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Tony D’Urso is the host of The Tony D’Urso show on the VoiceAmerica Influencers channel. This show highlights successful entrepreneurs and humanitarian endeavors as well as the noteworthy career achievements of others. The Tony D’Urso Show was born from a combination of his previous two series, Revenue Chat Radio and The Spotlight with Tony D’Urso. 

We discuss how Tony motivates himself and others to create opportunity, map values and a vision to business success, and how to do good for each other as we navigate an increasingly challenging business and world environment. 

Check out Tony’s show on Voice America here: https://www.voiceamerica.com/show/2667/the-tony-durso-show

Visit Tony’s website here: https://tonydurso.com

Get your own copy of The Vision Map here: https://tonydurso.com/product/vision-map/ 

Transcript powered by Happy Scribe

Hi, this is Tony D’Urso. So I am the host of the Tony D’Urso Show, which is the number one talk show on Voice America. And we’re getting about a million listeners a month. And here I am on the Disco Posse podcast with Eric Right. And I am pumped and ready and excited and delighted and honored all three to be on the show. Thank you so much, Eric. For heavy me on.

Tony, when you have professional broadcasters on, it makes my job easy. I could go home now. I could just sit down and I could let you go. Tony, I’d say the honor is mine in that I’ve been lucky enough through getting connected through the team at Kit Caster. They’re a fantastic bunch and they’ve connected me with a lot of amazing folks when they let me know that you are available. I went through the Tony DERs backlog and I am a student of Tony Deers right now. And you are a really fantastic conversationalist interviewer and just you you’re very good at digging into what matters when you get into conversation with folks.

So first of all, for folks that are brand new to you, if you want to give a quick bio, of course, this is fun. I always appreciate Tony D or so with the Apostrophe. However, Google does not like Apostrophe s for folks. Go to Tony D or so. Durso com, of course, and you can get the real links. But anyway, Tony, let’s share a little bit of your story first.

Eric, first of all, it’s so great to speak to a fan, someone that Binges, someone that’s Binged or Binges. However, the case may be on my shows. I really appreciate it because I really try very hard to curate and bring people to e your audience to you, because frankly and this is why I started. There’s so many good people out there. Eric, there’s so much advice, so many books and classes and webinars and seminars and lectures. And you and I and every single person on this Earth cannot listen to every single person.

Read everybody’s book, listen to everybody’s lecture, take everybody’s class. It’s impossible. There’s just not enough time in the life to do that. So what I do and what I specialize in is interviewing and speaking with people who are at the top of their category, whom I call I coined the term elite entrepreneurs. I have a book out on Amazon, which is the bestselling book, Elite Entrepreneurs. And these people give you an example. Wesley Snipes, the actor Kevin Herrington from Shark Tank, chef Hoffman from Priceline and Frank Shank.

Its make a Wish Foundation. And I call them elite Entrepreneurs. And I get their story and I bring that in curate to you. So whether you’re a startup or thinking about it or in a career and you want to hack your job or you’re a small business owner, there are people that talk about their journey and how they became successful. In every category you can imagine and literally every category that you need to know about in order to be successful at your job, your career, your business categories such as HR, photography, online sales, financing.

There’s so many niches or niches depending on where you are in the world, that’s really important for you to learn. So I bring this to people. One show, one show week. It’s now an hour show. I’ve been doing this for a little over five years. I’ve had a couple of shows, and now it’s one show called The Tony Dr Social, which I mentioned earlier, is the number one talk show on the entire Voice American Network for several years running on 14:00 a.m. Fm radio stations. And I get over a million listeners a month while you and your audience can listen on Spotify.

I heart and listen on Stitcher Apple podcasts and so forth. If you want all the shows, including the back early, early early shows, which I also call the embarrassing shows where I was winging it like, what do I do now? They’re at Tony Durso Com podcast, and that’s where you can get everything. And if you know somebody I’ve interviewed, you just put the name in the search and you’ll find it like Kevin Harrington. Just type in Harrington and Poof, there comes up this show, so that’s just a way to access it at Tony Durso Com podcast.

So I work to help people improve whatever their game or their job or their businesses. This is the premise that I started and I wrote up a map to success. I call The Vision Map, which is actually a new book coming out on Amazon. Not sure when it’s called Creating Your Vision, but I don’t know when that’s going to come out, maybe a month or so. The books written and it’s just going through its final process. And this is to help you go through all the process, because again, there’s so much.

Now let me give a little qualifier on that. Every single person I speak to is smart. You know, something, you’re knowledgeable about something. You can eventually figure this out, Eric, but it takes so long, it could take you so much time to really get good at your game. So if I bring experts who talk about their problems, their troubles and how they’ve had to work to make it successful, it really inspires, motivates and gives a lot of good tips. May or may not be a long answer to why I did what I did and how, but I’m happy to go into it a little bit more.

Well, the interesting thing is, like you said, you work with incredible people and their founders, their CEOs, their heads of marketing, their individual content creators, their sports enthusiasts, whatever it’s going to be. But the one thing that humans and generally suffer from, as we call it, the cursive knowledge, right. And you get so wrapped in your understanding of your own platform product, whatever, however, that you often can’t separate yourself from it and what you can bring in doing The Vision Map. And part of that process is that you come with sort of the unwashed eyes from the outside and say, well, describe to me what you do and almost like therapy, you can say, so what I’m hearing you say is that you there’s a problem that happens in the world.

And don’t you hate it when you go and bottle tops are always constantly sliding off of bottles. When you’re driving, we’ve created it allows you to they’re very specifically honing on what you’re hearing and what’s resonating to you out of this thing. And then it’s a real freeing thing to open up to a third party. And it’s hard. It’s very hard for those folks to do that because they’ll always say, like, who can know my product better than me? Well, maybe your customers. And the problem is they’ll never be honest with you because there’s a commercial relationship.

But I bring in Tony, and Tony sits and listens, and then he talks to the customer and he talks to my team. Okay. Now I’m on getting a real story, and it is a beautiful thing. I love your way of doing that. And, of course, like I said, it comes through in your content, in your conversations with people that you’re very good at, sort of pulling on the strings that really matter and getting to what’s very interesting, really, really quickly.

