Patrick: Welcome to the Business Spotlight. I’m your host, Patrick Dougher. My guest today is Bob Bare. Bob is a serial entrepreneur who has had more success than most people deserve in their life. I say that because he’s the chairman of six different companies, one international.
He’s a published author and he has a tool to help people who want to get their message out, especially in book form – to get you not only out there, but to create hundreds of thousands of dollars in income from the systems that he’s got in place. Bob, thanks so much for being on the show.
Bob: Thanks for having me, Patrick.
Patrick: I want to get into your story because you’ve been very successful in business. Then you became an author and now you’ve created a system to help others create massive success. How did you create this?
Bob: I’ve always been an entrepreneur since I was a teenager. I guess I learned through failure. You learn through the school of hard knocks, and I’ve gone through all of the mistakes that you read about by people like Michael Gerber in “The E-Myth.” I’ve created businesses where the whole business was created around me and if I tried to go to lunch, I would get calls during lunch because it couldn’t operate with me gone.
Now I see people who are doing that with their business and it makes me feel for them. People start their businesses because they want freedom, at least in my case. I’m the creative type of person. I’m the guy who sees the shiny objects. I had a friend give me a card one time that said, “Stay focused. Let the shiny objects float on by.”
I see opportunities all the time. We have a potluck after church and one day I was sitting around a table with several guys. We were talking about business and I came up with a new business idea. My wife happened to be walking by and one of the guys said, “Hey, Jan. Bob just came up with a new idea for a business.” She just kind of rolled her eyes and kept walking and said, “Not another one.”
I had to learn the hard way what it takes, after you have that creative idea and after you create a business that really works, to get out of it. How to build a team that can make the business run smoothly like a watch so that you can look for your next idea and you can move on and do something else. What’s exciting to me are opportunities, seeing opportunities, creating something that answers a need in the marketplace. But once I’ve done it, once I’ve created it, I hate the administrative part.
I discovered, like a Realtor might say, that each of us has what I call our highest and best use. It’s important for people to find out what they’re passionate about and what they’re good at. If you’re listening to this – whether you’re in a job or whether you’re in your own business – and if you drag in to work every day not wanting to be there and reluctantly, you’re probably not in your highest and best use.
I tell people that your highest and best use is when you’re doing the thing that you would almost do for free. You would get up in the morning and want to go there whether you’re getting paid for it or not. I love to see people when they find that sweet spot that they’re excited about because then they’re so much more productive. Then they can help other people.
I’m 58 now and as I get, I’ll call it more mature, it’s more and more important to me to be doing something with my life that’s making an impact someplace. I want to leave a legacy behind. I feel like a lot of people do also. I’m long past the days where I just want to create a business and make a lot of money. No, I want to do something that has a positive effect, a positive impact on the world.
You can only do that when you’re doing something that you’re having fun with, that you’re enjoying. What I’ve discovered is what I really enjoy now is I love finding the sweet spot for other people. I love helping other people find what they’re best and highest use is, what they’re good at, what they’re an expert about, what their passion is, and then helping them create an impact in the world.
Patrick: The businesses that you’re doing right now. Briefly tell me what they basically do.
Bob: I have some audiology clinics in Texas. We send teams out to long term care facilities and we help people hear better. That’s basically now a business that is absentee ownership. I drop by and say hi and visit the people every couple of months.
Patrick: You don’t mind cashing the checks though.
Bob: No, I don’t mind that.
Patrick: I know it’s a very successful business and you’re kind of downplaying. You’ve built a really cool thing.
Bob: I have really built and gathered a great team. The people are great and that’s why it runs so well by itself. It’s a team of people who care about what they’re doing. They care about helping other people. They care about serving people. I can just let it go because they care so much about being effective and being good.
I eventually found someone who was great at administration and who was great at running the company for me. You’ve interviewed him. You know Odell. That’s what freed me up to go on to my next shiny object.
Patrick: That’s good.
This the Business Spotlight. I’m Pat Dougher with Bob Bare.
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Patrick: Welcome back to the business spotlight. I’m your host, Patrick Dougher. My guest today is Bob Bare. He’s a published author and has a system for creating massive success for the people he works with. Bob, thanks for being on the show.
