The School of Greatness - 260 8 Mental Shifts to Making $100 Million in Your Business with Josh Bezoni

Episode Date: November 30, 2015

"Aptitude plus obsession equals greatness." - Josh Bezoni If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes and more at http://lewishowes.com/260

This is episode number 260 with the $100 million man, Josh Pizzoni. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Welcome, everyone.

My name is Lewis Howes. I'm very excited about today's guest. He's a good buddy of mine. His name is Josh Bozzone. And these are the eight principles, the eight mental shifts to making a hundred million dollars in your business. Now, this is perfect for anyone who wants to start a company, any current entrepreneur, anyone who's thinking about starting a company in the future. You're going to want to listen to this. There's some golden nuggets in this episode. So many

things that I learned, I've been doing business for years and I kind of felt like I've hit a ceiling sometimes. You know, I've hit a wall, I've hit a certain mark every year. But it's been challenging to really break through and 10x what I've already done. So, you know, in order to create something new for ourselves, we have to learn something new, we have to become someone new in order to have something we've never got, right. And so Josh shares with me and all of you, what he did for a decade that kind of had him stuck at a certain level financially and in his business and stress levels. And then these are the eight shifts he'd made mentally and in his business that helped him go from a $5 to $10 million company to literally a $100 million company in a year.

And it's because he applied all of these things. So I'm very excited about this. Before we dive in, I want to make sure you guys share this with your friends. So share this out. Just click on this. If you're on iTunes, click on the share button, send it over to Twitter, over to Facebook. Share this out with your friends at lewishouse.com slash 260 and share this with a friend who you think is stuck or who wants to start a business or who's looking to scale. They need to listen to this episode with that. I am very excited to introduce you to the one, the only Josh Bazzone. Welcome everyone back to the school of greatness podcast. I've got my very good friend, Josh Bozzone. I'm in his house.

What's going on, brother? Great to have you here, man. It's good to be here. Thanks for letting me crash. I usually record in my studio, but I'm in Austin for a book signing. And Josh has got a great place downtown, so we're hanging out. We watched some football earlier. His Iowa team is in the Big Ten Championship.

So congratulations, Ohio State. Lost the other week to Michigan State, unfortunately in the big 10 championship. So congratulations, Ohio state lawsuit of the week to Michigan state, unfortunately, but they beat Michigan. So that's really all that matters. Yep. Um, I'm excited,

man. We met five years ago, 2010. You hosted an event here in Austin by the lake. That was like this fitness health industry mastermind conference type of thing. Yeah. Fit fest, fit fest. That's what it's called. I remember seeing someone tell me about it. like this fitness health industry mastermind conference type of thing. Yeah, FitFest.

FitFest, that's what it's called. I remember seeing someone tell me about it. And it was a video of you talking. I'd never heard about you before I saw this video. And you were doing like a private mastermind, and Tim Ferriss was going to be there, and Joe Sugarman, right? And Joe Polish. Joe Polish and Bill Phillips.

I called in all my favors. All your favors. And I was like, man, I got to get to this event. This is still when it was early on for me when I was pretty much a nobody still. And I was like, I got to get to this event. I really want to meet Tim. That was like a dream of mine to meet Tim. And you'd known him before his book, right?

Yeah, yeah. You knew before he was anything. I met Tim before he was Tim Ferriss. Right. I met him at a conference, Yannick Silver's underground conference. I spoke at one of the few – I usually don't do podcasts and I don't do seminars. I don't speak a whole lot. So this is like my maiden voyage, my virgin flight on a podcast.

I love it. Yeah, it's your first podcast. And I've been talking to Josh for a while about getting him on. He's got an incredible story about what he did in the past. For the last 20 years, you've been doing businesses and you were making like, what did you say? 10 million a year for a number of years, essentially, or 5 million, 5 to 10 million in sales a year for like 10 years. And you never get past that hump. And then you launched a company three years ago that did $100 million the first year, right?

Yeah. And that conference that we were just speaking of where Tim Ferriss came, that is what was really the catalyst that launched this whole company Biotrust. Really? That was the beginning. That's where I met my business partner, Joel, the first time. Yep. I met him there the first time too. And I met a lot of people that would become amazing partners for Biotrust. And it was all from that one event that when I moved to Austin, I decided I wanted to throw. And it just has rippled effect out from there. Amazing.

So I'm interested to tell, before we get, you've got eight steps, eight principles that you really learned in the last few years that have helped you get to $100 million brand. And again, $100 million in the first year you launched, which is pretty incredible. And you did it with, I would just say a half a million dollar investment or $1 million investment. Yeah. We, we put in about a million dollars to start the company, no investors, no debt, no debt, million dollars to a hundred million in a year. It's pretty impressive, but there's a lot of mistakes you learned for 20 years and lessons you learned for 20 years to get there. Right? Yeah. Biotrust. We say it's a 20 year overnight success story because there's literally 18, 19, 20 years of just trial and error, doing things the wrong way, making mistakes, learning from the mistakes. And like we were talking about earlier today, the biggest lessons

in life I've ever had are the failures. When you hit a grand slam, you don't always learn a whole lot from that. But when you strike out a dozen times, you got to keep going back up there. That's when you learn. Exactly. And before we get into what you learned, I guess, what are some of the things you were doing before Biotrust? First off, tell people what Biotrust is. And then we'll go into what are some of the things you were doing before Biotrust? First off, tell people what Biotrust is, and then we'll go into what are some of the things you were doing before that to get to here. Yeah. Biotrust is an all-natural nutrition company.

