Antonio Panico is a nationally known entrepreneur and author who specializes in business coaching, or helping others achieve their business goals. In this interview, he tells us about himself, his work and his latest book, Coach Rich, Coach Poor.
I met Antonio Panico a few years ago at an event of our mutual friend Marco Scabia. He didn't make a very big impression on me at first, because he had a very--I won't say aggressive, but he came on very strongly. I've always been someone who was a little defensive when confronted with very flamboyant characters.
Well, I couldn't have been more wrong! And not only on that occasion: in fact, Antonio has played a very important role in my life, because he has been my business coach for several years. He has helped me so much, both professionally and personally. He showed me how to overcome obstacles and avoid major mistakes, eventually becoming a very good friend of mine.
Yes, I can safely say that Antonio is one of my best friends. We have confided in each other in so many situations, not just business. He is a kind-hearted person who I have seen help other people and commit himself so that his own client, his own coachee, would get results.
This interview comes after years of knowing each other (4, 5, or 6 years, I don't remember exactly), and it comes on top of another one I did with him at the time of his first book launch, Unstoppable.
On this second occasion I helped him with the sales funnel (I am also mentioned in his latest book, Coach Rich, Coach Poor. I then had no further way to support him, except by promoting some of his online courses to my list-courses that he later dropped so that he could devote himself entirely to his Academy (which will also be discussed in the interview), to helping entrepreneurs get results, either himself or with his team.
Read this interview well to the end, because there will also be some very interesting tidbits and extremely useful tips that you can apply to your business right away. Antonio is someone who should definitely be followed, and I think his book Coach Rich, Coach Poor should be read regardless of whether you are coach or coachee, whether you are "rich" or you are "poor."
Happy reading!
Who is Antonio Panico, Italy's first business coach
Valerio: Good morning everybody, I am Valerio Fioretti and today I have as my guest my very dear friend Antonio Panico, a great coach who is an expert in marketing and especially in business coaching. Hi Antonio.
Anthony: Hello, hello to everybody. Thank you.
Valerio: So, Antonio. I have in my hands this which is your very latest book. It's very cool, I'm quoted as well and so it's even cooler. It's called Coach Rich, Coach Poor and is from the series If only I could Of our mutual friend Max Formisano. You've done a great job, and I'd like to talk to you today about that and other things. Can you first give a 30-second introduction for those who don't know who Antonio Panico is?
Antonio: I am a business coach, actually I am THE business coach, because I was the first one to position myself, to start a business work coaching. Let me explain this passage: it is not that there were no business coaches before, there was in fact example coaching or corporate coaching. All of the coaches, though, (this is a topic, I also talk about it in the book), were doing executive coaching, life coaching, corporate coaching, coaching for housewives and massage, or something like that.
Instead, when I entered the market (and I didn't enter with business coaching), I received many requests for coaching on business. Since this is my specialty (I don't have just that, but it's a big specialty of mine, since I come from the business world), I decided to go for business coaching. I was the first business coach in Italy.
Valerio: Okay.
Antonio: So many companies, so many coaches who were already doing coaching then started to call themselves "business coaches" as well, but the first one in Italy was me...
Valerio: Okay.
Antony: ...so much so that I also registered the brand.
Valerio: Okay. This gives me the hook to ask you a first question right away. The Facebook feed, of social in general, is bombarded with people going on video, pitching, trying to do business. I'm overjoyed because I teach people how to do this, so if I see people applying themselves, doing it, it's much better than all the people who don't do a damn thing and just criticize. However, there is obviously some distinction to be made, I presume.
I think the word "coach" - "coaching" is rather overused, and sometimes used ... not really out of hand, but without a lot of knowledge. My question to you is, to be called a coach what does one have to do? Is it a path, is it a certification, or is it a methodology, in the sense that it takes results? Can you give us a distinction, just to understand?
What it means to do coaching
Antony: I'll explain right away. Coaching is not institutionalized work.
Valerio: Serious work.
Anthony: It is alas a very serious job, unlike what you see around. Sometimes you see some pretty strange things. Coaching is extremely serious work, but there is no category of coaches, we don't pay the...
