainty, when you are certain you have the confidence to make a bold move, you have the confidence to write a big check, you can take that step and move forward with your head up. So instead of looking at all the things I don’t know, all the things I’m uncertain about, what I do is say hey you know what you got to use hard trends to look at all the things you do know, all the things you can be certain about and look at all the amazing opportunities that you can see because that gives you a pathway forward. Just like right now one of the hard trends is demographics, one of those categories and there’s 78 million baby boomers hard trend, hey they’re going to get older they’re not going to get younger, that’s a hard trend we got 10,000 people retiring every single day and that means a lot of knowledge and wisdom and talent is going to be walking out the door with them, of course that part is a soft trend that depends. See the hard trend days are leaving, the soft trend is well they take another knowledge with them or are we creating a knowledge sharing network, are we creating a really powerful mentoring programs, are we capturing the knowledge before they leave or are we just letting it take them with it. See the soft thing I like about a soft trend is if you don’t like it you can change it, the thing I like about a hard trend is you can see change and disruption coming before it happens. Let me give you another example with health care, so right now health care costs have been going up for a long time, seems like there’s no end in sight but yet that is not a hard trend that’s a soft trend you could change it. And if in our mind we think it’s a hard trend unstoppable we don’t try, that’s why health care reforms so far has been nothing but health payment reform, didn’t help you get a better knee, all it did was try to figure out how we’re going to pay for the mess that the aging baby boomers are going to create. But if you realize the rising cost of health care is actually a soft trend that’s an assumption and you could change it, you might realize you could take a new technology like Blockchain and bring transparency and trust and increase security to a healthcare ecosystem today, that has not a lot of security and almost no trust and transparency. Let’s face it right now you don’t realize that an aspirin in the hospital might cost you 30 bucks, well you don’t know how much it costs and you say okay I’ll take an aspirin and you get the bill later. Tony: This is the Tony DUrso show, just ahead the chat continues with Daniel Burrus and Akbar Sheikh, global futurist and millionaire maker. But first it’s time for us to take a short break, see you back here in just a moment. AD: Change starts here; change starts now, join us The Voice America Influencers Channel. AD: You hear that majority of businesses fail; don’t be a statistic, get my book free The Vision Map: Beat the Odds for your Business Success, get it free at TonyDUrso.com/vision and set up your own successful vision map TonyDUrso.com/vision. AD: Hear the stories, be motivated, be inspired join us today Voice America Influencers. Intro: You’re listening to the Tony DUrso show with key influencers, we’d love to hear from you via email, be sure to send questions and comments to Tony@TonyDUrso.com, now back to Tony and his guests. Tony: All right we’re back on the Tony DUrso show, today’s show is with Daniel Burrus and Akbar Sheikh, global futurist and millionaire maker, and now back to the chat with our guests. Daniel: So we will see technologies like Blockchain and virtualization and others able to wipe billions of dollars of waste out of healthcare, but if we think it’s a hard trend you know what we don’t try, if we see that it’s something we can change we do. But I’ve given you an example of is the power of a soft trend, if you don’t like it you know what you can change it so knowing the difference between those two make all the difference. And very quickly before we run out of time on this subject, I want to just mention that there are three categories of hard trends one is demographics and I know we’ve got a lot of what’s called Generation X, as well as Millennials and baby boomers listening to this right now. And of course all of the things that people say about Millennials, and all the things that people say about Gen X really is not real balanced, I mean there are just like with any generalization there are some things that can be true, but frankly a lot of it is missed. And then secondly wherever you are that’s where you are it’s not where you’re going to be, in other words a millennial is what getting older every day, every week, every month, every year and as they get married and they have kids, they have different needs by the way for you Gen Xers same thing is going to happen to you. So you may not buy a station wagon like Tony’s parents did or buy a SUV or a little minivan like some of the Millennials parent did, but you’re going to have to come up with some way if maybe it’s a station wagon owned by Uber, but you’re going to have to get around some on and you’ve got a family to get around with. So you see we aren’t static in time we move, so there’s demographics, there’s government regulation for example a lot of people think well we’re not going to get any more regulation our administration currently doesn’t like regulation, that I would say oh yeah we’re going to get it, you can’t predict it at all but you can predict a lot when you learn how to do it. For example are going to get more regulation around cybersecurity the answer is yes, virtually yes even though we got an administration that doesn’t like regulation. You see there are