About Today’s Show

Do you have money blocks? Do you know that even billionaires have money blocks? You’re in good company. Sometimes it’s good to get extra help and external help to help you with those blocks when it comes to success and it’s an interesting combination. You do need to know all the tools and how to do it in Facebook Ads, how to build a community and you also need the mindset. From a personal experience and what I believe in, everything starts in mindset and 80% of your success is mindset. That’s why I invited Pamela Bruner to be on the show. She is an author, a coach and a speaker. She conquered her own fears around money and she teaches conscious entrepreneurs to build six and seven-figure businesses by combining effective strategies with cutting-edge mindset tools. She’s the co-author of Tapping Into Ultimate Success and she also owns a digital marketing agency. I hope you will enjoy this show as much as I did. Pamela, welcome to Stellar Life Podcast.

Thank you, Orion. It’s so lovely to be here.

It’s lovely to have you here and thank you for being my guest. Can you tell me and our audience a little bit about yourself?

I have always wanted to change the world and transform lives. Ten years ago, I had trained as a life coach four years earlier. I was struggling. I had what I call an imaginary coaching business, the kind where you say you’re a coach, you go to clients, and one of them is coaching for free. I couldn’t market, I couldn’t sell, I couldn’t put myself out there and I was so socially uncomfortable. I would try to go to a networking event and I would leave in tears and go into my car and cry because I was that uncomfortable. I needed to transform myself so that I could transform others. I did some work including EFT tapping to get over my fears. I actually dove in and learned marketing and sales and said, “I bet there are other coaches and healers that want these services.” I created a business around helping others to grow and grew to $1 million a year in under three years. I found my purpose, my passion, what I love to do and how I can serve the world.

You say that you grew from $375 a month to $1 million in three years. That’s astounding. That’s so awesome.

I love saying that because if you think, “I’m just not there, I could never be there,” I was in the, “I could never be there either,” category too years ago.

There’s a certain mentality to making $375 a month to grow into $1 million. That’s a lot. How does that happen? What were the moments that changed your life?

As with most things, when I’m answering questions, whether their questions in a conversation like this or questions from clients, almost everything has both a mindset and a strategic component. In order to grow, in order to change, in order to do something that you have not done before, in order to do something that is not predicted by your past, you have both a mindset and a strategic component. When we look at the mindset part of what I did, it was a combination of money mindset, of recognizing the value of what I was and even the value of who I was. Along with helping me understand that I was, or at least could be, a likable person with a message that was important to people. Those were all new beliefs that I had to not just embrace intellectually but embrace emotionally.

Along with that, there’s all the strategy of what is a good offering to make if you’re a coach. What is a good marketing message? How do you sell from a heart-centered place that has people feel supported and served in the same breath that you’re also giving them an opportunity to invest in themselves with you? Learning all of that, the mindset and the strategy, it’s a good bit of work to do all that, but the payoff is huge both in quality of life and how you enjoy and how you interact with people and obviously, financially as well.

 

You talked about recognizing the value of who you were. Can you talk a little bit about that?

When I teach this myself, I teach that there are four basic core limiting beliefs that lead to what I call the unanswerable question. These beliefs, which usually come from childhood are either, “I’m helpless, I’m not good enough, I’m not lovable or I’m not safe.” Usually, although there’s a little bit of art to it, you can tell which one or which ones operate for people by seeing what annoys them. For example, I used to get annoyed when people would act like they didn’t care. I would go into the mini-mart or something and the person behind the counter would act like they couldn’t care less that I was there. I would get disproportionately irate at that treatment and it took me a while to realize, “They’re acting like they don’t like me, they don’t love me. This is a sign that I’ve got this deep core belief that I’m not lovable.”

