Heidi: 00:04

Hey. Welcome to the SlashText Podcast.

Bill: 00:07

Good to be on the SlashText. Let's go.

Heidi: 00:08

Alright. So I am so excited to have this conversation, and thank you very much. Having Bill Walsh on the show is quite a privilege. So today, we're gonna talk about you, your business, your strategies, how you're helping entrepreneurs and small business owners. Awesome.

Heidi: 00:27

You are America's small business expert. Yeah. I mean, we can go through the whole bio. You've done all of the things. Your PowerTeam International Group, your global business development company, really helping entrepreneurs with education and helping coach them and learn how to scale their businesses and drive success with so many entrepreneurs.

Heidi: 00:47

I've had the privilege of meeting many of them at your events.

Bill: 00:49

Yes. Pretty awesome. Thanks for coming. Thanks for attending.

Heidi: 00:52

Absolutely. With over two decades or more of experience, you've helped countless entrepreneurs and business owners scale their companies through Rainmaker Summit, the Win University. I know there are a whole bunch of platforms that your CEO luncheons that I've had a privilege of attending in many

Bill: 01:08

And speaking at.

Heidi: 01:09

And speaking at. Yes. Awesome. Thank you. Around the country.

Heidi: 01:12

You're also a best selling author of

Bill: 01:15

I am.

Heidi: 01:15

The Obvious Yes. Which is great. And I love that you are one of the top 30 business coaches in the world for the last five years.

Bill: 01:23

Almost ten years now.

Heidi: 01:24

Almost ten years.

Bill: 01:25

Crazy. Yeah.

Heidi: 01:26

That's that's I don't even know how you achieve a credential like that. So I need some coaching.

Bill: 01:31

Actually, they vote for it. It's just it's it's voted in by Guru Magazine.

Heidi: 01:34

Really?

Bill: 01:35

So that you can't buy the title. Actually, people vote all over the world on it.

Heidi: 01:38

I love that. Pretty cool. Well, that's huge because there are so many paid to play platforms.

Bill: 01:42

Yes. It's not of them.

Heidi: 01:44

Love that. So thank you so much for being a guest, and I feel like you have so much to offer. I appreciate the time that you're willing to

Bill: 01:52

Glad to be here.

Heidi: 01:53

With that, let's dive in. Let's start with your journey. Can you share how you started an entrepreneurship and then what led you to this PowerTeam International?

Bill: 02:02

Yeah. So nine years old, had my first paper route. 11 years old, had my first grass cutting company. By the age of 14, I was racing BMX bikes, and I was traveling all over the country. And I learned then that certain parents had every weekend off.

Heidi: 02:18

Yep.

Bill: 02:19

Certain parents with every BMX race, and my parents were not because they both had day jobs. And I didn't realize if they took a weekend off how much they lost in that time and a half or double time. Yeah. And so around 14, I realized that one of my first private jet, and I said, how do you get one of these? Yeah.

Bill: 02:35

And the guy said, well, you've gotta be an entrepreneur. Mhmm. He said, you gotta get behind the cash register instead of always being in front of

Heidi: 02:41

it. Yeah.

Bill: 02:42

And what was more important to me was the quality time they had. Mhmm. Most of my friends, their parents, once again, would come to the races every weekend or they drive us to the races. And I realized that they owned real estate. They owned businesses.

Bill: 02:55

Most of them did not have a nine to five job, and they had the ability to to spend the money on it. I I was fortunate because I raced for a factory bicycle team, and so they sponsored most of the stuff. Right? But most kids didn't have that. But that's when I knew that Entrepreneur was the real deal.

Bill: 03:11

And then at a high school and college, a trader, and then I did turnarounds for almost a decade. We would fix your company. We would close it and sell the assets or take it public, and I got to the point around 2,000 where I was just like, there's got to be more. My kids were nine, seven, and two. And I just remember that, you know, we were going to a basketball camp or something like that, and I was working a hundred hours a week.

Bill: 03:36

I was making a lot of money, but it was I knew that something was missing. So I took two weeks off, and the two weeks became two years. Okay. I wasn't super wealthy, but I was wealthy enough, and I lived below means to have home in Chicago, home in Florida, and sure enough, I had to figure out what was next. Yeah.

