Hey there, a warm welcome back to Connect and Convert the Sales

Accelerator podcast, where small business owners tune in to hear the insider secrets

to help grow their sales faster than ever.

Yes.

Isn't that right, Leahey?

That is what we do and we have fun doing it.

Absolutely, Dennis.

We have a lot of fun.

But I'm gonna tell you, we have had some amazing guests on this podcast.

Have we not lived?

In fact, we had you as a guest not long ago as a new author.

So we

did, and it was fun and you were a great interviewer, although I

kind of missed your sidekick on that one.

Yeah, I know.

But you could, you could play both roles easily.

Anyway.

Today, I got to say to our listeners, our viewers, our small business owners,

our sales leaders, our salespeople, please stay tuned to the entire episode.

Okay.

The real deal.

Today, we have one of the best guests that we could ever hope to get.

He's kind enough to join us today.

This dude is one, is a multiple bestselling author, an

internationally known and recognized authority in online marketing.

He's a featured media expert on CNN, New York Times, you name it, and he is

often quoted in the marketing press.

His name is Bryan Eisenberg.

Hello, Bryan Eisenberg and welcome to.

Thank you so much for having me today.

Hey, I, I, your credentials could go on and on.

I love the fact that you and your brother Jeffrey have a number of New York Times

USA today, business Week bestsellers call to action waiting for your cat to bark.

That was one of my all time favorites until, yeah, that was a good one till now.

Always be testing buyer legends and the other all time favorite

was the rice and beans.

Not billionaire, millionaire.

Could be billionaire, but it's billionaire.

For now it's millionaire.

Okay.

Uh, I think from what I know of you, I think you're proudest

of your accomplishments.

The thousands of people, companies, students, clients that you have worked

with, they've consistently had dramatic improvements in their conversion rates.

Sales, some of the most notable ones.

Google, chase, Hewlett Packard, NBCUniversal, ge, WebEx, Dell.

Couldn't you get some big name companies?

Bryan?

What's the matter what?

You had a problem attracting the big guys.

Huh?

Hey, we're a positive podcast.

None of that negativity.

Oh yeah,

sorry.

No, but you, you know, it's funny, you know, all the main street heroes

that we've worked with, no one would get excited by the impact that we've

had on those lives, and you know, to.

You know, those actually mean more where we've transformed people's lives versus

the big company that got a 10 digit optimization and then wiped it all clean.

'cause a new CMO came in town.

That's a very interesting point, isn't it?

So the big names, you know, grab the attention, you

know, oh, uh, work with NBC.

But the real value, I think to you is those individuals that will never know,

will never hear about 'em, but they know and they know what you did to help them.

Wonderful.

Well, one of the reasons Bryan is here today, and by the way,

Leah, shame on us for not having Bryan on this podcast sooner.

I mean, clearly we missed having him, but now I think we

blamed, we blame producer Paul.

He's not here, so,

oh,

actually, he's

always

here.

Don't, don't ever say that.

He'll, he'll, he'll make you look bad.

He'll turn your screen dark or something.

He, he, he has.

Why are we here today?

Because Bryan, with his brother Jeffrey, has written yet another

book with a very interesting title.

I love it.

I think I swallowed an elephant.

The stories we sell, I. The success we build.

How about that?

What do you think, Leah?

I think he gets an A plus for title.

What do you think?

Oh, I love it.

Because you instantly just in your head, are going what?

You are thinking of every elephant joke your kids have ever told you.

Yeah.

You're shaking your head, you're wondering, and then you get sucked in

and isn't that what a story is all about?

That's what a story's all about.

So Bryan, my first question is, okay.

Having been a fan of, of yours and Jefferies for many, many

decades, having also read your books, this one's different.

How is this book different?

Well, first I want to hit on the title because we had a

lot of pushback when we wrote out the fir, we wrote the draft and we started

sharing it among friends, and we had a whole bunch of people who said.

Yeah, it's not an immediate payoff and stuff like that.