some hard trends at play you can’t ignore and if you take the time to think those through all of a sudden you can find all kinds of opportunity. And the third category is technology and of course technology lets you do things today that were impossible just a couple of years ago, a quick example I was just in Coeur d’Alene and a guy has come up with a drone that can fly at 70 miles an hour and it can be automatically triggered by a 911 call. So when a 911 call comes in a drone at 70 miles an hour can go right exactly to where the problem is with high-definition cameras and capture what’s going on right on the scene before anybody can get through, that was impossible a couple years ago it isn’t now, what else could you do with that, what else could you do with all of the new tools we have out there. What I want people to do by becoming anticipatory is to see the amazing amount of opportunity, and really when I wrote this book what I was trying to do was blow the fog away from the mountain of opportunity. By the way the fog is the news and the news creates the great fog let’s face it, bad news sells good news doesn’t sell and if there’s no bad news they’ll just give you more high anniversary of bad news. Tony: So true unfortunately. Daniel: I’m just saying that we need to all blow away the fog and when you do all of a sudden you will see so much opportunity, you’ll find some new passport and the certainty to go do it. Tony: I love that, we all want more clarity and I urge the audience to get your book The Anticipatory Organization because we’ve only scratched the surface, and of course I also urge everyone listen to this episode again, there is so much information here that can literally impact your career, your life, your job, your business, whether or not you act your day job or have another business or you’re an entrepreneur, solopreneur there is so much here that impacts all of us. And I would love to also know Daniel aside from reading the book; you got anything else that can further educate us on this topic? Daniel: Well absolutely, I’ve got a learning system that is an award winner and I call it the anticipatory leader and that’s for individuals, and there’s one called the anticipatory organization where obviously organizations and companies. And if people go to Burrus.com my last name you can find out information on that and see how it works and I think you would really like it. And something special for all of the people listening to this podcast, I’m going to actually give you a free hardcover copy of my book, all you have to do is go to wwe.theaobook.com and got to pay a couple of bucks for shipping but you’ll get it in four days and that’s a hardcover copy and I know you’ll love it, that’s why I’m giving it away because I know that you’ll recommend it to a friend and they’ll end up buying it and I’ll end up doing fine. Tony: That’s very nice, thank you so much Daniel and I’m going to repeat that again Theaobook.com? Daniel: Yes, that’s it. Tony: Well thank you so much, once again Daniel Burrus he’s a global futurist, best-selling author and just entrepreneur businessman, strategist, professor, extraordinaire but you’ve never heard that title before. His website is Burrus.com you’ll see the other show and everything else in the show notes here. Thank you once again Daniel insightful, I love this there’s just so much in such a concentrated form that when you have an update for sure you’ve got to come back and incite us more with your studies, your findings and what you’ve learned. Daniel: You got it, my pleasure. Tony: All right, well thank you very much and now we have Akbar Sheikh join us. Akbar is a best-selling author, speaker and coached eight entrepreneurs to seven figures through building out their sales funnel. He was once homeless, overweight and suffered from a crippling anxiety disorder, welcome to the show Akbar, it’s so great to have you on I’ve been looking forward to this. Akbar: Likewise, thanks for having me man. Tony: The millionaire maker, this is incredible I mean what you’ve done for people I’ve seen the testimonials, I’ve been through it is just you’ve changed people’s lives and I can’t wait to just jump in. But first things first Akbar, you’ve got an amazing story can you tell us how it all started for you, what’s your backstory? Akbar: Well yes, it’s a pretty [Inaudible 00:35:46.18] I’ll try to keep it PG it’s pretty wild, gosh you were thinking about it it’s kind of crazy, but yes it’s true we’ve had some success lately we’ve helped eight funnels or eight websites or eight entrepreneurs eight seven figures. However, I had to go through quite a bit of suffering to get to where I am today, to go through about a decade of suffering actually. That suffering includes a messy divorce, very much overweight, completely out of shape, very much unhealthy, nearly dying at the emergency room and actually being homeless, being involved with the wrong crowd, not having good friends and really that’s kind of just the tip of the iceberg but that’s really the world I come from. And what got me out of it was really Tony just never giving up, was just always understanding that there’s more to life and one of the biggest shifts that ever happened to me is really when I stopped trying to sell people, because I had failed in 10 businesses all types of businesses from automobile wholesaling to real estate to selling radio products to selling fashion to dropship aid to Oh God knows what. Failed in all these businesses but in reality as I look back, those businesses really never failed, in reality I was the one that just failed ten times, I failed the business ten times you know why