Bill: 03:55

And what was next was that I knew what I was great at. I was great if you had an idea, I could help with the team, the systems, the money, the marketing, the go to market, and I could execute. And I could pull that out of people better than anybody, and I had a gift for that. So I wound up searching big challenges, and I found that most small businesses fail. Most of them don't even make it two years.

Heidi: 04:17

Right. What's the percentage? I mean, stock

Bill: 04:19

It's is bad, but, like, 80% don't make it five years. It's really scary. So I did some research and I figured out there was a young company called GoDaddy and I figured everyone had to have a website, so I became a marketing partner for GoDaddy. I found another company called Franklin Covey. Guy, Steven Covey wrote a book called The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

Heidi: 04:39

Of course.

Bill: 04:39

What about And this sure enough, they had a planner system that was going online, and we wound up teaming up with them as a channel partner. And then another company was called Card Service, which was part of a bigger company, got bought out by a company called First Data. So I figured how to give them an online merchant processor. And the last part was a business plan. After fifteen years of turning companies around, said, why not give them our own set plan that helps them launch, grow, and build.

Bill: 05:06

And we put it inside of a product called successful.io. It was like a business in a box. And my family thought I lost my mind. Like you're from M and A to selling a system to help small business, and within twenty months, we were in 20 countries.

Heidi: 05:20

Wow.

Bill: 05:20

So as much as people thought we were crazy, we weren't that crazy, we were just solving a problem.

Heidi: 05:25

Okay.

Bill: 05:25

And then we launched a business course called Rainmaker, which is a super intense program to help entrepreneurs. Think of like an MBA for entrepreneurs on a weekend. Makes you write your plan, write your grants, marketing funnel, sales funnels, work on your public speaking, how to connect, do deals, and we charge clients $5 for the whole year, and they can go up to four times a year. And so that was a way for us to find either companies we can invest into or marketing partners. But we would give them the best training ever on their business.

Bill: 05:53

And then 'seven began investing in companies, 'eight, the mastermind called Win Mastermind, which is a two times a year think tank where we don't have any speakers. You're the speaker. Nice. You know, and you gotta get in front of the whole room, and we've had the prime minister of The Bahamas and other countries where you gotta pitch them on how you can help their country. Wow.

Bill: 06:09

We've had day with a billionaire. You spend a whole day with a billionaire and see what does their life look like? What does it consist of when you have 5,000 employees, and how do you manage that? And I don't think people realize what goes into some of those things. We built that as a very high end deal flow group.

Bill: 06:24

2010, we launched the Ultimate Wealth Camp, which is like a a thank you for our clients. And back then, it was just digital marketing, but now it's marketing partnerships, AI, blockchain, NFTs, all this stuff. And then we launched a program called Platinum to help speakers that want to learn to speak and sell from stage. And then I became the main sponsor for an event called the Small Business Expo. And it was just two cities back then and, you know, they I I just didn't like they had these little small hotels that let's move these to convention halls.

Bill: 06:52

Yeah. We went to the Javits Center and then within five years, we had almost 80,000 people a year coming. You know? So we literally brought on Google AT and T This is

Heidi: 06:59

a huge event now.

Bill: 07:00

Huge event. Yeah. Google AT and T, T Mobile, Shark Tank, Facebook, Twitter, Cadillac, all the sponsors. And then in 2019, we had a difference of opinion. They wanted to have me just speak a bunch, and they were gonna kinda run some of the workshop.

Bill: 07:14

We were booking 70 speakers every two weeks.

Heidi: 07:16

Wow.

Bill: 07:17

And so we decided in 2019 to take the year of 2020 off.

Heidi: 07:20

Mhmm.

Bill: 07:20

But when I took off, then I was no longer the sponsor or on the line for all these massive convention halls. And, of course, COVID hit Yeah. Which was god is great. What a blessing. Right?

Bill: 07:30

And when things went wrong, I figured out and I learned in my research that golf was actually what's called a necessary business. So the country clubs never You have

Heidi: 07:39

the exception of Vegas.

Bill: 07:40

Vegas. But the country clubs never closed. So the clubs all stayed open, so we've teamed over the group called Club Corp Yep. Which was part of a group called now it's where they have a whole thing, but they they changed their name, but still the same idea, but they had 200 country clubs.

Heidi: 07:55

Yep.