Valerio: There is no Professional Roll, there is no protected category in any way.
Antonio: No, because coaching is not institutionalized as a job, but it is a method of work, a relationship with the client is formed. Two years ago, however, it was identified by the UNI association, which gives the details of how--not a certification, but it explains how a job should be done. So a definition was given: coaching is defined as a helping relationship between the coach and the coachee (coachee is the client), in which the coach, with his professional doing, helps the coachee through a one-to-one relationship to achieve goals.
The question is obvious: How does one become a coach? The answer is by "doing coaching" (then let's talk about what it is to do "coaching"). There is one thing that is the fundamental element of coaching: since the coach, by his definition, has to help people achieve results, he can be called a true coach when he has clients who achieve results.
Valerio: Fantastic.
Antony: By definition.
Valerio: This is the most important thing, also because, for those who don't know, I was your coachee. You've helped me so much in the past years, I've bypassed huge mistakes, amazing things that only you know. When we approached each other, when you first ...
Antonio: Do we talk about it, tell your clients about it?
Valerio: Let's tell, let's tell. Let's tell about when you approached me at our friend Marco Scabia's event and you wanted to launch the book. You then talked about it here as well: you wanted to launch your book, and I was very wary of you, first because you are Neapolitan, second because your name is ... but I'm kidding, of course ...
Antonio: Antonio.
Valerio: ...absolutely, I have a lot of friends in Naples. I was a little wary because it was starting a little bit ...
Antony: Because I am a coach.
Valerio: You are a coach.
Antony: That's why you were wary.
Valerio: I was wary of that, just because I was bombarded by people coming up to me and saying "I am a coach, I am a coach, I am a coach, let's work together, let's do something...." These coaches seemed to me to be a bit too many, I who trained in the United States didn't have all this abundance of coaches, so I was saying to myself, "What's it like here in Italy? Has the bomb of coaches exploded?" Antonio then did a great thing, he said "look" and sent me an 'e-mail with his clients and the cell phone numbers of the CEOs of the companies he had invited. He said, "Go, call them and ask them what I did for them and what results I got."
A coach who can demonstrate results without talking and without putting on airs, but by having clients talk on his behalf, I think is something I've only seen you do. It's something that I've then also done with some of my clients. Otherwise I've only seen it done by you, I copied it great and it works great as a persuasive method. After that was finished there were results, so you helped me so much. So in this book that...
Anthony: I remember it perfectly the coachee done with you and I also have the card, which I saw before I did the interview. I more than doubled year by year....
Valerio: Yes.
Antony: ...quadrupled turnover in two years.
Valerio:
Yes. Yes, yes, it is true, it is true, it is true.
Antony: Actually.
Valerio: Absolutely, absolutely true, absolutely true.
Anthony: It's not that I'm only good, I've done my job. You are very good, but coaching helps you achieve the results that you can achieve.
Valerio: The coach alone is not enough, right? It takes the commitment of the coachee, because if you don't follow the coach's directives it's not like the coach can do the work for you, you have to work. However, having a good coach who has a methodology, who has an empathy, an ability to approach the client in an important way... (because if you don't understand me, you don't understand my state of mind)... You many times would make surprise phone calls to me and ask, "How are you? How are you doing? What happened?" because maybe we hadn't heard from each other for 6 hours, we usually talked. You definitely have an above-average sensitivity. Look, this book here has a great title, Coach Rich, Coach Poor. Is it provocative?
The book: Coach Rich, Coach Poor
Antony: It's provocative. It's not-I meanwhile tell you what my idea is. I am honest with everybody about what they do. Having met Max Formisano at Marco Scabia's class (where you were also)...
Valerio: Yes.
Anthony: We met everybody there now 3-2 1/2 years ago, and he maybe even 3 years ago. He...
Valerio: 4 years ago.
Antony: No, it hasn't been that long--has it been that long?
Valerio: Yes, yes.
