How To Grow Any Business With A Bestselling Book With Rob Kosberg

The Fail On Podcast with Rob Nunnery - Fail Your Way To An Inspired Life

Rob Kosberg is a marketing and brand building expert and the founder of Best Selling Publishing. He’s a bestselling author and a syndicated radio show host that has also done over $250 million dollars in negotiated real estate transactions. Rob now specializes in helping his clients become the go-to experts in their respective fields.

Through his trademarked Publish. Promote. Profit. Program, Rob helps his clients to create their own professional bestselling book.

He then teaches them how to use their book to grow their income via speaking engagements, free publicity and lead generation strategies.

In today’s episode, we will be discussing Rob’s rise and fall in the real estate market and how he regained his confidence and totally rebuilt himself after riding the housing market all the way to the ground.

Rob also shares the simple, yet effective business model he used to promote his first book and build his initial client list. Finally, Rob discusses the bold guarantee and strategy that he uses to separate himself from publishers and helps his clients become bestselling authors as well.

Key Points From This Episode:

• Rob’s journey into entrepreneurship from a family of entrepreneurs.
• How Rob got his real estate license at 18 and started selling houses.
• Why it was all about the money when Rob first started in real estate.

• The business collapse Rob faced during the financial crash.
• Going from $100 million in yearly transactions to selling everything on Craigslist.
• How Rob took the fall from business owner to house hustler.
• Find out why Rob was encouraged to write his book.
• How Rob used his book to get his business back off the ground.
• Why Rob sold his business and got into Best Seller Publishing.
• Discover what makes Best Seller Publishing unique.
• Publish. Promote. Profit: The three phases of Best Seller Publishing.
• How Rob has landed authors on TV shows, elite magazines and radio.
• Knowing when to quit versus when to carry on.
• Why we need to be reminded that money comes from people.
• And much more!

Tweetables:

“I was the kid, the nine-year-old out in the snow knocking on someone’s door and saying, “Hey, I want my $2.” — @robkosberg

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[0:02:58].1]

“If you find something that everyone is making money and run, because eventually it’s going to collapse.” — @robkosberg

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[0:08:33].1]

“It was hard on us. Really hard. We took art off the wall to sell, to have Christmas presents.” — @robkosberg

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[0:12:23].1]

“I went from owning these companies to now just hustling real estate.” — @robkosberg

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[0:13:20].1]

“When you get a diversity of smart opinions, it brings clarity. It really does.” — @robkosberg

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[0:33:00].1]

“So many people, especially in this generation, want a way to extract money without the people.” — @robkosberg

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[0:39:50].1]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Rob Kosberg — http://robkosberg.com/

Rob on Twitter — https://twitter.com/robkosberg

Rob on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/robkosberg/

Unbound Merino — https://unboundmerino.com/\

Transcript Below

Read Full Transcript

EPISODE 036

“RK: If you’re decent at marketing and you’ve tried X, Y and Z and you can’t make it work, then the market is telling you that you’re trying to do something that the market just is not interested in.”

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:17.0] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Fail on Podcast, where we explore the hardships and obstacles today’s industry leaders face on their journey to the top of their fields, through careful insight and thoughtful conversation. By embracing failure, we’ll show you how to build momentum without being consumed by the result.

Now please welcome your host, Rob Nunnery.

[INTRO]

[0:00:41.1] RN: Hey, there and welcome to the show that believes leveraging failure is not only the fastest way to learn, but it’s also the fastest way to grow your business and live a life of absolute freedom. In a world that only likes to share successes, we dissect the struggle by talking to honest and vulnerable entrepreneurs. This is a platform for their stories. Today’s story is of Rob Kosberg.

Rob is a marketing and brand building expert, a bestselling author and a syndicated radio show host that has also done over $250 million dollars in negotiated real estate transactions. Rob specializes now in helping his clients become the go-to experts in their respective fields. Through his trademarked Publish. Promote. Profit. Program, Rob helps his clients to create their own professional bestselling book, and then teaches them how to use that book to grow their income via speaking engagements, free publicity and lead gen strategies.