Thank you. Eric. As you were speaking, you gave me a great analogy. A concept came up of a dictionary. Yes. A dictionary, everyone. It’s got all the words, it’s got everything. So if you just give someone a dictionary and say, here you go. It’s like, how do you extrapolate what you need? How do you use what you need? How do you get to where you’re going? Is there anyone that has this problem? I don’t even know the problem that I have. So how do I even know that I have a problem or that I need to know about this or that?

Or leadership or quality or the seven bio hacks to success and so forth? I don’t even know that I need these things. But when you listen to the show, my show, for example, you’re getting people that have going through that journey and explain how that can help you. In a way, it’s not a sales thing that’s all done to help. And a great analogy, which I’ve been using lately is a diamond. Yes. Diamond, Derek, everyone is a diamond. Everyone here is good at something. You listening right now in the audience.

You’re good at something, you know something, whatever that may be. And so you are a kin, like a diamond. What? You know, I consider it a polished facet. A facet is like one little, tiny little surface of a diamond. When you Polish that, it shines, you right now you shining something. And when you learn a little bit about marketing, you’re polishing that facet. When you learn a little bit about how to write a book or how to communicate, you Polish that facet and so on and so forth.

And as you go through life, you’re learning and polishing those facets. And you as a diamond, you’re shining with what you know how you can help others, how you can improve your company, your product, your service, whatever you may be doing. So that’s what the show is designed to help make everyone better that way. And it’s considerate, like free mentorship. You’re being mentored by a millionaire, a billionaire. Most of my audience are you’re being mentored by them 1 hour a week, and you don’t know everything you’re going to learn until you go through it.

What I’ve really like I said in watching you and the diversity of folks that you speak with, and it’s something that I try to do as well and that you started off with, like, I’m going to go to who I know, and I know this area. My favorite things is that suddenly meeting somebody who is in a vastly different area than I’ve ever been before, taking that curiosity to them to just discover their thing, and you find, you know, there are things that map that make sense.

I’m a technologist, but I’m a cyclist. I’m a guitarist. I like these things. And as we you realize, like, well, they all have a beginning and end, a theme thing, a process of learning. Then you talk to somebody who has a sports person or a CEO or a race car driver, and in the end, it’s about mapping and understanding their motivation, what gets them going, what does. And like you said, I love this idea of I can’t go take an HBR course or read this long form book because I don’t have time.

But what I can do is I can put my headphones on while I’m going for a run on the treadmill or something, going for a walk or even just sitting in the background. And I can pull in an hour where you basically are like, blinket for an incredible business education, because it’s not just repeating the highlights of a book, your live pulling crucial information through conversation, and you can hear it. You can hear the way they speak to you. It’s not canned. It’s a unique skill to be able to pull someone through the conversation and let them still feel like they’re leading.

It’s a unique thing. It’s interesting to hear and how you’re able to do it.

Thank you. And there’s a lot of good surprises as well. One of my guests talks about how to make your brand stand out. You know how to make your brand stand out. There are some points that are so clear and so simple and so well explained that you’ll want to make changes in what you promote and better promote, how to make better changes or improvements to get your brand to stand out. Another thing is, do you know that you can literally not even a joke, not even an exaggeration?

You can literally predict the future and what’s going to happen in your industry? We go over that with one of my guests, the anticipatory organization. No, that’s not the right name, but the word anticipatory is in it, and it’s just app with Daniel Burris. And it’s just amazing when he explains how you literally can create this great knowledge base of what you can literally predict is going to happen in the future. And that makes all the difference in your decisions, in what you do in your business or your career.

So it’s things like that that we learn. And I’m just so glad that people like it and enjoy it. And I guess the million listeners and growing is a little bit of a testament to that.

Yeah, that’s part. I’d love to talk about your growth journey, Tony, because you get to be the one that’s always pulling people through their story. So I think it’s time to turn the microphones. And how did you go from first? I want to choose this as a format. I want to take this on because the first handful, you’re just trying to find your feet and see where it fits. But then the evolution of the way, like you said, you go back to the first show, you like you crane a little bit.

Sometimes you listen to the butt is part of the growth experience. So how did how did Tony decide it’s? I want to start trying this out and then make it a thing.

Well, I’ve spent 32 years in corporate America, and I’ve learned a lot about marketing, advertising, business, sales, etc. And in the year 2000, I formed a company and I did the fund raise. And I raised three point $25 million from friends and family in a six month period. And I assume the role of vice President, sales and marketing. And I did all the marketing and lead generation for the company. And I just continue to learn how to bring people to you. And the Internet was very embryonic at that point.

It was like, what do you do with it and how. But we started working with that, and that went very, very well. Now as an employee, you’re kind of pegged in your income a little bit. I mean, I’m making comfortable six figures, but there was only so much I could go. Unless you have stock options or other things like that, there’s always a ceiling. So in the year 2007, I had the opportunity to start a lead generation marketing company, be the CEO of it, and that kind of takes the limit of my income.

So I did that in 2007 really focused. And I made a lot of people a lot of money. And I generated a lot of people. And I learned a lot of basics hard. One basics on how to get people eyeballs or what have you to visit you to visit your website and so forth? Well, that went very well, Eric.

However.

Ensuing seven years, I did that. There were four major industry regulations, protocols and changes that totally impacted how we did marketing, how we did lead generation and so forth. Give you an example. One money, I go into the office and one of my clients, I’m doing a million dollars a year in sales on just that client. I have multiple clients. Well, they canceled by what happened? Well, there’s a new federal regulation that came down. The attorneys got together, and they realized that the company, their company, could no longer accept marketing services the way that they were getting.

And they had a retool. So Meanwhile, out of business, and this happened with all my clients. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And this is the fourth time I had a major impact to my business in seven years. And I got really tired of it, Eric. And I look for what could I control myself? What could I do no matter what, no matter what happens in the world as best as possible? And I kept hearing this word called podcast. I’m like, What’s this thing? Podcast. And when I found out, Eric, I was like, hey, I’m Italian.

I can do this. I can talk. I was smart. I got a mentor. I got a well known radio personality, Michael Benner, who’s a who’s who in Southern California. And he mentored me and gave me great tips. And to this day, still does on interviewing, presentation, radio and so forth. And I learned all that I could learn in a couple of weeks. I’m Italian. I do think as just boo, boo, boo, boo. I learned how to podcast, and I jumped on 1 hour live on blog talk radio.

