I'm always saying what's working and what's not working.
Vincent Pugliese:And they go, okay, we could add this.
Vincent Pugliese:It gives you flexibility.
Vincent Pugliese:It gives you the opportunity to add something that wasn't there before.
Vincent Pugliese:Okay.
Vincent Pugliese:As opposed to this is the way we always do it.
Vincent Pugliese:There is no, this is the way we always do it in our world.
Vincent Pugliese:There is we're starting over tomorrow, a little bit better than yesterday.
Vincent Pugliese:And we look around and we go, there's that.
Tim Winders:How can creating a membership business transform your life
Tim Winders:and grant you the freedom to control your time and location today on seat,
Tim Winders:go create the leadership journey.
Tim Winders:We're excited to host Vincent Pugliese, an expert in building profitable
Tim Winders:membership models for the past seven years, he and his wife have not only
Tim Winders:lived off their membership businesses, but have also empowered others To
Tim Winders:create scalable businesses that offer both financial freedom and flexibility.
Tim Winders:Vincent is passionate about teaching others to leverage their unique
Tim Winders:skills and interests into successful membership platforms with the belief
Tim Winders:that even the most obscure niche can generate substantial recurring revenue.
Tim Winders:They have mastered the art of identifying and cultivating such opportunities.
Tim Winders:Vincent, welcome to SeatGoCreate,
Vincent Pugliese:I'm so excited to be here.
Vincent Pugliese:Thanks for
Tim Winders:man.
Tim Winders:I'm excited that you're here too.
Tim Winders:I, we've discussed your last name.
Tim Winders:I pronounce it a little different every time just to keep us fresh.
Tim Winders:And you, you haven't told me I'm totally wrong yet.
Tim Winders:So I appreciate that.
Vincent Pugliese:With my name, both first and last name, you have to be flexible.
Vincent Pugliese:It was my first kind of thing in life.
Vincent Pugliese:I, what do you go by?
Vincent Pugliese:I go by every version of Vincent.
Vincent Pugliese:You can imagine every cause what am I gonna do?
Vincent Pugliese:Say, no, it's not bad.
Vincent Pugliese:It's this I'm like, whatever you want to say.
Vincent Pugliese:so you have to learn how to be flexible early in life with a name like mine.
Tim Winders:You do, and, you, you've got the, the accent,
Tim Winders:I'm guessing Italian, right?
Tim Winders:And, in Vinny, I think when you and I chatted a couple of weeks ago,
Tim Winders:we got off on this, My Cousin Vinny thing, which I love that movie.
Tim Winders:It's so cool, but,
Vincent Pugliese:Terrible year of my life when that came out, I got to
Tim Winders:Oh boy.
Tim Winders:we may go down to that road in just a little bit, but for right now.
Tim Winders:if you're out and about, I know you're in Florida now, you were in Pittsburgh for a
Tim Winders:while, you've moved some, but, if you are on a plane or you bump into somebody, and
Tim Winders:I know you're always connecting, that's the theme I believe of this conversation.
Tim Winders:If you bump into somebody that they don't have a clue what you do, maybe
Tim Winders:you're not even a business connection and they ask you what you do, what do
Tim Winders:you tell somebody when they ask you that?
Vincent Pugliese:I it's funny you asked because with a lot of
Vincent Pugliese:us entrepreneurs, you could have a lot of things you could say.
Vincent Pugliese:And I've come on this one line where I say I have a membership for memberships.
Vincent Pugliese:And I always get that sideways look that a dog gives you when you
Vincent Pugliese:say something to them because they go, I don't know what that means.
Vincent Pugliese:And I love that because it actually brings up conversation as opposed
Vincent Pugliese:to saying, the typical, I do this to help this person to do that.
Vincent Pugliese:I'm like, I have a membership for memberships.
Vincent Pugliese:And they go, and if you're not in the entrepreneurial space.
Vincent Pugliese:They're like, I have no clue what you're talking about.
Vincent Pugliese:And if they are at it, they're like, tell me more.
Vincent Pugliese:And then we, it leads to almost every single time.
Vincent Pugliese:It leads to a more meaningful discussion, which is better for me than a one liner
Tim Winders:Do.
Tim Winders:Do you prefer, does it matter to you?
Tim Winders:If they are in the entrepreneurial space and it lets you go down your path of
Tim Winders:what you really do, or let's just say it's, I don't know, grandma Margaret on a
Tim Winders:plane and she looks at you and membership means nothing to her, but yet she's
Tim Winders:still intrigued and wants to talk to you.
Tim Winders:Do you prefer one over the other?
Tim Winders:Does it matter to you?
Tim Winders:Are they just people that you could connect with?
Vincent Pugliese:it's interesting conversation.
Vincent Pugliese:Cause I usually like to ask the questions and I've found that.
Vincent Pugliese:Most people aren't really kind of, um, versed in that.
Vincent Pugliese:I find the world to be not very curious and I think it needs to be more.
Vincent Pugliese:So I always lean on the fact that I don't really want to talk about myself.
Vincent Pugliese:I want to talk about you.
Vincent Pugliese:So I'll generally ask the questions.
Vincent Pugliese:I'll I've had tons of conversations where it's like.
Vincent Pugliese:Long time.
Vincent Pugliese:And they only asked one question and, after a while, it's not going
Vincent Pugliese:to be a friend of mine, because if you're totally not that curious,
Vincent Pugliese:we're not going to go very far, but I can totally do the interview.
Vincent Pugliese:If somebody is very kind of shy.
Vincent Pugliese:Or they're not curious.
Vincent Pugliese:Cause I'm just, I love meeting people.
Vincent Pugliese:I love learning what makes people tick.
Vincent Pugliese:And then as the conversation goes on and they go, what do you do?
Vincent Pugliese:And then once I explain it, it, almost solidifies it where they go, Oh, I can
Vincent Pugliese:see why you would do that while you'd be good at that simply by the way that
Vincent Pugliese:I asked the questions to begin with.
Vincent Pugliese:So it's generally not people asking me, I don't know if you experienced that.
Vincent Pugliese:Maybe it's just my face, but people just aren't asking me.
Vincent Pugliese:I generally ask them more than they asked me.
Tim Winders:it's the same way with me.
Tim Winders:and my followup to that is, Do you enjoy a situation like this where for the next
Tim Winders:55, 60 minutes, I'm really asking the questions, which I love to do, by the
Tim Winders:way, and that's why I love this format and you're, just responding to the
Tim Winders:questions and we've chitchatted before.
Tim Winders:So you know maybe where we're going.
Tim Winders:I don't know.
Tim Winders:Maybe you don't.
Tim Winders:Does it, I don't want to say, are you uncomfortable, but when someone else
Tim Winders:is asking the questions like I am.
Tim Winders:What kind of role do you feel like you're in at that point?
Vincent Pugliese:Okay.
Vincent Pugliese:It's twofold in this setting, completely comfortable when it's a screen.
Vincent Pugliese:I could see you and you could see me and I know what we're doing here.
Vincent Pugliese:I'm completely fine with it.
Vincent Pugliese:Cause I know that we're helping people out and we're talking to people.
Vincent Pugliese:But in a personal setting, I'm not comfortable.
Vincent Pugliese:I try to turn the tides.
Vincent Pugliese:I'm like, all right, you I'm not here.
Vincent Pugliese:I'm not interested in talking about myself.
Vincent Pugliese:I know about myself.
Vincent Pugliese:I know who I am, right?
Vincent Pugliese:I'm interested in learning.
Vincent Pugliese:I find out so much by asking curious questions and by asking follow
Vincent Pugliese:up questions that I'm really not interested in telling my story.
Vincent Pugliese:I'll tell it here because I know the benefit all around of it, but
Vincent Pugliese:in real life, no, I, you can go years with me connected and I won't
Vincent Pugliese:really talk that much about myself.
Vincent Pugliese:I'll generally talk about you unless you're, we're in a conversation
Vincent Pugliese:and get deeper beyond it.
Tim Winders:so this is fascinating.
Tim Winders:I had not planned on talking about this, but I think there's some value
Tim Winders:in this because I think there's some people that are wired similar, and I'm
Tim Winders:not saying that you and I are wired the same, but there's a lot of commonalities.
Tim Winders:I'm just genuinely curious.
Tim Winders:I want to know as much as I can, like one of the drawbacks to that, just
Tim Winders:Every superpower has a kryptonite is that I'm addicted to information.
Tim Winders:And I've realized that I need to cut back on all that I try to consume because I
Tim Winders:don't need to know all that stuff that as much as, that comes up, but I do, I
Tim Winders:am at times, and maybe this is maturity.
Tim Winders:Concern that I might be controlling and dominating conversations and situations.
Tim Winders:I'll give you a quick example where we're parked here in the Black Hills
Tim Winders:and we've got a great little sitting area in the back with our fire pit.
Tim Winders:And the other night we had some of our neighbors come over and say,
Tim Winders:Hey, you mind if we sit with you?
Tim Winders:Which.
Tim Winders:That's like dog on a bone for me.
Tim Winders:I love that stuff.
Tim Winders:I'm usually going out and about and she's got a background in medical.
Tim Winders:He's got a background in the air force, retired.
Tim Winders:It was great.
Tim Winders:They've been traveling in their RV for a while.
Tim Winders:All that's really cool conversation.
Tim Winders:But one of the things I am trying to be more aware of is in a situation where
Tim Winders:there was five of us sitting around here, our grown son was with us also.
Tim Winders:I didn't want to be the guy dominating that conversation.
Tim Winders:it was social.
Tim Winders:Mostly, but is that thought ever crossed your mind like
Tim Winders:where you're in a situation?
Tim Winders:Maybe it's networking.
Tim Winders:Maybe it's business Maybe it's at a conference.
Tim Winders:We're going to talk later And you walk away going man I know I
Tim Winders:ask all the questions and I'm the curious one, but I dominate that.
Tim Winders:I'm becoming more aware of that.
Tim Winders:Does that ever cross your mind?
Vincent Pugliese:The dominating part doesn't worry me like
Vincent Pugliese:it used to, cause it did.
Vincent Pugliese:The more self awareness you get as you get older, the more you realize, Oh, shut up.
Vincent Pugliese:they're looking around, they're looking at their watch and they're looking, they're
Vincent Pugliese:looking over their shoulder or Oh crap.
Vincent Pugliese:I'm telling a, I'm telling a 14 minute story and I'm six minutes into it.
Vincent Pugliese:And they don't care at all.
Vincent Pugliese:Like I've had those moments in the past.
Vincent Pugliese:my concern now is not the dominating part.
Vincent Pugliese:It is, I am.
