Dave Lorenzo (00:01):
Hey, now folks. Welcome to the Sunday special. I'm Dave Lorenzo, the godfather of Growth, and I've got with me today my partner Nicki G. Hey Nicola, how are you? Hey, Dave.

Nicola Gelormino (00:10):
Fantastic. How are you?

Dave Lorenzo (00:12):
I'm doing great, thanks. So this is the low production value show that we do to document the progress in our business. It's a show that we do for us, and we just invite you to listen in behind the scenes and hear what's going on. So this week, it's kind of a funny week. I was kind of taking mental stock of this week, earlier today, thinking about the things that I had done for the business, and I have a whole list of to-dos that I wanted to get done. I didn't get 'em done, and I was feeling really bad about not making progress. But then I realized I flipped my notebook over and I looked at this whole page of notes with ideas that I had, and I think this was one of the more productive weeks from a strategic standpoint and less from an activity standpoint.

(01:06):
We had some stuff going on on Monday, and then I flew to Chicago on Tuesday and had meetings and dinner in Chicago with a bunch of folks. Then Wednesday morning I was up at the crack of dawn because you and I had a meeting that we had to run together on Zoom and then a whole day's worth of stuff in Chicago, and then a speaking engagement Wednesday night and then flying home Thursday and spending pretty much the entire day Thursday, just the leading email from my email, hundreds of emails from my email inbox that I was going to ignore. And then yesterday was a day when I actually got worked on it. I was productive, so there wasn't action, but because I had so much time where either I was disconnected or I made the choice to be disconnected, I came up with a lot of strategic ideas that you and I need to go through.

(02:00):
I did have one specific activity that was quite valuable for our business this week that I can report out to you on. Again, this is like a report to the boss here. So I met with the person who's going to head up our sales activity and had lunch with her yesterday. It was a great, great meeting. She's fully on board. She's so excited, and she actually came up with a handful of really great ideas. So I'm excited to go through all of that stuff with you when we have time. This was a crazy week for you. You were incredibly busy with the legal matters that you were working on, which we really can't get into. But suffice it to say that Nicola was just fricking buried. I mean, she was just buried with legal work until 10 o'clock at night from seven o'clock in the morning every day this week, and she's got somebody coming over her house to help her do legal work tomorrow, which is today because it's Sunday.

(03:07):
So we record this on Saturday for Sunday, so it's for Sunday. So she'll be doing legal work while this show is on. So I mean, that's the thing. We made huge progress this week in the business. We have somebody who's going to help us with our sales efforts and we have a vision for what we're going to do from a sales perspective, but it seemed like I was kind of on a treadmill running in place. The one thing I will say, and if you listen to the Saturday side hustle yesterday, that was the speaking engagement I did Wednesday night in Skokie, Illinois. So we were able to turn that around and use it as content. The one thing I will say is I learned a very, very valuable lesson, and that is that these speaking engagements that I'm doing are great opportunities to test out new content that will be good for our clients to perfect that content.

(04:08):
And in going through that show, in editing that show, I realized that I've told a couple of brand new stories I had never told before. I know I can polish them up and make sure that they fit the needs that I have in developing content for work for the business. And what I did this morning, by the way, Nicola, was I went through all my gear and I segmented my gear so that regardless of where I'm going, I can take camera and audio recording with me to collect and preserve all the content because then you put me on a stage for 45 minutes. There's got to be 10 minutes of material there we can use somewhere.

(04:51):
So that was a big learning event. So two things I can take away from this week. Number one, connecting with the person who's going to help us with sales. Both of us really like her, and I think she's going to do really, really well. She's going to make a lot of money. She's going to have a good time. We're going to have a good time with her, and that's kind of our criteria for hiring people. They have to be knowledgeable and be personable. We have to know we're going to have a good time working with them, and they have to really be into the concept that we have. And she brings all that. I think she checks all the boxes. So that and this process for creating, developing and refining content, I think this could be helpful in a lot of different ways for the future.

