Business Innovators Radio - Interview with James Brown, CEO & Founder of Business Accelerator Institute and Perseverance Squared

Episode Date: February 10, 2025

James is the CEO/Founder of Business Accelerator Institute and Perseverance Squared where he is a business consultant with a strong background in law. He launched his first business in 1994 and rapidly expanded to multiple top-performing locations reaching $8M in annual revenue. In 2014, James transitioned to coaching, guiding over 350 business owners to significant growth through strategic management and marketing. As a fractional CEO/SLFU Program Manager at How To Manage a Small Law Firm, he launched Small Law Firm University, growing it to $3 million in revenue within a year, and developed a CMO program that generated an additional $2 million annually. With a Business degree from Lindenwood University and a JD from St. Louis University, James is a recognized industry expert and co-author of the best-selling book Shift Happens. He has earned numerous accolades for his legal expertise and business acumen.Learn more: https://businessaccelerator.institute | https://www.linkedin.com/in/businessacceleratorinstitute/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-james-brown-ceo-founder-of-business-accelerator-institute-and-perseverance-squared

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of Influential Entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Influential Entrepreneurs is sponsored by Marketing Huddle where we build an authority positioning portfolio for entrepreneurs that sells for you so that you don't have to. For more information, visit Mike Saunders360.com.

Today we have with us James Brown, who's the CEO and founder of Business Accelerator Institute and Perseverance Squared. James, welcome to the program. Thank you so much, Mike, for having me. I'm excited to be here. You know, I love Perseverance Squared, so I want to dive into what you do. I really resonate with that word because it's one of the traits that Napoleon Hill talks about in Think and Grow Rich.

So I want to hear all about what you do and how you do it and why you do it. But first get started with a little bit of your story and background. How did you get into the industry? Yeah, so I'm a retired or recovering lawyer. I had an unorthodox path to becoming a lawyer. When I was 19, before I even started college, I announced that I was getting married. and I remember my mom and dad kicking me out of the house and saying, you're going to amount to nothing,

you're not going to be able to finish school and blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's where started perseverance, right? And I don't like when people tell me I can't do something. And so I worked at General Motors for 11 years on the assembly line and built cars while I went to undergraduate and I got a business degree. And then I was accepted in the law school. and so I worked 6 to 2.30 every day on the assembly line. I went to school every night from 4 to 11.

And you slip for 30 minutes. Yeah. And, you know, I had a two-year-old when I started law school. And I remember when I went into the registrar's office with my wife and child, the registrar said, you guys are going to be divorced when you're done with law school. You know, I'm like, again, don't tell me what I can't do. And so, no. Now fast forward to, I'm graduating law school.

I took the bar exam and at that time, General Motors announced they were closing our plant. And I'm like, oh, crap, right? At this point, I have a five year old, a two year old, and one year old. And so I sent out 200 plus resumes to all the law firms in the St. Louis area and I got zero response. Nothing. You know, and in hindsight, I wouldn't have hired me. I had nothing but automotive experience, right? So it forced me to start my own law firm.

And because of my blue-collar background, I started a consumer bankruptcy firm. I saw a lot of good people having bad stuff happened to them through no fault of their own. They were either laid off or they had a major, like a heart attack or something and no health insurance. and they had 500,000 in medical bills because of it. And so I decided to go into consumer bankruptcy. And when I first started, it was just me and my wife. And, you know, what did I do? I looked at what everybody else was doing and I just copied it.

And I put marketing messages out there the same as everybody else. And I was getting maybe two to three clients a week, right? Nothing to write home about. It was we were breaking even sometimes. And so I started studying the human buying process. And I started figuring out what makes people take action. And one of the things I found out was that the human brain, 24-7, is looking for a solution to any problems that we have. And we're constantly thinking about those problems.

That's why sometimes in the middle of the night we'll sit up and we're thinking about it because your brain is working 24-7. And so when I have a problem and I'm constantly thinking about it, the brain is in search of solutions. So let's say I go to Google and I type in what happens if my house is foreclosed on, right? And all of a sudden, thousands of options come up. And they all look the same. All of these bankruptcy lawyers, everything looks the same. My brain gets confused. It doesn't know what to do, right?

because there's so many options and they all look the same. So that's where analysis paralysis comes in. And we end up doing nothing. Yeah. Right. So what I started to think about was, what if my marketing messages were different than what everybody else is saying, right? Give them a choice that stands out over everybody else.