Vincent Pugliese:I'm an extroverted introvert, right?
Vincent Pugliese:So I don't love, I don't like networking.
Vincent Pugliese:I don't like large crowds of small talk.
Vincent Pugliese:Just don't, I don't like, Oh, what do you do?
Vincent Pugliese:What do you do?
Vincent Pugliese:Okay.
Vincent Pugliese:Okay.
Vincent Pugliese:I'll talk to somebody else.
Vincent Pugliese:I'm like, no, I would rather pull you aside and let's just
Vincent Pugliese:have a real conversation, right?
Vincent Pugliese:Let's talk about real stuff.
Vincent Pugliese:I don't need the niceties.
Vincent Pugliese:I don't need, so my problem is this.
Vincent Pugliese:I can get too deep too quickly.
Vincent Pugliese:With the curiosity and then even in terms of the conversation, I've had
Vincent Pugliese:people say, Oh my goodness, 10 minutes in, and this is like intense because
Vincent Pugliese:I'm like, because it's so real.
Vincent Pugliese:And I have to realize sometimes I'm completely ready for it.
Vincent Pugliese:Cause I love it.
Vincent Pugliese:And they've been having maybe a lot of more thin conversations that don't
Vincent Pugliese:go there and they're not ready for it.
Vincent Pugliese:That's my awareness.
Vincent Pugliese:Now it's not dominating.
Vincent Pugliese:Cause generally they do more talking than I do.
Vincent Pugliese:I, as.
Vincent Pugliese:but in terms of the questions and the follow up, it can get real,
Vincent Pugliese:but that's where I've learned everything about everybody.
Vincent Pugliese:It's so valuable, but I don't think everybody's always ready for it.
Tim Winders:I, same thing here.
Tim Winders:I'm looking at my timestamp.
Tim Winders:We're at the nine minute mark we've been talking and we're already going into
Tim Winders:some like deep personality type things.
Tim Winders:And this is exact, this is the same thing I do when I'm talking to people.
Tim Winders:I mean, it's like, oh, how long can you talk about the weather or even I'm.
Tim Winders:I'm starting to get bored talking about sports and politics and all that stuff.
Tim Winders:And some people dig it.
Tim Winders:I'm not, that's fine, but I think you can only talk about, a game coming up or a
Tim Winders:game that happened so much, just live the game and we're going to go into, I know
Tim Winders:your background in sports photography.
Tim Winders:So I'm going to, I'm going to dig in that just a little while, but I'm the
Tim Winders:same way I'm getting extremely bored.
Tim Winders:I would rather spend some time just by myself with a book or, my wife
Tim Winders:or something like that than idle.
Tim Winders:And I think I heard the same thing from you.
Tim Winders:So similar.
Tim Winders:So
Vincent Pugliese:100 percent I, the, just that boring kind of, I hate to say
Vincent Pugliese:it, like the cocktail hour conversations just get me out, it's loud, it's noisy.
Vincent Pugliese:it's impersonal.
Vincent Pugliese:Everybody's, maybe everybody's pitching their stuff or they're
Vincent Pugliese:giving you a business call.
Vincent Pugliese:Hey, can we just, you know, go over there and have a real conversation?
Vincent Pugliese:Do we need to do any of this?
Vincent Pugliese:So yeah, my style of conversation, what I love doing doesn't
Vincent Pugliese:lend itself to the small
Tim Winders:then here's the, I want to throw a little gas on this fire because
Tim Winders:I think this kind of fits in money.
Tim Winders:We'll often start creeping into conversations that some people have.
Tim Winders:If I think back into my career when I was hardcore networking, cause I thought
Tim Winders:that's what I was supposed to do.
Tim Winders:I would look at Vincent right now when I'm talking to you, even though
Tim Winders:we're 11 plus minutes in, and I would have done this at the 32nd mark.
Tim Winders:And I would have seen dollar signs on your head, even though I would have had
Tim Winders:some compassion and I would have been curious and all that kind of stuff.
Tim Winders:I would have been trying to manufacture what's the transaction
Tim Winders:that you and I may participate in.
Tim Winders:And it may not be just me transacting, getting money from you.
Tim Winders:It might be, what can I do to help you do something?
Tim Winders:It was not entirely self.
Tim Winders:And maybe it wasn't whatever Tell me a little more about your view of money
Tim Winders:maybe today and if you could contrast it if you had a different view of money in
Tim Winders:this arena of communication connection blah blah blah, 20 years ago or whatever,
Vincent Pugliese:almost like motive of type of
Tim Winders:yeah.
Tim Winders:whatever, however you want to take it.
Tim Winders:I just want to throw money into the equation here.
Vincent Pugliese:Yeah.
Vincent Pugliese:It's funny because you, the more you do this, the more you see it, the more you
Vincent Pugliese:go, like it's, you equate it very simply.
Vincent Pugliese:I think everybody can relate to this.
Vincent Pugliese:You go to LinkedIn.
Vincent Pugliese:You get a friend request, you accept it and then comes the pitch, right?
Vincent Pugliese:Boom.
Vincent Pugliese:And it's typed out and it's got emojis to it.
Vincent Pugliese:It's got and literally I'm, my personality, did you
Vincent Pugliese:just friend me and pitch me?
Vincent Pugliese:Did you really just do that?
Vincent Pugliese:And.
Vincent Pugliese:and then there's a quick block almost all the time, but like view
Vincent Pugliese:that in the personal space, right?
Vincent Pugliese:Okay.
Vincent Pugliese:That's so easy for so many scammers to do online, but there's a lot of people
Vincent Pugliese:that kind of equate that to, like you said, okay, dollar signs right away.
Vincent Pugliese:And, everybody's trying to build a business and at least
Vincent Pugliese:in our, in a lot of our space.
Vincent Pugliese:So the business side comes into it.
Vincent Pugliese:It really does come into it because you're looking for the right people are,
Vincent Pugliese:you're trying to help the right people.
Vincent Pugliese:What I viewed as this, and it's been probably the game changer for me is
Vincent Pugliese:any good relationship that I get into a conversation with the transaction wise.
Vincent Pugliese:I think this something great is going to happen between us
Vincent Pugliese:within the next three years.
Vincent Pugliese:Next three years, something great one way or the other, meaning two
Vincent Pugliese:years and 10 months from now, I might make a referral to you and
Vincent Pugliese:say, you got to work with him, right?
Vincent Pugliese:Or, contrast, I might talk to you and you go, I'm looking for a cool event and all
Vincent Pugliese:these events are awful that I'm going to.
Vincent Pugliese:And I'd be like, I'll tell you something.
Vincent Pugliese:We're creating something that's a little bit different and maybe you should go.
Vincent Pugliese:If it, if you have awareness of what's going on, who the person
Vincent Pugliese:is and how the relationship is and how the trust is being built.
Vincent Pugliese:I say it all the time.
Vincent Pugliese:Content leads to connection leads to content.
Vincent Pugliese:And when those merge at the right point, make an offer, but it doesn't
Vincent Pugliese:mean connect with somebody on LinkedIn and then try to pitch them something
Vincent Pugliese:or meet somebody in person and say, you should buy my life insurance.
Vincent Pugliese:no, you haven't earned trust there yet.
Vincent Pugliese:I don't believe in you yet.
Vincent Pugliese:You don't believe in me yet.
Vincent Pugliese:And it's just so presumptuous.
Vincent Pugliese:So when you go into it, and the other thing is when you can add so much value to
Vincent Pugliese:somebody's life with what you do, meaning I'm, I'm in the membership space and I'll
Vincent Pugliese:talk to somebody had one yesterday and we just had a phone call because we met
Vincent Pugliese:at a conference a year ago and I asked how it's going and she's totally stressed
Vincent Pugliese:out, has a successful business, right?
Vincent Pugliese:But I know right away from my space, I bet you she's very
Vincent Pugliese:heavy into client Has to be.
Vincent Pugliese:She's not in my space cause she doesn't really have too much time freedom.
Vincent Pugliese:She's got a good business, but it's tons of client work.
Vincent Pugliese:And I asked her that, are you heavy?
Vincent Pugliese:And she said, yeah, we started talking within a half an hour when I explained
Vincent Pugliese:what we do and how we do it and what my schedule is like and what is it.
Vincent Pugliese:She, we, she had to go, but she's I want to talk to you more about memberships.
Vincent Pugliese:Now, what was that?
Vincent Pugliese:That was a conversation.
Vincent Pugliese:That's me using my expertise to hopefully help her.
Vincent Pugliese:But if the things align.
Vincent Pugliese:And I can help them with what I have, as opposed to me trying to make a sale.
Vincent Pugliese:I don't ever think of it in sales.
Vincent Pugliese:I think of it like in terms of offers, what make an offer when you've built
Vincent Pugliese:trust and they need what you do.
Vincent Pugliese:I'm not trying to sell anybody.
Vincent Pugliese:I'm trying to make an offer.
Vincent Pugliese:So there's a collaboration if it's right.
Vincent Pugliese:So that, that, and, but again, coupled with what I said in the very beginning,
Vincent Pugliese:never have any rush with any of it.
Vincent Pugliese:People screw up because they're desperate and they want
Tim Winders:Yeah.
Tim Winders:They come across as
Vincent Pugliese:you think of it,
Tim Winders:they come across as super desperate on those LinkedIn posts.
Tim Winders:And the thing I love about what you said is that to me, your value
Tim Winders:is you're helping someone solve a problem, but you don't know that
Tim Winders:problem until you get to know them.
Tim Winders:See some, so many people are attempting to go straight for the jugular.
Tim Winders:I've got them in LinkedIn right now.
Tim Winders:I could guarantee you when you have.
Tim Winders:Podcasts and that you're a coach and different things like that.
Tim Winders:that everybody wants to show me how to become an 8 million, eight
Tim Winders:figure coach when they're probably a zero figure appointment setter.
Tim Winders:So I don't even know.
Tim Winders:I'm same thing, but the thing I wanted to slow down on is that you
Tim Winders:are taking the time to bring value.
Tim Winders:My, my observation, you tell me if this is right or wrong by solving a problem.
Tim Winders:If they've got one, they may not have one, but most people have problems, right?
Tim Winders:So you're just communicating to find out what that might be, correct?
Vincent Pugliese:it comes down to curiosity, right?
Vincent Pugliese:Let's say we meet and I go, and we talk about career and
Vincent Pugliese:you go, things are awesome.
Vincent Pugliese:Like, and you tell me all this stuff, traveled, my family business
Vincent Pugliese:is booming, blah, blah, blah.
Vincent Pugliese:I'm doing this and doing that.
Vincent Pugliese:We're helping these people.