because I gave up, because I gave up each and every time. It wasn’t until I said when I first started my consulting business, it wasn’t until I just said I remember I was making no money doing that and I said to myself wait a minute other people are making money here, why can’t I do it. I said you know what I’m sick of it, I am so sick of it I don’t want to do this anymore, you know what there’s no plan B anymore I am just going to make this work, this is the first time I’ve ever had this conversation myself first and last time, so I’m just not going to give up, I am going to make this work or I’m going to die trying. And it was with that mentality, that knowing that yes of course this can work it’s working for all these other people, but just committing myself to it and say no I’m sure that’s it, I’m done I like this I’m just going to stick to it until it works, and only then with that mentality was I able to finally find some success. Tony: I’m impressed, it reminds me of the adage that you have to fail to succeed and it’s just amazing how, and I’ve interviewed so many people hundreds and hundreds and they failed and they just kept at it and did not stop, which I think is the testament to their success, they did not stop and eventually became tremendously successful. I just still think that that is the important thing, when a person stops then they’re done otherwise you’re still learning. Akbar: Crazy how the universe works, isn’t it? Tony: Yes, and you’ve created eight millionaires which is amazing, you’re there at the very much at the top percentile. Tony: This is the Tony DUrso show, just ahead the chat continues with Akbar Sheikh, but first it’s time for us to take a short break, see you back here in just a moment. AD: We don’t follow we lead, join us The Voice America Influencers Channel. AD: Hey guys, how would you like to be a best-selling author or sell a product or service in high-volume? These are just some examples of what you can do with Clickfunnels, get everything you need to market, sell and deliver your products and services online, without having to rely on a tech team. And I just got you a free account, check it out at TonyDUrso.com/click try it completely free and build your first funnel. You get a simple drag-and-drop web page editor, you can quickly build sales funnels that convert, there’s a smart shopping cart with one-click upsells, there’s email and Facebook marketing automation, in fact you get everything organized in one simple dashboard. Try it completely for free at TonyDUrso.com/click, TonyDUrso.com/click and here’s to your amazing success. AD: This is the Voice America Influencers Channels, be inspired. Intro: You’re listening to the Tony DUrso show with key influencers, we’d love to hear from you via email, be sure to send questions and comments to Tony@TonyDUrso.com, now back to Tony and his guests. Tony: All right we’re back on the Tony DUrso show; this segment of today’s show is with Akbar Sheikh, the millionaire maker. After taking 8 entrepreneurs into the seventh digit club, that means making over a million dollars annually, Akbar actively seeks to help more entrepreneurs cross into seven and eight digit earnings, touted as the only business coaching program you’ll ever need to hit seven figures fast, Akbar delivers. It has an amazing roster of testimonials and guarantees a positive ROI from working with him, and now back to the chat with Akbar. Tony: You only accept companies that not only have a good vision, but they actually give back or help the society and I like to know, why is that factor your first key decision point in accepting clients? Akbar: Oh we’ve rejected enough money to feed villages, first and foremost we are a for-purpose company, we’re here to help entrepreneurs make more so that they can give more, that is what we’re about, that is the crux of our company because I really truly do love entrepreneurs, I think that we make the world a better place. So I really feel that entrepreneurs are the movers and shakers of the world, I’m only here to spread good I feel that we’re all gifted, God has given all of us gifts and I want to use those gifts for good. So I’m not going to spread anything unethical, we’re going to provide, we’re going to promote and help ethical companies scale whose purpose is to make the world a better place. Tony: And I understand also that when you take on the client you become their strategic CMO? Akbar: The reality is look we try to give 10 percent of gross revenue to charities, we distribute it amongst different ones such as funding clean water like we’ve actually developed, we’ve actually built a well in Africa giving an entire village clean water, so we like to fund clean water. We like to sponsor orphans taking care of their medical, food, clothing, education so on and so forth all around the world. We like to give the gift of vision to blind kids by paying for their eye surgeries, the thing is Tony there’s only so much I can do giving 10% or whatever it is, there’s only so much I can do let’s just say we make ten million dollars a year for example that means I can only donate around about a million. But if I can help a lot of entrepreneurs scale to billions and they all start donating to their families, communities and favorite charities well now collectively as an entrepreneurial family, we have made a much larger impact in society. You see the definition of philanthropy and one of them is to simply improve the quality of mankind, and in essence that’s what we’re looking to do here, that’s our mission, is to help entrepreneurs make more so they can give more. Now I had to create a model that I know would create the