Stu Heinecke - How To Grow Your Business Like A Weed

Jim Fuhs [00:00:01]:
World renowned author, cartoonist, just great human being. I can't wait to hear what our friend Stu Heineckey has to say on launch day.

Stu Heinecke [00:00:13]:
Hey, man, so nice to join you guys.

Chris Stone [00:00:15]:
Congratulations, Stu. I know that, you know, on on book release, you probably have lots of things to do, and you're you're you're watching this thing uptick, and I know you've got a ton of things going on, so we are honored to have you aboard today. I can't wait for you to share the story behind the story, if you will, of this book. Any breaking news here as far as how it's doing, if you want to?

Stu Heinecke [00:00:47]:
Well, the funny thing is, actually, this is a great part of launch day. This is incredible to be with you guys, the books on Amazon. So where else would you want to be but with Jim and Chris right now? But, yeah, I'm watching. I'm on Amazon. I've got a couple of pages open, and I'm watching every page. How to grow your business like a weed is showing up on the Kindle platform. It's the number one new release in small business marketing. That's pretty cool. That's a good start for the day.

Chris Stone [00:01:25]:
That's got to feel great. And honestly, Stu, a lot of the people that watch our show that listen to the podcast after we release this next week, they're a part of small business. They may be solopreneurs. They may have an LLC. They may have a small business. So this is just the perfect audience to for the first time, if this is the first time you've seen this gentleman or heard of this gentleman's work, you're in for a treat. Stu, what number book is this for you?

Stu Heinecke [00:01:57]:
Well, this is actually my fifth book, but amazing. Third one with a publisher. Wow.

Jim Fuhs [00:02:03]:
Yeah. And do you think that's actually made a big difference for you by going to a publisher as opposed to you did on your own?

Stu Heinecke [00:02:10]:
Oh, yeah. I think it's night and day. I know a lot of authors, and a lot of them are saying it's a really well established some of them are saying, I want to own my book now, so I just want to have the whole thing. I want to control it completely. I already have an audience. People know me. And so that makes sense to go that route. But otherwise, publishers, there's so much expertise behind what they do and so much great I don't know, great judgment of how these things work. And, Jim, you know, my book, my earlier book, how to Get a Meeting with Anyone, I didn't even come up with the title, but the publisher did. So it would have been called something like breaking Through Without the Publisher. So when they came up with the most outrageous title, when he first said it, I thought, gosh, can I lay claim to that? I don't know. Yeah, why not? They just know they make a lot of things happen that you wouldn't be able to make happen if you were I think, even if you're an established publisher, because when they bring your book to the international book fairs and then they start selling international rights so that it becomes different language rights. You're not going to do that if you've just self published a book. So there are a lot of things that a publisher brings to the table, and I'm so glad to work with them. This is really kind of weed like me. Of me. But I like collaborating. And who know? I didn't know. You don't collaborate when you cartoon. But I love collaborating. And it just turns out that the more you team up with others, the more you create a team around you, just a network around what you're doing, the stronger it becomes. Hey, by the way. Hi, Russ. Just notice that. But the stronger it becomes. And it's a very weed like trait, actually.

Jim Fuhs [00:04:16]:
Wow. Yeah, and it's funny, too, because, like, with your first book, one of the things I remember because Jeff Sheehan and I would spend a lot more time together before this thing that she'll remain nameless, but I think he had that book was like completely dog eared, right? I mean, he had gone through it multiple times. If Jeff Sheehan, who's one of the top, I think 50 people in the B to B social media space, is going through this book, there's something to it. And then obviously getting to meet you after that, it's like, wow, this guy is brilliant. Because you've had quite the evolution going from being a cartoonist to a published author to the father of contact marketing. So what made you make this I guess this is like, to me, you're taking another step. You're going beyond just contact marketing now with this Weeds book. You're talking about, really strategy to help businesses grow like a weed. I mean, what made you think of this? I know you talk about in the books I'll let you talk about.

Stu Heinecke [00:05:21]:
Yeah, and I should also respond to the I mean, why would a cartoonist be writing a strategy book? What is that about? But there's an evolution that actually makes a lot of sense. And so I'm also a marketer. That's my education. I'm a marketer. And I've used cartoons throughout my or much of my career, actually. I'm still doing it. So throughout my entire career, really, I've been using cartoons as a device to break through. And we've created a lot of record breaking campaigns using something as silly as cartoons. And then I was lucky enough to be mentored by some of the best cartoonists in the world. These were my heroes of cartooning. So people like Gayan Wilson and Eldon Deeney from Playboy and Arnie Levin and Leo Cullum and Bob Mankop and so forth from the New Yorker. And I got just the most incredible, I don't know, launch or education in the cartooning. It was amazing. So it just became part of what I do and part of who I am, I suppose. Part of this is really just why would I be writing a book about strategy and weeds? What do I have to do with either of those things? But the thing is, I've been a business owner my whole career as well, and I sell. It doesn't matter what you do in a business. If you own the business you sell, it doesn't matter whether you have the name sales or the word sales in your title or not. That's what you do. And so that's why when I wrote that book about how to get a meeting with anyone, I was using cartoons to break through to presidents and prime ministers and celebrities and so on, and I what's everyone else doing? And that's the evolution of that earlier book. And then the Wheats book came from I was a young man. I was driving down the Santa Monica freeway one day. I lived in La. And I noticed a dandelion growing out of a crack in the concrete, I should say in the media. So there are six lanes of traffic going this way, six lanes coming the other way. Just a rush of roaring tires on all these lanes. When it was when we used when the traffic used to move pretty well, I don't think it does anymore. And then this 40 foot wide median and a crack in the concrete, and this dandelion found its way there, and it's making this living. It's just sitting there, running its process, and it's sort of happy. Those yellow flowers and those seeds, geodesic seed pods, and they're kind of blowing seeds around in the smoggy turbulence. It's something we've seen a million times, all of us have, because in one sense, you might wonder, how on earth did it get there? How did it pull that off? Because it's pretty significant that it's not an apple tree growing there, or a petunia, quite frankly. Those plants wouldn't make it as a weed. They're really special. But we know how dandelions get there. They release those seeds. They're these highly mobile seeds that probe every possible opportunity to take root. So they're almost miraculous in the way that they operate. And then also just it just looked like it was happy. I don't know. It wasn't depressed. I don't think it was thinking to itself, jeez, this really sucks. I ended up middle of a freeway instead of at the beach. That's really where I wanted to be. There's none of what we do to get in our way. And so as I whizzed past, I'm just saying, wow, I hope I can live up to that example in my career and in my business. And it just got me thinking for all this time, this day is huge for me. It's just hugely significant that the book is finally out as of today. So it's just an incredible journey, but that's where it came from. Yeah.