And I’ll be kind to myself. I won’t use the word embarrassing, but I will say I learn things. I definitely learned things between that and being mentored. And I just but and I used my skill, my knowledge, my abilities of generating leads and people and getting people to know about something. I promoted myself. I became my best promoter, and I got tons and tons and tons of downloads and people listening to my show. It was a high rated show called Revenue Chat Radio. And then in my second year, I wrote a book, Easy Sales Procedures.

And I got invited to join Voice America. And I created a second show called The Spotlight with Tony Torso, so that I’m running two shows a week, and that was just a bit much. So I think in my third year of doing this, I merged both shows into the Tony or So show. And it’s Italian. There’s an Apostrophe there, but search engines Butcher have been butchering my name. So I just took the Apostrophe off. So I know it looks like a title, but that’s just how it is.

And then I became the number one show, Voice America, and have been number one for several years running, getting hundreds of thousands of downloads and listeners every month. And I’ve just grown and grown from there. And as I’ve grown in the show, I’ve picked up more and more. Let’s say well known household names, some I mentioned earlier, millionaires, billionaires and so forth. And I’ve just kept growing. And I love interviewing people who are at the top of their category.

One of the things that really stands out when you described your story that people may not even pick up. If I look at the timing that you started two significant ventures that were successful for in many ways throughout some of those challenging times. Like you started at the beginning of two fundamental country, in fact, international wide failures in the world in the 2000 dot com crash. Basically, you survived through one of the most challenging waves of business failure. And then in 2007, you began what was at that point, only Dr Michael Brewery and a handful of hedge fund folks understood what was about to happen in the world.

And we watch the financial collapse that happened globally. And yet through that, you persevered and were able to stay focused on what you were trying to achieve and survive those things. It’s not insignificant to to be able to weather that storm. And even you talk sort of I’m sure the timelines are always compressed, right? We talk about you losing a number of clients in a period of time because of regulatory changes. The whole marketing world really took a strong hit, but I imagine that you probably kept the lights on for quite a while.

And when most people just said, I’m not going to be able to take more failure, I want to get out now. Well, I feel like I’m on top of Tony, you you keep pushing what makes you tick. How did you do that and what’s your mindset as you go through that?

I have so many answers to that question, but let me start off simple. An Italian, there’s three steps to success if you want to save. One is keep at it. Number two is keep at it. Number three is keep at it. You don’t fail until you stop. Now, when you’re in the middle of it, you don’t really think of those words, and you don’t really think of that. But when you’re in the middle of it and things are crashing around, you, you’ve got to feed your family.

You’ve got to pay your bills. You got to put gas in the car. You’re propelled by this strong intention to survive, no matter what. It’s just you’re not going to let something affect you. And I’ve been beset in my podcasting with some serious, serious problems, but you would never know it because I refuse to give up. And I guess I’ve learned a lot from speaking to some of the most successful people in the world and learning from them. And they mentor me on that show. And they mentor you on that show on how they’ve made it.

And it sounds easy now that now that I can go and look back in the past, it sounds easy. But I did not fall off, roll out of bed or fall off a log or whatever the cliche goes. It was hard work. But the key thing, the foremost thing is you want to be successful, you have no choice to be successful. You’re going to solve this. And there there are problems. There are serious problems and challenges, even the podcasting. In fact, there’s a word in the diction.

Can you believe this, Eric? There’s a word in the dictionary. Most podcasters go, what, seven, 8910 episodes. I’ve run into them. It’s called Pod Fade. And two years ago, before the COVID madness of 2020. Before that, the year before. Blueberry said 75% of podcasters don’t make it into the second year. Well, it got even more worse than next year. So there’s a lot of problems and issues that beset podcasters. The key is monetization, and I teach that to my students. I teach them how to be successful, how to monetize, how to make income with what you’re doing.

And it’s work. It’s not like it’s roll up your sleeves and stuff like that. So thank you. And I would say the only reason and I’m successful is I just really refuse to give up.

And it comes through in your caring about, you know, that getting through the other side, because quite often this is the thing, right? I remember you hear the choose the Land Armstrong quote, A lot of people don’t like Lancasham. But put it aside, put his personal choice aside. But he said at one time, like, if you quit, no one else, everyone will know and no one will care, right? It’s the whole thing of like, it’s your choice of why you quit. And really, when it comes down to you, especially startups, there’s actually only two reasons that start ups fail.

If they run out of money or the founder quits, it’s purely economic or choice. There’s a lot of reasons why they run out of money. There’s a lot of reasons why that would occur. But one of the most common things, I didn’t realize there was a word for this. I’ve got a lot of friends who are like, fantastic people and they have great conversations. And I love talking with them. And I’m like, yeah, they’re like, we’re going to start a podcast. And like you said, or they all make it to episode ten, and then the wheels come off the bus because it’s it’s work.

You got to fit it in, you’ve got to do these things. And I know like I said, I just pressed publish as we’re recording on my hundred and 81st episode. The there was a gap in the middle where I think it was about 25 in and I was doing it with work and just kind of like doing it off the side of the desk and sort of aligning it to my work. And they said, look, there’s no way to measure whether it’s successful and it’s not impacting sales.

So we just don’t think we can back it. And I was like, okay. And I got busy myself. And I said, well, maybe I’ll just put it on hold. And then I went back about, I guess, about six weeks, seven weeks later, and I checked the itunes for it. I’m like, oh, somebody had asked me to show an old show. And so I went and I looked at it, and I saw the reviews there. And I was like, oh, good. Golly, people listen to it. Now.

I gotta keep going. I was suddenly reinvigorated him, like, okay, how do I fit it in? And like you said it was I was the only one that let it stop. So I’m like, get on the bloody horse. You fit it in. And so half an hour a week, I could fit it in. I thought, can I do this every other week? If I can do 30 to 40 minutes every other week? I mean, there’s no reason I can’t do it. And now, you know, three years in, I’m doing 1 hour a week.

And I’ve got a backlog because of, like I said, being inspired by folks like you, Tony, that taught me that, like, episode eight doesn’t happen without 179 episodes before it. You just got a muscle through. And sometimes you’ll have a show that you maybe struggle with, just, like, everything with work, everything. It’s not all great days and perfect ending. It’s a lot of gumption, if that’s of people sort of think of that as a word, right? It’s just you got to push through some stuff. But you got to know that on the other side of it, there’s worth in doing so.

