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. 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. Moe Abbas

Tony:

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Let's see what we can learn through the success of others. Here's some info on Moe Abbas who chats with us about free marketing training. Moe, a serial entrepreneur who had early success creating one of the most successful construction companies in Canada. His most recent venture is changing the education system with GenM offering students free marketing courses and training to get them employed. Here we go. Welcome to the show Moe. So good to have you on with us today.

Moe:

Thank you for having me. Tony, great to be here.

Tony:

Moe this is a very good subject to have Pre-marketing training. We all want to understand more. We have a lot of entrepreneurs and business people in the audience. We love to know how this all works. But before we get into that first things first, I'd love to know Moe how did it all start for you? What's your back story?

Moe:

Yeah, I guess it all started back in 2007 when I started my first business. It was an Ottawa General Contractors and it was me and a few friends in a basement office. We didn't have any money. You know, it was a classic story. We need to grow our business we had no money. So what we would do is to grow our business we work with students who need experience and volunteer and our company would help train them to launch their careers. Like Christine Baxter's for example that she came to Ottawa general contractors back in 2007 and I work personally with her, helped her coach or trainer. I ended up hiring her and you know, fast forward seven years later, she's the chief financial officer of Vancouver General Contractors. This is like a life-changing thing that we did with many students. And for us, it was a cute way to grow our business.

I mean, we didn't have any money, right? So we couldn't pay people a lot of money and it just wasn't there. And for us, as we grew the company, we actually ended up hiring about a quarter of our staff. From these volunteers, interns turned out to be a great way of getting talent. And you know, I did that for over a decade. I created one of the largest renovation companies in the country. And to give you a background, I didn't go to school. I am a high school dropout, I taught myself business. I used to go door to door when I was 12 years old to help my family, we didn't have any money. I have just been an entrepreneur my whole life really. And you know, I should just learn from books at the bookstore. And I found it to be a more effective way to learn.

Then post-secondary. I ended up hiring a lot of my friends who went to post-secondary and fast forward here, 10 years later I'm working on a social media app. It was a project with one of my cofounders, Richard, and again we're hiring these volunteer interns and he turns to me, he's like, man, well we have like 200 applicants here and nobody has experience. He's like, you've been training these students for a decade and helping them launch their career. Do you know the problem you're helping your students solve? I never really thought about it from the student's side before I was thinking about the value I gained as a business owner and solving my own problem. And that conversation really led to an investigation of the education system. And you know, from that investigation we discovered that 56% of graduates are underemployed and 73% are employed outside their field study.

It a huge problem. It costs over a hundred thousand dollars to get a degree and it takes four years and it's not getting people hired. And for us that led into a conversation about building a marketplace where, you know, we said maybe small business owners can help train students for the job market. I mean, we did it. Why can't other students? It was really valuable to us as well. And then, you know, we started saying, ah, that they can't happen. Like how do you deal with, how do you know businesses want to do this? I have no students who are willing to volunteer with businesses, how to do a labor law. Like how do you deal with all that stuff? Then we said, you know what? You know, maybe there's something where we could probably solve those problems, but how do we even know that people want this kind of product?

So what we ended up doing is we turn it over to co-founder, Marco, and we like Marco, we need a landing page. So he whips together a landing page, we put it up and we started sending students to it. We didn't have a product at this point by the way. We use just like, you know before I used to build a product and launch it and not sure if there was a demand or not. I lost a lot of money doing that. So this time we're a little, smarter about it. Sort of like, let's check the demand first, who started following students see the landing page and the conversions are just astronomical. And we did the same thing on the business side, said, wow, this is like huge demand for this. But like, you know, you know, maybe there's something else out there right now. So we looked at the market and so how do students get work experience in this co-option internships.

But in reality, like only like a couple of percentage of students will get a paid internship because businesses don't want to pay to train students. It's just like there's not going to do it. Not every people get that opportunity. And then you have an unpaid internship. But the problem with unpaid internships is they don't scale appropriate labor law issues. It's not something we really wanted to build out. It didn't see as a good model for most students and businesses. And then you have the learning platforms, the problem you learning platforms like you know, I don't even, you can get some skills and learn some stuff but you just don't get any work experience. So we saw a market opportunity, right? And we had this really cool insight. So after working with like, I don't know, maybe like 50 plus students, over the last 10 years we knew how to work with them.

And then we had this insight where we'd work with them one on one and it was essentially a skills transfer from a professional to a novice, something we ended up coining as a digital apprenticeship. So this is the cornerstone of GenM. GenM is a two-sided marketplace. On the one side, you have students, and I'll give you an example of real students. Sarah Miner, She was a stay at home mom. When I say students, I mean like anybody who just wants to learn. By the way, don't actually have to be in school, so Sarah Miner wants to switch careers, but she couldn't go back to school. It was too costly and it was too big of a time investment, so she discovers GenM she creates a profile on GenM. She did the full marketing curriculum on our platform and then she started an apprenticeship.

