Dawn Fobbs is an Entrepreneur, Professional Speaker, Authoress, Business Development Consultant and an International Certified Professional Speaker and she has businesses that fit to her own lifestyle, not the other way around.
Her proven track record includes retaining over $50 Million in grants and contracts.
In this episode, Dawn will talk about leaving corporate America and becoming her own boss. She has published over 23 business books and will teach us how to write a book in 3 days and create a legacy through entrepreneurship.
She will also share how non-profit public charities work and how to get contracts. Also, she will tell us about their upcoming cross country road trip from Texas to Canada to do masterclasses that she and a friend will be doing.
Let’s listen and dissect tons of knowledge and ideas from Dawn and create our legacy as entrepreneurs.
You will learn:
– How to create a book in three days.
– How to have a business that fits your lifestyle.
– How to create a legacy through entrepreneurship.
– And so much more!
Connect With Dawn:
Email Address:
dawndfobbs@gmail.com
Instagram:
@msdawnnn
Facebook:
www.facebook.com/msdawnf
Connect with Us!
Our Website:
https://awesomeoutsourcing.com/podcast/
ApplePodcast:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast
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https://www.facebook.com/AwesomeOutsourcing
Thank you so much!
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Listen To The Podcast Episode Here
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Automate To Dominate Show Description:
Automation and Outsourcing saved my sanity. After a life-altering stroke, at the age of 36, I had to start all over again. From a successful MBA in Finance to a second grade IQ level… overnight.
Since my stroke, I’ve had to learn how to automate and outsource as much as humanly possible. It touches everything I do. Now, I am on a mission to help free you up from all the unnecessary tasks you do, and I’ll stop at nothing to help you get your freedom back.
Come with me on an amazing journey where I learn how to automate and outsource my way to financial freedom. I’ll share everything I learn about building multiple passive income streams in numerous areas of life. The primary goal is to have each income stream running on autopilot with very little intervention from me.
This show is for entrepreneurs and small business owners who know they want to build other passive income streams. The ones who will build the freedom they have always dreamt about, and aren’t afraid to work for it. I don’t have all the answers, but I promise I’m going to figure this out and talk with successful experts to teach us exactly how to do it.
I’ll share all of my most significant “a-ha moments” along the way to help you learn from my successes and failures. I’ll show you what worked and what completely bombed.
P.S. I guarantee we’ll have fun doing it together!
I’m so glad you asked… Here you go!
Michelle Thompson: [00:00:09] Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Automate to Dominate.
Michelle Thompson: [00:00:14] Today we have Dawn Fobbs with us and she is a development and growth consulting business coach. So we are super, super excited. She has an amazing story. You guys are going to get a kick out of this. So she has published over twenty-three books. She is a world-renowned speaker, authoress, business development consultant. I’ll let her tell you a little bit more. But I mean, I could go on and on. Dawn, thank you so much for being here.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:00:47] Thank you so much for inviting me. And I’m excited to share my journey with your listeners so that maybe they can take one thing out of it and make it a part of their journey.
Michelle Thompson: [00:00:57] Absolutely. Absolutely.
Michelle Thompson: [00:00:59] Now, tell us just a little bit about you and your background. How did you get into what you’re doing and you know, just kind of your history.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:01:11] Well, I’ve got that story of leaving corporate America to do something else. And that’s literally what I wrote as I was sitting at my corporate desk in the 90s. I woke up one day, literally, literally woke up in my mindset. There’s something else you’re supposed to be doing. I didn’t know what else was. So I did write a resignation letter at that moment and I stuck it in my desk.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:01:32] I went to my boss and I said, you know, where can I go from here? I’m already at the top. I was already the manager of the call center. So where can I go from here? And they said, well, unless you want to go to finance, you really at the top of the list, there’s no other level. You’ve already went from one, two, three, four to the next. And I said, not a problem. So at that point, I started looking for what is it that would fit into my life instead of me having to try to fit into it. So I tried to, you know, list all of those things that was going to fit into it. I may have notes on napkins, notes on scratch paper and all of that. And then what I did is I looked at all of them and I said, okay, this is the life that I wanted. And I kind of pictured it out. I want to be able to travel. I want to make sure I’m there when the kids go to school. I want to be there when they get home. I want to be able to go and have lunch with them every day. If I want to cite to figure out, well, what business does that fit into.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:02:20] So my very, very first business I started it was a 24-hour child care center. What better way to have children, to raise children, and then care for other’s children?
Dawn Fobbs: [00:02:34] And I had a little niche because when I was 24 hours, seven days, but I cater to the single moms that had to work two and three jobs. The single fathers who had to raise their children alone, who worked a long shift or a couple of jobs. You know, I cater to those individuals that were in the entertainment and we don’t need to go into that any further. But there were entertainers that, you know, didn’t have sitters to be able to watch their children from Friday to Sunday because they were busy entertaining. So, you know, I grew that business. And as I had time to be able to research all the other things I wanted to do, I got into the business of being a paid speaker. I got into the business of starting my own nonprofit organization because I wanted to do a lot of giving back in the community.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:03:16] And then I started figuring out, well, how do I become an author, and what do I do? And I heard that there’s this thing where you can literally do print on demand and I don’t have to have a bunch of books in inventory. And how do I do that? And I said, you know what? Actually, when I went to college for those little three years, I literally wanted to be an 11th grade English teacher. I love writing. I love reading. I love stories. I love talking about stories. I just love the whole mechanism of learning about people’s lives. And I thought, you know, there’s the information that I’ve learned that it doesn’t matter how many times you meet me and talk to me, you’re not going to know what I know because there’s too much information. So I started writing and that led me to really writing because in that first year in 2008, I only wanted to write one book and that book was in it for networking. I ended up writing eight books in one year.
Michelle Thompson: [00:04:03] Wow.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:04:04] It was not the intention, but I got so excited. I was like, oh my gosh, I can pay somebody to do a cover for me. I can create the content on the inside. I can upload it and people can order it. I mean, it was amazing. And so that’s kind of how I got started on my journey of, you know, waking up one day and saying there’s something else I’m supposed to be doing.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:04:23] And now I’ve gotten myself into business consulting and coaching, which I love, love, love. I do a lot of different contracting with different entities to go in and do speaking in training opportunities, things like that. But the thing that I really love is that I still do what fits into the life that I want instead of me having to convert myself into something that I necessarily don’t want. So that’s like the story of, you know, stories that is for me could have been unlikely because being a single mom, you know, being a female, you being way early 20’s, you know, it’s been twenty-three years now. Going on 50 years old.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:05:02] So it’s like, wait a minute. It could have been all the odds could have been against me. But I retrained my brain to think. But guess what? What if it works?
Dawn Fobbs: [00:05:11] And that’s kind of what happened is that I got into it, I studied it, I mastered it and it worked, you know, and here I am now. I’ve never worked for anyone else since I left that last corporate job. I often say if I ever went back to corporate, I feel like bumped my head and woke up and thought I was supposed to have a corporate job because that’s the only way it would happen.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:05:28] I would literally probably go back to that job because it was an amazing opportunity. It’s just that there was something else I was supposed to be doing and I had to figure out what the else was and I did it.
Michelle Thompson: [00:05:40] That’s amazing. And that’s exactly what this podcast is about, is how do we enable ourselves to build up the passive income so that we’re able to do the things that we want to do and not have to be on somebody else’s schedule, but also be able to give back.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:05:57] That’s right.
Michelle Thompson: [00:05:58] That’s a huge part of being an entrepreneur is, you know, the legacy and being able to give back. So kudos to you that.
Michelle Thompson: [00:06:06] That’s an amazing story.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:06:07] And all of my really, really smart entrepreneur friends. We also know that even though we have that main thing of being an entrepreneur. We also know that we need to have multiple streams of income because there are times that come that maybe that particular thing is slow down. Well, maybe you’ve got this other thing like me. I have several stores online that I don’t even ever talk about. I don’t need anybody, I don’t need to promote it. I don’t need to do any of that because I have an audience that purchases it. It’s a niche club.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:06:33] And so, you know, that income that comes in from people who want to buy, you know, my t-shirts or my base or my bat, I’ve even taught my 18-year-old daughter how to start her own store online with drop shipping. We still don’t have an inventory or anything because we don’t need it. We’ve got somebody else shipping it and all of that.
