Whether your biggest challenges are in your business or personal life, pushing through the fear and challenges to success begins with realizing you’re not alone and adopting the attitude of never giving up. Jason Hartman interviews co-author of It’s Okay to Be Scared But Never Give Up, Jim Palmer about the success stories in the book. Having faced their own serious challenges, the authors wanted to help others find the road to perseverance by telling their own stories and interviewing several business experts regarding the challenges they faced and how they overcame the odds. Jim emphasizes the importance of never giving up, of finding your inspiration and hope to move past the most difficult times in your life. Jim shares several examples from the book. For more details, please visit: www.HolisticSurvival.com. Hearing the success stories can also help others avoid similar pitfalls.
Jim Palmer is an entrepreneur, author, speaker, and coach to other entrepreneurs. A marketing and business-building expert and host of Newsletter Guru TV, Jim is known internationally as The Newsletter Guru, the go-to resource for maximizing the profitability of customer relationships. Martin Howey is one of the busiest and most respected business consultants in North America. He has generated more than three and a half billion dollars in sales for his clients, and has contributed to the financial success of more than 10,000 small businesses throughout the world.
Narrator: Welcome to the Holistic Survival show with Jason Hartman. The economic storm brewing around the world is set to spill into all aspects of our lives. Are you prepared? Where are you going to turn for the critical life skills necessary to survive and prosper? The Holistic Survival show is your family’s insurance for a better life. Jason will teach you to think independently, to understand threats, and how to create the ultimate action plan. Sudden change or worst case scenario, you’ll be ready. Welcome to Holistic Survival, your key resource for protecting the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. Ladies and gentlemen, your host, Jason Hartman.
Jason Hartman: Welcome to today’s show. This is Jason Hartman, your host and as you may or may not know every tenth show we kind of do a special tradition here that originated with my creating wealth show where we do a topic that is actually off topic on purpose. Something just to do with general life and more successful living and that’s exactly what we’re going to do today with our special guests. Again, tenth show is off topic and it is very much intentional just for personal enrichment and I hope you enjoy today’s show, and we will be back in just a moment.
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Start of Interview with Jim Palmer
Jason Hartman:My pleasure to welcome back to the show Jim Palmer. He is the author of a new book with Martin and Howie entitled it’s okay to be scared but never give up. And I think you’ll find this to be inspirational where he did profiles on a lot of people who’ve overcome great adversity to reach new heights of success and I think you’ll find it to be very inspirational. Jim, welcome how are?
Jim Palmer: I’m great, how are you doing Jason?
Jason Hartman: Good, good, you’re coming to us from Pennsylvania today right?
Jim Palmer: That is correct. Philadelphia area.
Jason Hartman: Fantastic. What inspired you to write this book?
Jim Palmer: Well my good friend Martin Howie has gone through a very serious battle with cancer. Martin Howie, in case people don’t know is one of the most infamous of business consultants at international business and Martin actually was extremely healthy, a runner, a cyclist, and triathlete and he was a marine, eat healthy, all this stuff. The one thing he didn’t do, which he is just sharing openly now, is he didn’t get the regular checkups that men and women should have after a certain age. And he suddenly found himself about two years ago with stage 4 colon cancer. And you know he was given about six months to live, but he underwent some really radical surgeries and chemo and radiation. And in August of 2011, Jason, he was told my his doctors that the cancer is nowhere to be seen, this cancer that was really pervasive throughout his body.
And so I started challenging, and a couple of other friends started challenging Martin you’ve got to write this book and tell your story. You know you could save people’s lives with you know the message of early detection and things like that. And then in December, on December 2nd of 2011 Martin and I were together at a marketing seminar in LA and we’re having breakfast and I kept badgering him about the book and that’s when he shared with me very sadly that he cancer again. So I knew writing the book wasn’t something he had time or focus for so I said let’s write it together.
And we had talked all along. . .Jason you probably find this too, but I think the nation and the country and certainly for small business owners there’s kind of like this little bit of gloom in the atmosphere and we thought you know in addition to just another book about some good success strategies, marketing principles, things like that, I think it’d be good to really put out a book that also had some hope and inspiration. And so in addition to telling Martin’s story and then also you know my story, I’m a cancer survivor, I said let’s interview some highly successful entrepreneurs and have them each share something like a major challenge that they went through, whether it be in their business life, or their personal life.