It's a premium nutrition company. So we'll talk about disruption in a little bit. But that's really an area where we saw we could disrupt the industry because there's so many products out there that are made with chemicals, artificial colors, flavors, sweeteners. And there's so much more research coming out on how these aren't healthy for us. And so it's an all natural nutrition brand, fish oils, protein powders, protein bars, which you were eating earlier. Amazing stuff. I love it. Protein cookies, probiotics, a whole, whole line of health and nutrition products. And why did you want to do this?

probiotics, a whole, whole line of health and nutrition products. And why did you want to do this? Well, in 1996, I graduated college and I always followed this guy named Bill Phillips. He had these newsletters. Bill Phillips went on to write, um, body for life. Yep. Uh, sold like 4 million copies, huge, huge seller for a book. And I read this guy, just like people are listening to your podcast right now. I used to read his newsletters. So I packed up right after I graduated, I packed up my Toyota Corolla, had 180,000 miles on it. Didn't even have the heater burned out. And I went to Colorado. I was freezing. I had like a snow park on while I was just driving to Colorado. I went, knocked on the door at EAS, gave them my resume, got hired the next day. EAS, which was a big brand back then.

It was like a $200 million sports supplement brand. John Elway and all the Broncos used to use the products when they were winning the Super Bowls in the late 90s. Yeah. And Stars, Brad Pitt and people used to use the products. And in the late 90s, it was the hottest supplement company around. Wow. Yeah. Okay.

And that was Bill Phillips ran that company, right? Yep. He ran that company. And I started as a product formulator. Okay. Is that what you went to school for? Yeah. I had a biochem degree.

Okay. And loved fitness, loved helping people. Used to do the junior bodybuilding shows and all that stuff when I was a teenager. And got a job with Bill. Best thing I ever did. Because I literally came from Iowa, so I was off teenager and got a job with Bill. Best thing I ever did because I literally came from Iowa. So I was off the farm and got to see how the quality control was done with products. See how you formulate products with science that work. Cause this is a really science-based company

and just got to see how to run a company as a direct response company. Yeah. So there I met Joe Polish. He was, um, consulting for Bill Phillips and Joe and I hit it off. Joe's got a group called the 25 K group and he's a, he's highly connected. And Joe started introducing me to all these people in the direct response industry. And he gave me all these books to read. And you know how you usually give a kid a book to read and they never read it. Yeah. Well, Bill would give me a book. Joe Polish would give me a book. Joe Polish would give me a book. I would literally read it in like a day or two, take notes over it, give it back to him. Wow. And they're like, this kid's serious.

Right, right. You know? And that's where the hustle came from. Wow. I probably read a thousand books, seminars on marketing, direct response. And anyone out there who wants to start an online company, if you learn the right copy, like good marketing copy, you'll never go hungry. Really? It's the best skill. I, one of the best skills I ever learned. That's true. And direct response, people who are running,

you know, apps and all these companies online, a lot of them don't understand direct response and they could double their business if they just truly understood how to affect people emotionally and get them to move in a healthy direction and persuade them in a positive way. And that's, that's what's through your words. Yeah. Through your words, the written word emails. It's crazy, right? Yeah. It's powerful. It is so crazy. Okay. So you were doing all that and then you're working at EAS for how long? I worked there for about three years, and Bill sold the company. It's public knowledge now. I think Bill sold it for altogether over $200 million.

Yeah, that's pretty good. And I was 24, 25. And so I started my first company. I left EAS when Bill left. And I started my first company when I was 25. I learned to write copy. So I put a sales letter as a website. This is 1999.

Like Google came out in 1998, I believe. So this is like pre Facebook, pre Instagram, all that stuff. I wrote copy for a brain, um, uh, neurosupplement, neuro nutrient supplement. And you know how, um, you know, there's a lot of neurosupplements out now,

but I was doing this back in 1999. It was like one of the first ones probably. Yeah. It was one of the first ones. Wow. And so I was making $46,000 a year at EAS. I started at 26 and I worked my way up over three years to 46. When I launched my company,

putting copy on a website, the first week of when I officially launched, I did $46,000. Shut up. So my family at the time was saying, don't quit your job. What are you going to do about health insurance, all this stuff? The first week I made $46,000, which is what I was making for a whole year before that. Oh, my goodness. How did that make you feel?

As a poor kid from Iowa, I was like doing cartwheels. Wow. It was awesome. And so that first year, um, by the way, I, I use credit cards to start the company. I went and had a business plan, went to banks. They'd like pat me on the head. I looked like I was about 14 and they would say, um, you know, good luck with this kid. Wow.

The internet, what's the internet then? And so launched it 3 million in sales, my luck with this kid. Wow. The internet, what's the internet? Right. Then, and so launched, did 3 million in sales my first year in business. My net profits were 33%. So I made a million dollars when I was 25. And this supplement, you created yourself? Yeah, myself and another guy from EAS that was a-

Formulator. Formulator, PhD, yeah. Amazing. Yeah, and so it sounds like it's a home run, but then after that, like I said, failure teaches a lot, a lot of lessons, but I didn't, I'd never taken a business class. I knew how to market. I didn't know how to run a business. I didn't know how to grow a business. I didn't know how to hire. I didn't know about accounting. I didn't know. I knew enough just to be dangerous. Just to sell. Just to sell.

