Dave Lorenzo (00:00):
Hey, it's the Sunday special. I'm your man, Dave Lorenzo. Here with me today is my partner, Nicki G. Hey, Nicola, how are you?

Nicola Gelormino (00:07):
Hi Dave. I am great. I'm so happy to be back. We have been gone for a short while. Audience, we appreciate you hanging in there. Sometimes other things are just pulling us away from what we really love doing. Some of those things unfortunately have to pull us away because they are our day jobs. So I was consumed by a case that was headed fast for a jury trial that resolved, as they say, just before the courthouse steps and Dave was traveling. I know you got to hear him broadcasting from some room at this John Wayne airport, but look, if nothing else to learn from that other than this, it's that we are committed to you, our audience, and we appreciate you hanging in there with us and we're really, really excited to be back.

Dave Lorenzo (00:59):
I had Covid, I was traveling. It was a freaking nightmare and I'm just lucky to survive, so it's good to be back. Let's catch you up on what we've been doing the last couple of weeks. So that what's been going on the last couple of weeks? What have we been doing? So since you last heard from me in room like 5 41 at John Wayne Airport, the John Wayne Airport, Hyatt Regency, which by the way is very nice. Nicole, I got to tell you this just as an aside, okay, in Orange County, California, within two and a half miles of each other, there are two Hyatt Regencies, okay? And I, not once but twice pulled into the parking lot of the wrong hotel while I'm staying there. Three days I pulled into the wrong parking lot of the hotel twice and I walk in the lobby.

(01:49):
I'm like, this is not my hotel. Where am I now? What am I doing here? How does this keep happening to me? We have become so reliant on the GPS that I just follow the GPS into the parking lot and after the first time I did it, you would think I would learn, but you know what? I was thinking about other things and I pull into the parking lot. I'm like, well, this parking lot seems familiar. I think I'm in the right place. Then I walk in the lobby, I'm like, I've been in this lobby before and I walk by the front desk. I'm like, oh, I did it again. I go back out to my car and I drive the two and a half miles back to the other hotel.

(02:25):
So I had four speaking engagements on four consecutive days, five days with travel out on the west coast. Then I flew home for one day because I had a personal issue I had to take care of, and then I picked you up and you and I flew to, and then your case settled during that day in between, and you and I flew together to a conference where we spoke and we shared the stage with two friends of ours and we did great. We can talk about that in a minute. And then you and I were at that conference for two days and we flew back to Miami. We ran a Zoom meeting that we're part of together on that Wednesday. So now it's a week and a half and we came back. Both of us were kind of hoarse from that with a little bit of a sore throat.

(03:10):
Then after we ran that meeting, I got on a plane and flew to Wisconsin to do a session in Wisconsin and came home the following Thursday, which is now like a 10 or a 12 day, I can't remember, stretch. And I came home that Thursday night feeling like garbage and I called you up on Friday and we were talking about some business stuff and you said you felt like crap that Friday comes and goes, we do our thing and we got some work done. The following day I tested positive for Covid and that was as we recorded this, that was exactly eight days ago, seven days ago. I'm now on my eighth day symptom free after a week of on and off symptoms. You've had all kinds of symptoms. You never tested positive, but we even shared the Covid experience together from, I guess the best I can think of is I picked it up somewhere along the way and I gave it to you pretty much exclusively because nobody else we know has had any symptoms. But you never tested positive even though you and I had kind of identical symptoms. So that's the last, we've been off from the show about two and a half weeks, and that's the last two and a half weeks recap as to where we've been and what we've been doing. Although this week, our covid week, I guess because we couldn't do anything else, we were super productive in the business. So did I miss anything from the happy recap there of our adventure the last 14 days?

Nicola Gelormino (04:46):
No, I think you've covered it all. I don't think I already wants to hear too much about Covid, but look, you can still be productive, but brain fog is a real thing. I'll just say that. So I'm so glad that no one else is not feeling well because we were at a big conference with several hundred people. So I am glad that no one else has indicated that they are not feeling well because so amazing to me that this disease's, it's still amazing to me that covid is still out there, that it's still making people sick. It's something that we just have to continue to live with and it stinks but

Dave Lorenzo (05:17):
Reality. So we're real people living real lives. I was home for 24 hours and my wife the Saturday night, my wife, she's a senior event planner for a national organization that has an 1800 person convention that she runs. She left Saturday night, she left at four 30 on Saturday afternoon, I tested positive at six 30. She was already in a plane in the air. On her way to the conference, I told her I sent her a thing that I tested positive. So she gets to her conference in the first two days, she isolated and tested and made sure she tested negative and basically did her job, the pre-convention from her hotel room. But the whole week, I have two teenage kids, they have activities. I'm by myself here, and life moved on and I ran a business picked up and dropped off. My kids didn't miss any of the activities they had in there was Halloween and everything that's involved with Halloween, including one kid who trick or treats and another kid who, I don't know what the hell he does with his friends on Halloween night, but he did something.

