Episode 97
How Michael Grewe Of Smarketing Brings Smart Marketing Ideas To Life By Delivering His Clients Amazing Print and Promotional Products and Graphic Design Services
How Michael Grewe Of Smarketing Brings Smart Marketing Ideas To Life By Delivering His Clients Amazing Print and Promotional Products and Graphic Design Services
Show notes
How Michael Grewe Of Smarketing Brings Smart Marketing Ideas To Life By Delivering His Clients Amazing Print and Promotional Products and Graphic Design Services
Full transcript
[00:00:00] Justin: Like you wanna get where you are in 15 years, let's do it in two.
[00:00:05] Justin: What's that Z access? What's that quantum leap or that shortcut to get there? A lot of it's in your own head and what you believe you can do. I have a client who's 31, who just did a hundred grand last month doing advising, coaching, training. Has 10 years experience doing sales, but most people are like, oh, I couldn't, be a consultant until I'm 40 or 50.
[00:00:22] Justin: It's all in your own mind, right?
[00:00:23] Hector: Hello and welcome to another episode of the How to Scale a Business Podcast. My name is Hector Santhe Esteban, and I am your host. Today our special guest is Mr. Justin Michael, and he is the bestselling author of The Frame. he's, written, 10 books or, almost a dozen books or so, and, someone who is just on the cutting edge of a lot of things.
[00:00:43] Hector: so thanks for hanging out and being with us today.
[00:00:46] Justin: Yeah, it's great to be here. I've been doing a lot of books. I did seven books in the past three years, and pushing them to Amazon on a wide variety of topics from, sales to consulting, to mindset to,linguistics, heuristics, metaphysics.
[00:01:00] Justin: I mean, I. It's kind of fun to get 'em out there. And then I do business consulting behind that. And then my background, I was at Salesforce in LinkedIn. I lived in New York and San Francisco. I was selling software for 20 years. And then for about the past six years, I've had my own California corporation doing advising, consulting and coaching.
[00:01:19] Justin: So I've coached somewhere on the order of about 250, tech startups and about a thousand people one-to-one. And the more and more I got into it. The bigger problem was something I call ontology, the science of consciousness, which is being an identity and people having blocks in their self-esteem.
[00:01:37] Justin: So a lot of what I've been writing has been focusing on that sort of deeper, how do you perceive yourself problem?
[00:01:45] Hector: Yeah, I think one of the things that you, like I said, you're on the cutting edge of, and I think is sort of coming to the head is this mix between, I don't know, business and spirituality, sort of, call it, to create some.
[00:01:57] Hector: Some terrible terms for them, but previously people thought that there was a, a clear difference between those, that they were, someone's spiritual, quote unquote success and their financial or, business success. there wasn't a lot of crossover and it seems like you're sort of trying, able to merge a bit of the two.
[00:02:16] Hector: I'd love to hear sort of, What your thoughts are on that and how if there is sort of a, a synergy betwe between those two worlds, how those come about?
[00:02:27] Justin: Yeah. So. I love people like Joe Dispen and Eckhart Toll. Eckhart Tole, who did Power Of Now, the Alchemist was a huge book for me.
[00:02:38] Justin: I loved Wallace Waddles, the Science of Getting Rich Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill. So 20 years ago, I was 26. I'm 46 now. I ran into Jack Canfield. At a charity event, he gave me his books and he gave me the secret DVD. It's 20 years ago I watched it and I met Hailey Byrne, Rhonda's daughter who did The Secret, and I ended up meeting them.
[00:02:58] Justin: And ever since that time I've really been into, manifestation, law of traction, this sort of metaphysical element of like, are we our thoughts? Are we our body? Are we our mind? Is there one universal substance? Are we like the formless. Flowing into form. And it's really interesting. I have this just like simple model of the universe, which is sort of, you're doing things and then you're thinking things, and then what are you being right?
[00:03:25] Justin: if you believe you are abundant, then you'll have abundant thoughts and then you'll do things more abundantly. So it really comes under pressure For sales. You wanna do a six or seven figure deal. You wanna work at a top company, but you don't think you're good enough. And then deep down, you don't feel like.
[00:03:40] Justin: You have what it takes. And so I've been giving this analogy in interviews, but if you put someone on a lie detector on a polygraph and go, okay, 200 K, 300 K, 400 K, 500 KA million, at a certain point it's gonna tell a lie. And then people hit me. They're like, it's not all about money, man. It's like, well. I work with a ton of like sales professionals, consultants, business development people, and they're trying to grow their business and take care of their family and put their kids through college.