What happens, especially if you’re trying to grow a business or you’re trying to build a cause or anything like that, if every time you talk to somebody and you ask what looks like a fairly normal question, like let’s say somebody says, “Pamela, can you tell me if this elevator speech is any good?” I get those questions all the time. I will give them a perfectly good strategic answer like, “Yes, it is or no, it isn’t. Here’s what you need to do to improve it.” Then there will be this moment when they’re wanting to ask me another question and they don’t know what question to ask. That’s because the unanswerable question is coming up. The unanswerable question is, “Am I lovable or will I ever be lovable? Am I good enough? Am I going to be safe doing this? Am I ever going to have power?”

Once you hear this as a framework, you can see it in other people. You can see the groupies and the hangers-on or even the people who are legitimately trying to get transformation from a leader or a coach or something like that. You will see that moment where they want to ask another question and they don’t have a question to ask. Often, they’ll ask silly questions like, “Why aren’t you continuing to ask questions?” It’s because they can’t even voice their own question.

When somebody can’t voice their own question, what do you do?

Speaking as a coach, one of the things that you can always do is you can always ask questions of them to try to get them to step powerfully into one of those four areas. It might be something like, “I see your passion for this and I know that with your passion, you’re going to be able to make your mark in this area. You’re going to be able to affect change in this area.” That’s a great thing to say to somebody who wants to feel more powerful or who wants to feel that they’re good enough or, “I know that asking all these questions means that you have a real desire to help people and you truly care about people. I want to acknowledge you for that and say you’re worthy of being cared for as well.” There are ways that you can say these things, whether you’re a coach or a bystander or something like that, that gives them the answer to the question they’re not even asking.

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When you give them that answer, you can look at someone and say, “You are good enough, you are lovable, you are safe, you have an abundance of resources, you are very resourceful,” and yet they won’t believe you. I’ve heard people tell me all kinds of good things about myself and I still have those beliefs that I think for me, a lot of them are not good enough. How do you get over those beliefs because somebody like you can come and say, “Orion, you are wonderful, you are good enough, and you are so cute.” I’ll be like, “I’m cute but I don’t feel like I’m good enough.”

One of the best ways to do it is by asking questions instead of telling people. It depends on how much time I have with someone. If what I want to do is give them something to chew on and just complete the conversation, I’ll make a statement, if I want to empower them, a question is far more empowering than a statement. Asking a question like, “What are the things that you’re good at that you might bring to bear in this situation?” that’s going to get them making the argument that they’re good enough. As soon as they make the argument, things change. As you said, they have many resources, “What are the resources you might bring to bear on this? I hear that you’re concerned that you don’t have power, what do you have power in?” I’m not asking them if they do, I’m asking them where it is. As soon as that is there, it has them hunt for it. People will look for something much longer if they’re starting with the assumption that it’s actually there.

You said you had the, “I’m not lovable,” the strongest. How did you get over it? Did somebody ask you questions?

I ask myself questions once I figured this out. One of the questions that I asked myself was, “Is there anyone I like?” I said, “Yes, there are some people in the world that I like and I like very much.” I’m not talking about necessarily the people I love or my family, but the people I like. What do I like about them? I made a list. I like people who don’t give up, who strive. I like people who are smart, it’s fun to talk to them. As I made this list, I looked at the list and went, “Darn it, I have pretty much every trait on that list. The people that I like, I’m describing me.” That was a little bit of a wake-up call and the more comfortable I became speaking my truth, the warmer I became to other people even when it felt dangerous.

It feels very dangerous to be warm and loving to other people when you’re not sure if you’re going to be loved in return. The warmer and loving I was to others, obviously that reflected back and reinforced that belief. Very relatively, I went to a three-day event and as I usually do at events, I booked a few clients and I talked to a lot of people who were interested in working with me. The biggest compliment that I’ve gotten in months or years I got at that event, I had three people at the event say to me, each separately at a different time, “You were one of my favorite people I met at this event.”

Much better than going into your car and crying.

It was then that I thought, “Ten years of personal development work, it has paid off and it’s showing up.”

Do you teach EFT as well?