(06:33):
So those of you who are out there who are parents or people who have busy lives and you have to manage and balance your family life with your work life, I feel you. I understand. I mean we do it too so that I don't have like 15 nannies running around here taking care of everything. I'm from four o'clock in the afternoon to six 30 every day This week I was the Uber driver picking up and dropping off at sports practice and one of our dogs got sick in the middle of this whole thing and I had to take the dog to the vet. I had to wear a mask and the whole bit, and it is what it is. You live your life and the reason I'm telling you this is I don't want you to feel sorry for me. I definitely don't need your pity, but I want you to understand this is the plight of an entrepreneur.

(07:22):
This is what you do when you're an entrepreneur. I was knocked out every day at four 30 in the afternoon, five o'clock I napped in the parking lot waiting for my kids to come out, and there was more than one time when the kid was banging on the window and I woke up and let 'em in the car and I'm masked up in the car. The kids are masked up in the car. But this is what you do when you're an entrepreneur. Somehow you get through the day, you get through your life. This is what we do. I mean, this is what life is in the entrepreneurial world. There's no calling in sick because if you call in sick, there's no business or if you call in sick, big projects don't get moved forward. Let's just put it that way. So this is the way, this is the life works. What do you think Nicki? G?

Nicola Gelormino (08:10):
It's so true. It's so true. I mean, for all the glamorous things you see about entrepreneurship, working your own hours and not having a boss and not having to check in, and the reality is there are a lot of times like this where you've got to keep on going because if you don't, you're not making money. You can't afford to be sick, right? I say that a lot. I can't afford to be sick. It doesn't matter. You just got to get through it. You will. You got to keep telling yourself, just get through today, get through today, get through, and the next day comes get through this day and you're not feeling well. You've got something really stressful. You just got to keep pushing through it and you will get to the other side. It could take some time, but I'm glad we're talking about this because this is a reality. Being an entrepreneur, you're tired, you're beaten down, you're sick, but you're still pushing forward. We're still doing recordings and our voices sound terrible, and I'm sitting here trying to read something three times over because I have Covid fog in my head.

Dave Lorenzo (09:06):
Now, here's some really good news. The stuff that we've done, I'm looking through my notes here. The productivity we had this week, we set up two orientation sessions for the people who've enrolled in our exit success lab program, which is fantastic, and those orientation sessions are going to take place next week. We planned a brand new offering for people who want to learn how to do professional speaking, not only for fun and profit, but also as a lead generation activity. We have planned our events that we're going to do for 2024 as an introduction to exit success lab. In the last two weeks, we've posted five articles on the website, and those five articles, three of them are actually indexed by Google and they're actually getting traffic now, which was staggering to me. I did some research and interviewed a second agency for and set an appointment for this upcoming week with a second agency for search engine optimization.

(10:19):
We organized a template for an exit strategy audit, like a due diligence audit, and we have that template ready to go that we're going to be working on for the next couple of weeks. We set up a standing meeting schedule for the next, well, we had standing meetings every day this week, which is incredibly productive and also a lot of fun. I met with a person who's going to help us grow our business from the standpoint of entrepreneurs here in South Florida. You and I scheduled a meeting in Chicago with two people who are going to help us with our business out there. We also finalize the offerings for some of our memberships. We set up the agenda for the orientations for next week, and we recorded five podcast shows last week. We just did. We did two others today we're doing this one now.

(11:26):
I've edited one of those, so I'll be spending all day tomorrow editing the rest of them. So we were sick as dogs, but we were able to get all of that. All of that got done from the time that I came back from the last thing I did, and you came back from California with me until today. So all of that was done in the span of the last seven days. We got all of that done in the last seven days, and somehow you managed to do legal work. You had a thing that you did for a volunteer organization that you're a part of with the University of Miami. I did a bunch of stuff for the networking group that you and I are both a part of. You scheduled your meeting for your exec committee, for your group in that networking organization. We were incredibly productive and it doesn't, the last week for me didn't feel like it was the most productive week I've ever had because every 20 minutes I'm getting up to take a dog to the vet, going to the doctor myself.