Chris Stone [00:09:09]:
And I love how this is so much about mindset because I think when people think about weeds, their immediate thought is something bad. Right. Some thistle that you've got to yank out between in your garden or a part of the flowers and all of that. And there are a lot of that if you're intending to grow something beautiful like petunias and there's weeds, you got to get rid of them. And so typically, most people think of weeds like very, very negatively. But you've looked at it very differently and said, let's study this and let's study resiliency, and let's study how you go into how over the course of time, how weeds have developed almost like something against weed killers. There's all kinds of stories that you talk about how weeds are not just that they haven't just been the same for eons, right. They've developed and changed and metamorphicized. And when you go into that, it kind of helps your mindset. Is this book as much about mindset as it is a specific how to or is it bold?

Stu Heinecke [00:10:28]:
It actually does include mindset because that's part of the weeds model. Actually, here's what I discovered. They come in all shapes and sizes. They're all over the world. Actually. Most of these weeds have spread all over the world. One of the things I wanted to discover was, do they have a model? I mean, how do they do that? We all know what it means to grow like a weed, but how do they actually do it? Do they have a model? And if they do, is that model applicable to what we do in business? And the answer is, they do have a model. It is applicable. Just writing a book has changed my business and the way I do business in some pretty profound ways. I'm writing. I'm just saying, oh my god, look at all these mistakes I've been making. Rejigs it just changes the way you do business. But one of the things that you might notice because we talk, you mentioned the weed mindset, or is there a mindset and there is a weed mindset. And by the way, it's not sitting around smoking, dudes. That's not what it is. I know someone I'm something guests have asked, like garen is asking, garen is hoping that that's what it is. But that's not what it is. It's just weird even think that something without a brain. How is it supposed to have a mindset then? But they're just a different, completely different kind of, let's say, form of life. And while they don't have brains, they certainly have this collective intelligence. And they are in that sense, they are brilliant. I mean, they never do anything without an unfair advantage. Just think about that for a second. About in business. If you don't have any unfair or secret or very competitive advantages, why would you be in business? I mean, you can't survive in business without unfair advantages. So you can look to weeds. I could just look to the weeds in your yard. And I'm sure that after, if you listen to this, the whole broadcast or our whole livecast here, you'll be going outside looking at the weeds very differently after this because you'll be just going, yeah, look what they're doing. Oh, my god, look what they're doing. And then you'll still have to pull them out of your right.

Jim Fuhs [00:12:38]:
Yeah. I'll tell you, when Chris and I were at Podfest and VIDFEST, I was sitting out by the pool, and in my back of my mind, I'm like, are there weeds growing out here? So I was like, you already have me now looking because of your story about the Santa Monica freeway. And I will tell you, I have just a couple of lines in the book that Stu isn't nice enough to put in there. But as a retired marine lieutenant colonel, this book has a lot of leadership implications for veterans getting into business, even for military guys, because it does make you think about what you talk about with the whole weeds mindset of like, you know what, you got to be resilient. You got to adapt. And that's something that weeds do that we as business owners, just leaders in our community, don't always think about. Right. Sometimes it's easy to shrivel up, like what a wallflower as opposed to being. And I also found it interesting that you think that weeds are optimistic. And that was something that I found to be like, wow, I never thought of it that way.