I do EFT with my clients. As I coached them on business, I do EFT with them and sometimes I demonstrate what I’m doing and show them what I’m doing. As you may know, I wrote a book on EFT called Tapping Into Ultimate Success with Jack Canfield, the co-creator of Chicken Soup for the Soul, but I’m not an EFT trainer. I just believe that it’s a great modality.

For some people who don’t know what EFT is, can you share a little bit about that?

EFT, which is also called tapping is a simple self-administered acupressure technique that has been scientifically proven to calm the amygdala, the fear center of the brain, and lower the cortisol or the stress hormone levels in the bloodstream. When we are in a state of fear or anxiety or anger or irritation or something like that, what happens is that the rational parts of our brain shut down a little. Blood is shunted to the fear centers of our brain and we become less resourceful and actually less intelligent. If you’re trying to operate your business from fear or you’re irritated with a friend, a colleague, a co-worker, a spouse, you are less resourceful.

One of the things that EFT tapping does is it calms that fear response or their anger response or something like that, so you are returned to a neutral or loving or a productive state and you can take action much more effectively there. At least, that’s the way I use it. Tapping is used for many other things. People use it for removing cravings and weight loss and all kinds of things. I use it for business fears and fears about money and things like that.

What are the most common fears that you get around business and money?

There’s almost always a fear around raising rates. It seems to be pretty universal. It’s very rare that I meet somebody that shouldn’t raise their rates and that is comfortable raising the rates. I say, “You should raise your rates.” “I don’t want to and I won’t get as many clients and people won’t like me and they’ll think I’m greedy,” and all of that kind of stuff. I believe that transformation is incredibly valuable that it’s worth charging for. In fact, if we do not charge adequately for transformation, what we’re doing is sending a message to people and to the universe that improving yourself isn’t very valuable and that is a message that I will never want to send.

The money issue and tapping on, “Here’s how to double your income, here’s what you should do to grow,” is very important. Other things are whether it’s a fear that I’m helpless or not good enough or not liked or something like that. Putting yourself out there like learning how to market and learning how to sell. Most people feel like they’re being pushy when they’re trying to market or share what they do. They feel pushy or greedy when they’re trying to sell or offer their services or products. Getting that concern or fear squared away is really important.

What are some coping mechanisms that people use to avoid raising their fees or moving forward in their business?

There are many different coping mechanisms. One of the favorites that I’m seeing right now is that people procrastinate by being busy. It’s procrastination by busyness, especially when there are many different ways to grow your business, “Should I write a blog? Should I take out an ad? Should I call a friend? What should I do to grow my business? There are twenty things I should do. I’m either stuck in the overwhelm or I’m doing the things that feel very safe.” I have two readers of my blog and one of them is my mom, but I should sit down and write twenty blog posts instead of going to a networking event or picking up a phone. That’s procrastination by busyness. When people tell me that they’re busy and I asked them how many conversations they’ve had about their services in the last week, usually they will say none or one or two or something like that. That’s not going to be a way to build a business.

How many conversations do you have with your business every week?

I do not do all the sales in my business.

Let’s say the younger version of you at the beginning of her way.

Ten to twenty and I still do seven to ten a week even now.

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Let’s say you’re going to a networking event. How do you start that conversation of, “Let me tell you what I can do for you?” How do you find that potential client? It’s easier in your niche because obviously if you go into an internet marketing event, most people will need what you have.

I’ll tell you a secret that I use that I teach my clients. It’s super helpful, which is I almost never network for clients. What I do is I network for referrals. I am never assuming that the person I’m talking to is an ideal client, but I always assume that they’ll know somebody who is. It’s very non-confrontational to say, “This is what I do and this is who I help and I’m privileged to do this or blessed,” or whatever the language is that’s appropriate for you. “I love doing this and I hope the clients experience these kinds of results,” and usually I won’t even get done when somebody says, “I know somebody I need to introduce you to.” I’ve got a sentence and a half out two weeks ago when I was at an event and the young man I was talking to said, “You’re describing my mother. She does that I. I should hook you up,” and sure enough, three days later, I’ve got an email from his mom saying, “You met my son and he told me about you.” How cool is that? He wasn’t an ideal client, but his mom was.