And I reminded him, I said, you know.

Our bestselling book by far, in terms of volume, in terms of impact,

in terms of people remembering.

The book we wrote was waiting for your cat to bark.

Right?

Right.

And it didn't follow the same rules everyone was expecting.

There's no media payout, but it told you a story.

And it's the same thing with this title, right?

The story I want you to, to absorb whatever that story is.

For you, uh, because we all have our own elephant.

Everybody in the world is dealing with an elephant that they swallowed.

We're all overstressed, overscheduled, overstimulated, overwhelmed, and

there's a way to get around it.

Mm-hmm.

There is.

And so that may lead to my next question.

What is it that you hope the reader comes away with after experiencing this book?

You know, one of the big surprising things for Jeffrey

and I, um, who've been sharing a book early, I mean, I still don't have an

actual copy, I only have the author copy that says, not for resale.

Yeah.

Right.

So it's still fresh off the press.

Um, is that we've almost seen as a Rorschach test.

Different people depending on where they are, right?

What issues they're facing, what, where they're stuck in their business,

where they're stuck in their lives, are taking different things from it.

Because part of what we did is I.

Yes, it has a lot of wisdom that we, that you may be familiar with if

you've read some of our other books.

Yes.

But we simplified it more so than ever beforehand.

And, and that's all thanks to our friend Elmer Ate.

If you've ever met Elmer at the, at the Wizard Academy, you would know, um, he

used to love to tell us, you know, he.

I thought our stuff was brilliant.

It just wasn't speaking.

Um, I don't know if we could use this on the podcast, but basically dumbass,

of course we can say, well, real speed.

Real speed, right?

Real speed.

But, but really just trying to make things so simple for people.

Right.

Because simple also means mastery.

Yes.

And I think a lot of people mistake that simplicity.

They think they're talking down to kids, and I know you're working on a kid's book.

It's not, it's actually way more difficult.

Yes.

And so.

There's also a lot we chose to leave out of the book, right?

Trying to make bite-sized chapters every chapter, somewhere between 250 and 400

words, and that leaves a lot of the surface of what you're gonna get from

the book, coming from you exploring what those very few words mean to you in your

life today or in your business today.

That that's a great answer.

I I, I wanna also commend you.

For doing something that some authors find it difficult to do, but apparently

you have come to grips with it.

You're very transparent.

You tell a very personal story.

Really throughout this book, you weave it into it.

It's not just one part, it's woven into it.

Would you mind sharing that story and, and maybe enticing, you

know, in a way that hopefully gets people to say, I gotta read this.

Okay.

Yeah, let me spin it back a little bit because it'll kind

of set it up for the, the right place.

Sure.

Um.

About 18 years ago, uh, Jeffrey and I left our agency.

Um, we had, uh, turned our agency into a software company, uh, took it public

through reverse merger and the market crashed and all the money that we

were supposed to get as investments, um, you know, most of it dried up.

They sent a little bit in good earnest money and all that.

Anyway,

wait a minute.

That never happens.

What.

Yeah, ma. Massive failure.

Anyway, we were busting our, you know, whats to try to get the business

working and we turned it, despite some of the professional management

that we had, they were resistant to really turning it into a software

companies, right services software.

And we took control back and we got it all back.

We got it up to over a hundred customers paying on a subscription model.

And, um, we asked the investors, Hey, could we get some more of, uh, of the

stock now that we've got it alive?

And we weren't taking money at that point.

It was, it was, it was a big mess.

Anyway, they said, no.

I said goodbye.

A few weeks later, Jeffrey left.

And at that point, I, I, I did a real look at myself and I realized

I had ballooned up to 277 pounds.

Oh, wow.

Um, I had, um, uh, two kids.

My third was on the way.

Um, my youngest, my middle one, now Sammy was a baseball player.

He had just finished T-Ball and I already saw that I, I wasn't able to keep up

with him, let alone now a third child.

I spent the, the next 10 months losing over a hundred pounds.

