Launching a New Business with a Book with Justin Stoddart

Rob Kosberg:

Hey, welcome everybody. It’s Rob Kosberg here with the Publish Promote Profit Podcast. Got a friend and client of mine, Justin Stoddart, on with us today. Justin is the best-selling author of The Upstream Model: Hidden Secrets to Building a Massive Referral Business While Crushing Big Tech Competitors. Well, that is a title in and of itself that we’re going to talk quite a bit about, Justin. Justin is a husband, father to six, so he is a big thinker, and we’re going to talk about the ways that he’s thinking big in his business. And he’s a coach and consultant, kind of a business development coach in the real estate industry and space. Not specifically to realtors, but all those in the real estate industry. So, Justin, great to have you with me. Thanks for being on the show and welcome, my friend.

Justin Stoddart:

Yeah, my pleasure. Total pleasure to be here. Thank you for this opportunity as well as all that you and your organization have done for me. It’s been fantastic.

Rob Kosberg:

Thank you, brother. Well, I heard about some of the cool things that you’re doing, and people come to us in all different phases of writing their book and with all different purposes, to be quite honest. Maybe tell us to begin, who is it that you serve? Who is it you help? I know you say a good bit of it in the subtitle in particular, but what’s the purpose of the book and who is the book speaking to as far as who you’re serving?

Justin Stoddart:

Yeah, I’d say on a very kind of granular, specific level, any real estate industry professional. However, I make it pretty clear in the book that these principles apply to any well-paid professional who finds themselves earning a good living, yet they feel big tech encroaching upon them. That might include property and casualty insurance, and you see the lizard for Geico or Progressive with the scanner taking some of your opportunity. If you’re a wealth manager, you see Robinhood and some of these other tech platforms and portals kind of encroaching in upon your customer. So, I think anybody that’s in a space where they’re not confident that the future is going to look the same in their industry, then they ought to be at the same time taking a look at, how do I rise above this tech disruption?

Rob Kosberg:

Well, and there’s going to be, right? And there already is. You mentioned Robinhood. Of course, Robinhood is getting fried right now and deservedly so because of all the little guys taking down the shorts and the hedge funds. But tell me what that looks like in real estate. Obviously, I come from a real estate background. I love real estate, work with a lot of clients in the real estate space, but is that something like the encroachment of Zillow, for example? And what does that look like? Give me a real working example.

Justin Stoddart:

Yeah. It’s a great question. I think anyone in the real estate industry is being faced with this concept that Redfin, right? Who’s a publicly traded company, they’ve done essentially what I just described, which is they have replaced well-paid agents with lower paid customer service representatives. They’re still agents, but they’re just not earning what an agent could earn, right? And really the value proposition is no longer the agent, the value proposition is the technology. People come to Redfin, not because they love the agent, it’s because they love the tech. They’re in love with the tech and they simply bring in functionaries to go do the work of opening doors and writing contracts. And I think that is the future of a lot of industries and a lot of industry professionals, unless they figure out how to rise above that, right?

Zillow, who for a decade now has been the friend of real estate agents and they’ve said that we’re going to give you leads, well, Zillow, despite all kinds of promises that they never would, has now become a brokerage. They’re competing directly with their customers. And so again, you see these big tech companies, even Homey or these iBuyers, Opendoor, that are coming in and actually blatantly removing any agent from the equation on purpose. So, there’s all different kinds of levels of how that disruption is going to happen. And again, we see it in property casualty insurance, we see it in wealth management, we see it in lending. If you are sitting here right now and you are a well-paid professional, there’s no doubt that big tech is drooling over the fact that they could replace you with a lower paid person and their algorithms, scrape off some to give it back to the consumer to incentivize them to come, and then it’s scaled, they can make a boon, right?

And you see these companies, their stock price is just ratcheting up because they believe that that’s the future. They believe that consumers actually don’t need a well-paid professional, that all they need is a customer service representative and their tech. And I think they’re wrong and I think it behooves those of us that are well-paid professionals to find models and ways to increase our value and then be able to communicate that to the client to where they always do have the ability to remain at the center of the transaction where the client wants them to be there and values having them there, that it’s the ROI and having them there is great, right?