Will that make a difference? So everybody else was saying stop foreclosure, stop repossession. My name is Joe, and I've been doing this 20 years. and you should hire me. That's pretty much what everybody was saying. So I ran an ad that said, are you about to lose your home and can't tell your family

you're going to live on the street? Ooh, yeah. And that week, I signed 68 new clients. Good night. The next week was 72. The next week was 63. And I'm like, oh, crap, right? It's just me and my wife.

But that taught me about the human buying process. and, you know, so we started crafting marketing messages that totally look different than everybody else. And that's how two years later, I opened an office in Detroit, two years after that in Kansas City, about three years after that was in Miami. And I ultimately built an $8 million law firm from knowing how people react and what makes them take action. You know, it reminds me of years ago I read a book. forget who the author was, you'll, you'll probably understand the concept or remember it. But something like a laddering. It's like, oh, hey, what's important to you about whatever?

And the person answers it. And you're like, oh, that's nice. I agree with that. Well, how about that? What's so important about that? And you go two, three, four levels deep and you get to the real heart of the matter. Same as what you just described there with the foreclosure. It's like, are you facing foreclosure? Call me. Ick and up. You haven't connected those dots yet, but you got to the internal gut, you know, embarrassment. What am I going to do? to tell people, I don't want to have my pride, you know, a damage. And you got into what really drives them internally got in their head. And I think that right there really is that secret that unlocks people to take action.

Now, you need to also be confident, be an expert, be have empathy, because when you get those 60-some leads, you can't be an idiot and talk to them on the phone and condescending because you got the lead, but then you blew it. So you've got, it's a full package. you've got to have everything together. I agree. And there is a time and place for that, right? Everybody kind of knows that we have two sides to our brain.

There's the logical side and there's the emotional side. The brain I learned is the emotional side is where we make decisions. Right? A lot of us will try to tell ourselves we make logical decisions, especially lawyers, because we're trained to think logically and analytically. but we make decisions based on emotion. And as soon as you make a decision, it immediately passes it to the logical side of the brain

to look for justification and why that decision was made. And was it the right choice? Why is it doing that? Because your brain's designed to protect the body. So if I have this foreclosure notice, that's not like you just mentioned, that's not really what's keeping me up at night. It's the fact that I'm going to lose the home and we would have nowhere to go.

I'd have to pull my kids out of school and they'd have to leave their friends. It would be embarrassing to have a U-Haul truck come in the middle of the night. And I feel like a failure is a provider, right? Now I run a message that targets that. They raise their hand because the emotional side of the brain kicks in and they call and they make an appointment. And as soon as they make an appointment, the logical side of the brain is, like, I hope this was the right choice. So now they pay attention to how much experience I have and all my credibility badges. So as soon as they make an appointment, I send them a confirmation

letter and it says, congratulations. You've just taken the hardest step towards regaining control of your future. And I bet you're nervous about that. Yeah. So I want you to see what some of our raving fans say about working with us and I give them social proof. And then I give them all my credibility badges and how much experience I have and I've represented over 60,000 people in bankruptcy. And now the logical side of the brain is saying, oh my gosh, I have. And that eliminates cognitive dissonance. Exactly. And questioning, what have I done? Even if the next step is schedule your onboarding call and they might go, no, I'm not going to do it, but doing what you just described, quells that, reestablishes your credibility, your authority, all of that.

I love that. And you know what? How hard is that? You create one little email intro with some of the little wording, two, three paragraphs, a couple links to some things that you've done in the industry. And you have that as a templated email that goes out. And that probably eliminates 70% of all of the no-show appointments. Absolutely.

Absolutely. And I actually send them a series of seven to eight emails, between the time they set the appointment and the time they come in. I call it my glide path, right? And my goal there is not just to send them reminders because that would be annoying. Yeah. Right. My goal is. You think I'm an idiot?

I've booked it. I put it on my schedule. But your goal is to kind of in one way I've heard of like the indoctrination series, like you're introducing, you're warming them up, you're pre-framing all of that. Yeah. Yeah. What I look at like a sale is just an exchange. change of value.

Yeah. Right. If we're looking for anything, if the value of that thing to us is more than the money that they're asking for it, it's like, here, take my money. Okay. So this glide path is designed to bring value with every email. So it brings them a useful tip, whether they decide to hire me or not. Right.