Bill: 07:56

And we began

Heidi: 07:57

actually members.

Bill: 07:57

And we began to use all their clubs for private luncheons

Heidi: 08:00

Yep.

Bill: 08:00

For '24 to 30 and there was a deal on COVID. If you serve food, then you could take your mask off so we would just serve food all day long. And we knocked it out of the park. Yeah. You know, fortunately, had a good relation with Caesars, and they would give us these 20,000 square foot ballrooms for 200 people for our business course Rainmaker.

Bill: 08:17

We never stopped doing the Rainmaker. Wow. Even during COVID, we just followed all the COVID rules.

Heidi: 08:21

Yeah.

Bill: 08:22

And now, we're heavily involved with launching new TV network called Global Broadcasting Network, GBN. And we're back doing the expos again. We've teamed up another group called the Franchise Expo. Wow. And so we're doing those every month now, about 40,000 people a year coming to those now already.

Bill: 08:39

So it changed really quick. Just went from small business to franchising, now we're doing podcast mansions. Yep. So we're opening up facilities where you can go in different states and go shoot your podcast. And one of the newest ventures is we're working on a program to help people that if they do approve this whole idea around this gold visa, that we'll be able to help them, you know, migrate their business or a new business in The US and a big incubator center in Vegas up to 25,000 square feet to give them a place to facilitate and a domicile for the business, help them with immigration, help them with legal, help them with growing a business so they can acclimate to The US economy quickly.

Bill: 09:16

Wow. And, yeah, so yeah, and I speak still about 100 times a year on different conferences, and I'm really excited to be a part of ETS' board now to help ETS scale and really just you guys already have a great business with us, but how do we double that, right? How do we build in referral programs? How do we create new initiatives to really give the existing customer base more tools and systems and process so that they can scale? Because of that, I believe ETS is going to become even more a household name.

Heidi: 09:46

Yeah. So there you go.

Bill: 09:48

Now my kids are all grown up, so the most important thing in life is good kids.

Heidi: 09:52

Yeah.

Bill: 09:53

You know, my daughter is now 31, brand new mom. Youngest son is a DJ in Vegas and a tech yeah, tech kid. And my older son runs a big mobile SaaS company called Mobax Pro that we launched about six years ago.

Heidi: 10:04

Yep.

Bill: 10:05

Tell people to automate all their online mobile funnels.

Heidi: 10:07

Yep. So that's are using. It's fantastic.

Bill: 10:09

Yeah. It's it's it's a no brainer for any small business that wants to migrate data to mobile versus email and newsletters with about a 90% operate, there's nothing that's close to it.

Heidi: 10:18

Right. Yep.

Bill: 10:19

So it gives you an idea of all the stuff that's going on.

Heidi: 10:21

So much stuff. So much stuff. And we will share links and we will share all

Bill: 10:24

the things. Sure. We'll just give we'll them one link and then you Yeah. Get

Heidi: 10:27

It's fantastic. But so let's dive into where we're at today. I mean, first off, the timing of this podcast is really interesting because we happen to be sitting here on the day that the house has signed the one big beautiful bill. And Trump anticipated to sign the bill on the July 4. So interesting timing that we sit here.

Heidi: 10:47

Obviously This

Bill: 10:48

is gonna be one the greatest things for real estate owners.

Heidi: 10:50

Yeah. Absolutely.

Bill: 10:51

I mean, now you're going back to that multiyear depreciation. You're getting some really big perks. If I was an accountant today, I'd be running the biggest ads possible talking about how the big beautiful bill benefits anyone that owns real estate. Absolutely. And then they should call you as a CPA to make sure they're getting all the right stuff, especially through ETS and the team programs you guys have.

Bill: 11:14

So they don't miss anything. Yeah. But it's gonna really bring back, I believe, a lot of money that's moved into alternative style investments.

Heidi: 11:22

Yes.

Bill: 11:22

Back into real estate

Heidi: 11:23

Absolutely.

Bill: 11:23

Which is great to see.

Heidi: 11:24

Absolutely. So that was a question I was gonna ask for you because as we've seen the economy shift Yeah. Being a large part of our business is working with real estate investors, We've certainly seen a slowdown.

Bill: 11:36

Of course.

Heidi: 11:36

We've seen transactions slow. Building costs are expensive. Interest rates are high. Cap rates are not ideal. So there's been a really big shift towards alternative investments.