Bob: I’m enjoying it.
Patrick: I want to get into, really, what you’re doing to create the success you’re having. I know that it probably starts with setting this up and then the companies that you’ve built beyond your book, “More Power.” I encourage you guys to get a copy. They can get it at your website www.BobBare.com?
Bob: You can get it there or Amazon.
Patrick: Amazon is a good place. Roughly a billion people use it – big shop. Tell me more. I want to know your story.
Bob: Funny thing, I get a lot of my ideas in the shower. I don’t know why. I guess maybe I turn off my mind for a few minutes. But one day I was thinking about all the things I’ve learned in the past 40 years of being in business and creating business. I thought about all of the struggles that I went through unnecessarily.
So many people – sometimes they’re sales people and sometimes they’re technicians, but they get this idea, “Hey. I’m going to start a business. This is a great idea.” I’m sorry, but sometimes they have no idea what they’re getting into. You can be a number one sales person or you can be a great technician, but running a business is a whole new learning curve. It’s totally different.
So they start a business and they discover that this is not what they expected. There are so many things they didn’t know. So I decided at this point in time, when I had my brilliant idea in the shower, “Hey, I should put together a list of steps that it takes to create a successful business.”
That’s when I came up with the idea of writing “More Power.” It’s kind of a mentorship in a book taking you step by step with the basics. This is what you need to do not only to create a business but to make it successful and to carry it through to where it becomes a legacy for you and your children or whatever you want to do with it.
Patrick: And repeatable. That’s the other part about it. You’ve repeated this process and now you’re mentoring others around the country and around the world to create that.
What does your book really mean for you as a speaker and a mentor and a leader and a business owner?
Bob: What I discovered in the process of writing it and getting it published is that a book is not an end in itself. So many people think that, “Oh, I’m going to write this book and it’ll go up in the bookstores and people will buy it and I can just sit back and watch things happen.” Writing a book and then getting the book published is really the easy part.
The good thing is once you’ve become an author, once you’ve taken your specialized knowledge and put it into a book for other people, then it becomes a tool that you can use not only to assist other people in what the message of your book is, but it becomes a tool to let people see that you are an expert. It’s a demonstration of who you are and what you know. It opens so many doors.
Since I’ve published the book I’ve discovered that people like to hear people speak who are authors. I’m a Rotarian. I love rotary but I’ve ended up not only going to my own rotary club, I go up speaking to other ones. I usually speak on how to become a published author and I give people, in as much time as I have, some ideas and tips on how to get a book out of you.
I really enjoy helping people with that. I would say that maybe two out of three people feel like, or have the thought, or have someone tell them, “You ought to write a book,” but people don’t know where to start. I like to help people gather their thoughts. I like to help them discover if it would even be worthwhile for them to write that book, if what they’re thinking about writing is the right one for them, and then when they find what they really would love writing, giving them some steps and some suggestions and coaching them into getting themselves to the place where it turns into something that they can use to spread their message.
There are all kinds of different books: nonfiction, children’s books, fiction. Whatever the type, I like to help people who have a book that will make some form of a positive impact on the world. Typically that ends up being something in the self-help field or entrepreneurship, helping other entrepreneurs, or something that will help people.
We have an author that we’ve published a couple of books for who is the mother of one of the youngest firefighters who died in 9/11. She had written two children’s books – one called, “My Son Christopher” and another called, “The Day the Towers Fell” – and she basically took what was in her heart.
She had the desire to teach people how to tell their children about 9/11 and how to give them a positive message that this was, yes, an act of hate, but how you can turn it around and how you need to learn to love and share. It’s so rewarding to help people with a message like that get their message out to the world.
Patrick: One of the things that I really want to get into as we go into this next segment is that it’s nice to have a book, but it’s selling the book. It’s getting it into the hands of people who want to buy it. There has always been that elusive, don’t-know-how-to-get-there kind of thing. When we come back, we are going to talk to Bob about how to really get this authority into the marketplace, into a place that can change not only your life, but the lives of those that you serve.
This is Pat Dougher. This is Business Spotlight. We’ll be right back.
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Patrick: Welcome back to Business Spotlight. I’m Pat Dougher. My guest today is Bob Bare from www.BobBare.com. Bob is a published author and has what I call “the secret sauce” for having you become the authority that you want to be in your marketplace. Bob, thanks.
