Transforming Business Clarity in a Fast-Paced World, with Mitchell Levy

Ready to uncover the secrets behind Silicon Valley's success and learn from a global credibility expert? You won't want to miss this episode where we sit down with Mitchell Levy, a dynamic executive coach and prolific author who has spent years at the epicenter of tech innovation. From steering companies in Silicon Valley to serving on a public firm's board, Levy brings a treasure trove of insights from his interviews with 500 thought leaders. Levy shares the ten values of credibility and how they can transform your approach to business clarity in today's fast-paced technological world.

Curious about how to build unshakeable trust with your customers? Discover the CPOP (Customer Point of Possibilities) framework, a strategy that will change how you articulate your business identity. Levy reveals his own CPOP—"coaches who've created a job, not a business"—and shares actionable tips on transitioning from a referral-dependent model to a thriving, sustainable enterprise. This segment delves into the crucial differences between merely having a job and running a business, emphasizing the value of consistent operations that keep entrepreneurs motivated and enthusiastic.

Are you thinking about expanding your business network? Mitchell discusses the importance of strategic decisions during expansion, particularly the cultural fit and alignment of values in acquisitions. Hear firsthand about the complexities and motivations behind acquisitions in public companies, whether for talent or product expansion. Plus, we introduce the Referral Network Club, a new initiative that promises to help you build valuable referral partnerships. 

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Chapters

• 0:02 Silicon Valley and Business Clarity
• 12:27 Building Customer Trust With CPOP
• 22:06 Playground Concept in Business Growth
• 22:17 [Ad] The Dark Horse Entrepreneur | Helping Parents Make Money Online
• 22:43 (Cont.) Playground Concept in Business Growth
• 29:46 Understanding Acquisitions and Business Growth

Transcript

Erin Manning: 0:02

Welcome to the Dead Pixel Society podcast, the photo imaging industry's leading news source. Here's your host, gary Pegeau. The Dead Pixel Society podcast is brought to you by MediaClip, advertag Printing and Independent Photo Imagers.

Gary Pageau: 0:18

Hello again and welcome to the Dead Pixel Society podcast. I'm your host, gary Pegeau, and today we're joined by Mitchell Levy, who is a I don't know what. You call you, mitchell. I mean, you've got a list of things you do. You're an executive coach, all kinds of things so let's get into that In a nutshell. Let me hear what Mitchell Levy is about.

Mitchell Levy: 0:41

Well, so normally I would just say summarize with global credibility expert. There you go. Well, all right. So who am I? Is always a good question, right? So, uh, been married, happily married, for 34 years. Congratulations, 25, thank you.

Mitchell Levy: 0:57

Um, I've been in Silicon Valley for 35 years. I've started 20-ish companies. Um, I've sat on the board of a public firm for nine years. I've as a book publisher. We've published over 750 books as executive coach. I've been doing that for so many years. Hundreds of clients, and where am I now Like everyone else of clients? And where am I now Like everyone else?

Mitchell Levy: 1:28

I'm transforming, and so one of the big transformations happened in between 2019 and 2020 is I interviewed 500 thought leaders on credibility, and so we sort of know what this is for a guy like you who interviews well and listens. You know our credibility is part of it. Showing respect, and what's interesting to me is I came up with 10 values of credibility and then I've been deploying them since 2020. And one of the things that I am now is I've transformed a little bit from focusing on purely talking about credibility and now focusing very specifically on clarity. Okay, right. So today's world there's so much stuff out there and including us potentially being. Not only did the world you're in transform significantly as technology and then everything got democratized, but, just like mosaic, transformed the internet into something we all recognize we could use. Gpt is the start of the transformation of humans, and who we're going to be a couple years from now is so much different than who we are today so you're giving us a lot to chew on there, and I'm sorry.

Mitchell Levy: 2:48

I just thought, I know.

Gary Pageau: 2:50

No, that was great. I was just saying because I kind of wish people could have listened to our half an hour preface to this conversation where we got to delve into all this stuff which is fun company history and all that fun stuff from photo industry standpoint. So you're up to speed on all of that. But let's talk a little bit about, like the Silicon Valley stuff, because you know, that's sort of I wouldn't say it's passe, right, but it's sort of not. It's not the global hub of tech anymore.