Stu Heinecke [00:13:42]:
Well, first of all, thank you, because one of the blurbs in the book is from you, Jeff. Thank you. That's pretty cool. But actually, I interviewed two four star generals for the book. I interviewed a lot of really interesting people, business personalities and all sorts of experts in business, all areas of business, the full spectrum of expertise within business, but also weed scientists and botanists and so on. It's a crazy combination of people to bring together. But you're right, there definitely is sort of a military like doctrine here, which is why the two generals, I mean, they gave some great quotes about how just weed attributes are necessary from a military standpoint. That was general Barry McCaffrey and David Petraeus also gave this great quote about weeds being just being persistent, I don't know, just resilient. The thing is, we talked about the weeds mindset here just a minute ago. Weeds, this is what I identified in the book. Weeds are optimistic, as you said. I'm going to call come back to that. But optimistic and persistent and aggressive and urgent and adaptable and resilient, those are all qualities that serve us anywhere in life, anywhere where there's competition. If you're not competitive, if you don't have those attributes running, and I mean, like running at at a high pace or a high high pitch, then you're not going to get anywhere because it's a very, very competitive world. In the military, competition is life, literally life or death. In business, it's I don't know, it's the difference between going broke or really, really thriving in your field. And so those things are really important. One of the things that I found also interesting about the mindset is that weeds are incredible collaborators. Think about that for business. If you own a business, you're trying to create an internal culture, and you want people to collaborate, and actually what you really want them to do is feel like, I can't believe I get to work here. That's like a movement, kind of like if you were working for SpaceX right now and you were helping to bring mankind or humankind to Mars, we've become a multiplanetary species because of what you're doing at work. That's incredible. That's incredible work to do. Now, Jim, you mentioned optimism, and I guess how would you get any sort of inkling of a mindset from weeds? And I guess what you well, in my case, you get it by watching what they do. If you're out there working on your yard and you yank up some weeds and you discover you only got a piece of it, well, there's a strategy at play there. Or if you grab a handful of, let's say, thorns, like my background with blackberries, there's a strategy at play there. When we think about, let's say, how would weeds be optimistic? I guess if you think of optimism as being the opposite of or the lack of pessimism, maybe, or depression, when we're depressed, we don't we don't move as fast. We don't do as much as we could do. We're not excited about anything. We're lethargic and our output suffers. But when we're excited, when we're optimistic, it hits a feverish pitch. I mean, that's when we're most productive. And you can see this happening with weeds. If you cut them down, what do they do? They just go to work immediately on their process, and they're very aggressive in their process, and they just grow right back. And that's what an optimist would do.

Chris Stone [00:17:32]:
That's amazing. It's not just like optimism just to be optimistic, right? There's something tactical behind it. You have to remain that because it's not just blind optimism. In other words, let me ask you this. What are maybe some of your favorite examples of businesses who have applied.

Jim Fuhs [00:17:57]:
The.

Chris Stone [00:17:57]:
Weed mindset and sort of the I know there's an acronym in here as well that's brought through the book. What are maybe some of your favorite examples of businesses throughout the course of history that use this?

Stu Heinecke [00:18:12]:
Well, I would say that any business that is winning is probably using some of this strategy. But one of my favorites, and this isn't just because I'm on dealcasters live right now, but one of my favorite examples would be Amazon. Look at it. When you spot a dandelion in your front lawn, let's say, and you're just looking at it, you think, God, now I have a dandelion. If you're just looking at and you think, well, I got a dandelion look up. Because what you really have are hundreds of them by the time you spot one. They always work at collective scale and they understand scale, I guess, in that collective brain of theirs, they understand scale implicitly. They really get it. Well, I think Jeff Bezos does as well, and his whole team. And in fact, Jeff doesn't do all of it alone, obviously. So he's got this incredibly sharp, sharp team and they have innovated all kinds of things, like one click shopping. I think Amazon was the first affiliate program, wasn't it?

Chris Stone [00:19:19]:
It sounds right. I'm sure someone else will claim it, but let's just say that it does. I've heard that, but I don't know for sure.

Stu Heinecke [00:19:28]:
Well, I mean, what you see though is Amazon has spread all over the world and it involves even a lot of small businesses. I mean, they love store fronts on Amazon. It's become sort of the whole world of retail. Literally the whole world of retail is encompassed it's in this one website. It's incredible. And it's all because they are very, very weed like in the way that they spread and innovate and create those unfair advantages. They're a great example. Jeff won't like this next example. I don't know if Jeff's listening.

Chris Stone [00:20:06]:
Oh, he's always listening, Stu. He's a big fan of ours.

Stu Heinecke [00:20:11]:
I haven't seen anything come across.

Jim Fuhs [00:20:13]:
He's actually on Amazon. Watching us on Amazon.

Stu Heinecke [00:20:16]:
Yeah. Well, I hope so.

Chris Stone [00:20:17]:
Always watching, aren't you, Jeff?

Stu Heinecke [00:20:20]:
But now I hope he tunes out a little bit because I'm going to talk about Elon. So, Elon is another great example of weed strategy and really weed mindset at work. I'm fascinated with the development process that he went through with the Falcon Booster system, but now with starship. And if you watch, he just like a weed. They try something. Yeah, they just they try and fail and try and fail and try and fail, and suddenly they succeed and they don't give up. They don't stop. When he succeeds, he ends up doing things that are building things that no one's built before. I mean, we're so used to those Falcon Boosters now going up to the I don't know, either launching satellites, whatever they're doing, they're going up to space or up to the ISS, et cetera. But we're so used to now seeing them come back down and make a propulsive landing. And if they launch Falcon Heavy, then there are two boosters that come out like a duet. It's unbelievable. Or they land them on drones, drone ships at sea. Now, for a long time, I should say, we're so used to that now. But before you might remember that they'd send them up and then they'd come back down and crash or explode on landings in some form. And it was a big deal when they finally first stuck a landing, but it's become so routine that we don't even pay attention. But that process is incredible. And process is a big part of just what weeds do. Think about it, they've been around for millions, and actually they've probably been around for about 145,000,000 years because that's what the fossil record says. The flowering plants appeared on the planet 145,000,000 years ago. And I'm sure a lot of those were weeds, right? They've been around for a long time. They have this process that is just programmed into their DNA. They just run it like a computer. And so this process is really well honed. I mean, it's ancient, but it's also a process that changes on a dime. And I know we'll talk about some examples of this coming up, but it just changes that. It reacts to any challenge to its existence and it just sort of evolves right around it. So it's an evolution as well. But process is also just a huge part of their model. Does that make sense? Absolutely.

