How to have the hard but important conversations in your business [PODCAST]

Episode 102:
The Hard (But Important) Conversations

Dom Goucher:    Hello, everybody, and welcome to a shiny new episode of PreneurCast with me, Dom Goucher, and him, Pete Williams.

Pete Williams:    Hey, everybody. Welcome back. This is the new regime all over again. Back to weekly shows, which is a lot more fun.

Dom:                   Indeed, although I haven’t gotten over the joy and the slight smile that I have saying that we are over a hundred episodes now.

Pete:                   Very good little — I was going to say landmark, but I’m not quite sure if that’s really the right term to use. There aren’t that many podcasts that have that consistency of producing on a regular basis for the length that we have. So it’s a testament to ourselves.

But I think it’s also a testament to our listeners who are willing to hang around and give us great feedback and comments on iTunes and e-mail us into the support [at] preneurgroup [dot] com. Thank you everyone for listening and being part of our little community, because it’s what makes us take that time out of our week every week to put this show together for you all.

Dom:                   Indeed. It’s awesome. There are people that pop up on the comments and things now and we’ve been seeing those people- they also pop up in different things that we do- and we’ve been seeing those people now for the span of the time that we’ve been doing this. I think two and a half years.

I also want to thank our listeners. It’s fabulous that people have been with us for so long, but also all the new people that are coming on all the time and that are talking about how they’re going back and listening to the back catalogue. That’s just absolutely great. Thank you, everybody. And yeah, Pete, it’s interesting.

When I first got into podcasting, which is quite a few years ago now, one of the big things that people were talking about is this thing called podfading, which is this idea that people start something and they go and they list themselves on iTunes, and they maybe do two or three episodes, and then they don’t. They just stop.

Pete:                   Fade away.

Dom:                   It just gets too hard for them. They just fade away. It used to be a big problem. But I’m so happy to say, 102 episodes plus here we go, and we’re still going. We’ve still got stuff to talk about and people are still telling us that they want us to keep going, so let’s keep going, man.

Pete:                   Absolutely. So, if we’re going to keep going, where do we go to?

Dom:                   I haven’t asked you this for a while. You flagged something in a recent show about a book that you’ve been listening to, and I always feel I’m slightly behind the wave with this stuff. You are the leading edge of, I would say what’s good to read, but obviously you listen to everything.

Pete:                   I think I know where this is going and I’m dreading it.

Dom:                   Okay, alright. I’ll try and reroute, in that case. What have you been listening to this week?

Pete:                   The book that I’ve been listening to, much to your delight and chagrin on both sides there, is The Lean Startup. I’ve finally got to that book. And I know it’s very strange and probably a lot of listeners are bemused that I haven’t actually taken the time to devour this book yet.

But I finally got around to it, and so far so good. I’m only about a half an hour into the book so far, but yeah. Hey, look, it is all that it is meant to be, is probably the good way of saying it. So many people love the book and it is a fantastic book. And it is, so far, been a great listen. I really encourage people to check that out as well.

Dom:                   Now, I’m guilty in a little way. I originally planned to give you a hard time about that. I really did, because it’s one of my books of the year, even though it’s not a Book of the Year as it were. I actually have to take some responsibility for this one, because when I picked it up, the first thing I did was do what I always do with any book that I’m going to talk to somebody about, which is to say the core idea is this.

The core idea is this, these are the four takeaways. And then hopefully, that gives you enough to go away and read it if you feel that it’s important enough. But I think I did such a good job of summarizing the book that you just went, “You know what? It’s not something I need to go and spend all that time doing now.”

Pete:                   That is absolutely right. The whole MVP [minimum viable product] framework, if you call it that, is core to this particular book. It has been spoken about and rehashed and regurgitated in so many places. Not just you, but in other places that I’ve consumed. I felt that I already knew enough about the book.

But when you said to me and also to our audience (I think it was on the podcast, maybe it was somewhere else that we do different things together), you said that you’ve gone back to reading it for a second time.

