Abundance Mindsets and the Art of Selling Without Selling, with Marc Von Musser

What if everything you've been taught about sales is actually holding you back from extraordinary success? Marc Von Musser, sales expert and founder of Soar and Roar, challenges conventional wisdom with a refreshing perspective that could transform your approach to business.

Growing up as the son of a renowned photographer who captured 150 national magazine covers in a single year, Von Musser learned early that success comes not from transactions but from capturing essence and creating value. This foundation, combined with his journey from a nine-year-old newspaper delivery boy to Tony Robbins' director of coaching, has given him a unique lens on what truly drives sustainable business growth.

In this compelling conversation, Von Musser dismantles the tired notion that "sales is a numbers game," replacing it with a human-centered approach that produced staggering results—increasing Tony Robbins' coaching revenue from $2 million to $30 million annually, and product sales from $11,000 to $2.1 million in just six months.

You'll discover why competing on price is "a race to the gutter," how to position yourself as a trusted advocate rather than a salesperson, and why an abundance mindset unlocks creativity that scarcity thinking suffocates. Through captivating stories—from helping his tattoo artist brother generate $5,000 in just 13 days after making zero income, to explaining why he willingly paid $15,000 for a sauna available elsewhere for $4,000—Von Musser reveals the profound impact of heart-driven selling.

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Chapters

• 9:06 [Ad] Real Talk About Marketing
• 9:54 (Cont.) Abundance Mindsets and the Art of Selling Without Selling, with Marc Von Musser

Transcript

Erin Manning: 0:02

Welcome to the Dead Pixel Society podcast, the photo imaging industry's leading news source. Here's your host, Gary Pageau. The Dead Pixels Society podcast is brought to you by Mediaclip, Advertek Printing and Independent Photo Imagers.

Gary Pageau: 0:18

Hello again and welcome to the Dead Pixel Society podcast. I'm your host, Gary Pageau, and today we're joined by Marc Von Musser, who is with Soar and Roar. He's a sales expert, a longtime photo guy back in the day. We're going to talk a little bit about that and he's coming to us from California. Hi, Marc, how are you today?

Marc Von Musser: 0:39

Oh, I'm blessed and grateful, excited, to be here talking about some of my passions and some of my background. So it's going to be fun.

Gary Pageau: 0:48

So, Marc, you're really well known for sales expertise, like being a coach, helping people improve their sales. How did you get started in that? What was your driver for that?

Marc Von Musser: 1:02

It's a great question, I would say. I started in sales were back when I was nine and I started recognizing that I had an opportunity to become a newspaper delivery boy back in the day. Now I didn't do the math on it. All I saw was $60 a month at the end of the month. Right, I didn't realize. For 365 days a year I would be waking up at four 30 in the morning before school and getting the papers folded, packaged and delivered by six o'clock in the morning every day of the year. But when you're that young, going door to door and that was the first part of the equation the second part of the math was I realized that I had to go door to door and sign people up and then go the end of the month and collect. So but I was one of maybe five to six guys in the whole school that had a paper route and that got me excited because 50 to $60 back then was a lot of money. I was, I was, I was a lot. So that got me started.

Marc Von Musser: 1:57

And then for the next God knows how long I always found myself that I could make five to 10 times more money in less time through sales than if I was working an hourly job and somewhere along the lines I learned that there was a science to sales. And then I learned that there's a new evolution of sales, and so that's been tested. I've done easily half a million sales calls. I've done probably 10 to 20,000 doors knocked. I've met with over 10,000 people. So I've sold pretty much everything, and I was never one I would test something to see. Is it really true? So I was more of almost like a sales engineer as I went through it. But that's how I got started and I just loved it. I loved I was more intrigued by getting a yes or a no, but understanding why I got the yes or why I got the no, and that's kind of what took me that deep into the rabbit hole.

Gary Pageau: 2:48

You know, one of the things that I find with people who are like sales people, right, you always hear the old saying, which is you know you got to get. You know nine no's to a yes, and the driven salespeople love to get those no's because they know it's going to bring them closer to a yes. Was that your philosophy, or are you more into trying to figure out why the no's are coming into place?