Michelle Thompson: [00:06:50] That’s the beauty of drop shipping, right? I mean, it takes all the risk out of it.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:06:53] But the point is, is even when you discover what that other thing is, you’re supposed to be doing for yourself and you become self-sufficient and don’t have to worry about working on somebody else’s dream, you could be working on your own. Still, make sure that you have that mindset to know that you still need those multiple streams of income.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:07:09] Because even as a professional paid speaker, not only do I go out and do speeches face to face, but I do every week at least three seminars on Zoom or on teleconference or something to a niche audience of people who want to hear or learn what I can teach them. So, you know, somebody was asking me, you know, how the Coronavirus affected my business and I said how it’s affecting my business in a great way because now I’ve created even more classes online that I can teach, you know, without having to be face to face.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:07:37] But I can be face to face on a computer or voice to voice on the phone. And they were like, well, how did you do that? And I’m like, it didn’t happen overnight. This just provided an extra opportunity. And so that’s how I looked at it as just an opportunity to, you know, as entrepreneurs, we know that we’re already self-quarantined all the time because we’re so busy working on our dream that we’re in the house, anyway unless we’re traveling or whatever. But we’re already self-quarantined.
Michelle Thompson: [00:08:03] Yeah. Yeah. So true. So, you know, you said you have the online stores and then you also have like you’ve written twenty-three business books that are on Amazon.
Michelle Thompson: [00:08:15] So that’s twenty-three other additional, you know, royalty of income.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:08:21] Right. Every quarter I look forward to that money being deposited into my account because you know, here’s the great thing about, you know, when you promote your books as a speaker, if somebody is going to hire you to do a speaking engagement and they say, okay, we want to have five hundred of those books.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:08:38] So that fits into the topic that you’re going to be teaching us. I’ll have to do is go in my bookstore. I make that order, I ship those books to them. You know, even though that book in the back office may only cost me $2.48 and the book online costs twenty-nine bucks, I’m giving it to them for $10 or $15 a person. I still make an income off of that. And then, you know, again, you got to have multiple ways to be able to bring income into your house so that in times when they get tough as entrepreneurs, we all know that happens. At least you’ve got a little bit of something and you don’t have a complete stop. Where there’s nothing coming in and now you get nervous and you’re trying to create something out of nothing, which may not happen as fast as you really need it to happen. You know, just thinking about having done those multiple strings is very, very smart because you can literally take one thing and spring off ten things from it, especially without the digital products and all of the things that we can do now with, you know, Internet and with, you know, video conferencing and all of that. It makes life so much easier for entrepreneurs. Now, podcasting, you can get sponsors to pop for your podcast. And there’s so many things you can do at home or you can be location independent, meaning you can be anywhere in the world and do it.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:09:50] Which is my whole philosophy is I want to be in any corner of the earth still being able to help people that I want to be able to help in my business.
Michelle Thompson: [00:09:59] Yeah, it’s so true. I mean, my friend Furgal, he lived in Ireland and he decided he was tired of the rain and he wanted to go on the beach.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:10:08] I’ve been there for two weeks and it rains every day.
Michelle Thompson: [00:10:11] Yeah. Yeah. So he literally just, you know, picked up and moved to the Canary Islands and he.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:10:17] That was so cool.
Michelle Thompson: [00:10:18] Yeah. And I mean, nothing changed. Right. He still is able to help people every day because all he have to do is take his laptop and an internet.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:10:27] That’s what I told people. You’ve got a great laptop and you’ve got Internet and you’ve got a phone.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:10:31] You can literally create anything that you want anywhere you want to do it. I mean, every time I’m traveling for leisure with my family or by myself or whatever, I still am working. Like I literally can be sitting on the beach and face to face on zoom with someone coaching them where I could go back to my room and coach them. You know, it’s only a short time and then you get back to whatever you’re doing. Because our phones are so smart as well. I can literally be doing it from. From the car that I’m in as I’m traveling from one stop to the next because we’ve all got these little dashboard things and all of that. So, I’ve, like again, I have businesses that fit into the lifestyle that I created for me and not the other way around. And I just think that’s really the best way to do it so that you don’t regret down the road. Oh, I went from one 9:00 to 5:00 to now this other 9:00 to 5:00, which I’m not enjoying. You want to work that you want to do work that you super enjoy, that you don’t mind telling other people, hey, this is how I did it. You can do it another way. But you asked me how to start it. I will tell you how to start it.
Michelle Thompson: [00:11:27] Absolutely. And so you know what else? I mean, this is like incredibly interesting. What else you got going on, girl?
Dawn Fobbs: [00:11:36] Well, you know what? This is gonna blow your socks off and your audience as well. I met a very, very nice lady by the name of Tammy Fink on Facebook. She posted something with this awesome, amazing looking RV type school bus that somebody had completely good at and turned into a sleeper driver type RV thing. And she threw this little comment out like, oh, my gosh, this is so awesome. I like, I’d like to drive this thing or something. And I think you back. And I said, wouldn’t it be awesome to take a cross-country road trip in that thing? And she goes, Don’t joke with me. And I go, I don’t joke when it comes to excitement. So we take it to the DM and we decide to start talking back and forth.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:12:20] Well, long story short, Tammy Fink and I are going to be doing a cross-country road trip from Texas to Canada. We’re gonna start it on August the 3rd and it’s going to end on August the 16th. And we’re gonna have twelve stops that we’re stopping it from Texas to Canada and we’re going to be doing masterclasses. We’re gonna do it after our mastermind. And we’re gonna do a great meet and greet. And we’re gonna be meeting with each one of the small business administrative groups that are there that help people get loans and all of those things. But we’ve got an audience of people that are absolutely waiting on this. As a matter of fact, we just had a few people that were kind of inquiring about it. And every time I mentioned this to someone, they get so excited. We’re going to Louie’s going through Louisiana. We’re gonna go through Detroit. Where to go through Ohio. There’s so many little awesome stops. And we’re partnering with some of the small business administrations, but also some of the colleges that have women, business administrations there, so that we can meet with entrepreneurs and small business owners and meet them where they are to be able to share everything we’ve done. You think I’ve done a lot of great things, well Tami’s been in business for 30 years and she’s an awesome graphic designer, but she’s also a great guru at branding and a great guru at teaching people how to do so many great things in their business with marketing and all of that. So we’re taking that show on the road in August.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:13:33] And, you know, we looked at starting to promote it this month. And then, of course, with things that are going on right now, we decided to push it back. But we are getting ready to set up everything where people can go in free, pre-order their ticket without having to pay for it, get to at least get their name on the list if we’re coming to their town. So we’re pretty excited about that. So I’m always working on something with partners somewhere. I’ve got another great partner named Christine Jenning that’s over in Toronto, Canada. We’re doing an event in October and I love creating partnerships. So that’s the other part of my business that I really love is as a speaker, as an author, as an entrepreneurial global-minded person, I love partnering with other people. I’ll meet someone and I’ll go, you know, we should write a book together. You know, I’ve written books with several people, like the 20, 30 books that I’m telling you about, those are all the ones that I did all on my own. The other four books were books that I did with other people that I don’t even add to my list. But those are on Amazon as well. But I love partnering with people and bringing out their good side and my good side, and that’s putting something good together for the good of the people that we’re trying to help. So even if it’s a workbook that we create together, if it’s a class that we do online, if it’s a podcast show we do together.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:14:43] If it’s, you know, a speaking engagement that we do. And the one thing I can tell you about my mind is I never worry about where they’re located.
Michelle Thompson: [00:14:51] Actually it doesn’t matter.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:14:53] It doesn’t matter with the world we live in now, that should never even be a factor. I’ve got a lady in Trinidad that I’m going to be doing an event within 2021. And I’m always looking for other global people who have the same mindset that I have so that we can do amazing events together. And that’s the exciting thing about being an independent entrepreneur, is that you don’t have to worry about location. If it’s a good fit, make it work.
Michelle Thompson: [00:15:17] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So going back to the, you know, small businesses, like a lot of the people that are listening to this podcast,
Michelle Thompson: [00:15:25] you know, that’s where they fit. They’re The small entrepreneur. Maybe one, two, three, four employees. Now you’ve got like a track record of $500,000,000 in grants.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:15:37] $50,000,000.
Michelle Thompson: [00:15:39] Oh, sorry. I’m sorry. $50,000,000. Yeah. You can slap me, I add an extra zero there. I got all excited.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:15:47] You know what? When I used to travel around and volunteer with T.Harv Eker with Pete Potentials, but I always say, okay, write down your goal, but how much money you want to earn this year and you write it down. So does everybody have a raise it up and you’d raise up. You say, okay, now put it down and add a zero. And everybody got, oh! So I completely understand that adding the zero.