Bob: I’m enjoying being here today, Patrick.
Patrick: I want to get into who you serve. It’s somebody that has a vision, has a message, has something to say, and wants to create a legacy. But there’s more to the book publishing in there than just get it written and get some publisher to buy it.
Bob: There’s a lot more. To me, the power of becoming an author and the power of writing a book is in expressing your expertise, expressing your authority, expressing that you have a message. Just the fact that you’ve put your story together in a coherent package and you’ve gone through the difficult steps, oftentimes the learning curve of how to start with an idea in your mind and put it together in book form and then get it actually published – that’s a big accomplishment.
People respect that accomplishment. The fact of having authored a book is a statement. It says that you are a person of substance, that you have determination, that you have the willingness to put this message out there. And even when people don’t read your book, just the fact that you have a book or just the fact that you can give someone a book carries a powerful message and it gives so much credibility.
There are a lot of fields and a lot of people who talk about the expert industry and the expert field. That’s important, but I like the word “authority.” I feel like experts are people who have enough knowledge that they help educate other people in that field. Experts educate. What better way to educate than writing a book about it, especially a book where you’ve completed the whole book?
I know there are opportunities to get a chapter in a book and I’m in a couple of those, too, and that’s okay. But it really is powerful to have your own book with your own message. Once you have that book, that’s just the gate that opens all kinds of opportunities. Then you can go from there and use your book as an introduction to the marketplace.
Typically people who become an author have a book published, if they want to and if they have someone strategize with them, they can then use that book to open up the door to a speaking career if that’s what they want, open up a door to coaching or counseling if that’s what they want. Or maybe they have a brick and mortar business and they want more people to come to it.
Imagine someone in the medical profession, for example someone who does hormone replacement therapy. If they write a book specific about their field and someone calls their office to inquire about their knowledge or their expertise or if someone comes in to ask, rather than sending them a brochure or an advertisement, if that person had their own book that they wrote about hormone therapy, they could give them their book. They’re the author of that. In people’s eyes, whether they read it or not (hopefully they will read it), they think, “This person knows what he’s talking about. He’s written a book about it.”
Patrick: That’s the thing that’s so important. Just the ether of someone holding your book going, “Wow, Bob must have a clue.”
Bob: “I should listen to what he says this.”
Patrick: As crazy as that sounds, people think like that all the time. How powerful it is when you have the book and it’s in your arsenal. You’ve got that mantle of authority that when you walk into a room, you’re not having to prove that you’re an authority. You are an authority.
Bob: And it opens new doors. I have a second book I’m working on now that I’ve been asked to co-author with an author who sold 22 million of one of his books. He liked what I had to say. He read my book and liked it and endorsed it and he said, “You know, I’d like to co-write something with you.” I would have never gotten that opportunity if I hadn’t written one already.
Patrick: What is that going to mean for you when that book comes out? What doors do you think that will open for you?
Bob: Obviously it makes me feel good, and we all want to feel good about ourselves. But it also just adds another level of credibility. People will be able to say, “Wow, he co-authored a book with this person who is so well-known. He must know what he’s talking about.”
Patrick: Well even beyond that, his circle of influence becomes your circle of influence. And if he has co-authored a book with 22 million copies sold, your authority in the marketplace just shot up.
Bob: There’s a story I heard once and I don’t know if it’s about Rockefeller or one of the rich people of the past. A young man came up to him and said, “Would you lend me money?” He was a wise person. He said, “Well, no I won’t do that, but I’ll tell you what I will do.”
They were at the New York Stock Exchange and he said, “Take my arm and walk with me across the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and we’ll talk to each other and turn around and come back. By the time we get back to the other side, people will have seen you talking with me and you can borrow or get all the investors you need.”
Patrick: That’s influence and that’s what we’re really talking about, folks. Bob has a system to create massive influence and I’m convinced that if you raise someone’s influence, their affluence has to rise as well.
We’ll be right back. This is Pat Dougher. Thanks again.
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Patrick: Welcome back. This is the Business Spotlight. I’m Pat Dougher. Bob Bare is my guest today and if you’ve been watching, you have gained so many pearls of great price in my opinion. I like to call them nine pound pearls because he paid a high price to get them and they have got to be worth it.