To promote something. Yeah. And then I reinvested that money. People forget too when you say you earned a million dollars, the government takes about half of that. Exactly. And then the other 500,000, I roll back into new products and try to grow the company from there. And so for about 10 years, I stayed at that level where I hit the ceiling between five and $10 million and just bouncing my head against it. I was working a hundred hours a week. Um, just having, just

couldn't get past that. Couldn't get past that mark was just stuck there. And so that's what we're going to talk about today. And Josh was telling me some of these, these, you know, these mindset hacks that he was hacks that he was about to talk about before. Some of them were very interesting to the fact because I feel like I've kind of hit a ceiling. I do a couple million dollars a year and there's a lot of people who are listening who are probably making six figures.

They're really good at making six figures, but then how do they get to seven figures? And then once you get seven figures, how do you make eight figures? And it kind of feels like people get stuck because they get some success and they know how to get to where they're at. But then it's like, how do they get to the new step? And they get comfortable and we get stuck. So, you know, five to 10 million a year. And then all of a sudden in one year,

after again, years and years of doing this, you get to a hundred million. And what are, you've got eight steps, right? Yeah. So we talk about, should we dive into the first few? Yeah. I'd love, love to. Um, the first one for biotrust, which was really important for us was to create a charitable mission. I hadn't done that in the past. In the past I was just, you know, I was 20 years old and I was trying to make money and I really wasn't thinking about contributing to everyone in society as a whole. And so with Biotrust, the very first thing we did was we, um, we came up with the concept that for every order that would happen at our website, we would give, uh, we feed a hungry child for a day. Wow. And so we've done over 1.5 million meals for kids. Amazing. And that really came

from not only cause we're a nutrition company and it ties in with hunger, but when I was a little kid, we used to feed people on Christmas and go to their houses and really poor people in rural Iowa. Amazing. And that just stuck with me. It's such a great feeling. Sure. And it's important for the community as well, our customers and our employees, because people want to be part of a company that's doing, doing good things in the world. Sure. So charitable mission was the first thing we did with, with the meals. And the second thing we did was on our

order page, we put an opportunity for customers to donate to the make a wish foundation and they could do $1, $5 or $10. Now the interesting thing was we just wanted to do that as, as goodwill. But when we added that to the order page, our sales conversions went up really? Because I think people see that you're a giving company and they want to do business with you. So our sales went up like over 5% on the order page, the conversions. And over the years we've raised over the last three years, we've raised over a million dollars for the Make-A-Wish. Amazing. So we do a match, a specific match on that amount of money.

Whatever they give, then you match. Yeah. And anyone out there who's got a website, you could add that to your website, to any charity you want, raise a certain amount of money, $1, $5, or $10 your customers can donate. You can do a match on that. And you can do so much good. And it's so simple. And it's a win-win-win. The charity wins. And the Make and you can do so much good. And it's so simple and it's a win,

win, win the charity wins and the make a wish kids win. Sure. Um, we, we actually increase sales and, and customers like feel good about giving. Yeah. So that's something simple that people could do out there. Raise your conversion rates, do something great for a charity. I like that. It's so cool. I'm going to apply that. So simple. We're doing that already. You know, we're, we work with pencil promise, which I know you do as well, but in schools, but it's not like on the checkout page. Hey, if you want to make a donation, we just give, you know? So I really liked that. I want to incorporate that. Yeah. And we do, um, well, pencils of promise. We'd buy a trust, just build our second school, which I got introduced to them through you. Yeah. Adam, he came out here. We met by a coffee shop. Nice. At the end of it, I said, yeah, let's build a school. And he's like, that's awesome. Um, so we do a lot of

charity work, but if you, if you start an organization and you tie in your sales goals with doing something good for people, you know, if you, if you hit a $10,000 in sales, you're going to do something great for a charity and you have those goals set out. I mean, people in your company will work hard for them. Um, it just, they want to work for a company like that and recruiting. A lot of people have come to us and said, we, we read about all the charity work you do. And because of that, we wanted to come work for you. So it's a great recruiting tool as well. Sure, sure.

And there's not a downside to doing it. That's right. Yeah. Okay, so that's the first principle. Oh, one more thing about that is you meet the coolest people. Like I was having lunch with Maria Shriver, Arnold Schwarzenegger's ex-wife. Yeah. She does some amazing

things like a month ago I was in California. And it's all because of charity work. You know, Pencils of Promise, we're there at the gala and Usher's there and John Legend singing. And I meet these people which I'd never would have the possibility to before. And so I'm a firm believer in you get what you give in life in a big great. In a, in a big way. So step two is promote your passion. A lot of people chase money out there. Yep. And whenever I've chased money in life, it's always bit me in the ass. You know, a lot of people see what we're doing in the supplement area. They get into it. They have no passion for it, but they want to make the money, they want to make money. A they see you're making money. Don't meet label claims. We were talking earlier, the Department of Justice just busted 100 supplement companies that are doing it the wrong way.

Five guys went to jail. 100 companies because they're not truly passionate about helping people. And it comes across and they're paying the price for it. But that also comes to helping your customer. And so with us, making, like extremely important and making a top priority and putting people in charge of that is so important. We have a, a plus BBB rating. We work really hard for, and we do all these things because if you're not passionate about what you're doing, you're not passionate about the people you're trying to help.

