In this episode, I interviewed my good friend Bob Circosta. Bob was the world’s first Live TV Shopping Host over 40 years ago, and he helped create the whole industry which now includes HSN, QVC and many other U.S. and international Live TV Shopping channels. Bob shares the story of the first product ever pitched, back when HSN was a radio station that launched a show called the International Suncoast Bargaineers Club.
It’s a fascinating story, but Bob also weaves in some great advice for entrepreneurs and business owners based on his more than 25,000 hours pitching products on live TV and over 75,000 unique product presentations. Among other things, in this episode you’ll learn:
•How to pitch your product or service
•How to get distribution to market your business
•The secrets to effective selling, even if you “hate selling”
•How to stay motivated in the face of trials as you grow your business
Even after helping thousands of business owners, Bob is still very active in helping entrepreneurs and inventors get their products launched on HSN, on Canada’s “The Shopping Channel,” and by hosting product videos for digital marketing on Facebook and Instagram. You can learn more about Bob Circosta at BobCircosta.com, and if you’d like to learn about working with Bob or attending one of his live Bootcamps, please reach out to Info@HarvestGrowth.com.
This podcast is hosted by Jon LaClare, founder and CEO of Harvest Growth. To learn more about Harvest Growth and how they can help you “harvest the growth potential of your business”, please visit HarvestGrowth.com.
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Jon: Welcome to another episode of the Harvest Growth podcast focused on helping consumer product companies, inventors and entrepreneurs harvest the growth potential of their product businesses by teaching cutting edge marketing strategies and interviewing successful marketers, as well as product marketing experts that share their stories to inspire you to achieve hypergrowth for your own business. I'm your host, Jon LaClare, Founder and CEO of Harvest Growth, and I believe that if you want to make your product the next household name, you just need to follow the right plan and that even the best products struggle to succeed when they step away from proven strategies that work. And I believe that you can grow profitably, which means you don't need to be a fortune 500 company or have access to venture capital in order to grow your business. If you'd like to learn more about what we call the perfect launch process for marketing products, check out HarvestGrowth.com and if you still have questions on how you can implement this process for your business, you'll see a link on our homepage to set up a free consultation with one of our product launch specialists today.
Jon: I'm excited to have with me my good friend Bob Circosta. Now Bob is the original TV shopping host. He's literally the world's first live host on TV. Even back before HSN or QVC existed, it was a radio station and I'll let him tell his detailed story on that, but it's amazing what he's done in the last number of decades, frankly, that he's been on TV, radio before that as well and had great success with over 25,000 hours on live TV pitching over at 75,000 individual product presentations on HSN and other networks as well. It's an amazing track record that frankly, probably nobody will ever come close to and frankly because he's the original pitch man from TV, it's going to be hard to catch up and really nobody ever could to the amazing Bob Circosta. And Bob has been a good friend of mine for many years.We've, we've done several live events together. We've produced dozens and dozens of videos together, and I would say more importantly, we've created a great friendship between the two of us over the last 15 years, Bob, I think.
Bob: Yeah. That's probably, maybe even a little bit more than that, Jon. Yeah, it's amazing how time flies, isn't it?
Jon: Hey, thanks. Thanks for joining today. What I'd love to start with is no one tells your story, I tried to give a little bit of an introduction, but no one tells your story better than you. Can you just tell us your background, how it all began and what you've been doing since.
Bob: Well, yeah, I'd be more than happy to. First of all, it's always a pleasure to be with you and you're so right. I mean I value our friendship over the years or the working relationship we had or have in our personal relationship as well, friendships. So I'm always a pleasure to be with you. You are, you are the best. There's no question on that.