How’d they get through it and then ask them to share some business wisdom. Now in massive action style we set ourselves a hard date of 60 days to get the book done and we actually pulled it off in 62 days. In early February we launched a book, It’s Okay to be Scared but Never Give Up. Which we actually wrote into the book as a business lesson about how to get something done quickly.
Jason Hartman: Yeah that’s good. 62 days to do a book, that’s a good pace. Tell us about some of the stories in the book. I mean you profiled a whole bunch of different people here. I’m looking at your table of content, quite a list of names. Jim, give us maybe your top 4 or 5 stories from the people you interviewed.
Jim Palmer: You know Adam Urbanski is known as the millionaire marketing mentor, very very bright entrepreneur who has been in business a long time I think 10 to 15 years. He told a story, he was a very successful coach, multimillion dollar business. He had his dream house, he had two dream cars living the life, and then he got a little bit lazy with some of the strategies which helped him to be successful and he also had some bad spending habits and he suddenly found himself, Jason where he had to sell his house and actually get rid of his two cars and move in with his brother-in-law and almost start his business over.
And he talked about having this major mindset struggle because he was known as the millionaire marketing mentor, had a very successful coaching business and here he was living in his brother-in-law’s home driving a used car. So he told a story about how he got through that and built his business back up so I think it’s fair to say that was a major and significant challenge that he worked through. Very very interesting and inspiring story.
Jason Hartman: So what were some of the things that he did or told himself? Because a lot of this I think. . .or I know a lot of it is a result of self-talk. Of the most important conversation any of us will ever have is the conversation we have with ourselves isn’t it.
Jim Palmer: Absolutely.
Jason Hartman: And what do these people. . .this may weave through all the stories so it doesn’t need to be about Adam in particular and maybe this is even better left for the end after you talk about a few people here, but what I want to know and I want the listeners to hear Jim is what do they do, how did they overcome these obstacles? What were they saying to themselves in the heat of the moment when all the chips were down, where things looked really bad, where most people would give up, jump off a bridge, you know whatever. And unfortunately some people do that stuff. And what do they do to just keep themselves going and work through the fire?
Jim Palmer: In Adam’s case he actually shared this story. He went back to a networking event, which is something a lot of very brand new entrepreneurs do, but he was going to a networking event, he parked actually a few blocks from the place in his used Ford Fiesta I think that it was. He had $20 in his pocket and he was kind of nervous that he might have to go out for drinks afterward and buy drinks. So that was going through his head and that was kind of hitting bottom for him. And he said he went back to one of his earlier mentors who helped him very early on in his business and the guy told him exactly what to do. He said you got to get on the phone, you know stop all the email and all this other stuff. Get on the phone and talk to the people that you’ve coached that have coached with you before and introduce a new program and sell it one-on-one.
And that’s essentially what he did and he kind of fought back and developed a new coaching program. As much as he hated doing it, got on the phone talked to pass clients, who again had no idea of his current situation and he actually built up a book of business and a new coaching program and he just kept going from there. I think one of the morals of the story in addition to never giving up is that he went back to something that he relied on early in his business which is a mentor and a coach. And the coach was able to deliver some really rock solid advice kind of hit you between the eyes type stuff, pull up your boot straps and make it happen type advice, you know what I mean?
Jason Hartman: Sure, sure. Okay go on to the next one you would like to share. I mean obviously we don’t have time to share all of these people but tell us about the ones you’d like to talk about.
Jim Palmer: Let me tell you about Melanie Benson Strick. She again was a successful internet marketer. She was a speaker and a coach. And Melanie started building this business from six figures to multiple six figures to a million dollar coaching projects where she had multiple coaches working for her, partners and Melanie looks back on it now and shares how it was really not congruent with what she wanted to build for a business, and because of that she started doing things and relying on things that she didn’t feel comfortable with. Like she’s all about really providing great customer service, but the bigger the business got the more she got out of touch with that. She ended up getting into a couple of relationships and partnerships where she was launching this very expensive live event, a three-day live event, at a very expensive hotel, and it was just as the economy was starting to crash several years ago, I think 4 years ago. And one of those relationships ended up busting up like days before the event.