Wow.

Uh, and getting my health in order.

And, um, I, I told myself a story back then that, uh.

I needed to do this in order to keep up with my kids.

It wasn't about my health, it wasn't about business, it wasn't anything.

It was just about keeping up with my kids.

'cause connecting with my family is the most important thing.

Like at the end of the day, as much as I, you know, I love impacting the

world, obviously, you know, I want to impact my kids more than anything.

Right?

Of course.

Yeah.

And it allowed me to be present for them as an entrepreneur.

And that's, I've always loved that.

It's why it inspired my last book, right.

The Rice and Beans Millionaire.

Right.

It was to share those stories of being an entrepreneur for them,

that I could be there to play catch with my son for all these years.

It meant so much to me.

Yeah.

Spin back now, few more years forward, uh, COVID hit.

Mm-hmm.

And of course I was speaking all over the globe before that.

Um.

We had, uh, you know, still doing a little consultancy and stuff like that.

We had finished, uh, working with Google.

Um, had a num, a huge success there.

And, uh, got frustrated at the end because, like I said, some of the

management changes and some of the things got rolled back, even though

it was billions of dollars in Lyft.

And we got, kind of got frustrated.

So we said, okay, we're gonna start working more with small businesses.

So, you know, we were doing that, we were advising a couple companies

doing a little consulting, you know, on, on, on their stuff.

But my world shrunk and the weight slowly crept up.

And um, those of you who know Jeffrey know that he also dealt with several

health issues over the last few years.

He did, unfortunately.

And, um, he's fine now and working on an exciting new project.

And it was July of last year when, um.

I decided that I was gonna get, um, direct medical care for all the caregivers

in my wife's, uh, home care business.

We bought a franchise 'cause I wanted her to be an entrepreneur and, and, and

have those joys, the headaches as well.

But the joys too.

Understand the headaches, have the joys.

Yes, correct.

But, um, so we signed up for the direct care practice and we signed

the whole family up just so we can all take advantage of it and

have the minimum number to get the discount, blah, blah, blah.

And we all got our blood work and here I am.

I'm, I'm walking every day, 7,500 to 10,000 steps.

I'm eating plant-based, minimally processed food.

Wow.

And yeah, I put on a little bit weight, but I didn't realize it was bad.

And then I got a blood test and my blood sugar showed I was 3 76.

My A1C was, I think, 13 nine or something like that.

It was, it was insane.

Blood pressure, high, all kinds of issues.

I had, I had a painful bunion for years that I, that I didn't,

um, even realize how bad it was.

Obviously I was maintaining with some chiropractic, but these were all related.

Within four months, I reversed everything.

Um, and I, we can talk a little bit more about how, but the main, the

main thing for me was I knew all those months while the weight was creeping

up while I was trying to lose weight.

But even as I was taking my steps, um, I. The story wasn't resonate anymore.

My kids are grown up.

My youngest is driving now.

Uh, you know, my, my middle one was, you know, off to college.

He's working right now.

My, my oldest as well, and keeping up with my kids wasn't the challenge anymore.

So that story creates friction, right?

When it doesn't align with who you are as a, as a person.

It's not authentic anymore.

Yep.

Your body reflects it.

And so I ended up with brain fog and fatigue and I needed naps every day.

And I, I lacked clarity and lacked motivation sometimes, you know, even

getting those 7,500 steps was, 'cause I was walking my dog in the morning.

That's where I got most of my steps.

Right.

It was 'cause of my dog needed to walk too.

Right.

And, and.

So I was doing it, but I wasn't really living life.

And I was sitting on the couch most of the day trying to

wait for the day to come over.

Mm-hmm.

And, uh, when I got that blood work and the practitioner told me, you know,

I, I, I wanna put you on medication.

I said, Nope, you, you gotta gimme three weeks.

Wow.

And I knew at that moment I can either, unfortunately, follow the

path of my brother who's been through a number of illnesses and have to

take all kinds of medication or.