Marc Von Musser: 3:11

Originally. The only benefit to that thought process is that, if I can, it's a catch-22. On one hand, if I can get my head around that, it's a numbers game. I know that in a hundred people, for example in photography, if a hundred people walk through the door, at least five or 10 of them will be buying a photo package, for example. Right, so there is a numbers game. But that's the trap. If I shift my thinking, where I start thinking about these are people just like me with a real problem. Now, all of a sudden, I could be adding value to everybody, even if they don't enroll or not, and that little shift made a huge, huge difference in the ability to enroll people Once I got past looking at them as a numbers game. It's one of the big flaws in traditional sales training. People sell. Oh, it's a numbers game, and I'm categorically disagree. It is a human game. It is a huge service opportunity.

Gary Pageau: 4:03

Okay, that's interesting. You're saying that because again I hear that all the time. Right, you just got to keep plugging away. It is a numbers game. You know for every nine to go get one, and so you just got. You're just. If you're not succeeding in sales, you're just not talking to enough people. And there's some truth to that.

Marc Von Musser: 4:18

Yeah, there's some truth to that. But there's another higher evolution, which is if I recognize every single person that I'm going to talk to has a need and I might not be the one to fill it, but if I could identify what their needs are, their problems are, help them solve it. That's, for example, when I was selling high ticket coaching. Everybody that came through was funneled through a filter. You know, they came through the high ticket funnel. They saw an ad on Facebook, they came, so they're qualifying themselves down.

Marc Von Musser: 4:46

But Most of the companies had a belief, like you're just saying. Most of the competitors said oh, it's a numbers game, just make as many offers as you can and you'll make money. Well, in the industry it was 4% to 8% was the enrollment rate, with a 40% cancellation rate. I looked at it as human beings and I said stop selling people and start enrolling them in their dream. And we had a 30% to 40% enrollment rate with a 3% cancellation rate, because we stopped trying to close people and started saying hey, gary, let's have a real conversation. What's your goal, what's your dream, what's stopping you? What's the hardest part of not having it? And getting them clear on the pain of not having their greatness and not having their dream, and those people would step up at a much higher level than when I try and look at them as a number and just hammer them like the wolf on Roll Street and some of those old, antiquated, outdated strategies Buyers and anything me included, you included, the listener included we're tired of being sold to and closed.

Marc Von Musser: 5:46

What we want is an advocate. We want somebody that is an expert in their area, who can offer real advice, steer us in a way and to say, hey, here's what it is, and again, giving them the honor to make their own decision, and I'm going to give them all the ammo to make that decision, but it's their decision. If you close somebody and use pressure or posture to do it, that's a big reason why the cancellation rate and that's a big reason why most people hate sales, because it doesn't feel good and it's not the best way.

Gary Pageau: 6:08

Right, Incidentally, you do have a photography background in your in your family. Your father was a photographer. Do you think that's where you learned some of that sort of instinctively seeing how he handled his portrait clients?

Marc Von Musser: 6:20

That's a great question. Yeah, my dad was a phenomenal photographer. He was amazing and, like you and I were talking before we started, the photographer in their eye. We used to talk about calling their eye. Their ability to see what other people miss is part of what makes a great photographer. Now it's a different game with with technology and that's a whole nother level of study that somebody is going to need to understand how to maximize it, and I have massive respect for the people that know how to do that.

Marc Von Musser: 6:46

I loved I grew up, like I said, I grew up in a dark room. My dad had a dark room at almost every house we lived in and I just love the smell. It sounds crazy. I love the smell of the chemicals. I love being able to, you know, make my own all of that and, oh my God, it's such great.

Marc Von Musser: 7:00

But it certainly did play a difference because my dad would want to go ahead. He didn't compete on price ever. He would go ahead and look to create. He did some amazing photography thing. Like I told you, in one year they did 150 national covers, magazine covers. He also, before that, was the supervisor of photography at intent. So he was looking at using the tool of the camera to capture an essence.