Look, if you're behind on your car payments, stay off of social media. Right. The repo man is not only looking for you in the real world, but they look for you in the digital world, too. And then I put a story in there of a guy who actually lost his car because he checked in at Applebee's. And then I say, regardless of whether you, before you hire any bankruptcy attorney, including us, just make sure you stay off of social media. And that brings value to them. And in gender's trust. Exactly.

And that's the biggest thing we have to break down when we're marketing to the general public is they don't know us like us or trust us. So we have to break down the trust barrier. Now, along those lines, authority-based marketing is great to really help the logical side of the brain. That's why I did a book and became a best-selling author. I'm forever a best-selling author. And I had this book signing and Times Square. And we used all of that. we had the books in our lobby and people would ask me to sign them and you know all that's great

but if i tried to lead with that in some of my marketing i'm going to miss the boat because you know why because you're promoting yourself in a haughty cocky con too much of a you know i'm the hero look at me and in reality you know like uh donnell miller teaches and building a story brand the hero is your client or your prospect you're just the one guiding them through the jungle of the process. So yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, and people will ask me, so should I not do those things? Like get a book published or do it?

No, you absolutely should. This isn't a this or that. It's how we use it. And when? Marketing. And when, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, you don't just blah all of that day one or email one.

You just kind of let it flow out. You know, one thing that I was thinking about when you were talking there, in your research, have you found that people are more motivated to get something or gain something or to not lose something? Not lose something all day. They will do much more to avoid pain than to get gain. And so that's why when your marketing messages are focused on the pain points, you're actually painting a picture for them and they can see that they're in this situation

that they don't like to be in. and they want to get out of it. So you paint that in there and then you say, we have a solution for you. Come in and find out what it is. And now when they sit down with me, the very first thing I'm asking them is what brought you in today because I'm going to dig until I get to those emotional reasons

and paint that picture of where they are and why they don't like it. And then I'm going to turn around and say, let's talk about best case scenario. What would be the best case scenario? Well, I wouldn't lose my house. okay, and what would that mean to you? And I paint that picture like the ghost of Christmas future. And then I say, if I can give you the best chance of achieving that outcome where you

would never lose your house and you wouldn't have to worry about all these things ever again, is that something that would help you? And they're like, yes, it would. Great. Let's talk about how we're going to do it. And then you're interjecting what you're going to get. Exactly. Because you've already established what you're, you know, not.

what you're not going to get, what you're not going to lose. So you're avoiding that pain. I think that makes a whole lot of sense. And, you know, the problem, I feel like all of that logically makes sense. But I think that any salesperson listening to this would secretly agree that they just want to blow and dump and barf up everything to the person and certainly something will stick. And they just want to go and I can help you and you can do this. And it needs to be in a moment. measured way so the people get it and understand it. And it's kind of like the breadcrum

trail. You want to, you want them to understand this point before moving to the next point. Yes. And, you know, we, we did for 20 plus years, did all of our marketing on TV, radio, internet, and we closed 73% of the people we talked to. And that was in four different geographic areas. And so, you know, to me, if I can get a yes from them in the first five minutes after I paint the picture and get them to an emotional trigger and they tell me yes. And then I say, let's talk about how we're going to do it. I know I can close them. Yeah. And most people, and here's the thing, here's why, because it goes back to what we talked before was I'm getting to the emotional trigger. A lot of times salespeople will go in and say, okay, great. Hey, we have

have an hour for today? Is it still a good time? Yes. Okay, I'm going to go ahead and start asking you some questions. And they just go through this check the box question, question, question. Well, that's that's appealing to the logical side of their brain. Right. And they stay closed off. And you never get them to an emotional trigger. It's going to be very hard to get them to say yes. Do you feel like the old school, you know, I'm going to say like back in the 90s, you would ask someone easy to answer questions at the beginning of the conversation just to get three or four yeses. Is that a thing anymore? Do people, does that really trigger someone if you said, hey, how's the weather today?

Do you enjoy sun? Yes. These random questions to get three yeses so that when you start talking business, they're more predisposed to say yes. Yeah, I don't look at it as I have to get a certain number of yeses. but and I know exactly the old school what you're talking about but I gauge it on did I get them to that emotional trigger. Yeah. Right.