(05:35):
So those are the things that I have to report for this week. There's no exciting news. Looking forward to next week, what I'm doing is I'm going through the 30 candidates we have on the professional side. I'm going to email all them set up appointments to interview them, and I'm going to take them through what the process will be like, see if they agree to it, and then before October 17th, when I have to go back on the road again, I'm going to get all these people on board. So we'll have our first class of potential subject matter experts on board by October 17th. So we have things moving, we have things in motion. It just seems like sometimes when you're thinking about things and you're doing the strategy, because it's not tangible, it doesn't seem as valuable, although it probably is more valuable from a business perspective. That's what this week was like in E S L for me. I know you were just swamped with legal work that you can't talk about because it's like you're in witness protection and you're not allowed to share the details of where you were and what you were doing, but you don't look any worse for the wear. Nicole's got a great haircut, by the way. She just got a haircut. She looks fantastic. She looks amazing. She always looks amazing, but she looks fresh so she doesn't look like she worked 130 hours.

Nicola Gelormino (06:49):
The fact that I look fresh, that's a win. I will say, you crash after a really long week. Everyone listening knows this. Eventually it catches up to you. You're cutting your sleep a little short. You're handling a lot of stress. I mean, that was my week. So crashed last night and I feel good today. And then this is something I look forward to every week. So you wake up thinking, this is going to be something I'm really going to enjoy, and that just kind of reinvigorates you. So looking back at everything that you described from this week, I'm really excited about the lead salesperson that we've identified. We were excited about her when we met her. I can't be more excited that she's on board. She really wants to work with us. It's that excitement of they want to work with us too. You feel like you're dating when you identify strategic people who will be a really good fit for you, and you're hoping that they think that you're a good fit too.

(07:39):
It's like I've called this professional dating a lot of over the years as you're looking for candidates and you're trying to, sorry clients, and you're trying to find a good fit for clients and you think they're a good fit and you're hoping that they think they're a good fit for you. So that's what we found and we think this is going to be a very good partner for us. We're both really excited about that. I think she's just an excellent professional. I love that you've kind of taken all of your recording stuff on the road with you. I witnessed this during our meeting. I cannot believe what Dave was traveling with, but I can tell you that I know it's going to bring a lot of value to our business. So thank you for that heavy lift and taking that all along with you. He even used an ironing board to execute the setup for our meeting, which was probably my favorite part of the whole setup was the irony board from the hotel room.

Dave Lorenzo (08:28):
I'll make that the cover for this episode. So if you want to see the picture of the setup in the hotel room to run the Zoom meeting, it is a mixer, a keyboard with a mini computer, a small monitor on an ironing board in front of the tv, which is hooked up to the mini computer.

Nicola Gelormino (08:48):
Absolutely love it. But look, folks, you want to accomplish something. You find a way to do it that's being resourceful is being able to figure out, can I travel with this? What's my setup going to look like and can I do this? And it was executed extremely well, given all the conditions. So there's some other takeaways from this here too.

Dave Lorenzo (09:06):
I moved rooms three times and I just wrote a letter highlighting the gentle, oh, I can call him out here. The gentleman's name was Cho, c h o, at the Hyatt Place, river North in Chicago in downtown Chicago. We moved three times looking for the best wifi spot to be able to run the Zoom meeting in the hotel because the first room they had put me in a beautiful upgraded corner suite, but the wifi was terrible. It would cut out. I was checking my email when I first got there after I unpacked and everything and the wifi kept cutting out and I called him. He came up and I did a speed test, but he did his own speed test and he is like, oh, this is no good. So we went to another room, we did a speed test there. It wasn't good. And then we went to the highest floor in a much crappier room, and the wifi was good in the crappier room. So I missed out on being in a corner suite to have good wifi. But that guy was, he had the patience of a saint. He was helping me figure out which was the best room from a wifi perspective. So I was just grateful that I was able to make it through the entire meeting without the whole system going down.

