UNCHARTED with Michael Buzinski & Jess Dewell

Starting the conversation:

We are a product of those who came before, and what happened to them. Yet often we want to disconnect from those influences before fully learning what we must from their experiences. And when that happens, we make similar mistakes. Cultivating opportunity is exciting. Pausing, evaluating, and learning from what has previously happened – good and bad – these tasks are often overlooked and deemed unnecessary. Leadership teams that are disciplined about reflection achieve more over time. Listen in as Jess Dewell discusses building a better legacy with Michael Buzinski, President and CMO at Buzzworthy Integrated Marketing.

Host: Jess Dewell

Guest: Michael Buzinski

Transcript

Announcer
This is Uncharted, a series of candid conversations about facing uncertainty. When we are called upon to be courageous, the strength of our leadership is tested. Red Direction has developed the Fast Track Your Business program to help you stay aligned to your business’s True North. Jess Dewell is your guide. Jess brings you a 20-year track record of business excellence, where strategy and operations overlap. Your Path comes from consistently working from the special place, your unique True North. Now, here’s Jess.

Jess Dewell
Everybody. Welcome back to the Bold Business Podcast, we are having an uncharted episode. And this particular Uncharted episode is with a gentleman named buzz. And I’m going to tell you about buzz in just a second. Before I do that, you need to know our greenroom conversation was so good. It may seem like our conversation is all over the place. It is very poignant and very pointed and very timely. So listen in. You don’t have to take notes because you’re probably driving or running or something like that. But make sure you’re saving this in your player because you’re going to want to come back, you’re going to want to come back and hear this conversation that I have with Michael Brzezinski buzz, who’s a lifelong entrepreneur at digital marketing, thought leader and author, as well as the Chief Marketing Officer, Officer of Buzz worthy integrated marketing. Now with over 750 service-based businesses under his belt, helping them get their digital marketing si MP L E with periods in between and at the end. We’re going to learn a little bit more about that, as well as the rule of 26 as well as Machu Picchu, as well as arrogance. And how can we get out of our own way, Michael, welcome to the Bold Business Podcast.

Michael Buzinski
Wow, just I, I’m blown away. I think I call it a wrap right there. We’re good.

Jess Dewell
There’s nothing else to say is there nothing else to say? So, so I want to start with because one of the things that our conversation came from Brett in the greenroom and I think the way that our whole conversation will go is that we’re building off of each other’s ideas, we’re building off of things that have happened to us that have inspired us that can inspire us now and bring past inspiration to the surface and how can that help us right now? And you just got back from Machu Picchu? Yes, I did. It was amazing. And I know I’m sure you didn’t go for work. However, where there…

Michael Buzinski
Today’s work involved in going to see Machu Picchu, I just want everybody to know like Tran that actually takes you to the ruins. You do have to actually …

Jess Dewell
Hike you hike up there and you do well how long of a journey is it then?

Michael Buzinski
Well, there’s a half an hour bus ride if you don’t stay at the hotel, the top which is kind of a waste of money anyway, so yeah, so you do that half of that, half of our bus ride. And then it takes about 20 minutes straight up into the ruins. You can’t see the ruins from wherever they drop you off. And there’s no vantage point from the hotel either. You usually stay down in what they call Machu Picchu. And which is a gorgeous little tiny town. But it’s all mountains. I mean, you’re up at 7000 8000 feet. And before that was Cusco, and there’s other ruins up there and that’s at 12,000 feet so just walking you can get winded so anyway, not to digress there. But yes, it’s a wonderful once you get up there though you’re like Oh, thank god I did the …

Jess Dewell
Well, it’s funny when you’re Flatlander. Right. I mean, what’s your elevation where you are in Illinois? Zero. I live in Brooklyn, we’re also at zero. So you close to 1000 square feet. I’m huffing and puffing seven or eight or 12

Michael Buzinski
Yeah, it was there’s, there’s like sometimes you got, you get up out of bed, you know, and you’re just like, well, am I tired?

Jess Dewell
All I did was sit up.

Michael Buzinski
Your shoes and you’re like, who’s gonna work.

Jess Dewell
So while you were there, were there like and this could be personally or professionally what was the what was like the biggest takeaway for you that you’re going to remember when you think about Machu Picchu that’s going to be inspiring to you as you take your next actions.

Michael Buzinski
What’s a couple of things I think, I think Peru, in general, we went to a few places we were in Lima Cusco Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu. So we got to see both the coast and the Philippines like wait a second your intention.

Jess Dewell
Your puppy wants to be involved all up mine get in my lap because yeah, he’s jumping next to me. You might see fears.