Chris Stone [00:22:39]:
And I think it's awesome to be inspired by the bezos and the Musks of the world that are applying it. And you can say these are the principles of that, but I think a lot of people might look at that and say, well, they have this cumulative advantage because that business Amazon started ugly, right? And it was built to that. But how would someone who is just really not necessarily bootstrapping, but they're a solopreneur and they're looking to be successful and kind of looking to shift their mindset into something like the weed mindset. How would someone like that that's just like, okay, I'm not Elon Musk yet, I don't have a staff, but how can I sort of apply some of these principles that you're speaking about in the book? For me, the lone solopreneur?

Stu Heinecke [00:23:32]:
Well, a couple of things come to mind. One is you probably do have unfair advantages. If you've been in business and you've stayed in business, you probably have some unfair advantages. That's really good and you should be focusing on magnifying those and creating new ones all the time. But it can come down to something as simple as the location of your business. You could be in a place that just is filled with traffic. Not because not traffic that you built, but it's just filled with traffic. People are always coming by. That's great. They can come in a lot of different shapes and sizes. But the fact is you need to be focused on what are those unfair advantages I have? How can I cultivate more of them and how can I put them out there in the marketplace? Now, the other thing that you mentioned, Chris, was solopreneurs. So that's interesting because solopreneurs are not really scaling, are they? If you're a solopreneur, it's still just you, right? That's kind of a big deal. It's a big part of scaling. And so one of the other things that Weeds well, there's a section in the book called Scaling Like a Weed. I'll tell you, I have a blast of this book because it's just fun.

Chris Stone [00:24:46]:
I can tell you're lighting up, talking about it. It's amazing.

Stu Heinecke [00:24:49]:
Well, I mean, like, when I talk to people and they tell me their story and I get impressed, I say, you're just a total weed. But one of the things that the Weeds show us is that while we were sort of trained to be self sufficient not sort of, we are trained to be self sufficient. That's how we make our way in the world. I think we were taught that when we first played musical chairs. So the first time you play, it's like, why? Where'd my chair go? And you learn from that. Life is I don't know, life is not fair. It's very competitive. If you're going to be competitive, if you're going to thrive, you better start paying attention and being proactive. And you can't just be lazy. It won't work that way. And so it starts there. And then you're told we're told to go to school, get good grades, and with those good grades, get into a great college. And with that college degree, or maybe even beyond the bachelor's degree, but graduate degrees, et cetera, go out and get a great job. But you know what? Here's the problem. From the Wheat standpoint, you can't scale jobs. You can't have 1000 jobs. You can't do that. But entrepreneurs, successful entrepreneurs know that the key to all this is scaling everything. And the only way to do that is you build a team and you build a network. And those things sound probably so mundane, but if you don't do that, nothing happens. And I have spent a lot of time as a sort of a solopreneur myself, and I'm realizing that my inclination to do a lot of things myself or learn how to do them, it's great fun. It's a great thing. Entrepreneurs are very self reliant people. But the more you rely on yourself, the more you prevent yourself from scaling. So solopreneurs start finding ways to network and create new I don't know, just new alliances, new partnerships, get into new sales channels, et cetera. Do more. You guys have an unfair advantage in this show. I'm sure the show is helping you get business. This is so not strange. It's so wonderful, actually, amazing to see what you're doing. Who knew that you could have a live show on Amazon and you guys are early adopters and you've got a following and that's a big unfair advantage. How are people going to match that?

Chris Stone [00:27:21]:
Thank you. Thank you for saying that, Stu. And it sort of speaks to what you're saying, is that Jim and I, when we started working together, that's when things became like Weeds. That's where it was like and I've always encouraged, whether you're a solopreneur or whether you have a small business. And maybe a couple of people. Always look for people that you trust, that you can surround yourself with, that will not try to just tell you what you want to hear, but they'll be honest. And you can tell them about their successes, and they will help you celebrate. And you can tell them about your failures, and they will help you get through them and learn from them. And I think that's an important mindset for really anyone. Because, to your point, it's like you can't do all the things by yourself if you expect to scale. You've got to get yourself out there and maybe make some mistakes with some people that you want on your team that all of a sudden you feel like you're in competition with them. And that's going to kill the weed mindset.

Jim Fuhs [00:28:29]:
Yeah, and to Chris's point too, right, that's definitely a struggle. Chris and I talk about that sometimes. Chris is taking that next step and has a VA. I'm trying to figure out what can I get a VA to do to help me scale? Because I think we get into this mindset of, well, I've got to do it. It's got to be done my way if I want it done right. And we got to learn to trust. And I think, right, weeds just kind of like, hey, it's all going to take care of itself. And if the weed gets chopped down, it grows back up. And so we have to kind of have that more open mindset. And so, yeah, definitely for us. I was mentioning to Chris before, in some aspects being on Amazon is a weed strategy because you've got all these other people that if you want to call it, they're on YouTube, right? There's 51 million YouTubers and we keep saying, well, why don't you come try out Amazon? No, I got to be on YouTube. And so they've given us in some aspects, an unfair competitive advantage that we're willing to be in the pool with them, but they don't always want to do that. So it's fascinating from the mindset of what people take.

Stu Heinecke [00:29:44]:
Yeah, well, you guys are total Weeds, by the way.

