The Cheat Sheet: How to Build Your Platform and Control the Mic with Pete Vargas: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. Brought to you by the HubSpot. Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Systems Saved Me. Today, we're pulling a classic episode from the archives, and we'll be breaking down the cheat sheets, how to build your platform and control the mic. And to drop these value bombs, I am brought to Pete Vargas in the EO Fire Studios. Pete is the stage whisperer, and he's taught thousands of people how to grow their business through leveraging the power of their signature talk and stages.

0:34Pete has worked with leaders like Grant Cardone, Tony Robbins, and Damon John in Fire Nation. Today, we'll talk about how good people can win, how the foundation of any great platform is taking care of yourself, and how to be committed to building your platform to have revenue, freedom, and make a difference in this world, and oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Pete and our sponsors. DTC Pod, hosted by Ramon Berrios and Blaine Bolas, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. DTC Pod is a podcast about all things direct to consumer.

1:06Ramon and Blaine cover everything from starting, growing, and optimizing e-commerce stores in DTC brands. If you're interested in the stories behind your favorite consumer brands, this podcast is for you. One recent episode on how the best brands are built is a must listen. Listen to DTC pod wherever you get your podcasts. Pete, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Hey, Fire Nation, what's up? PV3 here. So excited to be with my man, JLD. And this was an interesting one, man. I thought about it last night. I was thinking JLD.

1:45And really, I think one of the things that people don't believe that can make you successful is that they say good guys or good women can never win. Like you can't be nice. You can't be positive. You can't be good. And it sounds like, no, they don't. But yeah, a lot of people don't think the good ones can win. And I think that's just not true, JLD. Well, brother, you are one of the good ones. I've known you for years and years and years now. We've hung out virtually. We've hung out in person, literally all over the world. And it's been a blast. And I look forward to many more of those times. And I wanted to bring Pete on Fire Nation because, I mean, he's doing this incredible platform tour, which we'll be talking more about as we get into this interview a little bit because we want to share with you, Fire Nation, how to build your platform and control your microphone in 2022 and beyond, of course.

2:42So let's just start off with the basics, Pete, because I want to know for Fire Nation what a platform is and why do I need one? Yeah, man. A platform is something that you take a stand for in this world. It's the message that you have that you are trying to get out on a bigger scale. And right now, JLD, I believe that when you control, when you have a platform like you, you control the microphone and you change your world. And right now in our world, the wrong people, and I'm not talking politics here, the wrong people are controlling the microphone. There's too many divisive, negative, fearful messages in our world.

3:24And the only way that we can change that is if we make sure that the good people, the positive people, the ones like you actually control the microphone. And the way to do that is by building your platform. Well, you're preaching to the choir, Pete, because Fire Nation are also part of the good crowd. And that's why they listen on such a consistent basis to amazing people such as yourself. But one thing I will say, knowing my audience that they love is a step-by-step process. So what are your recommended steps when it comes to building our platform? Yeah, man. I thought of something, and because we're buddies, I know you'll bounce off this with me, but I thought last night I had this insight.

4:04I said, let's give the six pillars to building a platform, but then let's go behind the scenes with JLD and see if those are actually things that allowed him to build his platform. All right. I just rolled my sleeves up. I realize I actually now have to earn my living here, so let's get to work. JLD, I think there are six pillars. If you can imagine a platform being held up by six pillars, I think there's six pillars. But I don't want to forget about the foundation. The foundation to any great platform is you taking care of you. I'm going to tell you the six pillars. I'm going to tell you the techniques, the tactics, the strategies, and all of that stuff.

4:43But if you don't take care of you, meaning your mind, your health, your relationships, your leadership. If you don't take care of you, the entire platform comes crumbling down, JLD. So the first piece before we ever get into the pillars is taking care of you, JLD. Well, I got to be honest here. There's a lot of things that my peers, yourself included, Pete, do better than me. But there are few to maybe no one of my peers, none of my peers, that really over the last couple of years have taken quite the level of a health focus that I have. I mean, I know you know this, Fire Nation doesn't as much, but I just completed my second 10-day water-only fast.

5:25I have gotten down to the lightest I have been. Not that being light is healthier, I'm saying per se, but I'm just saying that shedding the fat I've been carrying around for a couple decades that most human beings do on some levels, gotten down to the leanest I've been since I've been 17 years old, body fat percentage. And one of the most unhealthy things you can have, Fire Nation, is visceral fat around the gut, around the organs. And man, have I poofed that out. I have got nutrition dialed in. I've got my training dialed in. I've got my sleep dialed in. I've got my sauna, my cold plunge, my red light therapy.