And, you know, and that ties into this vision map that I’m coming out with because we talk about, okay, something happens. You’re blocked. You’re out of income, you’re out of money, you’re out of steam. There’s a regulation. You can’t talk anymore. I mean, there’s words that I am not allowed to say as a result of the madness of 2020 in the world shutting down. You can’t say certain words, which I accidentally said one of those words earlier, but I’m not going to say it again. But when these things happen, Eric, what keeps you going?

Why podcast? Why are you doing whatever you’re doing? Why are you selling Widgets or helping people with HR? Why are you a coach? Why are you doing whatever you’re doing? And in the vision map, it starts off with, well, what’s your vision? And I can give a whole training class on this, but basically, what is it you see yourself doing, like, with a D. What are you doing? You go into the future, you look back, and you got almost, like, creating a movie. Well, in the past two years, I did this.

I did this. I did this. This is my vision. Now, that’s really not a perfect definition, but I’m just trying to get the concepts more to it. I’m just being really fast and kind of slamming it together. But that’s a good way. Like, what am I doing in this venture? What am I doing? And then right below that the fuel cause that ventures like the vehicle, the car driving down the freeway. Well, what’s that fuel right underneath that adventure that’s making that happen is the purpose.

Why are you doing what you’re doing? And that’s who are you being with? A B. Why are you doing it? Who are you? And then below that, there’s like, seven, eight, nine steps. But just give you three. And below that is your long term accomplishment, your long term. What are you trying to do now? People call it a goal side, but I don’t use that word because the goal could be what I did today, this week, this month, three months from now, or this year, or it’s a ball in a net.

There’s so many definitions for goal. I just took it out of gowhat, are you looking to do long term? And that’s what you see yourself as having accomplished. Accomplished. I wrote this book. I did this lecture. I did this podcast. And when you put those three together and that’s your life, that’s your business. That’s your whatever. It helps propel you. Despite any bumps in the road or blockages, it’s very, very powerful. It only stops when you let go of it. But if you hold it like, I’m holding up a clenched hand now, I’m not going to let go of this.

And as long as you don’t let go of your dream, your goal, your purpose. So why you like to do it? You will be successful. And I’ll just say one last thing on that, Eric. The purpose is like, I’ll do this for free. I’ll get up every day in the morning, and I’ll do it. I’ll podcast every single day and talk to people. I love it. I love helping people. And it doesn’t matter if I get paid for it or not. I’m not joking, folks. That will propel you, and you will make money if you stick with it.

Very important. What I’ve just said, please, kind of. Soak this up and I’ll explain more in a book and there’ll be a class and all sorts of stuff. There’s a lot to it, just like, really fast. But this is years of experience.

It’s something that’s counterintuitive to a lot of people. The first thing they think is I need to immediately figure out how to pay for something. Like, how do I get paid to do this thing? And I said I’m a student of Tony and that I’ve taken on this thing of like, I love doing this.

I I.

Happen to have sponsors. I happen to have some other things that come through it, but I didn’t chase it down. They came, and that’s what makes it enjoyable is that I’m not out to try. And fill spots or whatever. There may be a point where I have that happen, but right now I’m doing it because I love it. And even if I get paid for it, it does make me love it more or less. I would do it for the love of the game. And like you said, you hit something very important.

And even the semantics of the way you describe what it is, a goal is something we all get busted by. A goal is a to do list with a three year timeline. And you know what we do with to do list defer the task to the next day because we didn’t have time for it today. Right? And the goals are years down the road. Oh, boy, is really easy to just defer it by another week or two. And then in mind.

We have a solution for that in the entire vision map and how it goes all the way down. There’s a whole methodology to it. But yes, and you know what? For who’s listed in the audience, you may or may not know. 2030 whatever. Years ago, companies had 10, 15, 20 year long goals and strategies. Can you imagine? I can diagnose people all day long talking about where you’re gonna go in 20 years. It’s out of mine. It’s preposterous. When I was doing podcasts, I had a two year goal, and I accomplish it.

But today, people listening to this or tomorrow they’ll go, two year goal. That’s weird, because with technology today, you can be a millionaire in two days. Yeah, you could be a millionaire in 24 hours. I’ve spoken to people that have done this sort of thing. It’s a whole new world. But the words, the definition, the basics are still the basics. So you can apply this, whether it’s six months to millionaire world or two months or ten days, whatever it is, these basics are still going to be applicable no matter what.

One thing I often hear people, they’ll say, like, hey, what do you think about becoming a YouTuber? And we kind of joke sometimes, but it’s a pejorative, a YouTuber. I’ve got kids of varying ages, and so I see different types of YouTube content all the time. I watch some myself, and I watch mostly to learn of how do they do this? What’s the way that they’re doing it? That’s keeping viewers up and retaining interest and just it’s neat to be a a student of it all the time.

And someone says to me like, oh, why don’t you become a YouTuber? I’m like, I don’t have the commitment or the time. It sounds like it’s just a thing. Like, you’re just firing a video. Like, I could sit here and I could unwrap Kinder eggs. And you see channels like this that have 12 million subscribers. Not because they spent 20 minutes unwrapping a Kindra because they spent an hour a day doing it, and then an hour a day doing editing and doing keyword research and then posting it for three years.

So someone says to me, you want to be a YouTuber so you don’t have the commitment.

I will tell you this about YouTube, and let me put it in a very political in whatever. I’ve been podcasting five and a half years. I started putting all my videos on YouTube, and in five years and I promote it. I spent a lot of money promoting, and I have a service that does social media promotion, by the way, I send visitors. So I spent a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of energy. And literally I’ve spent thousands and thousands and thousands of people to my shows on YouTube through my promotion.

I have very large social media network. And in five years, Eric, I got under 50,000 total views on everything is like, what? And you know what’s it called subscriptions. They would go up by one or two and then down by three.

Upper one or two.

And down by three. And I’m like, this is being manipulated. So I went to Rumble. I went to Rumble, and in two or three weeks, I’ve got over five0 views on my shows. It’s not being manipulated. It’s like, oh, is that how this works? So you kind of have to learn as you go, because otherwise, if you want to be a YouTuber and I get what you’re saying, it’s like a full time job. And you got to spend thousands of dollars because only certain people are selected.