Like, why are you doing it? Right. Exactly. Just for the money. It's not going to, yeah, the money will, the money will, it'll bite you in the butt if you're doing it for the wrong reasons. Okay. The other thing is, is just self-sabotage. I think when I was younger, I had a lot of self-sabotage tendencies because when you grow up without a lot of money and you start making good money, you start saying, do I really deserve this?

There's people starving in the world. But if you tie in what you do, so it has meaning to not only yourself but to other people, it helps alleviate that. And I think you do better. You don't have that hurdle holding you back. And so I think that's super important just for that reason alone is just be passionate about what you're doing and get involved with the charitable aspect. I like that. Do you think you can be successful without having a charitable aspect tied to your business? Well, people have proven you can do it.

Right. But I just think money without meaning is meaningless. That's a great quote by Josh Bozzone right there. Tweet that out. Are you on Twitter, Josh? I don't run Twitter. I don't run my Twitter account. What did you say?

Money without meaning is meaningless. There you go. I don't run Twitter. I don't run my Twitter account. What did you say? Money is... Money without... What did I say? Money without meaning is meaningless. There you go. And it's true, you know? Yes. I like that.

Okay. What was that? Point number three? That was two. Three is to really go into an industry that you can disrupt. Everybody talks about disruption, but if you can create a product or service that helps things be more convenient, like look at Uber. I'd never, I never used a black car service before. Never, ever. And Uber is so simple to use the convenience factor. The

taxi cab companies are wishing they would have done this a long time ago. Yes. Or ease of ordering like Amazon with their one-click ordering. Yeah. You can disrupt based on quality and you can disrupt on speed of delivery. And there's all sorts of areas to disrupt on. And for us, we saw all these products. We had a quality control problem. The supplement industry has a quality control problem. So by coming out with amazing products with high quality and those processes in place to make sure it's always a high quality, we could disrupt there.

And then the other part was, um, the artificial aspect, which we talked about earlier, all these chemicals in the products. If we could come out with products without those chemicals and without the artificial sweeteners and colors and flavors, we knew that we could kind of disrupt a lot of what's going on there. So that's another area of disruption and also distribution. Most supplement companies right now, they either go to a store, they sell retail or they sell in like a big mall website with all these supplements. And people are trying to choose from hundreds of supplements and they usually do it on price or they hear a friend used a product or something. So we created our own almost like QVC

distribution channel. We have millions of people every day that are part of our distribution channel customers and we control that. And so we disrupted the way the supplements are sold that way and created a whole new model. So we disrupted on quality, higher quality, better ingredients, and just the way the products were marketed and distributed created a whole new platform around that. So that allowed us, one of the reasons, allowed us to grow so quickly. Sure. Yeah. Incredible. And I never did these things before. Yeah. You know, when I was in my twenties, I never thought about disrupting a industry. I just thought about making some good products and trying to make a living. And so it's

a, it's a mind shift that has to take place in order to reach a new level. Yeah. So was that number three? That was three. Um, step four is really to form allies. And this is something I never did before either. I used to buy media, sit at my house, work from my home, and just kind of, I was in a vacuum, but forming allies allowed us to grow very quickly as well. We have over a thousand business partners, people call them affiliates, but these are people that promote by our trust products and kind of they promote BioTrust products, but it's not MLM. They're affiliates. They're affiliates.

And we make up sometimes 50% to 80% of their whole company profits. Really? So they're acquiring customers and breaking even or losing a little bit of money up front. And then selling BioTrust products, it's like 50% of their whole company's profits. Amazing. So we went out to all these companies who have email lists, anyone who has an email list of 25,000 people or more. Um, and we said, we'd love to be your backend supplement company. We have golf lists, we have religious, uh, lists,

we have conservative lists, we have health lists, all kinds of, uh, affiliates out there that promote the products. And, you know, that's one of the key reasons which those allies allowed us to grow really quickly and build our own internal list with our lifetime commission program. So, and how big is your list now? Are you allowed to talk about that? It's in the millions, millions of millions. It's incredible. Yeah. In three years, in three years. And we, we went to our affiliate partners and we said, we'll give you a really high commission. And we'll also, every time a customer purchases that you send over purchases again, we'll give you the same affiliate. Yeah.

So they keep getting a commission all the time as long as their customer is a customer of ours. Amazing. Instead of a lot of affiliate programs who say, we'll pay you once and then we'll keep the customer. So we have people that are, you know, making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month and where their whole back end. Amazing.

So yeah, anyone out there who has a email list, let us know. And at the end, at the end of the podcast, we'd love to have you on board. Yeah. And then,

so finding allies, but you're also still do a lot of media by, right? We do do a lot of media buying. We're like, uh, our still do a lot of media buy, right? We do do a lot of media buying. We're like our platform is a full functioning tech, and our technology allows us to have that distribution. And we do all the split testing, and we do all the crazy split testing, all the metrics. We have over 1,000 metrics we track.

Right. It's 1,000 data points. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. Okay. So that was step four data points. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. Okay. So that was step four allies. Yeah.

Step five was to build the infrastructure at 20 X 20 X times what we even thought we needed. Because really when I first started, when I had a company at one point in 2009 that grew really rapidly and I didn't have the infrastructure in place, customer service, shipping, inventory to handle it. And I mean, the growth was amazing, but not having the infrastructure in place like almost killed us. Right. You know? And when you call in and it's like a five hour wait time on a call,

when it says, you know, your call will be answered in five hours. Oh my gosh. It's not a good thing. Yeah. And so building a team with the ability to handle 20X times the amount of business you're doing, once you test it out and prove that it's a viable option, is a great plan so you can grow quickly.