Sarah Miner was serious, you really want to the launch career, so she did eight apprenticeships and then she got certified as a digital marketer. Now she's earning money as a freelancer and is able to support her family and you can imagine before she couldn't even talk about digital marketing. Now she's like, I ran an ad campaign for this company. I was a content marketer for this company. I ran the email marketing for this company. These are the results I did. I had to run social media for this company, so she was able to showcase real-world experience. Stock her resume up, really talk and really become a marketer through GenM for free costs her nothing to do as you do within six months, which really showed first of all how much, you know, work ethic she had and how fast you can launch a career these days with a, with a platform like GenM and on the other side you have businesses and you know, this is small business.

I'll give you an example and it's Ben Semen and he had a startup, it was a new company and they're selling speakers online as an e-commerce startup. And Ben Semen didn't have any money, right? It was just him and a co-founder and they got to figure out how to market his business and they wanted to do a Kickstarter campaign, but they were just like, yeah, it's so much work to do. And just building up the product. And he discovers GenM creates a profile, he assigned some coursework to students or they, it's just clicking, click, click, what do you want them to be trained in? And then he started an apprenticeship with two of them. Those apprentices help them launch a Kickstarter campaign, he certified them and they're still part of his company today.

Tony:

Absolutely amazing. Moe, it seems like you've discovered that a good apprenticeship is an answer to the problem with the current education system. Plus the fact that the education system things change so rapidly. You could go to school, come out with a degree and it's in a way worthless because the whole industry has changed so much. It's, it's turned over so fast. You've really cracked the code on this is very, very impressive. And what about the business side? How does a normal business company, a business owner, whether it's a solopreneur or a larger company, how can someone be a good mentor and take care of and deal with a certain, give us an idea of that flow and how that apprenticeship actually works.

Moe:

Absolutely. Absolutely. So I mean like to give you an idea for the businesses. And first they have a very compelling value proposition, right? So show the businesses they pay a small membership fee to access our marketplace tools and support. It's $49 a month as part of that fee, the membership, they have access to the marketplace and they can find a student marketer who markets their business unpaid as part of their training. So they can do things like social media, content marketing, you know, marketing. They act like a marketing assistant or an apprentice as we call them.

Tony:

Moe this is, this is substantial for $49 a month. I can get a person working on my company, $49 a month.

Moe:

Yeah, it's crazy. Like you for us. It's not like we set the price

Tony:

It's amazing! How many hours, how many hours would that kind of give us? Or is it, does it go by hours or does it go by the task?

Moe:

So we define the apprenticeship, you know, 10 hours a week for three months, but you can get another apprentice at the end of that. Or you can go hire the one you're working with. So you're gonna have 40 hours of help from the student marketer and you have thousands you can pick from. Like, we have a massive marketplace set today and you can find the best fit for your business. That's it. $49. You get about 40 hours and help. But it's, it goes beyond that. And not only do you get the extra help you get at the vetted talent pool, but you could also hire from the future and you really get to give back and help a student launch their careers. And I think, you know, that goes a long way, especially as young founders, you know, and really give back to the community.

That to me is one of the most impactful things that we've, we've done in our, in our platform. And yes, you do need some marketing experience. This is not for everyone. Like if you run a mechanic shop and you just want somebody to do your social media and you don't want to talk to them and you don't know anything about marketing, this isn't the platform for you, right? This is something where you have to at least have an idea where you can provide feedback and guidance to a student. And that usually takes about 30 minutes to one hour a week and a phone call with the student. You've got to be able to task them. Although we are building out with tasking in our platform and templates you could use to make it really, really easy. We're going to make this like, it's just the amount of value we're adding through our tools is just crazy. And those are all available in the membership fee at no additional costs. But ultimately you gotta be able to really give back to the student because they're unpaid and because you know, it's just part of the community we've built. Yeah, we're really in the relationship business.

Tony:

This is Moe Abbas, Free Marketing training and you can find him at genm.co. I'll spell that. That's GE N as in Nancy and then M as in Mary, G E N M.coe Moe this is really,

Moe:

It's genm.co There is no M so it's not .co we don't have a .com right now. That's a lot of money for that .com for now. We'll get it later. So as gen M, like generation millennials or whatever. .C O.

Tony:

Well, thank you. I think it was my autocorrect that type that went in and put, gave it to.com. All right, well scratch that everyone. G E N M.co alright this is Moe Abbas talking about free marketing training. This is the Tony dear soul show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Just to the check continues about free marketing training and becoming influential with Moe Abbas and Teresa de Grosbois But first, it's time for us to take a short break. See you back here in just a moment.

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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 at Tony DUrso.com now back to Tony and his guests.