Dom:                   Yeah.

Pete:                   I was like, okay, if you’re going back through for a second time, there must be something more to this than just MVP. That’s why I decided to grab the Audible version, the audiobook, and start listening to it.

Dom:                   Yeah, you’re absolutely right. This term, minimum viable product or MVP, as you say, it’s around now. It’s got some traction, it’s got some momentum, and a lot of people are talking about it. I’ve been guilty in the past of making that mistake. I’ve been guilty in the past of going, “Oh, it’s somebody else talking about X, Y, Z.” It’s like, for example, if you were to pick up David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done, and go, oh, it’s another time management book.

Pete:                   Very true.

Dom:                   That’s one of the biggest oversights you could possibly make- look at something and go, “There’s no value in that for me.” If you’ve got a way of rapidly consuming this content, then hopefully there’s going to be something in there. There should be something in there, even if it’s one thing that changes the way you look at things. To me, in The Lean Startup, it was really, really getting minimum viable product.

That made it worth it to me, to reread it, and certainly to read it the first time. Again, I started this by asking you what you listen to. Folks, don’t forget, as a PreneurCast listener, you have a deal with Audible, the audiobook company that Pete and I use all the time. You can get a free copy of anything if you go and start up a trial with Audible.com through our link, which is AudibleTrial.com/PreneurCast.

That’s it. Go there, if you’re not already a member, then go there and you can use that free trial to download The Lean Startup and give it a listen. If you are already a member of Audible, you’ve already taken us up and seen the light, as it were, then the book of the week, or at least what Pete’s listening to this week, is The Lean Startup by Eric Ries.

Pete:                   Beautiful, highly recommended. Throw it onto your iPhone, iPod, and play it back at two speed and chow through it really quickly.

Dom:                   Indeed. Now, I was going to segue neatly after I’d given you a hard time about the book, Pete. I was going to segue neatly into the thing that you wanted to talk about, because you want to talk about having the hard, but important conversations.

Pete:                   Yeah. I think this is something that has reared its head up a little bit in some stuff I’ve been involved with recently. It’s something that’s probably worth chatting about on the show, because I think for a lot of people, particularly entrepreneurs that have this vision that things are going to be great, things are going to be good, there’s going to be huge successes, huge wins; and they don’t have that much needed hard conversation.

A perfect example for this is, probably related, and relative, and put in the context of most listeners, is let’s say you’re going to be doing a joint venture, a project together of some sort; whether it’s a product together, a marketing piece together, maybe an eBook together.

The conversations generally start with how much money it’s going to make, how successful it’s going to be, how you’re going to take it to market, how you’re going to find affiliates; but you never have that conversation about what’s the nitty-gritty? What’s that one percent? What happens if it goes wrong?

Those hard conversations, because no one wants to have that conversation for a few reasons. Obviously, it can be a hard conversation to have, that harder negotiation part. There’s negotiating to actually get a deal done, to get an agreement, so to speak, on doing a project together.

We’ll do a thing about pitching maybe in a future episode, but then there’s also once you have that agreement, let’s fine tune that last one percent, the nitty-gritty, the hard side of what would happen if something goes wrong. I think people avoid that.

I also think it’s because you don’t want to be the one who puts the damper on the positivity and say, “Hang on, Mr. Partner here. Let’s actually talk about what would happen if X, Y, and Z happened. What happens if this doesn’t go well? What happens if there’s some issues here? How is the cash flow going to be managed? How is payments going to be made?”

A lot of people try and avoid that for one of those two reasons- don’t like the awkwardness of the hard conversation, or don’t want to be the party-pooper, if you will. So many people that we speak to get burnt because they didn’t have that conversation and they didn’t manage expectations of either party. What if it does go well and it makes a profit?

How are those profits going to be dispersed, when’s it going to be dispersed? All that stuff. Some of these projects that I’m referring to are not projects that you would go and get a lawyer to draft up a 17-page document and pay $4,000 for. That’s just over the top. But it’s about simply having that heads of agreement written up and discussing that through, which I think is really, really important.

