IAM1008- Best-selling Author Focuses on Entrepreneurial Education

A best-selling author and the host of Radio Free Enterprise, Frank Felker has more than 40 years of experience starting, running, and helping small businesses. Today his focus is entrepreneurial education. Over 25,000 entrepreneurs from 170 countries have enrolled in his online business courses and he has taught thousands more at live events across the United States, Germany, Brazil, and the United Kingdom.

His book, Unlocking The M Cube, How to Master the Six Sides of Business Success, makes clear why only a small number of business owners thrive and succeed while the vast majority struggle and fail, and what every business owner needs to do to create the entrepreneurial life of your dreams.

• CEO Hack: Book- The War of Art
• CEO Nugget: Never be afraid to hire people who are smarter than you
• CEO Defined: Taking total responsibility for results

Website: https://frankfelker.com/

Book: https://amzn.to/3rgNmhw

Full Interview:

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Transcription

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00:23 – Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:51 – Gresham Harkless
Hello, Hello, Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Frank Felker of Radio Free Enterprise. Frank is awesome. Have you been on the show?

01:00 – Frank Felker

Thank you so much for having me Gresham and it's great to reconnect with you.

01:03 – Gresham Harkless

Definitely always a pleasure to learn and hear from you because you do so many phenomenal things so definitely a pleasure to reconnect before we jump into the interview I want to read a little bit more about Frank so you'd hear about some of these awesome things that he's doing. Frank is a bestselling author and host of Radio Free Enterprise. And he has more than 40 years of experience starting, running, and helping small businesses. Today's focus is entrepreneurial education.

Over 25, 000 entrepreneurs from 170 countries have enrolled in his online business courses. He has taught thousands more at live events across the United States Germany, Brazil, and the United Kingdom. His book, Unlocking the M Cube, How to Master the 6 Sides of Business Success, makes clear why only a small number of business owners thrive and succeed while the vast majority struggle and fail. What every business owner needs to know and needs to do to create the entrepreneurial life of their dreams. Frank, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:56 – Frank Felker

I'm ready.

01:58 – Gresham Harkless:

Awesome. Well, let's do it then. So To kind of kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit and hear a little bit more about how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

02:06 – Frank Felker

Well, my story goes so far back. It's funny, Gresham. At 1 point in my quote career, I was so young that nobody would take me seriously. I first got involved with small business in 1974. I was 15 years old and my mother opened a copy shop, a print shop-type place. And in any event, nobody would pay any attention to me or take any of my ideas seriously because I was so young. Now I have the exact opposite problem people don't take me seriously because I'm so old. And I find it humorous. But one thing that I've learned is that no matter what somebody appears like on their exterior, It's worth giving them a listen. Any person you ever meet can teach you something about something. So don't turn away from somebody no matter how their appearance strikes you.

02:55 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that's absolutely huge. I appreciate you for sharing that. I just call it a little more seasoned over here than anything else, but it's great because I think we all have our Zona Genius thing we can kind of pull upon to kind of learn from each other. Yeah. Awesome, awesome, awesome. So what led you to kind of write your book and do everything you're doing with Free Enterprise?

03:13 – Frank Felker

Yeah, As I say, my mother started this little copy shop. I was just a teenager. Neither 1 of us knew anything about business. And we really struggled for about 10 years, really struggled. And I say in my book, Unlocking the M Cube, that we weren't just broke, we were poor. And I'm not really sure how she got by, how she paid the mortgage and put food on the table. I really don't know. I was young and teenage boys are not always the most observant people who really care about what's going on. But what I did care about was more than us being financially unsuccessful. I hated the fact of being stupid about business.

Now, we were actually ignorant of business, but I felt stupid And I didn't like it. And so I started at a very early age to observe what is the difference between the small fraction of business owners who thrive and succeed and the vast majority who struggle and fail. And I've literally made it my life's mission. And it's encapsulated in that book. The M-Cube is 6 M's, things like marketing, money, and management. And then my podcast Radio Free Enterprise, every interview I do is in alignment with 1 of those M's and helps to try to elucidate the topic for my audience, which like yours is business owners.

04:38 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I definitely appreciate that. I love alignment and being able to kind of have that with everything that you do, but I love even more why that mission piece that you spoke to because I think so many businesses struggle and they're not sure why they're doing it. So I love that you're providing that information, that expertise, and that knowledge so that we can, you know, increase the likelihood of being successful.