I’ll tell you that if you listen to him, if you engage with him, if you go to www.BobBare.com, you’re going to find that he has a key to helping you become as successful as you want to be. Bob, thanks for being on the show.
Bob: Thank you.
Patrick: If someone wants to connect to you, www.BobBare.com. What is it that they get when they do?
Bob: First of all, they start learning. Like I told you, experts educate and so I try to educate. If they want more information on entrepreneurship from my book, I have a series of videos. They can opt-in to my list, give me their first name and email address, and get access to 20 videos that teach them about entrepreneurship.
If they are an author who is working on a book or has a book published and they’re looking for ideas or strategies on how to take what they’ve done and turn it into a business or turn it into extra income – like I said, I’m the shiny object guy. I like coming up with ideas. I like creating strategy. I like creating business models.
One of the most difficult things for authors after they get their book written or when it’s practically finished, one of the very difficult things is finding a publisher. There are a lot of information. There is a lot on the Internet to read about out there and I encourage people to do that. But basically, it comes down to a couple of choices. Am I going to self-publish my book or am I going to look for a traditional publisher or are there other options? The answer is not the same for all people.
I like to talk to people on the phone. If people set up and appointment with me, I can probably spend at least half an hour finding out what their ideas are and maybe giving them some suggestions and then seeing if there was anything that we could do together that might help.
In the self-published realm, there are a lot of great books that are self-published and I’m so glad that people are able to do that because there’s so much information available that we would never be able to get if everyone had to find a traditional publisher that would agree to publish their book for them.
Self-published books are great but there are some things to learn about that. There are some tricks of the trade. For example, if you want to self-publish a book without putting up stop signs and roadblocks for getting a publisher later on, there are some things that you should know and some things that you can do for your first self-published books that will prevent getting you on that bad guy list. If you want to find a traditional publisher, there are things you need to know about that – or if you want to go someplace in the middle.
One of the things I enjoy doing is helping people through the process. If they want to get their book published through a traditional publisher but still have the option of being able to purchase books themselves for their own use at a price that’s close to printing, there’s even an option for that. You don’t have to have it one way or the other. There are some answers that solve both problems at the same time that are really great.
So many things are individual for each person. It depends sometimes on the type of book they’re writing – whether it’s fiction, children’s, self-help, entrepreneurial. There are different choices along the way.
One of my favorite words is “innovation.” I don’t like to always create something that’s the same for every person. When I hear someone who says, “This is the answer for everybody,” it makes me kind of scratch my head and hesitate a little bit. I like to come up with new ideas, fresh ideas, or take a combination of things – like creating a recipe – and then finding success.
Patrick: I know that you guys have systems that will take somebody from the beginning of, “I’ve got an idea,” all the way through to being published on a national scale. You have systems and marketing and part of your business services actually taking somebody through that.
I also know that you have mastermind groups and things of that nature that are coming. I also know that there are even monthly groups in the DFW area and probably throughout the nation in the not too distant future. Do you want to say anything about those?
Bob: Sure. Some people have more time than money and other people have plenty of money but no time, and those are two different problems. We can help people coach people along if they’re taking their time and they’re looking for a way that they can afford.
There are other people – professionals, experts, people in the healthcare industry – who have a great idea for a book but they just don’t have much time. I like to help those people strategize, come up with what the book is about, get as much information from them as possible and then take that information, transcribe it, and get them assistance in putting it into a book form. For people who need a done-for-you model, we can help them out with that too and that’s fun.
Patrick: That’s great. And then these expert groups, what are they?
Bob: In the Dallas, Texas, area on the second Monday of each month we have a get together at our office called Dallas Experts Network.
Patrick: So we’re going to come to the DEN?
Bob: You’re going to come to the DEN and have fun learning and listening and networking with people and creating an environment of networking and fun.
Patrick: Very good. Folks, this has been the Business Spotlight and my guest today, Bob Bare, has a system to take you from an idea to creating a profitable legacy that can change your life forever – and those around you. This show is about giving you the opportunity to tell your story.
I’m Pat Dougher. We’ll talk to you all next time. Thanks.