And that really comes down to just hiring, which is what I'd like to talk quite a bit about, but building out that team in the past, here's some of the things in the past, um, that I did wrong with hiring. Okay. So, uh, I would do title inflation. So like I would hire a friend and he all of a sudden he'd be like vice president of the company with no experience, you know, when I was in my twenties or, uh, not having executive team with, with stock options or skin in the game. So they would just, you know, they could, they felt like they could leave. They weren't part of the team. There was no real commitment there.

Uh, hiring people I didn't like and respect something I did before. Really? I thought they'd do the job. I thought they'd do well, but they really weren. Really? I thought they'd do the job. I thought they'd do well, but they really weren't people that I wanted to be around 24-7. I think that's really important to be around people where there's a culture fit. Oh, another thing I did was I didn't have redundancy at each position. And with Biotrust now, we're at a level where anyone in the company could leave and the company would still function.

But before, we would have a tech guy who had all the black box information. And if he left, our whole company would be shut down. Wow. Or he couldn't even go on vacation, for example. Right. And so we do a lot of redundancy and backup in the company. Backup. And you also do procedures and say, how do you do that? Like a backup?

Well, you have teams that can handle the work. And so you have that one person build a team around yourselves. But what I did when building Biotrust was I wanted to hire a company with people in it that had already done what I wanted to do. So the goal was to build a company that did 300 million plus in sales. And in the past, I would have just hired people who had never done that and thought maybe I could train them. But this time around, I really hired my mentors. I interviewed people and found people who had already done that. They'd been part of the building process, built these big companies. So they knew how to hire. They knew they had a network that they could fill in the other positions and

they knew the processes and procedures to put in place for each department. And so I went on LinkedIn and I actually emailed people and I would say who are already working somewhere, who are already working somewhere because we have a saying that stars aren't looking for jobs. They're not on monster.com looking for jobs. So I would go to LinkedIn and I would contact people that were leaders in their industry. And I would explain what we were doing and how we were growing very quickly and saying that we're looking to hire like a CFO if they had any referrals that they

think. And they would almost always throw their hat in the ring. Really? Yeah. You would go after a CFO and say, well, look, do you know another one? Like, yeah, our C level. And they'd always say, well, I'm, I'm interested because we would tell them about the company and our charitable mission and how quickly we were growing and they would throw their hat in the ring. And so using LinkedIn, sending like little mini sales letters out, I was able to attract people. Then they would meet the team and see all the other amazing people we were hiring and that we were doing something different. And so using LinkedIn, I networked my way for the first year to all these great people. And then once you hire great people, like a

executive in a area, they usually have a good network to fill in the rest of the department. They know who they need to hire. They know how to structure it. They built really big companies before. And so that was a key to go from, you know, running my head against the ceiling, so to speak, to running a company that could do over a hundred million in sales. Yeah. And what about someone who's like, that's great and all, but I don't have the money to hire people like that. You know, I'm a startup or I didn't have a million dollars to invest to get started. It's just, you know, I make five grand a month or I don't even make that. And I'm doing it all on my own and I've got, you know, multiple things happening.

Yeah. And I did that too. You really have to take a percentage of your profits that you're making. If you're making profits, hopefully you are and sacrifice that money yourself to build the team around you. You know, cause there are some points where I would be making, I would be more concerned about short-term profits and actually building a great team. And so you have, there's a, there's a balance there. If you don't have, if you don't have money, like I've never taken money or investors, it's a hard balance. But anytime you start consistently making profits over a certain amount of time, take 20% of that money, 30% of that money, invest in talent and get things off your plate so that you can work on your unique ability and other people can work on theirs.

Yeah. That's great. Okay. Otherwise you get stuck doing everything. It's all about the team. I'm all about the team as well. That's one of the principles in my book is building a championship team around you for your vision. But you can't do it alone. You can't do it all on your own. Yeah, very, very true. I've tried to do that and almost killed myself trying to do it. Okay, what is that, number five?

I think that's five, yeah. And six is forced focus. You know, when I was a young entrepreneur, you kind of chase shiny things. It's like a friend calls and says, I got this opportunity and you're all of a sudden in some business you never thought you'd be in. You're not passionate about it, but you think you can make money in it. And Joe Polish has a saying, there's a lot of entrepreneurs that are stepping over dollar bills to pick up quarters because they're not focused. And so when we started Biotrust, my partner, Joel and I had an agreement that we would not take on any other projects. Like legally, it was in our

operating agreement that we would not take on any other projects. That way we would have to be focused on Biotrust and our executives have the same thing. They can't be out there consulting and running other companies because we're trying to win the Super Bowl and everyone's got to be focused. All in. Yeah. And so I have friends who are entrepreneurs who one week they call me and they're going to start a smoothie company. And the next week they call me and they're doing some other crazy thing. And I'm always trying to talk to them about being focused, finding something that works.

And then the hard part for an entrepreneur is just grinding it out. Yes. You know, you got to. For years. You got to grind. You got, it's not always fun. It's not always shiny and new, but you got to put in the work and build the team. There comes a point where you can kind of step out of that later on.

But in the beginning, you definitely have to grind and focus. So that's. Forced focus. Forced focus. Don't take on multiple projects. Focus on one thing. Make it great. Put all your energy into that one thing.