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Michelle Thompson: [00:16:07] So tell me how like how do you do that? How do you get all those grants and what’s the process behind that, somebody’s looking to their business?
Dawn Fobbs: [00:16:16] Well, of course, the first thing of getting grants is that you have to have a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. The next thing is, is that you have to set it up according to the programs and services that you want to offer. The third thing is then looking for that funding. And what I did in my nonprofit organization is that we have an inter-generational program where we service and do programs for elders, but we also do programs for children and those who care for children like childcare centers. Remember, my first business I started was a child care center. So when I thought about reaching back, I wanted to reach back to those individuals who had child care centers. And so by helping them with proper meals and all of that, I got a contract with the Department of Agriculture. This is one of my first big contracts. I got a contract with the Department of Agriculture to be one of those food and nutrition sponsors whereby we taught them proper nutrition. And then if they did that proper nutrition feeding through the month, we would give them a reimbursement from the Department of Agriculture to their center so that the center didn’t even have to worry about having funding to buy the food for the kids. They got it directly from the state. After I’ve trained them, then I got the money from the state, passed through me and went over to them and then I got paid for that service. So that particular contract brought us in over six point four million dollars to me that that particular one bought us in $2.4 million.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:17:34] All of the contracts together that I had with Health and Human Services Chopper License and Houston-Galveston Area Council, the City of Houston Area Agency on Aging, Humana, Cigna that brought in over $6.4 million into my business to date because I use my voice as a speaker to do multiple things. So if I’m going to go in and do a training for your company or for your government entity that’s on a contractual basis in these contracts are easy for you to find online if you go. Let’s say you say you want to work for a particular government entity. Let’s just throw one out. Let’s say you want to work for the EPA. You go over to the EPA’s website, you look at requests for proposals. You look at what they’re requiring for you to do if it fits into your business genre. Then you apply. Of course, it’s a competition and whoever wins the competition is the one that they’re going to contract with, which you have to just know that you’ve got to continue to apply in all these different places. But the way I stepped mine up is I started networking in the same places these entities work. So if I knew that they had a workshop event this weekend talking about their different programs and services, I would show up to those networking events and I would then talk to the person who’s in charge of the grants and the requests for proposals.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:18:42] And I would just ask, you know, what does it take to apply? You know, do you work with organizations that do this? And then I would have a connection there, not somebody to hook me up ever. I never had a hookup, but at least I introduced myself to say this is what we offered. Do we fit into this program? I still had to go and do the hard work of completing those proposals and all of that. And I got a little bit addicted to it and just ended up with multiple, multiple proposals. And so one thing I can tell you, although I have multiple things going on, they still are all the same thing. They’re all still under speaking. They’re all still underwriting. They’re all still on the consulting and coaching, which all of that I have to use my voice to do. So that’s how I keep it all saying like, I don’t go out and do things that have nothing, like I’m not going to go out and create a garden because that is not my thing. I’m not an outside element type chick. You know, it’s just not my thing. I’m not going to go and start a car dealership. I love cars, but I don’t want to sell cars. I’m more of a girl that would get a car, restore it instead of trying to sell cars.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:19:43] So I like to do things that fit into, again, the life that I’ve created for myself. So, yeah, I’d love to help individuals to want to start their own 501(c)(3) nonprofit public charities, but I also love helping them to discover where the funding is and so that they can get grant funding and all of that. And you know, the funny thing, Michelle, is that a lot of people don’t understand that even with their business that they do right now, they’re still contracting opportunities for them with their government, with their state, with their local entities. You know, the government can’t do everything themselves in your community. This is why the money comes from D.C. down to your state, then down to your local city, then even down to your county, so that if they’re individuals that can do that work and you don’t always have to be a nonprofit to get these contracts, but a lot of nonprofits are gonna get more funding because it’s tax-exempt to them. So people need to look at what kind of business they have. So, for instance, even like with my books, I have some companies that will license out my books to be able to give to their employees or whatever when they do what they call an onboarding or whatever. So I’ve got a book on customer service for a lot of call centers, have used my books to license out to be able to give to their employees to read, you know, these simple customer service texts. I mean, I was in customer service for ten years. I was a call center manager over forty-seven women. So I think I know a little bit about customer service, you know? And so anything that pops in my head and I say, okay, I want to write about that. I start pulling out my notes and my knowledge and all that. And I can put a book together in no time. And when my clients come to me and say, hey, I’ve been wanting to write a book for five or six or seven years, I’ll go. Let’s get that done this weekend.
Michelle Thompson: [00:21:21] Yeah. So you actually say, you know, you teach people how to successfully write your book in three days.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:21:29] Right.
Michelle Thompson: [00:21:30] Wow, in three days. Yeah. How do you do that girl?
Dawn Fobbs: [00:21:34] And look I can make them do it in one day but I don’t want to overwhelm them and confuse them. But for me, I use my fifth-grade formula. In fifth grade, my teacher, Miss Carr. She said, before you write about a story, always put the outline together of your talking points of what you actually want to talk about. Then it’s easy because you know those talking points, you can then go back and fill in your thoughts, your ideas always add some proof to it so that it’s not just your idea, but that you can say, hey, this backs up what I’m thinking, you know, what I’ve done or what I’ve gone through. She also said, always share your story so that people can know that you’ve got a dog. You know, you’ve got what they call that a dog in this fight or whatever they call it. And so I use that same fifth-grade formula Miss Carr taught me in elementary so that I can write my books. So when I get a client that comes to me that says, hey, I want to write this book, I don’t know where to start. First thing I go is, what do you want to talk about? Okay, good.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:22:31] Who’s your audience? And we sit down to make a list of this is who your books gonna go out to? What they don’t realize is that I’m asking them who their audience is, is, because later on I’m gonna show them how to build a list so that they can send out information about their book to that targeted audience. So there’s a method to my real madness. But I’ve done retreats where we’ve done a weekend retreat from a Friday to a Sunday. And when people left that retreat on a Sunday, they had their books all ready to go home and get them edited. You know, you can write it and say something. One of my, I went to a little school in Austin called Wizard Academy. And Roy H. Williams is the founder of that school over in Dripping Springs, Texas, which is near Austin. And one thing he said is stop trying to be perfect and just write the book. That’s why that’s why you pay editors and you pay wordsmiths and you pay other people to go in and fix all your wrong. But if you’re trying to figure out how to write, every sentence perfect. The thought is going to leave your mind and you’re gonna be a year down the road
Dawn Fobbs: [00:23:32] still trying to write that same book. Six months down the road, still try to write that book. And when he told me that in 2008, that’s when I got busy and started writing my book, because I kept saying, you know, I had all the excuses in the world. I don’t want to write a book because if I write a book, then I’m going to be responsible for that. That means that people are gonna think, oh, she’s an author now, she’s got money, now I’m responsible. Now I’m obligated to help you. Now I’m obligated to do this. And I had to get rid of all those limiting beliefs. That’s what I meant by retraining my brain. I had to get rid of all those limiting beliefs and say, I’m going to write this book regardless. And I think that’s what propels me forward. To end up writing eight books is because my mindset, you can, you can do it. So go ahead and do it. And since you have the you know, the portal to be able to put it up on Amazon and all of it, just go ahead and do it.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:24:20] So the one that I’m writing this year about the million-dollar speaker formula, it’s gonna be my first hardback book. And I’m excited about that because I all of the ones I have a paperback but I’ve found a source where I can get a hardback book and then put the paperback one over on Create Space at Amazon as well, which they are now KDP, which is Kindle Direct Publishing. So, so when people hire me to help them to get their book done, not only am I taking you through a quick way to do it, but then I’m also going to put you with a team that can edit it, that can do you book cover with you, that can wordsmith them
Dawn Fobbs: [00:24:50] for you, that can put you in a power position where because you wrote it, you know, everything in it. Like the reason I always tell people don’t ever use a ghostwriter unless you’re gonna sit there and really critique the entire book, which it took you just as much time to critique it than it would for you to just go ahead and write it is because you want to be able to know what’s in your book. You want to be able to say, oh, I am on page 157, I say blah blah blah. Or I remember in this book that I wrote, I explained the story about whatever. When somebody else writes it for you, of course, they’re gonna write it from their perspective.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:25:19] I don’t ever want one of my books written from anybody else’s perspective because the information I’m responsible for that I’m giving to other people, it’s because I’ve lived it, I’ve done it, I’ve seen it, I’ve mastered it. So now I’m showing you had the quick version if you want to read the book, how to do something even better than what I did. I can’t do that from somebody else’s brain. So it’s it’s fair for you to write your own books. Now, if you want to just be a bestseller and you want to just put a bunch of fluff in a book and you want to have this huge marketing team that can help you promote it. You can go ahead and pay a ghostwriter and get that done that way. But that’s all for the fame of it. You know, even when I was in school, Michelle, I never had this thing of fame. I always wanted to be known but be known for the right reasons, not just for fame or for clouder or for any of that stuff, because for me, titles never mattered. What was important is for you to pay me so that I can live the life I want. So all of that bestseller and all that, it was never a goal for me. My goal was to increase my speaking fees, to be able to have something in my hand, to be able to call myself an author so that when I step on that stage, there’s not very many people that have been on a stage with me that can say they’ve written twenty three books. So I’ve kind of got a little unique going on. That was at an event one year and this guy got on the stage and he said he wrote a hundred fifty-seven books.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:26:31] I said, oh he beat me. Yeah, he’s got about twenty-five years on me, though. He got a hundred and fifty-something books, and he proved it to me because I saw all of them on his bookshelf. It doesn’t live very far from me. It’s all of his books on his ship. And I was so impressed that I thought, this is awesome. So I said, okay, I think I’m going to do 50 by 50 then, 50 books by time of 50. I was like, this is not a competition. But you’ve inspired me. And he wrote them all back to back. He said he would wake up in the middle of night so inspired he would get to writing, he would get his references together. He’d get them on Amazon within a day or two. He’d have a published book. And I was just like, man, that’s pretty cool. And that is true. You do have to take action. You have to take swift action. You can’t say I’m going to want to could I, should I, would I, because it’ll be five years later.