Marc Von Musser: 7:22

And again, as I got older and started coaching even people in the photography industry, I said quit selling pictures and start selling memories, start capturing memories in those magical moments. People will pay a lot more for capturing an essence. And what is it? Annie Leibovitz is a great example of that. She got very, very famous for taking the ultimate photo of a person, right and how.

Marc Von Musser: 7:58

He was a guy I worked with. He was an amazing photographer who started the beefcake calendars and the male calendars back in the day. Right, but he was able to capture the male form. There's tons of people that capture the female form in a great way, but the male form. There's tons of people that captured the female form in a great way, but Cal Yee captured the male form where he had the looking good calendar. It blew up and went viral. He couldn't get it anywhere because it would sell out, but he'd captured the essence of a masculine man, unlike any other photographer. So he he elevated just taking pictures and that's why his calendars and his magazines and it was just some fun stuff, but I would say it's certainly my dad's input had a big, big factor in me getting to look at things differently than everybody else.

Gary Pageau: 8:37

Obviously not wanting to spend too much time on the portrait side of the world, but obviously the world has changed a lot in terms of capture. Right, because there's a lot of technology and cameras now obviously iPhones, things like that where they can improve pictures or whatever. They can't replace what a photographer does. So in any industry where you have technology sort of enhancing the talent of the person doing it, how do you distinguish yourself from the competition?

Marc Von Musser: 9:45

That's a great, great point. And this gets back to something we talked about before we started, which was competing on price is arguably one of the dumbest things and the worst ways to differentiate yourself. If you do that, it's a race to the gutter for the lowest price because there's always somebody going to come out of China that can beat your price. The best place to position yourself, to differentiate yourself is on value, is on services, customer services, on input. So one of the things I liked in photography and the people that own camera stores and people that sell. I will pay more if I know the person is going to show me how to use it, if they're going to give me tips, if they have ongoing training, if they could show me, for example, I even buy stuff which I haven't even opened, but I love the concept Somebody that's telling you how to be a pro photographer with an iPhone.

Marc Von Musser: 10:33

Now it sounds crazy, but I ended up buying this guy's program because I watched what he did with it and it's like knowing that somebody can show me how to use what I've already bought, or I will buy the products when they tell me.

Marc Von Musser: 10:45

For example, in my home studio I hired a different guy to show me how to set up your lighting, a three light system and all these different things, and so they're differentiating to say, hey, don't just do a podcast, make sure you look great, and so I will pay for that service, as opposed to just trying to buy it myself. There's always going to be your do it yourself people, but the giant segment of people who are desperate to find advocates in the area. They need help. And if you position yourself I don't care if I'm selling camera equipment, I don't care if I'm selling how to use it Become the advocate and really take a stand for people and show them what they're missing. And if you're going to do anything, do it well, and so that what I would say is a big part of it is you want to differentiate yourself. Add more value and find a way to differentiate yourself by creating that advocacy for people and show them how to get more bang for their buck out of whatever it is you're selling body or something like that.

Gary Pageau: 11:40

It's the same one B&H or Adorama or Horonosis is selling right, so you almost feel compelled to compete on price on that, and you're not buying at the volumes they are so, but okay, so let's break that down.

Marc Von Musser: 11:58

So, for example, for every person that says I need to go buy the Mark V, right, I'm going to go buy this camera, this base, whatever, this lens, okay, If you have a professional photographer who knows exactly what it is he looks for, yes, he can go compete on price. The second thing is he's going to be looking at what is the customer service? What is the return policy? What if it gets in shipping? It gets damaged. I've had that happen Something gets shipped, it's damaged and now I have to send it back and I'm out of pocket for three months or two months because it's going back to China. That is not acceptable. So now I need something as well where the person can do that. Customer service in Zappos is a great example. They sold shoes. Nobody's going to buy shoes because, again, I have to try it on. Women have to try on their shoes. It was absolutely the wrong judgment because they did do it and they did it based on customer service.