Rob Kosberg:

Yeah. Yeah. That’s well said. Technology is deflationary, meaning that things tend to get cheaper because of technology, which is a good thing. I think it’s a good thing for the consumer, but it’s not always a good thing for the market in general. And I guess what I’d say is whether someone agrees with your statement or not, meaning that you can actually stem the tide of tech coming. I’m not 100% sure that you can, but this is what I do know. You better do something. You better start operating differently because if you do, then worst case scenario, you’re going to be the last one to fall and you’ll be the one making the most money along the way, which could lead into many, many other opportunities for you, et cetera. But obviously, I do agree that there will always be the powerful need for an intermediary that is customer centric, customer focused, taking care of the customer, and that knows way more than a customer service rep.

All of us have had a bad experience calling a big tech company and getting somebody in a foreign land that doesn’t speak our language very well and that quiet, frankly, doesn’t really know what our problems are. So that’s, I think, the last thing we all want.

Justin Stoddart:

Well, I think collectively you’re exactly right, Rob, is that there is no way for one individual agent or even a small group of agents to out-beat the massive amounts of money that these big tech platforms can spend at changing the consumer’s mind saying, you no longer need a well-paid professional, come to us, right? That’s going to happen. However, I do believe that there are professionals who can individually rise above that, carve out for themselves a niche, not because they’re kind of outwitting their customers and selling them a line that’s not true, but they can actually learn how to be more valuable, right? And this is key to The Upstream Model of how to actually get to the customer before big tech can turn them into a lead, to where you actually have the ability to get there earlier and get there referred from somebody who already has deep trust with the client.

So, for example, as a real estate agent, getting referred from a financial advisor is going to sound very different than getting referred from an online lead source, right? You will come into that person’s life very differently; they’ll respect you differently. So, it’s then how do you actually get those referrals? And what’s the value you need to offer to those upstream partners to make them want to bring you into their client conversation, into their client experience, to where you get conversations with all of their clients on a regular basis? That’s more what the book goes into, is not just getting there earlier, but also having so much value that the client thinks, “Yeah, I couldn’t go over there.” But again, the ROI of the fee that I pay to you exists. There’s actually a return, I get more money back, right? It’s a good investment to have you in the picture.

It’s not just because I know you, like you, trust you and I want to support you, right? Those days are going away. But people will purposely choose to keep certain professionals because of the value that they offer and how they got introduced into the relationship.

Rob Kosberg:

Love it, love it. I see the truth in that in several different areas of my life. One is I live in a very unique location. I live in kind of a national historic home built in 1812, right on the water in St. Augustine, the oldest city in the country. And there is no way that Zillow or Redfin or an algorithm can put a real reflective price on my home. There’s no way, it’s impossible because of the uniqueness of it. And there are people that specialize in this kind of historic real estate and property. You need to speak to a real professional. On the other end of it, I went out a year ago or so and I bought a brand-new Harley. And the reason that I bought a brand-new Harley, I saw several that I could have gotten significantly lower price that had next to no miles on them, but I wanted to build a relationship with the local Harley Davidson dealership.

And in fact, brought a friend in and he bought a Harley as well from the dealership and got to meet the owner of the Harley dealership who owns five dealerships. And so, spending a few thousand dollars more was worth it to me to develop that relationship and begin building on that, because I know I’m going to have fun with more motorcycles. I know that I want a relationship where I walk in and they go, okay, this is a guy that we like to deal with, and this is somebody that we know. You can certainly put a price on it, perhaps, but you can’t get that at the risk of just a few thousand bucks of savings. It’s not worth it. It’s better to spend the money.

Justin Stoddart:

You bring up a great point, and this is actually a story I tell in the book. If I’m going to book a flight to San Jose from Portland, Oregon, I don’t need a travel agent, right? And often people will say, real estate agents are the next travel agents, insurance agents are the next travel agents, right? And I think for those that don’t innovate, those that don’t actually do anything different, that’s probably true, right? Because reality is, on a transaction that simple where there’s not any more value than choosing what time I’m going to leave and arrive, there’s not a lot of value there. And so, a consumer should not pay more, and thank goodness, technology is removing those costs. But if I’m taking, and this is actually an experience that I had with a good friend of mine who was in the insurance industry and he said, “My wife and I are actually booking a trip to Europe.”

