21 – He started a gold standard webinar replay service: Tom interviews Geoff Ronning

Episode 021 – Geoff Ronning
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:27] Hey everybody. It's Tom here with screw the commute Episode 21. Wow do we have a great guest today. I use his service. It's made me probably a couple of million in a few short years I've been with him. So you want to make sure you listen in tight and have a pencil and paper ready to write down ways to get to him. We'll have it in the show notes too. But brief message from our sponsor. Have you ever thought about what's the slowest most fun way to lose maybe 340 thousand dollars. Well if you haven't I want you to think about it if you're thinking about any kind of higher education for you retraining if you're an adult or if you have kids or nephews nieces neighbors that are thinking about going to college. A book came out not too long ago by a very well respected guy in the education field and they followed two thousand students over a period of years and 45 percent of them reported that they learned absolutely nothing in the first two years. Forty percent said nothing in the whole four years. I don't want that to happen to you. We have a great higher education webinar at screwthecommute.com. Listen to it and pass it around to all your friends because I don't want that to happen to you.

[00:01:52] All right let's get to the main event. Geoff Ronning is a longtime entrepreneur. He currently is focused on stealthseminar.com and the Webinarprosperityblueprint.com. He has a front row seat and advisory role to webinars that are running around the world including mine I might add. Geoff has observed his clients run over a billion dollars in business through webinars on Stealth Seminar. Geoff, I got one question for you, man. Are you ready to screw? The commute that is.

[00:02:29] Yes. Yes. So tell everybody what you do.

[00:02:38] Well right now I'm focused on as you said stealthseminar.com and webinarprosperityblueprint.com. Webinarprosperityblueprint.com is really more of an educational site where I help people create webinars that are successful. Stealthseminar.com is a platform that is primarily known for its automated webinar services so people are able to create a webinar and then automate it so they can be off playing golf or on vacation or on other projects and their webinars are running and generating leads and or sales.

[00:03:23] And I don't think you know this but I was in the woods deer hunting leaning up against the tree answering questions from my automated webinar as it was going, while I was hunting.

[00:03:37] So yeah these things they're great. Absolutely. So did you ever have a job.

[00:03:43] I did yeah. I had a lot of jobs. Yeah. Oh yeah. Because I had a lot of false starts as an entrepreneur. You know I started out really as a kid working for myself. Like literally 13 years old.

[00:03:59] What were you doing then?

[00:04:01] I was doing shows I was doing entertainment shows I was doing magic shows. As I got older and became an adult I transitioned into hypnosis shows. I got in trouble in sixth grade for hypnotising kids at camp. But you know what would happen is I would get lazy with my business and so I would have like this huge influx of shows and I'd be like oh I'm rich I'm never going to do anything again. And then all of a sudden it be like oh no I'm poor. And the last job I ever had which was also probably the worst is I work at Leeds shoe store.

[00:04:52] Who's that guy on TV? Married with children that show was on then. And Tom, it was so bad. It was just like that.

[00:05:09] My favorite line from that show is Peg told Al I'm pregnant and Al goes Oh no my God it's just like Exxon one spill and you pay for it the rest of your life. So what was the turning point other than maybe a smelly set a feet that made say you know what I'm done with this. I'm going to do good at business and get out of this working job.

[00:05:39] The turning point was when I mentally shifted and said to myself or maybe I realized I mean you always know it. But there's a difference between knowing it and really knowing it internally as if you know like you depend on gravity. And that's when I realized that I can be successful as I want. There is absolutely no reason that anything like seasons or anything like that should have any impact on me. And really it was that mental shift and I guess taking a hundred percent responsibility and of course women's smelly feet had to do with it.

[00:06:26] So give the listeners some tips of what they can do with these webinars.

[00:06:34] Yeah so a lot of people use them to generate leads. So we work with a lot of people that are in different areas in different industries. For instance if people are looking to get landscape business and if people are looking to get dental patients if people are looking to get maybe bankruptcy clients whatever you know we've got attorneys we've got surgeons all kinds of stuff financial people, people that need individuals coming through the door. We've got a lot of individuals that use our services to do that to do it all automated and then we also have a lot of people that use our services to literally sell product.

[00:07:17] That's mostly like me.

[00:07:20] And then we have you know the third slice would be those that use our services for educational and for rapport and trust building. You know where they're given straight education. So we've got some people that literally will bring the leads on. We'll then take those leads and put them on another automated webinar to sell them and then we'll put those on another automated webinar to deliver the actual service that they bought.

[00:07:48] Yes because I do some webinars with you that are free to the people listening but then something sold at the end. And some of them I sell outright I pre-record them and then I just sell the content that's on those webinars. I believe I kind of invented the term hybrid webinars because I was one of the first ones that was seeing that a lot of these young people just want to play it and forget about it. But I wanted to have some interaction at the same time so I say you know listen to my webinar encore and I'll be there answering questions live and then that's where I'm sitting in the woods or wherever I happen to be.