Yeah. And I killed some companies. I was telling you before I had some companies that were doing really well, make a million dollars a year or this and that. Right. Yeah. And they, and I would actually shut them down.

I sold one of them and shut another one down because it was just taking my attention away from real, what I wanted to do and with bio trust and helping people. So it was holding you back in a lot of ways. Yeah. If it, if it, you know, you're not making a very big impact with it and, and, uh, it's holding you back. It's time to cut those things loose. So the next one, uh, seven is know your numbers. When I was young, I would look at the end of the month and see if I made profit or not. And that was like the only numbers I was looking at sometimes conversion rates, but to run a larger company, you have to be a data-driven company and you have to have

like your metrics dialed in. You have to know how much it costs to acquire a customer. If you lose money acquiring a customer, what month do you break even? You know, what's the lifetime value of a customer? We have a thousand metric points, data points that we look at and follow. And to run a larger company, you have to do it with data. You know, everything's got to be data driven, your decisions. We, we monitor open rates with emails, conversion rates on sales pages, you know, all these things because it helps you steer the company in the right direction. It's like a dashboard for a plane. If you don't have those numbers, you can run yourself into a mountain.

Wow, I like that. Yeah. So how does someone, an entrepreneur, like figure out what those numbers are? How do you even know? Wow, that's a lot of learning throughout the years. Yeah. Yeah. So how does someone, an entrepreneur like figure out what those numbers are? How do you even know? Wow. That's a lot of, that's a lot of learning throughout the years. It goes back to learning about direct response. I think that's learning about conversion rates, learning about, um, typical direct

response, metric numbers, and then branching out from there. There's a book called scientific advertising by Claude Hopkins. I think it was the first kind of introduction I had to you can really – you really have to use these metrics in marketing to know what's going on with your customers and your company. So be data-driven. Data-driven. The eighth one is really to fire yourself. And what I mean by that is you have to go from a doer

to a delegator or from like, for me, it was, I was going from a marketer to a strategist. And there's a saying, you know, magic Johnson owned a hundred Starbucks coffees. And I thought to myself, so was it a Burger Kings? He wanted, he owned at 1.100 Starbucks. Wow. And he sold them back to Starbucks like a couple of years ago. Really? But I was thinking to myself, Matt,

I bet magic Johnson doesn't make lattes. No, you know, it's like there's a lot of entrepreneurs out there that are doing things that they shouldn't be doing. And when I was with biotrust in the first, I was like our legal, reviewing legal stuff with the lawyer. I was in charge of all operations.

I was in charge of the phone room. I had like a million things. And slowly, every month, I'm like, I'm going to take this off my plate, delegate it, hire for it. And after two years now, there's a lot taken off my plate, and I can focus on high-level strategy. But you have to fire yourself in certain positions, two years now, there's a lot taken off my plate and I can focus on high level strategy, but before, but you have to fire yourself in certain positions, you know, especially ones you don't like to do and don't want to be part of. Yeah. And you, you started out as a, you know, a formulator

with, with the actual ingredients at EAS, you know, you would put together the new ingredients, you'd be doing the testing and that was your specialty. And now you don't, you're not even a part of that in any way. I mean, you're part of like probably tasting things and connecting with the people that are doing it, but you're not in there formulating the ingredients, learning about all the newest research. You have a team that's doing that and you're saying like yes or no to certain things, right? Yeah. And that's the point you want to get to as an entrepreneur. And then when you get to that point where the company can function without you, then you can go on and do another project or another company if you want to. But I just see so many people just like I was for 10 years,

stuck doing all this work I didn't want to do and not knowing how to get out from under that. Because to really run a big company, Richard Branson said he can run his whole Virgin empire for 15 minutes a day. Amazing. So that just means that he has delegated. It took him 40 years to get to that point. Yeah. That's the goal. You know,

15 minutes a day. He can run everything. Yeah. That's impressive. Yeah. For, for a billionaire with a huge company. Wow.

He's got some great people in place. Wow. Okay. So that's fire yourself. That's the final principle, right? That's the final principle. Yeah.

No. What is it that, why do you think you're so driven to do what you're doing? Like, what is it about you that makes you this driven? Why not just be satisfied with a $10 million a year company or a million dollar a year company? And why do you push so much and focus and sacrifice other things in your life to make sure that you're building this? Yeah. That 10 years when I was building the company and kind of hitting my head against the ceiling, so to speak, a lot of times I was working for work's sake, you know? But what I say greatness is when aptitude plus obsession equals greatness. You know, you have to have that obsession to be great at anything, I think.

Anyone who's super good, they have to have some aptitude. They have to have that obsession. You combine it and you can get greatness out of that. You have some people with great aptitude, but they're not that obsessed with it. They're not passionate about it. And they're just kind of average. So I think it comes from my parents. They were both – my dad just shut down his

hardware store. He's like 74 years old. He's been running it for like 35 years, hardly ever taken a day off. So in my family growing up, you just didn't sit around, right. You know, you went out there and made a difference, tried to help people. Yeah. And I think, I think that's where it comes from. What do you want people to say about you when it's all said and done? Like what's the legacy you're trying to leave behind? Wow. That's a good one. I don't,

I don't think I've, I think this is just the beginning. I think a lot of charitable work, like building schools with pencils of promise. I think, I think it'll be more charitable than anything else, but that that's more to come there. Are there any other principles that you are takeaways from this that you think

entrepreneurs or people listening would really should really focus on? Or if they're, you know, let's say, okay, these eight things are great, Josh, but let's say,

you know, how do I apply all these things at once? And, or do I not, is that too overwhelming? And do I focus on two or three things to get started? The new year's about to happen. My business, I'm reevaluating my goals, what I want.

