Welcome to small business marketing then and now a conversation with small business owners on how they marketed the launch of their business the evolution since then and how they have pivoted during this COVID-19. Brought to you by Profit Master Business Solutions – more leads more sales and more revenue for your small or medium sized business. Click findnewrevenue.com to learn more. Now here’s your host, Howard Wolpoff.

Welcome to Small Business Marketing – Then and Now. I’m Howard Wolpoff your host. We’re going to have a conversation about small businesses how and why they launched what they did to market themselves what they did as the business was growing to market the business and what kind of pivots, they may have been doing now during this COVID-19 environment. This is all we brought you by Profit Master Business Solutions.  To find out more click on findnewrevenue.com. I’m excited to get our podcast started so today we are really going to be talking about your financial prosperity and some of your mental prosperity and just being in the right mindset. We have an incredible guest with us – Joel Salomon. He is the chief prosperity officer at Salomon Prosperity Coaching and someone who helps others from obstacles standing in the way of their financial freedom. Joel published The 9 Money Rules Millionaires Use: Only the Unconventional Ones which was a best seller in both the self-help and personal finance. In 2018 he published Mindful Money Management -Memoirs of A Hedge Fund Manager which also was a best seller.  He is an award-winning speaker and frequent podcast guest. He’s led eleven workshops teaching the concepts and how to overcome limiting beliefs and he is a very experienced money manager working for some really large-scale companies and creating some numbers that would make your head spin for the company and for his clients.  Joel, really welcome to the conversation thank you for joining us.

Thanks so much for having me, Howard. it’s a real great pleasure to be here.

So, you have a really very experience of your background and your path to where your focus is now so why don’t you share with us a little bit about how your business life got started.

I started my career as an actuary, and you may know the difference between an actuary and an accountant.  I tell people an actuary looks at his feet when they talk to you an accountant looks at your feet when they talk to you.   They say an accountant is an actuary with charisma but normally what actuaries do is they calculate the premiums you have to pay for your insurance policy if it’s life insurance or health insurance or disability or auto or home. So, I was doing that for a life insurance company for a number of years but when it came time to study the last exam it was all.

on investments and I really enjoyed that particular exam. There were 10 exams. And when I finished up and realized my true passion wasn’t actuarial science, but it was investing and so I finally I got talked to a number of actuaries. I finally found one who actually was on Wall Street, and he gave me the path that he took to get there and long story short, I got to the buy side where I was actually investing money. I worked for a small hedge fund and then I worked for Citigroup as a hedge fund manager which was my dream it took me 15 years, but I got there. And then Citigroup shut down the whole business in 2012 when a law was passed that banks can’t own hedge funds and I started my own hedge fund and that was really my true dream and so I did that for about four years when I had an epiphany that my true purpose was not to be a hedge fund manager but actually to teach. And I literally went into my office my office and sent an e-mail to my investors telling them I’m shutting down my funds and I’m giving them their money back because I found my true purpose. Starting in 2016 …….. now it took a while. My lawyer was very upset at me because you can’t just send an e-mail to your investors telling them shutting it down as there is a legal process involved so it took all of 2016 but towards the end of 2016, I got the chance to actually start this new business coaching people. And so that’s what I’m doing I’ve been doing that for about 3 1/2 years now I teach people how to change their mindset around money from limiting beliefs to empowering beliefs from lack and scarcity to abundance and prosperity. I teach people about investments how to invest – what’s a bond; what’s the stock; what’s real estate; what’s cryptocurrency and how to invest. I have in my book the Nine Money Rules that you mentioned a five-step proprietary stock screen. I have in my book as well a seven-step real estate screen to invest in real estate. I want to make it easy for people to know that they can do it themselves that’s actually rule #8 of the Nine Money Rules DIY investing. And then I also teach people about personal finance you know a lot of people are struggling these days their businesses are struggling you know I’m a math guy so it’s all about you know what’s your business plan, what are the different scenarios you’re looking at and can you really make real money in this business.  So, I teach you all of that as well as personal finance; how to how to get out of debt; how to consolidate credit cards; what’s your credit score; how to improve your credit score and of course how to get to your financial freedom number quicker.

So, looking back at the beginning of this obviously really amazing path that you were able to walk on with Citibank doing you a favor in your mind at the time or were you kind of really disturbed over this change of course for you?