Um, but yeah, you know many people were surprised to find out because we're all familiar with, with TV shopping now then how did it really start? And I was there so I can tell you the real story, how it really began and many people are surprised to find out that it started, believe it or not, on radio, very small radio station in Clearwater, Florida. In fact, it was called WWQT 1470 on your AMD. I'll never forget that. And it was a, a news-talk formatted radio station and it had nothing to do with, with selling merchandise at all. It was a talk show and I hosted a talk show every day from noon until three and we did on my talk show what they do on all talk shows. We talked about politics, we talked about what was happening in the world, the issues of the day, nothing to do with selling merchandise. However, you need to keep in mind. One thing, this was possibly the world's worst radio station. It was awful. I mean, I don't know how many listeners we had, but I'm sure you can count them all on one hand. Yeah it was just, you know, but anyhow, so I'm doing this talk show, talking to the same three people probably every day. And in order to stay on the air, as anybody in radio knows you, you have to sell advertising. And so the owner of the radio station, a gentleman by the name of Bud, he would go around town and you would go into business after business, and try to sell advertising something that very few people wanted on this radio station but he sold a few here and there and one day, all true, he sold a 13 week advertising contract to an appliance store.
And as a matter of fact, the appliance stores still operating today on Greenwood Avenue in Clearwater, Florida. And so for 13 weeks on my talk show, I advertise the appliance store and I told people to go in and told them about their sales and all of that, which you would normally do, ran the commercials. At the end of the cycle Bud went back in to the appliance store to A) renew the contract and B) to get paid. And he walked in and he met the owner of the appliance store and the owner said, “What are you doing here Bud?” And Bud said, “Well, you know, I want to renew our contract.” And the owners said, “Wait, wait a minute, renew? Renew what?” And then he said, “Not one person has come in here”. And even said, they heard my commercial. He said, “You truly do have possibly the world's worst radio station.”
And they went on and on and finally the owner said, “I'm not going to pay you for the advertising because I didn't get the return.” And Bud said, “Wait a minute, that's not how this works.” And they went back and forth. It’s crazy. And finally, the guy who owned the appliance store said, “I tell you what I'll do instead of paying you in cash, I had a big shipment come in a couple of hours ago” and looked back by the door and a huge box of merchandise. “So in lieu of paying you cash, take the box in merchandise.” Bud, by this time was so frustrated, I think he felt better he was leaving with something. He had no idea what, but he was leaving with something. So he took the boxer merchandise and he got in the car and drove back to the radio station. Now meanwhile, I'm on the radio and I'm doing my talk show and every hour of my talk show they had the little news break where they would do the local news and do the local weather.
So I would take a break, have a cup of coffee, and I'm sitting in this little booth all by myself, not bothering anybody, by the way. And I'm sitting there and the door opened up and in walked Bud. Now Bud was about six foot eight. So when he came in a room, you knew he was in that room. And so he walked in this little booth and he's holding in his hands and electric can opener. Now this was 1977 so this was an avocado green, ugly, electric can opener. And he looked at me and he said, “Bob, when you come out of the news, I want you to sell this can opener.” And I looked at him like he had three heads. I said, “You want me to do what?” He said, “I want you to sell this.” I said, “Sell?” I remember saying to him, “Wait a minute. I'm a news man. You know I have morals and I have ethics. I, I don't want to sell something.” And then he proceeded to explain to me the relationship between me selling the can opener and me getting a check and instantly that can opener looked pretty good. And so I came on back on the air out of the news and I said, “Folks, we'll get back to our topic in just a moment, but you'll never believe what happened during the break.” And I recounted the story and I started describing the can opener and I said, “If you call me up, you call me up right now, reserve a can opener, come on down to the radio station, pay for it, it's yours.” And pretty soon you know, the lights on the phone, they started to light up. In fact, I didn't know what those lights were because nobody had ever called me before on this couple.
And the interesting thing is that day Jon, it was August 28th, 1977, we sold 112 electric can openers. And that was the beginning of what we now know as the home shopping industry. That's how it all started. Bud was a great marketing guy, a great visionary, and he said, “Wait a minute, I made more money from selling those canned openers than I would have from selling the advertising.” So we started every day at two o'clock on my talk show, we stopped the talk show and we had what we called a product spotlight. And Bud would go out and he would get products from different merchants or he would get certificates from restaurants and things like that. In fact, a very similar to what Groupon is doing today. We were going back in 1977, 40 or 42 years ago or something. Uh, so, so the, the program went from a five-minute segment to 15 to 30 and pretty soon that's all we were doing on the radio.