Dom:                   And that’s it. To me, when you speak about this, it just reminds me of the enthusiasm in this modern age where people are doing more and more things like joint ventures, when there are more businesses that are based around intangible things. People are starting businesses today that are based around information projects. Things like physical logistics are out of the window.

And I think partially it’s people getting into things that in the past they never would have gotten into and they don’t necessarily have the experience; whether it’s the experience of knowing what questions to ask, which is something that I’d like to talk about; or the experience of how to ask, how to have those conversations because they are hard conversations.

When somebody comes up to you and goes, I want to do this, and we’re all going to make this, and it’s going to go like this, and we’re going to do this. It’s almost like a green mist of money just settles on the conversation and everybody starts going a bit starry-eyed. At the end of the day, this is business.

You’ve got to get out of it what you’re supposed to get out of it. So many times, it’s almost like, if anybody has listened to all hundred plus episodes, they may hear this as a repeating pattern, but business is business. It doesn’t matter what the business is.

At the end of the day, you still have the work that you put in and the money that you get out. It has to work that way. You can’t ignore the fundamental business, no matter what the offer is, no matter what the deal is, no matter who it is you’re talking to.

If this huge person with some higher authority than you in your industry or they’ve got more sway or they’re a bigger company than yours, and they come to you with an offer, or a deal, a joint venture, and you get all starry-eyed and forget to ask the hard questions, then it’s probably not going to go well at some point. You’re probably going to end up resenting them. There’s all these reasons to ask these questions. But it comes down to, it’s business.

Pete:                   It’s also a trust thing as well. I think a lot of people don’t want to have that conversation as well because it will imply that you don’t trust the other person, and that’s not the case at all. I think, realistically, if you take the time to sit down and have that conversation with some script along the lines of, “Hey Joe Blow, this is all sounding fantastic, it’s looking really, really good.

I’m very buoyed by the idea of X, Y, Z, and the chance we’re going to have; these partners in the program, and how we’re going to take it to market. That sounds fantastic. But I think to ensure we manage the expectations of both myself and you, it’s probably worth having a 15-minute conversation about some of those harder, more fine points.

I don’t want to dwell on them, because I don’t think it’s obviously going to be a big issue, but just to make sure everyone’s expectations are managed, can we have this conversation about A, B, C, and D.” I think that frame, that context, that script to use, is really important.

You can have that conversation in the contexts I said of expectation management. I think we’ve spoken about that on the show before, about the importance of expectation management. If you frame it that way saying, “To manage my own expectations, those of my team, and to make sure I’m managing yours as well, let’s talk through these things.”

Dom:                   I have a new Dom-ism for you.

Pete:                   Ooh. Here we go. I love the Dom-isms.

Dom:                   Are you ready for this one? This is completely new.

Pete:                   I’m sitting down.

Dom:                   You have not heard this before. Disappointment is born of expectation.

Pete:                   That is very enlightening, and exceptionally true. That’s what it is. I think a lot of things become, is because you have your own expectations of things, and you don’t discuss them in this scenario and have that hard conversation.

When it comes down to whatever it might be at the end of the project, or halfway through, your expectations difference to theirs, and you are going to be disappointed. And it’s because you didn’t have that hard conversation upfront.

Dom:                   Yeah. That was a very Zen statement by me, but if you think to yourself at any point in any deal, in any goings-on, in any joint venture; if you have ever turned around to the other party and said, “But I thought…” that means you didn’t have the hard conversations. It’s that simple.

Pete:                   Yeah, it should be. “But we agreed,” “But we discussed.”

Dom:                   Yes, and that is it. There’s such a difference in your foundation, your strength, your platform, that you’re coming from if you can say, “But we discussed,” “But we agreed.” That is a position of strength. “But I thought,” is not. I just want to come back to thing that you opened with there, which is, by the way, the framing that you put forward there for that conversation, I think was excellent.