Tony:

All right, we're back on the Tony DUrso show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Let's see what we can learn through the success of others. Today's show is about free marketing training and becoming influential with Moe Abbas and Teresa de Grosbois. The most recent venture is changing the education system with GenM his company offers students free marketing courses and training to get them employed while small businesses get the opportunity to work with these eager students to train them as they help their businesses grow. Very cool all right. And now back to the chat with Moe. Moe on the business side, you've got to train the person half hour, an hour a week, have a phone call, give them tasks and so forth and the student will go off and do these, give us some examples of how the business can actually grow with this help from those students?

Moe:

Yeah, absolutely, I'll give an example. Like, you know, you, you know, a business, for example, come to GenM or someone in eCommerce product. Okay. And you are doing some social media, you might have a few emails being sent out to your community. And that's really the extent of your marketing you might be doing over the paid ads. I would bring a student on and I'd be like, okay, like you know, I've been doing email marketing but I haven't really had time to really put into my email campaigns. And email marketing is actually one of the best returns on investments you could make as a business. By the way, is email marketing. So you can get a student to sit there for 10 hours a week, look at your emails, create new funnels, create different subject line and track the conversions on different subject lines on the best one on the best copy for your emails, create a cadence on your email marketing and really set up your email marketing campaign and you get it automated within three months.

And then you need to get another student after that, continue doing that and overlook that work. Or maybe you can get them to do some social media for you. Create like every week and Paul or you know, several times a week or so on Facebook, engage in comments. You know, content marketing is really popular. Like we had one of our students would reach out to different businesses and students, one of our apprentices on GenM. I'm so you actually use apprentices here as well. And they'd reach out to different students and businesses and they would get testimonials and they ended up creating a really long form, in-depth interviews of businesses that were then pushed into email marketing. You also sent it out in an email marketing campaign to our community and she did one of these a week and it was really impactful to building our brand and community up. And so this is just some ideas that you can utilize for your apprentice. So it really depends on your business and what kind of work you do.

Tony:

Well these are very interesting and I'm curious because let's call it a moderate turnover. Every three months I believe you said you get a new student or new intern and I understand that one can, first of all, document everything they do. So you don't have to retrain somebody from the beginning. So the new intern would just come in, pick up the training that was documented and carry on. But I'm also curious on the business side, do you do any training to the company on how they can best utilize that intern to really maximize the growth of their company?

Moe:

Absolutely. So we actually are investing very heavily over the next six to 12 months on what we call it fulfillment. Okay. So there are two parts to our business. One's matching, we want to match you with the best student possible. How are you going to have reasonable expectations as well? Like you're not going to get a seasoned 20 year as a student. It's not going to happen. Some are great, some are okay, some are bad. It's up to you to filter as a business set reasonable expectations and we will find the best candidate for you. Now that's part of the half of our business. The other half is the fulfillment. So what does this mean? We want you to successfully work with the students that we don't like right now. You made a good point. Like you can like create the training documents for the student and then when you get another warm, they can just continue with that documentation you've created.

Right now sure you could do that. But in the future, what we're actually creating, we wouldn't do all that for you. We don't want you to do all that work. We're going to have templates. It clicks click now you have templated working with Students, we're going to have a checklist for them to complete. We're going to be able to track the time they're working. We've already rolled out ratings and reviews. You can actually provide ratings and reviews to your apprentice on a weekly basis. So it's really important for us to make the experience, you know, we don't want you doing basic work, we want you to focus the relationship on feedback and guidance. So as we build out more of these fulfillment tools, you know, it's going to add, make it even easier for the businesses to collaborate with the students.

Tony:

Moe, this is really interesting and I'm very interested in myself as well. There are multiple categories here that we can immediately think of off the top of our heads. Okay. I can do email marketing. We talked about it. I could grow my social media, we talked about it. Can we go over some of the categories to expand our thinking on this? What can we use an intern for? Because of course we can use an intern for everything, but what are some of the good specialties that you have great success with, such as, for example, helping to introduce, refer or build a business partnership. Can you give us some examples and successes of what you've had?

Moe:

I mean, I've seen it. I've seen the students help launch Kickstarter campaigns. I've seen students do videos. It's, it's hard to find that, so you gotta get a filter for that video content for businesses, for marketing, I've seen a lot of funnels, you know, could use in click funnels, so setting up landing pages for businesses and the click funnels and then running some ads to those funnels and checking the conversions on that. You know, that's been really cool. I've seen businesses actually through podcasts reach out. They can podcast guests, create sequences for podcast guests. I've seen students create chatbots for, uh, social media and uh, you know, other platforms. So I've seen a lot of that as well. You know, I've seen businesses create really just kind of customized projects as well to their specific business needs. Some help with Amazon, some marketing or Amazon storefront, some with Shopify storefronts I seen a lot of them, you know, one for example matched with a local student through GenM who just happened to be in the same city and they're helping them set up an event, a collision conference. So actually I'm actually meeting them next week cause I'll be in Toronto for that event and she was just blown away from the student and she's sitting up, she's going to be a collision with her students her apprentice. And so she helped her set up an event.

