What Matters Matters Most with Wendy Lipton-Dibner

0:02John Lee Dumas:Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation? JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by High Level, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. Today we'll be breaking down what matters, matters most. To drop these value bombs, I brought to Wendy Lipton-Dibner and the EO Fire Studios. Wendy is an international best-selling author, organizational strategist, and serial entrepreneur. She helps leaders build unprecedented results by providing proof of real-world impact of their products and services. And today, our foundation will focus on the first step an entrepreneur should take to make money.

0:34John Lee Dumas:We'll talk about capitalizing on today's uncertain economic activity and also how to know if AI is right for your business and to owe so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Wendy and our sponsors. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world. Start your business today with the industry's best business partner, Shopify, and start hearing. Sign up for your$1 per month trial today at shopify.com slash onfire. Go to shopify.com slash onfire. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies?

1:13John Lee Dumas:Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white-label your own software. Say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today. Wendy, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

1:38Wendy Lipton-Dibner:Hey, Fire Nation. I am so pumped to be back with you today. And there is no doubt the biggest myth out there from my perspective is when you put money first. The bottom line is when you focus on impact, the money comes.

1:52John Lee Dumas:And Fire Nation, what matters, matters most. That's our focus for today. Because if we're being honest, money is the fuel that allows us to continue to both run and grow our business. And that's what we're looking to do, Fire Nation. We're looking to do those two things. So Winnie, what the heck is the first step an entrepreneur should do to make some money?

2:10Wendy Lipton-Dibner:I love this question. You know, you and I talked about it. Now we just realized a decade ago. So this is the first time that we are going to talk about this in this decade. What do you think about that? Bottom line, it's more than ever. When our top priority is to make money, the first step we need to do is stop thinking about what we need and focus on what others need. I mean, we all need money, but so do the people we want to serve. So instead of focusing on our problems, we need to solve their problems. And when we do that effectively, our money problems disappear. I've proven it time and again, JD, in every industry from technology to thought leadership and healthcare to hair care.

2:53Wendy Lipton-Dibner:When entrepreneurs make impact their top priority, they increase revenue an average of 200%, percent, typically in fewer than 30 days. I remember sending you a focus on impact certificate 10 years ago, as a matter of fact, and we're still celebrating your impact today and look at what you're doing. So focus on impact, everyone. When you focus on impact, the money will come.

3:16John Lee Dumas:I got that certificate in San Diego. I packed it up. I took it with me to Puerto Rico because Fire Nation, I could not agree more with what Wendy is sharing here today. And one thing that we both know, and you know it's Who Fire Nation. I mean, we live in uncertain times, but the reality is that's always the case in the present moment. So everybody's going to always be living in uncertain times. That's just the definition of being a human being. But I want to talk about how we can capitalize on today's economic uncertainty.

3:44Wendy Lipton-Dibner:Okay. So you're absolutely right on with this, J.D.E. Economic uncertainty is always here or just around the corner. And I've found economic uncertainty presents tremendous opportunity for entrepreneurs, not in spite of the economy, but because of it. So we know that in economic uncertainty, people become more uncertain about spending money, particularly on products and services that are new to them or that they consider non-essential, right, for their business or their life. So in times of uncertainty and even in strong economic climates, the best thing we can do is help people feel safe by enabling them to see the value of our offerings.

4:27Wendy Lipton-Dibner:And, you know, we hear that word value all the time. In my perspective, value is not what our product or service does. It's what happens after people use our products or services. What happens next adds tremendous value to everything we offer. It's the classic pebble in a pond. You toss a pebble in a pond and the impact of your pebble creates ripples in the water. Your product or service is a pebble. And when you throw it into someone's pond, an impact ripple appears. That impact ripple is the planned benefit of your product or service. If you have multiple benefits, then multiple impact ripples will appear in the pond.

5:07Wendy Lipton-Dibner:The key is to measure and market your impact ripples and all the ripples that come after it. That's when you can seriously maximize and capitalize on what really matters to people. Remember, five-star ratings and reviews are great, but what really matters in economic uncertainty is proof. Proof of the immediate, ongoing, and long-term impact ripples of your products and services. you are a pebble in the pond of every life you touch. That's what really matters, especially in times of economic uncertainty. What matters, matters most.

5:46John Lee Dumas:I love the ripple effect. So thank you for really going into that. It's such a powerful thing to think about. And the reality is this, a lot of entrepreneurs, when they're faced with uncertain times, with uncertainty in general, they scale back. They scale back on marketing. They lay off their employees. They kind of freak out a little bit. Is that the best solution, Wendy?

6:06Wendy Lipton-Dibner:So freaking out is never a good solution, but it always leads to a good solution. Freaking out is certainly a solution, let's face it. But in my opinion, it's the worst solution. In my experience, the best solution in the face of uncertainty is to provide certainty. Certainty for your team that what they do really matters. Certainty for your market that what they need really matters. certainty that the ongoing benefits of your products and services really matter. Certainty comes when we provide proof, proof of the real world impact people are receiving from you, from your team, from your products and your services, especially from you because you're the connection.