Vincent Pugliese:My mindset goes to, Oh, who can I connect to them that needs what they're doing?
Vincent Pugliese:Because they obvious obviously had us locked in.
Vincent Pugliese:But if I said, you need my mastermind.
Vincent Pugliese:what are you talking about?
Vincent Pugliese:Like, why would I even ask that they're not asking about it?
Vincent Pugliese:They're not in need of it.
Vincent Pugliese:They're not curious about it, but I'm going into it in terms of what I need.
Vincent Pugliese:It's immediately Hey, how can I help in one way or the other?
Vincent Pugliese:How can I add value?
Vincent Pugliese:A friend of mine, I don't know if you know who Laura Portier is.
Vincent Pugliese:She was a guest on one of our calls in our community.
Vincent Pugliese:She's a Facebook ads expert and she built this amazing business.
Vincent Pugliese:And she told me one time, she goes, every time I get on a call, Like a discovery
Vincent Pugliese:call, whatever you want to call it.
Vincent Pugliese:She goes, I just act like they paid me 500 bucks.
Vincent Pugliese:So what she did was I'm going to add massive value without leading
Vincent Pugliese:into the pitch without, Oh, let me give you a step or two, but you
Vincent Pugliese:need to come pay me for the rest.
Vincent Pugliese:She just let it all out.
Vincent Pugliese:By the end of the conversation, they're all like, how do I work with you?
Vincent Pugliese:Cause you're so good.
Vincent Pugliese:So we enacted that, a year ago where I'm just going to add
Vincent Pugliese:value on one of those calls.
Vincent Pugliese:And what I learned is.
Vincent Pugliese:By the end of the call, when you've added 500, 000, 1, 500 value in terms
Vincent Pugliese:of what they can do, and you blew their mind a little bit and add stuff, they
Vincent Pugliese:realize when that phone hangs up, I don't have access to this person anymore.
Vincent Pugliese:And that was really valuable.
Vincent Pugliese:They wind up asking me beyond, I'm being totally honest, they wind
Vincent Pugliese:up asking me about what I do way more than I say, this is what I do.
Vincent Pugliese:Because if you can rock their world for 45 minutes in a space
Vincent Pugliese:that you're an expert in, and then they say Oh, I need more of this.
Vincent Pugliese:Is this what you do?
Vincent Pugliese:I didn't talk about it very much, but I proved to you by helping you, I do this.
Vincent Pugliese:So that's the approach we take.
Vincent Pugliese:and if they leave there and they go great, and they don't call me again
Vincent Pugliese:for a year until they told me they did the work and I'm like, Fantastic.
Vincent Pugliese:Let's talk again.
Vincent Pugliese:That was, I'm thrilled.
Vincent Pugliese:It's not about, nothing's about short term and that's where I
Vincent Pugliese:think so many people get hurt.
Vincent Pugliese:Nothing is about needing anything now or this year, and then it
Vincent Pugliese:makes three years so much better.
Tim Winders:and at the end of the day, because you've approached it
Tim Winders:in what I would call a genuine way, you lay your head on the pillow.
Tim Winders:You don't feel like you need to go bathe off.
Tim Winders:Any of the, crappy manipulative Marketing
Tim Winders:funnel stuff that it's all out there and it's not really all bad Is I
Tim Winders:think it's just when people attempt to use it in a we'll just call it non
Tim Winders:genuine Way i've get here's a question that's just jumped in my head vincent.
Tim Winders:So let's go here for just a minute And the question is this, have you
Tim Winders:always had this type of energy around?
Tim Winders:I'm using a big word connection because I think connection is like the umbrella that
Tim Winders:seems to be most of what you're doing now.
Tim Winders:It all fits in, the unconference we're going to talk about a little while,
Tim Winders:the membership, total freedom that you did a while back, your book, the wealth
Tim Winders:of connection, all of that seems to fit Under that connection umbrella.
Tim Winders:But if we were to go back 15, 20, how old are you?
Tim Winders:How old are you?
Vincent Pugliese:I'm 52.
Tim Winders:You had to think about that for a second.
Tim Winders:Didn't you?
Tim Winders:We're at that.
Tim Winders:So you're 52.
Tim Winders:So go back 30 years.
Tim Winders:your early twenties or even your teens, what was Vincent like then?
Tim Winders:were you sort of a connector?
Tim Winders:Did, can you see glimpses of that personality at that time?
Vincent Pugliese:I can't.
Vincent Pugliese:What was Vincent like?
Vincent Pugliese:He was a jerk.
Vincent Pugliese:He was a selfish jerk.
Vincent Pugliese:That's the best way I can say what I was like from 16 to 22.
Vincent Pugliese:There's just really no other way to respond.
Vincent Pugliese:I was, it was completely about me, what I wanted, what I
Vincent Pugliese:needed and what I needed to get.
Vincent Pugliese:There's just no doubt about it.
Vincent Pugliese:I had humor and I had some wit so I can make people laugh and I
Vincent Pugliese:can, have fun and do dumb things.
Vincent Pugliese:But yeah, it was all about me.
Vincent Pugliese:It was not about, it was nothing about connection in a genuine
Vincent Pugliese:helpful form, not at all.
Tim Winders:but.
Tim Winders:But
Tim Winders:you had some gifts and talents that led you into some things that we could talk
Tim Winders:maybe now about, I think, photography and things like that, So when did, can
Tim Winders:you pinpoint something that occurred or a timeframe that you began moving
Tim Winders:away from, all about self to then connecting and thinking about others?
Tim Winders:Cause I can in my life, there's a few situations where I say that, God got my
Tim Winders:attention with a two by four to the head and said, okay, now I'm going to use
Tim Winders:these skills that I gave you for good.
Tim Winders:Is there anything like that, that you can pinpoint along the way?
Vincent Pugliese:100%.
Vincent Pugliese:So when I was 22, after screwing around for six years at a really
Vincent Pugliese:deep comp, not a very short, but deep conversation with my dad, because
Vincent Pugliese:I wasn't going anywhere in life.
Vincent Pugliese:It was the first time I paid attention to it.
Vincent Pugliese:So I don't know what I'm doing.
Vincent Pugliese:It was middle of the night, just stressed out.
Vincent Pugliese:and he said to me, he goes, you love sports.
Vincent Pugliese:You like travel and you like taking pictures.
Vincent Pugliese:Why don't you become a sports photographer?
Vincent Pugliese:He went upstairs with a glass of water, two 30 in the morning.
Vincent Pugliese:I'm like, what is that even a job?
Vincent Pugliese:I'm like.
Vincent Pugliese:Nobody in school told me you can, that would be my dream job.
Vincent Pugliese:Why did anybody tell me this?
Vincent Pugliese:And so then the next day I look at the newspaper and I see a picture on
Vincent Pugliese:the back page, I'm like, how did I not notice there's a name underneath that?
Vincent Pugliese:Somebody took that picture and they got paid for that.
Vincent Pugliese:I went out and bought a camera and a lens that day.
Vincent Pugliese:And my uncle, who's an amateur photographer is you idiot.
Vincent Pugliese:Why don't you talk to me?
Vincent Pugliese:there's auto focus now.
Vincent Pugliese:I bought a manual focus camera in 1994.
Vincent Pugliese:Like I didn't know what I was doing.
Vincent Pugliese:I just wanted to get started and I would sneak and I would buy the
Vincent Pugliese:cheapest tickets to games that was in New York, Yankee games and Mets
Vincent Pugliese:games at Yankee stadium, Shea stadium.
Vincent Pugliese:And I learned how to sneak down to the front row by watching the security guards.
Vincent Pugliese:I'd watch security guards, and they would walk down to the dugout in between
Vincent Pugliese:innings, and I would follow behind them, and I would sit down in an empty seat.
Vincent Pugliese:And they'd walk past me when the innings start, and then as soon as they got past
Vincent Pugliese:me, I would walk down to the front row.
Vincent Pugliese:So every game, I was in the first or second row with my camera.
Vincent Pugliese:And then I figured out how to sit next to the professional photographers.
Vincent Pugliese:So I would every night ask them questions.
Vincent Pugliese:What kind of film do you use?
Vincent Pugliese:And what kind of camera who do you work for?
Vincent Pugliese:How much do you get paid?
Vincent Pugliese:But that was my first real school that I paid attention to and wound up getting
Vincent Pugliese:internship with the national hockey league, a subsidiary of the NHL, and then
Vincent Pugliese:being published in magazines and hockey cards and, getting internship at news
Vincent Pugliese:it, Building onto where I eventually won international sports photographer of the
Vincent Pugliese:year for a newspaper that I worked for.
Vincent Pugliese:and that built out in this business that started after that,
Vincent Pugliese:when our first son was born.
Vincent Pugliese:But to answer your question, I did that for 20 something years.
Vincent Pugliese:I did everything you can imagine.
Vincent Pugliese:Superbowls world series traveled everywhere to do it, but at some
Vincent Pugliese:point along, and I think it was the first NHL finals that I covered.
Vincent Pugliese:before I actually photographed them actually winning something.
Vincent Pugliese:I was there and I was almost emotionally empty.
Vincent Pugliese:This was my dream assignment.
Vincent Pugliese:This was my dream assignment.
Vincent Pugliese:The thing I've been wanting forever.
Vincent Pugliese:I'm credentialed.
Vincent Pugliese:I got on ice credentials in case they win everything you can imagine.
Vincent Pugliese:And I was like, I don't care.
Vincent Pugliese:I don't care anymore.
Vincent Pugliese:And here's why I finally said to myself, I was doing this all either for me.
Vincent Pugliese:Or for the attention I was getting from it, because I finally did something
Vincent Pugliese:that people thought was cool, right?
Vincent Pugliese:I would show up at a party and I was the guy that was with Tom
Vincent Pugliese:Brady the day before, right?
Vincent Pugliese:I'm next to LeBron James on the sidelines, right?
Vincent Pugliese:Listening to him call the winning play.
Vincent Pugliese:Of a game and taking notes on that, that became my identity and without it,
Vincent Pugliese:who was I, so I had friends that would talk to me all sports and then there
Vincent Pugliese:was, when there was nothing sports to talk about, it was empty and I felt
Vincent Pugliese:empty and I'm like a circus clown.
Vincent Pugliese:I'm here for the show.
Vincent Pugliese:To either impress people or for them to impress their friends.
Vincent Pugliese:That's what would happen.
Vincent Pugliese:But what was I contributing?
Vincent Pugliese:And that's when I finally realized it was all about my own selfish goals.
Vincent Pugliese:I wasn't helping anybody with the work I was doing, at least from my perspective,
Vincent Pugliese:I was helping me and that was the.