Gary Pageau: 3:17

But you were involved in Comdex. You were there like in the whole stream of that kind of stuff. I remember when you know at, I remember when you know at PMA. You know Comdex was one of the people we were concerned about because, like you know, if they start showing digital cameras at Comdex we're screwed. So uh, tell me a little bit about sort of that era. And the reason why I ask is because you know I just finished Steve Jobs's book or the biography, autobiography, and uh, you know, just sort of I just don't think that era will ever happen again in terms of time, place and technology and the marketplace kind of all converging in silicon valley in that one time period it's.

Mitchell Levy: 4:00

it's, by the way, I I can't possibly ever say at the moment that silicon valley has become passe. So I will. I will take heat on that only because if you look at the, the juggernauts who have presence today in silicon valley, in terms of the S&P 500 and who's out there, it's a fairly big entity and part of it is something that many humans around the world have not sort of taken into consideration yet. One of the real premises of Silicon Valley something that I actually saw also in Convex not necessarily the people running it, but in terms of the humans who were part of it is what Silicon Valley is particularly good at, because if you're an engineer in a company and you have an engineering buddy who's at a competitive company, you're still going to talk to each other about the cool things you're doing. Right? It's about the betterment of society, not benefit. The betterment of society, not necessarily the betterment of the bottom line, right?

Gary Pageau: 5:08

right and that there's always that ethos.

Mitchell Levy: 5:10

That's correct. Yep, yep, yep. That's the ethos. That ethos happened with many of the folks that I met. I was. So, for comdex, I actually ended up running four conferences at complexx for those who, if you don't know, that at the time it was the largest conference company on the planet, particularly during the dot-com days and what was fascinating, I think there was a couple hundred thousand people would descend on Las Vegas. Yeah, and although I say I ran four of the conferences the way Comdex actually did, there were something like seven or eight unique conference tracks. Seven of them were IT and one was business. Right, I had the business one, right. So anyone who took a business, who went to some business speaker at Comdex during the heyday, they went to something I ran. Okay, and you know, dream Like that actually was one of my dreams my wife and I, for 23 years, we'd rent a house in Europe and we'd invite friends and family, right.

Mitchell Levy: 6:21

And during the first trip, we went to this, this house in France. It was huge, and we, you know, we rented it for a month and we invited a bunch of friends and we only had, like I think, three couples come, because nobody believed we were really doing this right? Hey, come on over, we got the place, it's free, you just need to get there. Sure, and during the first week we actually had nobody show up, so it's just the two of us and our two-year-old son.

Mitchell Levy: 6:53

And what was fascinating is I'm reading you know, if you're an entrepreneur, you can't actually stop, right, right. So I don't do business development during that time frame, although I'm going to say, as an aside, I've actually closed more business to pay for all 23 trips times three while I'm on my trips, but we don't have to mention that to my wife. So what was interesting is I was going through emails and I deleted one, and then I go and had to undelete it because it was somebody who was running the business conferences at Comdex, and it actually said hey, mitchell, we've got a conference coming up. I'm going to need the content in a week and we'll need the speakers booked in three Can?

Mitchell Levy: 7:45

you do this and so I actually had to ask permission, because if I'm on holiday with my wife, it's it's that's that, that time in which she absolutely came first. So she gave me permission, so I ended up booking 60 speakers from uh chateau in france, um our first year, and in early internet days.

Gary Pageau: 8:06

I mean, this was the 90s, so there wasn't what this was this was yeah, this was still internet ish um a little bit of dial-up modem action, I'm sure oh yeah, I actually I can't remember.

Mitchell Levy: 8:22

Was that trip or another one there where where the house had a hard time with the Internet? I'm pretty sure it might have been that one where the house occasionally had a hard time. So we actually had to travel to a so I would download, process the emails offline, oh yeah, and then travel to a place and piggyback on the Internet in a corner store or something We've all been there.