But, immediately that you put forward this situation, I wanted to leap in. I wanted to leap in because you said, being worried about the other person might be offended and all this stuff. Let me tell you, and let me tell everybody; if somebody doesn’t want to have these conversations with you, walk away.

There is no legitimate business, or businessperson, out there that has a legitimate reason not to have these conversations. The only person that would be offended by being asked for the details is dodgy. End of discussion. Walk away.

Pete:                   And it’s really hard to adhere to that statement quite often for a lot of people because they get so glary-eyed (I think is probably the right way to say that), in the ‘this looks so good, and it’s such a good opportunity, I don’t want to be that person,’ so you don’t want to have that conversation.

But what happens if it goes bad? Because that is a big concern, I’m sure, for a lot of people. What happens if we start to have this hard conversation and the relationship goes sour and I miss out on the potential upside? I’m sure people are — actually, I know people I’ve had conversations with around this.

Their justification for not having the hard conversation is this; it’s going to sound ridiculous, but everyone who’s listening, I’d love you to just take a moment and be honest with yourself and see if you’ve ever had this conversation with your own self. This is: okay, I can either go forward with this potential project, and it’s going to make $100,000 for me personally in my business.

You know what? The alternative is having a hard conversation and getting the details right, and blowing it and not having any revenue at all and the whole thing going out the window. So that’s your two options. But the third option you justify yourself with is, well, if I only had this hard conversation, and I do get screwed over, I’m probably still going to get at least $30,000 or $40,000 out of this, which is better than nothing, anyway.

If I do get screwed, I’m going to be ahead anyway, so I’m going to take that risk. I think so many people end up choosing option C in that scenario. That third scenario where they go, “I don’t want to risk and roll the dice on a hard conversation to end up with potentially zero.

I’ll just take this gut feeling I have, out of nowhere, plucking a finger in the air that worst-case scenario, if I do get screwed, I should at least not get screwed more than $30,000. Does that make sense?

Dom:                   It does, but I completely disagree.

Pete:                   Yeah, it is. It’s completely irrational and illogical when you think about it, but so many people have that conversation with themselves.

Dom:                   It’s not even that. I honestly don’t think that many people get to see.

Pete:                   You think? Okay.

Dom:                   No, I’m sorry, they don’t. They go — and the term is starry-eyed — they go all starry-eyed. They go, oh, put a number on the table, it doesn’t matter what that number is. We took hundreds of thousands of dollars because that’s the level you operate at.

But whatever level you operate at, whatever it is that you’re doing, if somebody puts that money on the table as part of a deal, believe you me, you’re going to have to work. Now, the thought process should be this: “I am going to have to work. Therefore, if it goes wrong, I will have worked anyway. What am I going to get?”

That’s your metric. Let’s use your numbers because they’re handy. If it’s $100,000 because it goes well, great. But if it’s a less amount, because it goes wrong, you’ve worked for that. You’ve put your resources and your assets, your reputation. You stood up, you stuck your head over the parapet, you’ve done whatever it is.

You’re out there. That’s what you’re evaluating this conversation again. It’s not whether you offend this person and you don’t have this deal, because again, I’m sorry, but I’m standing by this. If you have this conversation and they get shirty, you just walk away.

Because what you’re walking away from is you’re not walking away from physical money on the table. You’re walking away from the potential of you working hard for nothing or for an insufficient return. Now, I am quite happy, and I literally live my life like this. You and I had a conversation this morning that went along the lines of, “Hey, there’s this great project,” says Pete.

And Dom says, “That sounds like a lot of work without a guaranteed return. Can we structure it this way so that we work and see a return?” I’m not saying that you were being dodgy, I’m just saying that a lot of people look at things this way. They see the idea, they see the positivity, and even you and I, who have worked together, day in, day out, for two years, we both look at each other’s ideas from a practical, business point-of-view.