If there were two or three things that I should get started with immediately, like these must happen, what would you say those two or three points that you talked about that we should do? I think the first is the charitable mission. It makes such a big difference. And even in my performance, when I wake up in the morning, I can look in the mirror and know that I'm helping other people and not just myself. And we're hiring people. We're doing good in the world. We're creating great products. So I think that charitable mission gives your life more meaning and it'll

have a huge impact. For one, if people can go out and just tie in a charitable mission with their company, I think it can make a huge impact. Okay. That's where I would start. That's one. What's the second thing? I'm hiring. Take, make a list of all the things that you're doing now that you don't want to be doing and figure out a way to delegate them and hire something about hiring. By the way, I have some hiring tips I was going to mention, but a lot, there's some people that shouldn't hire people who love everyone. We have friends that everyone they meet, they love and they think the best of them. And they, you know,

I used to do that and hire them. And I would believe what people said that they could do. And a lot of times they couldn't always do that. And so I found out in hiring that what other people say about the person is more important than what they say during the interview. So I started interviewing their like past employers and that made a huge impact on finding out. So actually using the references, using the references, actually calling them and figuring out their real performance because the best indicator of future success is their past performance. People who are winners are winners are winners are winners. Yeah. They have a history of just winning or overcoming obstacles.

Right. You know, and you can see that in the interview process. So when you're taking these things off your plate, make sure you're hiring great people and get help with that. Get an expert that can help you hire. Interesting. What's a question that you always ask? Well, when we're hiring, an important thing we do is we work on a project with someone. So we don't just ask questions because talk is kind of cheap. So we bring them into the team and we work on a project and see how they work in the projects. For like a week or two weeks? No, just even for a couple hours. My COO, we had him come to a meeting with real life problems and

challenges that we were having as part of his interview process. And we'd see how he interacted with our team. We would see how he- Feedback he gave. Feedback he gave. Yeah. So if you can do a project with someone before you hire them, interesting, my partner and I, Joel Marion, which Joel Marion is amazing. He's like the LeBron James of marketing. He's a freak online marketing. He's talented individual. He and I worked on a project together, an ebook launch before we started

biotrust and we were up in the middle of the night, you know, we're for weeks straight doing this launch. It was one of the biggest launches in like the fitness industry and working with him on that project. Let me know that, Hey, I want this guy as a business partner and vice versa, because we have strong work ethic. We're talented in different areas. So finding a good partner is vitally important but do a project together before you i've seen so many companies dissolve because the two founders don't get along and it just destroys the company right so wow it's important things when uh looking for a partner what do you uh what do you want next you you're, what's the goal is to sell the company. Is it to continue growing it? What's the vision? The goal is to keep growing the company.

We have a lot of areas that we can get into and grow and expand. Uh, we have about 300 people we employ through contractors. We have 230 employees, but we have a lot that work at other manufacturers and our shipping company and things like that. But the idea is to grow and really become the best. You know, we want to become the most trusted brand, uh, in the nutrition world. Uh, but I do believe that anyone who starts a company should build it to sell because it will sell at some point. Yes. Even if it's your great, great, great, great grandchildren, it'll sell at some point. We're not going to be around forever. And when you build a company to sell, you don't cut corners. It's like building a house. If you think you're going to live in a house forever, when you build it, yeah, you're going

to make it solid foundation. Yeah, exactly. Best ingredient, you know, the best quality. Yes, exactly. But there's a lot of people in business who will cut corners. Like they don't have their finances in order. Their quality control is not so great because they don't care because they're going to support, they're going to own it forever. But if you think at some point, someone's going to be looking over your shoulder, then yeah, you know, you build it really sturdy. So I love it. Um, any other tips you have? I've got a few questions left for you, but unless you have something you want to make sure you cover, um,

I don't know. I think we're, I think we're pretty good. I like this. And a couple of questions I have for you, you bet. Uh, what is,

what's something you're most grateful for recently in your life? Always grateful for health because once that's gone, does nothing else matters. It's true. Um, the ability to grow and evolve as a business person and just a human being in general. Grateful for that ability to evolve. A lot of people I see get stuck and they're kind of the same person forever.

I met you five years ago. You've changed so much in five years. Yeah. It's been fun. So I'm grateful for the ability to evolve. Yeah. There's a question I ask everyone at the end about the three truths. So I don't know if you've heard this at the end, but if there was,

you know, all your companies were gone, all the video sales that you've ever done, the copy you've written is all erased and you have a piece of paper. It's the final moment and you get to write down three things you know to be true.

And this is your message to the world. What are those three things that you would say? One, I think your word I love is hustle. Just hustle, right? If you want to achieve something, you really have to get a mentor, learn the steps, and then just get after it. Another one is you get what you give. So true. A lot of people,

um, that are truly, uh, enriched and grateful. They, it's because they give so much. It's a direct reflection on how much they have in their life by how much they give.

So that would be the second one. Third one, uh, you know, how much they have in their life by how much they give. So that would be the second one. Third one. Uh, you know, I don't, I don't know. I'm stumped.