Tony:

This is the Tony DUrso show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Just to head the check continues about free marketing training and becoming influential with Moe Abbas and Teresa de Grosbois But first, it's time for us to take a short break. See you back here in just a moment.

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Tony:

All right, we're back on the Tony DUrso show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Let's see what we can learn through the success of others. Today's show is about free marketing training and becoming influential with Moe Abbas and Teresa de Grosbois And now back to the chat with our guests.

Moe:

A contests a is another one I've seen students help set up contests or businesses. You know, I've seen them set up referral programs. I've seen them set up, you know, like it's the question is what do you need for your business? So what channels work for you as it isn't this affiliate marketing? I've seen some help set up our work with affiliate marketers. Yeah, those are some ideas.

Tony:

Thanks for sharing that end. I'm going to

Moe:

Micro-influencers sourcing micro-influencers and partnering with them.

Tony:

No, this is great. We've totally got to just, and I just want to let the audience know this is Moe Abbas's pre-marketing training. Boom your business, expand your business, get interns at an amazing rate and you can find out more about this at genm.co. That's GE N as in Nancy, M as in Mary, G E N M. CO. Moe. Thank you so much for telling us about this and explaining this. You've got something really good here.

Moe:

Thank you Tony. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Teresa de Grosbois

Tony:

And now we have Teresa de Grosbois joining us who chats about becoming influential. Teresa's the number one bestselling author of Mass Influence a four times international bestselling author. She teaches marketing courses around the globe to business leaders and entrepreneurs on how to create massively successful word of mouth campaigns. Here we go. Welcome to the show Teresa. So great to have you on with us. Thank you.

Teresa:

Oh, it's a joy to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

Tony:

Thank you. And this is quite a topic I love talking about becoming influential and for our audience. Before we get really into this, perhaps let's start from the beginning. How did it all start for you, Theresa? What's your backstory?

Teresa:

I love that question. You know, I probably first became fascinated with the world of influence around the age of three because I had none. You know, I'm actually from a really large Northern Canadian family and I was the youngest, so, you know, like a lot of youngest children. I spent a lot of time trying to get heard, trying to get listened to. And so, you know, the whole world of importance and influence just became a fascination for me, you know, and, and go figure that 50 years later I would find myself as a global authority on the topic because I think the seeds of the passion were sown very young,

Tony:

That is quite something. Let's talk about that. You wrote a book, which is great evolutionary, and the title for the audience's Mass Influence The Habits of the Highly Influential. I'd love to talk about this, how this book came about and we'll get into some habits

Teresa:

That sounds like fun. The book essentially I wrote because I meet so many people that don't understand the world of influence, you know, and I really wanted to help good people like everyday heroes who just want to create change and do something good in the world to understand how important influence is. Because a lot of us, you know, our inner dialogue or self-sabotage, those stories we tell ourselves about, I'm not good enough, I'm not strong enough, I'm not smart enough. Those flare-ups, even more, the minute we think about stepping into leadership or really stepping into our own dreams of making a significant difference in the world. And so it's really important that you know the good people everyday change agents of the world understand that in fact the world is calling you to step into leadership and you need to recognize that it might just be your own self-sabotage that's stopping you from being a major contributor.

Tony:

That's a really good point, you know, for a very long time. And I mean long, I never thought of myself as a leader. I don't think I do to this day, but for whatever reason, maybe it's the self-sabotage. It was just something was just like, Oh no, I couldn't be a leader. No, not me. Why is that Theresa? You know, why do people have this?

Teresa:

You know, it is a fascinating conversation because there's a lot of research on this now that most people regular everyday people start creating self-limiting beliefs at the very earliest stages when they're first learning a language. You know, in those very first failures you have in life, you start telling yourself stuff to make it all make sense. You might think, I'm too small, I'm too big, I'm not good at sports, I'm not good at Math, I'm too white, I'm too black, I'm too tall, I'm too short. And whenever you start telling yourself at those young ages can become repetitive themes in our life where we take out of the running of things because we're convinced we're not good at it. And that self-sabotage is something that a very early version of you invented. One of the reasons I do a lot of inner child work and a lot of my programs and a lot of the work we do in the evolutionary business council is because making friends with your inner child who's the source of not only your ego, but a lot of your self sabotaging beliefs is actually the start of getting past all over those places that your hands hamstringing yourself.

Tony:

Very interesting. And now what are these habits that we should develop to become, I guess more influential to become a better leader? What do we have to work on?