So therefore she was on the hook for like, I think she shared in the book, $80 thousand dollar hotel bill. Because the coaching relationship she had dissolved, even though she went along with the event she wasn’t able to sell what they were going to sell. I mean everything completely fell apart for Melanie. Again, here is somebody that had a million dollar business and just in the complete despair of anguish and you know she just started working through it, getting back. And again, she reached out to some friends in the business and actually I was one of the friends she reached out to. And a little over a three years ago Melanie and I created the Mars Training Program together based on both of our beliefs about our customer retention and providing good customer experience. So she did that with a couple of folks and it’s fair to say I think she’d say she’s still building her business back up, but again never giving up she’s fighting back and it’s a real testament when you see highly successful entrepreneurs you never know what’s going on behind the scenes.
Jason Hartman: Sometimes they make it look so easy, you know like there’s just no problems and it’s amazing how people on the outside so many times think that oh I can just do that, I can just start a business like this and do that and it’s a lot more to it than that. Every business has it’s challenges and things are a lot more complicated than they sometimes make them look on the surface huh?
Jim Palmer: Exactly, there’s two sides to every coin that’s for sure. Another story I’ll share, let me share a little bit about my back story. In 2000, July 2000, for the first time since I was 15 years old I was out of work. It was very sudden, my wife was a stay at home mom all these years, we had 4 kids and I was the main bread winner and my position was eliminated with this company. And I done pretty well for myself Jason, and I thought you know I’m sure I’ll be bounced back in a couple of weeks, you know filling multiple lucrative job offers was in my head. And that actually turned into 14 months of unemployment. We lost all our savings, started racking up incredible debt, my wife did go back to work, but things got really bad. I mean it really. . .I don’t know if you’ve been, or if you know anybody that’s been out of work for that long it really wreaks havoc on your self-esteem and your confidence.
Jason Hartman: Sure it does.
Jim Palmer: And about 12 months into this already, you know a horrific scene, I was diagnosed with stage 2 melanoma just for good measure. So I got through that, a couple of months later as I was recovering and in this time of October of 2001 I had to figure a way to take control of my life because I felt like I was spinning out of control. And I basically turned to prayer and it became clear to me that I was supposed to start business. Owning and operating my own business was the way that I was going to rebuild my life and our financial situation. And that was what I did. I battled back, I’ve actually had cancer twice, again but I catch early on all my checkups that I go to.
But I built a very successful business and again I’ve never looked been back, it’s been tough and I gave an interview to somebody and he said tell me about your early years. And I said my entire first year, 12 months in business was what I call revenue free. It took me over a year to get my first client and so just because you have a business I felt like I had a job, I just didn’t have any income which is the problem I had to solve and figure out how to do that. But I kept going and going and going and I was in debt for quite a while, as I know anybody who starts a business can understand. You still got to feed the family and as you build things up you keep incurring more and more debt. But thankfully things have worked out very well for me.
Jason Hartman: Good, good. So your story is inspiring, these other stories are inspiring. Are there maybe one or two more you want to share with us before we go Jim?
Jim Palmer: I was gonna mention Renee. I didn’t know her at all, I met her. She’s Joe Polish’s girlfriend. You know Joe Polish is the famous carpet cleaner and direct marketer. And she was very beautiful woman and she was having illness and problems with her face and things like that and she discovered she had a tumor on her brain stem and again, basically a death sentence and through some really good therapy and doctors and all these different things, she is still with us and doing well today. And again using what she went through to help and coach others. Very very inspirational when you hear what she went through. And you want to ask me about somebody.
Jason Hartman: Yeah I want to ask you about Mike Koenigs .
Jim Palmer: Mike Koenigs, you know his story is a little bit less of a oh my gosh type challenge, but really a great story of inspiration and hope. Where Mike grew up in this very small town. I believe it was Minnesota. Yeah Eagle Lake, Minnesota and his father was a barber and it was just a small town that most people grew up and stayed in, but Mike’s main ambition was to get out and create something of himself. Mike really started his entrepreneurial route of making movies and doing things like that. It caused actually so much debt in trying to build his business, it caused the divorce of his first marriage, but he kept going an plotting along. But today is a creator of many successful programs to help people market their business, Traffic Geyser is one of them. And it’s a real testament to when you really put your customers first and you try and solve problems. Mike I think is one of the best problem solvers I’ve ever met. He takes a look at a problem or situation, what people need to do, which is help people with marketing grow their business. And he kind of what he called reverse engineers it and finds a way to automate it so it can be quick and easy and he’s really built quite a business. It’s not a life threatening challenge like some of the others, but very very inspirational.