Marc Von Musser: 12:48

If you had a problem, with the shoe they'd send you another one before you even shipped it back. And all of a sudden, millions and millions and millions of people were buying their shoes from Zappos. They were paying more for the privilege of not having to go and sit there and try on 30 pair so you can compete on price. But the bulk of the people, they don't know what's the difference between the Canon cannons and the Nikons and the Mamiya's or in some of these different cameras. They don't really know. And so when I would go in whether it's a lens and again, like a telescope I have a telescope here and I had another friend that had a huge one I wouldn't know which one to buy.

Marc Von Musser: 13:23

And that's where it comes into play, where you can position yourself as hey, rather than me selling you a camera. Why don't we sit down, take 10 minutes, you tell me what your goals are, show me what you're looking at, what's your price budget, and then guide them to the best camera for them. They're going to be able to sell a lot more cameras, and that's what most people don't. They're so busy trying to sell something, but they're skipping the part two. To help clarify for the buyer what they need and what's best for them. I'll give you one example on loans.

Marc Von Musser: 13:52

Okay, so I was a real estate loan broker for not loan broker but a real estate broker for many, many years. And I remember during this was before IndyMac and the whole big short happened and I remember picking my lender based on somebody and I said all I expect from you is to treat every client I send you like they're my mom personal thing. I will funnel you a ton of people. Just take care of them like family. He goes oh, absolutely so all of a sudden I send them. I send them the first one. I sent him 38 loans in one year and I noticed every single one of them was getting put into an option arm, which was the start. At 1%, it can go up to 3%, 5%, 8% as the interest rate changed Now every now and then.

Marc Von Musser: 14:35

That was okay. But even my people that wanted a fixed rate, the conservative buyers, they were getting put in an option arm. And I asked him and I said, bob, why is every single person? And he basically lied to me and he said, oh, they just they changed their mind. They wanted the option arm. Well, math doesn't math up.

Marc Von Musser: 14:57

So I finally found out on a fixed loan he was only getting one point, which means on a $500,000 loan he would make $5,000 to do all the paperwork and make sure it got closed 5,000 bucks. On an option arm, he got five points. He made $25,000, but it gets worse. At the end of the month, whoever had, if they had enough qualifying option arms, they got an additional five points and it gets worse. So now he made $50,000. Then six months later they refinanced them all and now they did it again and he could make another.

Marc Von Musser: 15:27

He could make a hundred thousand dollars from one $500,000 loan and all of a sudden the industry knew it was a Ponzi scheme. The industry knew it was going to collapse and I was vindicated when that happened. Well, that's the same kind of thing where it's like most people selling, or selling solely for what has the highest profit, what they make the most money in the least amount of time, instead of serving the client. He ended up losing me as a, as a referral partner, because he was not serving my clients at the level I had asked him. He was not being honest with it, nor were most of the lenders, so that again not good.

Gary Pageau: 16:02

Well see, I'm. I looked at it as that, you know. You said to Bob hey, bob, treat my clients like family. Maybe he hates his family.

Marc Von Musser: 16:11

That's a great variable. I didn't think of that, but you absolutely could be right. I mean, there's always that variable in there, right?

Gary Pageau: 16:18

Yeah, that's a great one I mean this stuff sounds great in theory, right? I mean the idea that, oh treat, everyone spend 45 minutes on the camera counter trying to sell this guy a lens and to be you've educated him and he may go off to be an agent by it, but that's okay, cause you build this relationship. Yeah, now, obviously there's people who are like, listen, I'm paying that guy to spend 45 minutes at the counter telling somebody that he's going to go buy a lens from B&H. So what's the reality check on that? Do you have any information or data that says you know what? That there is actually a pot at the end of the rainbow for that procedure?

Marc Von Musser: 16:55

Well, there is Penny wise and dollar foolish. It's an old wives tale that we've heard, and what happens, though, is that, again, I'm not going to take away from the guy who knows his camera equipment better than you and I combined. He he's going to go out there and get exactly what he's looking for, but that's not the bulk of the market. I don't. Uh, somebody I know I helped him um in other areas, and then I've helped lenders do it as well. Uh, even somebody I know sells guns. They work in a gun store, right Second Amendment person and they teach people for home security. They teach gun safety classes, home protection, et cetera.