Heidi: 11:47

We've seen diversification with oil and gas and other types of things, but the big one seems to be in buying small businesses like big mover businesses and actually converting back into blue collar type roles.

Bill: 11:59

Well, I think you're seeing you're you're you're roll ups like never before. This is why I'm here in Vegas called Gettle. Right? Gettle, think in round one, one for 25,000,000, round two, two fifty six.

Heidi: 12:08

Yeah.

Bill: 12:08

And they're building what are called best practices services. So, what they're doing is they're saying join the best practices services, then they'll bring your company into the fold, and in the future you'll have a chance to be part of the roll up. So if your company meets those guidelines and you follow the process because the multipliers of a company under 10,000,000 is one fourth or one fifth of the multiplier of a company that's over 10 to 100,000,000. Yeah. So collectively, they're way more powerful in the roll up game because family offices don't wanna bet on a really small one.

Bill: 12:38

Yeah. They wanna bet on something that's got a large EBITDA, a larger larger end of year cash flow process because they know that once again, they're looking for the best use of their money. Right. And four to 8% in a bank's not gonna cut it. And now I think with the baby boomers walking away, some of are just walking away from the business.

Bill: 12:56

We built the model called gross royalty revenue where we can go into those owners, give them a five year gant of revenue Mhmm. That they never would have had before. Mhmm. You know, in terms of just instead of saying, let me just give you one chunk or just close the business down Yeah. What if we could allow you to revenue show that as we grow it?

Bill: 13:12

Oh. And because they want that proven growth model, makes it easier for us to step in and bring operators in to run them. Right. And some of those operators might be once again new money coming in from around the world. Mhmm.

Bill: 13:23

I've heard as many as 50,000 people now wanna be a part of this gold visa package program. So when you tell

Heidi: 13:29

us the gold visa package?

Bill: 13:30

So gold visa with Trump's program is that for $5,000,000 tentatively that you'll become a US citizen. K. Which which is great and all, but I do think a lot of those people that come here, they're gonna wanna also start a business. Mhmm. So for the ones that would like to also launch a business while they're here Mhmm.

Bill: 13:46

Power team on the side of this is gonna be the one they can go through to help make that happen. And that's one of our beliefs so that Dubai, The Emirates, all the places where there's really deep money, But because US passport is one of the best passports in the world. Yeah. If you travel at all, we know. We're we're we're used to it, but it's also one of the greatest economic engine in the world.

Bill: 14:04

So if you can also start a business here, that's like a that's like a double win.

Heidi: 14:09

For sure. So talk a little bit about what why do some of these businesses struggle so much with scaling? And and this goes I mean, I think there's two sides of it. There's entrepreneurial side where you're helping entrepreneurs start a business. But there's this whole other side of a lot of these baby boomers, smaller companies that have been in business a long time, but they have not been able to adapt and scale.

Heidi: 14:31

And this is really why you've been so successful.

Bill: 14:34

Right.

Heidi: 14:34

You have been able to shift and dramatically evolve as things are thrown at you. But a lot of people can't do that.

Bill: 14:41

Right. So don't forget. We don't only about 10% of our clients are new start ups. Okay. About 60% are existing SMBs.

Bill: 14:49

And where the challenge usually comes in is that they don't like the word scale because sometimes it means you might have to lose some control. Oh. And a lot of times a small business has a hard time going from being the guy that's in the truck doing the roof to the guy that's actually managing those five teams that are on the roofs or that are fixing the deals. And so what I find for a lot of business owners is that day to day operations are one thing, but scaling is a whole another story. Right.

Bill: 15:18

And part of scaling is it starts with leadership. Mhmm. Right? So you're gonna you've heard the saying a million times that a nation will rise or fall in leadership. Right?

Bill: 15:27

What's the same thing for a small business? So the small business has to take a step back and why are programs like Rainmaker for the last twenty years and WIN the last sixteen years and some of our CEO summit level coaching and new CEO forums we're launching? You have to realize that success leaves a lot of clues. Yeah. Right?

Bill: 15:47

So if you can study who's best in class, and then they gotta make that a goal. Some people do not wanna scale a business. They like to have it where they can work their four days and they're done. Yep. And that's what happens today is that a lot of these companies are being approached with numbers that don't make sense to them because the roll up is worth a whole lot more than the business itself.