I'm stumped on the third one, but there's two, two good ones. Two good ones. Okay. Anything else about life, relationships, love health?

Well, for sure. Like we were talking about with health, you know, if you lose it, I do a lot of work with make a wish and I see these little kids that have terminal cancer and we, and it's in their parents. And that just reminds me, wow, we got to take care of our health. We got to do everything we can. Yeah. So, uh, the, the health is so important. Okay. Uh, well, I've got one final question. Then I want to have you, you know,

really give something away to people if they want to go get something. We'll talk about that in a second. But I want to acknowledge you, Josh, for a moment, because you're a guy that someone I really appreciate because you have such a big heart. Every time I come to Austin, you always welcome me for something to stay at your place. You're always very giving to me and you've been very giving to me for years and never asked for anything from me. And when I'm around you, I feel like there's never a sense of ego or arrogance or you have it all figured out. It's like you're constantly a student and you're constantly like, how can I be of service and appreciative of everyone else where they're at? You're never judgmental from my experience. service and appreciative of everyone else where they're at. You're never judgmental from my experience. Like you can hang out with anyone if they make $20,000 a year or 20 billion a year.

And you're very like gracious and supportive and giving to each person. And you're never like, no one's ever too good for you or not good enough for you. You know what I mean? Yeah. And that's something I really appreciate. And when I, and I'm around you, I experienced that, I really noticed it. And it makes me feel like it makes me want to be a better person because sometimes I'm like, you know, I'll judge people who maybe aren't at a certain level, who maybe don't have the same values or don't think a certain way. And I'm like, oh, maybe I just won't give them as much time a day as someone else. And I see you or give everyone the same type of time, love connection, curiosity, which for me is something I really value and I appreciate about you.

So I want to thank you and acknowledge you for your gift that you have, but not a lot of people have, I don't think so. Well, thank you. Yeah. Thank you. I'd like to,

I'd like to acknowledge you for your hustle because I see you with this book. Number what? Three on the New York times bestseller list. I see you traveling all over the country. I see you hustling book, number what, three on the New York Times bestseller list. I see you traveling all over the country. I see you hustling on TV and ads for your book on magazines and just crushing it out there. And a lot of people don't have that spark or that hustle. And that's rare, extremely rare. I appreciate it.

Thank you. Thank you. Before I ask you the final question, what is it? You want to give something away, right? Yeah. I wanted to give something away. Well, first of all, if anyone, like I said before, has a list out there and wants to be an affiliate of Biotrust, we'd love to have you. So they can go to our website at the bottom. There's a link for affiliate partners, or they can actually also just email me. I have someone who checks my emails.

So, CEO at Biotrust.com. Cool. If anyone wants to contact me there. We want to give away actually a coupon code for 20% off, and the coupon code is Lewis, which is easy to remember. There you go. But it's for protein powders or protein cookies or probiotics or fish oil, any of our products. Protein bars? Protein bars.

These bars are amazing. I'm telling you what, guys. I have these bars a lot. A lot of companies send me products to just have and try, and I'm always running out of these protein bars. The chocolate chip ones are incredible. And the chocolate chip cookies, the chocolate chip protein cookies are so good. So I recommend checking it out for sure.

Yes. Anyone just use Lewis and that will be up for about a week. There you go. And I want to give people the opportunity to save some money. There you go. Can you leave it up for a month? I can leave it up for a month. There you go.

If we need to. There you go. Perfect. Cool. So there you go. So check out Biotrust.com. You get 20% off on some goods for for a month. There you go. If we need to, there you go. Perfect. Um, cool. So there you go. So check out biotrust.com. You get 20% off on some goods for the next month. Uh, final question. Is there anything else you wanted to add about that? No, I think we're good there. Okay. Final question, which you already answered it before, but let's get it a nice little roundup. Final question is what's your definition of greatness? It really is an equation and I talked about it, but it's bears repeating.

Aptitude plus obsession equals greatness. It's really an equation. Everyone I see who out there is great. It's obsessed with what they're doing. It's like their passion in life and they have some sort of aptitude around it. You don't have to have, that's the thing with hustle. You don't have to have a ton of aptitude around it. That's the thing. With hustle, you don't have to have a ton of aptitude. You can be great if you just are obsessed with learning, obsessed with helping

people, obsessed with becoming the best in that area. There's NFL players that are probably mediocre athletes that just work their way to the top. There are athletes that are better athletes than a lot of people in the NFL that aren't there because they're not willing to put in the work and hustle.

They don't have the passion around it. They're freak athletes. True. They're not passionate. And I went to school with some of these guys. It's like, I wish I could have their genetics there, right? They're six, four, and they're naturally strong, but they just didn't have the obsession with them, you know, to get them to that point. So I never took a business class. Um, but once I found business and nutrition and marketing, I was obsessed with it. I put in

the 10,000 hours, you know, I love it. Josh Pizzoni. Thank you so much for coming on. You are the man. I'm super excited about what's to come and thanks for sharing your wisdom with us today. Thank you so much. And there you have it, guys. I hope you enjoyed this and got some great nuggets out of this. Make sure that you were taking notes and writing all this information down and you start applying it in your business ASAP. If you know someone who would enjoy this episode, please make sure to share this out with your friends, lewishouse.com slash 260. If this is your first time here, thank you so much for coming. I would love it if you subscribe to the podcast

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You guys know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. Oh, Outro Music Bye.