[00:04:04] Justin: So if you wanna go Julian Assan on the system and challenge the Federal Reserve, that's a different podcast, right? So I help people kind of. Thrive when the economic reality they're in and monetize their expertise. That's been a lot of my work and I just find like those mindset issues don't quite get you there.
[00:04:21] Justin: The affirmations and the I am are assuming the wish is fulfilled. It's not enough. Best way to look at, it's like smoking drugs and alcohol. Like if you're a chain smoker, I can sit there with a shotgun for, 60 days and you won't smoke, and then like three days later when I'm gone, you're gonna start smoking again because you your identity.
[00:04:39] Justin: And that was Charles Duhig. Amazing book, the Power of Habit. I'm sure you've seen that, but there's more insidious ones with like thought patterns and decisions you've made about yourself. So I have this distinction in this new book I'm writing called Rewriting the Law of Attraction. And it's essentially there's surrendered manifestation where you believe there's a higher power.
[00:05:01] Justin: You believe in a concept of reverse paranoia, pronoia, that the universe is plotting to do you good. And then you allow the hows to be the domain of the universe, like how you're gonna get to the goal. It's very different than Western philosophy, which is write your goals down every single one. Write all the ways you can get to the goals, and then just grind to get to the goals and look at your dream board, right?
[00:05:21] Justin: And so in this book, I'm like burning the dream board. It's like the Phoenix rising. So I've found more and more that if you clue into serving other people. And really providing ROI on the fees that you charge. That's really how wealth comes to you. And that was the Zig Ziglar. You know, help enough people get what they want and you'll get what you want.
[00:05:43] Justin: Real fundamental. And that's kind of what I'm teaching people so. Yeah, it's been a lot of fun. I've helped people build up really phenomenal agencies and coaching businesses and hit, number one in sales. But I think I've helped people really gain confidence and self-esteem and love themselves and actually like, have a real skill and finally gain that unconscious confidence.
[00:06:06] Justin: And that's what we can do as great coaches.
[00:06:10] Hector: Yeah, I was having this conversation with, a friend recently where we were talking about how a lot of, quote unquote spiritual people or, you know, woo woo or love, you know, these, these people,they tend to not have. Material success or financial sort of stability.
[00:06:27] Hector: there's a large group of them that, that still sort of struggle in that regard. for either that group or the people who are not even sort of in tune with this. what are some of the mistakes or sort of the drawbacks, that you see hold people back from sort of making these leaps?
[00:06:44] Justin: It's interesting, right? Because you have to take massive action to be successful, but you run out of time and then you burn your body out. So like really an understanding of the power law, like Pareto principle and the 80 20 principle or even the composition of your body, like. 80% of your musculature is, and 20% of the muscles, like 80% of any day you live, if you're not cognizant, is more wasteful than the 20% that's effective.
[00:07:11] Justin: So that's like a, just a practicality element. If you get into a flow state and you're passionate about what you do and you love it, you can work hard at a low stress level with less strain. And so, I've done both ways. I've muscled through and been like the hardest working guy on the phone all day, and I've traveled all these cities and I've been doing it that way.
[00:07:33] Justin: And then there's also like a way where you can kind of balance. Faith and where the outcome is going in a moderation and pace. It's kinda like a marathon versus a sprint. I think people get really into the ritualistic sides of it, the metaphysics, the chanting, there's like musical tones and singing bowls and crystals and all that, and that's all really cool.
[00:07:56] Justin: But if you don't take action inspired action. It's not gonna happen, right? So that there has to be sort of like a bridge between the metaphysical and the physical where it comes into form as where you kind of just like follow your heart and take the leap. The way I've described this work is, comes from the work of Michael, a singer who wrote The Untethered Soul in a book called, the Surrender Experiment, which I had written this book called Attraction Selling, and I found this after the fact.
[00:08:25] Justin: But I see it as like. We're all flowing through this river and people are in these canoes, and I've done this as a kid, been on a canoe trip and canoed upstream in the wind. You're just going like this and getting almost nowhere. And then you watch certain people who are just sort of flowing with the current, they don't know where the current is going.
[00:08:44] Justin: it's kind of like JRR Tolkien, that amazing quote, like not all those that wander are lost. So if you fall in love with the journey. The flow, you may actually end up somewhere even better. And you see in the natural world, you see, and this comes from like Steve Hardison, but who would you have to be to become the thing you want now?