Bill: 16:08

So one of the things we focus on is that a lot of business owners, they have to get out of their own way. Know, so you got to hire a good tax person. You got to hire a good lawyer.

Heidi: 16:20

Yeah.

Bill: 16:20

Right. You got to have good HR these days. Yeah. And you got to have great marketing.

Heidi: 16:25

Mhmm.

Bill: 16:25

And and the challenge is you've gotta stay with the times. Yeah. And the times in the last twenty years have changed so dramatically. The way to reach clients and reach potential customers has changed. Look at the last election.

Bill: 16:38

Yep. Many of the voters were not connected through on television. Mhmm. They weren't connected through direct mail. They weren't connected through making phone calls.

Bill: 16:45

They're on podcasts. Yeah. Right? They're on webinars. They're on telesummits.

Bill: 16:49

And so They're on something called social media called power clips. These these eighteen second little power clips. So we tell every business owner today, get an influencer site. Mhmm. Maybe even create a book covering your niche.

Bill: 17:01

Maybe even start to get on some podcast or launch your own podcast. But you gotta start building something called an active community. If you really study the greatest of companies, if you study every unicorn billion dollar valuation five years or less, they only have one thing in common. They build active communities.

Heidi: 17:19

Okay.

Bill: 17:19

So whether it's Uber, Dollar Shave Club, Airbnb, just go down the line of all these companies. They built online active communities. Mhmm. And so if you're a business owner and you really do wanna scale, you have to reach your customer and your future customers where your customer's at. Yeah.

Bill: 17:36

And that's changed a lot.

Heidi: 17:38

Absolutely.

Bill: 17:38

And if you keep going down the same old path, someone else that their service is not as good as yours, their pricing is more expensive than yours, they're gonna get your customer. Absolutely. So that that I think is a is a has been a really challenging point for a lot of small business owners. Mhmm. They get caught up in their own press.

Heidi: 17:55

Yeah. Well, it's so true. I mean, the small businesses, localized businesses, service companies, it gets very mom and pop. You know, it's it's been the shifting model, which has definitely been something and also wonderful working with you on the engineer tax services side. We're a twenty five year old company.

Heidi: 18:11

Yeah. It is professional services. Looking at that a little bit through the lens of we also work with a lot of CPA firms and in the CPA industry. And one of the difficulties is, I mean, about a massive shift. We see we're kind of like this middleman between dealing with our clients and dealing with CPA firms.

Heidi: 18:31

What we see and what we hear is there's this disconnect between what a taxpayer believes they're getting and what they want versus what they actually are getting and then what a CPA is providing or what the CPA thinks their client wants.

Bill: 18:45

Yeah.

Heidi: 18:45

The CPA industry is old from the sense that, you know, obviously it's been around a long time, very professional or something like a law firm.

Bill: 18:53

And they have a consistent way of doing business. Yeah. Have a client, great friend of ours, forty years in the tax business. He processes 5,000 returns a year.

Heidi: 19:02

Wow, that's impressive.

Bill: 19:03

That's impressive out of one office, not 21 office they do that, right? But 80% of his clients are returning clients.

Heidi: 19:11

Yes.

Bill: 19:11

So he doesn't have to be too aggressive.

Heidi: 19:14

But it's the ability to also scale and move with the times because this is the struggle. We are seeing this huge glaring spread between the older style law firm sit in the office with your suit and tie and charge billable hours versus the firms that are learning that they have to scale and and create automations and tools and AI and technology. But but that is the exception, not the rule right now. 100%. If you look at that and you think about I think sometimes it's harder.

Heidi: 19:42

And what I wonder is, is it easier to start from scratch and start a new firm and start over than it is to take a firm, a company that's been in business for twenty five, thirty, forty years and change it into a newer world.

Bill: 19:54

There is nothing wrong with reinventing. I would take if you have a good brand, I would not start a new company. I would keep your existing brand, but what I would do is I would learn if I was forty years of CPA business or thirty years CPA, I would really work on my public speaking. I would work on my ability to be effective on little short videos. I would begin to sponsor B and Is, rotaries, chambers.