Teresa:

Well, I talked about 10 different habits in my book and I think the most foundational one is really understanding that becoming influential is as easy as breathing. And you know, there was a time when we all thought breathing was hard, right? We, we came out of that beautiful warm environment. You know, we're in the womb, suddenly we're born some idiot whacks us on the back. We have to learn the skill of breathing and about a minute it hurts like heck, and then all of a sudden you master the skill of breathing and you never really think about it again. Like nobody goes through life thinking, wow, I've got to breathe 24 seven today. Where am I going to find the time? This is something we naturally do, right? Influence is very similar to that. It's once you understand the principles on which influences are based and you really understand how simple it is, it's not something that consumes your time. You just naturally move through your day doing it.

Tony:

This is the Tony DUrso show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Just to head the chat continues about free marketing training and becoming influential with Moe Abbas and Teresa de Grosbois. But first, it's time for us to take a short break. See you back here in just a moment.

We don't follow we lead, join us the voice America influencers channel.

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 at tonydurso.com now back to Tony and his guests.

Tony:

All right, we're back on the Tony DUrso show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Let's see what we can learn through the success of others. Today's show is about free marketing training and becoming influential with Moe Abbas and Teresa de Grosbois and now back to the chat with Teresa

Teresa:

And the most foundational principle of influence. Then the one that's the most like breathing is that you can't make yourself famous or influential. You can only give influence to other people and they can give it back to you. So when you watch about how highly influential people operate, they are constantly spending their own currency of influence because the more you spend your influence, the more influence you get. It's quite interesting. It works very differently than monetary currency. The currency of influence actually grows the more you invested in other people.

Tony:

Theresa, when you say spend the currency of influence, do you mean in terms of if you're an influencer or at some level, I presume everyone, of course, is at some level an influencer and if you're not good on social media and all of a sudden you are, does that mean then Teresa post and communicate and use that?

Teresa:

Yeah, absolutely. We all have influence, right? Influences are just doing people know, like and trust you to take action based on what you suggest. Right. And then the mass influence just does a lot of people know, like, and trust you. Right. And that's still a little different than fame. Fame is just doing a lot of people know, no, you, to be famous. They don't have to like you or trust you, right? So you can be famous without influence, influence, but you can't have mass influence without some level of fame. And so when I say spend the influence you have, you all know people deserve someone to stand up for them and say, Hey, this person's work is great. You know, and it could be someone that you want to be in a relationship with the business. It might just be that some employees in the bank did a great job for you. Do you take the time to walk over to the manager and say, you know, that person was awesome. I think that should go on their performance review. So when you meet people that deserve kudos, that deserve praise, do you naturally stop pause, and praise them because highly influential people do that all the time. They are constantly shedding a light on the good work of others, especially those they deeply respect and admire, right? There doesn't need to be anything smarmy or inauthentic about this, but when you see people who you respect and admire, share their work, shout them out, post them on social media, interview them on your show, right? It's important that you start creating some dialogue around who you think is worth it for other people to look at.

Tony:

Those are some great points and I want to focus a little bit more on that. When we're out, my wife and I and something exemplary occurs, I'll actually ask her, I say, would you please post this on Yelp cause she knows that stuff and she'll write a review on some great restaurants, some great service, some something great that occurred with some employee at some store. I don't necessarily do it myself cause my wife knows the Yelp and we know that that's very important for business and retail stores. Is that all right or do I have to do it? Would I have to actually do it myself in my name?

Teresa:

Well that's a beautiful first step, right? Real influence starts to really solidify though when you start building relationships with other influential people, this is actually the second habit, right? So the first habit is just getting in the habit of giving out influence. But the next foundational habit is around making sure that you know, who else has influenced that you respect and admire and phasis on respect and admire. Cause you want it to be authentic. And when you work to get in a relationship with them, you're going to give them influence. It's kind of like when you want to meet the new neighbor, you're going to bring them lasagna and Apple pie. Well, when you want to meet someone influential, the thing you do is you bring them some form of influence. This is where a lot of people fall down. A lot of mistakes made in this realm because people get nervous around the influential and they do a lot of really weird things.

Tony:

I'm thinking about this now, I interview a lot of people. I've interviewed hundreds. My audience knows who they are, they're listed on my site. I don't necessarily see anything that the guests do afterward. So I'll interview them on my show. So what else would I do? How else would this system work?

Teresa:

Well, you're a beautiful example actually of a lot of the habits that I teach Tony because you know, first of all, I would come on your show any day of the week because I love what you stand for. I love what you do. I think your work is brilliant. And so for me, coming on your show is all about authenticity. Like I've gotten to the point as the leader of an organization reaches over 600 million people, you know, I'm at the point where I can be choosy about which shows I go on now right.

Tony:

And I'm honored and flabbergast.