Mitchell Levy: 8:46

I go to my wife, I said, listen, this is a dream, this is one of my, you know, in terms of in life. One of the bucket list items was to run conferences for Comdex, and here it was, right in front of me, and so you know, she was kind enough not to say no, right?

Gary Pageau: 9:03

So let's talk a little bit about I mean you've, she was kind enough not to say no, right, okay, so let's talk a little bit about, I mean, you've run, you know, dozens of companies, you've done all these things. I don't want to, you know, dwell around that, but I kind of wanted to drill down a little bit on one thing we talked about kind of prior to the thing, and that's why I want to revisit it is clarity concept, right, the idea that most businesses, whether they're a camera store, a photo store, a mobile app or a service provider, printer, whatever, really needs to have a firm grasp on what their compelling offering is. And that's something you specialize in.

Mitchell Levy: 9:41

Yeah. So first, if you're hearing me right now, I want to say something that you're not going to like. Almost everything you've been taught is wrong, right, right. You've been taught by people whose job was to make it complicated, because the more complicated they can make it, the better the opportunity is that you would buy some product or service for them, right? So I interviewed 500 thought leaders on credibility, and one of the secrets I unraveled and one of now superpowers I've had, because I've now deployed this over a thousand times is to allow any business or any person to articulate who they are. Now let's do it a different way to articulate the playground they play in in 10 words or less.

Gary Pageau: 10:32

And why is that important to do? I mean, if you've been muddling along successfully or maybe not so successfully, but you're making a living, you're kind of stumbling along why is it important to have that clarity?

Mitchell Levy: 10:47

Yeah, oh, it's a compass that allows you to make better decisions. When opportunity comes in the door, do you say yes or no? Well, is it in the playground? You plan If you have people who really adore you and want to refer you. Do they actually know what you do? Can they explain it, right? I know so many times when because I have so many businesses when somebody asked my wife what does he do, and for a long time she would just say a publisher. But now it's simply he helps focus on clarity, he helps focus on credibility, right. So the thing that's interesting is we have such little time. If somebody looks at your web page or look at your social media, can they actually figure out who you are? Can they trust that you could do what you do in seconds?

Gary Pageau: 11:39

Right, but why is that important, like you said? I mean, why is it important for someone else to know instinctively what you do? Why is that important?

Mitchell Levy: 11:47

Well, if they're a prospect, there's so much other competition out there Sure, if you can't get them to want to trust that you're an expert at what you do or your company is expert at what they do, in seconds they're going to go to the next one, right right. If they stumble upon your page as a prospect, they need to do that. Stumble upon your page as a prospect, they need to do that.

Mitchell Levy: 12:16

If they stumble upon the page where they met you and they really adore you, and next thing they're doing is they're talking to a perfect client of yours. Do they put two and two together?

Gary Pageau: 12:23

Right, can they help you make a connection?

Mitchell Levy: 12:26

Right. It's your job as a business owner to make sure that people trust you, know you, love you and you can't leave it to chance. You have to architect that and you do that by being able to articulate who you are in less than 10 words.

Gary Pageau: 12:44

So walk us through that process a little bit of getting that articulation down, because you're not talking elevator pitch or any of that kind of you know word speak or you know business, you know MBA type stuff. This is a different way to refine that down.

Mitchell Levy: 13:03

This is something that you're going to hear it, and it's really simple and even once I unraveled it, it still took me weeks to actually own it for myself, right, right. So it's, and I'm going to give you the formula. Now, there's lots of places you can go to learn more, but I'm going to give you exactly the formula. So I call it a CPOP. It stands for your customer point of possibilities. I just articulated or summarized it as a CPOP, and it's comprised of two pieces. The first piece is who? Who do you serve? Right, right, and a lot of people. They start off by saying I serve, and then they, they give you a litany of of different people they serve.

Gary Pageau: 13:54

We serve everybody, right? I mean that's yeah.