(12:27):
And that's another thing I did. I had scheduled, I have all this maintenance stuff for my health, like annual checkup, typical examination stuff. I don't want to get into a lot of detail that people do on a regular basis. I scheduled all of that this week as well, and I went to the vet with the dog who had a cough, and it mysteriously disappeared as soon as we got in the vet's office. So all of that was done in the last seven days. So this was an incredibly productive week, but I don't want to talk about that. Here's what I want to talk about and I want you to talk about want about the experience you had speaking in front of 300 plus people in California. I want you to tell folks what that was like, talk about how we prepared for it, what we did and what that experience was like for you.

Nicola Gelormino (13:19):
Sure. So as Dave mentioned, we had the opportunity along with two other professionals that are based here in South Florida that we know that we're friends with. We had the opportunity as a group to present in front of over 300 group leaders in the pro advisors organization. These are individuals who are well over 10 years in experience in the industry, some of them over 30 years experience in their industry. They are subject matter experts in their fields, all different types of professional advisory fields in info advisors. We are there because every person in that room is a leader of a group inside of the organization. On average, those groups are 30 individuals in each of them. So you can imagine the collective leadership in that room was immense years and years of experience and some members who have been part of the organization for over 20 years.

(14:07):
I found that to be incredible. So we had the opportunity to present in front of that room on the topic of recruiting and to share our experience and our expertise and what we did to build out the groups here in South Florida, which is the fastest growing region in the country. So we knew that this was a big stage and Dave and I, we love big stages, so we were really excited about it, but we also knew there's a lot of pressure associated with that. You get this opportunity one time, and I think you and I both view this as something that we needed to take seriously. We needed to make sure that we delivered tremendous value in the window of time that we were given, which we were told would be more or less like a half hour, maybe 40 minutes. That's kind of what we were thinking.

(14:49):
So we wanted to make sure that we packed a lot of knowledge into that window, that we were spot on with our presentation, that everyone was just excellent at their parts so that collectively we were really just going to do an excellent job. So we spent a few weeks, I would say, sketching out what that was going to look like, knowing what each person's part was going to be and spending time really internalizing it and making sure that it was polished and that we were good to go. And then the days beforehand, we rehearsed it together and we familiarized ourself with the environment, with the room, with the stage, all the things that we've talked about on our podcast or things that we did to make sure that we could do the best at this presentation and to really make the best the most out of this opportunity.

(15:38):
And I'll tell you what, when we delivered the presentation to that audience and we walked off stage, I looked at Dave and I said, this was amazing. It was an amazing feeling because I knew we had done such a good job and we did such a good job because you have four excellent professionals who took this seriously, who put in the time and the effort to make sure this was going to be great. We didn't just show up there and we spoke freely and this ended up being perfect presentation. It was because of the way we approached it, the way we executed it and the way that we all worked together because we were doing a group presentation. It was an incredible experience and I think for us it really kind of ignited our excitement about doing more presentations for our business. But that experience is one that I will remember forever. I will. I mean an audience that big and having that kind of feedback we received after the event is something that for me is a highlight in my professional career.

Dave Lorenzo (16:38):
That's great. I couldn't have said it better myself. And one of the things that I think really came through, not just for you in walking through this for Maria and Lenny who did the presentation with us was the things that we're teaching, the things that we're sharing with people, this is actually the way we do business, so we prepared for this. The way I prepare for a presentation is sort of the way I made sure that the four of us prepared for this. So to give you in the audience some context, we were asked to do a panel and I don't like panels. I don't think panels add value to a conference in any way. So the way the four of us decided to go about this is we essentially did four individual presentations with a common theme because the common theme was that our life experience is the experience we brought to developing a group, and that's why our groups individually were so successful.

(17:48):
But the four of us working together to build our groups was kind of the secret sauce that enabled the four of us to do some things that other people in the room had not yet done. So in preparing for this, each of us prepared our own individual presentations and each of us led with what our own personal experience was and how we brought that personal experience to building and leading our groups, and it was that personal element that really made our presentations resonate with the audience along with how the four of us interacted and how the four of us work together. So when we were preparing and then even up to the day before, nobody else who's doing, and by the way, there were three other groups that were tasked with the same thing that we were tasked. All of them did seated panel presentations and they were fine.

(18:46):
They provided value, they were fine, but nobody brought the emotional firepower to the event that we brought and that came from the way we decided to do this and the way we structured the presentation and the way we prepared all the way up until the night before when I had gone to the room while they were setting it up, I introduced myself to the audio visual team and I found out what time the actual sound check was going to be, and I got our group together to come to the actual sound check so that we could do a run through of the presentation from the actual stage with the lights down, with the spotlight on so that anyone who hadn't presented in that environment of the four of us, I think two people hadn't presented in an environment like that. I don't know if you had ever presented in an environment like that, but I wanted everyone to experience that for the first time without an audience there.