Teresa:

Thank you. And I don't say that, you know, to lands army, I say that because it's important as someone who understands how influence works, that to know that you don't need to align yourself with people, you don't authentically respect and admirer right. And it's okay to choose. It's okay to choose who you support and okay to choose who you align with at the same time. I love how what you do gives influence to other people and that actually helps your show get bigger. Cause every time you interview someone who's influential, what are they, what do they naturally turn around and do they turn around and do what I just did? I love Tony DUrso the show is. Awesome. Let me put that on my Facebook. Let me put that on my LinkedIn. Let me put that on my Twitter and influential people will naturally create that. I call it a cycle of reciprocity. That's a term coined by Dr. Shawn Dre Perron who's, of course, one of the top communications experts in North America, but there's this cycle of reciprocity that's created amongst influential people of, wow, I love your work. You love mine, let's help each other and therefore influence grows. So the best thing you can do, anyone can do to grow their influence is starting thinking about who around you already have influenced that you think is doing really great work. Go out and start helping them and see what starts coming back to you.

Tony:

This is Teresa de Grosbois becoming influential and you can find her at teresadegrosbois.com and I'm going to spell that first Teresa's, T, E R E S, A in this beautiful French last name is D E G R O S B O, I S.com Teresadegrosbois.com. You'll see it in the show notes. Teresa, thank you again. This is great. And it's true for when I first started three and a half years ago or so. Of course, I was started with zero audiences and now it's quite large. And I do believe that when I get on those that appreciate the show, they will then let their audience or their fans and their friends know about it. And that does help me grow. So I sincerely appreciate the kudos and the referrals on my shelf. Thank you.

And one of the things we're talking about habits, I still want to talk about some, but one thing that piques my interest here is as part of what you told, you talk about focus. So how does focus deal in the habit? Because not to be confused, but a habit is something we do like breathing. Most of us I believe don't think about breathing. And I know, I know someone who has asthma that does think about breathing a lot. So we have that in the mix. But normally a habit is something you just do all the time, eating or whatever and you don't have to think about it. So how does focus on dealing with the habit or is this another step or another lesson and becoming influential?

Teresa:

Yeah. Well, one of the things you do see with really influential people is they usually have one specific area they focus on becoming influential in. So something they stand for, some cause, something they teach. Some audience they want to reach because if you scatter your focus all over the place. If you're just helping a ton of people in a ton of different industries, you will become more influential, but it's not as powerful and it's not as concentrated. So it's important to figure out what are you really passionate about. I love how Aristotle first talked about this in his work. He talked about the difference between the different types of happiness, right? He talked about hedonistic happiness, that's sort of appropriate happiness that comes from those fleeting joys in life, that really nice latte we drink or those special hugs from your child hedonistic moments are appropriate, but they're not lasting.

The minute that thing has gone, happiness is gone. And he also talked about eudaimonia or unionists' happiness, which is the happiness that comes from knowing you're a deep contribution to the world. And that you really understand, what your life is about when you're a mission on this planet is. So this habit is all around figuring out what is your mission in life? What are you going to focus on? What are you going to make the focus of your influence? And a good place to look is what really lights you up. What brings you joy to actually be known for or to do for others? You know, maybe there's a cause, maybe you just enjoy bringing fun to other people through comedy or entertainment. Put figure out what that thing is that you want to give to the world at large or your community at large. And that's the thing, you should be focusing on.

Very good points. And I would say personally, I am blessed to know my purpose, my vision, to know where I'm going and what my life's mission is. I totally get it and I totally know where I'm at and I'm so happy to have found that. So for those that haven't, I have a good feeling. I have this hunch that Teresa here can help us, so if you don't have that all worked out, check her out at teresadegrosbois.com. Now a preponderance of my audience is entrepreneurs, small business owners. There are some direct corporate-level executives and so forth in the mix. A lot of us speak or should be speaking and if you're not a speaker in the audience you need to be, you need to skill even if your career-minded and you want something and you're listening to my show to find what else you can do in your life. Speaking publicly is so important. You need to learn to skill. There's so much I could just do shows upon this after show and Teresa, you talk about the habit or the principle that people need to get in place in order to be a good speaker. Let's talk about that.

Teresa:

Yeah, I think first and foremost, good speaking is always based on authenticity and authenticity. There's a lot of different definitions out there, but the definition I use of authenticity and I'm often quoted on is that your inside voice is saying the same thing as your outside voice. And you know, we all see examples of this, right? Where you meet a salesman and you can just tell what they're telling you isn't the same as what's going on in their mind. You know, it lands far, it lands off. So when people are totally congruent with what's going on inside and what's coming out of their mouth, they have authenticity. That doesn't mean they have integrity because sociopaths, for example, can be extremely compelling and great speakers because they convince themselves of the truth of things that might actually be totally unfactual, right. So we meet people all the time who can be really authentic and still dishonest. So it's important to notice that authenticity is what makes someone charismatic and compelling, more so than integrity and honesty. When you've got both then you gain trust and you gain the respect that people want to view so that you actually can compel forward in lasting powerful influence with people.