Mitchell Levy: 13:56

No, the market is everybody who needs this thing everybody's got two eyes is in the market for photography what I'm going to suggest is try to make that as small as possible and as narrow as you possibly can. Typically, one, three words, right, and I'll share you mine. And the next step is, from your customer's perspective, right. What is either the pain point that they globally recognize or that they locally recognize? What is the pain point they recognize, sure, or what is the pleasure point they want to reach? Right now, in many cases, 80 of the time, the pain points the right one to use, but there are cases where you want to do the pleasure point right so and it took me a long time.

Mitchell Levy: 14:46

So the current iteration I have of my c-pop is something that's eight words long and, and the goal of sharing a c-pop now, this is really cool and and we and you and I did yours so we could share yours right afterwards the goal of sharing a c-pop is for somebody to listen to it and go, huh, tell me more. Or what do you mean right? Or what do you mean Right, right? So my CPOP coaches who've created a job, not a business, right? Okay, should I tell you a little bit more? Sure, absolutely.

Mitchell Levy: 15:22

So within that container, there are over a hundred thousand executive coaches in the United States. There are many different types of coaches and in many cases, particularly now with the internet, there are many certification organizations that have trained them to deliver and perform, to do a transformation of the clients they work with. There's one thing in particular that they've not been trained. They've not been trained on how to run a business. So what I do with the people in the program we have an ongoing done with you program that not only do they get clarity, but they also are getting a business development system so that they're continually in front of prospects that they then turn into clients and they have coaches that they work with to help them on each step of the way.

Gary Pageau: 16:08

So can you restate that again? Now that you've explained what it is, can you restate it again so the audience can kind of make the connection of what you just explained to your actual CPAP?

Mitchell Levy: 16:18

Got it. Coaches who've created a job, not a business. Okay, right, so what I? A lot of times, what happens is when a coach wakes up in the morning, you go oh my God, I, all my clients come from referrals and I don't have any clients at the moment, or I I need to get my next one. To go to this networking event, like all these people and right, and that feels more like a job. That feels more like something they don't like. Right versus a business is something that's consistent and flowing and something they're excited about so so.

Gary Pageau: 16:50

So their pain point is the job piece. Okay.

Erin Manning: 16:56

Yeah, yeah.

Gary Pageau: 16:56

I'm just saying is that it's sort of like the old adage about you know entrepreneurs, right, Like entrepreneurs will work and you know, work 90 hours a week because it's their passion, right? So they're not necessarily treating it as a job, Whereas there are some people who maybe start a franchise or just a hardware store or something like that, and it is just a job. They're just working for a paycheck that they happen to create for themselves.

Mitchell Levy: 17:23

I'm standing up so there might be a microphone difference on sound, because I wanted to. I wanted to share a plaque that sits on my desk, sure Okay, and it says the best thing about being self-employed is you get to decide which 20 hours a day to work.

Gary Pageau: 17:40

Exactly, Exactly, Cool, All right. So I get that, Okay. And so when you've got this in this case, for example, so the people that you are helping are really the people who are interested in wanting to maybe grow their network and be more effective and may have more of a I want to say an altruistic viewpoint, but more of an expansive viewpoint, as opposed to just listen I need to make X amount of calls a day and I need to close this many deals in a month, kind of viewpoint.

Mitchell Levy: 18:11

Well, from the perspective of coaches and, by the way, I also have an executive coaching business and I serve a different audience Sure, yeah, yeah, you know. And so the CPOP for that audience is CEOs flying like eagles Okay, right, so that one is forward. So it's a cool CPOP, right, so that one is forward. So it's a cool CPOP, right. But on the coach's side, what happens is if, if you're, we're going to put ourselves in the mindset of a coach you're good at what you do, you've created a good network A lot of times. They've worked for some big company for a while, so they have a really good network, people know them. They get good referrals, right they're. They're really good at delivery, right, and what happens when a referral comes in the door is like you, like me, it's good to have a conversation, but the person coming in the door I'm maybe one of five other people, so they get to make a decision yes or no on me.