It appears. And I say that from experience, certain people are so selected that rise up and the and the rest aren’t. And if you don’t talk, to talk or walk to walk, it happens. And then you get, you know, you get these people who are paid. They’re paid money to go on YouTube and say bad things. And you can tell that they never heard the show. They don’t know anything of what you’re saying. And they say something bad that has nothing to do with the show.

You know that they’re called trolls, and, you know, they’re paid because they’re gone just to say something negative, but they have no idea what you said on the show. So how can you comment if you don’t know what was said? So you learn very fast that they’re paid and that their job is to discourage people from listening. So you’re gonna have that. You’re going to have that. And I think it’s unless YouTube wants you to be a rising star for their own reason. It’s something that you get on multiple other places, but it’s definitely not going to be the key for where you’re growing unless it’s the only platform you have.

Let me make this more simple. I’m going to exaggerate a little bit. There’s 22,376 social media platforms that you can be on, but you can’t get on 20,000 yourself and answer and post and comment. Pick the key ones, pick where you’re going. Is it going to be Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, whatever and work those. And I work and engage and speak with people on my key social media platforms. And I’ve got over 200,000 followers, but I’m not on $20,000. I’m really push hard on four or five social media platforms or less.

And that’s a good key to success because the you’re super deluding yourself. So if you’re thinking of getting onto YouTube because it sounds good, I understand. You know, I’ve tried TikTok on there on TikTok, and I realized very rapidly the amount of work and the effort. And it’s like, do I want to spend hours a day doing this or paying somebody big money to do this? You realize quickly where it’s going to go. So you should experiment. You should try. But when it’s all done, you’re going to get more bang for the buck, so to speak, by the key big social media platforms.

I mean, that goes to one of the important, both strategic and tactical pairings of being focused, you know, setting what your where you want to be. Right? Is it going to be a follower account, viewership, audience size, share, voice, whatever. There’s lots of different phrases we have. But if you go to ten places and try to grow, then you’ll have ten poorly grown audiences versus if you choose two or three at the most kind of thing and you stay focused on it, and you measure and adapt and put your efforts towards it.

It’s the easiest thing that people do, and we’re human by human behavior. It’s very easiest for just to go. Like squirrel, we see something, some new network comes up. People got all clubhouse crazy for a while. And I haven’t heard anybody use talk about club house in a month and a half now. But yet it was all like everybody was all over because it was the new hot thing. It’s not going away. It’s just that the buzz is gone. And so a lot of people maybe try to invest in it early, then they lose focus or effort and attention, and somebody else will keep succeeding on there because they’re going on bloody clubs every day, and that’s their thing.

They’re choosing that. But you can’t just go in and suddenly become a runaway hit, like success five years in the reason why, Tony, you’re at the point of being an overnight success with years of lead up, right? I always joke. I was in a band for a long time, and it said, every band you talk to, you see that big coming out thing where they played at the Grammys or whatever. And it was the first time and the they had a gold record and they are an overnight success.

And you’re like, I saw them 14 years ago in some Podunk bar playing to an audience of 40.

How embarrassing in the way.

You know, an overnight success is one of the worst things that we can aspire to be because it just takes away that there’s a grind and it’s what you need to do. But it’s true. It’s not just grind, but grind with purpose.

Yes. Yes. Yes. And I’ve learned a lot on marketing, lead generation social media. And I use what I’ve learned and now because I like to help. And I created a service where I do social media marketing for people, especially podcasters. And I, you know, one of my students last year hit 2 million downloads. Another another one of my clients had two and a half million downloads. So I’ve learned how to help and take all that we’ve just said in this interview and just shorten that time and how to get the real people listening to your show, because that’s what a lot of podcasters want, of course, to help them grow.

So I do that as a service. I just mentioned that because I’ve learned that from all my years of experience. And I really like to help podcasters and, you know, we all need to communicate. It’s such a great thing to be able to say what we want. And, yes, pick your platforms and stuff like that. Absolutely. And just grow with it. You know, I didn’t get over 100,000 followers on Twitter overnight. I just keep growing and engage and engage and engage and engage, and it just grows.

And I’d rather have 100,000 on Twitter than a thousand people on 20,000 different platform. So, in a way, pick where you’re going to put your effort is very, very key. Takeaway to this, and you can be successful in literally anything that you want to do. You know, based on some of these points that we talked about.

The other thing is beyond is persistence is fitting it in. We talked briefly about people would hear this and they say, oh, it’s an hour a week that I commit to it. Obviously, the truth is much more than an hour week because I have to do editing and research and whatnot I could choose not to, but for the quality that we want to get. You research your guests, you read their books, you’re putting a lot of other external effort. You’re a prolific creator as well. You’re an author of multiple books.

So, Tony, how do you prioritize and maintain you’ve probably got multiple streams of kind of content creation on the go at any time. Being creative is a real challenge to fit in.

It’s hard to schedule it right is you have to be very well again, it goes back to that vision and that purpose and your long term objectives that I mentioned earlier, once you get that clear and these words that I just said, yeah, these words are in the dictionary. You hear them all the time. Eric, you hear, you know, the word egg and milk and sugar and flour and salt and vanilla extract. You know, these words and others cream, but I challenge you to make me really delicious safe.

It’s a whole nother thing to put it together. You know, we joked earlier about it’s in all the words in the dictionary. But when you put it together, that’s what is great on getting people to express and communicate on our shows when we speak to experts, because it helps people put it all together. And there is a there’s a finesse to it that we’ve learned. And, you know, I actually lost one of the points. I actually lost one of the points that you were talking about.

I had a really important point to say, and I’ve never done this in five and a half years. But I’m going to say, can you please refresh me on what you were saying? This is a first. But you know what? We’re human, right?

I know. And that’s maintaining focus when you’re multi streams, especially in creative avenues.

It’s the purpose that keeps you going. That purpose that I was saying that gets you up whether you get paid or not. I work everything by a checklist. I have a checklist for getting my guest on promoting the show for this week. I have a checklist for different things that have to happen. And in the vision, a structure, I have a method of how to put something on your things to do list that comes from your well, I’ll give you the rest of points. It’s vision, its purpose.