And we did that, believe it or not, for five years until 1982 and many people ask me well, you know, “How could you, how could you do this on the radio?” And, and the obvious answer is, but we didn't know any better at the time, so we had nothing to compare it to. And then in 1982 they wired this particular county here in Florida, they wired it for cable. And at that time, cable only had to do with perfecting your reception. It had nothing to do with programming. So they had all these channels and we went it, cause obviously we thought, wait a minute, if you could see what we're talking about, that's gotta be better. So we went into the local cable company Vision Cable and we leased the channel. And uh, that was the birth of the Home Shopping Channel and so that was still local, just in Clearwater and then in 1985 it went nationwide coast to coast. And as they say, the rest is history. By the way, the name of what we called ourselves on the radio was the, the International Suncoast Bargaineers Club. That was the name of it when we were just on international. Are you, I mean, on a windy day, the signal went around the block. But that's the way it was. So it was international Sun Coast Bargaineers Club, then it went to Home Shopping Channel, then it went to a Home Shopping Club. When we started nationwide in 85 and then it went to Home Shopping Network, and now today it's HSN. And so that's where it all started Jon, with the sale of 112, electric can openers. Who would have ever thought it! Now home shopping is in every country in the world and never did I think it would make that transition over the past 42 years.
Jon: It's an amazing history. Thanks for sharing that story. It's so fun. Yeah, I think we take it for granted. You know, those of us that have seen it on TV and haven't experienced or heard this story in detail like that before. We really take it for granted where it all began and it's really fascinating of course from somebody who was there since day one. So thanks for sharing that story.
Bob: My pleasure. I always like to share because I, I truly think it's an entrepreneurial story that a lot of people can be because we didn't sit around a table and say, you know, let's come up with an idea to do this. Basically we were just trying to meet payroll. That's what we were trying to tell. We were trying to solve a problem. And I think that's what a lot of entrepreneurs need to look at when they're starting their business and starting whatever they're into is what kind of a problem are they solving. I mean I think that's a fair amount of importance.
Jon: Well, and since that day, so since those avocado green can openers.
Bob: I have any more, I don't have any returns.
Jon: But since then, you know, as I mentioned before, you sold quite a few products with 75,000 individual pitches, but many of these have become multimillion dollar products as well. Can you share a couple of examples of some of the biggest successes that you've been able to be part of?
Bob: Well, I'm very proud to say that I still have the uh, the longest running product in the history of TV shopping and it is a water filter, that I have a presented over the year for the past, I think 35 years or something like that. And it's in different versions it’s been offered over that course of time. But it's still around today and the Clean and Pure water filter, which is the only water filter in the world that you never have to replace a filter. So you save a tremendous amount of money because you don't have to keep going back to the store. And it replacing filters because that adds up. And the water filter, as I said, has different versions. So it lasts certain periods of time. We started with just a hundred, I think 50 gallons and then went to a hundred gallons in 150 gap. And now today it's up to 40,000 gallons. In other words, you use the water filter and you never have to replace the filter for 40,000 gallons or 40 years. And in my case, that's going to take me all the way I'm sure, but a of, so that, that is an incredible product that has been on the air, as I said, 35 or something years. Um, and, and I did a, when I was a host on home shopping and then continued after I left home shopping, I continued guesting the item. As far as other items there, there are so many. But, I'm glad you brought it up cause that's a good point. You know, you can't get emotionally attached to any product and that's one of the challenges I think entrepreneurs face and product owners face is that they think what they have is the best. And it could be, I'm not saying it isn't, it could be, but if you come from that vantage point and you become so emotionally attached to a product, uh, you're going to have some challenges along the way because you have to know when to move on. You have to know when the cycle hits. And uh, and home shopping has had a lot of cycled type products that are very, very good for six months, eight months, a year. I mean the water filters certainly not, you know, it is the exception. There's no question cause no other product has ever lasted 35 years in this business. But I think it's a lesson to learn and is that you can't get so close to your product, does that no matter what, you have to read the tea leaves, you've got to read the signs along the way and know when to move on. But health items, beauty items, and the TV shopping business, beauty items do extremely well. Problem solving items because that's what's key problems sign. I keep coming back to that because I ask entrepreneurs on all the time, you know, inventors, entrepreneurs are coming to me and saying, “Hey, I've got this idea”, or, you know, “What do you think?” And everything. And one of the first questions I ask is, what problem are you solving? And that's what you've got to think of, you know, and people also, the thing, you know, I gotta come up with something. I got to come up with a, you know, a product or something out there. Think about problems and solving those problems. And then you will be well on your way, but there's a myriad of product categories. You know, also another point is that at the beginning of the home shopping, it was basically just jewelry type items and maybe a gadget here and there. But it has progressed to such a point now, uh, that, uh, practically every, I mean, they've sold cars on TV shopping. They've sold a little bit of everything. And price points vary. I mean, I see items a, there are some watches and jewelry pieces that go for thousands of years ago. This reminds me years ago that there was a shipwreck off the floor and it was the Photoshop and, and the Hitoshi ship went down and Mel Fisher and his whole crew went out and they found the gold and he brought one of the coins on home shopping. We sold it for $25,000. Wow. And that was years and years ago. So, so it did. It's about every, so if anybody is watching and thinking, Hey, you know, can I, uh, can I market what I have in the TV shopping world today? It's kind of wide open. It really is.