What is the amount of work, what is the return? I don’t care that it’s you. I do care that it’s you and we have a great working relationship. But this is my point, that even though I know you so well, we’ve worked together on so many projects, we both evaluate ideas because it’s a business. It’s in both of our interests and in the interests of the project going forward that it’s realistic about what we’re doing. So, I’m risking offending a friend.

Pete:                   Well, this is the hard thing. Yeah, absolutely. If you do it right, if you approach it the right way, it’s not going to be offensive. That’s the whole point. The underlying thing of this is that so many people have this picture in mind that having the hard conversation’s going to be offensive and risky. And it sounds so clichéd, but it’s risky not to have that conversation.

I don’t know a beautiful, articulate way to argue the point that it’s riskier not having the conversation than it is to have one. But it is just the blatant facts that you need to have that squirmy conversation. It will also, I think, solidify the relationship in a positive way with the right partner.

You were saying before that if the person skirts around and doesn’t want to have that conversation with you, then they’re not going to be the right person to do business with. That’s a concern, but if you go down that path of actually having that conversation with the right partner, they’re going to respect you so much more for it.

They’re going to realize that they’re dealing with someone who is serious, and that will actually make them step up to their A-game, and not rest on their laurels, and not pull punches. It’s important for the sake of the project that you both bring your A-game. And the way to bring your A-game is to actually bring your A-game and have those hard conversations.

Dom:                   Absolutely. I literally, that was the next thing I was going to say. Whatever people think, if they’re not having these hard conversations, it’s the opposite. If you’re thinking people are going to look down on you or disrespect you or thing that you’re being funny with them, it’s actually the opposite.

If somebody comes to me with a deal and I am offhand (not that I would be); but if I was offhand with them, if I said, “Yeah, it’ll be fine, it’ll be great, we’ll sell loads, and it’ll be great.” And if they pull me up, it actually wakes me up. It actually makes me say, you know what, these people know what they’re doing. Not only that, but I feel better about the deal.

I feel better about putting myself in the hands of this person or working with this person and representing them, or whatever it might be. I feel better about the deal because I know they’re paying attention. Ironically, again, I evaluate everything on how much work have I got to do.

Well, somebody comes to me, and they haven’t got a clue, they don’t know what the deal might be or could be. That’s actually a red flag to me. That’s like, okay, well how much work am I going to have to do to make this work, then? If you don’t know which way’s up—

Pete:                   Absolutely. I think the takeaway here, and I want to talk about a way to do this in another aspect of a lot of listeners’ lives as well. But the question I think everyone should be asking themselves right now, if you’re in a project, if you’re starting a project with other people, whether they’re employees or partners, ask yourself the question: have I had the hard conversation?

Is there a hard conversation I’m avoiding, or what hard conversation should I have that I haven’t had yet? One of those three questions you should be asking yourself and seeing what comes back, and then dealing with that to ensure that everyone’s expectations are managed and the projects better off because of that.

I think something else around this for a lot of listeners, too, who are straddling that fence of employee-entrepreneur type lifestyle is that from an employer perspective, looking at it from this angle, when I have an employee across various projects and various businesses, call me on my shit. Call me on hard conversations. Say stuff like, hang on, let’s think this through.

In any aspect of business, when an employee has a hard conversation with the right boss, in the right way, in the right context, and wrapping it with that statement I said before, it will show that employer, that manager, that you are serious as well, and that you are going to be a good egg, that you have the best interests of the project in mind. I really encourage people, if they’re employees, to also have this hard conversation.

I know it’s quite scary when you’re an employee going, what happens if the boss feels threatened and fires me, and all that stuff. That’s a fair, fair feeling to have, but again, it just comes back to framing and context and managing expectations and saying, “for the betterment of the project,” and put these qualifying statements at the front of them.

People have probably heard, and got their own opinion on the value of qualifying statements. I’m a big believer on them to set context and set framing. If saying stuff like, “for the better of this project, so we can make sure we manage your expectations, what is this happening? Why is this? What is going on here?”