I can be that person who's disciplined and change what I'm doing and change my life.

And since then, I can't even tell you the amount of change that's happened,

that that is one, that story alone to me is inspiring.

And, and you weave that throughout this book.

Uh, you, you, there's one chapter in particular, chapter

86, building a persuasive system for health Transformation.

You even address it directly for, like you said, this book.

You read into this as the reader what you wanna read into it.

Yeah.

The other cool thing is every chapter stands on its own.

Yes.

You don't have to read chapter three to understand Chapter 10.

Yeah.

I mean, there is some

flow to it.

Yeah, there is some connect, but yes, you can pick up any

chapter any day and be like.

Wow, there's something there I need to chew on.

No, no pun intended.

Or maybe a small pun intended.

Right.

Um, that, that you can apply to your life or to your business immediately.

I mean, I, I am now truth truthful statement.

I am now using this book as one of my day starters.

The one I day starter rituals, I'll pick a chapter.

It doesn't make a difference because every one of them has a nugget.

Every one of them says, holy bleep.

I. That's something I need to think about or that's something, yeah, I've been doing

that and I need to continue doing that.

So,

and I, conversation podcast, feel.

Like, I've never had the honor of meeting you in person, Bryan, but I've, I, I've

heard so much about you and then, and I've read your other books, and then

I just feel like I was further down the rabbit hole of who this guy is.

I related to the fact that you love your brother.

Your brother had stuff going on.

I worked with my sister for years and there's wonderful parts of that.

And then there's also the challenging parts of that.

And you were true to that thread.

Through the whole thing, you were truth to the thread of having to make a choice.

Because yeah, anybody can decide to do, and I won't even say the easier way, but

it's a path towards pharmaceuticals, and this is, I'm going in this direction,

I've made this decision or personal responsibility in a different way.

And I just feel like I know you.

I feel like I could sit down and have a decent cup of coffee with you and

go, okay, this reminded me of this.

And did you mean this when you said that?

Or did I just think that,

that's great, great analysis, Leo.

I mean, exactly.

I mean it's, it's very human and that's what's missing, as

you know, in so many stories.

You know, we talk about storytelling and yet we leave out sometimes

the most important factor.

The person, the human, the feelings, the emotions that we all have.

You're not afraid to share those and they resonate.

It's, it's deeper than that.

And there, there's a chapter in the book about that.

One of my friends keeps joking all the time.

We'd have conversations.

Yep.

There's a chapter in the book about that too.

Yeah.

There's a chapter about everything.

Frankly.

Yes.

We, we talk in the wizard world about brand diamonds.

Okay.

And, and a good brand diamond.

You know, obviously we have our core and our mission, our passion,

like those, those are obvious.

That's like, okay, we know what these guys are, are, are doing, but where

we really connect with people is in their quirks and idiosyncrasies and,

and, and in our vulnerabilities.

That is what makes us uniquely human, right.

We're all flawed.

We all have challenges and I think too many people are afraid to.

Be authentic about what their pain is and the their, that's part of

what their origin story, it's what got them to where they are today.

And, um, I was not afraid to, to share that.

Uh, you know, we've, we've made plenty of mistakes in, uh, in our career.

Um, we've had massive successes.

At the end of the day, it's about being human, connecting with

people at, at a much deeper level.

And, uh, it's only in the absence of it sometimes that you recognize that.

And like I said, I didn't realize how bad my brain fog was.

I didn't realize how bad the fatigue was.

I didn't realize the small aches and pains.

I didn't need to live that way.

I thought it was just aging.

We see a lot of that in communities that right after COVID too, right?

We isolated, we preferred Zoom.

We weren't meeting in person.

We weren't connecting.

We didn't realize how much we, we ache even those introverts of us right?

To connect with people on a real basis.

And so, um, yeah, it became a, it became a priority to make sure

that, you know, there wasn't any persona, any mask showing up here.

It was a real person.

Okay.