Vincent Pugliese:Holy crap.
Vincent Pugliese:I hit the pinnacle of what I wanted to do and I'm completely empty.
Vincent Pugliese:Now you'll hear billionaires talk about that in terms of money.
Vincent Pugliese:I didn't get the billionaire status, but I got the career status where I was
Vincent Pugliese:like, more of this is not helping me.
Vincent Pugliese:it's not what I wanted.
Vincent Pugliese:So I eventually within a year, I declared I'm not doing this anymore.
Vincent Pugliese:And what happened was this was the change I was shooting a wedding
Vincent Pugliese:because weddings made good money.
Vincent Pugliese:Sports didn't always make good money, but weddings did.
Vincent Pugliese:And I was photographing a wedding with one of the best DJs in town, but he was great
Vincent Pugliese:at art and he was terrible at business.
Vincent Pugliese:That's almost every artist.
Vincent Pugliese:Every creative artist is great at art, terrible business.
Vincent Pugliese:You'll talk to podcasters who will obsess over everything.
Vincent Pugliese:They don't know how to do business.
Vincent Pugliese:So while we ate dinner, I coached him for an hour on his business.
Vincent Pugliese:I'm like, I've been watching you.
Vincent Pugliese:What about this?
Vincent Pugliese:Why don't you try that?
Vincent Pugliese:Don't do all the stuff by the end of it.
Vincent Pugliese:He's you just changed my business.
Vincent Pugliese:And I was like, cool.
Vincent Pugliese:And then he went up to turn the music on for the reception.
Vincent Pugliese:And I remember thinking, I don't want to go out there.
Vincent Pugliese:I want to talk to him some more.
Vincent Pugliese:And then that same night, some drunk guy in the dance floor is like,
Vincent Pugliese:Hey, cameraman, take my picture.
Vincent Pugliese:I'm like, I went home and I told my wife who was in bed, I said, I'm done.
Vincent Pugliese:I'm done with this.
Vincent Pugliese:And she's what do you mean?
Vincent Pugliese:I don't want to do this anymore.
Vincent Pugliese:And it was making really good money.
Vincent Pugliese:It was a strong six figures, but it didn't require that much time.
Vincent Pugliese:And I was like, I'm done.
Vincent Pugliese:And not that I'm going to quit tomorrow.
Vincent Pugliese:We have three kids and, but I said, she said, what do you want to do?
Vincent Pugliese:And I said to her, I said that conversation I had with that DJ,
Vincent Pugliese:if I could find a way to do that for a living in some form, I
Vincent Pugliese:Would be the greatest thing ever.
Vincent Pugliese:Cause I felt so good that I helped him with an expertise that I had.
Vincent Pugliese:So there were a lot of moments within those 20 years in between
Vincent Pugliese:where it started getting in there.
Vincent Pugliese:But that was the moment where it was like, it's not about me.
Vincent Pugliese:And I'll tell you, I'm so thrilled for like literally whole different
Vincent Pugliese:life from that moment on.
Tim Winders:So Vincent, one thing that, is.
Tim Winders:Interesting.
Tim Winders:we have this subtitle, the leadership journey, just because journey
Tim Winders:to me is what fascinates me.
Tim Winders:I love to learn from people's journeys and one of the things I
Tim Winders:think this also fascinating is how many people out there would have
Tim Winders:reached that place that you did.
Tim Winders:and would have convinced themselves that they need to keep doing it.
Tim Winders:Either they had so much invested in it or either social capital or
Tim Winders:real capital or whatever, and they would have just kept going along.
Tim Winders:And so there's a couple of things that I heard.
Tim Winders:I'm going to mention them and then you could respond to whatever you want to.
Tim Winders:number one, you recognized it.
Tim Winders:you had a situation where, something sparked in you and all of a sudden
Tim Winders:you're coaching someone when you're really, your eyes were off yourself.
Tim Winders:That's exactly the way I perceive it.
Tim Winders:Your eyes were on yourself before you talked to that DJ,
Tim Winders:when you talked to that DJ, bam.
Tim Winders:But there was probably stuff building up along the way there.
Tim Winders:And then the second thing, and I'm going to bring this up here
Tim Winders:because I think it's important and you talk to your wife about it.
Tim Winders:And she didn't, I think her name's Elizabeth.
Tim Winders:I've seen, I see her name on all your stuff.
Tim Winders:And so I think y'all are a team.
Tim Winders:She didn't say, listen, big guy, you bring the money in here.
Tim Winders:Don't you think about doing anything different and changing our lifestyle?
Tim Winders:there's a whole factor of who your partner is and stuff like that.
Tim Winders:Anything I just brought up there, whatever you want to respond to, just
Tim Winders:to talk about that transition before we move along to the next phase of
Tim Winders:your story, because I think wives,
Tim Winders:spouses are important.
Vincent Pugliese:Oh, you just highlight how lucky I got by the person I married.
Vincent Pugliese:Um, from the funny side of it.
Vincent Pugliese:She knows that if it was just about money, I'd be miserable and she wouldn't
Vincent Pugliese:wanna live with me if I have to.
Vincent Pugliese:It is it's like me in school.
Vincent Pugliese:If I have to continue doing something that I don't wanna do, I don't care
Vincent Pugliese:how much money it is, I can't pretend.
Vincent Pugliese:I can't go into the office every day with the briefcase until I retire.
Vincent Pugliese:Like anything, but, and she married me knowing that, So it wasn't a big,
Vincent Pugliese:I wasn't stunned by her response because she knows that the more
Vincent Pugliese:excited I am with the work that I'm doing, the better I am at home and the
Vincent Pugliese:more money we will eventually make.
Vincent Pugliese:But we're also both very.
Vincent Pugliese:about couples and relationships, you know, you hear, listen to Dave
Vincent Pugliese:Ramsey and say, there's one side,
Vincent Pugliese:one person's a spender, one person to save her almost every relationship.
Vincent Pugliese:We're both on the saver side.
Vincent Pugliese:We neither one of us need very much.
Vincent Pugliese:we have much more than we need as it is.
Vincent Pugliese:And it's something where it's like money never really drove us.
Vincent Pugliese:And we'd never made decisions based on money.
Vincent Pugliese:So even when I quit my job.
Vincent Pugliese:To become a full time, entrepreneur, it was like, okay, it's going to be a
Vincent Pugliese:rough year, but we'll make it happen.
Vincent Pugliese:And we can do with a lot less.
Vincent Pugliese:And how much do we really need?
Vincent Pugliese:And what do we really eat?
Vincent Pugliese:And what do the kids need?
Vincent Pugliese:The kids they're happy with dirt.
Vincent Pugliese:come on, let's not make our life dependent on the need for money.
Vincent Pugliese:But I will see a lot of people that will tell me.
Vincent Pugliese:I cannot start that thing because I need to replace my income.
Vincent Pugliese:And I say, how much is your income?
Vincent Pugliese:Like about 160 grand.
Vincent Pugliese:And my wife makes 50 doing this.
Vincent Pugliese:I'm like, so you can't do what you want to do because you have to replace that.
Vincent Pugliese:How about you save a little bit of money for a couple of months and do what you
Vincent Pugliese:love doing, but you don't need people.
Vincent Pugliese:Tim, give me that answer.
Vincent Pugliese:I got to replace my income.
Vincent Pugliese:I want to be in a situation where money makes no difference in terms
Vincent Pugliese:of the work that I do and the less that I need, the easier that is.
Vincent Pugliese:That's a really hard thing to convince to America.
Vincent Pugliese:it just really is for this country to see that, that you don't need that much, but.
Vincent Pugliese:You know, get into finances when the average car payment, 700, when everybody's
Vincent Pugliese:in gymnastics and all these different Taekwondo and they're paying for all this
Vincent Pugliese:stuff and there's a country, there's all this different stuff involved when we
Vincent Pugliese:need three vacations a year, enjoy the job that you're going to have for the next 20
Vincent Pugliese:years because you trapped yourself into it and you won't do anything to change it.
Vincent Pugliese:We, we both are, we'd be fine with so much less.
Vincent Pugliese:Which allows me to fire a client.
Vincent Pugliese:That's a pain in the butt and we've done, we fired high price
Vincent Pugliese:clients because they just weren't fun to work with, can't do that.
Vincent Pugliese:If you always need as much money as possible and you're in debt
Vincent Pugliese:and your budget's that high.
Vincent Pugliese:So that's why, and she's wonderful to, she's the best
Vincent Pugliese:thing that ever happened to me.
Tim Winders:I think the cool thing about that, which what I hear you say too
Tim Winders:is whatev, whatever people are making, they need to be spending less than that.
Tim Winders:There was a time in my life where we weren't, and I know you recognize
Tim Winders:this, but you're talking to a guy that he and his wife live in an RV
Tim Winders:motor coach that's, 15 years old.
Tim Winders:We travel around and when I tell people what our quote unquote overhead is,
Tim Winders:when I tell them that my biggest bill.
Tim Winders:Is my cell phone bill, they go.
Tim Winders:I, you're talking about flexibility and we haven't always had that.
Tim Winders:And I think, when we talk about things like, total freedom and all
Tim Winders:that's part of the equation it is.
Tim Winders:cause I don't care what people do to bring in revenue.
Tim Winders:And I, this is the way I thought like nineties into the two thousands,
Tim Winders:I'm just going to out earn it.
Tim Winders:I'm just going to out earn.
Tim Winders:I'm just going to make more.
Tim Winders:I'm going to, I had a membership during the two thousands in the
Tim Winders:real estate investing space.
Tim Winders:in oh eight.
Tim Winders:I had no margin and bam, that was
Tim Winders:ugly.
Tim Winders:So I think that's a great transition.
Tim Winders:I'd love to ask more about the sports photography and all that.
Tim Winders:But truthfully, I want to talk about the more fun stuff because I know that you
Tim Winders:did so many cool things and all that.
Tim Winders:We'll let somebody check all that out and on some other way you transitioned.
Tim Winders:And I know it probably wasn't, just snap the finger and you
Tim Winders:did, but you made the decision.
Tim Winders:Give me some of the timeframes from there to when you looked around and went, okay,
Tim Winders:I am an entrepreneur in a different space.
Tim Winders:Photography's behind me and I'm moving in a new direction.
Tim Winders:Give me rough timeframes, when that was, that kind of stuff.
Vincent Pugliese:years?
Tim Winders:Years and how long?
Tim Winders:some people think, you wake up one morning, Friday, you shut it down.
Tim Winders:And then Monday, you're like in something new.
Tim Winders:I'm guessing there was transition.
Tim Winders:And if you want to give the years, that's cool, too.