Jon: I like how you suggested that not every products in the last for 35 years, of course there's only one that's made it that long and you've been part of that since day one. But even as you look at that’s great. It's a great example of how to continue with success once you have a good launch of your product, whether it's on Home Shopping Network, HSN or QVC, or whether it's online or on TV, right? Whatever it might be. But you know, as you mentioned, that's not the same product today that you sold 35 years ago. Right? It's gotten better and better and better. Second thing that really helped that to continue to be successful and that that goes for HSN, but also goes for other, other marketing channels as well.
Bob: That's an excellent point. I mean, you have to listen to the marketplace.
You know, you have to, and that goes back to what I was saying. If you get so emotionally attached to what you have, sometimes you don't listen or you listen, but you don't hear what, what people are saying and you because you don't want to hear what they're saying. Uh and that sometimes can cause some problems. So you're right, you gotta go with the flow, no question about it.
Jon: So I love talking to you every time I always learned something. Of course nobody knows anything about this industry as much as anywhere close to what you know. But one thing I always teach to the clients that I work with is the importance of live selling. Now it doesn't have to be the way that you do it on TV, but sometimes it can be just taking your product down to the flea market or a home show or something in a live environment where get that feedback coming back immediately. And I think what that does is it helps you to hone your message. It helps to help you perfect your pitch. And really talk about your best way that's gonna be able to make the most total sales of the highest level of sales. And when you and I teach at our live events, as you know, this is what the most of the participants I think love the most, you know they get past what I teach, which is a digital marketing, but they really look forward to what you teach, which is the messaging side that the pitch and I can see your book behind you, Life’s a Pitch. You know, you are…
Bob: Oh wow. What a surprise!
Jon: You are the expert and really have no competitors and being able to teach how to pitch a product. So I, you know, and usually we'll do these over two days in our live events, but can you break that down? Maybe how, what would you teach our audience that are listening of inventors, entrepreneurs and business owners? What can you tell them about how to pitch their product or how to pitch their business?
Bob: Okay. I think the first thing to keep in mind, and one thing that I have learned working with so many business owners and so many companies over the years is that there are two keys to any successful business, any venture to get, you've got to have both of these keys. You can't have just one. The first one is, and I call it D and P or P and D, uh, however, the D stands for Distribution, which I want to talk about in a few minutes. That's, you know, you got to get your product out there and you could have a great product or offer a super service, but if people don't know about it, obviously you're not going to get the return that you want. The P stands for Presentation, which is the pitch. You have to have the right messaging and that's why you have to have both of these because if you have a great message but you're in the wrong market, you're not going to go anywhere.