Have those hard conversations in that area of your life as well, because that will make huge benefits to your salary, your bonuses, your promotion abilities, inside that corporate world if you’re still in that part of your entrepreneurial journey.

Dom:                   I completely agree with that. I was that corporate person many years ago. I worked inside a big multinational company. I was very, very fortunate that I was almost encouraged to do that by each of my bosses as I moved through the company and worked in different departments.

I always had a manger who I felt I could have that conversation with. Honestly, it’s a very interesting thing, and it’s a bit like the contrasts I was saying earlier about people being afraid of having this conversation because the other person won’t like the conversation.

If you have had that conversation with your boss, or with a potential partner, and it went well, that’s great, good for you. But I also experienced a very brief point where I had tried to have that conversation with somebody and it didn’t go well. Honestly, it made me seriously question my relationship with that person, whether or not I could carry on working for them.

It’s like, you want me to do something, but you don’t want me to know why I’m doing it. Obviously, if you’re on the bottom rung, don’t go to the CEO and ask him what he’s doing, but be realistic about this. I have another angle on this, actually, which is, as you say, reaching out to the whole PreneurCast Community and the different businesses that the people are in.

I know there are a lot of people out there that work directly — freelancers or trying to build up freelance businesses that work directly for clients, and I just want to point this one out. I just want to make this clear. There are people out there that I know that are well-established freelancers.

But there are also people out there, the entrepreneurial spirit is to reach out, to do things you haven’t done before, and this I think applies to those people, because one of those hard conversations can be with a client. There are things that you can do to head off the negativity that happens, and to also limit your exposure, just like upfront with a joint venture, saying, look, what’s the deal?

What happens if—? Okay. Now, you don’t have to get all negative about it, but one of the best tips I ever came across was that if you send out a proposal and if you send out an invoice, make sure that they contain standard boilerplate text somewhere on it that very politely states the most fundamental policies that you carry.

Let’s say you’re a graphic designer. Here’s a good example. This is from the graphic design world, and people can relate to this, or maybe you’re a video editor, or whatever. In different organizations at different levels there are different policies dealing with the ownership of the original work files.

If somebody hires you, say to produce a digital magazine, so the end product is a PDF, you need to decide whether or not you are retaining ownership of the source file that made that thing. Let’s say you use a program like InDesign. I’m going way too technical, but there’s a program out there for desktop publishing called InDesign.

Or you may have used something less complicated. It doesn’t really matter. Let’s say you make a logo and you do it in Photoshop or Illustrator, but the client employed you to create the final product, which is an Illustrator file. Sorry, not an Illustrator file, a particular format file.

Pete:                   PDF, JPG.

Dom:                   PDF— blah, blah, blah, right? Okay. Is it your policy to give them the source file or do you retain the source file because that’s actually your work product and they didn’t buy that from you? Whatever your decision is, trust me, there will come a day when if you do not have a policy on that, somebody will call you on it, and that will be one of the worst days of your life.

Trust me on this. There will be an example in every industry and every business that there is a case where somebody will want something that you never thought they would ask for. They will want you to do something, something will happen. And if you can think it through and have that hard conversation with yourself now, and just make a footnote.

I know people that had, in the old days, used to have their terms and conditions preprinted on the back of invoice paper. And when they printed out an invoice, they printed it on this preprinted paper with their list of 50 terms and conditions on the back, because they were a big company. But it’s just as easy to say, in the bottom of an invoice, the bottom of a proposal, certainly in a proposal, because we’re back to proposals again.

We’ve talked about proposals, we’ve talked about making yourself stand out. Being clear upfront with a potential client that you retain the originals or there will be a charge if they want the originals. If it’s in the proposal, then it goes from a conversation on the basis of, “Well, I thought…” to “That’s a standard term and it was in the proposal. I’m happy to discuss it with you from my position of strength, because you can look at it, and you can see it’s in the proposal.