Mitchell Levy: 19:10

When you're doing outreach whether it's email or social media or LinkedIn and there's somebody who's randomly on the calendar and you're just talking to build a relationship, right, the coach has never been taught. Well, how do I turn a relationship into a prospect? How do I turn that prospect into a lead? How do I turn that lead into business? Right, that prospect into a lead. How do I turn that lead into business? Right, that is something that they're not comfortable with, because in the past people have come in, they're just saying yes or no and they close 80 to 90 percent. So part of it is this coaching on mindset okay, right, how do you? How do you sell without selling? How do you sell? By just showing up as you and, at the right time, making an offer. And what is the type of offer you should make? So somebody wants to say yes, right, right, right.

Mitchell Levy: 20:01

And that's all part of the program.

Gary Pageau: 20:02

Let's extrapolate then this to, let's say, a typical business, right? Maybe not a coaching business, right, but I mean, every business now has relationships they need to build. They're all relationship businesses, right? Whether, even if you're doing online, an online business, you've got to figure out how to have a relationship with the customer. So they don't, you know, jump to somebody else. Now, you know, I mean I'm talking about more. You know I'm just shipping out a lens cap and that's the end of it kind of business. But you know something more substantial, right?

Mitchell Levy: 20:39

So wouldn't someone who is looking at that sort of thing they have to have the discipline to understand that some people aren't their customer. That's what's great about a CPOP Right, Absolutely Fantastic. You got to know when to say no. Right. And for some customers you have to decide. You may have an existing customer, that money's coming in the door, but they are taking you're not making money on them and they're taking most of your energy. And for some people you need to fire the customers that are really causing harm, Right? So I'm going to take it a step further. I believe every business that's not a commodity business is into coaching.

Mitchell Levy: 21:16

Right, you can call coaching in whatever way. If you have a client and your job is to help the client be successful, that means you're going to coach them in some way. A little bit of education, a little bit of prompting, a little bit of support, right, and your goal is depending on. Let's focus on you for a second. And your CPOP, right, we came up with that For those that know Gary, right, the audience that he serves, and what I'm talking about is not just with this podcast, but I'm also thinking about what you serve in the business development space, right, right. So your CPOP we came up with was five words. By the way, I'm slightly envious. I mine's at eight. I like it. Five, five is easy to put your arms around, right, right. And what we came up with? Something very simple companies serving the dead pixels. Right, right.

Gary Pageau: 22:34

Tell me, what does that mean to you? Well, I mean, I think the dead pixels is a little like we talked a little about earlier, is a little specific, right I mean. But I would call it photo imaging, but it's the same idea, right? And yeah, I mean I serve companies that really serve other people. That's really the idea is that.

Mitchell Levy: 22:52

it's a that's pretty spot on, I think. Well, you could do companies servicing photo imaging, yeah. Or you could do the dead pixels.

Mitchell Levy: 22:58

I mean I'm going to keep that, but Because I like the thing is, if the goal is for somebody to ask you, tell me more, right, exactly Right, then you have the well. By the way, you're in the photo imaging space. That's who I serve and I know most of the big players in this space, and what I can do, once I learn a little bit more about your product, is I can make the right introductions for you. Right, right, right and. And so what happens? If they're not in this business, they're not a client, even if they have lots of money. Now you get to make decisions. Do I want to play somewhere other than what I've been playing so far? Right.

Gary Pageau: 23:36

And that's a really great way to put that, because I mean, you know, I think everybody, when they reach a certain age or a certain point in their career, they think you know, well, I've been there, done that, done it this, I'm going to try something new, and then they find out that not only is the grass not greener, but it's a pile of mud. You know, I don't want to say that people shouldn't take chances or explore their boundaries or whatever, but, like in the case of the Dead Pixels Society, right, we're not just printing, right, a lot of the readership is into, you know, ar and AI and augmented reality and imaging of all kinds. So I mean, you can kind of open the kimono a little bit on that. But we're certainly not getting into food service or some other thing, right, some other service industry, yeah.

Mitchell Levy: 24:20

So I love the. If you're listening to this and you're thinking about who am I and what do I need to do, the best way to think about it is you're actually establishing your CPOP. You're establishing the playground you play in and when you talk to somebody, if they're a good fit, you're inviting them to play in your playground. If they're going to recommend you, they're going to recommend you because you have expertise and they know you and they trust you to play well in your playground. It's a fun way to think about how to move forward.