most success for entrepreneurs, and yes that is a coaching program where I’m very much involved and I’m very much like their CMO chief marketing officer. Well I think part of the reason we’ve helped so many entrepreneurs to seven figures or six figures is because we are particular who we work with, I only work with you if I really feel very strongly that we can help you, otherwise it’s not like some okay well whoever’s willing to pay will take you that’s what most digital marketers do I’m not picking on anybody, but no I’m only going to take you if I know I can help you. Tony: And I want to rule this process out a little bit, so you take on a client you feel that do you like their goals, what they’re doing, you can help them? Akbar: We help entrepreneurs and gain clarity, we help them with their website strategy, you see most entrepreneurs their websites or funnels are not converting, so we’ve identified five things that every website or funnel needs to get the seven figures. Most entrepreneurs they are doing a terrible job at these five things and that’s okay because not everyone can specialize in everything, you have to do what you do best and outsource the rest. So we make sure we help you revamp your funnel and your website so it’s actually converting, number one. Number two you’re going to get your clarity, you’re going to get your vision, we’re going to help you get your mind right, we’re going to teach you how to build a right team, we’re going to teach you seven figure organic strategies, we’re going to teach you if you want a rock or webinar, we’re going to teach you really just how to go from. Here’s what we specialize in, right now something’s not working there’s leaks in your business, we specialize in identifying what those leaks are and fixing them right away so that you can scale. Tony: I’ve heard the stories of people building a funnel every day for months and just never making it, so I understand there comes a time when you need a mentor, someone that’s been there that can guide through. Just like sailing the ship you can you guide through all the shoals and the rocks and the sandbars and everything else to actually lead that ship to victory, so very cool on that. Akbar: Yes most people are very terrible with their messaging, a lot of times you just help them with their messaging, with their copy, with their storing and it really just helps them. I mean so many people it’s like a movie Tony, it’s like a lot of times a movie as the director, producers, actors, big-budget, cinematography, locations, permits oh my god so much goes into it, and the movie could flop if the script is no good. So the script is one of the most powerful elements, words are some of those powerful things on the planet and most people are just not good at it, it’s a difficult skill to acquire regards a lot of time to fine tune and hone that skill. So we specialize in getting your messaging right, because a lot of times your funnel is really not converting because your messaging is just no good. Here’s the thing it’s just not clear, like a lot of times you read this copy I have no idea what you’re doing, Einstein said the genius is to take a complex topic and make simplify it so the masses can understand it, I’ve something called the dumb bomb test when somebody reads your messaging right away can they tell what is this, what’s in it for me and how do I get it, most people fail in dumb bomb test, people’s marketing lacks clarity and that’s what we help them do. Tony: I’ve seen some of the testimonials and over and over and over every single person that I’ve checked out, they make a point to delineate the fact that ethical procedures and ethical operations is your number one, you care that they’re doing it right, they’re doing things by the book and that everything is proper. Kind of a weird question to ask like why, but for the audience why is that so important to scaling a company from where they are up to a million dollars? Akbar: Being ethical and boring? Tony: Yes, why is that so important because in this world today we’re like the dog-eat-dog and there’s a means to an end, but you don’t not break that way you’re very clear-cut from the beginning that it’s got to be all straight. Akbar: Here’s the thing Tony if anyone is lying or being unethical in their marketing it’s simply for two reasons, number one they’re just lazy sorry three reasons number one they’re just lazy, number two they just don’t care and number three they just frankly don’t know any better, they just see so many other people do and they just think it’s okay they just copy one another, they just don’t take it seriously. But think about that for a second, the way you do one thing is the way you do everything, so those people are not taking it seriously that means they’re not taking anything seriously, they’re not taking their health seriously, their relationship seriously, their finances seriously, they can’t succeed because they’re not serious. If you’re not being ethical and your marketing is just not serious, I can’t help you scale that’s one side of the spectrum. The other side is hey listen I’m trying to collect blessings over here by helping good companies grow, I’m not here trying to collect bad deeds by helping unethical companies grow, because we got to understand for every action there’s a reaction, it’s about what am I spending my time on. Let’s just say you have some sugary drink that’s like a sixty grams of sugar, and I’m promoting the hell out of you and I’ve got you up to seven eight figures whatever and you’re selling all these high sugary drinks to all these kids all over the place, that’s terrible why would I do that, I’m