It’s long term objective. And below that, how are you going to accomplish your long term objective? Well, you need a master plan. The master plan consists of two things, a strategy and tactical strategy is like, okay, well, you know, we want to capture that island because it’s the corridor, and we can control and keep the enemy out. If we capture that island, that’s sort of like a strategy in military terms. And the tactical is okay, well, what are we going to do to capture that island?

How are we going to take over? So you work out all these tactical steps. It accomplishes the strategy that accomplishes that long term objective, which is just about a year or two that you want to accomplish. All right. So you’ve got your tactical plan. I’m going to do this. I’m going to do this. We’re going to do this to take that Hill or that island. Well, now what comes below that is our what I call 30, 60, 90. And that’s your 30 60 or 90 days.

It’s like, this is where the rubber meets the road, Eric. Okay, well, I’ve got my strategy, my tactical. I’ve got my plan, my purpose, my vision. I need to make money. I need to make income. I’ve got this great plan, this great thing. How am I going to make income? It could be I’m going to do a mastermind at C. And I’m going to bring on ten people to do a mastermind. I’m going to charge them $10,000 each. And I’m going to promote that. And it’s going to take two months to put together.

So that’s why it’s 60 days or I’ve got a class that I’m going to do, and I’m going to do a webinar, but I need to do X and X and X and X and Y, and that could take three months to roll out. So you’ve got to have by the end of a couple of months making literally making income on that plan. No joke, no baloney. And you’ve got to work that out. Now, these plans, these words while they’re in the dictionary, they take some working.

A good vision map takes weeks to put together. But I’m going to explain that in one more second. So after your 30, 60, 90 day plan, now that plan goes into your daily Things to do list. And the daily Things to do list is on that plan. It’s not put guests in the car, go to the store, go buy a house, go read a book. That Things to Do List is specifically only and totally for that vision. And you keep it and you write it down, and you don’t ever take it off until you can scratch it off as done.

And if you have to break it down, you have to break it down. But I’m talking about the daily Things to do list, which is literally something that is literally accomplishable in one day. So what is that? How do you break that down? And you put that in one day, and when you’re done, I should show you mine. You just have a sheet after sheet of things crossed off on your list. And that’s what keeps you going, because you’re putting stuff on the list and you’re taking stuff off the list.

But you’re very structured. And it’s all done on paper, because on the computer, I know things fall off.

You’re preaching to the choir. On this one, I’m filled with lists.

And can you see this all crossed off? The camera just all crossed off. Just all crossed off. Just crossed off. Because on the computer, I got all the fancy expenses, and I’m not going to throw anybody under the bus. I got them all. Not all. There’s 260 more that come out every day. But I got these great programs that did this and flesh and color, flesh and light and interrupt you and say, this is time to do this and all these things. But when you’re working on your desktop, Eric, you have to clear it out of the way.

You’re doing something.

Yeah.

And it goes out of sight, out of mind. But on that piece of paper, it never, ever disappears until you cross it off. And that really is the your help fuel you to keep working and keep at it. That is very, very key to accomplish that, no matter what. And following that system will get you profitable really, really fast. And I’ll give you an example. I mean, again, it’s like, Tony, I’ve heard these words before, and Tony says, yeah, they’re in the dictionary. But get this, I had a student.

He’s doing five or six five health products sales a month on Amazon. Five. Okay, bye. Okay. And I worked with him on just a vision map, and in the second month, he was up to twelve sales a day. I was just working on the vision map, so that’s the power of it. Five a month or twelve a day. I mean, he was just rocketed that fast, but it’s really just getting that focus in. And there’s an ebook available at Tony Durso Com books, and that’s been reedited updated, and it’s coming out on a paperback on Amazon soon.

But right now you could get to ebook, and it’s got most of the information, but not all, but it’s a really great. So based on that, you’re smart, you can figure out the rest.

Well, let me tell you what I really respect, but what you just described Tony is that you didn’t tell me about a guy that you went to a million dollars a month in sales. So these are really easy to fall on. They’re compelling. That’s how those Instagram ads work. Like, hey, look at this. This is my Mazarati. And I got this because I’m selling you health pills. And I apologize if I’m being campy in the description. That’s not meant to detract from anybody that does anything. I know I run a coffee store, I’ve got a coffee brand.

I literally have got my coffee behind me. But like you described Tony, that fellow went from five sales a month to twelve a day. That’s how it goes. I started a coffee store, and I said, let me see if we can do this. The technology is there to do it easily. I chose a brand, I chose some things to get together. And I went from, you know, ten in the first month that I sold to today. While we’ve been talking, I’ve gotten three notifications of sales.

Like, it’s not going to be hundreds. There are days when I don’t sell any other. But the fact is that, like you said, when I if it starts here, it starts with three a day. Gm rolled one car off the line at one point. Everybody has to think that way. This is possible. What matters is the fact that you put this into a place. You create a system that works for your mind and your lifestyle, and this is why we need guidance. This is why I love your approach, because this is not how to read this book.

And you’ll be rich in 30 days. It’s like, now read this book and you’ll have you’ll have a system that you’ve got that can bring you to whatever you need to be so that you are where you want to be in X years.

It’s so true you know, I’ve interviewed five, 6700 people. Now I’ve lost count because for a year or two, I was doing two interviews per show. So it’s probably five or 600 700 well known people. And I can tell you literally and honestly, I can tell you. And and our listener here in the audience, every single person had a story and had to work at what they got to be successful. Only one person in some 700 million years and billionaires had his life handed to him. That was how rare it was.

And I think kind of walked another person kind of, like, was well assured through. But every other person I spoke to a guy who homeless, he was on the street and he became a millionaire. I mean, what a great story. I’ve spoken to people that their parents put him to school to do this, and then they turn around and do something else and become super successful at something that the parents despised, you know, not despised that it was a bad thing, but just the parents, you know, I want you to be a lawyer.

I want you to be a do. I want to do this instead. And the parents like, oh, I’m not talking to you again or whatever. I’ve amazing story, really, really amazing. So if you in the audience, if you think things are tough, if you think you have to work for things, let me tell you, you are right. Things don’t necessarily go for you. It doesn’t always go easy. In fact, one out of 700 what’s that percentage? This is real world. That’s how everyone else had to work and become who they became.