Gary Pageau: 24:58

Well, and the other thing is like in our industry there's a lot of consolidation that's happening right now, people buying various people, right, and I think this concept could be very helpful in determining who would be a good either acquisition or a partner or something like that.

Gary Pageau: 25:17

Right, because I've seen it more than once where somebody buys a company, maybe to fulfill, maybe because they have a product line that I don't have but I want, or they have a technology that they have that I want, but maybe the culture of the company is so radically different that it's not a fit that you know that their CPOPs don't match Right. And that's where I think we see a lot of issues that happen in that space is there's a disconnect, whether it's values or outlook on life or something like that, where on paper, this might work right, the spreadsheet jockeys love it, because the EBITDA is this and the top line is this and the cost is this and you can let this many people go and you can make it work from a spreadsheet standpoint, and then, over the course of years, it's still not working because the values or the CPOP or what have you aren't connected.

Mitchell Levy: 26:15

I love that. I mean, I sat on the board of a public firm and we would often buy companies for one of three reasons. You buy for the top line revenue and the clients that are there, or you buy for the customer list itself Right, not a straight name but breadth. Or you buy for an employee or a set of employees right, and I don't know if we did this at the time and I love this as well is you still want to fill those needs and you need to make sure that the acquiring company can fit into the playground of the company. Here you can't. You know, apples and oranges don't always mix.

Gary Pageau: 27:01

Right, because I mean, like I said, I've seen it quite a few times where you know someone you know is experiencing a shortfall or they may have access to capital. So they're saying, listen, I need to start buying companies, we need to consolidate this space in this area. And then it just, more often than not, there are challenges right, it's a personnel conflict, it's a way they treat their customers conflict, right. And then the customers start leaving and I know there's some people listening to this are going to know who exactly what I mean there and then from there, you know you've really sabotaged your own business by doing this. It's a self-inflicted wound.

Mitchell Levy: 27:44

It's a great, great conversation. I absolutely unfortunately that happens more than not because we think about the world in a very myopic way and we've not been thinking about and once again we're going to go back to this we've not been thinking about what playground do we plan right? And if you look at the types of companies that are out there and what they actually provide for the audience that they serve, it's not exactly what people think all the time, because the company themselves, sometimes they just landed on it and they're just getting it luckily. But when technology or industry changes, they can't move with the industry, because what they're not thinking about at the end of the day is who are your customers today, who are your customers tomorrow and what is either the pain point they have or the pleasure point they want to solve? When automation and AI and other things come along and solve that for the customers automatically, how are you shifting who you are?

Gary Pageau: 28:52

Or do you need to right? I mean, here's the question is that you know if you're already doing what you're doing well and AI comes in and maybe augments your workflow, which is what was happening in the imaging space. Right? You got you know. Portrait labs used to hire people to retouch photos. Now AI does that, so those people don't do that anymore. Ai can retouch a photo, but you still need someone who's going to get those customers work with those photographers do those things. So the mission really hasn't changed, but how you get there? It can.

Mitchell Levy: 29:28

The mission really hasn't changed, but how you get there it can. But now what you're doing is you're finding somebody who I'm going to go back to the coaching world who sort of coaches all the partners, the stakeholders that you're working with.

Gary Pageau: 29:36

Right, this has been interesting. So when you were on that public company, did they have this narrowed down or was the acquisition thing? And you don't have to get specific? And I'm just curious of where that drive was coming from. Was it a share price thing? Was it a we need to look busy kind of thing, which I think is a lot of what happens? I think with public companies, they need to look busy, they need to look like they're doing something.

Mitchell Levy: 30:01

No, I think, Gary, it's always about one of those three areas, and this was prior to me doing research and understanding the simplicity of clarity, as I do now. But it really was opportunities. When you're in a public company, opportunities are presented to you all the time, right, right, and particularly if you end up with a little bit of cash hanging out and you have an investment arm, there's always lots of opportunity, and so the opportunity is to come in once again. Are there brands, company brands, that you want to say, hey, these are clients of mine. Do you want to increase the breadth of clients you have so that you could potentially sell other products that you have, so you could cross sell? Right, so farming is different than harvesting from a from a selling perspective, sure, um.