04:57 – Frank Felker

Well, and you know, mission, why you're in business is actually M1, M1 of the M-Cube. And it's critical because you don't need it to succeed in the short term. Really the most critical short-term M is marketing. But for the long term, if you really don't know what your mission is or why you're doing this, every business owner knows that there are a lot of struggles and a lot of difficult times and sleepless nights. And if you don't have a strong why to hold onto, you're probably going to give up.

05:28 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, the roller coaster ride of running a business is such that you need to have that North Star, that Y, that mission, as you said so well, or you'll just kind of fly off the ups and downs on the roller coaster.

05:41 – Frank Felker

Yeah, and different people have different Ys. Some people, want to make a lot of money. They might express it differently and say they want to be financially secure or financially independent. They want time and freedom that they couldn't have working a normal job. Some people have a big idea that they're looking to express and bring to the world. Somebody like an Elon Musk. Other people, they're why, and this is not a very healthy 1, but it can carry you through, is to prove themselves to someone, like their father or their ex-boss or their ex-wife, for that matter. Different people have different Ys, but when I hear somebody say, oh, it just seemed like a good idea, that's not good.

And I knew a couple who opened a restaurant in Springfield, Virginia. The reason why they did it was because they loved that restaurant and met at that same branded restaurant when they were in college in Georgia. And so they just thought it would be a great idea to have one of those restaurants of their own. And I estimate they lost somewhere between $600, 000 and a million dollars in less than a year due to the failure of that restaurant to take hold. So it's serious, serious business, and you need to have a serious why.

07:00 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that's absolutely huge. And of course, a lot of the other Ms, as you mentioned as well too because I think you can't always guarantee success, but as you talked about the ignorance and the knowledge that we can possess, I think if you have more of that information, which is why I love everything that you do, it helps to increase your likelihood of being successful and understand absolutely what you're ultimately doing. So I wanted to hear a little bit more about the other M's. I know we touched on some of them. Could you take us through a lot more of those and how those manifest themselves in Radio Free Enterprise?

07:29 – Frank Felker

Yeah, I'll try to do it as quickly as I can. The second M is marketing. And I really struggled because I have seen marketing cause people to succeed, even if they weren't quite sure what their mission was. But if you don't understand marketing, and you don't implement marketing, I found that the number 1 differentiator between success and failure, is successful companies, and business owners, understand and implement marketing on a daily basis. And people who fail generally do not. So that also includes that horrible word sale. I say that for most small business owners marketing is a mysteryand sales is a dirty word but I put marketing ahead of everything including making the hamburgers or cutting the hair or whatever you do because if you can't sell it nothing else matters.

Seeing people succeed with no money and no nothing, but they knew how to sell and they generated revenue. So the next 1 then is money. You need to have some kind of money generally. You're gonna have to eat yourself. So you need to at least have enough money to provide for yourself while you're starting up and trying to get to cashflow positive. But, In addition to money itself, you need to understand money. Most people, Again, do not understand money at all. I highly recommend something called color accounting. You can find it at coloraccounting.com. If you can't read, you're illiterate. If you can't read your financial statements, you are accounting illiterate.

And I assure you, Gresham, I'm sure you know, successful people know their numbers. They can read their financial statements. Let's see, we're up to 3. Number 4 is a machine, which is actual production operations. That's flipping the burgers, cutting the hair, mowing the yards, writing the code, whatever it is you do. But that comes in number 4, because you don't, if you've got great marketing, even a substandard product can succeed as evidenced by Windows 3.2, kicking the butt of the Macintosh operating system way back in the day, even though it wasn't even close which 1 was best. Microsoft ended up with a 97% market share because of superior marketing, not because of a superior product.

Nonetheless, for long-term success, you should be good at what you do. The fifth M is the management of people. And again, I put it way at the end because I don't think you should hire anybody until you've proven that people are buying what you're selling, you know how to make the hamburgers, et cetera, et cetera, because it's compact, it's a trust you take with the person you hire, that they do this for you, they work for you and you will pay them. Well, things happen where you can't make payroll, but they trust you to pay them, they need that money.

It's People enter into hiring people too lightly, and this is another M you must master. The final M is minutia, which has to do with, whether should I be an LLC or an S-Corp, and do I have the right kind of insurance and business license, and et cetera, et cetera. Those are important, I don't wanna discount them, but they will not help you succeed. If you are spending all your time with busy work of the minutia as sort of a defense mechanism to keep you from going out and talking to people to sell things, that's what a lot of people do. And that causes failure. And I often find that that's what people put first, is the minutiae and it's a recipe for disaster.