Michael Buzinski
Usually, she waits she knows when, when I’ve done like oh Like I get off the phone and she knows right so, so we got to see the coast, we got to see the highlands, we got to see some valleys we saw we saw these things. Machu Picchu itself, the one thing that I came to realize is that it’s very young. When we talk about civilizations, it’s only been the ruins took 100 years to build, but they’re only 500 and some change years old. And I’m like, wow. So while I was in the Amazon as another part of Peru that we went to, I was there with some folks from Belgium. And they’re like, it’s so cute. They think that these ruins are so ancient we, we live in buildings in Europe, older than Machu Picchu. Right? So, perspective becomes a huge deal. You’re like, wow, okay, so it’s cool. Don’t get me wrong, and how they built them is astonishing. The big rocks are just you’re still, you’re like, why did they do it that way? Like some, there’s that part right there. But they that was their thing. Right? Um, but the people of Peru I feel I learned more from then the history. One of the, one of our guides, was we were talking politics like you’re not supposed to, and

Jess Dewell
Oh, right. When you least expect

Michael Buzinski
it. Yeah, right. Religion and Politics, right. But I feel that you learn more about a country understanding their politics and their religion than anything else very Catholic. You know, Catholic is the second religion, soccer being the first of Peru. So I literally saw an icon in a church that had a crest of their local soccer team embroidered on one of the icons on one of their altars. That’s how much soccer is a religion. But the funny thing was, is he was talking about how they it’s a country of haves and have nots. It’s a very poor country, not met not much there. Even like the nicer buildings, you would think he would kind of put it in the mid-range in the Americas. Right. Okay. And but he’s when you listen to him talk. He’s like, Yeah, we’ve got this corrupt system, and they’re always taking money from us and not giving it back. And, and he’s like, basically telling the story of the United States government is going on. But the big difference is, he said, four out of the five last presidents are in jail. It’s like, wow, what happened if that would happen in America, right? Four out of five, jail, like you’re done. You’re going, right? Wow. You know, and stick with me.

Jess Dewell
Because Okay, so there’s so many places we can go and where my, where my mind went first is thinking about Machu Picchu. And how young is thinking about how old are the peoples of Peru are older than that? Right? Right. And so you think about all of that, and this thing that has become this perspective of, well, we’re old, but this is new, and everybody comes here because they think there are ruins. And then you have people in Europe saying the same thing. That’s kind of neat. But …

Michael Buzinski
There’s churches older there, right?

Jess Dewell
Some people’s houses could be older than that, like you said, I mean, I’ve been in houses older than 500 years old in Europe. And in addition to pubs, and all of this amazing churches being amazing. But his youth, so if we think about this, you know, this concept of youth and the fact that these ruins are young, but the peoples are not, is there a what is there anything interesting that you have found or thought about in that relationship that are experienced that we bring to something that is new and young? That could be parenting, but I’m thinking of businesses you and I both started a lot of businesses? Is, is there something that most people overlook that wow, even though this is young, look at what had to happen for this ancient people to build this.

Michael Buzinski
I think that what you can learn from the youth of say that these ruins particularly if you go into how the where the Incas came, the Incas were conquers. Okay, yeah. And so the people of Peru and Colombia and Chile and Argentina and some of Brazil, in Colombia, right. All those people came under Rule of the Incas. And so the Incas were no better or worse than, say, the Spaniards who came in and took over the Incas. Right. And in some respects, some of the stories we heard was the fact that the Spaniards were actually welcome as a exit from the Incas. And that even if it’s conquerors, there are great things that Peru has because of the Spanish the Spanish coming, right. Yeah, and, and conquering, you know, a lot of the stuff and then, then there’s this other story that comes even after that is that they liberated themselves from the Spaniards Yeah, and the conquerors, but they kept A lot of the culture, the religion, and now it’s all put together. And so I think you really kind of get like the and I say modern-day, but the most modern-day to as an American as we how we learn history because most of our history is 1942 or 1492. And on right, that’s kind of like we’re that’s our area.

Jess Dewell
I was wondering what you were gonna say about 1942. I’m like what happened?

Michael Buzinski
Different, different, different war, different country.?

Jess Dewell
Exactly. Right. But a war in a country nonetheless.

Michael Buzinski
Right. Yeah. But, but if you think about it, that how often does history repeat itself? Hmm. Right. And yet, we here in, in modern-day United States, we can’t seem to do that ourselves. Look back just a few decades, let alone a couple centuries to see, the things we are setting ourselves up for have already been done by other societies. And some of the things that we’re trying to set ourselves up for have failed miserably time and time again. Yeah. So I wonder if because it’s so new that we don’t think that it’s worth learning from.

Announcer:
We will return to Uncharted in a few moments. How you work on your business often means the difference between failure and success. When you commit to developing skills, increasing capacity for the unknown, and prioritizing your mission, you’re taking action toward success. Find out more about how to Fast Track Your Business at FastTrackYourBusinessToday.com. Let’s get back to Jess.