6:02So Pete, you're preaching to the choir on this one. You know what I think? I think about people like you, and I know you've got a good friend. We got the opportunity to buy Platform University from a gentleman by the name of Michael Hyatt last November. And the thing I think about you and Michael, like something that comes in mind for me, is you take care of yourself. You take care, and you said your health, bro, but I would say your relationships, I would say the way that you grow personally and spiritually, I think your mindset, like what I see in my entrepreneur friends who aren't just having financial success, but are enjoying life, they take care of themselves bro.

6:44And so I think about you, I think about Michael Hyatt and you, you inspire me to, to continue to build that foundation. Cause without that foundation, bro, the whole platform will come crumbling down sometime JLD. Well, I got you by a couple of years, so you have plenty of time to catch up. Well, so that's the foundation, man. I'll tell you the six pillars like quickly. And then I'll let you kind of got, we can, we can see how JLD did this. The first pillar to building a platform is you have to be clear on the problem that you're – it's clarity. Clarity is the first pillar. Any great platform has clarity around the problem they're going to solve, who they're going to serve, and they're really, really crystal clear on that.

7:34If you're not clear on that, the market's not going to be clear on that. If you're not speaking in your customer language, what does the customer go to sleep wrestling around? That's the first pillar of building a platform. The second is I believe that everybody who's built incredible platforms or the majority of people who've built incredible platforms understand the power of being an incredible communicator. It's the second key thing to building a platform. You have to know how to communicate. You're about to be in front of thousands of people here in a few weeks because you know how to communicate.

8:14You're going to be in front of over 100 ,000 people, JLD, a couple hundred thousand people on this platform tour because you are a powerful communicator. And one of the things I've learned is that a lot of people take different methods to growing their platform. They might, you might do a podcast. I might do a summit. But here is a universal thing is the majority of them are all great communicators. So that's the second pillar you have to have in building a platform. The third pillar is you have to have a customer base. And the only way you have a customer base is if you have products and services that are knocking it out of the park for your customers and that you price those products and services in the right way.

9:06Most entrepreneurs undervalue their products and services and undervalue the worth that they're providing in the market. And it's a shame. And so the third piece is customers. So GLD, I'll pause there before I get into the next three, but there was clarity, communication, and customers. Three first pillars in making sure that you have a powerful platform. It's powerful stuff, and I'll quickly run through how I see that I fit in there over the years, which was number one, clarity. I identified a problem. I was clear that I was going to be the first person to do a daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs.

9:44I was clear and I understood that there was a void in that marketplace. Nobody was doing it, not even close. There wasn't even somebody in that realm. So it was a very blue ocean. And I was clear on what I was providing to my audience. And to become a great communicator, I mean, how do you become a great communicator? You put in the reps, you hone your craft. And doing a daily podcast is one of those things that allows you to become a great communicator. Customer base, that's you, Fire Nation. And of course, me offering Podcasts Paradise, the journals, the Common Path to Uncommon Success, all the other things we've done together over the years.

10:17It's all been for you by me asking you, my audience, what is your biggest struggle? And then providing the solution. So love those first three, Pete. Keep it rolling. Yeah. So those are the first three. And you just went behind the scenes with JLD there. The next three. So the first three start with the letter C. The next three start with the letter S, just if anybody's taking notes out there. But the fourth one, the fourth pillar is what I call the bucket of stages. And if you've ever heard me, I was on the podcast before. That's what I jammed on. I jammed on stages. I'm such a big believer in stages.

10:54And there's two types of stages that you can really be active in in building your platform. You can have your own stage, which we'll sure talk about that here in a second. Or you can actually start by leveraging other people's stages. It's a powerful thing. I think of somebody like JLD. I think about the invitation that he gave me four years ago to be on this podcast when nobody knew who I was. Well, I know this man has invested hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, his time, his resources, his team into building his own stage. The power of what I really encourage a lot of people to be thinking about is when you can leverage somebody else's OPS, it's like leveraging OPM.

11:43OPM means other people's money. And so I really believe that people have to get clear on building one of their own stages at a time, one at a time. I see some of the greats go dominate one of their own stages at a time, but simultaneously make sure that you're leveraging other people's stages. It is the most powerful thing to position you. The pro to own your own stages, you are the owner of it. Nobody else can take Entrepreneur on Fire away from JLD. The pro to other people's stages is you get to leverage all of the money and time that they've spent in building their stage. So that's pillar number four.

12:31Pillar number five, it's one of the ones that I've been most passionate about since COVID hit our world. And I believe that every entrepreneur needs to be married to Sam. Now, listen, on a professional basis, JLD, on a personal basis, I'm married to Kim. You've met Kim 20 years of marriage this year. I love her with my whole heart. But my professional wife is Sam. And the number one reason I believe why entrepreneurs fail is because they're not married to Sam. Who's Sam? Sales and marketing. sales and marketing you can treat sam like a woman you can treat treat sam like a man i don't care but what i do care about is the path to being married to sam is by making sure that in your business you have when you get one sales and marketing strategy that is consistently producing revenues for you.