10:55 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. So let me ask you this, what would you consider to be what I call your secret sauce, which could be for yourself personally or the business or a combination of both or everything that you do? What do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

11:08 – Frank Felker

Well, I would, The number 1 thing is being observant. I really pay attention, not as much to what people say but to what they do. People will tell you anything and they'll even tell themselves lies about what's important to them. But if you watch what they do repeatedly, especially, you'll know that's what they enjoy or feel comfortable with, or that's what's in their heart. And so as I observed successful business owners, I saw them doing things, employing behaviors, leadership-oriented behaviors that made them stand apart from their competition and from their peers in other industries in the same city.

11:48 – Frank Felker

So I would say observation, being observant, and marking down what you observe.

11:55 – Gresham Harkless

I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

12:06 – Frank Felker
I really, there's, I do a lot of reading. I'm just finishing now the book, Lift Off, which is a story about SpaceX. And my goodness, you know, we look at Elon Musk right now and think, well, that guy's so smug, that guy's so rich, that guy's so brilliant. Tell you what, that guy is tough. He has seen some tough times in the not-so-distant past. But in any event, I'm obviously very charmed with that book. But a book I would recommend is called The War of Art. Now we've all heard of the book, The Art of War.

12:37 – Frank Felker

This is not the same book. This is The War of Art. It has to do with being creative and how difficult it can be for someone who's an entrepreneur an artist or a writer.

12:50 – Gresham Harkless

Nice, and so I wanted to ask you for what I call now a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client or if you hopped into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

13:02 – Frank Felker:

In the fifth M of management, I've created an online course, one of the courses you mentioned earlier. It's called How to Hire and Keep Great People. And there is a nugget that I get a lot of people go, or aha kind of moment, which is never to be afraid to hire people who are smarter than you are, or who are better at a given task than you are. Because you don't want people whose only benefit to you is that they always tell you how right you are. That's the sign of a poor manager that surrounds themselves with yes men.

13:34 – Gresham Harkless

I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're open to different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Frank, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:44 – Frank Felker

Yeah, I love that question too. And I have listened to quite a number of your interviews, and you get some great answers from people. I like the Chief Energy Officer's answer. I don't know if you know this question, but at 1 time in my career, I was actually CEO of a public company. And that's what the real CEO is. I mean, it was a small company and it wasn't anything huge. We were publicly traded through what's called a reverse merger. But there was a tremendous amount of responsibility and accountability and that kind of thing that comes with being a public company. But yet still, now I'm a solopreneur, you're still CEO of your own ship. And I would say to me, the number 1 thing that CEO means is you take total responsibility for results. No matter what happens outside that you couldn't control, may not have been your fault, but it's still your responsibility to deal with it, to deliver the way that you said you would for your client, to do whatever it was a commitment that you made. You're fully responsible. And once you come to that place in your mind and in your heart, you're pretty much unstoppable.

14:53 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, Awesome, Awesome. Well, Frank, truly appreciate your time. Appreciate that definition. Of course, what I want to do is just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know, and of course, how best they can get ahold of you, find out about the book, the podcast, all the awesome things that you're working on.

15:09 – Frank Felker:

I appreciate that, Gresham. Well, I would encourage you to tune in to Radio Free Enterprise. It's RadioFreeEnterprise.com. You also can find it, you know, podcasting platforms, YouTube, Facebook, et cetera. But in order to connect you with the book, go to FrankFelker.com and you get a free copy of the PDF edition of the book of the first edition. I'm putting out a second edition sometime soon. Not sure exactly when that's going to be done, but I recommend that you go there and get the book and read it for yourself. You can read it in about 20 minutes. It's a very quick read. And the promise that I make to you is it's likely that you will never look at your business the same way again after you've read that short book. So take me up on that.

15:56 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And to make it even easier, we will have the links and information in the show notes. But I appreciate you so much for taking time out, of course,of course, today, Frank, but I appreciate you so much for writing the book and all the great work that you do and all the courses and all those things to help people and arm people with that success. Because I think I use the word holistic a lot when talking about business, but understanding what that holistic part is, those 6 M's that you laid out, is so huge to try to guarantee that or increase the likelihood that businesses can be successful. So I appreciate you again, my friend, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:27 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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