Marc Von Musser: 17:28

Ninety nine percent of the people that walk in there are moms and pops, normal people that come in and say, hey, I need to get a gun, and instead of him selling the one that makes the most money, he says OK, great, let me take a step back. What are you hoping to get? Well, I want home protection, I want this. And he's like do you have any experience with a gun? How much are you looking to invest, et cetera? How often are you going to go to the gun range? He goes through a whole series of questions to find out what they need and I didn't realize there's such a big difference. We think, oh, buy the dirty Harry gun 45 caliber, blow your head clean off, right. And so for years people were buying the 45, not realizing the liability the 45 will not only kill the intruder, it'll go through the next house, the next house and kill the neighbor three doors down, right. Think of those things when you're an untrained person with guns. And this person was like well, the you know 38 special is good, but some of the different ones I'm trying to remember which one. He said, but don't go with that one. And he also talked about a shotgun or certain the other ones. But he became the salesman, the number one salesman, and very few people competed on price because they were walking in there. They weren't saying, well, I can go get this at Walmart or I could go get this at guns and things, because he was developing a relationship. And the other part too, to the same thing with cars some of the car salesmen, right, instead of selling people. If you study some of the top salespeople they're very good at I'm not talking about the ones that churn and burn, but the ones that do that is they're going to get very good of, okay, so talk me through this how many people are you looking to have in your family? How often do you drive? Where do you go? And they're going through, and then, based on that, they can say, hey, for the money. Take a look at this one.

Marc Von Musser: 19:08

It's just one of those things where there's another byproduct in sales that no one talks about, and that's the byproduct of being a con man. When you look at Jordan Belfort in the just lie your ass off, which was a lot of what's integrated and woven into traditional sales, there's a reason he became a drug addict. I can't. I can think of half a dozen to a dozen sales trainers who were big in sales who all had a drug problem or an alcohol problem. Why is that? Because they were lying, and the core identity of a human being doesn't feel good when they do that. They knew they were lying, right. Jordan Belfort knew he was lying when he was telling somebody to buy this stock that was not even going to make it through the week. Taking people's retirement. He screwed $250 million out of grandparents and he's paid back $2 million. There's a reason that he was trying to numb those voices. So if you want to be great, you have to do the right thing. You have to get in alignment with being an advocate for people and that was part of the whole core of heart-driven selling. That I started to notice when moving away from the heart of the numbers it's a numbers game and to serve people. Now the other by-product is you wake up proud of what you do. Second part is you wake up to thank you, thank you, thank you emails. The third part is you start waking up to other referrals.

Marc Von Musser: 20:21

Right when I was at Tony Robbins, I took over the sales training for Tony Robbins. I was his director of coaching and their sales teams were not performing. So they saw what I did with the coaching department, something I had never sold before. But again, I followed the same process and we went from 2 million to 30 million a year in coaching sales. And the other part that we noticed is that when I shifted to the process I did, which was serve people, we went from $11,000 in product sales selling Tony Robbins products to 2.1 million in six months. We went from $17,000 in event sales to 4.8 million in six months. And so that's the part two. That's going to make or break businesses.

Marc Von Musser: 21:00

That you won't get when you're just buying on price is the refer. You can build a referral army when you serve people and I'll give you an example. Specifically, I bought a sauna. Now I could buy a sauna directly from China for anywhere from one to $4,000, a great sauna, right. I did not have certainty that they were going to deliver. I had never bought an Asana from China. I saw all the ads. I also was looking on marketplace buying Asana on a resale marketplace marketplace one to five grand same thing.

Marc Von Musser: 21:29

I ended up spending $15,000 on Asana and I was happy to do it. When I got on the phone with the person and I said hey, I'm up in Big Bear, it's cold, it's here, I have this space. I, I want a three person. Next thing, you know, she didn't con me into buying a fifteen thousand dollars. She asked me what I was going to use it for, how often I was going to use it, what my intent was.