13:35You begin to date Sam and you're like, wow, this is cool. When you get a second sales and marketing strategy in your business, it's like being engaged to Sam. And so my challenge to Fire Nation is how do you get married? You have three predictable sales and marketing strategies that are driving your business. I want people to fall in love with Sam. And so that's the fifth pillar, JLD, is I think a lot of people miss out on sales and marketing. They're afraid of it. And what I would say is it does not have to be that difficult. And then the sixth and final pillar is what we call scale, the scale pillar.

14:21This is really where your team and your processes and your planning all come into play. Like we believe that great entrepreneurs plan. JLD is an incredible planner. We believe great entrepreneurs have process. Man, the process for being a guest on Entrepreneur on Fire is so tight and so clean and so easy and it's so efficient for JLD. hey, great entrepreneurs, even getting started, have process. And really, you don't have to be a company that has to have hundreds of employees. Or as of last check, I had 60 employees. We just found out for the third consecutive year, we're on the Inc. 5000. You don't have to have that.

15:10But I believe you have to have people that give you back your time. And I call that your dream team. It could be one executive assistant. It could be one part-time person. It could be one sales rep. But I believe team is a key part to allowing you to scale your platform. So JLD, stages, SAM, and scale, my friend. Stages, SAM, and scale. I love the stages part. And I love how you really made a point to talk about one at a time. Please, Fire Nation, one at a time, dominate it and then OPS other people's stages. I dispense all day yesterday, my one day per month that I have being on 20 other stages.

15:54They were 15 minute podcasts, interviews on other people's stages, their shows, their clubhouse, their Instagram live, whatever their biggest stages. They got 15 minutes of my time and I got to be on their stage. And again, Sam sales and marketing make it happen, and then scale with that dream team all the way to our break for our sponsors. And we have a lot coming up, Fire Nation, when we get back from thanking those sponsors. Marketers have never been spread so thin. Trust me, I feel it too. Between creating content, launching campaigns, generating leads, nurturing your prospects, and more, you barely have a second to breathe, let alone do your best marketing.

16:35But I've got some great news. There's a better way to do things, and it's with the help of HubSpot and Breeze, its new built-in AI. When you combine the power of HubSpot's marketing hub and content hub, you can have your best quarter every quarter. No more guessing what's working and what's not, and no more switching between multiple platforms just to manage your workload. HubSpot's Breeze helps you instantly remix your content, gives you lead scoring to shine a light on your best potential customers, and an AI-curated analytics suite for reports and KPIs. Add this to co-pilots and agents to automate your tasks, and you've got yourself one powerful platform, making your life easier, getting your results faster, and better connecting you to all your data all in one place.

17:15Stop spreading yourself thin and start making major moves with HubSpot. Visit hubspot.com slash marketers to learn more. Pete, we're back, and man, we talked about a lot. I mean, we went through the six pillars. We went through kind of a little behind the scene of how I've been implementing a lot of those six pillars in my business for almost a decade now. Let's talk about the building of the platform. What exactly will building our platform do for our business? We talked about these six pillars. And if we implement this, it's obviously hard work, which we're all willing and able to do. But what should we expect as a result?

17:55more customers, more revenues, a bigger following. And quite frankly, the greatest one that I believe you've provided to the world, and I believe Fire Nation does too, is impact. You change people's lives, man. When you have a mindset of building a platform that's going to be counterintuitive to the people who are controlling the microphone now, you are going to literally change your world. So it's going to give – and the thing that it's going to give you is a lot of freedom, man, a lot of freedom. You have freedom. I have freedom. I was just out. I was just out of work for two and a half, three weeks because of COVID.

18:36And I literally could do nothing. And I came back, and I'm like, man, I'm so grateful that I could – my team could send a couple of emails while I was gone or I had a following or I had things that could happen. And so, I mean, it gives you a significant amount of freedom when you build that platform, JLD. I love those two words. I love the word impact because I know, Fire Nation, that's your platform you want to be using to impact. Impacting in your passion, your area of expertise, the value, knowledge, skills that you have to give to the world, the impact that you have to give to this world.

19:11I love using the word ripple effect about how an interview that Pete and I did four years ago, like literally right now is being listened to by somebody. And that person is being impacted by that interview we did four years ago. And they're going to go off and make impact of their own. And that second, third, fourth degree of separation, I mean, that is just so inspiring to me. And yes, of course, freedom, freedom, freedom, and such a key word there. Now, one thing that you've been able to pull off is throw amazing events, literally just amazing events. You've also been able to figure out how to do both in person and virtual events the right way.