You may not have looked at it, but trust me, it’s in there. That’s a position of strength and respect. That’s just a standard policy, Mr. or Mrs. Customer. We can discuss it, but as a standard policy, it’s there.” They may feel a degree of negativity, but they cannot argue with the fact it was put in front of them. And that’s a really easy way of avoiding those really nasty conversations.

That’s from another one of my previous lives. That’s just a little bit of a tidbit. It’s right down there at grassroots. We’re no longer talking about joint ventures. These hard conversations occur everywhere. But if done correctly, if framed properly, if presented in the right way, both parties benefit.

I just want to come back to this; I know I’m saying it, but whether it’s you going to your boss, whether it’s you putting a standard terms and conditions in front of a client as part of a proposal, or whether it’s you going to a JV, joint venture partner, and saying “What happens if…” in my opinion, just to give somebody the benefit of the doubt, nine times out of 10, if something doesn’t go right at that point, trust me, you’ve saved yourself a nightmare.

Pete:                   Yeah, completely agree. It all comes down to having the hard conversation to manage everybody’s expectations.

Dom:                   That’s it. It really is, and we’ve said this before. I’ve said it in a positive way in the past. Make yourself stand out. Pete, you and I both talk about this. Make yourself stand out with your proposals by being clear about what it is that they’re going to get.

But, actually it’s what they’re not going to get, or what happens if it goes wrong. They’re the hard conversations. It is. It’s just about managing expectations. Turning, let’s try and wrap this up in a little phrase, turning “But I thought,” into “But, we agreed.”

Pete:                   Yeah, beautiful.

Dom:                   There you go. Cool, that was good. I think that was one of those things that we always look for, which is something that applies to everybody.

Pete:                   Absolutely. It’s a little different to what people often are wanting, but I think it’s something everyone needs to be looking at and addressing in their business lives on some level, so it’s really, really important.

Dom:                   Yeah. Well, let’s face it, Pete, if anybody’s come to us, either you or I, for any consulting, people might come and want something, but we try and give them what they need.

Pete:                   Absolutely. Speaking of giving stuff — how’s that for a bridge?

Dom:                   Awesome.

Pete:                   The contests, the Preneur Marketing contests that we have for our podcast community. If you are a listener to the show and you haven’t entered one of our contests, what are you doing? We have got cool stuff to give away. PreneurMarketing.com/Win. We have continual contests available. They do change regularly, so I do suggest you check out that site.

Put it in your calendar every Monday morning to visit it to see what new contest has got going on, because I’ve always got books and audios and different stuff to give away from guests we’ve had on the show, to our own stuff that we’re producing, to other tools of the trade that we think is really important that we’ll go and get for our listeners to get copies of for free.

Just recently a contest that ended was for the book microDOMINATION, which was from Trevor Young, who’s an author and guest on PreneurCast here, talking about his various bits and pieces. We had three copies of microDOMINATION to give away to our audience.

And a big congratulations to David Leigh, Andrew Clews, and a gentleman by the name of Gedaly Guberek (hopefully, I pronounced that correctly), as the winners of that book. We’ve shipped them out, so hopefully you’ve all received them, have your highlighters out and are chowing through them as we speak and as you listen to the show.

Dom:                   Yeah. And in fact, as we have asked in the past for people to leave us comments in various places, including on PreneurMedia.tv, you can actually leave us an audio comment. Andrew, one of the winners, actually left us some audio feedback, so let’s have a listen.

[Voicemail starts]

Andrew Clews:   Hi, Pete. Hi, Dom. It’s Andrew Clews here. Thanks for the microDOMINATION book that I won through your giveaway. I am one happy winner there. Also, thank you for the podcast, guys. I have been a long-time listener and I get a lot of value out of it. You don’t lapse into BS, you don’t lapse into jargon.

You give us information and advice and actionable steps which, by the way that you frame it, anyone can use in their business. So, keep up the good work, guys, and I look forward to listening to many more episodes. Thanks again, bye.