And so that’s why we were saying it doesn’t fall off a log, and you really got to work at it. And it’s that purpose. That reason why you’re doing it that keeps you going, whether you make money or not. But if you stay on it, you’ll very, very soon make money, of course, because today we need money to buy our food and put gas in our car. So that’s how it works.

And even when you give a relative comparison that’s relatable to somebody, that’s why, like five a month to twelve a day, this is achievable, because if you compare yourself against somebody, that’s one of the Sharks on shark tank versus somebody that’s walking up and they’ve got a story and they’ve got to leap of faith. They’re bringing something. They’re going to try this right. You don’t want to try and relate to the shark. You want to relate to the person that’s on the other side, there’s a famous story is a fellow named Delores.

And he had gone because he was really struggling. He was very successful by any right. It started his own massive network, had had successful exits from startups. It was an investor in doing incredible work, and yet was wrought with grief about his lack of success. And they said, like, he went to therapy, and in the end, they sort of uncovered. They said, Why is it that you feel that you’re not successful? So my College roommate has always outdone me. And they said, well, how is it possible that you’ve got all these things?

Who was your College roommate is Elon Musk? Well, perhaps you need to lower your bar. So even successful people this. So this thing that he’s aiming for is big. It’s Elon Musk. You know what I’m going to do? And I tell people that are listening right now you’re thinking about doing a thing, right? In your first book, putting a blog together, starting a podcast, then find the person that did five a month and find out how they get up to twelve a day like that’s. It like, this is inspire yourself with an attainable path.

Like you got to obviously aim. I always help you. Like, you don’t want to just say like, I’m going to be on better today tomorrow than I was today. I should compound interest is pretty decent if you do that every day. But that’s why, again, I appreciate your choice of selections, right?

Yes. Eric, unless you’ve got somebody putting in mega money behind you. Yeah. You go to Shark Tank and sell your coffee, you may walk away when everything’s done with ten to 15% to 20% of your company. I don’t know. You’ve got now a boss telling you what to do and your original resident. You may no longer be your original recipe after a while, but, yeah, you make money. So now people also refer to that as selling their soul. So now what? So you’ve got money? Are you happy?

I know this is going to rub people the wrong way, but money does not equal happiness of accomplishing your purpose, and your vision equals happiness. And when you do that, money follows it’s just to flip around. Money is not happy. I have a dollar in my pocket that doesn’t make me happy. I’m talking to successful people, and I’m sharing that with the world and getting millions of listeners. That makes me overjoyed that’s it.

Right. And this is an important thing for people to do. And like I said, there’s so many things are possible. I often say is a bit of a visual joke. Right? I’m a big fan of guys. I’ve got a friend who’s a magician, and he’s a lot more than magician, but it just has to be. It does. And that was a joke. So I watched him do simple things, like just a simple card fan. It’s something that visually. So if you’re watching on YouTube, you get to see this, right?

It seems like the smallest thing in the world, it’s unexciting. But what makes it easy to do is that I’ve done this probably for, like, half an hour a day for six months, like, just every day. I just muck around. And so the first time you do it you can barely get them to stay together. You drop the cards. It’s a whole thing. But now, six months into mucking around with this thing while I’m sitting on meetings or whatever, and I’ve got idle time. I don’t know how to not do a fan of cars.

I can’t do it in a bad way. So my muscle memory for this and my muscle memory for being able to jump into a task. And now I’ve got a system in my head. I know I can do this. This is why your map is so important, because it’s like, once you build that muscle, you understand the structure, then you just simply just apply it to the situation. And that’s what people really get stuck on. They’re like, you know, how does somebody become a great coach?

And yet they weren’t a star athlete. Happens all the time. They’re athletic, but they don’t have to be, you know, the athlete in order to be successful at it. You just look for the ways you find how to unlock the power, and then you unlock it for somebody else, which is pretty amazing.

That’s a good way to say it, because it’s like two different ways. Like, do you listen, do you read a book or watch a video by a person who’s not a well known chef? But yet you watch their video and you go, Well, do you need to be a chef to say this tastes good or this doesn’t taste good, so there’s a balance there. So, yeah, an Olympic athlete isn’t necessarily a gold medalist, is not necessarily the only person that can train other gold medalists and so on and so forth.

But someone that understands the basics in the games and what it takes to apply oneself to be successful in that endeavor. Absolutely correct.

Bill Belichick looks like he would struggle getting up of long flight of stairs. Like, yeah, he’s brought Tom Brady and his team to victory. And I shouldn’t joke. Obviously, Bill Belichick in fantastic shape, but he was not an athlete or he was not a top level elite athletes necessarily. Right. It is amazing. And that’s what people needed her to humble their humble their goals in a bit and humble their understanding of the world. And that’s really it to write. When I look you’re five years in, you talk about 500 people that you’ve interviewed.

If you start at the beginning and said, I’m going to interview 500 people in five years, it would be very easy to get off that bus fast, because you’re going to say there’s no way that I’m going to be able to pull this off. You start to think. But if you say, like, I want to have a successful show, I want to be able to find people who have never met and have interesting conversations and learn something with them and be able to pull a story out of them in 40 minutes easily.

And I will learn how to do that. I want to learn these lessons and applies into my own life. And then while you’re doing that, suddenly 500 people go by and you realize you’ve done it. And it’s fantastic. It’s an admirable thing you’ve done. Is that on the other side of it? Now, that’s the other thing, I guess. Tony, how do people talk about gratitude and this thing, like, how do you sort of check where you’re at as you go through this on the bigger picture stuff?

Like, I know we have checklist and we have other things. But how do you sort of about a six month point or just right now, how do you look back and say it’s been an okay year or I’ve achieved something, but I’d like to be better at this.

Well, I may shock you. I don’t look at things that way. I’ve learned. I’ve learned. And it’s only because you ask because it’s not a topic I discuss or talk about. And it’s a topic that I joke around and say it’s against the law. And there’s a I say that.

But.

When you’re on the right path to helping others and and doing the right thing, you start developing your morals, your goals. And as you go along that path, you start realizing that God provides everything for you and that your success is determined by God. The more you follow what God’s will and plan is, the more doors open. And the way I look at it is doors are opening for me. And people love my show. And my show grows because God provides that. I know it sounds. I don’t want to say any incorrect or wrong words.