(19:42):
So they weren't surprised or put off when it actually happened. And because we were dealing with two people who were, I want to say relatively inexperienced at being in front of an audience of that size, I even had a contingency built in with the audio visual guys as to what we would do if somebody froze up or if I had to help somebody out if they stumble a little bit on stage unnecessary because everybody was great. Everybody did a phenomenal job, but my point in sharing all of this is exactly what we teach people to do. That's how we prepared and approached this so we don't share things with you that we're not doing ourselves. That I think is such a powerful and valuable thing because there are so many people out there. I would dare to say 90% of people out there who are teaching people to do things, are teaching people to do things they have never done, and we're not only teaching people to do things that we've done. We're teaching people to do things that we're doing on a regular basis. We're eating our own cooking where converts of our own system use whatever hokey analogy you want. It's a really important way to validate everything that we're doing when we do something that we're teaching and it's as successful as that was. I think it really validates everything that we're doing, everything that we put together. What do you think?

Nicola Gelormino (21:13):
That's an excellent point. We are absolutely practicing what we are providing you our audience as advice in circumstances like this. I mean, we do it across the board. We do it with presentations, we do it with our business, we do it with professional networking groups. We are speaking from experience and speaking from a standpoint of practicing still today what we are talking about because we want to make sure that it does work and if we need to even adjust what our approach is ourselves, we're going to do that. We're going to do that with you and we're going to share it with you because we want you to be successful and we know this has worked and seeing the result of this presentation just told us that what we are doing is absolutely working. It worked phenomenally and we're going to keep using this system and we're going to implement it in all of these speaking opportunities that you and I are creating for the next year.

(22:06):
We sat down this past week, I mean, wow, Dave ran through the high points of what we put together. Essentially we developed a business plan for the next year in the few hours that we spent together this past week, knowing exactly where we are going this next year with our business. There's a lot that went into that and there's a lot that's coming up and we're going to approach that in the same way that we've been talking about. We approach a lot of things like a business, right? Yes, our business, we are approaching like a business, but we approach that speaking opportunity in a space that was not our business as a business. When we built out our networking group, we approached it as a business. That is how we approach everything. I think we're very consistent in our approach, and I think you have to be, especially if you're a professional and you are selling something, you want other people to view you as an expert. You want other people to know where you stand, your purity of intent. You want people to be able to come along with you and support you.

Dave Lorenzo (23:01):
So we have

Nicola Gelormino (23:01):
A consistent approach to do that.

Dave Lorenzo (23:02):
One of the things, a perfect example is the degree of preparation and professionalism that we bring to everything we do. A great example of that was during the walkthrough, the day before you guys had even come in for the soundcheck at two 30 in the afternoon, I was in that room introducing myself to the sound crew, and I walked the stage and I saw that where the risers were together, there were gaps where the risers were together and knowing that both you and Maria were going to be wearing heels, I told the guys who were putting the stage that they needed to gaff, they needed to tape those cracks on the risers to make sure I said, there's going to be women on the stage wearing heels. I don't want a heel to go through there and somebody to snap an ankle on stage and have an accident.

(24:01):
And in addition, I don't want everything to run smoothly, but I don't want somebody to get hurt here, so this needs to be taken care of. We came back for the sound check wasn't done. I reminded them again to do it. We got there, you and I got there early in the morning. The next morning it still wasn't done, and I asked them for the tape, I was ready to do it myself, and then the guy who I had told three times just went up there and ended up doing it himself. Think about that for a minute, and I want to draw a contrast because we were not getting paid to do this, and this was not an audience of our clients who were in the room. So think about the level of preparation and the level of professionalism that we brought to this task and compare it to everybody else who, everybody else who was presenting, they all went up there with pieces of paper in their hands, sat in chairs, and some of them not even professionally attire.