And I figured, hey, there’s online tools, and reviews. And he said, “There was so much information. I thought I could do it and then I realized that that’s the problem. There’s so much information. And this is the key, and the risk of getting it wrong on a trip of a lifetime just wasn’t worth it to us. We didn’t want to go and even just have a good experience when we could have had a great experience. I actually want to talk to people and I’m willing to pay the price because of what’s at risk.” And I think what these big tech portals will say is that it’s like buying shoes online, right? That there’s not much risk, everybody does about the same thing. But the reality is on something as important as ensuring your family properly and/or managing your entire wealth portfolio and/or helping you with what could be the largest purchase of your life, I’m sorry, but that’s not the same as going on Zappos, right? It’s not the same thing.

The risk is way different and it behooves the agent to prove that, right? It behooves the agent to actually have the expertise to be able to demonstrate that, but you’ve got a lot more to gain and a lot more to lose if you don’t do it right. And I think that’s where the opportunity lies is helping people understand that there is a difference depending upon the product or service that you’re purchasing at any given moment, that e-commerce doesn’t solve all the problems and allow you to capture as much opportunity or abate as much risk as you could if you had somebody really expert looking out for you, watching out for you introduced into the relationship in such a way that you immediately know that they’re highly regarded, highly respected.

Rob Kosberg:

Love it, love it. On this podcast, we kind of have two focuses. One is your book, your expertise, your vision, where we’re going with it. And the other is, okay, how are you using your book? Because what I see in my business constantly are people that are authors, and many times successful authors, but they never translate that to the kind of impact and income that they could with their books had they really had a vision and a process to profit from their book the way they should. So let’s talk about the first for just a minute, which is you’re a top producer in the real estate industry, in the real estate space, but you’re using your book to create something new and you have a kind of big idea and big vision for your book and how you’re going to use it. So, talk to me a little bit about all of that and how you’re using your book.

Justin Stoddart:

Rob, I want to give you credit for this, and you didn’t necessarily know that I was going to do this, but my ideas around The Upstream Model, both again in how to add more value to deserve to be in the transaction and then how to get there sooner, they were concrete-ish in my mind. It took the process of actually writing a book for me to really have to vet the ideas. I interviewed dozens of professionals to be sure that if I’m going to put this in a book, I got to get it right. These ideas have worked for me across multiple industries. I’ve now tutored and mentored dozens of other people prior to reading the book. And then all of a sudden, you’ve got to put it on paper and it has to not only make logical sense, but it has to also be entertaining to where you can actually have a story that flows, that keeps people’s attention so they actually want to get the information that you have.

That’s a whole new level of difficulty that I never would have been able to do without, number one, actually going through the process of writing a book, and number two, having the support that you guys offer. I would have turned back at some point. And now, because I’ve gone through that process, I’m actually able to articulate what problem I’m solving and the uniqueness of my new offer, right? Which is The Upstream Model. It’s not warm market, it’s not cold market, it’s this unique hybrid market, right? This unique bucket that nobody’s tapping into at the level they could. I couldn’t have been able to articulate it without going through the process with your team to do that. So, I want to thank you for that. But that’s exactly, I think, kind of step one is the fact that you’re going to get all these great ideas in your head that are floating around and you’re going to get them to where they can actually make sense to other people, not just yourself.

So that’s kind of the first kind of cornerstone, I think, to actually making a really big impact in the world is you’ve got to know what problem you’re solving and how you solve it. In a book, nothing does that better than making you put it on paper and having another people vet it and help you organize it, right?

Rob Kosberg:

Love it, love it.

 Justin Stoddart:

So, from there really, and again, I got this from the book that’s sitting right over your left shoulder there, Publish. Promote. Profit. If people have not read this, please read. It will change your life. It really will. It’ll make you realize the fact that writing a book isn’t the end game, right? In the way that Rob teaches, and many people do it. They want to check that off their list and then they want to put their hands in the air, the tape hits their chest, they take their victory lap. And that’s why most people only sell a couple hundred books and most of its themselves buying it to give it away, right? And I think what you taught is that if you really have a good idea, right? That a book is the starting line, it’s not the finish line. It’s the place where actually now you can get people’s attention that you have an idea worthwhile to where now you can really help them actually apply these things.