Jim Fuhs [00:29:49]:
Thank you.

Stu Heinecke [00:29:53]:
It's a good thing. But you know what's really cool is to hear that because you teamed up, something much bigger happened. That's what this is about. As soon as you start teaming up with others, it may be someone that you employ. You mentioned VA, which we should maybe explain as a virtual assistant. So you get help. It is hard to delegate when you find that it's hard to delegate when you find that you're part of the deliverable, all of the deliverable of your company. You're in the way, you're the bottleneck, and you need to get out of that position. And sooner you do that, the sooner you can start achieving scale. It's just really cool to. Hear that because you were just asking what's a great example you guys are a great example.

Jim Fuhs [00:30:41]:
Thank you.

Stu Heinecke [00:30:42]:
Strategy in action. This is a seed pod. This show being able to be on Amazon and tap into their audience is a seed pod because you're borrowing the network or I believe the followers, the audience of others, to grow yours and to grow your business and to spread the seeds. That your seeds out there and your seeds are in seed strategies. There's this weeds model about how to which helps you create these unfair advantages. Seed strategy is all about anything that causes people to become aware of you and form the intent to do something with you, to transact with you in some way. And you guys have a huge unfair advantage that you've built for yourselves just by doing this and just by collaborating like a couple of weeds.

Chris Stone [00:31:27]:
Thank you for that. Yeah, that means a lot coming from you. And it was all by accident, I could promise you. The other thing I should say is it doesn't come about easy, right. And I think a lot of people will look on feeds and algorithms and everything as they're thumbing through YouTube, thumbnails that say, get $14 million in two weeks if you do this. And all of these things are happening. And do you feel like that how does that play into this in terms of the mindset that you've got to do the work still, right? You still have to put in effort. It's not easy doing writing five books and painting that wall behind you. Yes. Ladies and gentlemen, for those of you who are watching and for those of you who are listening, later on the podcast, stu has painted his backdrop to look like weeds, which is just amazing, the articulate, art that he's got going on there. But yeah, can you speak on that a bit?

Stu Heinecke [00:32:43]:
You mean about painting my wall?

Chris Stone [00:32:46]:
No, about putting in the work for six. You can talk about painting too, if you want.

Stu Heinecke [00:32:58]:
No, the thing that's really you know what that makes me think of? I mean, weeds again, when we're done, you're going to go outside. The next time you see Weeds, you're going to be going, these things are miracles, look what they're up to. And so one of the things there's a weed that I think every one of us know, the dandelion. We all know that weed and dandelions are great example of weed. Strategy in play. You mentioned you got to put in the work, all right? You got to work harder than everyone else. This is a competition. It's a tough one. So certainly if you're not willing to work, then where do you think you're going to end up? But here's the thing. A great example of working beyond what everyone else is doing is what dandelions are up to. So they show up when all of the other flowering plants start showing up. All the bushes and so on, they start, and the trees and they start. Everything that's blooming well, the dandelions are right there with them. At the very, very beginning of spring, they're blooming and then they go through all of the plants go through a growth cycle where they flower and then they produce maybe fruit, which are really their seeds, their method of having the seeds spread. But most plants just go through a single growth cycle in the spring or spring, through summer. But that's not what dandelions are. That's not what wheats are doing. Dandelions are working overtime. They go through a growth cycle probably every week. Isn't that amazing? And then I'm on an island a little bit just outside of Seattle. And so in our climate, when everything starts dying out and turning brown and I don't know, let's say August, September, and certainly October, you'll still see Daniel. All these other plants are incinescence. That's really the term. But when they're in Senescence, the daniel lines are still out there going through their growth cycle like it was still spring. They're working overtime. They're doing what no one apparently what no other plant is willing to do. And that's what it takes. That's why I think is really exciting about weeds and weed strategy, just drawing strategic growth lessons from weeds is that they're all around us. They're so accessible. It just makes growth successible because we can look at them and watch and draw lessons from them. It all the time. It's really amazing. I mean, the only time we don't, let's say after Senescence, so in the wintertime, they're not doing anything. They're dormant, I guess they're rebuilding. That's sort of where we aren't like weeds at all because we're going to do this year round. But otherwise they give us these examples of weed strategy and growth strategy in motion, and they show us how to do it. Just if you're out working in your yard, going to walk away with a few lessons saying, I'm going to change the thing. I'm going to change a couple of things that I'm doing in business. And one of them is teaming up like you guys did. I mean, there's just so many things that you can do to incorporate weed strategy into what you're doing to grow your business or to grow, even grow your career. In fact, I think weed strategy is more like the theory of everything about growing anything.

Jim Fuhs [00:36:18]:
Yeah. And you know, Stu, one of the things that we had the I felt like it was an honor is like we had some zoom calls at the beginning of the pandemic, and we were talking with other business owners and maybe gave you some of the ideas. But it was interesting to see. Right, because we talk about with weeds being adaptive. But also one of the things you talk about in the book, too, is the urgency. I love how you talk about like some people say, oh, well, it's going to take us in six months. We can do this. Why are you waiting six months? Because we only have so much time. And so weeds are kind of urgent, right? Like when you tear that weed out of the ground or think you did, because I know your blueberry stuff in your yard is a good example, it's going to come back, right. It's going to start growing right away. It's not going to give up. And so I think urgency kind of falls in line with that. I mean, give us some of your thoughts on that.