Marc Von Musser: 21:50

So health became a concern. I wanted low emf. I didn't want the chemicals. I wanted, uh, what's called a hybrid. So it has the traditional sauna and it also has infrared. Next thing, you know, I I bought that. She was so good at walking me through the process I had some delivery issues. She was so good at solving those. I have referred a bunch of people to her so that one sale has turned into probably five additional sales because they were so good in the process and I paid five times more than what I was going to pay. Cheap is not always the place that people will go. People want the experience and that's a big part that people underestimate.

Gary Pageau: 22:27

Well, you always have to recognize too and I think you touched on this earlier. You know not everyone is your customer. Now clearly you're. You know you've got means to spend $15,000 on a sauna, so she kind of qualified you on that. Probably if someone was not have the ability to do that, they probably wouldn't have called her in the first place.

Marc Von Musser: 22:47

That's right, and they could have very much. And that's a great point you make, gary, which is I'm not here to sell everybody, I'm here to enroll people I can serve. And when you start to understand, it's kind of like if most people don't know who their audience is, they're trying to sell everybody. Right, that's about them, exactly.

Marc Von Musser: 23:05

And part of it is finding out what the person needs, and I did this too. I'll give you an example, a funny story. So part of the way that I took our company from $11,000 to $2 million in product sales was, I said to the coaches, because I was the director of coaching, I said guys, serve the client, that is your number one rule. And so all of a sudden, after we were doing that was in six months, by the way so we're doing about $4 million now in product sales I get called into the office of this chief financial officer who starts wagging his finger at me saying did you tell your, our clients that they could go buy a product from Jack Canfield, the guy from chicken soup, from the soul? And I said well, honestly, I don't know the call, but it's quite likely you go. What do you mean? And I said our job is to serve the client. They're paying us on average four to $12,000 a year for coaching. We're going to offer resources, input and help them get to their goals. Right? So he's going back at me and as I did that, I started to ask him and I said the person I worked for had three national New York times bestsellers, but Jack Canfield had 39. He's the most successful author in American history chicken soup for the soul and he sold 500 million books. And he was teaching a course on how to write a bestseller.

Marc Von Musser: 24:18

So I looked at the CFO and I said so how many has this person sold? Our boss? Three. Does he teach people how to write a New York times bestseller? No, how many has Jack Canfield? 500 million, and he's teaching people. Again I said do you want me to go back to your way, where we slam everyone with our products and you get $11,000 in product sales, or do you want my way, where you can make $4 million in product sales? Right, because if you want, I'm going to do it my way. If you want, I'll do it your way. What do you want? He took my way, but in his mindset though, he was so short-sighted, thinking he's losing money by steering somebody to somebody else. And in reality, this person was so thankful they brought in more coaching clients, right?

Gary Pageau: 25:17

no-transcript back in the day that we always used to run into looking into, like you know, photography customers, right, is that the belief always was when people were back in the day of processing film at, you know, they drop it off in the box, the overnight box. But they'd also take some roles to a one hour lab, right, right, and the idea was it was that nobody had 100% of their correct, their business, right, and you, just once people started realizing that you could then kind of adapt and kind of increase your value to say, listen, I need to create, if I'm competing against the overnight, what can I do to get more of those roles as opposed to and there may be times when the overnight thing is a good option? In fact, some of those people were doing one hour and actually did some overnight work too, because they, they, they would set up a drop box.

Marc Von Musser: 26:06

Yeah, and that's a great point. The other part, too, is there's nothing stopping us from adding more value to the clients that we do have. Right, instead of just trying to get more rolls through the door. What other services could I give them as well? For example, you could sell them additional film. You already know they're out of film. They're going to need more film, so you could have a discount. There's no marketing expense, so you could save some money there. And by getting them on a monthly is an example, you could go ahead and get them coupons or discounts and collaborate with photographers in the area that might be doing I don't remember what it's called, but you know no-transcript and frequency is also one of the keys to unlocking creativity, which you're going to need if you're going to market effectively.