And that’s where obviously incomes at as well, right? Is actually teaching people how to do the things that you’ve started to tell them how to do in the book. So, for me, that’s exactly what it is for me is that this is now a foundation on which I can go out. My goal is to get these concepts implemented into a million well-paid professionals’ lives. And I couldn’t do that if I didn’t have a book, but again, it’s the starting line. And for me, that is going to look like a massive coaching and consulting company that not only helps people to implement The Upstream Model, but to think bigger, because that’s the other part of my brand. My mission and my passion are to wake people up, to help them realize the potential inside of them and then to live in pursuit of that, helping them have lives that are both living, giving and serving abundantly.

That’s really kind of what I’m about, and The Upstream Model becomes a key component of that because I can sell this kind of, let’s think bigger, all day long, but if right away it doesn’t help people start making more money to where they have more options, more time freedom to think and create and do, then it just becomes something that they maybe will watch a couple of times. But if I could really move the needle in their life, in their business, help them make more money and have more time freedom, which is what The Upstream Model promises, now all of a sudden I’ve created some space where I can do some more really cool things with their mindset and with their life. So, for me, that’s kind of the big picture that I’m now rolling out. And again, I’m standing on the foundation of what you helped me to build.

Rob Kosberg:

Well, thank you for saying that. It’s interesting, you and I are similar in a lot of different ways. A lot of ways, not different ways, real estate being one. But another, I have a number of clients, the vast majority, I’d say, of my clients that come to write a book, come to write a book after their businesses are growing and maybe they hit a sticking point, or maybe they want to go to the next level, or maybe they feel like it’s the stake in the ground that they want to put. A few people, a lower percentage, a few is probably not the right word, but 20%, 15% come to us and the book is the cornerstone of something new that they’re starting. They’re already experts at the thing, but they’re using that to pivot. So, it could be somebody in the corporate world that’s writing a book and using the book to go and begin a consultancy.

In your case, it’s a top producer in the real estate space who’s using a book to build a coaching and consulting business. And I know the kind of business that you want to build, a big business, a business that makes a massive impact on people. Have you begun using the book? And tell me, what things have you done at this point that you’re seeing success with? Because a lot of people would say, you shouldn’t write the book first, you should write the book seventh, eighth, 10th. From your perspective, how has it worked?

Justin Stoddart:

Yeah. No, it’s great, Rob. Again, I think, and I’ve had other friends that have written books and it’s been fun as they’ve come back to me to say, “Now, what are you doing over here?” Again, the value of having Rob Kosberg in your network isn’t it just the fact that he’s got a great team that’ll help you produce a book, but it’s a fact that he realizes that to become truly a best-selling author, it’s not just one week of promos. Yeah, it’s fun to have that status, but the reality is I actually want to create a massive impact and a massive income from this. And so, from your mentorship and in your example and other people that you’ve brought into my world, right? By being in network with you, right away I realized that it wasn’t just writing a book, it was about having a digital course on the back end that again, taught people how to apply the principles in the books.

Because reality of it is even if all the principles are in the book, for people to go through and read a book and write down and implement them and know the how to of how do I actually implement this into my life and business, when my plate’s already full, right? Those chances are lower. And people, if you can show them, right? That there’s actually a return on the value that you’re bringing to the table, then they will pay you to help them apply the principles, right? And so, I launched a beta course, sold 30 students who are now up to 40 in the beta group and I’ve kind of capped it at that. Here within the next week, week and a half, I’m rolling out the Polish version of the course. We’re going to do that through some innovative marketing techniques that you’ve shared with me that really allowed me to start to scale this at a bigger level beyond just my warm market, right?

And that beta group has been really great because not only did it pay for my funnels and my book really, and a lot of kind of the upfront costs of doing this, but it now has given me a group of 30 people with whom I can work carefully with to say, what’s working and what’s not working, right? What resonates with you and what doesn’t? What do I need to do to help you understand and implement these things better? To where now I’m ready to go reproduce the actual final course and start to scale it, right? To really start to sell it at scale, which will then lead to additional, not just kind of group coaching opportunities, but more individual coaching. And I can leverage and scale from there when it comes to bringing in additional really talented people that have a similar vision as I do that want to be kind of boots on the ground, helping really impact people in that way.

Rob Kosberg:

Love it. I mean, 30 people right out of the gate. You said you’re expanding that to 40. So, you’re going to bring on-

Justin Stoddart:

So, I’m at 40.

Rob Kosberg:

You’re at 40 now?

Justin Stoddart:

Yeah.