Bill: 20:18

I would look for civic groups, ethnic groups, women's groups, legal groups, real estate groups, real estate clubs, and I would make sure that once a week, I was speaking somewhere. And I was given just good, maybe five or ten minutes of a talk. And I will tell you that in that five or ten minute talk online or live, you could double, triple, quadruple, or 10 x your database. Wow. Without spending very much money and you're going to your perfect audience.

Heidi: 20:41

Yeah.

Bill: 20:41

So there's a simple rule called sponsor and speak. But you've gotta have that look, the feel, the mocks, gotta have a few good tips for them. You gotta have an automated opt in system. You gotta have a good email system, good newsletters. Because once again, you can go deliver the message of good content, but then you gotta meet the customer where the customer is at.

Bill: 20:59

Yeah. The customer is

Heidi: 21:00

System to capture

Bill: 21:01

That's right. Where they're living they're living on their phones today. Yeah. There's thing called dual watchers. They got their phone out and they're watching TV, but they're still looking at their phone, right?

Bill: 21:09

Yep. And almost everybody I've ever talked to in any age range, they still all check their text messages. They're looking at text. So you've gotta stay in that realm of here's your tips for the month. Yeah.

Bill: 21:19

Here's the dates you have to know each month. If you're a customer, you better know you better file this on this date. You better make sure you don't miss this deadline. And that should not be delivered through email or trying to phone call your 2,000 clients. It should be an automated text on the first of each month that says, this is your local CPA, giving the dates of the month you have to know because I'm telling

Heidi: 21:37

you Trump just passed a huge bill.

Bill: 21:39

Yeah. So so you wanna you wanna so you wanna be ahead of that because if you're not ahead of it and someone else is, we've all seen great products that nobody buys. We've also seen shitty products everyone buys. What's the difference? Good marketing.

Bill: 21:52

So you've got to start with a great product or service and we don't ever tell clients what business to be in. You've got to come to us saying Bill, I'm great at this or here's where I'm really good at, here's where I want to excel at. What we do is make sure that your message to market matches that client and you do it the most efficient way ever. And we help you get out of your own way. And that takes a while sometimes.

Heidi: 22:14

Exactly. So that's a perfect lead in to my question. Is in you take someone who is significantly introverted and analytical and you say, you need to get on stage and start speaking.

Bill: 22:26

Not so much on stage.

Heidi: 22:26

How do you get people over that hurdle? Because you

Bill: 22:29

know We train them public speaking is one of the biggest scares. So we train them to have a five minute conversation with any room.

Heidi: 22:35

Okay.

Bill: 22:36

And really it's more about asking the right questions

Heidi: 22:38

Mhmm.

Bill: 22:39

And giving out a few tools and then giving away a gift. Mhmm. It's always giving away a gift of your intellectual property. Mhmm. People love gifts.

Bill: 22:47

You ever been to a basketball game, pro basketball game?

Heidi: 22:49

Oh, yeah.

Bill: 22:50

They will knock a kid over for a $2 shirt, and it doesn't even fit him. Does that make sense? They'll knock the kid over. So what I believe is that everyone has a voice, and you're voicing. And if you don't feel that you're the voice of your brand, then you hire a voice for your brand.

Heidi: 23:04

Okay.

Bill: 23:05

You can literally hire people now and you can hire them on AI. You can really have AI videos that become your brand. They can be you on video. They can take your persona and speak in any language you want. Let's say that you want to expand in the Hispanic market.

Bill: 23:17

I can take your two minute message. I can feed it into AI roles, and I can do it in Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese, any language I want within twenty minutes. I can put that message on social media in a power clip that gets them to a form where they can now call your office. Really, it still goes back to relationship building. The only difference is that you've got to fast track that timeline.

Bill: 23:42

You've got to condense the timeline because today people want answers right now.

Heidi: 23:46

Yes.

Bill: 23:47

They don't want to wait for an answer. They don't want to wait a month or a week for you to call them back. You're gonna find that if you're listening today, go to this website called goday.com and get yourname ai.com or getyourname.ai because every business in America within five years will have an AI agent that answers all the phones after 05:00 in video format, and it looks and sounds just like you. Wow. And you know there's what's called a race to singularity.

Bill: 24:14

Mhmm. Right? The race to singularity says that we're both going down these path, and Courser talked about it, right? That we're both going down these paths, but you're gonna find that machine learning and our learning is gonna come together. And at that point, there's going to be a meeting of the minds as to which one's more efficient.