[00:08:32] I absolutely believe you invented that term as it applies to the Webinar Tom, you were the first guy that ever said it.

[00:08:40] I have the Web site hybridwebinar.com to explain people and then of course that leads them to you. Because I did a lot of research I mean I was drug kicking and screaming into the webinar business because teleseminars were just so easy nobody had to do anything but dial a phone number. But one of my students made me do it and then I went crazy with it. But I was researching like crazy the services for the replays and what I found was and this is not just because you're on here. I found that you're the gold standard and everybody else these newfangled ones that are coming out are pretty much copying you. Right so they throw in different servers here and there. But you're the one that's the most reliable your customer service team is unfreckin' believable. I mean they set up the webinars for me if I want and I mean just crazy fast response really applaud you for that.

[00:09:38] Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. Thank you Tom. Thank you.

[00:09:42] So that's a lot of things and a lot of people that covers that can use these. You actually get a more qualified person because they do have to take the time to stop and watch the webinars. And so you can get a very good response from these things if you do a good job on the webinars. So have you ever gotten screwed in business, that is. What did you do about it? Pull a magic trick on them and make them disappear?.

[00:10:14] You know we always blacklist blacklist blacklist blacklist so you know whenever we get screwed by someone we put it into our CRM system and we keep really good records you know make every effort not to allow them to do business with us again.

[00:10:33] Yeah that's good because confrontation rarely leads to anybody getting rich but the lawyers.

[00:10:40] So yeah we let it go.

[00:10:42] So anything funny crazy happened to you in this business.

[00:10:50] Not like in my last business. Tell us about it.

[00:10:57] There were so many other crazy weird things. I was doing one show and you know in the hypnosis show basically the idea is that you change the environment and change people's personalities and have them experience different stuff and watch their reaction. So I was doing this one show and I had everybody on a roller coaster. And so right as they go up the hill and down the hill I'm facing the audience so the volunteers are right behind me and all of a sudden this whole audience it's just like their mouth drops. It's like they all start pointing and screaming. And so I slowly turned around and I don't mean to be gross but I turned around and there was this person that had this projectile vomit that was like 12 inches but like 4 feet out really long and I was just like oh there was no disbelievers at that show.

[00:12:13] So I assume that you've been working for yourself for quite a long time now. So what's the best part about it. What's the worst part working for yourself.

[00:12:23] The best part is absolutely the satisfaction that comes from knowing you're a hundred percent control in of everything you do professionally like you know what ever you want to do however you want to do it. You know you answer to no one except yourself which is probably a much harder boss than if you worked for anybody else. But it's that control for me Tom. It's that control. I love it.

[00:12:54] And what's the worst part?

[00:12:56] I would say the worst part is also the side of that control and that is having to always I've literally been like on a chartered yacht in the middle of the Caribbean talking to work related crap because there's no one to pass the buck to. You know if it's something at the highest end then you know you've got to be involved. But I accept that. I think that's a very good tradeoff for all the good. You know the downside is well worth it.

[00:13:30] That's for sure now. So what are you promoting nowadays that the people can get involved with you.

[00:13:36] I think if they look in the show notes they'll see a link that will take them to Steath Seminar. So they should find that link in your show notes or on your page and they can go there and check it out and see if it's right for their business and see if they can generate clients and sales with it.

[00:13:56] What's that other project that we talked about in the introduction?

[00:14:00] It's a coaching essentially training done with you build a webinar service that I offer you know that helps a lot of people that are looking to create that webinar to bring those individuals into their business or to you know sell those individuals a product or service. And what is involved in that? There are a couple of different options. The one that is the most popular is there are trainings that are provided and then there are weekly coaching calls so it's kind of a done with you. So I get to help people create the actual hook and the angles and all the strategies so that people are attracted to the Webinar And so the people have high retention on that webinar so they have high conversion on that webinar.

[00:14:51] Yeah exactly because just a webinar itself just because you have one doesn't mean you're going to sell anything or do what you're planning to build your credibility or bring in leads. There are a lot of different psychological things that you want to have in your webinars to excite people and move them to action. So I'm sure you teach a lot of that stuff. That's the critical parts. So that's currently going on and we can give them access to that in the show notes? Yep.

[00:15:23] Beautiful beautiful. All right. So we're going to take a brief break for a message from our sponsor and when we come back we'll have Geoff tell us what's a typical day look like and how he stays motivated. We'll be right back.

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[00:16:09] We're back with superstar Geoff Ronning a guy that came back from a devastating blow on his back and projectile vomit and made his way in business to be successful like he is now. So besides doing laundry after every hypnosis show, what's a typical day look like for you, Geoff?