19:53I want to take the rest of our time that we have today here and talk about the platform tour because I really feel like this is what you're gifting to Fire Nation. You're gifting to everybody who's going to attend and be a part of this platform tour. You're going to be gifting them the practical next steps of doing everything that we've been talking about here today. So what the heck is the platform tour all about? Who is this JLD guy that's speaking on it? And what do you have to say about that? Yeah, man, I'm excited about the platform tour. You know, we had this intention of, I mentioned to you last year that we bought Platform University.

20:34We bought that intentionally because we believe that we are committed to helping a million entrepreneurs build their platforms. But in order to build their platforms, they have to really understand these six pillars and do these six pillars well, and ultimately make sure that they're taking care of themselves. And I agree with you, you are one of the people out in my friend group that does that better than anybody else, which is why I believe you have such a sustainable and solid platform. And so what we had the intention of doing is we were set up, We were ready to be in eight cities in like 10 days, starting in New York, ending in California.

21:15And we had 40 or 50 of the most powerful people that went deeper into these six pillars, whether it be on podcasting with JLD or so many other things within these six pillars. We were set. We were ready. We were going to do something that nobody has ever done. JLDs start in New York and, you know, we're going to end in LA and A-list celebrities in every city, iconic places in every city. And unfortunately, because of everything that's going on in the world right now with the Delta, with COVID and with just so many restrictions, we are now going to make this entire event completely virtual, 100 % virtual where people can tune in from their home every single day.

22:03I believe it's somewhere between five to ten million dollars of speaker fees that this would cost the, you know, Fire Nation if they were trying to bring them all in on their own. And literally we're committed in seven days to making sure that the six areas, the six pillars, and the foundation that we go deep into all of those seven so Fire Nation can build the most profitable, purpose-driven platforms from that tour for the rest of their careers, JLD. Wow. I mean, Fire Nation, if you aren't having your pulse cricking a little bit about being a part of something like this, then check your pulse because this is why you listen to the show.

22:47This is why you get amazing opportunities just like this. If you want to learn more about everything we have going on over at The Platform Tour, check out theplatformtour.com slash fire. theplatformtour.com slash fire. So Pete, I want to give you the keys to this interview right here so you can close the door, lock up after yourself. What do you want Fire Nation to really walk away with from our entire conversation today? Anything else you want to share about The Platform Tour, please do so now and then we'll say goodbye. First off, I think you are an incredible demonstration of someone who's built a platform, making purpose, making profit, and actually doing it the way you want to do it.

23:34That's the beautiful thing about platform is as you build your platform, you can build it the way that you can design it the way that you want to design it. But I think the biggest thing that I would say, JLD, and this resonated last night, you've been a part of our major speak-offs that we do. It's kind of like the American Idol of speaking. And we had a regional one that just finished last night, and it just resonated with our audience. I said, listen, I want you to be committed to building your platform because I want you to make a lot of money. I want you to have freedom. I want you to be able to make a big impact in this world.

24:10But here's the biggest thing that's at stake is literally, and I said it at the beginning, we need new people controlling the microphone. We need more JLDs controlling the microphone. Imagine if Fire Nation could control the microphone on the scale or even on a portion of the scale that JLD controls the microphone. We would change our worlds. And so JLD, like I hope Fire Nation will leave here being committed to building their platforms because when they do that. They control the microphones, and they change their world, man. It's time, Fire Nation. It is time to be a part of changing this world together.

24:52Join myself, join Pete in changing the world. Join us on The Platform Tour. Learn more about how you can be a part of this, theplatformtour.com slash fire, theplatformtour.com slash fire, because you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with PV3 and JLD today, So keep up that heat and head over to eofire.com. Type Pete, P-E-T-E in the search bar. The show notes page will pop up with everything we talked about here today. Plus, why not go in a little Pete Vargas Bender? Go listen to the episode from four years ago, from a little while ago when we did one earlier this year.

25:30All great episodes. Listen to them. It's fantastico, as we would say down here in Puerto Rico. But of course, your direct call to action is theplatformtour.com slash fire. Go learn more. Come join us. Come make an impact. Come grab your freedom. Pete, thank you for joining us today, sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value bombs with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Hey, Fire Nation. Today's value bomb content was brought to you by Pete and Fire Nation. If you ever want to create a little bit of a platform using a podcast, check out freepodcastcourse.com where I teach you how to create and launch your very own podcast for free.

26:15That's freepodcastcourse.com. I'll catch you there or I'll catch you on the flip side. DTC Pod, hosted by Ramon Berrios and Blaine Bolas, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. DTC Pod is a podcast about all things direct to consumer. Ramon and Blaine cover everything from starting, growing, and optimizing e-commerce stores in DTC brands. If you're interested in the stories behind your favorite consumer brands, this podcast is for you. One recent episode on how the best brands are built is a must listen. Listen to DTC Pod wherever you get your podcasts.