We’ll be discussing Rob’s rise and fall in the real estate market and how he regained his confidence and totally rebuilt himself after riding the housing market all the way to the ground. The simple, yet effective business model Rob used to promote his first book and build his initial client list. Finally, Rob discusses the bold guarantee strategy that he uses to separate himself from publishers and helps his clients become bestselling authors.

First, luckily all I travel with now is a backpack for one reason only. It’s clothing from innovative Toronto apparel company called Unbound Merino. They have clothes made out of merino wool that you can wear for months on end without ever needing to have it washed. This means I can literally just travel with less clothes as they stay clean themselves.

Channel the show notes page for exclusive Fail On discount that you won’t be able to get anywhere else. If you’d like to stay up to date on all the Fail On Podcast interviews and key takeaways from each guest, simply go to failon.com and sign up for a newsletter at the bottom of the page. That’s failon.com.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:02:34.8] RN: Take us back to the first time that somebody actually handed you money – not necessarily handed you, but sent you money, gave you money in exchange for a product or a service that you created.

[0:02:43.5] RK: Yeah. I can think of a couple things. I’ll go back a long way to the roots first.

[0:02:48.8] RN: Let’s go.

[0:02:50.2] RK: One of my first jobs – I mean, this is going way back, but delivering newspapers. You think, you work for somebody else, but the reality is I was the kid, the nine-year-old out in the snow knocking on someone’s door and saying, “Hey, I want my $2.” You know what I mean? I had an envelope and I had to send the money in to the newspaper.

[0:03:12.6] RN: Doing collections too.

[0:03:13.3] RK: I was doing collections, dude. That was the first time. My family, I kind of come from a family of entrepreneurs. I got my real estate license at 18. That was really my first experience of being self-employed and making some big checks, because of work that I did.

Now that’s, again, more of a service than it is an actual product, but same, I think kind of idea. Because I did that through college, paying my way through college, selling real estate, owning a Corvette, I owned three houses at the time. At 19 years old that was pretty cool. It seem like it anyway.

[0:03:55.8] RN: Hustling out of the game. Were you raised in that kind of environment where your parents taught you to be an entrepreneur, or taught you to look for opportunity?

[0:04:03.8] RK: It was by osmosis, right? I don’t know that we ever had a time where I was taught that stuff. But my grandparents owned gas stations in Washington DC. So I mean, they got pictures of me as an infant on the hood of the car, with the hood open, with my feet dangling in the engine while they’re working on the car. I also grew up a gear-head and got my first car at 14. I had two cars before I had a driver’s license. I grew up in Central Florida at that time, so in the redneck places. You could drive around without a driver’s license.

Anyway, yeah, I mean I think it was by osmosis. I watched them out there hustling with their gas station and bringing people in and growing that business. Then my dad opened up a real estate company when we moved to Florida and the real estate company was a whole other avenue of doing the exact same thing, but now it was more about the service of real estate, rather than the service of pumping gas.

[0:05:05.9] RN: Right. Just a different industry.

[0:05:08.5] RK: Yeah.

[0:05:08.9] RN: Got it. Take us to that journey. 19-years-old, successful already, cars. Where did you go from there?

[0:05:15.9] RK: Yeah. I mean, my goal at that time was I wanted to go to law school and be a lawyer. Not because I wanted to be a lawyer, who really wants to be a lawyer? Although maybe there’s someone listening that does.

[0:05:28.1] RN: Yeah. Reconsider if you’re listening. Reconsider.

[0:05:31.7] RK: I thought this is a great way. I loved aspect of it. I thought this would be a great way to have my own business. It was all about having my own business and making money. I started making so much money in real estate and the mortgages that I was like, “Why am I thinking about doing – going to law school?” At that point, I got my bachelors in a worthless field, a Political Science degree.

[0:05:55.0] RN: You’re not using that today?