You, you, you used the con Sorry, Dennis, I just wanna ask you, you,

at the beginning of that beautiful paragraph, you were very specific about,

you weren't afraid to, but was there a moment where you paused and said,

oh, should I, should I like, because I'm thinking about our, our small

business owners that are listening.

There's a moment when they're gonna change their business, when they're

gonna do something different and they're ready to gungho go gungho.

But it might be someone else.

It might be the voice in the back of their head or a memory, and it's just that.

So did you experience that or was that not a

Yes.

When.

I first lost a hundred pounds.

I was very passionate about teaching people do it.

And there are a lot of digital marketers out there today who've

followed my path and journey.

Um, people like Leo and a bunch of them who decided they saw my

weight loss transformation back then, and they did the same thing.

So it was inspiring.

And I told Jeffrey, I wanna go out there, uh, you know, and, and talk about it more.

And, and he was kind of resistant of us doing that because he didn't, he didn't

know if he could keep up with that story.

Mm. And we were partners.

Yeah.

And when I told him about.

This book and what I wanted to do, um, and it's why I decided to record the audio

book as well, so it will be in my voice.

It's all recorded.

It's being edited now.

Good.

Um, he said, yes, it's your story and, uh, you know.

You can share it with, you know, as much detail or as little detail as possible.

I didn't go into the specifics of his illness, but you know, yes.

He, you know, he went through several things over the, the last few years.

Um, and those absolutely left an impact, right.

I lost, I lost both my parents to cancer.

So health is definitely at the forefront.

Um, you know, my, my son over the last year had to stop playing baseball

'cause he had a, an injury from sports and he was in chronic pain

for the last year that we were just trying to figure out what it was.

He's now doing better.

I, I think we are all vulnerable and, and we all have our own pain points.

And as a business owner, whether it's laying a a, the, probably the

most common one is waking up in the middle of the night because

they're so concerned about something.

Yes.

Okay.

That is a warning sign.

Something is going on with your body.

It's not that you just have to go take the chicken paws and go to the restroom, okay?

Right.

Your, your nervous system is telling you, Hey, there's smoke here.

Interesting.

Go take care of the fire.

And unfortunately we wave away the smoke, the smoke alarm goes off.

We're like, okay, I'm gonna go to the next thing.

And we add more to the pile, more to the pile, more to the pile.

And then it becomes this giant elephant sitting on your chest, on

your neck, on your head, wherever the, the bigger issues are.

And, uh, it's a, it's a terrible spiral.

And the deeper you dig into it, the harder it is.

But I, I, I do wanna remind people, look, you know, it took

me years to get where I was.

It took me four months to turn it all around.

That's

amazing.

Yeah.

Amazing.

Okay.

My blood sugar hovers in the seventies and eighties.

Now

from the three seventies to.

And no medication.

No medication.

That, that is unbelievable.

I happen to believe as obviously you do that, that the

body is a healing apparatus.

It can heal itself if you let it heal itself, if you don't interfere with its

healing, and obviously you tapped into that, you, you found a way to do that.

You, you, you hit it.

Exactly.

So when my.

Practitioner told me about the, the blood sugar results and wanted

me to come in and get medication.

Yeah.

I've been mentoring a young entrepreneur here in Austin.

Um, Paul has met him as well.

Uh, Dr. Matt Delgado from Lifespring Chiropractic, who is not your

typical chiropractor, and go into his origin story, everything afterwards.

But on his wall for all these years are the words we believe in miracles.

Right.

And he talked about how the body given the right environment, can heal itself.

And it can, it can.

And because of my relationship with him, I'd hear all of these people

who've had issues with PCOS and anxiety and, uh, they needed search

and all of a sudden not needing it.

And so I know these miracles were possible.

And I said, stop.

No medication.

I want three weeks.

Three weeks.

Cut it in half.

Then I got a continuous glucose monitor and once I had the data Yes,

now and my mind you right, I founded a Digital Analytics Association.

People think I love data, no data tells a story.

And I wanted the story of what was going on.