Tony:

Teresa, that's a great point. We hear about authenticity all the time. How would you define it and how would you coach someone into actually being authentic?

Teresa:

Yeah. Well, the first thing about authenticity, if we want to get that congruence, as I say, between what you're saying inside and what's coming out of your mouth, the first thing to do is to learn the skill of vulnerability. You know, and I love everything Brenae Brown says on the topic of vulnerability. So if you want to find out more about vulnerability and authenticity, I highly recommend you go listen to some of her recordings. She actually has a new show out on Netflix that's just awesome. But when it comes to being really courageous as a leader, being powerfully vulnerable is one of the best skills you can learn. That sets you up to learn to be really authentic because it's all this looking good conversation that we all have going on. It's hardwired into all of us as human beings, right? It's sort of like that.

Don't let them see you sweat. Don't let them see, you know, all your worries, all your fears. And we constantly go around with all this worry and upset going on inside. And then we learn to be like the duck above water. Everything looks calm and plastic on the outside. And learning to be vulnerable about those stories that you might be telling yourself in your head. Like, you know, things like, I'm worried I'm not strong enough as a speaker. I'm worried because I'm late and you might be upset. You know, even in an argument with your spouse, you know, owning what's the story you're telling yourself in your head of what might be going on here is a really quick shortcut to figuring out how to get back to authenticity and honesty and real influence in any conversation, let alone the mass influence conversation when you're on stage.

Tony:

That's very interesting on the authenticity and I'm thinking about that, I've run into a lot of people they have trouble seeing what really happened. It has to be distorted in away. We call it lying. And I find some people having trouble just saying something like it is, there are training galore and communication classes all over the place on just being able to say it like it is. And I always wonder, why do we have to embellish a story or add to a story when it's more simply stated just as it is? I don't know. I'm not necessarily asking you for an answer, but if you would love to comment that on that, I w I would love to hear what you have to say.

Teresa:

Sure. Great inquiry, isn't it? Because just because you're speaking doesn't mean communication's happening, right? Because there's always the what you think you're saying and there's what the other person's hearing and all the filters that they're putting it through. Right? So as human beings, we're always questioning is what I'm saying, landing okay. Appropriately so. And at the same time, if you get too mired down in that, then you can start to land in Authentic or to protect it or, or to incongruent with what's going on inside. Case in point, we all start to worry about political correctness and things like that. Cute story. One of the things that recently happened to me was in the evolutionary business council. We had our very first transgender member join a few months ago and it was actually really inspiring to me to meet this individual. His name is Dr. Ashley Folks and he's, he's actually known, speaks on stage about being transgender, really impressive individual and he identifies as a man and originated as a woman and I'm in conversation with him.

I kept screwing up and saying she or he or you know, referring to him in the feminine in moments. And I was getting more and more nervous in my first conversation with him and I just had this pause, put it on stop. He said, Ashley, I'm so sorry. I just, I've got a lot of inner dialogue around my brain keeps doing the wrong thing here and I'm really worried about offending you and that's distorting the whole way I'm having this conversation with you. And he just chuckled. He said, I totally get it, Teresa. And she said, don't please don't worry about it. I totally forgive you. Please just try and make an effort to remember which it is and that just totally relaxed me by getting vulnerable with him, you know. But how often do we end up in situations like that where you know a speaker's worst nightmare on stage comes true when something happens in the audience, you weren't expecting someone as the bomb of a question or something goes sideways that you weren't expecting. In those moments, being powerfully vulnerable is the quickest way to restore authenticity and impact to restore the whole safety, the emotional safety in the room. It's really fascinating how it works

Tony:

Very good point. I will keep that in mind. I speak multiple times a year. I've never run into anything awkward. Let's call it awkward. I haven't had an awkward moment. I don't want it, but if it happens I will deal with it. I will remember this. Thank you for that advice. Now, as entrepreneurs, businessmen, we as we talking about, we go to a lot of events. You mentioned something that is the biggest mistake that you see people making in dealing with the event hosts. What is that, Teresa?

Teresa:

You know, I would say when you're building a relationship with other influential people, the biggest mistake I see is what I would affectionately called a premature ask. You know, and a lot of people laugh when I say that they're like, Teresa, the premature, what the premature ask is like the equivalent of you've just met the new neighbors and you know, the first thing they do is run over and say, Oh my God, I love that lawnmower. I saw you willing up the walk. I can't wait to borrow that. And in that moment you're probably rolling your eyes and back in your head going, Oh, who did I move in next door to? Right. When you see this all the time at networking events and usually at any given networking event, the two most influential people in the room at that time are the event host and the speaker on stage. And you often see the moment the speaker walks off stage is when it's most visible. There'll often be a line up of people waiting and the majority of them want to offer to buy them lunch or coffee or give them a product sample, like a book, a CD or some sample of their product. And the interesting thing about that is that's way more about you if you're doing that to someone influential because the unspoken message is A I want an hour of your time so you can help me. Or B, I want you to endorse my product or my book or my CD. It's a lot like going to the new neighbor that you just met and saying, you're going to so love my kids. You're really going to enjoy babysitting them. That's the kind of energy that has, right? The way, remember we talked about the way to getting a relationship with influential people is to in fact give them influence.