(24:58):
And we had been there. We had been in that room. You and I had been in that room twice. I had been in that room four times. We had walked the entire room. We had done our presentation from the stage already under the exact conditions. We brought a different level of professionalism to a task we weren't being compensated to do just because that's the way we do things. And the lesson for all of you who are listening to this is the way you behave when nobody's watching how you do. One thing is how you do everything. So if you are bringing that level of professionalism to something that you're doing in a voluntary capacity, imagine when people are investing in your services, the way you're going to prepare and the level of professionalism you are going to bring to that. We received, I received more feedback from the leadership of this organization on that preparation than I did on anything else. People were blown away at how professional the four of us were and at our approach to handling this. So I think for me, I don't know how to do things any other way because it's just hardwired into my DNA, but the impression that it makes on other people, it can't be understated. It is a phenomenally powerful thing when there's such a stark contrast between how you show up and how everyone else shows up. What do you think about that? Nicki

Nicola Gelormino (26:42):
GI am so glad you said that. I love that phrase. I was going to say it myself. How you do one thing is how you do everything. We have a brand and a reputation, and it doesn't matter if this is an event where I'm speaking and it's in a professional networking context and not my business, it doesn't matter. It's being treated the same because I want to make sure that I'm conveying this is who I am as a professional no matter where I am. Same with you. Yes, you hear us having fun on the podcast, but you see us in a professional space anywhere. It's consistent. We are consistent consummate professionals. We have brand that we need to uphold. We have reputations that we've spent years in infected lifetime building, and that audience may only see us one time. That's how I see it. You see a lot of very famous professional athletes say this, and there's so much truth to it, which is that this might be the only time that someone in an audience sees me, and I want them to be left with the impression that, wow, this is a really powerful professional who really cares about what she's doing in any space and cares just as much as if it was work with a client.

(27:46):
Because that's really who I am as a professional, and I want people to see that. So I don't let that guard down because it's really important to me overall to be that's who I am. That way if I ever see that person again, that was the impression that I left on them, and I want it to be that way. And I know that you feel the same way.

Dave Lorenzo (27:59):
Oh yeah, it is. The Joe Diaggio quote. When I was a kid, my father told me about this famous quote from Joe Diaggio where the Yankees were up by like 10 runs and Diaggio was still in the game and he was playing center field, and he sprinted and dove to make a catch, and the Yankees are up 10 runs, and the guy who was playing left field Diaggio throws the ball into the shortstop, and the guy who was playing left field comes over and says, Hey, great catch. You know, we're up by 10 runs. Why would you go all out and risk injuring yourself to catch that ball? And Diaggio turns to the left fielder and he said, listen, there could be a kid in the stands who has never seen me play before and might not ever get a chance to see me play again. And he deserves to see me at my best, giving a hundred percent regardless of what the score is. And that's the attitude that you and I have. And it's not unique to us. It's unique. I think it's endemic among people who do a good job, people who always strive to do the absolute best they can.

(29:05):
And I think this is a great theme for what's happened over the course of the last two weeks. We had some adversity. I mean, you had the adversity of that case and all the trappings of dealing with contentious litigation that's coming right down to the eve of trial and eventually settles. And then we had the pressure of delivering that talk in a unique way with a lot on the line because we convinced the people who are organizing the event to allow us to do something unconventional and a little different. And then we had the adversity of having to deal with Covid while we had some time to put some stuff together in order to build a business. All of those things, all of those pieces of adversity end up if we stick to our core values, end up making us stronger, end up making us better for whatever is to come next.

(30:04):
So if there's another trial and you need to take three or four weeks or five weeks and be out of the business, I know that there's going to be a way for me to get through that. If I need to be out of the business for three or four or five weeks for whatever reason, I know that there's going to be a way for you to get through that. If we have six things going on at once and we have to keep a bunch of plates spinning at the same time, I know that we're going to be capable of doing that because of what we've been through the last two or three weeks.

Nicola Gelormino (30:35):
I couldn't agree more. I know that we will figure it out and we will get it done. And for those of you out there who are entrepreneurs, you have likely already experienced this. You've just got to figure it out. And sometimes you're going to have, you have other jobs while you're trying to build something else. That's really, that's the reality. More so than it's not where you want to build something else. And you've got to find a way to make a living in the meantime while you build that. And that means more hours, more stress, more pressure. But if you're really passionate about what you want to do, you're intentional about it and you know can achieve it, then you're going to get it done. You just got to put in the work you really do.

Dave Lorenzo (31:18):
Well, this is the Sunday special, so there's no end music, there's no editing, which I'm really thankful for. So this is going up completely raw. We thank you for joining us today. We'll see you back here next week for another edition of the Sunday Special, and if I get around to editing all the other episodes that we've done, there'll be an episode tomorrow. So thanks for joining us. We'll see you back here tomorrow, Nicola. Thank you. We'll see you back here tomorrow as well. Until then, I'm Dave Lorenzo, the godfather of Growth, and she is

Nicola Gelormino (31:49):
Nicki G. Thank you for joining us.

Dave Lorenzo (31:51):
All right, we'll see you tomorrow, folks. Thanks for joining us for the Sunday Special Sideshow, whatever it is. See you later.