And if I say, if I could get this for you and give you the best chance of achieving this, the outcome and you can avoid all of this, would that help you? And they say, yes, I know I've gotten them there. And then now I can go into the rest of it. And then they need, you've got the emotional connection, but now they need to go. Okay, here's where I am. Here's where I could be. Here's the gap.

What's the solution he has? How much is it going to cost? And now their mind needs to start justifying, well, it is X number of dollars. But shoot, if I can avoid all that and gain all this, it's obviously worth it. Yeah. And that's the last thing. When I get all the way to the end and I say, here's the solution we have. Here's the options.

Option A is not going to really work for you. Option B is great. And this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to stop foreclosure. I'm going to do all this. And is this option sound like something that you would like to do? Yes. Okay, great.

Here's my retainer agreement. And here's what they do. They say, well, how much is this going to be? Like, I forced them to ask me. And so I'll do it this way. I'll say, well, let me ask you this. What is it worth to you to save that home so that you don't experience those things you told me about? You have $100,000 a credit card debt here.

If I can make a call today and get that. them to accept 10 cents on the dollar and make it the rest go away, would you do that? And they're like, yes, I would. Okay, so for $10,000, you would do that deal. Yes, I would. Great. Our fee is only $7,000. And they're like, seriously, it's only $7,000. Right? So when I, at the end, when I put a financial value on what they're getting and how much we charge, it's a bargain compared to what you're getting. And that pushes them over the finish line. Yeah. And then obviously there's the things like, you know, oh, well, I don't have all that money now. So we need to do it. There's all of that, but you need to get them to the point where, okay, we're on the same side of the page here and we're

in agreement that this is the solution. Let's now put our heads together and see if we can put together a plan that works. And I think that's that's the big thing. Yeah. Yeah. And I think one last thing I'll talk about too and whatever you want to, you know, finish up with. But I think there's a fundamental difference between a price objection to the sale and a money objection. Okay. Price objection, you're going to hear things like, oh, I didn't think it would be that much. Your competitor doesn't charge as much as you do, right? That's a price objection. And that means they don't perceive the value for what you're asking. That you bring.

Right. A money objection, you're going to hear people say, oh, my gosh, this would help me so much. And I know I want to use you guys. I talked to four other people, and I didn't learn as much as I learned from you before I even came in. I just don't know where I'm going to get the money. Yep. Okay. Let's talk about it.

Let me help you find the money. Yep. Exactly. Right? So a lot of people will lump those two objections together, and I think they're very different solutions to them. I agree 100%. So tell me then if we've now talked about these problems and issues in closing sales in whatever industry,

what's the solution you provide to salespeople, business owners, entrepreneurs that need to learn how to close more sales? Yeah, I have a couple of things that we offer through Business Accelerator Institute. It's more of an online learning. We have a five-week course where small business owners can come out of that five-week course with a very detailed living, breathing business plan for the next 12 to 18 months. And then I'm doing ongoing four-week courses that will cover marketing, sales, hiring, things like that. If they want more than that, then that's where Perseverance Squared comes in. And it's one-on-one coaching.

And right now I have 20 businesses that hire me to do one-on-one coaching. I have three calls with them a month. Plus they have access to group coaching calls and training sessions. And I help train their marketing intake and sales teams. And so there's that through Perseverance squared. Perfect. Because probably people feel like I want to take a course and get the 30,000 foot overview, then they get into it and go, I agree with everything, but where do I start? How do I do it in my

specific instance? And that's where some of that one-on-one help would come in. Yeah, it's the implementation, Mike. You know, it's we all have our best intentions. But when we're working in the business and we don't have the time to work on it, the implementation goes to the wayside. Yeah. And so a lot of people who go through the course will say, I need more. Yeah. And we have different levels and different ways to get more while you're scaling your business. Perfect. Well, James, it's been a real pleasure chatting with you. If someone is interested in learning more about your programs, what's the best way they can do that? Absolutely. They can go to business accelerator. Institute, and you'll see all the things that we

have to offer on there, including the courses, and you can sign up from there. We also will have a landing page that's built out just for your listeners where they can download a free guide. It's the top 10 mistakes that will destroy your business. They can download that to get started. And then if they want to go from there, they can do more. But business accelerator. Dot Institute is the main website. Or they can click on the link on that landing page that I'll give you for your listeners.

Excellent. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate the time you took to edit. educate us with some of your techniques, and I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much, Mike, for having me. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www.w.w.com.