But if you have the right market, but the wrong message, you're still not going to go anywhere. And that's why you got to combine both of the message is key. There's no question about it and it's where I see a lot of people struggle, because they know they have something good, something of value, but aren’t able to get it out and focus on the end, to be able to get it out a light like a laser because of the attention span. It’s not there from people, whether you're doing it on TV or you're face to face or anything like that. We coined a term years and years ago in TV shopping called Dollars Per Minute or DPM. A lot of people think the goal in TV shopping is to come on with your product and sell it out. That's not the goal. The goal is to sell the most amount of units in the least amount of time. That's the key. It's the amount, because time is your only constant. You only have 24 hours in the day no matter what. I don't care what you do, you can't change that. So you have, if you want to really be effective in what you're doing, you've got to decrease the amount of time it takes to make the sale. And the message is very, very key in order to do that. And I can tend that if you're face to face with somebody, you also have dollars per minute because on that attention span. So when you're pitching your product, you have to, first of all, you have to understand their perspective. Okay? Most people when they talk about what they have, they talk about it from their perspective. They don't talk about it from the other person's perspective. And most people, when they talk about whatever they have, they try to sell it. I have people that come to me all the time and they say, Bob, I need to sell more of my product. How can I sell more? And when, and I always answer them, you want to sell more, stop selling and started helping. Help people with what you have. Help the person with what you have. How would you have is going to solve their problems, make their life easier. It's all about perspective. And we start off usually in the wrong perspective because we'll sit., and in fact, an example is if you ever sat down with somebody and you've talked to them about your product or maybe you're trying to raise capital or whatever the case is, and at the end of that meeting, if have they gotten up and they left and they didn't respond and your first thought was, I told them everything. I told him everything about what I had. You did, but you didn't make that connection because you talked too much about your perspective and about how you were going to get help. That's not important. They want to know how you're going to help them. So I would say a quick piece of advice on how to pitch is make sure you're starting from the correct perspective. And as you well know, Jon, in our two day boot camps that we do, I break it down into a presentation with five different keys to a presentation and I'm so happy, uh, that people are pleased with that type of print because they walked out of our boot camps and they now know how to talk about what they have and how to do it concisely and how to be focused and everything. And that's why I loved on the boot camps because we, it's so content rich and, uh, and I know we have one coming up in a little while. Uh, so if anybody would like to, you know, attend to it or learn more, I have them certainly get in touch with you and, and we'd like to get them in. We keep it rather small because we do a lot of, as you know, we do a lot of personal attention, one on one stuff. But yeah, to go back you've got to be able to pitch and it all starts by being in the right perspective.
Jon: Thank. Since Bob brought that up, our boot camps. If anybody has any questions on that or working with Bob in any capacity, I feel free to reach out to our office at Info@HarvestGrowth.com or you can go to our website, HarvestGrowth.com. You can also check out Bob's web site, put it in the show notes. You get the spelling very easily. But it's BobCircosta.com C. I. R.C. O. S. T. A. and you can find information about him and reach out to his office.
Bob: And let me also just jump in, present cause you're too modest to say it. When you go to the boot camp, you will be, I mean your life will change when you get the information that Jon shares with you because no one has broken it down better than Jon and is able to communicate it to you effectively, so you understand what this means because it's all about the numbers. You've got to move the data. You've got to move the knife. If you move the numbers, you're going to increase what you're doing. And Jon is, the best because I know you'd never say that.
Jon: It's always fun to teach together. And that kind of brings it to the second part of that equation, which is Distribution. That's what I talk a lot about is you know, you did, you managed master of the presentation and one of the distribution fonts of course in HSN and the other side is what I teach about, which is TV infomercials and digital marketing. So I let them talk to you. What's your perspective on how are things changing now? HSN is still very successful. I know you also sell up at the shopping channel or TSC up in Canada. He still works well of course. But what else works in terms of distribution? How are things changing?