Jess Dewell
Ooh, what an amazing concept of an assumption. Right? And that I, well, okay. So with that, I’m going to restate that. And then I want you to tell me if you can find one of your own assumptions from around that or like that, or is it one of yours? So what I hear you saying is, there’s some there’s this credibility factor of something that because it’s young, it’s not worthy of our attention, or we can’t learn anything from it.

Michael Buzinski
Exactly. Let’s, let’s do something political.

Jess Dewell
Yeah. Well, we’re breaking all the rules today. I like it, but I like a buzz.

Michael Buzinski
Venezuela. [Uh-huh.] One of the richest, richest countries in the world. [Yeah.] Right. Yeah, decided to take on a form of socialism. Okay. And they thought, Well, I mean, it’s going to be better than what we’ve seen in Russia and China and all the oppression that continues to happen today, in their form of socialism, right. [Yeah.] And you actually have people, you know, well-known political icons in the United States, plus Hollywood icons and stuff like that there. were praising the leadership in Venezuela early on, like, this is the way we should be. Why are we doing it this way? Right. It’s like [Yeah] let’s take a look at that. And we started taking a look at it. And then very quickly, it DSQ it escalated into the worst possible thing that could possibly happen to such a wonderful country, right. And now, you can’t even take dollar bills into that country. Right? Like, because they have been their currency has been devalued, so much, you know, I don’t know what the actual cost of bread is. But it’s in the hundreds of dollars, American dollars, American like 1000s of whatever they’re, and I apologize for being ignorant on their, their currency, but whatever there is, it’s 1000s, of whatever that is. Right. Right. And, and I have friends who have family in Venezuela, and they can’t even send them money, because it will get intercepted by the government and be used on their own. But yeah, we can’t turn but then when you go back and say, Hey, guys, this is bad. Those same people who were praising Venezuela can’t, for some reason, say, well, we would do it better. So they don’t respect that absolute power corrupts absolutely. And there’s a reason that we are here. And the reason we even created this country was to get away from absolute power. But yet we continue to see these examples of what absolute power does in modern days, right. But yet, we can’t learn that lesson.

Jess Dewell
And I know you’re giving this to governments. And I think that’s appropriate because it’s really hard to look at ourselves. It’s easy to look at things outside of ourselves, but I hear you describing many entrepreneurs, I’m gonna, I want to go out on my own, I can do this better. The man the whatever, right, the that and, and what happens, they do what they were taught, thinking that it was going to be different.

Michael Buzinski
First 15 years of my, my business, I ran businesses, how I was taught how businesses were run, right. And I was told if I do it that way, that I would be successful. And at some point, the, the CEO of it all would make it worth the work. And I found out that being CEO is for me, personally, not where I shine. I am a natural-born leader is what I’ve been told. I always rise to the top to leadership. But being a CEO is not the type of leadership that I like. Right? It’s it’s not. I like the, the marketing side of things. I like the systems of things. I’m not necessarily a CEO’s, why say I’m a president and CMO? Yeah, right. I’m a visionary for my company. And for a lot of companies that I work for on their visionary, like, they’re like, why is it that you can see my stuff in such cool ways? Well, that’s what you pay me to do, right? That’s your way. So you can do that. But in growing my business, and using, and all of the org charts for all these pyramid schemes, right.

Jess Dewell
And that’s what it is a scheme of a pyramid.

Michael Buzinski
And you’re just like, okay, but so then I would start creating these flatter and wider, you know, and those are tough, and it’s like, skinnier and deeper, and then those, so everybody’s is gonna be different. It’s not that we’re doing it better. You just got to do it better for you, what does work for you. And so you have bosses that, that find people who like to be barked at, and, and don’t have to think and just do what they’re told, and go home and not have to worry about anything. There’s other people like to be in organizations where they want to be challenged, and they want to be kept up at night, with the next big thing that they’re they’re expected to do because that’s how they thrive. So I never say My way is the best way. It’s just better for most of the people that I work with.

Jess Dewell
Isn’t that interesting? Well in and because well, and when you do that there’s a there’s huge judgment goes away, assumptions may still be present, yet, there’s enough curiosity that the assumptions don’t get the better of us. And we’re not making the same mistakes that we’ve made before. And we can really meet each other in a way that says, Oh, I understand how I can fit here and add value. Oh, I understand how you fit here and add value. And regardless of anything else, the whole goal is to find commonality. So are we patient enough? Are we willing? And are we truly, are we truly showing up to do that? Right? I mean, I really …

Michael Buzinski
Why are we showing up? Right? Are we, are we there to collect a paycheck? Or to make a difference? Yeah. Am I is your business there to make money? Yeah, we’re here to make change. Right? My the way that I have run my businesses, the core of my businesses, and the reason I think they’ve always been successful, is because they’re the why was change. Money was the side effect. Yeah. And I told my people always, you worry about the client’s needs. That’s right, you will always get what you want. The money will take care of itself. Now, as the leader in all the other things, I got to make sure that we’re charging enough. And all those stuffs in most of us go through that problem, right? We don’t charge enough because we’re trying to be more agents of change. And we don’t want to be the greedy guy and all the other things, then we realize, actually, we’re stealing from our clients by not charging them enough to give them the best, right? That’s right. And so we’re really creating loss opportunity, opportunity costs for our clients by giving them less than what they absolutely, really should get what they deserve.