It’s a unique concept, and it’s a concept that you’re not allowed to talk about, because right now people say the universe. Well, that’s an innate, non thinking, nonintelligent rock or dust that doesn’t give you your life that didn’t create you. I walk outside and there’s a patch of dirt outside my house, and I look at it every day for ten years, and I’m still waiting for a chicken to spontaneously combust in the fair. It doesn’t happen. The world, you know, this whole falsity of, you know, where things came from.

It’s just a confusion. It’s just a lie God provides. There is a guy that made you this amazing, great soul. And the more you realize that, the more you realize that that bigger picture, the bigger the picture becomes. And and then you realize the more that door is open or closed, because God wants you to go down a certain path God is providing. God is allowing God is directing. Now you have free will. If something goes wrong and it keeps going wrong and you don’t care, you want to keep at it, keep at it.

And then later, you find that it was a total mess up. You lost your money, you had all this problem. God allows you to learn whatever you want to learn. But when the doors are open, that’s because he’s trying to direct you down a certain path. Now, what I’m saying has taken me so many years to understand. It goes over people’s head, and it actually hits against people trained other ways. So that’s why I actually say it’s not something we’re allowed to talk about. But because you ask the question, I am compelled to give you the true, honest answer.

And the more sorry, the more you reflect or think about God, the more things start to open up. And it’s a process, just like growing your business from five sales a month to twelve sales a day. It’s a whole process, but the more you think about it, just a little reflection time, not meditation. I don’t know what meditation is. Still, to this day, I wrote it. I don’t know what it is, but just start thinking about God. Focus on God, and it just starts opening up in its it’s not even magic.

It’s just life. It’s just work. So I just wanted to say that and answer your question that things are rolling for me, because this is what God wants me to do. God wants me to connect people to successful people and help them grow. And the more I work on that, the easier. In a way, it gets sort of like the muscle memory. I can jump on a show and interview anybody because I understand millionaires, billionaires, and elite people. I’ll interview presidents, heads of States. It just doesn’t matter because I understand that now.

But it’s God’s gift that he gave me. God gives gift. My gift. I’m Italian. I can talk, right? I appreciate it. I can communicate. Not because we’re not allowed really too much to say things about religion or talk about it. But I had to answer your question.

I appreciate your candor, Tony. It’s one thing that is it’s a difficult topic. And even for folks that maybe struggle with, you know, I’ve had a lot of Don W long and I spoke a couple times. You actually been on the show come times we talked. Even where folks, if they have to map it to spirituality, whatever the hell they want to describe it, it’s just even the stoic philosophers often talked about is there are certain things that are beyond our control, and that’s what we have to just we have to look to what we can affect.

And like you said, be good, be ethical, do things that help people give. And in the end, what comes back, opportunity through that means. Right. But it’s inspiring when you hear folks that are committed to it and that live the you know, they walk the walk. I suppose it’s sort of the phrase that people say and it starts slow.

It’s not like fast immediately all of a sudden, you know, the world opens up or sun down. No, it’s slow. It can be fast, but it’s slow. It’s just a little bit. It’s like, you know, and I’m not really trying. I don’t push religion or or anything or any type of worship, but just start thinking about it a little bit, and it just starts making more and more sense. And I guess that’s what I’m trying to allude to. So whether it great, you or incorrect still true.

You are an intelligent being. You weren’t made by a piece of rock.

And and like I said, this has been really inspiring. Tony, your ethic and your effort and your expertise come together in every discussion, and it’s been a real blessing and an honor to spend time with you today. Tony Dorso Com, of course, we’ll have links in the show notes. I’ll make sure that people get out there. And because your book is going to be hopefully hitting Amazon Brown the time this goes out, depending on timing. If it has not, anybody wants to drop me an email, I’ll actually have.

Or if you’re on the YouTube version of this, drop a comment and the first ten folks that they need to if they’re having commercial problems with getting to this, any financial risk issues, I will happily fund and make sure that ten people deserve this book. And so I’m going to make sure to reach out to me just hit me up on email. And like I said, I’ll make sure that we put a few copies and some hands and educate more people, give them an opportunity.

Because that’s really what it is. Thank you, Eric. And when you get it on YouTube, I will send thousands and thousands of people to it. And we just hope we get through the YouTube.

Whatever it is to get through the algorithm. Yeah. Well, I tell you what, I had a funny situation where I had a really incredible individual, John McAfee. He was on my show last year in April, and John was just an incredible human. And we immediately went right into some really challenging topics that are algorithmically a problem for stuff. And at the time, I was only publishing audio only. So it just goes up with, like, an audio gram. So it’s the audio on YouTube. So literally nobody goes to YouTube to listen.

They like to watch. Now that I’ve published the video version, you get a couple of thousand views per episode. It’s a little bit better. But I thought to myself, I’ve got the video of this, and this was even before John had recently passed. And I thought, I’d love to put it up there because it was just such a really a dynamic discussion. I thought, good golly, I can’t, because if I put fresh content up there, that’s got a lot of hot button things. And next thing you know, oh, DiscoPosse is on the wrong side of cancel because of a problem.

So I chose with John’s passing, I just choose at a respect that I shouldn’t. You know, come along and it’s your content.

You own it. And there’s places like Bit Shoot and Rumble that I don’t talk about anything controversial. I really, really try hard not to. I don’t even swear on my shows.

It’s funny that we started talking about that, too, at the very beginning.

But why it gets censored on YouTube? Because they obviously somebody. Some they pick and choose who they want to promote. Real simple. I send 20,000 visitors to YouTube, and I get, like, two views. It’s like, what? So they’re choosing who they want to see the show. It’s just no sensor. But I’ll send 20,000 people to Rumble. I get a zillion views. So you just put it out on a couple of places and monitor.

Yeah, it’s definitely it’s a county world. We’ll see. I think we’ll see a lot of change in the coming months as this stuff. Sort of. It comes to the point where they’re going to have some regulatory stuff to deal with around it. But we’ll see. But anyway, Tony, thank you very much. And like I said, for folks, go to TonyDurso.com, check out the show, get the podcast on. They’re really, really great lessons. And, of course, get the book. And like I said, Tony, your prolific author, lots of other books, non business books as well.

So you’ve got great fiction work as well that you do so really cool. Thank very much.

Thank you. The honor is mine. Thank you so much for having me on DiscoPosse. I loved it. Thank you.