Bob: Well, things are changing. There's no question about that. I mean the HSN in the entire TV shopping industry is still very powerful. It's a great way to move product. It's what I call based on the loss of the selling and, and so it's still very powerful. It's a $20 billion industry. And, uh, so it's nothing to sneeze at, nothing to say it’s passé. It is not passé and it's still going strong. However, having said that, and then, you know, I was able to share that, but that story with you a little while to go out on the how it all started, that was then how about now? you know, we all, whether we want to or not, we all live in the future, right? What is happening now and it's the big D. It is Distribution. It's all change now. And uh, as a matter of fact, here's the new distribution right here. We all have our own shopping channels. Now we do, you know, and, and we hold it in our hands every single day. The power of video marketing. And if you think about, think about it this way, home shopping from the beginning and still is, is the same. It's really the epitome of marketing through video. We found a way to be able to successfully market whatever it is by way of video. Well, does that remains a constant. The only thing that's changed is that all and all of us, we now own the distribution that never used to be the case, but now we own the distribution through social media, through Facebook or Instagram. I read the other day, every single month, over 2 billion people watch videos on YouTube. Every month! And every day over 500 million people watch videos on Facebook and on Instagram. If you are not doing video marketing in one way or another, you are missing out folks. I'm telling you because video a, it keeps people or drives people to your website.A video keeps people on your website. Video makes a strong impact on the buying decision, uh, of, of your product. I was in a Target. I can say that, right? Yeah. I was in Target the other night and I'm trying, I'm, I'm shopping around for a blender and I looked over and I saw a young lady and she had her, she had her like her phone up here and then looking and looking and back and forth, back and forth from the product to her phone. And I don't like to eavesdrop, but it really caught my attention. And I kind of went by, you know, what she was doing, she was watching a video of that product that was on the shelf. She was relying on that video to make the buying decision. If I had one piece of advice for every business owner, every product owner, every person who wants to did it move to the next level, it's make video part of your story. You have to do it a bit because that's what we're all reacting to. And now it distribution has never been easier. Uh, you know, they, cause we all hold it in our hands every day. But with everything else, you can do it wrong. You know, just because it's there doesn't mean you're going to do it right. So make sure you have the right guidance. And again, not to toot the horn in my colleague there, but nobody's better with Facebook ads and Instagram and social media, video marketing than Jon LaClare. But you've really got to embrace it that there is a way to do it and to do it right. And it comes back to, or you know, having the right pitch, having the right presentation, having the right message and then combine it with that distribution and it's a home run. But we're all there. I mean we need to move into that now. We need to, it's happening with us or without us. It's happening. So just make sure that that has a powerful a place in your marketing campaign and that is video. If you don't know how to do it, then reach out and find out how to do it.
Jon: Thank you Bob. And thank you again for the kind words again, I thought, well one thing, I don't have to say it, it's one thing I want to mention is Bob and I actually work quite often together where Bob is willing to host in videos cause not every inventor, business owner entrepreneur wants to be on camera or, or you know, feels confident in sharing the message themselves. But as I mentioned before, no one can share a message for almost anything as well as Bob, just because your experience on TV, I mean 75,000 individual pitches, you just can't beat that kind of experience. And anyone who comes to our live events for example, they're always amazed at how they will share their pitch and the very beginning of the session and you know, be jumbled up, you know, there's not used to doing it of course. And then Bob will kind of coach them along and throw something together. You know, having never really heard of that product oftentimes, more than like, you know, 10 minutes prior and they're amazed. Their jaws dropped because the pitches is spot on so much better. Right? It's, but part of that is just experience. It's, it's being not uncertain or only but being able to sell products. And the interesting thing where, you know, there are a lot of people that have experience of being on camera, but it's a whole different world of selling on camera. And especially in the world of live TV shopping where you, and Bob can attest to this better than anybody, when you're on camera, you can see the numbers come in. So as you say something, there's a little bit of a lag of course, people are dialing on their phone numbers, but you can see what lines are working well, what's driving the interest, what's driving the sales. And because of that, he's been watching that for thousands, tens of thousands of hours seeing these kinds of responses and really honed the craft from there. So that is an opportunity. Just if you know, reach out to our office again at Info@HarvestGrowth.com or go to our website, you can reach out to us and I could set that up, if you're interested in having Bob as a host for your money.