Nicola Gelormino (10:20):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So that is going to be, so I really wanted to mention the equipment for a reason, because that's going to be an integral part of our content. So Dave's going to record some of the sessions he's doing out on the road working with CEOs, and we're also going to start doing recordings separate and apart from that down the road, that's something that we are planning. So this is just the earliest phase of another strategic step by us and how we're going to be preparing content. Well,

Dave Lorenzo (10:47):
That road is pretty short. That road is pretty short. Nicki G, it's coming up in about a week and a half. We're going to try and do the first set of those recordings. So you'll be donning the Spaceman headset pretty soon. So I'm glad you got that haircut because that fancy haircut's going to look really good with the spaceman headset.

Nicola Gelormino (11:05):
That is right. It's going to completely full flatten my hair with a giant headset. But look, we're going

Dave Lorenzo (11:10):
To, you put it under, you can go like that. It'll work out. It'll work out, but you don't have to worry about it. The sound quality will be great. I'm just going to, I get it shaved this close so that you can't see the gray. So that's why I shave it that close. But it'll work for the headset too. So

Nicola Gelormino (11:28):
Look, we're super excited about being able to record more live. I mean, that's part of what we're doing with fancy headsets and taking and testing the different equipment is that we're going to do more live recordings and that's something that we've committed to and we think it'll add a lot of value as part of this business. So we're going to start doing that immediately,

Dave Lorenzo (11:46):
Sooner rather than later, sooner rather than later. I have lots of work now with my new sales buddy. I'm going to go to a networking event together and we're talking about ways to engage CEOs and test our message locally because it's easier to test locally first and then scaling that. We have a couple of ideas for scaling that. So what do you got planned for? So we're recording this now. It's now Saturday night. We started recording shows today, like Saturday morning. It's now Saturday night. What do you got planned for your Saturday night? You going to the dump before it closes? What do you got going on?

Nicola Gelormino (12:21):
No, it actually closes at five 30, so that's out. Yay.

Dave Lorenzo (12:25):
Nicole's husband is a designer and contractor who remodels homes and occasionally they take romantic trips to the dump when they do demo work. That's right.

Nicola Gelormino (12:36):
That's what happens when you've been married

Dave Lorenzo (12:37):
For a while.

Nicola Gelormino (12:40):
My Saturday night is not that exciting. Dave, hopefully you have something nice planned.

Dave Lorenzo (12:44):
I have no idea. I have no idea. Maybe pizza. I don't know. Maybe pizza and tropic. How about that?

Nicola Gelormino (12:54):
Old movies good fun. You got to watch comedy sometimes, honestly, just to relax from your week. Have fun. I like to do that too. You can press well, folks, hopefully you're enjoying this journey with us. I mean, you're getting this unedited. We are having fun together. We're talking like friends, and we're talking about the business we're building, and we decided from the outset to do this with all of you as our audience. So it really is a behind the scenes. This is sitting in on a private conversation where we're

Dave Lorenzo (13:20):
Thinking, talking like friends, and

Nicola Gelormino (13:22):
We're talking

Dave Lorenzo (13:22):
About what you're talking like friends, what do we normally talk

Nicola Gelormino (13:27):
Instead of just two people are sitting down at a business meeting, two

Dave Lorenzo (13:30):
People on a bench like forest gum at the bus stop. Life is like a box of chocolate.

Nicola Gelormino (13:38):
We'll be there when we're older. Dave.

Dave Lorenzo (13:41):
Alrighty folks, thanks for joining. Maybe

Nicola Gelormino (13:43):
I'll bring a box of

Dave Lorenzo (13:43):
Chocolates. Who knows? Thanks for joining us for the Sunday special. I almost screwed up the name. Again, thanks for joining us for the Sunday special. We'll see you back here tomorrow. We've got a great episode of the show tomorrow. You don't want to miss it. Serious episode, serious knowledge that we're going to drop on you. We've got Gina, the HR genius, Gina Nelson, sharing some really great human resources knowledge, so join us tomorrow on the Inside BSS show. Until then, I'm Dave Lorenzo, the Godfather of Growth, and she is Nicki

Nicola Gelormino (14:14):
G.

Dave Lorenzo (14:15):
And pick another show and share it with some people and it'll help them build their business, and it might just be good karma for you. We'll see you tomorrow, folks. Thanks very much.