So if you want to meet the influential person in the room or the event host, you don't run up to them and say, can I buy you a coffee? Highly influential people. Sometimes it's as many as four or 500 requests to buy them a coffee a month and I promise you an hour of their time is not worth a $7 latte. Like those two things just don't equate right, so it's heavy to ask for their time. The way to build that relationship, the equivalent of bringing them an Apple pie or lasagna to kickstart the relationship like you would with a new neighbor is to say, Hey, I got a radio show. Can I interview you? Or I heard you said you were going to be speaking in Chicago. I've got connections in Chicago. Can I connect you to some other possible stages or I know someone who's in the same realm you're working on that I think might be able to really help you. Can I connect you? You do something to help that person. That's the equivalent of the gift that you bring the new neighbor. That's how influential people tend to get in a relationship with each other.

Tony:

I just want to just say thank you so much. This is Teresa De Grosbois. If I said that right. I'm glad. I mean influential and you can find her a teresadegrosbois.com I am going to spell that again. T E. R. E. S. A. That's Teresa. That's without H age. And the last name is D E G. R. O. S. B. O. I. S., right? B. O. I. S.

Teresa:

Yeah,

Tony:

There we go. Thank you so much. We talked about becoming influential, some great points and advice and gold nuggets, heavy gold nuggets, very big golden nuggets in this. I urge everyone to listen to this again to some great stuff. Everything you said just totally indicates with me and applies and I'm gonna work on some of these myself. Thank you so much, Teresa.

Teresa:

Thanks for having me on, Tony. It was a joy to be here. Tony's Insight

Tony:

Hey guys, thanks for hanging out with me. While I featured a few prominent elite entrepreneurs who took their vision to reality. I hope this was as inspiring for you as it was for me to interview these great people. I learned so much. Insights are so valuable here. How did you like this interview on Moe Abbas? He created his vision from the problem of having hundreds of people apply for a job that did not have experience. From there, the vision came about. And Moe created an incredibly viable company and he helped the students and small businesses both. That's a triple score. You've heard this before and here it is. Recognize a great opportunity when you see it. Usually, I see this as a problem that someone turns into an income machine. Are there any major problems in your area? Perhaps you can find a solution for that and make a revenue machine from that.

I know many stories like this. You've heard of this before, right? Think about it. Take your time. Listen to this again. Lists down issues and problems in your field or nearby related field. Then have a brainstorm session and look for solutions that people will pay for. Think carefully. I'm certain there are jumps there at your fingertips. In fact, take a look at using GenM to help your business grow even faster by taking on an apprentice or an intern. Good idea, huh? Teresa de Grosbois. Oh yeah, The self-sabotage. I've interviewed several people on this topic. Have you gotten rid of all of yours? I used to have this as a kid, tons of it. Over the years, I've gotten rid of these points that I could find. However, I believe this is where a mentor comes in to help us find and eradicate these false perceptions of ourselves.

Don't you agree? What are the habits that you should develop to become more influential and become a better leader? Teresa's book will definitely help us with that and it's a very worthwhile read and exercise. What a surprise. You can only give influence to other people and have some come back to you. It's like the opposite of money. The more you spend, the more you give back. I like that. When meeting people who deserve kudos. Do you stop to praise and acknowledge them? Do you share their work? A great point on focusing on an area where you feel strongly about and growing your influence there. What are you really passionate about? Start there and expand your influence using that passion. Good speaking is based on being real and authentic. Her definition is that your inside voice says the same thing as your outside voice. Are you like that?

Do you speak your mind? That's a good point. She makes dealing with an awkward moment. That's a great takeaway. There's so much more I got out of this interview. What did you get? Remember tweet at Tony DURs, so grab hold of your vision. Decide you're going to either start something great or take it to the next level. You have to decide first. It always starts with a decision and you can get my vision map to help you along the process. The free ebook is still online. At some point, the book will be released with more info, but for now, get that and use that to stimulate your success. I created my empire in just a few years. That's all it took. I had the vision map as my guide. You could do it too and please follow me on social media. You can find most of those links on the homepage at tonydursso.com. You can also get the vision map there. And if you have iTunes or access to any Apple device, look up my name, Tony D U R S O, and subscribe to my show, a kind review there will get you tremendous appreciation back in return. Thanks.

And 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. We hope you've enjoyed this week's edition of the Tony DUrso with his key influencers. Be sure to tune in again next Friday at 4:00 PM Eastern time, 1:00 PM Pacific Time on the Voice America Influencers Channel.