Stu Heinecke [00:37:08]:
Well, an urgency I think urgency is kind of the way that we attach importance to what we're doing. And so you're right, if someone says, yeah, this sounds great, we can do this in about six months. Look, a deal denied, or I should say a deal delayed is a deal denied. You got to do it right now. And if you're just putting it off, then I guess what they're saying is it's not important. I think urgency is how you attach importance to anything. If you're calling someone or calling up and then you're asked to hold, ideally you should be saying, no, I'm not going to hold. This is important. I think it has an effect on you just as much as it does on the people around you. You start feeling like what you're doing is much more important. It's urgent. Otherwise, in other words, it's important. It's just the way that you attach importance to everything you're doing.

Chris Stone [00:38:00]:
Yeah, the analogy applies, like you said, in so many ways, just hearing you talk like you did a few minutes ago and you were talking about how into the fall and then into the winter, you said, well, I guess this is kind of where it doesn't necessarily apply to this. But then I think about weeds in the winter. Well, they don't go extinct, right? They're back. They come back. They don't just go away. They have this they're back. They never go away. And somehow they're getting stronger and building some other stuff that maybe even science hasn't figured out just yet. And I think there's something to be learned. Just look at what we're, I guess, still sort of going through in terms of a pandemic. And I know things are coming out of it, but there's a lot of things that can be learned about how you would go through something like a winter in your business and how you come out on the other end stronger.

Stu Heinecke [00:38:58]:
Yeah, I think that's a great point. Some plants are perennials, they live over multiple years, and some are annuals. And those things, when you're talking about a weed, that's an annual, wow, that is one aggressive well, I can't say it. I don't think I can say but anyway, one aggressive, aggressive plant there. There's one weed that's attacking agricultural fields in North America right now. It's the water hemp. And this thing, some gardeners say that weeds are just plants that we say are out of place, like bee bulb or something. No, some of these are really just alien. And when they're annuals, they're really up to big things over that senescence period, because here's what happens if they're annuals, the entire population dies off and renews every year. That's aggressive. That means that there's an entirely new version of the species every year. In the case of water hemp, these things, they're just a weed from hell. They produce, like dandelions, produce 15,000 seeds per plant over a five to ten year lifespan. But these water hemp plants, every plant has the it's just on average, they produce up to 480,000 seeds per plant. That's incredible. And that thing's never going away. And the other thing is that those seeds are really interesting because the seeds are also like seed strategy. One of the things that those seeds are doing is with so many examples of the seeds popping out, some of them are mutating. And that's really useful. That's actually how the plants innovate. So here's what's been happening with water hemp. It showed up in the farmers fields. They started using herbicides, including, let's say, Roundup. And I'm sure everyone's familiar with just how noxious Roundup is. It's deadly stuff. It developed immunity to Roundup in four years through that process. So it's this really aggressive, almost like R and D period during senescence. But they're propagating these new mutations or new, let's say, adaptations, so that they can meet the challenge. And, God, can't we draw some lessons from that for our businesses, like from the Pandemic? What did we learn from the Pandemic? There's talk of us going into recession soon, and certainly inflation is a problem now. So what are we doing? I mean, how are we adapting to that? Or are you adapting to it? You should be. You should be busy at work, coming up with new ways to create unfair advantages, really, but to cope with what's going on and really to thrive as a result of what's going on.

Jim Fuhs [00:41:57]:
Yeah. And you even brought up in the book, you talked about Uber as an example and how the taxicab companies, they could have maybe created an app, and that would have been the way that we ordered cars, but we didn't. Right. And so now, right now, this is an opportunity for some of those businesses that we'd like to say, okay, sure, it's inflation, and this or gas is X number of dollars, but how do I create an advantage that not only will work now, but work in the future? Remote working is still a thing. So maybe a company says, you know what? We're going to save our employees some money by letting them to continue to work from home. Because a lot of us, I maybe now drive, fill my tank up once or twice a month. So I'm not seeing the impact that some of these people that are having to drive on a daily basis are. So that becomes a strategy in and of itself.

Stu Heinecke [00:42:54]:
So when I wrote how to Grow Your Business Like a Weed, I was writing it during the pandemic. And what an interesting time. It is an interesting time for all of us. But the thing is, we're always being disrupted. And weeds are one of nature's great forces of disruption, but they also recognize that they're going to be disrupted as well. We're all disrupted. We're being disrupted now by the things we just talked about. Perhaps there's a recession coming. There is definitely inflation happening. There's the war in Europe. I mean, there's a lot going on. There's always a lot going on that unsettles life. But there was surely a lot going on doing that during the pandemic. And when you watch, let's say, the restaurants, restaurants and gyms, those have been interesting because gyms used to be the model that everyone admired for going through tough time to go through recessions because it was based on a subscription model. And people kept coming. Well, they kept paying. I don't know whether they'd keep coming to the gym, but they kept paying. It was important to them to keep their gym memberships up, but they were dying on the vine during the pandemic as a completely different kind of disruption. And restaurants, same thing if their model was, you come into our beautiful, beautiful dining room that's out on stilts over the water, and you can't live this way, but you certainly can't even find a place like this other than if you come to our restaurant. Well, if that's what they relied on during the pandemic, they'd go out of business. They did go out of business. The ones that said, okay, good, we were prepared for something like this. So we've been gathering up an email list of all of our customers. We know who they are. We talk to them regularly. And so what we're going to do is we're going to focus on the same market, but we're going to focus differently. We're going to adapt. We're going to pivot. When they went to, let's say, the takeout model, and they were able to send their menus and say, please keep supporting us and we love you, and just through email, they thrived. So there are ways to meet those challenges always. And I think the weeds are a great way to navigate those kinds of difficult times.