Bill: 24:33

Well, let's see. The AI agent can do a billion, basically a billion thoughts less than about a millisecond, right? And it takes us about a week to do that and probably a year to do that. So you're gonna figure out how to leverage that inside of your business. And so I would start today.

Bill: 24:49

I would start today with using tools and systems and process, but I would also work on learn to have a conversation with the room. Yeah. So whether it's here's here's my name, here's what we do, here's a few tips for every small business that you should ask your accountant, here's a great way to get our newsletter for free every every month. And I could train anybody anywhere, anytime, how to give that two minute talk in front of any room and have absolute faith in front of the room, whether it's on a broadcast like today, or they're gonna be doing a webinar, or a telesummit, or going to one of these live

Heidi: 25:21

That is awesome. Yeah. I mean And they need it. And when you take it into a smaller piece like that, it's not as overwhelming.

Bill: 25:27

Right. It's not a twenty minute I don't gotta give a twenty minute TED talk. You're talking about a two minute power talk Yeah. In front of a room, then you can leave.

Heidi: 25:34

Yeah.

Bill: 25:34

There's no reason to go back and spray your business cards around. Yeah. That's so twenty years ago. You know, here's my card, their jacket opens up and it throws a card at you, right? Like, really?

Bill: 25:44

So you're better off to speak for two or three minutes, give away a couple good tools, give away a free newsletter, which means consistency every week. Once a week, you're somewhere talking about your product, your service, but don't do it in way to sell it, do it more in a way to attract the right clients. I can tell you that I've had days I I got to open up for president Trump and they with a group called Turning Point. And then I said I I wasn't gonna get paid and I couldn't sell anything, but I could give away a book.

Heidi: 26:18

Okay.

Bill: 26:19

So, I literally went on to chat GPT the day before, and I said, if I was gonna have a book for a group of conservatives, well, should I call the book? And they said, oh, you should call the book America First. Oh. So I called the book America First. And I said, well, what kind of photos would that well, they like eagles and flags.

Bill: 26:36

So I put eagles and flags on the cover of the book. Mhmm. And I pre sold the book the next morning. I got 4,000 orders in front of 20,000 people for a book that doesn't even exist. Wow.

Bill: 26:49

In less than ten minutes. Yeah. So don't tell me what you can't do. Let's talk about what you can do.

Heidi: 26:54

Absolutely.

Bill: 26:55

And there's no doubt if you're a business owner, you have to learn your own two minute power pitch.

Heidi: 27:01

Yeah. I love that.

Bill: 27:02

And we teach a lot of it.

Heidi: 27:03

We have found that to be exceptionally true, that it is the number one largest opportunity Yeah. Is really to to be on stage and to be in front of people 100%. Important information.

Bill: 27:12

There's something about group dynamics that just

Heidi: 27:14

Yeah.

Bill: 27:14

Make it doesn't be everyone thinks it's being on a stage. You can be on a stage in your living room. You can you can be on a stage at your office. You can literally set your office up Mhmm. And and make it so easy with a simple green screen these days and

Heidi: 27:24

Yep.

Bill: 27:25

Don't take very much.

Heidi: 27:26

So shifting gears just a little bit as we kind of wrap up. You know, of course, we're in the tax incentive space and we're dealing with this new tax bill. And I spoke on your stage last week in Chicago and, you know, I asked a question to the group. My title is the IRS, your partner in success and achieving the American dream. And there was a dead silence.

Heidi: 27:47

They said, your hand if you feel like the IRS is your partner in success. And of course, there's not a single person.

Bill: 27:53

Nobody. Yeah.

Heidi: 27:53

But I think that's one thing that's fascinating in the message we wanna get out. I wanna know how, you know, if you have any examples of times in your business or with businesses you work with, where you have seen those success stories, where the incentives that are built into the tax code, what people don't realize is incentives are there because the IRS will say, look, we will trade you tax dollars investments that you invest in.

Bill: 28:17

Well, do know a lot of people I know a lot of people have done

Heidi: 28:19

that with land. Choose to do it in your own

Bill: 28:21

That's right. Investments and take that That's right. So I have clients here that have had billion dollar exits

Heidi: 28:27

Mhmm.