Jason Hartman: Yeah it sure is, it sure is. Any common threads that you want to mention Jim between all of these people. I mean certainly persistence, tenacity, not giving up. You got to keep going in the face of incredible odds. In fact in my own life I like that, you know it’s quite exhilarating to do that. And I think that’s why people take up extreme sports or big challenges, whether it be running marathons or climbing mountains or whatever it is. It’s not an uncommon thing that people like overcoming challenges by any means.
Jim Palmer: Especially when your back is up against the wall, I mean you gotta make it happen. You know I love watching the show the Shark Tank, I don’t know if you’re familiar with that on ABC where these entrepreneurs go before these highly successful business people and try to get them to invest in their business. And one of the people that was trying to get, he was doing about 2 or 3 hundred thousand dollars a year, living in a small apartment very comfortable. And he was trying to get these sharks, the investors, to invest in his business. And he was talking in kind of a braggadocios manner as he talked, you know all I need is six figures to live on, I got a simple life. One of the sharks said, you know what, I’m not investing because you’re no longer scared and you’re no longer hungry and that means more than likely you’re not going to do the tough work that needs to be done. And so when you have 10 or one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of credit card debt, or when you’re, you know in my case the doctor said well you know there may be a 50/50 chance you’ll be alive after 5 years. I mean it’s a real slap in the face. A hard cold reality.
Well what do I got to do? I got to do something to protect my family. And you know in my case when I started to my business I had zero revenue. I had to go out to networking events, I had to go speak. I knew all these different things which were, to be honest with you, well outside my comfort zone at the time. But you know it’s that fear of being scared coupled with I’m going to make it, I know I need to do this. I know I can do it. This is exactly what I was made for. And when you marry those two, the kind of the ambition with also a little bit of the fear, man there’s nothing more potential driving than that.
Jason Hartman: Yeah. Very, very good points. Where can people get the book?
Jim Palmer: www.itsoktobescared.com. It’s also available at Amazon and you can get the Kindle version on Amazon as well. There’s some amazing bonuses, a number of the people that we interviewed gave us some pretty cool bonuses that you’ll get instantly. If you buy the book at itsokaytobescared.com you get them instantly. If you buy it at Amazon, on the last page of the book I give you the URL where you can claim your bonuses. I think the final thing I would say, Jason, is one of the things that will help any business owner succeed is what I call constant implementation and massive action. You know Martin and I really in some real straight talk, I didn’t know if Martin would be here in 60 or 90 days and we talked about the book, as soon as his cancer came back I didn’t know what that meant. So I did not want this to be like a 6 month thing. So we developed a strategy where Martin and I were gonna get on the phone and interview each other for 3 hours and then we were gonna get all of our guests on the phone, interview them, have it transcribed and then we would edit it into a book. It was an amazing two month of very hard work and really diligent notes to the grindstone. But we got the book done, and it’s out and it’s really making an impact. Some of these stories are really changing lives. So massive action, just get it done and stop looking for perfection. Do the best you can, get it done and don’t keep it in your word processor trying to look for that last comment that you might have missed.
Jason Hartman: Right, right, yeah now get it out there definitely and things can be improved later. Good advice. Jim Palmer, thanks so much for joining us today, good to talk to you again.
Jim Palmer: My pleasure Jason, take care.
Narrator: Thank you for joining us today for the Holistic Survival show. Protecting the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. Be sure to listen to our creating wealth show, which focuses on exploiting the financial and wealth creation opportunity in today’s economy. Learn more at www.JasonHartman.com, or search Jason Hartman on iTunes. This show is produced by the Hartman media company offering very general guidelines and information. Opinions of guests are their own and none of the content should be considered individual advice. If you require personalized advice please consult an appropriate professional. Information deemed reliable, but not guaranteed. (Image: Flickr | Celestine Chua)
Transcribed by Ralph
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