[00:09:03] Justin: So like a cherry seed becomes a cherry tree. It doesn't become a palm tree or lemon tree is the same with the human dharma, your identity footprint. So in Buddhism that thoughts become things. It's actually deeper. It's the identity. It becomes your reality. So when you close your eyes, all the perceptions of what you are, that's what actually manifests into the illusion, the matrix, that we live in the quantum field.
[00:09:29] Hector: Well, this gives us a lot to chew on. I'm curious for you, is the recipe a series of steps? Is it a foundation of pillars? when you think about how someone puts this together, is it, is there sort of an order of operations to things or do you think that there are, some key elements that they need to keep in mind?
[00:09:47] Justin: That's a good question. So I did this book, the Frame. And it's about power, status, and influence is very Robert Green and that has 10 laws, things like non neediness. So you can kind of just follow the laws and the chapters and practice them, knowing when to be silent, breathing, showing up, catching yourself on the frame breaks, and then.
[00:10:07] Justin: In the second book, the Rewriting a lot of attraction, this Phoenix Rising concept, it's more like rituals that you do to ground yourself to be present, to let parts of the past go. So I think, a lot of my books are really manuals for selling down to the messaging, the targeting, exactly how to use various tech stacks.
[00:10:28] Justin: But this stuff is really self-perception and awareness. Observing how you think about something or how you show up, and like your posture and what's internally happening to you. A lot of the power of this work is just getting the attention off yourself, and I think that's the heart of success in consulting as I train a lot of consulting is like me as.
[00:10:50] Justin: Putting my focus on you and being curious. And that comes a lot from Dale Carnegie. So the answer is yes. There is a set of models, framework, systems, heuristics, if you will, if you look at the two most recent books, the Frame and Phoenix Rising. And from there it'll give you a lot of ideas. not so simple as ask, believe, receive, and put up the dream board.
[00:11:10] Justin: 'cause life is a series of hair trigger situations. Like you're going to get fundraising, you're going in for that giant job offer. You gotta ask someone on date, you gotta buy a house. You gotta, purchase something, make a risky investment. And in those moments it's so pressurized, it's so easy to do the wrong thing.
[00:11:27] Justin: And you just see with top performers, top salespeople, really successful business people, they're framed the way they carry themselves. And then there's also like a, just a certain level of serenity and comfort in their own skin. When someone has really accomplished a lot in life. So yeah, I kind of felt like this law of becoming was the missing chapter as I put together almost the more secular, stoic elements of frame psychology, which doesn't come from Orin cl actually it comes from this guy, I think it's Irving Goffman from the sixties.
[00:12:01] Justin: So it's everything comes from somewhere and usually it's like a psychologist or sociologist, that type of thing.
[00:12:08] Hector: what's nice about today is that we have so much more access to these things where now we can sort of put 'em together in ways that wasn't possible before.
[00:12:17] Hector: we've talked a lot about, on the show, about how things are changing from a technological standpoint and economic standpoint. Geopolitical, I mean, pick your space and domain and things are sort of shifting. are there things that you are paying attention to more than others, or is there a signal in the noise for you that you are,listening to?
[00:12:37] Justin: Well, the obsession with AI and automating everything and having AI take over your job. I encourage people to write and read as a symbol of rebellion. if you think of like the dictators,you, these totalitarian regimes, they burn the books, right? And there's a movement to keep the millennial, gen Z and alpha generations, sort of ignorant and in the dark.
[00:12:58] Justin: So the best thing you can do for the world and your freedom is read, write, explore the classics, get a typewriter, just because, History repeats, and for me, there's really a, an awakening as far as consciousness and the penal gland, and there's the soul generation of people like going into medicinal plants in ayahuasca.
[00:13:18] Justin: I haven't really gone down that journey yet, but you can achieve it through music, through meditation. There's a lot of different kind of esoteric things that have been happening on this planet. If you look into it, it's got like a red pill or a black pill. it's not necessarily a cult. There's a lot of it that's very high frequency and positive and lovely.
[00:13:37] Justin: Whether you wanna look at Atlantis or the fourth dimension, there's all sorts of like astral projection, like flying around the stars and people that can like, hover over their bodies and Dr. Dreams like lucid dreaming. I don't get into all of that. For me, it's a study of the real world. How do you create high performance?
[00:13:57] Justin: How does someone go from making, just barely getting by to creating a phenomenal company or going and becoming a top salesperson or top coach or doing these giant deals? How do you gain that confidence, skillset, and experience? And that's just what I try to achieve as a coach. I try to break the limit of the ceiling and I try to really deep down, get in their internal psychology of how they're holding themselves back.