Michelle Thompson: [00:27:19] And that’s I bring up this point a lot on the podcast too is, you know what, we’re trying to make passive income streams, but that doesn’t mean that quick button or the easy button.
Michelle Thompson: [00:27:29] Right. We’re not we’re not afraid of hard work. We want to be proud of our work. And it’s putting the effort in and then letting it like launching it into the world and letting your child do its thing. Kind of ideal.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:27:44] But, you know, also knowing that you can be a rock star in your own field, you don’t have to be a rock star to every human on this earth. You can be a rock star to your niche group of people. Like for me, I have seven niche groups that I cater to and I have a very large database for all of them. Right now
Dawn Fobbs: [00:28:02] in my database, I have well over six hundred and something thousand people in my database. I think the last time I checked was like six hundred seventy-three or something like that. But I’ve got a very large database and I continue to build and build and build. And these are individuals that I meet through groups, you know, that are already established that want to hear. Like I’ve got a group in Louisiana that wants to know about my non-profit stuff and where to find grant funding. And they said, okay, send us a copy of your book and we’re gonna go ahead and get it. They’ve got two hundred and fifty thousand members. Whoa!
Dawn Fobbs: [00:28:32] And they said, if you teach this class and we do a cost-share on it and we pay your fee, we will also give you with their permission, a copy of our database.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:28:41] And I went, oh, of course, I’ll do the class and you’re going to pay me and I’m going to gain $250,000 new.
Michelle Thompson: [00:28:50] And I’m going to make $8 a book.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:28:51] Exactly.
Michelle Thompson: [00:28:53] So I just made $2,000,000.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:28:55] Yeah. Like why in the world would I not want to partner with them? So I look at smart partnerships as well. So if that benefits you, it benefits me. And we know our audience is going to be benefited. and it’s a perfect match in heaven, you know, for me. But if it’s one-sided and I’m only gonna benefit, I’m gonna figure out, well, wait a minute, what else do we need to do? If it only benefits you, I’m not in. If it’s not going to benefit the audience at all, I’m never gonna be in ever.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:29:18] And that’s never gonna be my thing.
Michelle Thompson: [00:29:20] Yeah. Yeah. So with your, going back to the successfully write your book in three days.
Michelle Thompson: [00:29:27] Do you just do like weekend summits for that. Did you turn that into an online course?
Michelle Thompson: [00:29:32] Like if somebody is listening and they’re like I need to take that, where can they find you and how do they get that information?
Dawn Fobbs: [00:29:38] I do that in two formats right now, only because it really is very hands on. I do that at the retreat on the weekends. Usually, I only take ten people, I don’t take more than ten, I’m number eleven that’s there in the building. So we do we hunker down and we do bootcamp style and we really get it done and we really do it as a group effort where everybody’s chipping in, Because everybody’s got knowledge that the other person doesn’t have. I may provide you and I sit down and do the outline, the core part with everybody. Then the rest of it is talking it out and adding this and putting the evidence-based. You’re gonna have your 200- to 300-page book. Okay.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:30:15] The second way I do it is I do it as a one on one coaching opportunity where they can have all of my time and we spend, you know, as much time on it as we need. Now,
Dawn Fobbs: [00:30:23] we have a lot of people that have a lot of people that’ll, we’ll start on a Friday and we’ll put the outline together. And then by Saturday evening, we’re pretty much done. We’re pretty much done. Now I have people that do it kind of backwards where they’ll write everything, because I’m like that. I write everything and then I type it or you’ll have some people who try to type it. I find so much more freedom in writing because anytime I write something, by the time I get to the typing point, there’s so many more ideas that come out.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:30:47] So then the book ends up being longer. So if they, if they definitely want to get that book written, they can reach me by email, of course, which is dawndfobbs@gmail.com or I’m on Instagram and I’m @MsDawnnn. And so they can reach me on Instagram if they want to send me a message of some sort or something like that. But I like to take people that are very serious and actually want to put the time aside. I’ve never really even knew that I could write a book that fast until I started writing and I was like, oh, I’m done. Like, okay, that didn’t take long time. But then I started hearing people saying they’ve been working on a book for three months and six months.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:31:25] And I was just like, why?
Dawn Fobbs: [00:31:27] Like, it’s not that I don’t have anything else to do is just like, I put that time aside to be able to do it. And I’ll block off those days where I’m not coaching or consulting or doing anything for anybody else because I’m focused on, I’m getting up at 2:00 AM, I’m going to work until this time. Tomorrow, I’m going to work from that time to that time. By that time, I’m already ready to get it up on Amazon. I’ve already before I even really start writing anything, I contact my person that does my covers for me and I give them the concept of what I’m looking for, what colors I’m looking for, what font I’m looking for, the size of the book. Then I get my part done because I know that my covers are gonna be done for me in less than twenty-four hours. Have some really great people, I’ve got about eight people that do covers for me and my clients.
Michelle Thompson: [00:32:12] That’s awesome. Yes. That’s, that little black book right there is it is worth its weight in gold just right there. That information.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:32:20] Absolutely.
Michelle Thompson: [00:32:22] Have you thought about, you know, you said you. Have you ever thought of, you know, in the virtual environment doing one on one coaching virtually, you know? And just get on a call and do that in two hours?
Dawn Fobbs: [00:32:36] I do that every day. I told you I do the zoom calls every single day.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:32:39] I have about two clients a day. And so.
Michelle Thompson: [00:32:41] I was thinking you just did one on one, like, you know, they come and sit for like a day and a half.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:32:48] Oh, no, I don’t need anybody that comes in my office and sits anywhere, everything I do is virtual. And the reason is because I’m in Texas. I’m in Houston, Texas. My clients are everywhere but Texas. So got clients in the UK, clients in Canada, clients in Georgia. I mean, I’ve got clients everywhere. So they’re not going to come and sit in my office. And most of my ninety-nine percent of my coaching and consulting is gonna be on Zoom, which is face to face that way. So maybe when I said face to face, that’s what you meant. But when I say face to face, it’s just like you and I right now we’re looking at each other on a camera. So that coaching I do at least to two clients a day.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:33:21] And then from my classes that I do, they’re either on Zoom or I do them on teleconference. The only time I do it on teleconference is when there’s like 200 or more people and there’s just too many people to be on the video screen. So if it’s like 30 or less, I’ll do it on the video. But if it’s too many people, I just do it on teleconference. So because you can only get so many people on the on the video thing before it starts logging them off.
Michelle Thompson: [00:33:45] Awesome.
Michelle Thompson: [00:33:46] So you have like seven ways to create a legacy through entrepreneurship. Can you talk to us a little bit about that and down into that?