Vincent Pugliese:yeah.
Vincent Pugliese:So around 2013 is when it really started to hit me.
Vincent Pugliese:I went to, here's where it happened.
Vincent Pugliese:I'll tell you, I'll tell you the origin of it.
Vincent Pugliese:I was slated to photograph a Pittsburgh pirates playoff game.
Vincent Pugliese:And if anybody's familiar with the Pittsburgh pirates playoff
Vincent Pugliese:games with the pirates are very rare, so they're very special.
Vincent Pugliese:Especially a home game, very rare.
Vincent Pugliese:It wasn't the, we went to the first game that they had in 20 years.
Vincent Pugliese:This was the next year.
Vincent Pugliese:So they were having another wild card game, second playoff
Vincent Pugliese:game in Pittsburgh in 21 years.
Vincent Pugliese:I'm credentialed to shoot that game, which is going to be a mad house and
Vincent Pugliese:so much fun in your dream assignment.
Vincent Pugliese:At the same time, my wife and I were hired by Dave Ramsey to
Vincent Pugliese:photograph one of his events.
Vincent Pugliese:In Pittsburgh a week before that.
Vincent Pugliese:So they found us and they hired us and we were doing, I don't know
Vincent Pugliese:what big event they were doing.
Vincent Pugliese:So backstage we're photographing Dave and his daughter, Rachel, and a bunch
Vincent Pugliese:of people and Chris Medford was their director of live events at that point.
Vincent Pugliese:Chris introduced himself to us and we're talking about the event, what to do.
Vincent Pugliese:And he goes, yeah, we're stressed out.
Vincent Pugliese:We're, we're planning a big event in New York next week, and it's
Vincent Pugliese:just taking up all our time.
Vincent Pugliese:And I said, and the event was, it's called business gets personal,
Vincent Pugliese:which is a great title, right?
Vincent Pugliese:To start this with.
Vincent Pugliese:And it was Dave, Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk all co headlining it.
Vincent Pugliese:There's only the three of them.
Vincent Pugliese:And it was at the Rose theater in New York city.
Vincent Pugliese:And I'd wanted to go and the tickets were not cheap.
Vincent Pugliese:It was a thousand dollars a ticket.
Vincent Pugliese:Um, the problem was that event was the day after the pirates playoff game.
Vincent Pugliese:So there's no way I can shoot a game transmit one o'clock in
Vincent Pugliese:the morning and get to New York.
Vincent Pugliese:And eight hours without any sleep.
Vincent Pugliese:And I actually planned it.
Vincent Pugliese:I thought, can I get there with no sleep and have a lot?
Vincent Pugliese:I tried to figure it all out.
Vincent Pugliese:You know what?
Vincent Pugliese:You can't do that.
Vincent Pugliese:I'm not going to work.
Vincent Pugliese:I'm going to be, I literally looked at it.
Vincent Pugliese:How do I take, so it didn't happen.
Vincent Pugliese:So I see Chris and he says, we're doing this event.
Vincent Pugliese:and I said to him, yeah, I'd love to go.
Vincent Pugliese:I'd want to go, but then he cut me off.
Vincent Pugliese:He didn't hear the second part.
Vincent Pugliese:I said, but I can't, cause I have an assignment.
Vincent Pugliese:And he looked at me and said, do you want to go?
Vincent Pugliese:And I'm like, is that a sign?
Vincent Pugliese:Cause he asked me, even though I said that, I said, yeah, I want to go.
Vincent Pugliese:And he looks at me, he goes, I'll have my assistant get you tickets.
Vincent Pugliese:I was like, okay.
Vincent Pugliese:So we went and shot the thing and this was my crossroads.
Vincent Pugliese:What do I do?
Vincent Pugliese:I've got the credential for this career that I've been doing for 20 years that
Vincent Pugliese:I've loved, but I know I'm starting to fade and I've got this event I
Vincent Pugliese:go to where I can meet these people.
Vincent Pugliese:It's a VIP pass.
Vincent Pugliese:I'm going to be having dinner with Gary and Seth and Dave.
Vincent Pugliese:And it's in the space that I want to go into, which I'm not, I'm an
Vincent Pugliese:entrepreneur, but I'm not in that space.
Vincent Pugliese:I'm in the service based entrepreneur photographer thing.
Vincent Pugliese:This is a space I want to go into content creation.
Vincent Pugliese:What do I do?
Vincent Pugliese:I got a decision to make here.
Vincent Pugliese:And I talked to Elizabeth and what do I do?
Vincent Pugliese:And she said to me, You got to go to New York.
Vincent Pugliese:So you got to go.
Vincent Pugliese:And I get emotional thinking about it.
Vincent Pugliese:Cause it would be very easy to be like, you go to New York, you know what that
Vincent Pugliese:means you're checking out of a career.
Vincent Pugliese:Like I knew if I didn't take that credential, that game I'm on my way out.
Vincent Pugliese:I knew, I know myself.
Vincent Pugliese:And I'm like, if I don't go to that game, I can't keep putting my effort in.
Vincent Pugliese:So I went to New York and I met Gary and I met Dave and I met Seth and I met a
Vincent Pugliese:good friend called named Ken Carfagno, who we started masterminding the next week
Vincent Pugliese:on our business is what we're building.
Vincent Pugliese:We did that every week and he took notes and he is still a part of our group today.
Vincent Pugliese:One of my closest friends.
Vincent Pugliese:and I met him at that event.
Vincent Pugliese:That was the moment and it took three years of writing and creating content and
Vincent Pugliese:doing a blog that nobody read and then.
Vincent Pugliese:Meeting people and making connections and connecting with podcasters and
Vincent Pugliese:then going to podcast movement and not even having anything, but starting
Vincent Pugliese:to get interviewed on podcasts when I'm writing a book and that's what,
Vincent Pugliese:that's where it all took shape.
Vincent Pugliese:So when we started coaching and then getting into the membership
Vincent Pugliese:space in 2017, there was four years.
Vincent Pugliese:Of foundational work and connection that happened before we even
Vincent Pugliese:started doing anything with it.
Vincent Pugliese:cause I didn't have the confidence.
Vincent Pugliese:What am I going to do?
Vincent Pugliese:And so that was, and then, but once 2016, 2017 happened, it
Vincent Pugliese:just started shooting upwards.
Tim Winders:So the cool thing about this word journey is that it, there really
Tim Winders:are, if someone considers it a journey.
Tim Winders:And you've already said you're not thinking short term.
Tim Winders:It's not like you're in 2013 saying, okay, I'm going to this event.
Tim Winders:I need to sell something the following week to really
Tim Winders:prove that this is worthwhile.
Tim Winders:People think that way.
Tim Winders:We know they do.
Tim Winders:They show up and, they show up at conferences.
Tim Winders:they buy a pitch or a package or something like that, thinking they're
Tim Winders:going to make money the next week.
Tim Winders:We dealt with this in our organization that we had with real estate investors.
Tim Winders:They thought it was a.
Tim Winders:Okay.
Tim Winders:Quick thing and all that kind of stuff.
Tim Winders:so here's what I listed out.
Tim Winders:When I was just checking out Vincent here in the last couple of days And
Tim Winders:it started progressing it went, I had growing up which we talked about that
Tim Winders:photography And then I wrote total freedom membership freedom unconference
Tim Winders:And then I kind of wrote that kind of did this thing that connection was something
Tim Winders:that kind of fit all that together.
Tim Winders:Did I miss anything along the way?
Tim Winders:Were there, are those kind of some of the big, brands and all that, because
Tim Winders:there's been some shifts, that total free room was bigger and now you've niched
Tim Winders:it down more to memberships within that.
Tim Winders:And I listened to a podcast where you had just spent like two months in your
Tim Winders:pool thinking about what you About that
Tim Winders:transition.
Tim Winders:So what else about transition pivot?
Tim Winders:Because some people will think this is our theme here a little bit, that if
Tim Winders:they're doing something, they need to just keep doing it the rest of their lives.
Tim Winders:That's not what we're talking about here.
Tim Winders:We're talking about
Tim Winders:listening yourself.
Tim Winders:If you're a faith person, listening to it, that divine voice, listen to
Tim Winders:your inner voice, whatever it is.
Tim Winders:So give me a couple of those transitions and what Someone listening can learn
Tim Winders:from, I don't even like the word pivot.
Tim Winders:Truthfully pivot, I think has been a little bit overused, but if you want
Tim Winders:to use it, you're welcome to use pivot.
Vincent Pugliese:it's the problem is it's the right word.
Vincent Pugliese:It just is the right, it's a con to me.
Vincent Pugliese:It's a constant pivot with consistent growth.
Vincent Pugliese:We're always paying attention to what the next step is.
Vincent Pugliese:So it's almost like you're starting fresh the next day with a little bit
Vincent Pugliese:of an advantage over the day before.
Vincent Pugliese:And I just want to keep playing the game.
Vincent Pugliese:So the game does not have to be total life freedom.
Vincent Pugliese:It did not have to be my book.
Vincent Pugliese:We do this for a while.
Vincent Pugliese:We learn how to run memberships.
Vincent Pugliese:We had a membership on photography for a while.
Vincent Pugliese:And then I realized what's working and what's not working.
Vincent Pugliese:I'm always saying what's working and what's not working.
Vincent Pugliese:And they go, okay, we could add this.
Vincent Pugliese:It gives you flexibility.
Vincent Pugliese:It gives you the opportunity to add something that wasn't there before.
Vincent Pugliese:Okay.
Vincent Pugliese:As opposed to this is the way we always do it.
Vincent Pugliese:There is no, this is the way we always do it in our world.
Vincent Pugliese:There is we're starting over tomorrow, a little bit better than yesterday.
Vincent Pugliese:And we look around and we go, there's that.
Vincent Pugliese:So that's what happened with us.
Vincent Pugliese:We had the total life freedom membership for five years and reiterate the story.
Vincent Pugliese:I was feeling.
Vincent Pugliese:What are we doing here?
Vincent Pugliese:It's going well.
Vincent Pugliese:It's very profitable, literally for the membership required a couple of hours
Vincent Pugliese:a week for me, it would be the dream scenario for a lot of people, just
Vincent Pugliese:like I guess the sports photography career would have been for other
Vincent Pugliese:people, but I'm like, it's not right.
Vincent Pugliese:Something's not right.
Vincent Pugliese:And it's not that I'm always negative.
Vincent Pugliese:I'm not, I'm just assessing where where is that spot?
Vincent Pugliese:And it's always there.
Vincent Pugliese:So I sat in the pool for a couple of weeks, like a hobo, right?