They did me a favor. I tell people my true dream was having my own company and actually I think on my website I say something like you know Citigroup gave me the kick in the butt to start my own funds and it was truly a dream of mine to be an entrepreneur. But everyone I talked to, all my friends growing up, they just got jobs at companies, and you know 30 years ago I don’t know if that’s changed. I seem to meet more entrepreneurs because I am now, but I don’t know exact percentages, but I feel like more and more people want to be or are entrepreneurs now than they were 30 years ago.

And that’s probably true I think it’s more open to be that. I think it was people look to you in a strange way at times 30 years ago with the decisions and the path they’ve chosen to make, but now there’s communities for entrepreneurs are look there’s teachings and trainings for entrepreneurs so it was really open and out there which definitely helps the process more now. But a lot of times when companies will make changes like that, or you start work people who start their own hedge funds there’s limitations. You’re not allowed to take clients from one to the other but with them closing did that help you get your started you’re able to bring people on immediately or were you developing a new clientele?

I knew I had to raise money myself so here’s the complete story I did look for another job right after I got laid off. In fact I was working with an analyst I was the portfolio manager and he was the analyst and I told him when I hired him two years earlier in 2010 that if anything happened because we knew things were kind of uncertain that at Citigroup that I would find him a job like I would find a job for us and when we got laid off and after you know in the beginning of 2012 started looking for jobs for both of us and not finding anything quickly I told them you know what I really want to start my own company I would hire you. And he said Well how long is that going to take? I said Well you know I have to raise money and it’s probably all of 2012. He said I can’t afford to be out of work for a year my wife’s pregnant with twins and I can’t afford to do that. So, I said OK I’ll help you find a job for both of us and so we I for a few months I looked for jobs for both of us and you have no idea how happy I was when he called me up in July and told me Joel I found a job because that freed me up to actually start my company because I felt responsible for him.

It’s understandable and says a lot about you in the process as well. So, once you got the funding, what was your first step in in starting the hedge fund?

Let’s step back a few steps first because in 2012 what I did was I was analyzing and investing in insurance companies mostly. So, I went out to those insurance companies who as probably you know and most of your listeners know have a lot of money, they’re investing your money, and they have hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars. So, you know give me 100 billion you know give me 300 million that’s not much for you. And so I went around to talk to insurance companies who I had invested in who I was enamored with from the other side like I was investing in their company and I got a couple of companies who orally agreed to give me money so I went out and started the process and hired my lawyer and hired an accountant and an auditor, all the service providers I needed ,fund administrator, my broker. I even moved into prime real estate space on 52nd and Madison Ave. I could actually see from my window Madison Ave. I felt like I’d arrived I was there I had achieved my dream. And so settled into this office, window view, room for eight people of course it was just me but you know I’m thinking big and call up these two insurance companies after I moved into my office December 17th 2012 and the first one said oh Joel we found another hedge fund we want to invest in and the second one said you know what we decided we’re not going to invest in hedge funds right now. I was like, what? Both you guys orally agreed to give me money – what are you talking about? And no matter what I couldn’t convince them and so I had no pipeline I had those were real significant amounts of money and I had no pipeline I had stopped marketing months ago because I worked had been working on all the service providers. So, I took a leap of faith, and I hired my analyst, and we started what I call now acting as if. So, we acted as if we had already raised all that money and what we did was, so I hired him which was one way of acting as if. I had morning calls with them and we talked about companies that we work quote unquote invested in and we went out to conferences and met with those companies we had calls with the CFO the chief financial officers of those companies and I did something even more crazy I put together a spreadsheet and I calculated how much money we had made on the stocks we were invested in every day. Now I would at the end of the day I’d say hey Sean great day good job or Sean we got to we got to move this portfolio around we’re losing money 2-3 days in a row here come on let’s go let’s come up with some better ideas. And we did this day after day you know with acting as if we had the money calculating the profit and the loss every day and the end of January, we had a good meeting with the potential investor. Now I wasn’t just sitting in my office and pretending I was actually going out and meeting with potential investors as well of course and banging the phones begging for you know begging for dollars and we had that good meeting and then sixty days later we actually had a written agreement and three months later we had the money to invest. And I truly believe today by acting as if we had the money, we got the money. 

Now were you able to use that spreadsheet as justification of your skills and abilities or that just for the practice?

no but I did have I did have 2008 9/10/11 at Citigroup which was not audited performance but it my manager at the time gave all the portfolio managers before he left the performance and so I had that to show potential investors when I went out but it was unaudited so that was a question mark in their minds. And the other big question mark they had was Joel you had the whole infrastructure of Citigroup behind you and now you’re doing it on your own. How can you get the same type of returns? Because we made money in 2008. I don’t know if you mentioned that, but we made money in 2008 you may remember the stock market was down 40% and I was investing only in financial stocks and financial stocks were down 57% and we made money investing only in financial stocks. 2008, 2009 we did a lot better we were up 25% in 2009 and we made money in 2010 when financial stocks were really poor as well, so we made money each full year that we were investing so it was easy to show that, and people were really excited about making us making money 2008 and 9.