Dawn Fobbs: [00:33:58] So my whole trademarked speel that I give every client is that I help individuals to create a legacy through entrepreneurship. There’s a bunch of ways you can create a legacy. My favorite is entrepreneurship. It’s the thing that I’m the girl that I meet somebody in the airport. We start talking about business and I’ll almost miss the flight because we’re so deep in it that we can’t even get out of it if we try it. That’s how much I love talking about business like that can consume a conversation with me and somebody talking about business just on an intellectual level. But one of the ways through creating a legacy to entrepreneurship is getting that digital footprint. We just talked about writing a book, putting something out there into the digital world that’s going to pass you. You’re gonna be gone off the earth and you’re that can still be there. Another way to create a legacy through entrepreneurship is to bring your family into it. Now, don’t bring them dragging and screaming, but bring them when they’re interested.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:34:56] Like I have a daughter that’s very interested in what I do for business. She loves to travel with me. She sees when I’m coaching people on calls and things like that. And she’s like, she’ll come to my office and she’ll go like, Okay, she’s on the call. But, you know, she loves the fact that I have that flexibility. You know, she’s 19 years old. She’s never known a time where I wasn’t here when she went to school and I wasn’t here when she came home. Now that she’s out of school, she’s that young adult and she’s working, I’m here when she goes to work, here when she gets sick. So she’s kind of so used to that. But, you know, that’s a couple of ways that you could definitely create a legacy through entrepreneurship. And, you know, from there you have to decide what’s going to be your thing. You know, are you going to be someone who only has a digital space where everything’s automated and you can earn your money to complete automation, where you never have to show your face, you never have to interact. You can be completely behind the scenes.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:35:46] I don’t have a problem with thinking people are behind the scenes. If that’s the way you set up your legacy, that’s the way you do it. I’ve seen people make a hundred thousand dollars in two hours by putting a course out there that their audience wanted to have people purchase that course and they don’t even know if that person lives in America or anywhere else. And guess what? They don’t care, right, that’s the whole thing. Nobody cares anymore. It’s a you know, they used to have that and they still have it that Doctors Without Borders.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:36:12] Well, we’re entrepreneurs without borders nowadays. I love that you need to code that girl.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:36:18] It’s one of those things that’s like really, really, really a real thing that as long as you’ve got a laptop, you’re good to go. And here’s a great way to let you know that even corporations are understanding this location independent thing. My, both my daughters work in call centers right now. They’ve both been asked, do you have a laptop? Yes, we do. Can you work from home? They’ve both been asked that my son is in Utah. He fell in love and moved to Utah. So he’s in Utah. He works for a staffing company that only staffs doctors that work with Doctors Without Borders. Right. He’s been working from home now for almost a week and a half.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:36:56] So even corporations are understanding that we don’t have to be in your four walls to make things happen because you literally have people that have that 9:00 to 5:00, but then they also have their own dream that they’re working on on the side until they decide enough is enough of working on somebody else’s dream. They’re gonna literally go ahead and work on their own dream, which I’m always proud of anyone who makes that step, because I know for a fact that if I had not taken that fate step and just said, okay, when I was ready to pull that letter out of my drawer and sign it and take it to my boss.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:37:30] I was ready, you know, when I wrote it.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:37:32] I put it away because I knew no matter what, my mind was not going to change. I was very convinced that there was something else I was supposed to do and I had to go and find that thing. And I just say, for anyone who’s looking at doing that and transitioning fully, just make sure you have a plan in place. Make sure that you’re plan,
Dawn Fobbs: [00:37:51] there’s no such thing, I believe, as in foolproof. But make sure that your plan has many, many tentacles so that when one’s not working, the other one is. And when that one’s not working, the third one is most entrepreneurs that I know have no less than about five to seven incomes that are coming in either. It could be from royalties, It could be from what your main thing is. You do. It could be from the part-time thing that fits into the main thing that you do. It could be that other side thing that you do, maybe artwork or graphic design. There’s just so many ways that you can run your business.
Michelle Thompson: [00:38:23] So talk to me about because you write seven seems to be the magic number, right?
Michelle Thompson: [00:38:29] Most entrepreneurs that don’t crash and burn tend to have seven streams of income.
Michelle Thompson: [00:38:35] But I mean, to get that, there’s a lot of systems that are working in the background. Right. I mean, if you’ve got it, if you’ve got an email list of six hundred thousand, you’ve got some serious systems in place, girl.
Michelle Thompson: [00:38:50] Talk to me about how you do that. How do you duplicate yourself through software so you don’t have to do it all.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:38:56] So I think you’ve had a lot to do with the raising two girls and two boys but also raising four kids that are all so different that you don’t even talk to them the same.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:39:06] They all have a different language. In business, what I learned is that you have to be very organized. The reason I split up my list into my niche groups is because I didn’t want to be trying to talk to you about something that you’re not interested in.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:39:19] You know, my speakers are not interested in this thing and my writers are not interested in that and my nonprofit people are not interested in that, and my female entrepreneurs are not interested in that and my young entrepreneurs, they’re not interested at. And guess what? My guys are not interested in that particular thing.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:39:34] But then also, you know, my little actors and actresses that need competence coaching, they’re also not interested in any of the stuff I just mentioned. So those are all so many different groups. So the thing is organization, you’ve got to be organized. When I put a list up and emailed it over from event right, I know exactly which one to pull. I know that I’m not going to be talking to the wrong group of people. Like I just put a class up yesterday in the classes for speech. It says speakers only how to build a list quick. And I have 19 ways I can show them how to build a niche list. It’s exactly what I did. This is not something I read in the book. Isn’t that something somebody else told me? Is that something I snatched off the Website? I went through Sunday going how the world did I build this list? Okay. I did this. I did that. And then I got to help here. And there’s 19 things that I did over my time that somebody won’t have to spend as many years as I do to get to that.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:40:35] They can kind of go through those 19. And then I gave up 20th bonus so they can go through that list and say, okay, I’ve already done one through five because I’ve broken up five here, five there, four there. They can go through and say, okay, I’ve already done one through five. Oh, wow, I didn’t do that. Oh, no, I didn’t do that. You know, it just kind of check off the list as they build their own lists. And one thing that I’m really going to be teaching in that class is and it’s coming up on the twenty-eighth.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:41:00] And one thing I’m really gonna be teaching in that class is, stop trying to skip over steps, master number one and then go to number two. It’s like starting let’s say you and I start five businesses. We’re not going to just launch all five businesses, we’re going to do business number one. We’re gonna get that successful, we’re gonna bring in a little money, right? We’re going to start on business number two.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:41:23] We’re going to master that. We going to bring in a little money there. That’s how you get your systems in places that you start to earn money. If it’s a business that you started and you realize, okay, I don’t have the audience really for that. I’m not. It’s been three months. I’m not bringing in any money, almost scrap. And I’m going to go to the next one. But don’t just try to start all five of those things at one time. I didn’t start all of my businesses at one time. I started the one business that then led me to the next business that then led me to multiple other things. And then I said, okay, I’m going to make this list of all the things that I do as a speaker and see how all the other things fit into it. So as a speaker, my book gets me into places to be able to speak. As a speaker, I get an opportunity to coach other speakers and other individuals that want to do what I do. As a consultant, I get able to consult people that’s using my speaking ability because I go out and do seminars and things for that as well. With my stores, I have a niche groups that I’ve, you know, like I have a car club, that I have a store dedicated just to that car is there’s over 2.5 million of us in the club. So all around the globe. So for that group, I know I’m only speaking to them about here’s this, you know, great t-shirt, my son’s my artist. So he creates all of my designs for my t-shirt. So essentially, we’re in business together.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:42:38] So, you know, I like yeah, I like to do things that really fulfill me, make me happy, you know, make me smile. And I can be happy when I tell other people about it or introduce them to some particular thing. You know, the road trip that Tammy and I are doing in August, that’s an opportunity for us to meet people right where they are and to show them how to be effective in their community
Dawn Fobbs: [00:42:57] as an entrepreneur. And not just look at it as that, you know, I’m just in business to just earn a little money to pay the light bill. No, don’t you want to win? You know, like when I think about business, I don’t just think about business as I mean, just pay the light bill and maybe have a car, note and all, no, I look at businesses, I want to do what I want to master and I want to win at it. So then that once I’ve won it, that maybe there’s something else that fits into that business that I can add on to it. You know, imagine if we went into Walmart and they only sold toilet paper. The reason I shopped at Walmart when my kids were little is because I had four small kids, and to be able to go to five stores wasn’t on the plan. I could go into one store, I could get groceries, I could get toilet paper, I could get cleaning supplies, I could get hair products if I wanted to. I don’t think I could get diapers and formula and anything that I want. If I wanted a rock for the floor, I could get that. It was a one-stop-shop and we could all go together, get it done, and get back home. I do know people that go to the grocery store for the groceries and they’ll go to the store for the batch and then they’ll go to that. But I cannot do it.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:44:03] It just, you know, instead of me having to go every store.