not making the world a better place I’m making it worse. Why would I do that, for what for money you got to be kidding me you can’t buy me like that, we want to promote good things that improve the quality of mankind. Tony: Akbar you’ve got integrity I really like that, that really shows and it shows in how you take your clients which is select, just right up to the top I really like that. And I also like the fact that you’re here to get blessings, I’ve never heard anyone put it that way I like that a lot that’s very cool I’m going to use that. Akbar: Please do. Tony: Now one of the facets in the customer growing is not just selling something, but you also help them manage an online course and sell their information and tell us a little bit about how that all works. Akbar: Listen people can package their products in many different ways, people can do e-commerce, they can do coaching, they can have a course, they can do group coaching, they can do events yes that depends on the business, but there’s a lot of different module, a lot of different modes of delivery most people are not taking advantage of it, most people don’t know how to do it, most people don’t know what to do they don’t understand the potential. You see there’s too many shiny objects out there Tony, there’s too is shiny objects out there you see the marketing world is screwed up our minds we see over 4,000 ads a day, the average human has an attention span of seven seconds, the average goldfish has an average attention span of eight seconds, so our minds are a mush. So I need to help entrepreneurs refocus and really kind of focus on their core offerings and help grow that before they get sidelined with the next shiny object. Tony: I like that, I’m surprised though that we have less attention span than the goldfish. Akbar: That’s true, that’s a study done by Microsoft. Tony: I know we’re all goldfish here. Akbar another factor that you use is how you call them power players, how they communicate, can you just take us through this and tell us all about it? Akbar: Power players communicate effectively, they communicate honestly there’s good use, I mean there’s really a lot of good use for entrepreneurs, and your competition generally speaking is stinky stood. I had a guy today he was looking for a coach he signed up for five, he heard about me and my calendar is full for my sales team and there wasn’t any availabilities for a week. So he booked an appointment for a week but he wasn’t a rush, he’s like oh I want a coach now, he booked five other appointments with five other coaches, this guy wants a coach and a mentor right away none of those people showed up to the calls, none of the coaches showed up to the appointment. Well to be fair one of them did have some calendar issue and he had some tech issue which I still feel is nonsense, but none of them really showed up, the follow-up wasn’t there, none of them showed up. I spoke to him today one week after he booked the call and five no-shows later and guess what we showed up to the call, we showed up prepared, we treated him with respect, we answered the questions, we did things the right way and here we go he signed up to be a client of ours. Tony: And we know he’s going to become a millionaire as well, because that’s what you do you’re so modest. Akbar: That’s the goal, it depends on the person they need to be able to implement and they need to be able to not give up. Tony: Right, now in your process you’ve been there done it all, of course you can’t literally type all the keystrokes and do everything for everyone but you guide them, you give them information, you tell them what to do next, is it sort of like you create little blueprints and say this week you should do this and this, next week you’re going to do this and this how does that work? Akbar: You know Tony that’s a great question I’ll be honest with you, we’re not super structured like that because it’s more custom tailored. See it’s like what’s going on in your business, what’s going wrong in your business let’s take a look at that and let’s fix that, instead of you learning a bunch of stuff that you might not need to. Tony: I got you makes very good sense. Akbar: I thought eight funnels, hit seven figures of people all over the world across all different industries e-com, courses, services, physical locations all different things. I mean recently my gosh our testimony folder is full one guy sent us a video he was crying, literally crying because we helped him get enough money to put a down payment on his first house, that was one of my favorites definitely. Then we had a lady just had her first, on the flip side you talk a lot about seven figures hey listen not everybody wants that, we help somebody just hit their first $10,000 a month, somebody just hit their first $40,000 a month, someone just crossed $250,000 we just help someone land a $650,000 contract. So I mean the results are all over the world, all over the different niches and industries the implementers are seeing success there’s no doubt about it. I mean listen you got to put in the work, you have to implement, you can’t give up, we worked very hard, there’s no magic pills out there okay there’s no flip a switch and you’re a millionaire. If you’re willing to put in the work and you’re not going to give up, we actually guarantee results. I don’t know anyone else who does it, we stick with you Tony, we stick with you we keep working with you until you have a positive ROI within the your investment with us. Tony: I saw that on your website that you will stick with the person, you don’t drop them like the redheaded stepchild you stay with them until they are