Sure, that was very challenging times and anyone showing that they can make money would really make them stand out in the crowd.  So now you had your funding, now you had good footing in this nice big office overlooking Madison Avenue, what were you doing now to market yourself to get clients?

Great questions. So, what I did after we raised the money is I stopped marketing for six months and I said I’m going to focus on this company and getting the performance that I know I can generate for my investors. So, we launched in June and for six months just focused on performance we were up 10% in six months. We had great performances and now I felt like OK now we can go out and talk to because now we have audited returns for six months and you know we can go out.  So, we started going out in January of 2014 meeting with all those insurance companies that I had met with you know in the beginning without audited returns. Now I have audited returns, and my prime broker was also really helpful in that they set up a lot of meetings for me, so I didn’t have to do a lot of the marketing myself, but we really were a small shop. I had my CFO, an analyst and myself. So, you know you have to wear multiple hats. I was the chief marketing officer, the chief investment officer and the CEO. And so yeah so, we went out and we took advantage of my prime broker all the networking that they provided for us and then going back to the insurance companies as well.

 So that gave you a strong start into this business obviously some of the business that grew and grew more than just the 10% that you created for the initial investors, what were you doing as the next few years went on to, I guess strengthen the brands and bring on more diverse clientele?

So, the other thing we did in late in 2014 we did hire an external marketing officer to support me because to be open with you and listeners on the content right I continue to be content even as the chief prosperity officer at SaLaurMor now and so I want to develop content. So as a portfolio manager I want to develop good returns so that’s what I love you know and that I continue to love and if you know I teach people about investing now so I love doing that and so that’s what I want to spend my time on so I think it’s important in any business to really understand your strengths and where you want to delegate responsibility. I’m also part of a group called The Do What You Love Tribe, a mastermind group that’s going to be launching in a few months and one of the things we work with each other on is the fact that we’re all entrepreneurs and have small businesses, but you don’t have to do what you don’t love to do. We’re a group of people where you could delegate to each other and some people love doing business plans me and other people don’t and so I’m really interested in seeing what the potential is for The Do What You Love Tribe to be over the next three to five years I’m pretty sure most of the people have no interest in the accounting and the revenue and expenses and the growth of that particular tribe. So, delegating the things that you love doing I think is important and understanding you know you can develop strengths over time. I don’t think you know I view us as pliable and growing all the time, but you know if there’s something you don’t love to do I like figure out you know how to delegate it and nowadays you know there are virtual assistants you can you can have a small business you know with one or two or three people and delegate a lot to others.

What you say is really true that not just the virtual assistance there’s a lot of outsource people there who are very happy to serve as someone’s department to them it’s a client relationship but to the to the client itself they’re filling in the need of a marketing department to graphic design department and IT department and as you’re growing and have more funds coming in and creating different budget lines for you to track how you’re spending it you’ll end up spending less having an outsource department as opposed to all the salary and benefits you’d be paying for one or two different graphic designers to satisfy the needs that you have so there’s a lot of benefits to that.  Some of these mastermind groups are really outstanding that they developed in so many different ways and utilizing each other in what seems to be very conceptually a tightening group to build and work off of everyone’s strengths really can make some great inroads for some of these companies that participating in.

That was a great point, Howard. Yes, I completely agree.

You had an epiphany as I think it’s a good way for me to describe it at certain point that you were excited with what you were doing but you felt teaching was your calling and wanted to kind of grow in that direction. Obviously, you said it didn’t make your attorney very happy and I assume that your clients weren’t it wasn’t their first choice with what you were doing but tell us about that pivot and how you created this new entity with and this desire for teaching and how and how you’re implementing it.