Michelle Thompson: [00:44:06] My mom does that and it drives me crazy because it takes her like two days to get stuff that she could just do at Walmart.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:44:10] Right, because even the stuff that you can get at Home Depot, you can get on Walmart. Not the bigger supplies but if you need a light switch or a light bulb or a screw or, you know, some oil for your car, whatever, you can get it all at one store. I’m not promoting Walmart because they’re not paying me. They should be. But my point is the one-stop-shop. Even in business, you could turn yourself into the one-stop-shop. You know, if you are a digital marketer, I mean, there’s so many different genres of entrepreneurs that would love to know how to market their thing.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:44:44] So if you’re a marketer, you could cater to so many different types of people. I just gave someone yesterday a list of all of the different types of clients that I’ve had, you know, that I’ve coached and consulted and still do. And they were like, wow, you’ve consulted with doctors and you’ve coached physicians and you’ve coached lawyers.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:45:03] And I’m like, but if they have a thing that I’ve already mastered that they’re trying to master. Like when my particular lawyer-client came to me, she wanted to learn how to be able to go out and speak because she was a business lawyer and she wanted to be able to effectively talk about intellectual property and how to protect your intellectual property, like your books and all that stuff. I was like, oh, that’s a great topic, because a lot of people just put these books in these workbooks and give stuff away for free and they never protected. And then when somebody somewhere else takes that book, relabeled it with their name and their cover and resell it, there’s really not anything you can do about it. There’s that thing you could do about it because it happens in other countries all day long. You hire someone. This is another reason why discourage people from ghostwriting. You could literally hire someone online to ghostwrite a book for you. They could take it and turn it into another language and sell it in their country. There’s not a thing you can do about it.
Michelle Thompson: [00:45:57] In fact, that’s actually a that’s an interesting point because so I used to actually do fulfillment by Amazon, sell-out textbooks, sell textbooks.
Michelle Thompson: [00:46:06] And it’s actually you would think there wouldn’t be like a lot of money there. But there’s actually a really good niche.
Michelle Thompson: [00:46:14] But we all got shut down because there were people in India and Africa who were basically scanning it and printing it and selling fake copies. And so the only way that Amazon could prove that it was an actual legitimate copy and it cost to buy it right from McGraw-Hill or who are. Yeah. So they literally just said, well, no, we can’t. And it sucked because like those of us who had like legitimate, you know, good use textbooks, they’re just like. Sorry about your luck. So, I mean, intellectual property is just so people don’t pay attention to it and they don’t because they want to do it. Like I don’t want to spend the money.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:47:06] It’s literally like $47 to just copyright and protect. Or if you want to do what I call the poor man’s copyright, as you could take this book, you can put it on envelope, you can mail it to yourself and that’s your poor man copyright. You can prove that you wrote it if you ever take somebody in court. But if you don’t do anything, then anybody can do that because I literally know someone that had a ghostwriter write something for them over on one of the, what do you call them virtual assistant sites or whatever it was a long time ago? Like guru.com or something like that. Had somebody write them a whole 400-page book. It was awesome. It was on Quantum biz and it was just awesome on the brain. And she was a chiropractor and she thought it was just a smart thing to do because she said she didn’t have time to do it. Literally found out that her book was being sold in different language, only because she went and visited the company, I mean, the country. When she has gotten in, I’m not going to name the country. She got to the country, she’s in the bookstore, she sees this book. She’s like, I don’t even know the language of it. So she got somebody to tell her what it said. It was the same title of her book, she said, what is the first part say, wait a minute, that’s what my book, what did the chapter say? But it was literally her book, and she looked at the name in there. The name was in English. The name was the person that she had hired on one of those sites. Oh, I know that. It’s like I thought about putting my books in Spanish and Chinese at one point because I know a really good friend who got an opportunity to go to Russia. A lot of times to promote his books and things.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:48:33] And I thought, would it be kind of cool to be able to go to another country because they give you someone to speak the language for you. So it will be great to be able to go. And all you have to do is do your talk and then you’ve got this other person that can speak the language for you. My thought, would that be cool, but then I thought about the implications of giving away my material and I didn’t feel good about that. So I didn’t do it. You know, I just, I just, I just didn’t do it. I thought, nah, I already know how that game kind of works. And, you know, again, somebody can literally change the cover, change the copyright, change all of that, leave all of the content in there and call it their book. And if you didn’t copyright it, there’s really nothing you could do but be mad. Which that doesn’t yield you anything. And a lot of that, it’s happening. I mean, we know that it happens with products and all of that, but it’s also happening with intellectual property. So to be able to teach someone how to effectively get on the stage and not be afraid and to be able to get their point across and to be able to use their hands and their body and their voice and to interaction to be able to talk about intellectual property. Her thing was being a lawyer. She’s used to books and head down in the books and get the legal things done. She wasn’t a speaker, but she wanted to be. And she’s making a lot of money doing that right now and loving it.
Michelle Thompson: [00:49:45] Wow.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:49:47] Yeah.
Michelle Thompson: [00:49:48] So that’s something that I would love to do. So I’ve already created an online course.
Michelle Thompson: [00:49:53] And, you know, the Website, the podcast obviously is another digital asset. But the next goal is turn it into a book. Right. And the nice part is, it’s pretty much already written. Right. Because I have all the courses and stuff. I just have to combine it and turn it into that asset.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:50:15] You know, your podcast can be a book too. Your podcast can be a book for all of the wisdom, tips, and ideas that all of your guests like me are giving you.
Michelle Thompson: [00:50:24] Yeah, that’s true. Tim Ferriss put a bunch of books out like that.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:50:28] I did a podcast from 2015 to 2018.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:50:30] And my guest would always tell me what’s stuck on them that made them an entrepreneur. Like what was it that gave you the oath to make you want to be an entrepreneur instead of working for someone else.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:50:40] And so all of those little tips I turned into a little workbook and that workbook was selling for like forty-five bucks.
Michelle Thompson: [00:50:46] Wow.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:50:47] You know, and that was the first fifty-six interviews that I did because I had everybody sign off and give me permission to be able to use that material in that kind of way. So, you know, I got that because I started doing that because I was doing a television business talk show on broadcast TV here and used it on QTV from 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015. So for four years on broadcast TV and that’s it. I’m tired of dressing up and putting makeup on and heels and being on TV.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:51:14] I just it was not my thing. I’m like I tried it, I did it. I won. I’m done. So then when I started doing the podcast, it was awesome because I could just dress any kind of way and I could just do whatever I wanted as long as I had absolutely amazing guests.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:51:26] And I always had great people like Ivan Mizner with BNI and billionaires and millionaires on my show. And they just all about an opportunity to tell me what they loved. And I thought, man, I should get somebody to transcribe this for me. I paid somebody to help transcribe it for me. You know, they had to listen to the interviews and transcribe it. And that just turned it into a workbook. And people loved it because, you know, being able to have that information, that wisdom from those millionaires, those billionaires or successful entrepreneurs, is just priceless, you know.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:51:54] So your podcast is a bunch of wisdom that’s being imparted into you and your guests. And there’s going to be someone who’s going to say, I don’t have time to listen to all of the podcasts or whatever, but I love to have the transcript of it. And I don’t know if you know this or not, but I had a lady that called me and said that she was so happy that I turn everything into getting it transcribed and turned into a book because she didn’t have the capability of listening to podcasts. She was from another country and I was like, oh, okay. I didn’t even think about that. Okay. So it was just pretty cool to be able to have that particular thing that I could promote and you know, send out on email. I don’t even write and say, hey, get your copy today or whatever digital copies.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:52:36] So, you know,yeah.
Michelle Thompson: [00:52:37] And it’s funny how it snowballs, right? Once you get one asset it kind of can create multiple assets from the same time thing. And a lot of times there’s so many things that are like staring us right in the face. And it should be so obvious. Oh, right, go do that. And your like,
Michelle Thompson: [00:52:52] you don’t even see it because you’re like, you know, so.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:52:55] Just because you’re so busy in it that unless you write it down, like, okay, I’m going to do a podcast. How many ways can I bring income on that? I can bring it from these transcriptions. I can bring it from creating a whole entire book. I can do speaking engagements from the lessons I’ve learned from the guests I’ve had on my podcast. I may have to go down the list and I could tell you right now twelve and conjugate on a podcast because again, I did my podcast. So I went to my podcast on the road and was interviewing people as I was traveling and all of it, you know, it was just, it was so much fun. Again, anything that I do, I’m going to be able to have to do it anywhere in the world without being held back any kind of way.