6:50Wendy Lipton-Dibner:Bottom line, in terms of uncertainty, provide certainty with proof that everything you do makes a measurable difference in people's lives. And that proof comes when you measure and market your impact ripples.

7:05John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, are you measuring and marketing, keyword, your impact ripples? Kind of a good thing to think about as you're going about your day today. And we have a lot more to talk about around this topic and more when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Fire Nation, how many different systems does your business rely on just to operate day-to-day? your CRM, accounting software, HR tools, spreadsheets, exports, endless back and forth, just to get one clear answer. It adds up fast in time, cost, and frustration. That's where Scalar comes in. Scalar helps you unify all your business data systems into one intelligent operating system, giving you full visibility across your organization.

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10:39John Lee Dumas:So visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial and see why thousands of businesses are switching. That's highlevelfire.com, where marketing, sales, and automation finally come together. High level, join the revolution. Wendy, we're back and you encourage entrepreneurs to prove the real world impact of their products and their services. What do you mean by that? What do you mean by real world impact and how the heck do we prove something like that? JD, that's my absolute favorite question these days. So thanks for asking.

11:15Wendy Lipton-Dibner:Real world impact is what happens after people not buy, but use your product or service and receive your plan benefits. It's the ongoing stream of differences, results, outcomes, changes, events, and experiences that occur over time as the result of experiencing your benefits, your impact ripples. And the longer people use your product or service, the more real world impact they'll receive and the more they'll tell all their friends and come back for more. And it happens as soon as you begin to prove your real world impact. So proving your real world impact goes way beyond asking for stars or reviews.

11:54Wendy Lipton-Dibner:It comes when we ask people to identify, celebrate and share every impact ripple that appears in multiple areas of their life over time. For years, I've had my clients track their real world impact through surveys and interviews. And while many of my clients did that, it took a lot of time. So JB, I'm really thrilled to announce that for the first time on your show, we can make it happen with tech. And we can talk about that later. But here's the bottom line. When you focus on creating proof of the real world impact of your products and services, that will far surpass traditional ratings and reviews.

12:34Wendy Lipton-Dibner:And as you can imagine, JB, that's what we all want, right? We want people to love what we give them and use it and share it with everyone they know. That's what Real World Impact Proof does for you.

12:48John Lee Dumas:And Fire Nation, I mean, it's an exciting metric to track as well because I mean, how would it not feel good, great in fact, to be tracking that, to be seeing the impact that you're making, to be really just understanding the value that you're bringing to this world. I mean, that's what it's all about. So it's exciting when we really take a step back, sit down and say, this is a meaningful thing that I'm going to track. Now I'm going to be intentional about doing just that. Now, it seems like everyone, Wendy, is jumping into AI right now. And I'm just curious, what is your advice about how to know if AI is right for our specific business?

13:26John Lee Dumas:Yeah, JD, AI is a ton of fun

13:28Wendy Lipton-Dibner:and it presents a lot of opportunity. It's not necessarily right for everyone. It depends on what we use it for. The real question, I think, is should we infuse AI into our business as a tool or as a feature in our products and services? I believe the way to know that is to incorporate AI into our business only when we want to be sure that it's featuring us. So here's what I mean by that. How much of you do you want in your business? Do you want to use AI to incorporate what other people think and believe? Or do you want to teach a machine to think and behave the way you think and behave? I wanted to use AI to help people learn how to think about real world impact.

14:23Wendy Lipton-Dibner:So I'm using it in a new app because I want to learn what we are learning about real world impact as we as we measure it and prove it. But I didn't go so far as to risk that AI would begin incorporating things that don't fit for my business. So for me, AI is not about making our lives easier, although it certainly does. But if you're considering infusing AI into your products or services, I suggest you just ask yourself one simple question. Do I want my unique impact to be the foundation of my business? If that's important to you, then my advice is don't incorporate AI into your business until you're absolutely clear about how to efficiently and effectively infuse your unique impact into everything you do.

15:18Wendy Lipton-Dibner:Then teach the machine how you think so it can maximize your unique impact. that's when you'll be able to confidently and enthusiastically use AI, infuse it into everything you do because it will be based on you, on your thinking, your experience, your expertise, and your personality, not some random folks in cyberspace.

15:39John Lee Dumas:Wendy, you invented something no one has ever done. I mean, ever. You actually wrote a book about it then and you even built an app for it and you did it all in one flipping year. what would you tell fire nation about this process?

15:55Wendy Lipton-Dibner:It is pretty exciting actually. All right. So here's, here's the bottom line about everything. I won't say the journey has been easy, but it has been the passion project of my life. So I'm going to go through five steps that I took that I think anybody can take. Here's how it went. Step number one, find a problem that moves you to tears. A little over a year ago, I woke up at two o 'clock in the morning. I couldn't get back to sleep. So I did what any sane entrepreneur would do. I picked up my phone, hid under the cover so I wouldn't wake my husband and started scrolling social platforms. Nothing looked interesting until I saw a post about a guy who hated his job.