I never thought of that. Sometimes I feel uncomfortable, it’s almost like I feel a pressure, talking about, “I’m networking now. I have to get a result because if not, I’m not a good networker.”

I can understand why that pressure would be uncomfortable for you and it might make you less charming than you are. This might be a potential reframe for you for enjoying networking a little bit more. What if everyone you were talking to was your next best friend, but not an ideal client? You get to say, “As my next best friend, I want to tell you what I’m super excited about. This is what I do. I love what I do. I love my clients. I love the results they get. It is cool,” and you’re almost jumping up and down, being excited about what you do. That is a very attractive energy.

Energy is a big deal. Before you are going to a networking event, do you condition your mind? Do you set goals? Do you set an intention? Do you do jumping jacks? What do you do?

I do set an intention. I have a little mantra that might be useful, which is, “I need nothing from you. I want everything for you.” When you go to a networking event like that, intention and energy is important. One of the decisions that you have to make if you’re going to grow a business this way as opposed to entirely online or something like that with no reach out, no networking online, is you have to make a decision that you will be of service to people who will never be your clients. What I mean by that is if I go into a networking event and somebody who has no relationship to what I do says, “I need this.” I have to have a little part of my brain that’s on the lookout for that for them.

If I meet somebody half an hour or two days later or something like that, who fulfills that person’s need, I need to be able to make that connection. When you become a connector like that, then everything changes. I know I met a couple of people a couple of weeks ago who do video and they were sponsoring an event. They said, “We’re looking for other sponsorships.” I said, “I’m doing a sponsorship in a couple of months and I don’t know that they have a video company there. Why don’t I connect you to the sponsor guy and see if you could sponsor his event too? It might be great for you.” They were over the moon grateful for that and all I did was send an email and say, “You ought to talk to these people. They’re cool.”

Were you always a connector or did you train yourself to be one?

I totally trained. Somebody who feels unlovable does not see themselves as a connector. Here’s the thing. Even as somebody who felt unlovable, I always wanted to help people. That’s one of the things connectors do is they help people. If you’re saying, “I don’t want to be a networker, I hate networking. I hate business, but I want to help people.” Great, be a connector.

 

Here’s a coping mechanism that I know I can use using your advice. I can go into a networking event, I’ve done this in the past, and I had the intention like, “I’m going to help ten people,” and I ended up helping people and not even talking about my business. It was about helping people.

That’s awesome and that you can do both because I want to help people and I want to assume that people want to help me. I find that usually when I ask people standard questions that I have, I don’t necessarily go to a lot of local networking events. I tend to go to three-day events and meet people there. They’ll say something like, “What is it that you want to get out of this event? What’s the number one resource you need right now in your business? Who is the person you’re most hoping to meet today?” Then the fourth possible question, “Who’s an ideal client for you so I’ll know that person if I run across them?” If I asked that to another person, almost always they’ll ask me back and that’s where you get to talk about your own business.

When you teach your clients about business and how to increase revenue, after you work on the mindset part, apart from networking, what do you focus on when it comes to increasing one’s business?

All business has just a few simple parts, but the “simple parts” can get complex. The first part is your offer. What is it that you are selling? Whether it is a simple product or whether it is a service or whether it is a coaching program or healing package or whatever it is, what is your offer? I find that most transformational entrepreneurs fall down on the job with the offer because if you’re offering, “I do single healing sessions. I have a month of coaching,” or something like that. That’s not a very transformational offer. It’s an offer that most people don’t understand. They don’t know what they can get from it. The only people who succeed with that kind of offer are people who are incredibly charismatic. They walk into a room and people talk to them and they’re like, “I don’t care what you do. I don’t know what you do. Here’s my credit card. I want to be like you.”