Michelle Thompson: [00:53:32] So if you had, you know, you ran into somebody and let’s say you’re at the airport, right and you start up that business conversation. What is one book that you would recommend that they read to help them on their entrepreneurial journey?
Dawn Fobbs: [00:53:49] I’m going to always be very biased to this book only because I traveled around the road with the foundation doing certification classes for them. But I would say Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. The Napoleon Hill Foundation is very near and dear to my heart, and I travel to so many countries to do their leadership certification classes for those individuals that we’re trying to get certified. I mean, they, they took me around the world to places that I probably would not have gotten be able to go with groups of sixty-seven other people from different countries. So I would say Think and Grow Rich only because there’s so much rich ideas in there. Step by step on how you can do it. It’s a book that every January I sit down and I read it over and over and over. I’ve got the 1926 versions and I’ve also got the newer versions. But every time I go into a little country bookstore when I’m out and about or something, they’ve always got books that they sell for twenty-five cents a dollar because they know no value of it, but I know the value of it. So I have many of those 1926 versions. But I would have to say Think and Grow Rich.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:54:46] So if you ever read Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill and many of these other many of his other books as well, I would say that’s the only book that I would say if I have to only name one, that’s going to be the one. There’s multiple books I could say I’ve got over 10000 books on my shelves all over my home. That’s the one that I would say start with only because that’s the book I started with when I said I want to be the first millionaire in my family. That was the first book that I discovered. Got me to even have the nerve to think that.
Michelle Thompson: [00:55:18] Yeah. Yeah. It’s amazing. And that era had so many incredible thinkers.
Michelle Thompson: [00:55:26] I mean, at the same time, I like I’m thinking like, you know, Acres of Diamonds. Right. And Og Mandino. Og Mandino is awesome.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:55:34] I love Og Mandino. I’ve got every Og Mandino’s books on my shelf.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:55:38] I started reading one. And I, literally when I read Og Mandino’s books, that was the first book I ever read that when I was done with it, I had separation anxiety.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:55:50] I mean, I never read a book where I was ready for the next, ready for the next, ready for the next. I just never had a book like that.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:55:56] And so I ended up with all of his books and I got all the original 1900 versions as well. But there are just so many books that you can read and you know, that’s why writing books is so important to me is because we can give something from our perspective that no one else is going to have because they haven’t lived what we’ve lived. They haven’t been taught would be been taught. They don’t have the same thought process that we may have. So to be able to give it from your perspective is just so important. I mean, it is so important.
Michelle Thompson: [00:56:26] Yeah. And that was actually the reason why I made the online course and this podcast. Four years ago, I had a stroke. And so I’m getting better.
Michelle Thompson: [00:56:38] But one of the things is we found out that I have like a blood disorder.
Michelle Thompson: [00:56:43] And so my life expectancy just isn’t as long as everybody else. And so I wanted to take what was in my brain and be able to pass it onto generations. And it’s easier to do it now than ever before. Right? And so it’s, it’s amazing. And it like it excites me like this podcast is like so much fun for me. But you think about like how many, you know, let’s say this, this is still out there 200 years from now. Yeah. Somebody is listening to this and they’re you know, they’re like, oh, who the heck is Og Mandino?
Michelle Thompson: [00:57:16] I need to figure that out.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:57:17] That’s a legacy through you that somebody else didn’t know. Because when people ask me about books and I start rattling off different ancient. And they’re like, wait a minute, I’ve never heard of any of them. And I’m like, wait until I tell you about the women that were the thought leaders and they go like a ho.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:57:32] Catherine Ponder and all of these different people books that I’ve read, you know, dare to dream and all of that. I’m just like you know.
Michelle Thompson: [00:57:38] Their dreams are great but.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:57:39] You have no, I tell you, you have no idea the wisdom that’s in this head.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:57:43] And I remember those things. I remember those bits and pieces. I’ve incorporate them into what I do, how I think, how I live. So for me, reading a book is not just I read a book. It was great. No, no, I read it, I’m taking notes, I’m highlighting. I’m playing it back over in my head so that if that’s something that I need to remember later, put it in the little memory bank and I can remember it later. So I read for real intention and purpose. And it has to be something I’m going to learn. Like people have asked me, do you read, you know, romance novels? I’m like, I’ve never in my life, my entire life read a romance novel.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:58:20] But if it’s a business book.
Michelle Thompson: [00:58:21] I don’t got time for that.
Dawn Fobbs: [00:58:23] But if it’s a business book or a biography on someone who was a business owner or entrepreneur or whatever. Tell me about that. And I guarantee you if you name the author or you name the person I’ve read about. So that to me is exciting, you know?
Michelle Thompson: [00:58:36] Yeah. So I’ve got a story that I’ve absolutely got to tell you.
Michelle Thompson: [00:58:42] Yeah. So I walked into this bookstore and, you know, I was picking up copies of like Napoleon Hill and Og Mandino and things like that. And the sales clerk kind of gave me this funny look. And he’s like, so why pick up those. I was like, I’m trying to learn about business. And he’s like, I got somebody you got to meet. And I was like, okay. So he takes me into the back of this bookstore and I meet this guy who is like, I don’t know, easily, like 80 some odd years old. He’s got this patch over his eye. Yeah. Yeah. And he grabs a hold of my hand and he shakes it. And he’s like, I’ve been waiting my whole life to meet you. That’s the very first thing this guy says. And I’m like, holy cow. Right? Like what? And he genuinely meant it. Like, he was just like a genuinely, really nice guy. So I find out that the guy’s name is Charlie “Tremendous” Jones. And yeah, he’s like this legend, right? And we sat down and I bet we talked for half an hour. And he pulled out all this information and stuff and gave me all these books to read to kind of get me started and get me go in. And he had the coolest idea and he was the one that really got me on to, you know, give as much as you can give back.
Michelle Thompson: [01:00:10] Give back. Always give back. And he started out as an insurance agent, right? And he sold life insurance door to door. And instead of handing a business card out, he would hand his book out. And it was, you know, life-changing. And so because people gave you a book instead of a card, like, you know, he remembered people or people remembered him and he ends up becoming like this international speaker. Right. Like he said, his daughter now runs the place. But, you know, it’s probably about two or three years after that Charlie passed away. But the amazing thing was the majority of his fortune, he left to the city of Mechanicsburg.
Dawn Fobbs: [01:00:56] Oh, wow.
Michelle Thompson: [01:00:57] And now his daughter still has the online thing. But he donated all of it. So kind of almost like, you know, she did the same thing.
Dawn Fobbs: [01:01:06] Yeah. Yeah. He was really an amazing guy. I think the first time I ever read, you know, any of his books was back in the 90s. And that was the thing that I thought was awesome about to give the book instead of the card because people are going to read your book, whereas your card may end up in the trash or something like that. But that’s really important. And I still today I keep several different copies of books in my car, especially if I’m networking or might a town or something. Because when I meet people, I’ll give them a book and I’ll go, oh, you know, this might fit in well with you if you want to know. You know, because people are always asking me about this is where they’re always asking me about non-profit stuff or things like that. And I’ll always especially if I’m in the airport. And I mean people I’ll go into my backpack and I’ll say, you know what, you’re going to take them I’m gonna sign it for you, see if this will help you. And people are just like shocked that you give them something. But it’s just because it’s worth me giving back to you can help you with something. I’m gonna do it. But you know what? You’re never going to forget me. That nice lady that was in the airport I talked to over 30 minutes. She gave me a book and I don’t know who she is, but I’m going to read this book in honor of her. And while maybe we’ll meet again sometime or I’ll connect with her on social media. But I think if more people have that giving spirit and they really, really, you know, thought about people in that manner, that would be a great reason alone to write a book, because you never know the thing about you never know who you’re sitting next to. You never know who you’re gonna meet. And if you’ve got that book on you and you hand it to them, you could literally change a life, an entire life.
Dawn Fobbs: [01:02:31] That’s how I look. That’s how important it is to me, being an author.
Michelle Thompson: [01:02:37] I mean, that’s the cool part about being the entrepreneur. It’s like you literally get to change lives. We don’t just get to talk about it. We get to act, do it.