Bill: 28:27

But they still leverage not only tax code, grant code

Heidi: 28:31

Mhmm.

Bill: 28:31

To bring in dollars and real dollars that are available for their business. Yeah. I know people have done great land swaps.

Heidi: 28:37

Yeah.

Bill: 28:37

Right? I know a lot of people that have leveraged the ten thirty one exchange rule. So it's not just I believe the greatest expense is not knowing the tax code. Absolutely. It's not having really qualified people that can not just say, here's how it's written, how to understand how to leverage it for your business.

Heidi: 28:55

Yeah.

Bill: 28:56

And use every means that's 100% legal to follow through the process. Absolutely. And then have it backed up by a team that knows the game. Right. I think the challenge for most CPAs is that they're not gonna go deep enough in some of those details Mhmm.

Bill: 29:12

That an incentive firm can do. Yep. And that's why I think you guys work so well with CPAs. You compliment every CPA by giving them almost like their own back office of the most amazing experts on the planet to make sure their clients are getting the best knowledge that's put to use for their business. I do believe that knowledge is power when it's put to use.

Bill: 29:39

But lack of knowledge or ignorance is by far the most expensive.

Heidi: 29:45

Well, grants are a great example. You talk with a lot of your companies.

Bill: 29:50

A lot of it. Grants. Even small grants. $2,500, $5,000 for a small business. Mhmm.

Bill: 29:55

For a small business, cash is like oxygen. Yeah. You know, you need to have some capital to drive that business. And if you're operating from fear, you're almost always going to fail. So we tell new businesses minimum 25 to a $100,000, existing companies 300,000 up to a million 5.

Bill: 30:14

Even if you never use the credit, have those lines available.

Heidi: 30:18

Yeah. That's tremendous.

Bill: 30:20

What else you wanna talk about today? I

Heidi: 30:21

absolutely love that quote that fear sets you up for failure. And I think it's very true.

Bill: 30:27

Well, I think when you have absolute faith, there's no room for fear, You know, but absolute faith also comes from being surrounded by the right people. You know, if you look at like even LeBron James, I don't maybe you don't like LeBron James but there was a time when the court in Cleveland was called the King James Court. And other coaches would know that if he came out and he was really on fire that night, the other team had no chance. Wow. And Michael Jordan was the same way.

Bill: 30:54

Michael Jordan knew that if there was still time on the clock, they could still beat you. You know what mean? They literally had that that presence to walk on that court. And so I think as entrepreneurs, what you guys do is so brilliant is that you make sure that they've got the best team around them. We make sure when it comes to the conversation, the marketing, the sales, the process, the partnerships, the KPIs, mindset that there's winning and there is thinking about winning.

Bill: 31:25

And I am telling you that winners are almost always the ones that they plan for the success, but they also make sure they are prepared for the offsets or the failures. And this is what kills a lot of entrepreneurs, is that they Henry Ford said whether you believe you can or you can't, you are right. Yeah. And I really do think that what kills most entrepreneurship is that their belief system gets burnt out, so they give up. And that's why you need good people around you.

Bill: 31:52

I speak all the time and I say, number one, get a good CPA. Number two, get good lawyer. You need these, you know what mean? Number three, invest in yourself. The greatest book you're ever gonna read is your own story.

Bill: 32:05

So you better start reading it today because we only have so many chapters left, right? So are you in chapter one or chapter 21, right? So anyway, I love what you guys are doing. ETS is a great team and I'm glad to be a part of your show anywhere I can do. And we'll give away a book to your list if that's okay.

Heidi: 32:21

Okay. Absolutely.

Bill: 32:22

So instead of finding all these websites, which you can find if you wanna find more about information about PowerTeam is ipowerteam.com. But I always give away a copy of my book, The Obvious. You'll get our newsletter all for free. One of you guys will have a a free ticket for lunch with me, one of the cities you travel to. But if you'll just text the word win, it's so easy.

Bill: 32:41

Text the word win to the number 26786 from your phone. So text the word win to 26786 right from your phone. You'll get that gift immediately, the book, the newsletter, and invite out for a lunch. So pretty awesome. Perfect.

Bill: 32:54

Thanks for having me.

Heidi: 32:55

Thank you so much for being here. Appreciate it.

Bill: 32:57

Keep up the great work. Appreciate you guys a lot.