[00:14:22] Justin: There's been a lot of great things written on these subjects. Like The Secret was powerful, but it pointed to things like Neville Godard and the power of awareness. weer earhart's work is really powerful, like landmark education. It's this really good one. Byron Katie, Sid Banks. So many cool influences you could jump into.
[00:14:43] Hector: Yeah, it's,it's a really interesting time and I'm glad you mentioned your prescription for dealing with ai because I think , it's something that everybody's gonna have to make a choice on. And so even ignoring it or abstaining from it is sort of a choice. this has been a really cool, conversation.
[00:15:02] Hector: I'm curious, we've talked a lot about the spiritual side. You mentioned having,training a lot of business development people, and in that space, what is the, Is it the same conversations you're having with them or is there a change and a shift when it comes to people who are trying to generate sales and trying to grow their client base or grow the revenue?
[00:15:23] Justin: It is really fascinating 'cause I've put out this long series of books and like I recently had a chief revenue officer come in. He was Christian and he actually loved my third book Attraction Selling, which was always like the power of positive thinking and a lot of tactical tools, even walking in the earth and earthing, like there's all sorts of unique ideas in it.
[00:15:43] Justin: So I'm always, amazed at someone who's coming in for cold call training might really tap into the spiritual elements as well. I thought this stuff would be controversial, but like you just said, a lot of people are hip too. Higher power, higher forces, more, more going on, more than meets the eye to just sitting in these meet suits.
[00:16:03] Justin: Right? I love that quote about, we're spiritual beings having a human experience. what I'm dealing with a lot though, is just the primal fear of calling CEOs and investors and board members, and these people that have millions of dollars and, it's like a 27-year-old kid. Or like, and I remember when I was young in sales, I would, wear a tie.
[00:16:23] Justin: And stand up and power pose and my investors who had sold the company to Oracle, they said, Hey, you know how you think and speak and talk. It adds 10 years. That's also really powerful is I waited 15 years to really have even modest success in what I was doing. Like I had been a musician, I did telemarketing.
[00:16:42] Justin: I went way around the back woods to finally get to Salesforce at 31 and finally get to LinkedIn at 35. And I didn't even really have much success till I was 37 and then again 41 42 consulting. So a lot of what I'm trying to do is compress the time. So people can have a better life. Like you wanna get where you are in 15 years, let's do it in two.
[00:17:06] Justin: What's that Z access? What's that quantum leap or that shortcut to get there? A lot of it's in your own head and what you believe you can do. I have a client who's 31, who just did a hundred grand last month doing advising, coaching, training. Has 10 years experience doing sales, but most people are like, oh, I couldn't be a consultant until I'm 40 or 50.
[00:17:23] Justin: It's all in your own mind, right? Like, 'cause all these people are billionaires, like Steve Jobs, bill Gates, Zuckerberg, they're all like, billionaires by their early thirties, even in their twenties. So that's the big thing. Like your life experience is really, Enabled or limited by how you see yourself, and that's why I love that book, psycho Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz.
[00:17:42] Justin: Have you run into that one?
[00:17:43] Hector: it's, it's one of the early ones that, I, I remember thinking like, this is very boring, but I remember thinking, very powerful. and, a big intro into the power of the Mind.
[00:17:55] Justin: Well, he was a plastic surgeon, right?
[00:17:56] Justin: And people would have a big scar on their face and he'd remove it and they'd still feel this figure, the whole kind of phantom limb. so yeah, I get that question a lot. People really wanna know what was the turning point? What took you to like your first a hundred K month or your first seven figure year?
[00:18:10] Justin: How did it happen? but I think it's like, I got the Go-Giver by Bob Berg. It's the idea of a service-based life. So service-based prospecting, service-based sales. It's the idea that just orienting yourself to the transformation of other people is gonna be a big outflow, and it's gonna inflow, abundance, wealth, and peace.
[00:18:35] Justin: It's kind of the end of suffering. I mean, mother Teresa is like, pick one person and help them. So if you're hearing this and you don't make a lot of money, if you're in nonprofits, if you're in a mission, if you're an artist, if you can just, if you have a passion for increasing the happiness and relief and healing of other humans, that's gonna bring you the fastest path to joy and serenity.
[00:18:57] Justin: And that's the thing. people are so combative and competitive, but the gentle giant is the most powerful, the serene mind. Like the peaceful warrior essentially. So I went from the inner self-talk of like Silas and Da Vinci code, like whipping myself, like the churning sea to just calm. Calmness in the mind.