Vincent Pugliese:Just sitting on a float thinking, I'm like, something's not right here.
Vincent Pugliese:And then it finally hit me.
Vincent Pugliese:I said, memberships.
Vincent Pugliese:We have a call every month within our membership, helping
Vincent Pugliese:people build memberships.
Vincent Pugliese:About a third of our membership was building them already with our guidance.
Vincent Pugliese:Why don't we niche down?
Vincent Pugliese:Cause memberships gave us the freedom.
Vincent Pugliese:We were able to move from Pennsylvania, Florida on a dime during COVID because
Vincent Pugliese:we have recurring online revenue and we don't have to be any one place
Vincent Pugliese:and it's all the incomes all there.
Vincent Pugliese:So getting everything was easy when everybody else was struggling.
Vincent Pugliese:If we can create a sister adjacent membership for memberships, where
Vincent Pugliese:that's what we talk about specifically, and everybody there is on the same
Vincent Pugliese:path and we have a roadmap for them.
Vincent Pugliese:It was so much more clear.
Vincent Pugliese:Then what we were doing before, which was cool in a great group, but at times,
Vincent Pugliese:God, like, what are we doing here?
Vincent Pugliese:That's what was my question.
Vincent Pugliese:So that we, so I did a lot of market research.
Vincent Pugliese:This is what I teach.
Vincent Pugliese:And most people don't do get on the phone and talk to people and don't sell them.
Vincent Pugliese:ask them real questions.
Vincent Pugliese:Give me feedback, shoot holes in this.
Vincent Pugliese:Tell me what the price point sound.
Vincent Pugliese:You're not looking to make money off of it.
Vincent Pugliese:You're looking for information.
Vincent Pugliese:And the overwhelming response was, this is amazing.
Vincent Pugliese:60 people from those phone calls joined the founding membership
Vincent Pugliese:without me offering it.
Vincent Pugliese:It was wild.
Vincent Pugliese:And then we went and grew from there and, and who knows, I can't tell
Vincent Pugliese:you, I'll be doing it in four years because in three years I might start
Vincent Pugliese:being like, Where are we going here?
Vincent Pugliese:How do we make this a little bit better?
Vincent Pugliese:And I think that freedom of being able to pivot and planning in advance, step
Vincent Pugliese:by step, instead of making a big shift, like I equate it to go into the eye
Vincent Pugliese:doctor and people laugh when I say this, when you go to the eye doctor and you
Vincent Pugliese:get in between that machine and they're going up and down there and you're
Vincent Pugliese:looking at a chart and they go, which one's clear that the left or the right.
Vincent Pugliese:Oh, the right one's a little bit sharper.
Vincent Pugliese:Okay.
Vincent Pugliese:What about this one?
Vincent Pugliese:The less little sharper.
Vincent Pugliese:That's how I go about business on a consistent basis.
Vincent Pugliese:What's just a little bit sharper that takes us there.
Vincent Pugliese:It's no big shift.
Vincent Pugliese:We're not pulling our eyes out and put a new eye in.
Vincent Pugliese:We're just making it a little bit clearer every day.
Vincent Pugliese:That's where we got where we are.
Vincent Pugliese:and it just gets better without any major shift.
Vincent Pugliese:That's what I did from 2013, 2016.
Vincent Pugliese:It was a lot of.
Vincent Pugliese:What am I talking about?
Vincent Pugliese:What have I done?
Vincent Pugliese:How can I help people?
Vincent Pugliese:It was not a rush.
Vincent Pugliese:And I think a lot of people do want that quick fix and I
Vincent Pugliese:am not in the quick fix world.
Vincent Pugliese:So I'll tell people.
Vincent Pugliese:I had a conversation last night with a guy about memberships.
Vincent Pugliese:He goes, but I don't think I could do this quickly.
Vincent Pugliese:I'm like, you're not going to do it quickly.
Vincent Pugliese:And if you want to, I'm not the person to talk to you.
Vincent Pugliese:I'm going to say three years to launch three years to freedom.
Vincent Pugliese:If you can't accept that, you're not going to like work with
Tim Winders:Yeah, that doesn't fit well with a lot of our, quick
Tim Winders:fix, get rich, quick type culture society, which has always been around.
Tim Winders:It's just got, it's hyper now just because of social and things like that.
Tim Winders:First of all, I do want to say laying in your pool, And hobo,
Tim Winders:like a hobo, didn't fit together.
Tim Winders:I don't, that's not a good, that didn't register in my mind.
Tim Winders:you're
Tim Winders:laying in
Vincent Pugliese:you.
Vincent Pugliese:saw me at night.
Vincent Pugliese:if you saw
Tim Winders:Did you look like a hobo?
Vincent Pugliese:I hadn't showered.
Vincent Pugliese:My wife would agree with me on that one.
Vincent Pugliese:Yeah, you did look like
Tim Winders:Somebody, somebody told me that, Oh, you live in an RV or
Tim Winders:are you like, are you like a hobo?
Tim Winders:I went, hobo is not the word I'd use in a 40 foot, motor coach,
Tim Winders:maybe more like a pirate or a
Tim Winders:nomad or something like that.
Tim Winders:But so one thing you mentioned though, you said.
Tim Winders:That you both situations that you pivoted or transitioned you said
Tim Winders:you were making good money So so the indicator is not money But you said
Tim Winders:something wasn't quite right when you were going from that total To membership
Tim Winders:when you're going from photography to also member the general thing you're
Tim Winders:doing What are some other indicators and I and I want to know is it almost?
Tim Winders:Always Vincent's got this feeling cause that's the two things that I heard, or
Tim Winders:are there some other gauges that you can learn from and pick up on that we
Tim Winders:all can learn from that you go, you know what, this isn't quite right.
Tim Winders:It's might be heading in a direction that's losing momentum or whatever.
Tim Winders:What are some other, prescriptions or some indicators that we can learn from
Tim Winders:when you've made this specifically transition from total to membership.
Vincent Pugliese:That's a great question because I'm not sure if I ever
Vincent Pugliese:thought about in terms of what were the things like a lot of it's gut, but And
Vincent Pugliese:I think gut maybe is undervaluing it because I think about this a lot, right?
Vincent Pugliese:I have freedom, like literally, you look at my schedule, you go, okay, he built it.
Vincent Pugliese:Doesn't mean my mind's not always going about it.
Vincent Pugliese:So I have much more, like I said, I spent half my time dreaming.
Vincent Pugliese:Half my time dreaming and thinking when you have time to do that,
Vincent Pugliese:you're going to notice things like, what don't I like doing?
Vincent Pugliese:So I think that's where it comes down to me when I coach other people.
Vincent Pugliese:I'm like, we make these subtle, almost surgical changes of what
Vincent Pugliese:don't you want to be doing in this?
Vincent Pugliese:And they'll say, there's one aspect of it that I hate.
Vincent Pugliese:Okay.
Vincent Pugliese:Let's work to eliminate that when you can cut that little bit of cancer
Vincent Pugliese:out, all of a sudden, the entire thing doesn't need to be destroyed.
Vincent Pugliese:You've gotten rid of, okay, now let's replace that with something good.
Vincent Pugliese:It's a joke that I said to my wife this morning, I said, I don't know how he did
Vincent Pugliese:it, but there's a line from a stick song.
Vincent Pugliese:If you're old enough to remember the band sticks and the line was, I got
Vincent Pugliese:nothing to do and all day to do it.
Vincent Pugliese:And it's one of my favorite lines.
Vincent Pugliese:Cause I'm like, we built that.
Vincent Pugliese:And so meaning if you can build freedom in your life, you eliminate all the
Vincent Pugliese:things you don't want to do piece by piece surgically, and then replace
Vincent Pugliese:them with the things you do want to do.
Vincent Pugliese:And I'll give you the perfect example.
Vincent Pugliese:I started doing coaching.
Vincent Pugliese:That's how this business started one to one coaching,
Vincent Pugliese:but that got stressful for me.
Vincent Pugliese:Because I'm waiting on everybody.
Vincent Pugliese:It got emotional at times.
Vincent Pugliese:It filled up my schedule.
Vincent Pugliese:I had to work more to make more money all the time.
Vincent Pugliese:And then we went towards the membership phase.
Vincent Pugliese:So I almost completely eliminated coaching until recently, except for hand, little
Vincent Pugliese:ones here and there within my membership until I started doing voice coaching.
Vincent Pugliese:Meaning I sit by the pool, right?
Vincent Pugliese:Or at the beach and I'll send voice memos and check in on people.
Vincent Pugliese:And then realizing this can be the coaching that I want to do.
Vincent Pugliese:So we started doing it.
Vincent Pugliese:Meaning you send me a question.
Vincent Pugliese:I give you an answer.
Vincent Pugliese:We don't need to schedule a zoom call surgically.
Vincent Pugliese:What's your problem.
Vincent Pugliese:Let's do it.
Vincent Pugliese:Let's fix it.
Vincent Pugliese:Come back next week and let's do it again.
Vincent Pugliese:So now we're rebuilding the coaching side because.
Vincent Pugliese:We cleared our schedule.
Vincent Pugliese:There's not that much now I want to do more of that stuff.
Vincent Pugliese:I didn't want to do it in the beginning.
Vincent Pugliese:I found a better way of doing it.
Vincent Pugliese:And now that's increasing in our business.
Vincent Pugliese:So when you can eliminate the things.
Vincent Pugliese:Piece by piece.
Vincent Pugliese:You don't want and figure out what it is that lights you up.
Vincent Pugliese:Cause I love helping people, but I don't necessarily want to be on for
Vincent Pugliese:zoom coaching calls a day, right?
Vincent Pugliese:Or phone calls like that.
Vincent Pugliese:Now, all of a sudden I'm feeling stressed.
Vincent Pugliese:Oh, if I could do it this way, you send me a message in the morning and I answer
Vincent Pugliese:you while I'm on a walk in the evening.
Vincent Pugliese:How do you build a life like that?
Vincent Pugliese:nobody told me that was possible in the past.
Vincent Pugliese:that's, so that's how we little by little take away anything we don't want.
Vincent Pugliese:And I can honestly say, there's nothing I do in my work that I don't like.
Vincent Pugliese:Because either we get rid of it.
Vincent Pugliese:I have a great wife that knows tech way better than I do.
Vincent Pugliese:So she takes care of all that crap that I hate.
Vincent Pugliese:Or we hire somebody else, but it's just her and I were the entire organization.
Vincent Pugliese:There's not a giant staff around it.
Vincent Pugliese:You don't need to have a huge team to do this.
Vincent Pugliese:And I think that's another thing that most people don't realize.