And once I knew the story, I was able to modify different behaviors.

And so one of the simplest behaviors.

Okay, and, and Dennis, this is I'm sure gonna reply to you,

how many meals a day do you eat?

Hmm, three.

Great.

How many walks after your meals do you take?

You got me, zippity.

Doda.

Oh, Dennis, we've talked about this after Phil.

No, no, I do.

I do the gym, but I don't walk after a meal.

Right.

So now all I'm gonna ask you to do, to change your life Yeah.

Is 10 to 15 minutes give a friend a call while you're walking.

Okay.

After every meal, it'll just stabilize your blood sugar.

It'll keep you healthier.

That's it.

It's not big commitments 'cause you don't eat an elephant, a massive bite at a time.

Therefore, the name therefore the name of the book.

I love it.

It all ties together, you know.

Can I, can I take now what you've been saying?

I wanna dive just quickly into a couple of the chapters.

George, one of your chapters is about data and I. I'm trying to remember it.

I did make some notes on it, so let me look.

Let's see if I can, there are a lot of chapters, so you're trying to talk

like a science nerd.

You're starting to talk about specifics.

I just wanna remind our listeners and remind Bryan that we're about

the story, we're about the emotion.

This is all about heart and goodness.

You have me here.

Otherwise, you know, this would be a dead point and we'd have to

fast forward to the chicken part.

Leah, you'll be very pleased with how I will handle this, okay?

Okay.

It relates to Bryan's CGM.

It's a continuous glucose monitor.

It's new technology, as we know.

It gives you, uh, uh, some of my relatives have these things.

It gives you a minute by second, by second reading of your blood glucose, right?

Yeah.

And, and it's been out for a while, but it's now over the counter.

You can purchase it.

Here's the deal.

It gives person with that blood sugar problems either too low or too high.

It gives them real time advice on what happened.

How did they get too low or how did they get too high?

Am I correct on that?

Yes.

But I'm gonna take it even more so it's not about the problems.

So I now I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell you something you probably never heard, and

Leah, you're gonna appreciate this one.

You know what the word aging, where it comes from.

I don't Aging stands for advanced glycation end products.

Hmm.

Fancy name, age.

Oh, I'm loving this.

Okay.

Um, I just finished cooking the chicken.

You know when you put chicken like raw, raw, it's got that

pink cartilage and all of that.

What happens as you cook it, it turns.

Tan or brown, doesn't it?

Correct.

That's the glycation happening.

That's the burning of the sugars.

Oh, okay.

And every time your body spikes your sugar, you are

glycating yourself from inside.

You are cooking yourself like a chicken from inside.

Wow.

The reason being.

So if that blood sugar gets too high.

That's why you walk right after you eat.

It just brings it right back to natural balance and you're not gonna glyc.

So you'll look younger, your skin will grow better.

Um, damn.

Yeah.

I actually have a friend who's, I gotta take a break right now.

I gotta go along like Botox lifestyle and it's all about understanding

this core premise of glycation.

Yeah.

That's, I I never knew that.

But you have now just, uh, given me a, see, I, I have a, a, a wife who loves

to walk and a dog who needs to walk.

So you, you now have given me motivation.

You're going to make my wife very happy because I will now

say, honey, let's go take a walk.

Tonight after dinner.

I love it.

So you've just probably given my marriage 10 more

years, you know, or something.

You know, you, you

didn't know that.

Anyway, I wanna jump in, sir. Paul Boomer here and.

I wanna let you know that this was an hour long conversation, but we decided to split

it into two parts because a, an hour is a long time to listen to a podcast, but

B, it is so powerful that Bryan has been saying that it's better split into two.

So we've done just that.

Now, make sure you come back four part two, because we dive deeper

into the discipline and the the few different rituals that he has

and that he recommends that will transform not only your business,

but also your personal life Plus.

We also explore a hot topic, which is how AI helped him shape his book.

So make sure you come back for part number two with Bryan

Eisenberg.