Gary Pageau: 27:18

So just for a definition there what do you mean by an abundance mindset? Because that sounds almost like coach speak right, so let's build this down to real world speak. What does that mean?

Marc Von Musser: 27:29

Abundance mindset is that if I think, for example, there's not enough people. I'll give you an example. My brother was a tattoo artist and he was in San Clemente, california. He's a tattoo artist and he was doing pretty well but all of a sudden his sales stopped. I listened to his language and all of a sudden he's like well, mark, all the Marines are going out and they're all deployed and there's 20 new tattoo parlors and and nobody has money for tattoos right now. And it's it's really tough. All the tattoo notice my language. All the tattoo parlors are struggling. There's too much competition. My Marines, which is their biggest demographic of clients, they were all deployed.

Marc Von Musser: 28:05

None of what he said was true, but in his mind it was true. So part of what it took me a good day to get his head out of his rear, cutting off his oxygen. So I got him and I said, freddie, this was on the 18th of the month. He had made no money and he was worried he wouldn't be able to pay his rent for his shop or rent for his house. So I said, freddie, I got him back, I said what you said is not true. I said all the Marines are not deployed because that's a teaching universe, at school of infantry. They're not deployed. They're not deployable. There's thousands and thousands of Marines there. So I got him back into what would make you do a happy dance. He said, well, $5,000, $5,000,. A good month for him was 10, but he had made no money right now. He couldn't pay rent, so 5,000 would have got him going. So I got him connected to 5,000. How would you feel? What would you do? And then I said, because he couldn't see anything other than his blind spots. So all of a sudden I said Fred, creativity is not just being able to do art and tattoos. I said creativity is problem solving. So I said if you were going to get a $10 million benefit by making five grand, what would you do? What special could you offer? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Marc Von Musser: 29:14

Now he also was not good in business. He didn't have an email list for his clients. He didn't know how to get a hold of him. He had no money for marketing. All to get ahold of him. He had no money for marketing. All of a sudden, freddie starts getting connected to five grand. Long story short the last day of the month he calls and I spoke with him almost every day. Until then he made $4,987 in 13 days. And he goes. I just realized the last person that walked through the door. She was short 13 bucks, so he hit the number. And then again the next month he did 10. And then the third month he went back to zero.

Marc Von Musser: 29:45

Because he shifted his mindset from abundance. There was always enough people there, right, there was always enough people that wanted tattoos. There was enough people in a, in a city with 200,000 people and the Marines, which is 50,000 Marines, there was more than enough people. But his belief system made him blind to what was possible. I took away the blind, he started making money. He put the blinds back on because, oh, that somebody said they're doing it cheaper down the road Didn't matter. When he made five and $10,000 in that month, they were still charging less.

Marc Von Musser: 30:19

But his mindset so an abundance mindset is recognizing that everything you need we live in a world with 8 billion people. We live in a world where you can have a global business. There's no shortage of people that are looking for your service. The question is are you going to find a creative, unique way to get in front of them, offer them a value? And that's what most people don't do, but there's an abundance of opportunity. There's abundance of people that need help. There's an abundance of ways to make money. There's an abundance of ways to become a millionaire.

Gary Pageau: 30:48

Can it really be that fast? I mean, how are some of the ways? I mean, can people really expect to see results this quickly from that sort of activity?

Marc Von Musser: 30:57

Very much. There's another friend of mine. He had just taken taken 22 days, went to the cancun, took 13 of his family members to cancun. They had a blast. It was the dream of a lifetime trip. He comes back and started whining on the 23rd saying, oh my god, I haven't made any money. And I said, doran, could you do me a favor and just zip it up for a second? I said you've just spent three weeks with your family doing what very few people on this planet can do, right, I said? I said, instead of honoring how much, how great you are for being able to take 13 family members and fly them down there and have a great trip, you're now whining. I said do you want to get rich or do you want to keep whining? Again, I'm, it's part of the softness, right? I'm just joking.