[0:05:56.3] RK: I’m not using it very much. I tried to stay away from politics as much as I can. Then when I decided not to pursue a law degree, I was actually accepted to law school when I had taken the LSAT a couple of times. When I decided not to, I kind of went all in on mortgage and real estate. Look, that was super lucrative and had a great run in that and really enjoyed it. Remember, getting your license at 18 it was all about the money for me at that point, you know what I mean?

Just prior to that, I was a bellhop, bellman at a hotel, a nice hotel in South Florida. It was a intercontinental hotel and we had a lot of celebrities come and go. So I made really big tips, but I had never seen a check, like when I sold my first house. I was like, “This is as much money as I would’ve made all summer,” and I made pretty good money as a bellman. In my second month, I sold five homes and I was like, “What? This is great. This is easy.” Yeah, so it was all about the money.

As you get a little bit older it’s like, “Okay, I think I can make money in different ways.” It becomes, at least for me maybe I’m a slow learner, but it became more about the meaning also, you know what I mean? Which we were talking about that before.

[0:07:17.2] RN: Right, right. So on this real estate journey, did you have that realization while you were running this company, or did this company come to – I mean, where was this company at when you started having the realization that maybe there is more to it than this?

[0:07:32.1] RK: We were crushing it. Yeah, we were doing fantastic. It was like golden handcuffs, you know what I mean? I was making too much money –

[0:07:40.9] RN: To walk away from.

[0:07:41.6] RK: Yeah and of course, I was also living the lifestyle that –

[0:07:45.5] RN: So expenses were high.

[0:07:46.6] RK: Oh yeah. Expenses were high. I was enjoying the money, I owned real estate all over the place. Had nice cars and a big home and kids in private school and all that, but I was like, “You know, I mean, this is not — I’m pushing through.” It was a grind. I was looking for an exit. Not quite the exit I had, but I was looking for an exit.

[0:08:10.6] RN: Sure. We’re only laughing because we talked about this beforehand. But walk us through what that exit look like and what happened?

[0:08:18.6] RK: Yeah, I mean it looked like the financial crisis. I was in South Florida and –

[0:08:22.6] RN: 2007 and 2008.

[0:08:23.7] RK: Yup. Yup. The companies all in the 2000s were crushing it. We did a lot of advertising, but in those days everybody was making money in real estate, which is always a bad sign. If you find something that everyone is making money and run, because eventually it’s going to collapse.

Everyone was making money in real estate at that time and our companies were doing over a $100 million a year in transactions. I had three primary businesses: real estate sales, mortgage lending and then the actual title escrow. But of course, they were all wrapped up in a house having to sell.

When the financial crisis hit, the kind of real estate that we were doing, which was primarily luxury property, lending mortgages has shut down completely. Home values in Palm Beach County, which is where I lived and worked, that market got hit 50% to 60% drops in values, which who would’ve thought? I mean, that had never happened before in my lifetime and it may never happen again. Certainly not like that. Just totally blindsided by it. We saw maybe a dip coming, but not something to that effect.

When lending shut down, then the only houses that we’re selling were cash. That meant that there was a lot of inventory and supply and demand, so the whole thing kind of collapsed on itself. That ended up being my exit. I had 25 employees and 6,000 square foot of office space and desks and phones and computers. There I am sitting in my office by myself, with people coming because I put an ad on Craigslist to come take my stuff away. They’re buying it for 5, 10 cents on the dollar.

[0:10:00.4] RN: What was your mindset at this point?

[0:10:03.5] RK: Depressed.

[0:10:04.3] RN: This is your first real setback, right? Like in terms of your business journey?

[0:10:08.3] RK: Absolutely. No doubt.

[0:10:11.2] RN: I mean, how low is that low? I mean, were you financially on the personal side fine? Even though –

[0:10:16.4] RK: No, I was not because I had held on way too long. I took money, hundreds of thousands of dollars out of my savings to keep the business going thinking that, “This can’t keep going this way.”

[0:10:31.1] RN: Right. “It will turn around sometime.”

[0:10:31.9] RK: This has to turn around. We rode it all the way to the bottom. Whereas, I had millions of dollars in...