Dawn Fobbs: [01:02:46] Actually take action. Yeah.
Michelle Thompson: [01:02:48] Which is amazing. Dawn, this is, this has been incredible. I’m going to hit you up with one more question. And so for anybody, listen to this. It is March 17th of 2020. So prices go up. So, you know, if somebody wants to hire you and they want you to be their coach.
Michelle Thompson: [01:03:08] How? You gave us your email, but, you know, can you give us a ballpark of what would it cost to hire you as an online one-on-one coach?
Dawn Fobbs: [01:03:20] Absolutely. If they want to hire me as a coach and a consultant, you get both when you get me. Not only am I going to be coaching you to get that end result that you told me you’re looking for, but I’m also going to be consulting you through the way by letting you know. Yeah. Or no. How about we try it like this or trying to get you to reframe your brain so that you can see that one thing you’re telling me about, we can actually make that happen ten different ways. Typically, if someone comes to me and they say, hey, I want to do a 30-day coaching session with you so you can let me work this thing out that I’m trying to figure out, I’ll give you an example. When a new speaker comes to me and they go, I really want to be a successful speaker. I’ve already got my speeches down. I know what I want to talk about. I’m not afraid of an audience. I go, oh, that’s wonderful. If they want to do a 30-day session with me, it’s $4000. What they’re going to get is all the things that they need to put themselves in a position to get the money that they’re wanting to do. So I’m helping them with the one sheet, the media kit.
Dawn Fobbs: [01:04:12] I’m helping them craft the best speeches they could ever, you know, come up with so that they can get the money. I’m helping them to actually get started on writing that book so that they can increase those fees. I’m helping them with the pricing. I’m helping them to discover more than a hundred different speaking opportunities that they can go after on their own. Most people don’t even know how to start researching where to find the speaking gigs at. So I give them so many different ways that they can search for those speeches. Now, if they come to me and they’ve already got their stuff together, they just need me to coach them on maybe confidence or something or getting on stages or something like that. And that’s usually anywhere from $1600 to $1900 one time initial fee so that we can work out all the kinks and everything. And then from there I put a price to it. But my coaching and consulting, if you want to have a one-hour session with me it is only $150. So at least you could kind of brainstorm and run some things past me that I could give you a perspective on that I’m pretty sure you haven’t thought of.
Dawn Fobbs: [01:05:04] If somebody comes to me and says, I want to write that book. Okay. And I wanted from A to Z. I want to get with you. I don’t even want help with the title. I want to have it all the way to the end where when I go to the mailbox or my front door, Amazon has dropped my book off at the door this week. How can I do that? That fee starts at $7000 dollars because I’m literally doing every single thing for you and with you and on your behalf. So those are kinda some of the prices there. And it does vary sometimes because there’s people that have come to me that I’ve done the book writing for them for $3900, only because they’ve had certain kinks worked out that I don’t have to go and do research on. When I ask people what kind of evidence are you gonna put in your book to support your ideas, they go, well what evidence. My ideas are good enough. And I’m like,they are? But you still want to have evidence so that you can still be put in an expert position. What put you in an expert position is when you can also add expert comments from people other than you so that it doesn’t make it seem like you made this thing up. You need to back yourself up. So I always look for evidence-based. No matter what you write about. I don’t care if you write about high heels. We’re going to look for evidence-based on how heels are good for you, how heels are bad for you. What benefits, what downfalls. We’ve got to have evidence-based and there’s some scientists out there that’s done some evidence-based material that you can quote and list their name and therefor respect.
Dawn Fobbs: [01:06:27] So there’s just so many things to do. And then also I help people to build their list so that they can have a niche list of people, because what if you write the book where you don’t have an audience still? And what’s the point?
Michelle Thompson: [01:06:38] Yeah. And that’s the scary part, right? Like $7000 and then no list. And you know, you’re like, oh crap. Now what?
Dawn Fobbs: [01:06:47] Well. Oh crap would be, well I got my book done and I’m finished and it’s really great. Now I gotta go hire somebody to help market it . When you can really, again, back to the one-stop drop type of thing. See a lot of people on Instagram and Facebook that teach a lot of courses and they give you the middle part of the business, but they don’t give you the beginning part, which is here’s how you get it started. They tell you how to run it and all of that. But then they don’t tell you how to sustain it. Then they don’t tell you how to get to your audience. So they even know the whole thing exist.
Dawn Fobbs: [01:07:19] And I don’t know why nobody tells you the beginning, the end
[01:07:22] and then the post part. I don’t know why nobody does that. Because if you tell me how to write an Ebook, that’s easy. I could do an Ebook one, two, three. Don’t have to be big about 50 or 60 pages. Put it up on a put up on Amazon for a $1.99. That’s make money while I sleep type of thing.
Dawn Fobbs: [01:07:39] But who’s going to know about the book? You don’t even tell me how to get a list together of my audience, you know.
Michelle Thompson: [01:07:45] There going to sit there.
Dawn Fobbs: [01:07:46] If my book is a children’s book. How do I get to the children? Well, you don’t. You get to the parents. How do I get to the parents?
Dawn Fobbs: [01:07:53] You get a list. You know, back in the day, we used to have to order a list and we use that to pay forward. And it can only be done by mail. So it would be mailed out and they would stamp it for you. You’d send them your materials. They would stamp it for you. They would mail it out for you and all of that.
Dawn Fobbs: [01:08:10] Now, you write at the click of your fingers. You can get your list together or you could pay somebody to do the research for you. There’s so many ways you can get a list of emails and be able to introduce yourself. And of course, you never sent an email saying, hey, buy my book.
Dawn Fobbs: [01:08:23] No. You introduce yourself first and so and so. I wrote this children’s book. The reason I wrote this book is because it’s going to help your children with etiquette and manners and how to sanitize and wash their hands. Okay, it’s only 50 pages. It’s very colorful. The main character, Susie. And she’s going to teach everybody how to do all these things because Susie is the sanitation queen. I don’t know. I’m making that up, right? My point is, you got to introduce yourself first. Then the second step you do it in baby steps, you introduce yourself to this new list. The second step is, is there anything that I can do for you? You offer your services. Is there anything I can do for you? You know, with this book, do you want to know more about it? If so, contact me here or hey, I’m gonna do a free 30-minute discovery call to talk about the book even more. Maybe this book can help your school. So for me, if I want to get that book out, I’m going to go after all the daycare owners.
Dawn Fobbs: [01:09:19] I’m going after all the moms’ groups.
Dawn Fobbs: [01:09:23] I’m going after all of the schools that have children in the age group that my book is for. I want to find out who all those leaders are and come up with a list of at least 500 people. That’s who my book is going to get promoted to. Valuable information right there.
Michelle Thompson: [01:09:38] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Michelle Thompson: [01:09:43] Okay. So.
Michelle Thompson: [01:09:46] Sorry. I was thinking about what you’re saying. And I kind of lost my train of thought here.
Michelle Thompson: [01:09:52] This has been one of the most fun episodes that we’ve had at all. I think we got.
Dawn Fobbs: [01:10:00] You’ve been awesome to. So the fact that you knew who Charlie “Tremendous” Jones was, you added like 20 more points. I mean, I always tell my kids you got points for them. They got well, you never tell us what we can do with those points. And like, I haven’t figured it out yet.
Dawn Fobbs: [01:10:14] But yeah, the fact that we’ve got a lot of reading in common that just really gave you some extra oomph because I love readers, you know, people who have some of the same. I met people that read some of the same books that I’ve read and we talked for hours.
Michelle Thompson: [01:10:28] Yeah, it’s amazing when you know, you started getting people on the same wavelength, you know. How you could just bounce ideas off and it just goes and goes and goes.
Dawn Fobbs: [01:10:37] Goes and goes and goes. That feels really good.
Michelle Thompson: [01:10:39] Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you, everybody, for listening. Dawn, thank you so much for this interview.
Michelle Thompson: [01:10:46] And again, I’m going to give you guys Dawn’s email one more time. So it’s D as in Dog, A as an apple, W as in Walter, N as a Nancy, D and dog, F as in Frank, O as an ostrich, B as in boy, B as in boy, S as in Sam at gmail.com. And she has twenty-three business books that are like full of crap ton of information. So go to Amazon, Google Dawn Fobbs and bring up those books and then hit her up and get some knowledge out of this woman’s brain. So, all right. Thank you so much. And we will see you guys next time.
Dawn Fobbs: [01:11:28] Thank you.
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