 I’ll tell you about the epiphany first, so I went to this personal development course I’m all about learning and growing all the time and I went to this personal development course and two things happened at the course which really changed my life and made me choose to move in this direction and one was we had a guest speaker speaking about stocks and stock options. So, he spoke for an hour in this three-day course and when he started speaking about stock options in particular, he made it sound like it was a get rich quick scheme you don’t need much time you don’t need much money. This is how the rich people get rich. Options are essentially riskless, and I was sick to my stomach. I had people this was day two of the conference they knew I was a hedge fund manager so they’re tapping on the shoulder they whisper in my ear Joel does this make sense. So, after he was done with his presentation we go outside of the auditorium, and I said please don’t do this. He has no idea about your cash flow or earnings or risk tolerance and most importantly has no idea about your belief systems. You know do you believe that you can become rich making investing in stock options so that happened then we also had an exercise that we had to do called obstacles or illusions and we were given a wooden board about two inches thick and we were totally going to break it with our bare hands now I don’t know if you’ve done this Howard or any of your listeners have but there was a lot of fear in that room like we literally had a sign a permission slip listening next of kin they really they made it very fearful type of exercise but we had a ride on one side of the wooden board and our biggest obstacle and we had a right on the other side of wooden board or ultimate goal and I wrote raising enough money for my hedge fund for it to be a long term business you know for doing this for the rest of my life and then on the other side I wrote as my ultimate goal helping everybody in this room become financially free and I broke that board went home that night and I remember I couldn’t sleep 3-4 in the morning first of all that guy was in my head and I realized that if I could ever get up the courage to speak in front of 200 people I could be authentic as opposed to misleading them and my biggest fear in life at the time was public speaking and I’ve done a lot of public speaking since then to overcome that and I have spoken in front of room of almost 200 people uh at a Mike Dooley conference but so that happened I was thinking about that and then the other thing I was thinking about is that half that wooden board was staring at me all night making everybody in this room financially free and then it finally hit me and so I went into my office and on 54th and we had actually moved to 54th and 6th at the time and I sent an e-mail to my investors telling them I’m giving them their money back I’m shutting down the fund because I had found my true purpose and I know it sounds like a cliche but it was true I felt like okay helping other people become financially free is what my calling is and that’s my why you know managing money for large institutions fund am I really making a big difference in the world you know managing 1% or less than 1% of the assets of these large companies not really but now and so that pivot was the aha moment of wow I really love helping people I’ve always loved helping people and yes I’m helping some people but not a ton and this is really a way to get out there and teach people the truth and teach people that they can do it themselves teach people that their belief systems matter and teach people that they can become financially free and get them on the road to that on the path to that financial freedom so one that’s fantastic and….

It’s great that you have that vision for others and the need and want to help them because there’s a lot of people that are very confused and don’t even know enough to understand whether they’re confused or not because it’s because it’s very complicated I still remember my on finance class and Business School which I would say kept me up nice but I was studying at night I was working in baseball and on the subway at midnight doing my finance homework that that one semester but what did you do to share this with those people how were you marketing yourself now to get to being their teacher?

Right that’s a great question. so I started by going back out to every my whole network that I knew as a hedge fund manager a lot of people came to me you know looking for jobs a lot of people I was clients of you know my service providers everyone who is anyone needs I believe some help with money and I give everybody 30 minutes free so we help you know for that you know a lot of lot of things can change in 30 minutes even I’ve helped a woman in December manifest $7000 in in a few weeks after we talked so things can shift and in the small amount of time but it’s you know what I did was I just went out to everybody I knew and I said they look you know I’m shutting it down this is my true dream and if you know of anybody just let them know and I started networking you know I think the big thing was you know I had been networking for my funds so I knew kind of how to go about it that was specialized and you know the companies that were looking to invest in hedge funds so this became just another way you know to get out there obviously things were different three years ago so a lot of meeting in person lot of cocktail parties and Manhattan there’s a lot of different groups in Manhattan that just you know generally entrepreneurs because I not only help individuals but I help small businesses with business plans and growing their business and changing their mindset when things are not going so perfectly well so all that I do as well so just doing a lot of more networking you know putting up the website so you have somewhere for people to go writing a couple of books I think that helped as well so just you know as any way you can to get your name out there I think is helpful our podcast too obviously so you know I after my first book I got on a number of podcasts this last book I got on even more so you know I’m grateful for people like you Howard to help me on and spread the word that you can become financially free you can change your beliefs around money it is within your reach no matter how young or old you are.