Tim Winders:Yeah, we, I'm in an age where very similar, I've learned the things that
Tim Winders:I am not going to do or don't want to do.
Tim Winders:You and I are doing something that I rarely do today.
Tim Winders:This is a Friday when we're recording.
Tim Winders:And.
Tim Winders:I rarely do anything on Fridays.
Tim Winders:I've gotten where I rarely do anything on Mondays too, by the
Tim Winders:way, but I'm trying to catch up.
Tim Winders:I've got three weeks and I'm going to be off in a, in another week.
Tim Winders:And and plus you and I were just going back and forth on schedule.
Tim Winders:so I think part of it is recognizing what you don't know.
Tim Winders:The cool thing is with technology, AI, all of that.
Tim Winders:But You brought something up before I get too far down and I'm watching
Tim Winders:my time to you said that you take time to think and you're not totally
Tim Winders:packing things in your schedule.
Tim Winders:Now, having said that, at one point you were doing daily podcast and I
Tim Winders:also know that now you do a daily.
Tim Winders:Post on, I think Facebook is where you, you do that.
Tim Winders:And so I'm going to layer this question together and say, okay, I totally agree
Tim Winders:that quiet, still thinking time is the most powerful thing that a leader
Tim Winders:in any role can do corporations or ministries, or especially entrepreneurs.
Tim Winders:They are packing things in.
Tim Winders:But what is Vincent's time?
Tim Winders:I know you.
Tim Winders:Push that daily podcast out and I know that probably daily facebook.
Tim Winders:You're probably in a rhythm that doesn't Take that long for you.
Tim Winders:I'm not making light of it at all But anyway
Tim Winders:talk about schedule and how important quiet time is to do what you're doing.
Vincent Pugliese:it's just what we talked about before.
Vincent Pugliese:I created a lot of time to where the mem, the mastermind needs two hours of my time,
Vincent Pugliese:the membership needs an hour of my time outside of content I create on my own
Vincent Pugliese:schedule and I was feeling unscheduled completely, which isn't a good thing.
Vincent Pugliese:I pretty much have free reign.
Vincent Pugliese:I write when I want to write or talk when I want.
Vincent Pugliese:What the daily post did to me was give me some structure that I needed.
Vincent Pugliese:I don't need that much, but I need a little bit.
Vincent Pugliese:So what happened was I started waking up and I don't know if you're like
Vincent Pugliese:me or anybody listening is like me.
Vincent Pugliese:My best ideas come soon as I wake up.
Vincent Pugliese:It's something that's ruminating, but in the past, I would
Vincent Pugliese:write it down to create later.
Vincent Pugliese:What I did was this wake up, here's the thought I'm going.
Vincent Pugliese:And I'm sitting down for about 15 minutes to a half an hour.
Vincent Pugliese:I'm writing about it and then I'm publishing it at nine o'clock.
Vincent Pugliese:That's what I'm doing.
Vincent Pugliese:That was the only, that's what I needed to do.
Vincent Pugliese:I need to get up and create, because if I batch all that, cause everybody's
Vincent Pugliese:telling me, Oh, just batch it all.
Vincent Pugliese:If I batch it all for 30 days and scheduled that a lot, I'm still in
Vincent Pugliese:the same spot of, I got no structure.
Vincent Pugliese:So that gave me the structure of get up, create, get it out of your head.
Vincent Pugliese:You might not publish it that day, but it gave me the bookend that
Vincent Pugliese:I needed to start the day in a creative mode that gets something
Vincent Pugliese:out there and then pushes forward.
Vincent Pugliese:It's just a little thing.
Vincent Pugliese:It's a little, but it's important because that's where I get a lot of response from.
Vincent Pugliese:from that, if you think about connection, all the people that
Vincent Pugliese:comment are like, it's very easy to be like, Hey, Tim, how's things going?
Vincent Pugliese:You want to chat?
Vincent Pugliese:Let's just have a conversation and then co brainstorm.
Vincent Pugliese:You tell me about what you're doing.
Vincent Pugliese:I tell you about what I'm doing.
Vincent Pugliese:You go, all my friend needs that content leads to connection,
Vincent Pugliese:connection leads to content, and both those together lead to offers.
Vincent Pugliese:Business is not that complicated and we make it seem so much more.
Tim Winders:Yeah, that's good.
Tim Winders:All right
Tim Winders:Trying to think how to frame this question You have unique access to
Tim Winders:some really Bright people that are in your groups and memberships because
Tim Winders:these are people that are wanting to build and create Something and you've
Tim Winders:narrowed it even down to people that want to do memberships so you're probably
Tim Winders:now seeing a wide range of businesses and Mindsets and things like that are
Tim Winders:wanting to be involved with memberships.
Tim Winders:There are people I remember sitting in dan kennedy's basement back in
Tim Winders:2003 2003 and he was saying you need to have people pay you for a
Tim Winders:membership and then you could stretch Membership, all that kind of stuff.
Tim Winders:So I've been exposed to it, but Vincent, there are a lot of people that don't quite
Tim Winders:get membership, but they're bright and they probably should be leaning that way.
Tim Winders:so here's what I'd love for you to do in the next couple of minutes.
Tim Winders:And then we'll talk about the unconference and probably wrap up, talk to the person
Tim Winders:that doesn't quite get memberships, but they're intrigued and peaked and maybe
Tim Winders:pull in some of, All of this vast wisdom that you're getting from just hanging
Tim Winders:around with some super bright people that you're accumulating together.
Tim Winders:Does that make sense to take that and run with it?
Vincent Pugliese:Yeah.
Vincent Pugliese:for us, okay.
Vincent Pugliese:Selfish goals and generous goals, right?
Vincent Pugliese:I selfish goals for me.
Vincent Pugliese:Recurring what I call recurring remote revenue.
Vincent Pugliese:it is the most underrated part of business to me.
Vincent Pugliese:When you wake up and you look at your phone and there's eight payments that
Vincent Pugliese:came in before you get out of bed, while you're thinking of your Facebook post,
Vincent Pugliese:it changes the way you do business.
Vincent Pugliese:I don't need to go searching for clients.
Vincent Pugliese:I don't need to bug people for a sale.
Vincent Pugliese:I don't need to do any of it.
Vincent Pugliese:It is all I need to do to simplify it is over deliver for those people.
Vincent Pugliese:Meaning I have a weekly call that I prepare heavily for, and
Vincent Pugliese:I want to crush it for them.
Vincent Pugliese:And if they leave that call or watch that replay and go, this is super valuable.
Vincent Pugliese:I'm sticking around.
Vincent Pugliese:That's all you need to build it up to that.
Vincent Pugliese:That gives you financial freedom.
Vincent Pugliese:Whatever your number is, let's say it's 10, 000 a month.
Vincent Pugliese:You get to a hundred people at a hundred dollars a month,
Vincent Pugliese:whatever, 10, 000 a month.
Vincent Pugliese:Now you just need to maintain that for the rest of your life.
Vincent Pugliese:And you essentially have financial freedom.
Vincent Pugliese:One person leaves, you replace them, but you have you two people leave in a month.
Vincent Pugliese:You have the whole month to replace two people.
Vincent Pugliese:It's way different than starting from zero and having to get all
Vincent Pugliese:new clients over and over again.
Vincent Pugliese:And that's what people say to me.
Vincent Pugliese:I'm just tired of chasing clients.
Vincent Pugliese:I don't have to chase clients.
Vincent Pugliese:I get members.
Vincent Pugliese:And then I tried to over deliver for them.
Vincent Pugliese:That gives me freedom to where my schedule frees up when your schedule frees up.
Vincent Pugliese:You can exercise, you can spend time with your family.
Vincent Pugliese:You can think of new business ideas.
Vincent Pugliese:You can create different levels to it.
Vincent Pugliese:We came to this conclusion.
Vincent Pugliese:At one point, we have the membership it's 97 a month based level.
Vincent Pugliese:We had people that maybe couldn't afford it or couldn't get on the calls.
Vincent Pugliese:we created a membership with all the content.
Vincent Pugliese:Why don't we open that up?
Vincent Pugliese:For 57 a month for people that want the library and people
Vincent Pugliese:like, that's exactly what I did.
Vincent Pugliese:Now we create another level to it.
Vincent Pugliese:So we have from low ticket to very high ticket, everything in between
Vincent Pugliese:around this one thing, and it still all takes me the same amount of time.
Vincent Pugliese:That 57 level requires no time because the membership sites already been built.
Vincent Pugliese:We just put every call and every course into it.
Vincent Pugliese:When it's done, we were doing that for the community.
Vincent Pugliese:Anyway, it's almost like a donut hole.
Vincent Pugliese:We got this donut.
Vincent Pugliese:We stamp a hole in the middle of it.
Vincent Pugliese:What do we do with this extra dough?
Vincent Pugliese:Throw it out.
Vincent Pugliese:No, let's roll up in a ball, glaze it and sell it.
Vincent Pugliese:Make more money from the donut hole than we did from the donut.
Vincent Pugliese:We used to throw it out in the past.
Vincent Pugliese:There's excess that you can create for a different client base
Vincent Pugliese:and that increases your income.
Vincent Pugliese:And you can do that without expanding your time too much.
Vincent Pugliese:Now you can create more content, make more connections, build the next thing.
Vincent Pugliese:The unconference came from the.
Vincent Pugliese:What do I do next?
Vincent Pugliese:I'm a little bored.
Vincent Pugliese:I want to create the thing that I didn't have that I couldn't find.
Vincent Pugliese:Let's go make it.
Vincent Pugliese:I don't have the financial stress that I can turn down
Vincent Pugliese:the people that I don't want.
Vincent Pugliese:I could be a little bolder in terms of who it's for and who it's not
Vincent Pugliese:for, as opposed to buy my ticket.
Vincent Pugliese:It's actually an invite slash application only thing.
Vincent Pugliese:Cause there's people that I don't want going.
Vincent Pugliese:That shouldn't be there.
Vincent Pugliese:Can't do that.
Vincent Pugliese:If I need the money and I'm stressed out, that's what memberships gives you.
Vincent Pugliese:It gives you that predictable income, that recurring revenue, just take
Vincent Pugliese:the stress off, free up your time and allow you to build the next
Vincent Pugliese:things you want to build as well.
Tim Winders:Is there a, one of the things I'm a business junkie, I love
Tim Winders:seeing different businesses and all that.
Tim Winders:Is there a business or two that.
Tim Winders:When they decided they wanted to have a membership, I don't want to say that
Tim Winders:you've scratched your head and say, I don't know, let's see how that works out.
Tim Winders:Is there one that you would go like, someone wouldn't think that might
Tim Winders:could be a membership, but yet they've created and built a membership around
Tim Winders:that, anything pop in your head.