[Voicemail ends]

Dom:                   That’s great. Andrew, you’re welcome, is the shortest way to respond to that. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to leave us that feedback. And, folks, anybody can leave us that feedback over there. But here, Pete, this is something, actually, we talked about. I’ve come across people who say, I’m listening when I’m walking the dog.

I can’t go to the website when I’m walking the dog, I’m listening on my iPod, or whatever. You had this great idea, which is to point out that we actually remind people regularly about these contests. Not just on the podcast, but via e-mail, because we have over at PreneurMarketing.com.

If you haven’t signed up, you don’t know this, but if you go to PreneurMarketing.com, you will see that there is an opportunity to sign up and get a free copy of Pete’s audiobook, which I do recommend. Pete, I will let you. The name of your book is?

Pete:                   It’s the book from Wylie Publishing that was originally produced a few years ago, got the rights back now. The title is How to Turn Your Million-Dollar Idea Into a Reality. It’s all about taking that idea from your imagination all the way through to implementation.

It’s got a whole bunch of case studies of projects that I worked from On Hold Advertising to the MCG venture, and how you get over the fear of failure and a whole bunch of other stuff about taking action from getting that idea out of your imagination to the implementation stage and actually making you money.

Dom:                   You see, you do that so much better than me. But the byproduct of that is, by giving us your name and e-mail address, we will send you every week Pete’s Noise Reduction Newsletter, which is Pete and I’s little distillation of all that noise out there, cunningly titled by Pete.

All the noise out there, things you could possibly pay attention to, we find the best and the greatest and the most interesting. Lots of tips, call tools, great articles, things for you to just go look at to help you get business benefit without having to spend the time going and looking.

So, well worth going over to PreneurMarketing.com and signing up. You’ll get Pete’s audiobook, which is great, and you’ll get on our newsletter. Of course, every week in the newsletter, we’ll tell you what’s in the competition, and you can just click the link.

That will be in your inbox. Folks, if you’re out listening to the podcast right now, if you’ve got any way of reminding yourself, when you get back, just go to PreneurMarketing.com and drop in your name and e-mail address. You’ll get the audiobook, you’ll get on the list.

And we will be telling you what is the latest competition, and give you a quick and easy link. But, if you’re at your machine, and you’re listening, or you’re just more able to deal with it, then it is preneurmarketing.com/win and you’ll get the latest competition details.

Pete:                   Awesome. Well, I think that does about for this week’s edition of PreneurCast. Have I missed something?

Dom:                   I have one extra thing. Yes, I have some data, because I know you like data.

Pete:                   Oh, okay.

Dom:                   And I know you won’t mind being interrupted because I’ve got data for you.

Pete:                   I like data. You’ve got me inquisitive again.

Dom:                   Yeah, because we did a little bit of an audit of the podcast traffic, because that’s what we do, we keep an eye on everything. Always measuring, always monitoring, so we can manage it. And every week we ask folks for reviews and feedback on PreneurMedia.tv through either leaving a comment or leaving one of those audio messages like Andrew, did or leaving us an iTunes review.

But some of the data we get, we actually know where people are listening to us. You may or may not find this interesting, but I find it fascinating. We have absolutely no one listening to us in Greenland.

Pete:                   Oh, really? Come on!

Dom:                   Yeah, I know, slackers. And there’s no one in North Korea, either. However, we seem to be quite popular in South Korea.

Pete:                   That works.

Dom:                   And just to make the Greenlanders feel bad, Iceland, we’re good there, too. Peru and Chile as well. We are truly a global podcast, sir.

Pete:                   Very, very cool. Well, to each and every one of you from all around the globe, thank you so much for taking time out of your week to listen to the advice, the experience, and I was going to say wisdom, but that’s probably a bit of a stretch, that Dom and I share here on the show every single week.

We love you all. And next week, we have another interview for you. It’s with a fantastic author with some fantastic stuff to share, so make sure you check that one out as well.

Dom:    Indeed. Thank you everyone from all around the world, and we’ll see you next week.