Mitchell Levy: 30:56

Or do you need talent? Right, so you go out and and and do search. Or you look at this company and you look at their talent pool and you go. We can add these people and these other people need to go, but these people to our company are going to bring us to the next level. Right, and that was really the. If I'm going to simplify it, those were the three primary reasons why acquisitions were made.

Gary Pageau: 31:22

So, kind of saying that theme of point, what do you think is more important? The talent pool or maybe the business that you're adding right, the product line? Let's say, for example, you're a footwear manufacturer and a brand of another type of shoe comes available and they have a great sales team, or something like that. What is the weighting factor there?

Mitchell Levy: 31:46

I love that question and what I'll say, gary, I can't answer it without knowing the bigger picture. Right, right, so the answer is it depends on the situation the company itself is in at the moment. A lot of times in life it's simple to come up with formulas that, generically, people apply across the board and everyone's looking for that. Yeah, in this particular case it depends on where the company is and where their holes are Going back to the playground they're playing in. How adequately are they playing in that playground? Does that playground need to expand or contract? That doesn't mean the business expands or contract, but does that playground need to change? And how they're playing, are they doing it as effectively and efficiently for tomorrow as they should be doing it today? That would lead toward either product or people acquisition.

Gary Pageau: 32:46

Because I mean, I mean obviously having a Silicon Valley location. You know, the acquire hire thing was sort of the Silicon Valley modus operandi for a lot of years. Right, we're buying the talent for this product or service.

Mitchell Levy: 33:01

Yes, yes. Although you know the good news in Silicon Valley is you're buying talent, the bad news is the talent is expensive and there are many other places in the US and around the world where you also have significantly powerful talent at different price points.

Gary Pageau: 33:23

Yeah, no, no. There's several cases of that where that's becoming apparent in the industry, especially from a development standpoint. Right when you can, you know, just for moving a few time zones, you can have access to some very, very good talent. So if people wanted to learn more about, you know, doing their own CPOP or more about this sort of thing, where would you suggest they go for some of the stuff that you recommend to kind of hone in on this kind of thing?

Mitchell Levy: 33:53

So normally I only say one URL, and I will say one URL, then I'll stop and I'm going to add a little bit. In case you're particularly interested in this CPOP or clarity, best way you can do is go to mitchelllevycom. Um, like many of us, the website's a good incarnation, but needs also needs we. We always need new stuff and so I want to make sure there's there are two places you go, but if you like what you heard and you're interested, you can get access to I think most, if not all, my programs and if you need access to my calendar, it it's directly there from MitchellEBcom. There's a couple of things I'm doing. One is brand new.

Mitchell Levy: 34:38

So one of the things I'm doing, if you actually want your CPAP you recognize man, I need this I do a 90-minute session. So we do once a month. We do a 90-minute session, guaranteed everyone in the room will get their CPAP, and so there you can get that through the Mitchell Levy. It's a credibility booster, clarity session. Going to MitchellLevycom will direct you to that right location. Okay, there's something new we just deployed and I'm excited about it. Most of the time, people in professional services, the best way they get clients is through referrals. Right, I created Referral Network Club, so ReferralNetworkClubcom, and for those people who are coming it is an inexpensive price point to come for one hour once a month and have the opportunity to walk away with one good referral partner.

Gary Pageau: 35:35

Okay, cool. But again, mitchelllevycom is where we find all that fun stuff. Absolutely Awesome, mitchell, it's been great connecting with you. Like I said, I kind of wish everyone could have heard. We've been literally talking for hours and I wish everyone could have been along for the ride for that. But I do appreciate you being on the program and look forward to catching up with you again soon.

Mitchell Levy: 35:56

My pleasure and, yes, that was sort of the discovery session, where we were just sort of feeling each other out and I enjoyed getting to know you as well. So, thank you, thanks for your time, thanks for having me.

Erin Manning: 36:10

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