 You know it’s really about the mindset that you mentioned a little bit about this more recent book but why don’t you tell us kind of the concept of about it and what people are learning…

from the Nine Money Rules Millionaires Use was really the book I wanted to write first but when you’re starting out visibility sometimes can be an impediment you worry about the haters you worry about what other people are going to think I teach my clients you know it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks it only matters what you think ultimately it does because your thoughts become the things and experiences of your life so I really wanted to write this book first but I had a lot of fear so the nine money rules is process oriented it goes through and they’re unusual unconventional as the subtitle says they’re unconventional money rules and you know the first one is your belief you know when you believe and then the second one is trust your intuition so there are some may say these are more spiritual rules that millionaires used to become financially free there are some rules that are process oriented I mentioned DIY do-it-yourself investing I you know another rule that I have is budgeting so there are some process oriented rules but the first six are really what I would call spiritual rules and so I wanted to get out there with this is what helped me become financially free and you know back in 2012 and I used a lot of these techniques when I was a hedge fund manager and people I know who are rich are using a lot of these techniques every day in their personal lives the professional lives and so let’s get the word out that it’s not you don’t need to have large amounts of capital in order to become financially free you know it’s really mostly about the inside work that you have to do the gratitude and the appreciation happiness all that internal work you have to do first because once you’re there then the outside world takes care of its which is a lot of lessons that people really need and really need to be really understand and explore more and you’re helping them do that with you’re kind of stepping out of the pages and more into a hands on approach with this So what do you have that that’s launching shortly to really be the teacher for them yeah so we’re starting uh Rod Reguera and I are starting a course called peace and prosperity now and September 29th it’s Tuesdays at 8:00 PM eastern 5:00 PM Pacific and we’re going to go through each of the nine money rules over nine weeks first week is free available to whoever I’m just going to limit it to my zoom limit but that’s the limit but first come first serve you know we got a limited number of spots up to that but first week is free and we want to get the word out that you know beliefs is what’s the start of everything so that’s for free and then we’ll go through each of the weeks people have like we did the first course this is one of my shifts during you know the whole COVID experience you know I have to be in my home and so I started this course in April we did the first time it was a huge success people said it that changed their thoughts about money dramatically they’re getting benefit because they realize they don’t have to work so hard to be rich and successful it’s not about the this it’s changing the mindset to work more smarter and more productively and then you know another guy said like it actually changed his thinking about life and overall which so I’m not going to guarantee anything but it’s I think it’s a life changing type of course and so we’re and obviously you get access to a world renowned meditation teacher as well chair Robert Guerra so she she’s really powerful she gets us into the frame the mindset to then take in the concepts of the nine money rules so I’m really excited to have that available to the world.

Well it’s very exciting that you’ve obviously was successful the first time is you’re bringing in now and being some of that that’s life changing can really make obviously substantial difference with the individuals taking part and hopefully there are a lot of people that can really take advantage and grow with this so that they can they can find them and then there’s an inner peace that comes with having your finances working for you in the right way and not having to stress over it on a on a daily or hourly basis as that at times that that’s unfortunately that’s the case for people so being able to provide that I think is obviously rewarding to you but you see the rewards they’re getting out of the experience

that’s a great point Howard because I tell people the number one stressor is money and even if you like at companies like you’re less productive if you’re even if you’re working at a company if you’re worried about money all the time and you’re worried about how you’re going to make ends meet and I know look the a lot of people who got laid off in the last six months a lot of people are struggling did not generating the income that they had you know nine months ago but just because that’s the situation today doesn’t mean it can’t change in the future so you know what we work on is that mindset so you know that you could live the life of your dreams and your desires and you know so that’s the first step and look II I know a lot of people are struggling but I think that pain can become pleasure in the in the near future and we’re hoping to do that.

Well it’s really great that you are doing that and I really thank you for sharing all this information with me and with the listeners that are really absorbing all this what’s the best way for them to get in contact with you in general to really learn more about this this course coming

Yes so my website is joelsolomon.com my company name is SaLaurMor that’s SaLaurMor.com it’s named after my daughters Lauren and Morgan so solomon.com as well and anyone feel free to e-mail me that it’s Joel@SaLaurMor.com. if you have questions if you want to learn any anything more about that group program or I do one-on-one coaching as well so love and I that I give everybody 30 minutes free so if anybody wants to reach out to me I’ll give them e 30 minutes of coaching.

Joel thank you so much for joining us today I really appreciate I learned a lot and I’m glad that we were able to share this with the audience and look forward to knowing that a good amount will be taking some of the lessons not just from this conversation but for more than they have the opportunity to learn from you so thank you very much again.

Thanks so much Howard it’s really been a great place great conversation one of my best for sure.

Thank you and thank you all for joining us today again another great conversation to see how a company can evolve from one place to another obviously Joel is a number of different places that with great successes along the way so again thank you to profit master business solutions so go out have a great day today and we will see you next time this has been small business marketing then and now brought to you by Profit Master Business Solutions. marketing strategy for the small business owner to learn more and click findnewrevenue.com.  Go out, have a great rest of the day and I’ll see you next time.