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They’re selling their charisma and they don’t worry as much about their offer, but it bites them later because nobody can describe what they do. They’re like, “I love Jenny. She’s awesome. You should go to her. I don’t know what she does. I can’t describe it,” and that’s hurting them. One of the important things you need is a great offer. If you have a great offer with a great marketing message behind it, then whether you go out and network or whether you network online, because I also do reach out online and so do my clients, there’s that initial, “Here’s how you build your business and it’s very manual, one-on-one.” If you’re selling a high-ticket signature system, which is how I suggest that you offer your services.

If you’re selling a system that’s $2,000, $3,000, $5,000, you don’t need that many clients in a month to have a fairly decent initial income. After that, now we’re talking about scaling. Now we’re talking about bringing on additional team members, how you leverage your time and what business model are you going to have as you grow? That’s what takes you from the practice level of, “I have a good practice. I’m making $70,000 or $100,000 or $150,000 a year to I’ve got a $500,000 or $1 million business.”

How do you build a foundation for that? Do you have to build a funnel? Do you have to have an offer? What are the first steps you give people?

I believe that if you have a solid high-ticket offer, everything flows from there. If you have a high-ticket offer, you can actually grow your business with a funnel online. You need very good messaging and you need to be a pretty darn good marketer to do it, which is why I suggest mostly that people build offline. One of the things that happen if you build offline is you get much quicker feedback for whether you’re doing a good job talking about what you’re doing. People are like, “I want to set up a funnel online.” I’m like, “You’re going to run some paid traffic to that. What if nobody buys? Will you know what’s wrong?” Probably not. If you go shake somebody’s hand and you talk about what you do and people are confused by your message, you’re going to get a deer in the headlights look. They’re going to look at you like, “What? I don’t understand.”

 

You’ve spent nothing, but a few minutes of your time and you’ve immediately gotten feedback that what you said doesn’t work. Change it and try again until somebody says, “That sounds awesome. I know somebody who could use that.” Now you have a good message and now maybe you want to go spend some money online with it. I’m always going to suggest people create a high-ticket package. They go out and start meeting people and sharing the message of what they do, preferably offline. Get some direct feedback about that. Sell some high-ticket packages, create $5,000 or $10,000 or $20,000 pretty quickly. Then now we’ve got something that we want to systematize and make more regular. Once you hit that $75,000 or $100,000 mark, now let’s talk about taking more of it online.

What about creating events and getting butts in seats? I went through some speaker training and I won an award for speaking, which was astounding to me because I had all sorts of belief I speak. I wanted to fill up a three-day event and it was a failure. I took it to heart and I felt like, “This was a failure and I’m probably not going to be able to get butts in seats and to get people to come to my event.” It was about the messaging and it was about refining your message. There was this illusion, especially when you go to internet marketing conferences that everything is easy and you just throw a funnel and people will come. The way people speak about it, it’s like magic, “You do this, you do that, you get Infusionsoft, you get this, you get that and everything’s going to work out.” I love what you said about going back to the offline and try it with people. Let’s say you have a good marketing message. It’s not perfect but it’s good, which I feel like I’m talking about myself. I feel like it’s getting better and better. How do you get people into your events? What do you do?

Filling events is I have found one of the hardest things to do still to this day. I’ve got tens of thousands of people on my email list and still I work very hard to put people in my three-day events. Just know that that is pretty much the norm. Here’s what I would suggest. Number one, don’t start with a three-day event. Start with a day-long workshop, an evening workshop, something like that. Work offline to get twenty people in a room rather than trying to get 200 people into a three-day event. I’ve had people fly in for a one-day event. I ran a one-day event and had people traveled from the UK to the US. It is possible that that happens. Not likely but possible.