Chris Stone [00:45:09]:
Yeah, it sounds it sounds a lot like preparedness is a huge part of this. Right. Because we can't foresee or couldn't have foreseen the pandemic. I mean, people were kind of hinting about it, but no one really thought but if you're building your business off of any rented land, like Jim and I are here on Amazon. Right, but what happens if Jeff bezos hi, Jeff. I know he's listening and watching.

Stu Heinecke [00:45:34]:
I hope you're doing it.

Chris Stone [00:45:35]:
Yes, you can listen now. I mean, you told him not to listen when you talked about that Elon guy, but he could snap his fingers and say, amazon influencer program, nah. Podcasts, nah, all of that kind of thing. That could happen. So as a business person, as someone who's resilient, you just don't wait for the shoe to drop, right? Like prepare for something in case something doesn't happen or happens to you that could cause like a restaurant with a view, so to speak. Would that be an accurate yeah, I.

Stu Heinecke [00:46:12]:
Think being proactive is a big part of it, but then also being reactive to it. So a couple of thoughts come to mind. There's one I wrote about Paul Harrison in my book. And Paul is an interesting businessman from Australia. He's a digital marketer, and he owns a franchise, even as a franchisee in the digital marketing franchise, but he also owns a few he's also an owner in a car wash franchise. So what's really interesting about that is that they're so different. But the fact is that when times get tough, people still tend to wash their cars. They don't seem to go down. And that's great, because during tough times, marketing spends do go way down. If you're in the marketing business, anybody in the marketing business knows this, those become really tough times. So for Paul, it was just spreading his or changing the way that he or how he focused on his business. And so now he had really two businesses. They were focusing on completely different markets. But when he wanted to focus on his car wash business, his digital marketing prowess was his expertise. That's an unfair advantage. He has more about digital marketing than most people who own car washes. And so he thrives as a result of that. When times get better, then he doesn't maybe concentrate quite so much on his car wash, but then back to his digital marketing agency or business. By doing this, he's always in sort of a time of thriving. And that's useful. He's very, let's say, astute about gathering information from the people who are doing business from him. They shouldn't just come in, wash their car, and leave. He needs to know who they are and be able to develop a relationship with them so that I don't know, maybe he might introduce something new. They might introduce something new in the business, or he might go off into maybe a third direction, I don't know. But you've got to have direct contact with these people. You mentioned Jeff. I don't know. Anyway. We don't know if he's listening, but if Jeff decided today that the influencer program has gone from Amazon, one of the things that I think is probably smart on your part is to collect an email list of all. The people that you're dealing with on this channel so that if it did go away, you'd have an easy time pulling them to another channel. I mean, it would just then just be another yeah, just another platform. And they'd make the change pretty quickly and easily, and it wouldn't have destroyed your business. So I think those are important. But then also, just when you have a market that you're serving and conditions change, going back to the restaurant business, for example, everybody eats. They still eat during the during pandemics and during any of these disruptions. Well, if they're still going to eat and they have a positive disposition to you and your brand, then you just find other ways to serve them. So you do react to these changes. And I think maybe in comedy, in comedic improv, there's sort of this rule. If you're doing this, you're sort of doing something with another actor, and the actor that your partner comes up with something crazy like, oh, my God, here comes the guys from the moon. Well, you're never allowed to disagree, never allowed to say, that's not right. There are no moon men. You don't do that. You just say, oh, my God, you agree, and then you go on, and then this. And so maybe there's a way to borrow from that concept to do a disaster improv. So whatever's happening, whatever it is, you say, okay, this thing just fell over, the market's coming down, but that's good, and here's why, and you then go into here's why, and that helps you pivot and have this balanced stance that you can use to react to really any disruption.

Jim Fuhs [00:50:28]:
Yeah, and I actually went through that back in 2018. I was living in North Carolina. Hurricane Florence came, and I was doing local digital marketing, and a lot of those businesses that I worked with never were able to reopen because the damage was so severe. But it also made me realize, like, you know what? There's this thing called the Internet. There's this thing called zoom. I need to start using it more. So fast forward to 2020. I was prepared. Right. I learned from that, that, you know what, it's not like, oh, I'm going to throw in the towels. How can I do things differently? It goes back to that resilience and adaptability that you talk about, and I think that's what we all have to think of as business owners. What's funny is, I think Chris and I have seen this both and our friend Tim Son, we were doing live streams or those sort of things, and all of a sudden, when this thing happened, people are asking you, hey, I don't know how to live stream. Can you help me? And it created a whole new opportunity that we weren't necessarily intentionally looking for. And so it's not always obvious, but building those skill sets definitely allow you to be more of a weed, I.

Stu Heinecke [00:51:42]:
Would say, yeah, you guys were adaptive and resilient. I would say those are I mean and I'm sure also urgent and and aggressive and persistent but but certainly adaptive and resilient and and and it it led you still working with the same a lot of the same. People. The same audience, the same target audience, I should say. A lot of the people you knew, I would imagine, also became clients for these other things. And as a result, you came out stronger. One of the things you did was you started the show. You ended up coming up the business that you have today, you wouldn't have even recognized it before all that disruption. No. So disruption is actually good, but you've got to serve those waves.