Rob Kosberg:

Awesome. So, 40 people right out of the gate that are in kind of a small group coaching program, and you’re using this beta group and they’ve paid you, obviously. I don’t know if you want to say what they’ve paid or not, whatever you feel comfortable with. But they’ve paid you to in essence create this course that then you are going to perfect and roll out to the marketplace.

Justin Stoddart:

Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. So, the cost of the beta course was between three and $500, depending upon when they came in. The initial group came in at 300 and then I’ve had about 10 more that have come in at the $500 price point. So, the price will jump, will probably double once I get it out of beta here in the next week or so. With the value being demonstrated now that I’ve helped people to actually create a TEDx ROI right away, now it’s fun because now I can really demonstrate the value, use their testimonials to help scale as well as just the course has been refined and I know what’s needed now to help everybody that comes in get that similar return.

Rob Kosberg:

Yeah. Love it. And you underpriced yourself, if I could just say that, because you’re worth more than that and like you said, you’ve already gotten to people a 10X ROI. But even at that, basically you’ve used the book right out of the gate to pay for the book and some of the other things you’ve done, you’ve made $20,000 or so just in a kind of beta version of this as you’re perfecting it. You’re also going to get some amazing testimonials. Make sure that you do get great video testimonials, audio testimonials that you can then transcribe and use as written because for your course, people are going to want to see social proof and they’re going to want to see that your course did help bunch of folks. So, hey, congratulations, man. That’s fantastic. I love nothing more than to hear that. And the opportunity you’re just scratching the surface, right? You’re seeing that there’s a hunger for this material.

Justin Stoddart:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the timing is right and the model that you’ve laid out, right? Including the additional people that you bring into the network to help us, not just write the book, but then sell the book, right? Getting into the lives of people has been the right model.

Rob Kosberg:

Yeah. There are so many simple ways to kind of test the market with your offers. I do that right in my best-seller publishing private group, just asking because I legitimately need to know what direction my ideal clients want to go. And why not ask my paying clients what my ideal clients that aren’t my paying clients yet really want. And so, I did that recently with our Wall Street Journal launch, which we’re in the middle of it, but it’s massively, massively successful. And it sounds like you did the exact same thing with this beta launch. You basically said, hey, would you be interested? Maybe could you explain how you made that offer to the group and what that looked like to get 40 people involved, which is tremendous?

Justin Stoddart:

Yeah. You bet. So, it was launched initially through just my own email list and inside my closed Facebook group, but you don’t pay to be in there, right? It’s called Think Bigger Real Estate, is the group. So, I promoted heavily. I did a webinar and I didn’t title it, The Upstream Model. Nobody knows what that is, right? And people don’t care about The Upstream Model. What people care about is the fact that there’s a shortage of inventory. How do I find more houses to sell? How do I find more listings? And so that was the title of my broadcast, right? And so, I did a presentation and I closed the doors 24 hours later, right? At essentially a 70% discount, right? $300.

Rob Kosberg:

That’s great. That’s fast. That’s a fast-close right there.

Justin Stoddart:

Possibly too fast. And then I came back and did an encore on Wednesday. So as soon as it closed, I even said, hey, because of demand, we’re now doing an Encore. And then I kept that one open through the end of the week and then a few days later, I did actually, inside now a student group that people have paid to get into, right? The course was essentially taught in one sitting. It wasn’t over a period of eight weeks. It was eight modules, but it was back to back. It was kind of a marathon day and some people said, “Oh my goodness, I didn’t realize it was going to be all day.” The content is yours, it lives here, but we’re going to run through it all today. Stay as long as you possibly can, block out the day. If you can’t be here, don’t worry. It’ll be here. So, then I’ve gone back and chopped it up into modules so people can go back and consume.

So, inside the group, they’ve paid for that content and that material. They’ll have lifetime access to it. But now that we’re going to start to scale it up, obviously the price point will go up and I’ll move the content out of being just in a Facebook group. I’ll move it into a Kajabi or something that’s a little more formal, a little easier for people to navigate and bookmark and find their spot to where the goal is to really help people learn and implement. Whereas the goal of the first one was, what am I missing, right? How do I help you guys have success and results with this? Now with the polished course that’ll be rolling out, there’ll be a different motive, right? Which is to really help people implement this at a deeper level. We’re not just learning together anymore, although that will always be the case, but I’ve learned a lot through that process and now it’s time to really scale it out.