When you know what you’re doing for selling, putting twenty people in a room for a day or two days, and those are different formats. The one-day event is usually more of a workshop style format. You’re teaching people and you can make a significant amount of money with ten to 25 people in a room. My best one-day, I had 33 people in a room and I made $107,000 in that day. That was a big deal. I didn’t expect that kind of return, but it was very gratifying. You can do it. A two-day event, which is one more like a mastermind than a workshop, is where you might get ten, fifteen, twenty people around a table and you work with them on whatever your area of expertise is and you usually have an offer, both in one-day and the two-day. You’re going to have, “Here’s the offer. Here’s the next level to take it with me.” You’re going to have a relatively low-ticket entry point. Your one day might be $97 or $197 or something like that, and your two-day might be $497 or $797 and then you’re going to offer a $5,000 or $10,000 offer from that. From the one-day, you might offer $1,000. You’re going to give people a way to continue the journey with you. It does not have to be a big event and it does not have to be terribly expensive and you don’t need that many people in the room. That’s a very good way to start.

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That was my mistake is that I always wanted to go to the end and jump over the middle. You hear those success stories of people that go from nothing to three-day events and they succeed. Then they go on stage and they talk about, “This is the way you should do it.” I guess everybody has different paths. This is the problem, we’d like listening to too many gurus and too many smart people. They teach you what worked for them, but we all have our individual paths. Life happens and things have happened and we really need to respect our way. Respect our self with where we are, and also believe in the person that we’re going to be in the future.

As you so brilliantly put it about yourself, be willing to fail because that event I talked about where I made $107,000, that was my second one-day. On my first one-day I sold zero. No one bought in the room. I totally failed. Six months later, I did my second event and I had worked very hard on my presentation, my offer and everything in that period of time. When I listened to webinar gurus who teach how to present in a webinar and sell on a webinar, almost every single one of them will say, “The first time I did this, I sold nothing and then I made a little change, then I sold one, and then I made a little change.” Even the guys who are really good at selling like, “This is my system for making a gazillion dollars on the web,” usually they will tell you that they created it through trial and error.

Who are your favorite gurus? Who are the people on a personal level and on a business level that influenced your life?

My favorite online company to follow is DigitalMarketer I’m in their high-level mastermind and that’s a wonderful place to get solid core digital marketing stuff. From a more inspirational standpoint, there are two blogs that I read every single day. One is Seth Godin, who is a business writer, and a little bit of a disruptor. The other is Mike Dooley’s Notes From the Universe and that’s much more inspirational. I read a business and I read an inspirational blog every day.

Did you have people in your own personal life that pushed you forward, that were your biggest fans and supporters?

My husband is the one who taught me to be an entrepreneur because I was working as a computer programmer and I wanted to be a musician. I quit my job as a computer programmer to be a professional musician. That took a little while but I succeeded. I created a six-figure business as a musician, which was cool. That’s the business that I left to become a coach.

What kind of musician?

Celtic harp and voice.

 

You are full of surprises.

In fact, I had somebody once who was looking at me, they were looking to hire me for coaching or internet marketing or something like that. They looked at me on the web like, “You’re a musician. You do this internet marketing stuff.” I’m like, “Yes, the music stuff is ten years old, but you can’t get it off the web once it’s up there, it’s just there.”

You become like this big household name. How do you balance your personal life with your business life and how do you put yourself first?

I won’t tell you that I’m perfect at that. That’s a growth edge for me because I love what I do so much that I do tend to work at it a little more than I should. The thing is I actually don’t believe in work-life balance as an absolute. People ask me all the time, “Do you believe in doing whatever it takes?” which some people say, “Do you believe in work-life balance?” I believe that you set your life up for work-life balance and then sometimes you have to do whatever it takes. I have to get up every morning, meditate and exercise, which I do every single day. If I’m going to catch a plane at [6:00] in the morning, I don’t meditate or exercise that morning. I meditate on the plane but I don’t exercise. That’s once every two weeks I do that. I’ve set my life up to do what I want to do and sometimes that doesn’t happen. I’ve got a great story about doing whatever it takes.

When I was writing the book with Jack Canfield, Tapping Into Ultimate Success, it was December. They were about ready to be done with the edits and get it in the final phases or whatever. My editor wrote me and she’s like, “We need some fairly extensive rewrites to this and probably about 5,000 new words for the book and I need that in fourteen days, which would be fairly aggressive in any situation. I was going to a two-day mastermind, and then followed by a seven-day Tony Robbins event and then I was going to go shoot videos with Jack. My calendar for the next fourteen days was already booked completely. What do you say when Hay House says, “This is what we need?” You say, “Absolutely, no problem.”