Tim Winders:When I say that,
Vincent Pugliese:if I told you in your audience that somebody can
Vincent Pugliese:make a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year with a murder mystery
Vincent Pugliese:quilting membership, would you
Tim Winders:wait, hold on, murder, mystery,
Vincent Pugliese:We're
Tim Winders:quilting.
Vincent Pugliese:There's a woman, Debra, amazing Debra Moebs, and she's in Georgia.
Vincent Pugliese:And she was a guest in our group in January.
Vincent Pugliese:And I heard about this from my friend, Ben Colloy.
Vincent Pugliese:And I'm like, no.
Vincent Pugliese:So I looked her up.
Vincent Pugliese:I'm like, this is real.
Vincent Pugliese:So I talked to her, had a great conversation.
Vincent Pugliese:She was in that space.
Vincent Pugliese:She, I think she had a store where they sold yarn.
Vincent Pugliese:I can't remember what it was.
Vincent Pugliese:And she started realizing.
Vincent Pugliese:There's a whole bunch of people that like murder mystery in this space.
Vincent Pugliese:It's because it probably won't work, but let's put something together for them.
Vincent Pugliese:Maybe we make a quilt together for a year online and we build it.
Vincent Pugliese:And every year, every month, we give you a clue about this murder mystery story.
Vincent Pugliese:We put those together.
Vincent Pugliese:She has last I heard from her 3, 100 paying members paying
Vincent Pugliese:a hundred dollars a year.
Vincent Pugliese:So yeah, there's about, there's a lot of
Tim Winders:you know what I love about that?
Tim Winders:we're talking about niche here is that I automatically know
Tim Winders:that group is not my group.
Vincent Pugliese:Yes,
Tim Winders:not a murder mystery.
Tim Winders:I'm not a quilter, none of that.
Tim Winders:And, but it's so crystal clear because part of life sometimes is knowing where
Tim Winders:you don't need to go hang out, right?
Vincent Pugliese:but here's the other part of it.
Vincent Pugliese:Here's the other part to think about it is so not for you, but I guarantee you,
Vincent Pugliese:if you meet somebody that it's for, you will tell them and she will get another
Tim Winders:I actually know someone that's a podcaster
Tim Winders:that has a quilting podcast.
Tim Winders:And I don't know if she's into the murder mysteries.
Tim Winders:I'm going, we might need to connect them.
Tim Winders:You know what I mean?
Tim Winders:I popped it in my head.
Vincent Pugliese:I, we can do it to, we can do it together or message me and
Vincent Pugliese:I'll do it because she'd be a great guest for the, but that's the whole thing.
Vincent Pugliese:The more you niche down when we went from total life freedom, which is a
Vincent Pugliese:great phrase, but very vague in terms of business to membership freedom.
Vincent Pugliese:I get a message almost every day saying you need to meet my friend, Judy.
Vincent Pugliese:She needs a membership.
Vincent Pugliese:You're the
Vincent Pugliese:guy that didn't happen before.
Vincent Pugliese:So we're so afraid of niching down, but niching down makes the murder
Vincent Pugliese:mystery quilting thing happen.
Vincent Pugliese:As opposed to her saying, I have a hobby membership and we do model airplanes and
Vincent Pugliese:we do tanks and we do a little quilt.
Vincent Pugliese:Okay.
Vincent Pugliese:But murder mystery quilting either in or out, somebody that
Vincent Pugliese:needs.
Tim Winders:All right, real quick.
Tim Winders:We only got a couple minutes here.
Tim Winders:I, at one point was a conference junkie.
Tim Winders:I loved going to them.
Tim Winders:We ran them with all of our businesses and all heading into 08.
Tim Winders:I spoke at quite a few and truthfully, the formula for conferences, it's good
Tim Winders:for people that are extroverts and love to get out, but they kind of suck in that.
Tim Winders:You're going to get pitched most often.
Tim Winders:You're going to be around a boatload of people that you may
Tim Winders:or may not want to hang out with.
Tim Winders:And so sometime during your hobo time in the pool, you came out, came up with
Tim Winders:this that you're calling an all in.
Tim Winders:Unconference.
Tim Winders:give me a quick 30 to 60 second.
Tim Winders:you're not really a pitch, but give me, tell me why maybe I should consider it.
Tim Winders:Maybe that's, let's do it that way.
Tim Winders:Cause I'm a guy that doesn't like
Tim Winders:conferences, but I love being around people.
Tim Winders:So what's up.
Vincent Pugliese:I love conferences, but I hate them.
Vincent Pugliese:I love that they bring together all these amazing people.
Vincent Pugliese:And then we have to sit like we're in school, listening to speaker after
Vincent Pugliese:speaker, when I could just listen to their podcast and then in the hallway,
Vincent Pugliese:I have to brush by somebody to have a conversation or go to a club at 1130 at
Vincent Pugliese:night with DJs blasting to talk to them.
Vincent Pugliese:What, who created this?
Vincent Pugliese:I hate the format to it, but my closest friends I met there.
Vincent Pugliese:So I said, why don't we do the opposite?
Vincent Pugliese:We all hang out in the hallways.
Vincent Pugliese:Anybody experienced pays the money and hangs out in the hallways and talks.
Vincent Pugliese:Why don't we create an event?
Vincent Pugliese:That's the hallways.
Vincent Pugliese:And then I said, we have these intimate mastermind retreats that are so powerful.
Vincent Pugliese:What if we blended them together?
Vincent Pugliese:What if we created something that was the hallways of a conference colliding?
Vincent Pugliese:With an intimate mastermind retreat, we'll limit it to a hundred people.
Vincent Pugliese:So it's not too small, not too big.
Vincent Pugliese:It'll be invite application only, and there will be no speakers.
Vincent Pugliese:There will be no stages.
Vincent Pugliese:There will be no pitches.
Vincent Pugliese:There'll be no upsells.
Vincent Pugliese:There'll be no vendors, everything that I don't care about in these events.
Vincent Pugliese:I eliminate and just bring it down to the things that everybody says they
Vincent Pugliese:go there for, but they still have to sit through all this other crap.
Vincent Pugliese:So that was the idea.
Vincent Pugliese:And I started doing conversations and everybody said, I love the idea.
Vincent Pugliese:And we booked a place in Sarah.
Vincent Pugliese:We booked the embassy suites in Sarasota, Florida, February 3rd through
Vincent Pugliese:the fifth, and we're halfway sold out without promoting it and just talking
Vincent Pugliese:and having conversations about it.
Vincent Pugliese:this is a thing that will grow in years to come, but it will not grow in size.
Vincent Pugliese:Um, we will probably keep it at this size every single time we will just add events.
Vincent Pugliese:as they're needed.
Vincent Pugliese:How was that?
Vincent Pugliese:How was that
Tim Winders:that was good.
Tim Winders:It I think some of our audience may be a great fit.
Tim Winders:So why don't we do this, Vincent?
Tim Winders:we're right up against our time here.
Tim Winders:Tell people how they could connect with you.
Tim Winders:This is a time to give websites, socials, anything, or, you know, if it's the
Tim Winders:unconference, I know you've got books and all the wealth of connection.
Tim Winders:I've read portions of that just right now, tell them all that.
Tim Winders:And then I've got another question too, before we wrap.
Vincent Pugliese:Yeah.
Vincent Pugliese:Real quick, our websites, my marriage, my membership, freedom.
Vincent Pugliese:com.
Vincent Pugliese:that's the website where it's all and on there, there's an application
Vincent Pugliese:for the unconference, if somebody's interested, there's, we also give away.
Vincent Pugliese:The audio for my book, the wealth of connection.
Vincent Pugliese:So you can get the audio for free, the full book.
Vincent Pugliese:It's not a chapter.
Vincent Pugliese:It's the full book.
Vincent Pugliese:Facebook and LinkedIn are the two.
Vincent Pugliese:there we go.
Vincent Pugliese:There we go.
Vincent Pugliese:Facebook and LinkedIn are the two, platforms I'm on the most.
Vincent Pugliese:And if you look at that again, show that again, I'm the only one.
Vincent Pugliese:I'm very unique in my book.
Vincent Pugliese:If you look at the bottom of it, I'm the only non bestselling
Vincent Pugliese:author, I think in the world.
Vincent Pugliese:Everybody else is the
Tim Winders:Congratulations.
Tim Winders:Congratulations.
Tim Winders:you're the only
Vincent Pugliese:very easy to achieve.
Vincent Pugliese:It was very easy to achieve.
Vincent Pugliese:I'll tell you that one.
Vincent Pugliese:That one was easy.
Vincent Pugliese:I got so tired of that, unconference the same thing.
Vincent Pugliese:I get tired of all this stuff.
Vincent Pugliese:Everybody's a bestselling author.
Vincent Pugliese:I'm a non bestselling author, and people love that.
Vincent Pugliese:So yeah, that's where you can find me, my membership freedom or on
Vincent Pugliese:social or just send me an email.
Vincent Pugliese:I'll give you the email.
Vincent Pugliese:Totally
Tim Winders:Sounds good.
Tim Winders:We'll include all those links.
Tim Winders:Vincent, we're Seek, Go, Create.
Tim Winders:Those three words will let you, allow you, force you, whatever, to pick one of
Tim Winders:those and why that just means more to you.
Tim Winders:Seek, Go, Create.
Tim Winders:Which one do you choose and why?
Tim Winders:Last question.
Vincent Pugliese:I'd love them all.
Vincent Pugliese:Go means taking action.
Vincent Pugliese:Seek means you're looking for knowledge or connection, but I'm going to go
Vincent Pugliese:with create because I think when you create, Around what you're meant
Vincent Pugliese:to be doing that you love doing.
Vincent Pugliese:You will, then you will gain attention and trust.
Vincent Pugliese:You will then gain connection from the people who love what you do.
Vincent Pugliese:And that, that, to me, that's where it all starts.
Vincent Pugliese:So I'm going to, I'm going to go with
Tim Winders:Awesome.
Tim Winders:Vincent, I knew I'd love this conversation.
Tim Winders:I knew I'd love the control of being able to ask you stuff so that I could dig in
Tim Winders:a little bit more and hopefully, I don't think it was that uncomfortable for you
Tim Winders:cause I know we're Sharing a message and we're looking For people that are thinking
Tim Winders:non traditional thinking differently and I think this has been a great message for
Tim Winders:you If you've been listening in thanks for listening in we've got new episodes
Tim Winders:on both youtube And on all the podcast channels every monday So we appreciate
Tim Winders:you being here until next time continue being all that you were created to be