Gary Pageau: 31:35

So I said it in a very caring way.

Marc Von Musser: 31:38

Yes. So I get with them. And I said Dorian, I said, let's get back to what do you want? What do you want more? Do you want to spend the next eight days bitching and moaning about how you haven't made any money, even though you've made no phone calls in the last month? Or do you want to make a hundred grand? He goes, let's make a hundred grand. I said, great, okay. So we did the same process. I said how many people in your area need help? How many B backs can you call? How many can you do this? How many Facebook lives can you do? So he did that. He made $130,000 in the next next eight days and then he forgot somewhere along the line that next month he was going to do it again and we dealt with that later.

Marc Von Musser: 32:13

But you absolutely can't right now. Everybody listening, if you really honestly looked at, how many people have they reached out to to say, hey, how can I help? And the answer is usually very low. They may be post every now and then on Facebook, which is a very reactive method. It's better than nothing, but it is not going to drive immediate traffic, the direct reach out by comparison, especially somebody, for example, that has a photography studio.

Marc Von Musser: 32:38

They have emails from everyone that's walked through those doors or express interest. How could I call them? How can I email them? Hey, create a special right now and you can generate a ton of money. And it might not be your ultimate solution, but I firmly believe that on most people's cell phones right here, there's over six figures to seven figures of business on your cell phone right now. But most people lack the ability to know how to reach out to them without being spammy or salesy, and there's ways to do. That, which is part of what we do in the training, is teaching people how to make money from any platform, whether it's paid traffic, organic traffic, email marketing, stages, local community event mixers. There's always a way for the committed and there's always excuses for those that aren't.

Gary Pageau: 33:22

So where can people go for more information about your programs and what you offer?

Marc Von Musser: 33:28

I would say start with. There's a couple of places wwwsoarandroarcom, and also I would say markvonmustercom, and I'll spell it M-A-R-C-V-O-N-M-U-S-S-E-Rcom, and start there. There aren't too many things. For example, gary, that I haven't figured out creative ways to sell and make a lot of money for people. My favorite two one was for IBS irritable bowel syndrome. How do you sell irritable bowel selling solution?

Marc Von Musser: 34:00

Well, I went back to the drawing board. I put myself in the mindset of somebody that high IBS, everything that was costing. We articulated a message. We got very clear we use paid traffic. In this person's case, he was a naturopathic doctor. We got him to $3 million a year.

Marc Von Musser: 34:15

There was another person talking about teaching handstands. Now their competitors were charging $97 and 497 for an online handstand program. We helped them build a program for $9,000. He made $20 million selling handstands. Now, why? And again, I had to think that that was me looking at the ad.

Marc Von Musser: 34:36

What would inspire me, and it really wasn't about the handstand, it was knowing how to articulate the message in a way that, for an achiever who stops achieving, it's one of the scariest places there is where, all of a sudden, you're like what's the point? Very similar to a doctor, spends 15 years becoming a doctor. They get there and they hate their life. Now what You've reached the pinnacle and now you're miserable.

Marc Von Musser: 34:58

So that was the sort of thing, too is about doing the impossible is normal for achievers, and so it was a way, as a metaphor, to teach them. It's not about the handstand, it's about claiming your greatness and always being able to do impossible, and that's how we did it. And and it's just one of those things, if your product solves a problem, you can sell it, and you can sell it at a much higher level and again, but you've got to get rid of the old, outdated thinking. It worked in the past, but buyers are so inundated. Where everybody is trying to get buyers don't feel safe to have an honest conversation. So you have to learn how to create that safe space, know how to pull out the truth out of them, and when you do that, people will buy.

Gary Pageau: 35:51

Awesome. Well, listen, mark, this has been great. We've covered a lot of topics, from IBS to photography. I'm sure there's something for everybody in this one, so I appreciate your time. I look forward to connecting something for everybody in this one. So I appreciate your time. Yeah, I look forward to connecting with you again in the future. Thank you so much. Thank you as well for having me.

Erin Manning: 36:10

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