Chris Stone [00:52:24]:
Exactly. And I think it goes back to your adaptability conversation. I mean, of course, when you have this great idea for a business and you're like, you have this vision for how it's going to happen, you got to be ready to move like a shark because it's not going to go. And there's only so much you're in control of. And so whatever business I'm in now was not the business that I had thought about years ago. And I had this whole mind map, and it's just like, boy, I don't even look at that anymore. This is a whole new one, right. You got to move with it because a lot of this stuff is out of our control.

Stu Heinecke [00:53:02]:
It's a journey. Yes, it truly is a journey. And we don't know where the journey goes. We can plan and so forth, but it's a journey.

Chris Stone [00:53:11]:
Stu, this has been so amazing. We are, we are. We've been so honored to have you as time just goes fly flying by. And for those of you who are with us, we normally call them the car buying public of Amazon, but today they're the book buying public of Amazon. This is the day that the brand new book, how to Grow Your Business Like a Weed, has debuted already. Number one in small business was that the best selling in small business, and I'm sure will be added to the other books that are considered bestsellers. Stu just so amazing that you're been able and as I understand it, there's something for people that buy this book today. Are we talking about that?

Stu Heinecke [00:53:59]:
Yeah, it's a special it's a secret gift. But there's a gift. If you buy today and you somehow get a hold me DM me, you can connect with me on LinkedIn. However you want to do it. You can go to my author site, Stuhinek.com, but connect with me and let me know and share your receipt. I got to see that. So if you bought today, yes, there's a special deal. I mean, a special gift coming away.

Jim Fuhs [00:54:25]:
That is awesome.

Stu Heinecke [00:54:27]:
Well, actually, let me just give a little clue. Oh.

Chris Stone [00:54:36]:
You'Re going to get some looks with that shirt.

Stu Heinecke [00:54:39]:
That's the idea, right? People come up and they say, man, I love your T. Actually, they go like this, man, I love your T shirt. Okay.

Jim Fuhs [00:54:54]:
That is too cool.

Chris Stone [00:54:55]:
Amazing. Good stuff. And we've got a friend, D. Scott Smith, motivational listener, and of course, Russ Hedge was in here as well, his partner for The Experience, another fantastic show. And it looks like you're going to be getting contacted from Zach Mitchum because he picked up the book on Audible as well.

Stu Heinecke [00:55:17]:
Nice.

Chris Stone [00:55:17]:
Amazing.

Jim Fuhs [00:55:18]:
Thank you. And you actually read the audible, is that correct, Stu?

Stu Heinecke [00:55:22]:
Well, I did the introduction. Well, there's a couple of things. I did the introduction and then when I was researching the book, just real quickly, I was looking for stories, sorry, I was looking for quotes by famous people about just really insightful things about how cool weeds are, about just how amazing they are. But all I was finding was complaints about the weeds in their yard by famous people for the book. I ended up asking everyone after I interviewed them, now that we've talked about weeds as a positive visual metaphor for growth, or metaphor for growth, is there anything that comes to mind? And these people offered up the most amazing quotes. So those are in the beginning of the book. And I also read those in Audible. They're really cool. One from Kathy Ireland is weeds scale faster than any business. It's in their DNA. And I think that's a great word, but there are a lot of them. So I read those parts of it.

Jim Fuhs [00:56:19]:
Nice.

Chris Stone [00:56:20]:
And another quote from some other guy that's doing marketing the Marine Corps way is in that book as well. Jim, somehow your quote is longer than everyone else's. Can we be a little more succinct? How many pages did you take up as Stu's new book? Come on.

Jim Fuhs [00:56:37]:
We had a lot to say. It was definitely very eye opening book. I mean, definitely got to get it, got to read it. Like I said, I would recommend it for anybody that is in business or even like I said, I think it applies to military folks as well when it comes to mindset because there's a lot of things that are very similar. I think the military training that we get applies into that mindset. Just like he said he interviewed General I think it's McCaffrey and also General Petraeus. This is a great book. Thanks to for letting me have an advanced read of it as well because it's definitely one of those things. Got to keep sharpening the saw, as Chris and I say, and working to move forward because you never know what's going to happen.

Stu Heinecke [00:57:28]:
Well, you're so welcome, Chris. I've got to get one to you as well, Chris. I'll just hint it if you buy one today.

Chris Stone [00:57:36]:
Oh, I can't wait to see the look on my wife's face when I put that one on. Amazing. Thank you so much. And again, for those that are listening, we're going to have a link in the show notes for you to pick up this brand new book, how to Grow Your business like a Weed. If you're watching on the replay on Amazon, it's right there in the carousel.

Jim Fuhs [00:57:58]:
Pick it up.

Chris Stone [00:57:59]:
Why wouldn't you? Stu, thanks again on the day of release for joining us and having just making everyone here better.

Stu Heinecke [00:58:08]:
Thank you so much. The book is how to Grow Your Business Like a Weed and I wouldn't want to be anywhere else but right here on launch day.

Chris Stone [00:58:16]:
Awesome. Thanks again, Stu, and for everyone else, as always, don't fear the gear.

Jim Fuhs [00:58:24]:
Thanks for listening to Dealcaster. Congratulations. You've taken another step forward in your content creation journey. Please don't forget to hit the subscribe or follow button here in your favorite podcast player so you can be reminded every time we drop an episode.

Chris Stone [00:58:43]:
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Jim Fuhs [00:59:00]:
If you have questions about this episode or have something you want us to review, you can also email us at dealcasters at dealcasters. Dot live. Thanks again for listening and you know the deal. Don't feel the gear.