Rob Kosberg:

Love it. Well, the process you use to sell that is the exact process you can use to sell something by just adding a zero on the back end of it. Something that’s three or $5,000. It may require a call, but you can get people to give you a deposit before you actually jump on the phone with them to make sure that they’re… you’ve seen me do that with our challenges and with the webinar, the beginning of the year webinar that I do every year, which works amazingly well for us. And for the most part, every single person that leaves a deposit, they know what the offer is, they know what the price is. They’ve spent hours with me, they know everything, and they know that it’s going away if they don’t take advantage of it. And so, every single person, generally 90 to 100% go through with the payment plan and become clients. So, you can do the exact same thing with your higher ticket thing, whatever that’s going to be.

I love where you’ve started though and I love how you’ve taken action, already made money right out of the gate. There’s no reason why any author can’t do the exact same thing and kind of following the in the same blueprint that you’ve laid out for them. So, what’s next? You crystallize the offer, you crystallize the course, et cetera. Where are you taking it from there?

Justin Stoddart:

Yeah. So, it’ll be more of a high-ticket offer, right? In fact, I’ve identified several people within the group right now who I would foresee as being people who love what they do, but they’d also love another revenue stream, right? So I’ve started to tap them already and kind of cast a bigger vision of, not only are we making this work in your business, but I’d love to give you the opportunity to help you tutor and mentor other people, with the bigger picture being that I want to build kind of a team, an army of coaches that have kind of bought into the think bigger philosophy, right? Without going too much into depth, but the greatest untapped natural resource in the world is human potential. So that’s really what the organization is about and The Upstream Model being a key to help people start to unlock that and create the space to really pursue that.

So, kind of big picture, right? Is a massive coach organization that impacts a million people. And so next step, right? Is to crystallize a course, as you mentioned, then it’s to bring on coaches to start to do one-on-one coaching. I don’t know that I’ll do that except with the coaches, where I’ll start to coach the coaches and continue to recruit coaches that we can then drive traffic to the value ladder, which starts with the book, upgrades to audio, upgrades to the course, upgrades to a high ticket individual coaching option.

Rob Kosberg:

Have you built out that funnel to begin driving traffic for the book? What’s the steps there? Are you’re going to use paid traffic to do that, et cetera, start building your audience out?

Justin Stoddart:

Yeah. So, so far, it’s all been organic. I have built the funnel all the way to the course level, the beta course, I should say. So, there’ll be a few tweaks to it to get it to the actual course. I have steps in place for the high-ticket coaching. I haven’t really pursued that or driven any cold traffic to it. It’s all been warm traffic at this point.

Rob Kosberg:

Yeah. Yeah. Good. Well, your book will be, maybe if not the best source of new leads, it will certainly be the best source of highest quality leads. And so, in the beginning, we ran our free plus shipping funnel really, really hard for the first probably a year to 14 or 15 months. In the very, very beginning, we were selling 1,500 books a month, around 50 books a day, and at a breakeven or a profit. After about three or four months, we started losing money on the front end, but that’s just lead acquisition, right? That’s just getting applications, getting calls set for my sales team, et cetera. But still the highest quality people that ever came were the ones that actually read the book and kind of bought into our philosophy, bought into the idea. And then when they got on the phone with one of my author development coaches, we were already speaking to a member, right?

Somebody that already thought like us and that agreed with the philosophy. So, you’ll see you’ll get phenomenal quality leads from people that have got the book and have read the book.

Justin Stoddart:

Yeah, that’s what my process looked like, right? I saw you on an Instagram ad. I’d been targeted for probably some people in common that we follow, and it lent immediate credibility. I ordered the book, read the book in a weekend, had a call scheduled with your team and was up and rolling. I bought into what you were teaching, and I obviously still do. So yeah, I think that’s a great model as the book can really be, like you said, kind of the entry point, right? Into really impacting people’s lives. And if they read the book, which you encourage them to do, then at that point, the ongoing relationship gets really, really easy, right? The kind of a sense of the value ladder gets easier and easier.

Rob Kosberg:

Yeah. Love it. Love it, love it. What have I missed, Justin? What else are you doing? What else have I missed? I love talking to you, I love what you’re doing with your book. I love people that take action because when you take action, you do experience, sure some setbacks and failures, but also some great success right out of the gate, which you’ve done. So, what am I not asking, or what would people like to hear about the whole process and what you’re doing?