Jess Dewell
And isn’t this crazy, we’re all going through the evolution of Peru and Machu Picchu, because we all hit that. Right? The lessons learned just because I did it, and you did it. Sometimes it takes us twice. And everybody else, by the way, everybody listeners Come on, you have to own it, you did it to remember, and it doesn’t matter how much we tell you, you still have to go through it. So hopefully, being able to acknowledge and say, Wow, we all had to do this, we can recognize, oh, we were all as young as much Machu Picchu. And we all come from wisdom that we chose not to pay attention to until it was time. And I actually think there’s something about that, that that at the right time. And then I can get coming back to assumptions, our assumptions can help can really help us avoid the at the right time piece.

Michael Buzinski
And so one of the things that I’ve done the last couple of years. So I’m gonna bring my book into this because it blends right into this one of the rules of 26. And we actually haven’t talked about the book anyway. So

Jess Dewell
I know what they do now.

Michael Buzinski
So, so when we talk about growing businesses, so one of the other assumptions that we assume, as young entrepreneurs, is that we’re going to be able to use word of mouth and referrals. Yeah. Right. Because everybody knows us. And everybody is, you know, we’re on their top of their mind at every moment that an opportunity to give a referral is going to be there. And, and I’ve networked enough, you know, and all those good things that if anybody ever needs me, they’re gonna come to me, right? Oh, Really,

Jess Dewell
I love, I believe the same thing every single day. And then I have to hold up the mirror.

Michael Buzinski
Right? So I think that there’s, there’s that level of arrogance that we’ve kind of underlined in everything we were just talking about. Yes. Right. So the Incas thought, well, we’re better than everybody that we’re looking at here. So we’ll just take everything that they have. And we’ll, we’ll collect it all together and make it a society and we’ll be able to do it better than this. Painters can say, No, you guys are actually doing it really well, we do it better. So we’re going to conquer you. Right. So when we build these businesses, we feel like we’re in the silo that all the things that, that happened to the last nine people who failed in the last five years in business. They’re the on that one, right? Because it’s what is it? One out of five? I’m sorry, one out of five. Make it past five years. You said one out of a hundred.

Jess Dewell
One out of 100? Make it 10.

Michael Buzinski
10 years? Yeah, I’m looking at my shoot, man. I’m at 17. . I’m doing something right.

Jess Dewell
Me too. About this bus? I mean, really? Yeah.

Michael Buzinski
So and I came from military, like, when you come from military, it’s hard because you, you go from everybody telling you what to do. You know, and you don’t in unless you have the stripes or the stars or whatever it is. You don’t say anything, you just do what you’re told to be okay. It’s all on you. Now. It’s all on you. It’s your, it’s your gig, right? And I remember my first three years going, knowing that stat, because it hasn’t changed much. Man, I don’t want to be the other three, because it used to be three out of five. Yeah, fail within five years? Yes. And now it’s four out of I’m sorry, out of the first three years. Out of five, don’t add of those don’t make it out of five years. Yes. And then out of those one out. And then all, all-encompassing, I think is the one out of 100. So anyway, yeah. With that, though, I think that as service-based businesses like ours, yeah. Or we’re serving people, we think that it’s the human element that makes us accessible and visible. Right. And I found after about professionally doing I mean, I say professionally, I’ve been a professional marketer, even before I was in the military. But when I started working specifically and directly with small business owners, one of the things that I found over and over again, is that they weren’t charging as much as they should. And they weren’t marketing as much as they could. And then they

Jess Dewell
Stop right there. Hold that thought. I have to do a little thing here. And that is people. This is Uncharted. This is the voice of old business radio, you are taught you are listening to me talk with Buzz, Michael Basinski. And I have to tell you, what, those of you who are part of the Fast Track Your Business program, those of you who have that awesome subscription to our community, we’ll get to hear what comes out of his mouth next, the rest of you. I hope you enjoyed it. Have fun, don’t forget to rate us and if you like go to fast track your business.com and learn more.

Announcer:
You’ve been listening to Uncharted. Fast Track Your Business subscribers receive access to a vast set of resources, including extended conversations to this and other Uncharted episodes. Visit Fast TrackYourBusinessToday.com. Your preparedness and the right perspective is absolutely necessary when you find yourself somewhere Uncharted. Special thanks to The SCOTT Treatment for production assistance.