16:37Wendy Lipton-Dibner:This thread described all the reasons. I mean, he did not all back. He hated his job. He was going to quit. This was wrong. That was wrong. It attracted hundreds of people to reply. all posting, I hate my job too, me too. I was hooked. I went down the rabbit hole and discovered complaints about things I didn't even think to think about. Everything from management to wages to freedom to benefits. But no matter the reason, everyone said, I hate my job. I'm going to quit. It was depressing as hell. And I was about to just, you know, go search for puppy photos when I saw a post deep in the replies that said, you know, I wouldn't mind my crappy job if I knew I was making some kind of difference.

17:23Wendy Lipton-Dibner:That one post had over 300 ,000 likes and thousands of replies saying things like, I want work that has meaning. I want to make a difference. That one really got to me. The worst one, I think it brought me to tears was someone who wrote, if I have to risk my life in this job. I just want to know that what I'm doing matters. And that's when it hit me. Employees are desperately searching for jobs where they can make an impact. So while consultants and books are suggesting all kinds of solutions like, you know, coaching and culture change activities and team building retreats and motivational seminars and edits to mission statements and full disclosure, I've done that a lot for my clients in the past.

18:10Wendy Lipton-Dibner:The bottom line is disengagement persists because we're missing a critical component to employee engagement. Employees need proof of the real world impact they make in people's lives. So step one, bottom line for you, listen to the problems real people are talking about and keep listening until you hear a problem that moves you to tears. Trust your tears. They will guide you directly to the problem and inspire the ideal idea for your unique impact. Don't stop till you find it. To paraphrase what G.J.D. wrote in his amazing book, never settle for a life that lacks fulfillment and happiness, especially in entrepreneurship.

18:56Wendy Lipton-Dibner:So step two, remember what you forgot. I learned statistical analysis and social research, crying all the way through it, and then published a study that led to my first job. This is back in the days at Duke. I developed and managed dozens of evaluation research studies in healthcare and education, nonprofit and for-profit organizations. And while I was going through all of these posts, I suddenly remembered what I had long forgotten. I needed to research this problem. Just seeing in social media doesn't make it true. I did a deep dive and there it was, pages and pages and pages of studies and articles all about employee disengagement.

19:37Wendy Lipton-Dibner:I learned this problem has been around for years, impacting hundreds of millions of people worldwide and costing the global economy an estimated, get this, J.D., 8.9 trillion U.S. dollars. And it's growing every day. My research also revealed disengagement is growing among consumers. So pay attention to this, Fire Nation. Customers are disengaging from their favorite shopping places, their favorite products, their favorite services. as patients are disengaging from doctors because they don't like the care they're getting and what they have to pay for it. Disengagement is happening everywhere and no one has fully solved the problem.

20:15Wendy Lipton-Dibner:So the bottom line for you on this one is think back to things you learned long ago until you remember something you forgot. Use that to find a problem that fits your unique impact and never underestimate the power of your impact. The next one, step three, ask yourself my favorite question. If money was no object and you were driven to make an impact, what would you do to solve the problem? I've spent my entire career helping entrepreneurs and executives and doctors and their teams significantly increase revenue by making an impact on every life they touch and measuring that impact with surveys and interviews so they could use the data to increase employee, customer, and patient engagement.

21:01Wendy Lipton-Dibner:But today, A, leaders don't have time for seminars and speaking engagements and retreats. So I asked myself my favorite question, if money were no object, how could I solve this problem in a way that leaders could build impassioned engagement and unrivaled loyalty and boundless growth in only five minutes a week with no extra work for them or their teams? The answer came to me immediately. I needed to build a tech product, right? something that would fully engage everyone in a fun and enticing and rewarding app that would capture, measure, analyze, and report ongoing long-term proof of the real world impact of their products and services.

21:41Wendy Lipton-Dibner:So of course, money is always an object. So I called a few friends and colleagues and described my idea. And three days later, I had an equity partner, a dedicated tech team, a publisher, and an editor for the associated book, Two former clients just jumping right in and another 20 clients and colleagues wanting to help. And a physician who asked to be my first client for a pilot study at his hospital. Wow. On fire. So the next step, the bottom line of that step first, let me give you that. Focus on impact. I mean, that's the bottom line. Explain your vision well and get what's missing from the people you know and from the people they know.

22:19Wendy Lipton-Dibner:All right, step four, design your idea to do everything you want, fully engage your team, and don't take no for an answer. When I first met my new tech team, they told me we were only going to build a small little beta app. Of course, I had other plans. So I explained everything about my vision for the tech that I wanted. My team was highly accomplished and they had never heard of an app like this because there's never been one. So by the end of our first meeting, they were fully on board and frankly, really emotionally involved in the project because for the first time in their career, they all realized that my impact was going to be their impact.