What I did was I got up at [4:00] every morning. I did a twenty-minute meditation, a twenty-minute exercise. I hit my computer by [5:00] and I’ve got four hours of work done every day before whatever I was doing started at [9:00]. Fourteen days later, she got in her email inbox at [8:00] in the morning, the day she requested it, all the changes, all the stuff, because that’s what you do when you need to do that. People have said to me, “If I had a contract with Hay House, I’d do that too.” I said, “No, if you do that in the rest of your life, that’s what gets you the Hay House contract.”

Did you go to Business Mastery or Date With Destiny? What was it?

It was Date With Destiny.

I met my husband at Date With Destiny. To people who have never been to Date With Destiny. It’s an insane event. You wake up early and you go to bed sometimes at 1 AM or 2 AM. You probably didn’t get much sleep and you have high energy and jumping all day long. That’s extraordinary. Where is that stamina coming from?

I do believe in taking care of yourself. I eat healthily, I drink a lot of water. I drink green tea. I’m pretty fanatical about exercising. I love it. I live in the mountains and I hike. That’s my normal exercise in the morning. That’s a pretty fun exercise. If you’re going to live a lifestyle like this, you can’t abuse your body and expect it to perform.

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Do you have a big team? Do you have a few members on your team? Do you have a huge team? How does it work?

I have ten people on my team. I don’t know if you would call that small or huge. I’m building the team all the time. In fact, I’m taking on a new person or two right now. As I was talking to my coach, I believe all coaches should have a coach. Otherwise, you’re a little out of integrity. I have several coaches. I was talking to my coach and I was looking at what do I need to do to maintain my fire and my excitement about the business as I grow and that kind of thing. We were analyzing what I liked to do and it’s like, “I like to talk to smart people,” which is one of the reasons I’m enjoying this conversation. I like to talk to smart people. I don’t care if they’re a team, if they’re clients, if they’re colleagues, if they’re interviewers or something, I just want to talk to smart people. That’s one of my fun things to do in life. It’s good to know that thing because you get to set your business up around that. A lot of people look at my team and the team that I’m growing, they’re like, “I don’t want that kind of team.” I’m like, “What I want to do is talk to smart people and it makes sense for me to hire them and have them around me.”

Do you have a few VAs and then other contractors?

The ten that I talked about are all employees. I also have contractors who are my associate coaches. I have people who have successful businesses who associate coach with me in my year-long coaching and training program. Then I have ten employees, some of whom work on the Facebook and funnels side because we have a Facebook and funnels ad agency and serve clients that way and some of whom work on the coaching side.

When you hire someone, how do you find the right fit? With me in the past, I tend to fail a lot. I hired a couple of people and they seemed so perfect in the interview and they said everything I wanted to hear and they were sweet people. On a personal level, I was like, “I love them.” When they came to performing, it was one disappointment after another. The mistake I did in the beginning was to keep hiring them regardless of how many headaches they caused me and the rest of our team. What are some of your advice on finding the right person?

There’s always a strategic and a mindset part of it. The mindset part of it is being clear about what you want to ask for and not being afraid, “This person doesn’t want to do this, they won’t like it,” that kind of thing. You need to be clear and be willing to be strong about what you want. The strategic side of it is I have a four-part hiring process. I find a lot of people through job sites like Indeed and things like that. First thing I do is I call somebody in chat for ten minutes because remember, if smart people can’t have an engaging conversation with me for ten minutes when I called them out of the blue, not a good choice. All of my people have to be very articulate. Then I get them to take a test and this is a test that is specific to whatever position they’re applying for. What I tell them is, “This test will take you an hour or two hours to take and you must return it to me within 24 hours.” It’s interesting and it’s a core competence stuff like, “Show me your Facebook ads you’ve created or how would you handle this situation,” or something like that. They take a test and some people will get the test and then they’ll never return it or they’ll take 26 hours to return it instead of 24 or they’ll have misspellings in it when they return it. I’m like, “Really? Did you not proofread this?”