Bob: And we've had so many people that have gone from that, gone into TV shopping and taken their product on TV shopping channels and then taking their product into infomercials and marketing effectively in other ways. But you're right, I mean most people aren't comfortable doing it and it's because I've done it for so long. I'm not doing anything that somebody else can do. If you do it that long, I better have it down by now. Right? But I enjoy doing it and so, you know, to make a video about your product or your service or to make a video about you, you know, you out there. Ifyou want to have that instant credibility and become an authority in the field that you're in, you know, come on and do one of our videos and sit down with me and I'll pitch you. Don't, don't worry. I'll do all of that. You just be you and I'll talk about you and, and, and tell everybody how you can help them with what you have. So by all means, you know, really get that some serious thought, uh, because we have seen it really help many, many businesses and many products over the years. And it just gets better and better. And we do it in a TV studio, all HD quality, complete crew, and you get the makeup and you get all that stuff, you know, so it's a lot of fun, but it's a powerful, powerful tool. And when you combine it like with a Facebook campaign or an Instagram campaign…Powerful folks! Very, very powerful! Absolutely.
Jon: So Bob, my last question I'm going to ask you is you have great experience not only in pitching but also in helping business owners, inventors and entrepreneurs as you've worked with thousands of thousands of them over the years it at events, but also in pitching their products and helping them get onto HSN or take their product in a different way or just frankly give advice and business advice. So what's, it's hard to boil this down to one thing, but what's one thing that comes to mind as a piece of advice you'd like to share with our listeners of inventors and entrepreneurs,
Bob: Well, don't give up and it's easy to give up and many people really don't progress to the point that they need to because they're constantly thinking they have to have all the answers and they have to know how to do something. Forget about that. How the, how will work out. Focus on your why. Why are you doing what you're doing? And again, I go back to what I said earlier, focus on solving other people's problems with what you have. Because think about it this way, if I don't think I have the problem, then why do I need your solution? But the other part is true. The opposite of that. If I have the problem now I want your solution and there's a difference between needing and wanting. So focus on helping people and solving their problems with what you have. And things are going to get tough. Expect problems, expect struggles and challenges. It's going to happen. There's no question. The trying times are not times to stop trying. You've got to keep going after it and but also in the same sense, be wise enough to listen and know when to move in different directions. Because I guarantee one thing: if you're starting out, maybe you're a coming up with an idea, maybe you have a product in its early stages, maybe you have a product you've had for a while, but it's just not going where you want it to go. One thing is going to happen. It's not going to work out the way you thought. It's going to be different. All right. And that can be good. That can be bad, but it's going to be different. So you know, keep flexible and just go with that flow out there. But yeah, trace it back to those two keys that I talked about earlier. If you're not where you are right now, either your presentation's wrong or your distributions wrong. Or one of the two, that's where you can trace it back to.
Jon: Well thanks Bob. Great Advice. We could talk for hours. I always love catching up with you and I every time I took a bunch of notes, every time.
Bob: My pleasure, Jon, pleasure to be with you and everybody else out there and hope we can see them at the boot camp because I know you agree. Well you know, Jon and I do the boot camps, we really help. And that's what we're focused on really helping people get to that next level. Because if it's one question that I have received over the years more than anything else, it's you know, people will come up to me and say, Obama, I know what I have but I don't know what to do next. I don't know that next step. If that's you, let us help you because we face that every single day in providing that next step of where you need to go. Jon, always a pleasure to be with you, my friend.
Jon: Thank you. Thanks Bob. Again and I'll just encourage everyone if you have questions we'd like to reach out and learn more about the boot camp or doing a video with Bob or just learning more about Bob. You can visit his website, BobCircosta.com or you can visit our website, HarvestGrowth.com if you'd like to reach out, we can connect you with Bob and get you more information. If you email us at Info@HarvestGrowth.com we'd love to hear from you. I know Bob would as well. He loves. He has a passion for even after doing this for so long, his passion really is helping inventors, business owners and entrepreneurs to be successful, and part of that is getting on HSN, part of that is helping them with their D and D, their Presentation, their Distribution, but helping create successful businesses and no one does it better than Bob. So thanks Bob. We'll look forward to catching up with you again soon.
Bob: All right, Jon. Thank you my friend. Thanks everybody.
Jon: Thank you for your valuable insights and for taking the time to share your story. Our audience of inventors, entrepreneurs and product marketers will benefit greatly from what you've taught us today. For the listeners, go to their website to learn more. Also be sure to check out HarvestGrowthPodcast.com to see other episodes that we have recorded. And if you like this episode and you want to learn more about how you can profitably grow your consumer product business, please subscribe to our show and leave us a review on iTunes or Google play.
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