Justin Stoddart:

I think to your point, people don’t do things for a couple of reasons. I actually just had a friend teach me this the other day and I’ve really been kind of stewing on it, thinking about it, is that people don’t make a buy-in decision for simply one of two reasons. Number one is they don’t believe in themselves, that they can actually do it, right? And the second reason is that they don’t believe in you, that you can actually help them do it. And if you can boil it down to those two simple things, it gets a lot easier. And I think I definitely had doubts about my ability to read a book and even create what is now becoming a more and more crystallized vision of where I want to go with this. Because I didn’t have the total confidence in my own ability, I had to reach out and invest in others who were already further down the path, right?

Once I had you in my back pocket, right? Once I had your team in my back pocket, they were like, okay, I can actually write a book now because they’re going to help me, right? And then it’s been, oh, and I can actually create a digital course now because I’ve got so-and-so helping me. Oh, and I can actually now sell this thing at scale because I know I’ve got so-and-so helping me. And so, I think oftentimes when we look at ourselves, we see an inferior product and the reality is we all are, right? But our product and our ability to really do great things is totally changed the second we create a partnership. And sometimes that creates a little bit of a kind of leap of faith of making an investment to have to go do something that we otherwise couldn’t do on our own. So anyway, I think if there’s anybody listening out there, is that if you’re not where you want to be, then you’re going to need to hire somebody to help you.

And as soon as you do that, you now own their knowledge, right? Because you’ve hired them to get access to your knowledge and that thing that would have taken you years and years to do isn’t going to take very long because you’ve got their help.

Rob Kosberg:

Yep. Love it. So well said. I say it kind of simply and I do teach on that. I actually break it down to four things, but the simpler thing is believing in yourself and believing in what tools you have or people you have that can actually help you. But it is kind of interesting. The whole concept people have a great idea and maybe even have a great business that has already kind of come from that idea, but then crystallizing it, putting it into a course, putting it into a book, putting it into something that somebody can in a weekend or a few hours really read, and what that can do to transform people’s lives is pretty spectacular. People are going to be reading your book that you never meet, maybe never talk to, never hear from, but it’s going to make a difference in their lives, and that’s pretty cool.

Justin Stoddart:

It is because funny you say that. I had a gentleman out of South Carolina who I’ve never met before. He said, “Justin, since reading your book, my business is blowing up.” And he quoted a line or two, and I have no idea who this person is. And I was like, that’s so fun, right? Whether or not he ever becomes more than just someone who read the book, my life is impacted because I helped somebody, right? It’s just really, really cool. If my end game is to impact, right? And it is, then what a great way to do that.

Rob Kosberg:

Love it, love it. Justin, thanks. Thanks, brother. Thanks for being on. Thanks for sharing these things. Where can people reach you? Where can they get the book? Where’s the best way to find resources? And I didn’t mention your podcast, the Think Bigger Show. And so maybe you want to talk about that. Tell us the best spots?

Justin Stoddart:

Yeah, you bet. So, if people are interested in the book, I do have a place where you can go get one at less than it costs me to get it to you. I’ll just say that. It’s upstreammodel.com/book, and that will send you kind of explanation more of kind of what problem it solves. So that’d be the best place to get the book. And then you can learn kind of a lot about me just at my website, justinstoddart.com. I do two blog posts a week that are really video blogs and two podcast episodes a week, which I’m interviewing kind of biggest thinkers out there, Grant Cardone. Some big names have been guests on the show. There are people who are in the real estate space and/or not, right? Sometimes they’re just really, really successful in business and I’m interviewing them and extracting from them, not just the tactical of what they’re doing, but what do they do to continue to be a big thinker? And that’s actually my signature question I ask at the end.

So if you feel like, man, I’m actually supposed to be doing something more in my life than what I’m doing right now, that’s a great place for you to go because you’ll tap into what these big thinkers do to continue to be big thinkers.

Rob Kosberg:

Mr. 10X himself on the show, I love it.

Justin Stoddart:

Yeah. Yeah. So justinstoddart.com, again, is kind of a fast way to get access to that content. And then all the social mediums as well, just @justinstoddart.

Rob Kosberg:

Beautiful. Thanks, brother. Thanks for being on with us and thanks for taking action. I love action takers.

Justin Stoddart:

Appreciate you very much.

Rob Kosberg:

Perfect. Great. Great job, man.