It’s interesting that you get information on what people answer on the test, but you get a lot of information about how people do work from seeing how they do take that test. I had one woman who just refused to take it. She’s like, “I’m very experienced in these interests if that’s not good enough for you.” I was like, “Thank you very much, but what you’ve shown me is you’re not willing to go the extra mile.” I didn’t say that to her, but I was grateful that she opted out at that stand. After the test, if the test comes back well, they interview with my entire team. Lots of people asking them questions and then I check references.

Fulfillment is usually more important than fun. Share on X

At the end of that point, I still made mistakes with that process. If you’re hiring a VA or a contractor, I would definitely try to do a per project thing like, “Let’s do a little project first and see if we like each other.” Of course with a VA or a contractor, you probably have to compensate them for that project. If I were going to do that process that I just told you with the VA or contractor, I would offer to compensate them $50 for taking the test or something like that, but at least there’s a test first.

This is a different question. We talked a lot about business mindset and we talked about some technical stuff and then we went back to mindset again. I really enjoyed this conversation. What are your three top tips to live in a stellar life?

The first one is to recognize that fulfillment is usually more important than fun. That working on something that is challenging and that has purpose and meaning behind it for you, even if that thing is getting in shape or climbing a mountain or something like that, that fulfillment is almost always more important than fun. Find a cause or find something that you’re passionate about and work towards that. The second thing is that fun is still non-negotiable. Make sure that you know what is fun for you. One of the things I failed at miserably in my life is fun. Fun is second on my list, but it is still non-negotiable because I’ve been very fun challenged. Figuring out what’s fun for me and what I like to do has been a real key to having the level of life happiness that I have now. The third thing, for me, is to surround yourself with people who light you up and call you to be your best because no matter how fulfilling or fun your life is, the relationships are key.

When people want to work with you, go to your event, get your book or hire your company for Facebook Ads, how can they reach out to you?

The best place to find me is through my website, MakeYourSuccessReal.com. I also have a separate website for funnels and Facebook, but everything will come from that main website.

I wish everyone to make their success real. I appreciate your words of wisdom and everything that you shared with us.

My pleasure, Orion. Thanks so much for having me.

Thank you.

Your Checklist of Actions to Take

✓ Let go of the four basic core limiting beliefs. According to Pamela, these are “I’m helpless, I’m not good enough, I’m not lovable or I’m not safe.” Overcome these beliefs by searching within yourself on where you feel most powerful.
✓ Be willing to fail. Being perfect shouldn’t be your goal but constantly try to see the opportunity in every situation no matter how challenging it may be.
✓ Strive to always be of service to other people. Show up with clear intention and positive energy.
✓ Be prepared with a great offer that has a great marketing message. Make sure it’s directed at your target audience.
✓ Start with a day-long workshop with an audience of at least twenty people instead of overstressing yourself with a three-day event.
✓ Set clear intentions when hiring a VA or a contractor. They can be a really great asset for your business when you know how to manage them well.
✓ Recognize that fulfillment is usually more important than fun. Find something that you’re passionate about and work towards it.
✓ Distance yourself from negative people. Empower yourself with people that encourage you and brings out the best in you.
✓ Educate yourself about EFT technique. It’s a self-administered acupressure technique that has been scientifically proven to calm the amygdala and lower the cortisol or the stress hormone levels in the bloodstream.
✓ Grab a copy of Pamela’s book Tapping Into Ultimate Success and gain knowledge about EFT.

Links and Resources

About Pamela Bruner

Pamela Bruner is a Business Coach, author, speaker, and EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) expert who helps coaches, healers and consultants to build their businesses. Pamela also heads AttractClientsOnline.com, a Facebook advertising agency supporting transformational leaders to expand their reach.