[00:19:17] Justin: And that's really helped me. I can't say I had to do like zen meditation or all these, there's just so many ways to find this. They're universal truths. but yeah, I can't say that the things in my book are new or revolutionary, but they're synthesized out of a lot of places and that they hit so hard.
[00:19:33] Justin: I mean, this new book, 17,000 words, you can read it in 90 minutes and it'll take you a thousand years of information is in there. That's been the fun part is amalgamating and assembling this stuff so it's so potent.
[00:19:46] Hector: It seems like you're drawing from places that aren't usually connected. when you're talking about grounding and sales, those are not too, those aren't in the same books, but they, but to your point, they have a ton of crossover or, impact on each other.
[00:20:02] Justin: Yeah. that's what makes my material interesting. So like the frame, this book, it has elements of like film noir and john la car spy novels and James Bond and succession in billions. And it like, it's wild. it has these. Really wild vignettes. It walks through and then it goes into all this history and sort of Robert Green style and then this new one.
[00:20:23] Justin: rewriting the law of attraction really feels like the Alchemist. It's all this just like parables and allegories and, flames and phoenixes and all these wild sort of parables and so. What I'll do is I'll conceptually find material, but then I'll package it in a way that is really enticing to read.
[00:20:40] Justin: seven Figure Formula. My book for coaches and consultants, it had a fighter plane on it, P 51 Mustang, and that's all satire. So just like, you're just laughing the whole way through while you learn. So, yeah, I'll entertain on Inspire, but I'll teach you a lot of things. And the biggest test of material in books is like, can you read it?
[00:20:57] Justin: Never meet me and still get a, an outcome. And that's why I love, like I have over a thousand reviews in my books. My favorite thing ever is when there's a total stranger, I don't even know who left the review, and they're like, Hey, this helped me build my consultancy unit a million dollars. This totally revolutionized my approach or my confidence.
[00:21:12] Justin: that's the coolest.
[00:21:14] Hector: Yeah. Well, we'll, we'll link all that up. I'd love for you to share where listeners can. Connect with you or find any of the books or what they should look for. and I've got one other question, but before we do that, I'd love for you to share where, they can find that out.
[00:21:27] Justin: Yeah. So if you just go to Amazon and type in Justin, Michael or LinkedIn, Justin, Michael, you'll find me, can't miss me. Ton aton of different books. I even have a book called The Sales Illuminati Manifesto. If you wanna hear my Citizen Cane. And I have like a, I have a white paper. Called manifestation, which is like my music and manifestation process that's like aligned with the chakras and the sgio frequencies and cymatics.
[00:21:51] Justin: And so it says, woo as you wanna get, I can get you there as tactical as you wanna get. I can get you there.
[00:21:58] Hector: Amazing. yeah, well, I'm excited to dig into some of those. And Justin, my last question is, in your opinion, what is the secret to scaling a business?
[00:22:09] Justin: Well, yeah, I mean, I think. You have to have tremendous grit and passion and patience.
[00:22:16] Justin: I think for all the iteration and all the bootstrapping and all the twists and turns. you gotta eat glass for seven years to really do it. you gotta delegate, but you have to realize you're never gonna find people who can quite do what you do. So the whole idea of Moneyball, it might take three people to do one thing that you can do and that's okay.
[00:22:37] Justin: . Holding a vision, being aligning to something you absolutely love, because you will work every waking hour. So like even writing and coaching, some of these books, I'll do 50 hours of editing. They're like, oh, is that all cha GBT? I'm like. I'll analyze it with technology, but I sit there like the sun will come up and the sun will go down, and I'm still in the zone, just tweaking stuff.
[00:23:01] Justin: So the time commitment would make it almost impossible if you don't truly love it. 'cause it's gonna be a grind, but if you love what you're doing, it won't feel like a grind. You kind of have to find a group of people that are aligned on that. That's what it's been for me. I mean, I've scaled up my own consultancy, I've scaled up an agency, but I've advised hundreds of companies that are scaling, the human factor of doing sales yourself.
[00:23:25] Justin: Even if you're the founder, mastering founder led sales. Doing it humanly where the AI and the tooling is, a multiplier, but not the core. You're not just spamming slop and automating everything, right? That bespoke white glove service of talking to someone slowing down, you just don't see it a lot. But when I watch like Gordon Ramsey documentaries, it's evident, you know?
About How to Scale a Business
How to Scale a Business gives founders the systems, hiring frameworks, and operating habits to grow past themselves. Host Hector Santiesteban breaks down what actually moves a service business from owner-driven hustle to a company that scales — in practical, do-this-next episodes.