[00:16:35] You know I'm a late riser. I do not like getting up early. I'm in Phoenix, Arizona. I've lived in Phoenix for 13 years. And I moved from the Pacific Northwest. I still don't feel like I've dried out. So I usually get up about 9:00 a.m. and then I usually get going around 10:00 a.m. I typically will go work out three days a week at 10:00 a.m. and then I'll come back in the afternoon and do the work that I have to do. I'm much more of a night person so I work at home. We have individuals that work for our organization around the world. I work with my wife.

[00:17:30] What role does she play. I never interacted with her.

[00:17:36] She plays the role of the smart person in the family. She does more of the admin and more of the bookkeeping. And also she oversees our help staff. That's more the sales oriented help staff. That's her role. We've been married for 20 years this year. So we have always worked together and it works out really cool for me.

[00:18:03] Give us some tips on that. Working with your spouse.

[00:18:07] Well you know I think... Let them make their decisions. Don't argue with them. Let them win the arguments. Don't disagree with them.

[00:18:21] So did you actually set up an office at home where you like go to it and that's your work area. Or is it just your house is your office.

[00:18:30] My house is my office. I mean right now as I'm recording this I'm in the office within my house. But actually I spend less time in my office in my house. I spend most of the time in and around the house. I work typical day I might work in five different areas of the house because I'll get bored over here and then over there. So that change really helps me like that helps the brain with different rituals. Like if I'm going to write or work on like webinars I'll come in here I'll come into this office right here. And it's like my brain automatically clicks in OK we're doing webinar work. Other work, then I go to other parts of the house and so I guess a lot of rituals like that.

[00:19:19] That's good. Yeah I have this gorgeous big office and I'm only in it whenever the students come in to stay at the retreat center. Sitting with the dogs you know sitting in the living room and the whole place is where I work.

[00:19:35] Yeah. Well you're exactly like me, then Tom.

[00:19:39] So how do you stay motivated?

[00:19:41] I stay motivated by staying focused on the goals I want to accomplish. One of the things I do which is extremely valuable for me is I go away just by myself once a year. And I spend usually about five or six days in a beautiful wonderful area that I want to go to and I just immerse myself in goal planning for the rest of the year and that really gets my head straight and it really allows me to set up the framework for my entire year. And so by keeping my eye on those numbers, the numbers are the most important. That really keeps me motivated.

[00:20:28] And that's OK with your wife.

[00:20:31] Yeah actually she's all for it. It's really been good for us. You know when we weren't always so successful. I used to just go away for like a day. It started out as like a night you know across town and it's kind of gradually built to where it is now where I pretty much go wherever the heck I want to go.

[00:20:57] And for five days right. Yes. So if you really want to be successful you start going away for months at a time. I guess that's how it works. Go away for 365 days and then you're going to be a billionaire. Yes. I don't know if you have a wife when you get back. Yeah I was going to say, Would you like to talk to her about that?

[00:21:23] So do you have any parting thoughts for all the screwballs that listen to this about working or using your service or anything you want.

[00:21:33] I think if people are out there that are listening and have a business right now what I would say to them is there's probably a whole other level they can take it to. Often times it's hard for us to see how far we can take things and that's really the benefit that's my biggest benefit of going away for all those days is to get out of the environment. I would say for people that are listening maybe give that sort of strategy some thought for people that are just thinking about wondering if they should start a business. I would say if they are the sort of person that is self-motivated because once you work for yourself no one is telling you what to do. And that was my biggest problem earlier right. I would write and layoff the gas but if there are people that are self-motivated and willing to take 100 percent responsibility for their lives then I say do it because there is nothing nothing that is more satisfying to me than being able to create security for yourself and your loved ones through work that you basically generate out of your brain. You know it's like it's such a gratifying experience.

[00:22:47] Well said well said. So how do people reach you. I know we'll have the links in the show notes. They have questions how should they contact you.

[00:22:56] Sure they could reach us at the links. That'd be great. Or they are the type of person that's on Facebook they can type my name and my name spelled a little different is Geoff. Last name as Ronning. They can catch me there.

[00:23:14] That's great. So Geoff thanks so much for the service you provide. And everybody out there folks I have made millions of dollars using his service in a very short period of time so I can vehemently vouch for it. It is a thing to notice even with this podcast I'm doing which was just audio. I'm driving people to my webinars so there's a lot of things that you can learn in his program called webinarprosperityblueprint.com.

[00:23:46] And Tom, I want to tell you thank you too because you have been a terrific supporter of our service and a fantastic client and friend and I just really appreciate it.

[00:23:59] Well I appreciate that so much. You of course know that I don't endorse many things and especially as much as I endorse you because you have proven yourself over years to have enormously great service. Unbelievable. Nordstrom's should take a lesson off of you. So I encourage people to look into doing webinars. I mean you can start a business based on webinars. You don't have to be in business but if you are in business it can really take you to another level. It has mine. So thanks everybody for visiting today. Remember to check out the higher education webinar. This is episode number 21. We'll have the show notes there all kinds of ways to reach Geoff and to take advantage of his services and knowledge. So see you screwballs on the next episode.

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