successful. And one thing we mentioned a couple times so that the public understands what we’re talking about, we say this word funnel a couple times, seven-digit funnel can you kind of break this apart a little bit so that the audience understands what we’re talking about? Akbar: Listen a funnel is nothing more than just a website, it’s actually genius marketing someone came up with this word, this buzzword named funnel but the reality is the funnel is just a series of websites that does whatever you want it to do. So in essence listen I come from a lineage of entrepreneurs, I’m very well familiar with all the types of businesses wholesale, retail, offline, online, wholesaling, manufacture everything you can think of I’m very familiar with all these industries, I can confidently say that the sexiest business model I have ever seen is online business by far. I mean it is so beautiful your website is your online store, your website or funnel is your online store and talk about like low overhead, talk about freedom, I love it most people fail by the way. The statistics, listen most people fail at everything I mean I think what is it I don’t know ninety-eight percent of online marketers entrepreneurs, ninety eight percent of online entrepreneur stuff like that don’t make it and it’s the same exact thing with weight loss. Ninety eight, ninety nine percent of people who try to lose weight fail, it’s a multi-billion dollar industry I know I failed I tried to lose weight for ten years I failed all the time, I spent all sorts of money and all sorts of programs exercise programs, supplements nothing worked because it’s the same thing I kept giving up I didn’t stick to it. But when I got my mind right and I decided to commit, then and only then did I lose 60 pounds you see what I’m saying. But that’s the thing having a successful online business is extraordinarily sexy, it’s full of rewards, but the reality is you know who really reaps these rewards is really like the top two percent and the bottom ninety eight percent they all could have it, they could have it all but they just give up, they just give up. Akbar: They can have it all if they hire. Akbar: You know listen if people just give up all the time you can hire me a hundred times it’s not going to work. Tony: Alright, so you’ve got to not want to give up and continue on no matter what, you’ve got to have some character, some ethical product here that actually helps society, you apply to Akbar and he checks it out and if it seems like a good fit, you say okay let’s check it out. Akbar: Here’s the thing my cousin wanted to start an online business, now this guy’s pretty smart I live in Dallas he’s in New Jersey. He flew over to me and said hey I’m coming down, that’s pretty smart because he’s family I can’t charge him if somebody else wants to come spend the day with me it cost a good amount of money, so he took advantage of the fact that we are family. And it made me think for a second, say hey this is interesting what am I going to tell my own family member, this guy’s like my best friend we grew up together, what am I going to tell him on how do you succeed online and I boiled it down to these three things, number one find a mentor, find a coach. Number two implement, do exactly what they tell you, and number three, don’t give up boom that’s it, follow that three steps that’s my three-step formula for succeeding online. Tony: I like that. Akbar and if people go to your website and I’m going to spell it its Akbarsheikh.com if they go there can they reach out to you, can they ask you questions, are you contactable through there? Akbar: We’ve made hundreds of videos and right now I just put up what I believe to be the best video we’ve ever made, on how to get a blueprint to making seven figures online. You go to my website that’s the first thing you will see, if you love what you see there’s actually a button where they’ll give you an opportunity to book a call with us and to see for the right fit to see if we can help you out. Tony: I love it, well audience go to Akbarsheikh.com check out that video, I’ve been up and down that homepage absolutely amazing with the testimonials and what they do, and if you’re a good fit please reach out to Akbar, you’ll be his next millionaire I’m sure because he is so passionate, he’s very humble Akbar what you’ve done in this interview it’s like almost two different people, because I think you put your money where your mouth is sort of thing, you don’t talk big, you don’t boast but your results are freaking amazing, absolutely love it. Akbar: Well yes I know I prefer it that way, we let the results speak for itself, if there’s not much to say let’s get to work. Tony: Well great, once again Akbar Sheikh the millionaire maker, you can go to his website Akbarsheikh.com check it out. Akbar thank you so much, I wish you so much success and many more millionaires. Akbar: Well that’s my number one secret is just keep giving, so that’s my number one advice to everyone just keep giving, my website is spelt Akbarsheikh.com just keep giving and you can’t lose, I’ll talk to you guys soon. Tony: Great, thank you very much Akbar Sheikh, we’ll keep giving thank you and for my amazing audience thanks so much for listening. Remember success awaits those who persevere and remain steadfast despite the odds, be righteous join me on the next episode of the Tony DUrso show. Outro: We hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s edition of the Tony DUrso show with his key influencers, be sure to tune in again next Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern Time, 1 p.m. Pacific time on The Voice America Influencers Channel.