Antony: M*****a. We met, we had coffee. We hadn't met for a long time and he said "come on, write a book with my necklace." I who was already swamped with stuff "we'll write it, I'm happy to write a book with your necklace, however we have to study a title that I like." From then on he gave me so many titles to consider, I however never found one thing that I was really passionate about, that really gave value to my potential readers.
One day he calls me (I was in the car) and says, "Antó, I have a title for you." I tell him "shoot," but I was already -- he goes "rich coach poor coach." Me: "you're crazy, I'm writing this". A few months. The series is really good and this book in my opinion really made sense to write it. However, the time had come and so I wanted to write it. It had a beautiful provocative title, provocative both because it obviously recalls the book Rich Father, Poor Father of Kiyosaki's--in the meantime, there's a beautiful and spectacular video of New York, how come it's gone? Beautiful.
Valerio: The screensaver went off, but we'll put your book tab back later, don't worry.
Anthony: It is beautiful, I like this screensaver. I was saying, it is provocative not only because it obviously recalls Kiyosaki's title (which it is inspired by), but also because it is provocative in another sense. The sense is this here, I'll explain now. A "rich" coach is one who by definition has to help other people get results; a "poor" coach is not only poor, he is also selfish, and I will explain why. This is also why I like the title, because a coach becomes rich by helping many people, not just a few. A rich coach is not only rich, he is a coach who has added so much value to society. That is why it is important for me to become a rich coach, and that is why I like the book and the title.
It is a title that appeals to every coach's personal ambition to make a lot of money, but it also goes to support the personal mission (which there must be in a coach), which is to help a lot of people. The richer a coach is, the more people he is helping; the poorer a coach is, the fewer people he is helping. Please note: I am not saying that those who are poor are not capable of helping, but very often they are content. A coach looking at his 5000 - 6000 - 10 000 euros a month, for me 10 000 euros and I work 10 hours a week, I am happy. But how much more value do you want to add to society, to a world, to people? What positive effect can this have on society?
Let me give an example: you know very well a customer of mine, who has been in my opinion for many years, for 4 or 5, maybe more for 4. He went from 8 million to 16 million in 3 years, this year he confirmed a growth of about 7% in 2018. This customer not only made more money and paid me a lot of money, he also opened 4 more stores, expanded abroad and hired more people who ensure a fiscal. Not only that, then.
Valerio: Sure, for...
Antony: Families...
Valerio: Absolutely. There is a chain of collective well-being that is created at that point, there is not only the immediate benefit of the entrepreneur, but it then spills over, of course, into his enterprise, his employees, his private life, and a lot of other contexts.
Anthony: It's the systemic effect, and that's what a coach is probably interested in. If you work only for money, above a certain threshold you are no longer motivated.
Valerio: In my opinion coaches who earn 10 000 euros a month are not that many, not even 5000. I read this book almost all of it, I went faster on some parts and stopped more on others. You give some very important pointers here, which I think are not only good for someone who wants to do coaching, but also for an entrepreneur who maybe wants to understand certain dynamics and wants to apply them to himself.
Let's say it's not like Unstoppable (your first best-seller), which was resounding because it leveraged self-efficacy, of which you are one of the standard-bearers here in Italy, this book is more... how should I say... I, in a way, saw it more as a step-by-step guide than instead of Unstoppable, is that right? Do you have to correct me?
Antonio: Also Unstoppable is a step-by-step guide, the latter helps a person get rid of the ballasts he or she has and unleash his or her self-efficacy, to be more confident, determined, and get more results. This here, on the other hand, is a book that aims to explain, help step by step the coach to become a coachee. Those who want to become coaches can become coaches for good by becoming a coachee.
Valerio: Yes.
Antonio: The entrepreneur, professional or manager who wants to approach coaching. What is coaching? There is so much confusion between coaching to training, to consulting, marketing, mentorship...
Valerio: Yes
Antony: There is so much confusion. You need to understand how to select coaching, because this is a distinctive topic. I very often, with my team, come across clients who had already selected a coach but had a bad experience. The most frequent statement is "I have already done training or coaching with Pippo Baudo and I had a bad experience." Not that Pippo Baudo does coaching.
Valerio: Yes, it is a fictitious name, okay.
Antony: Instead, you need to fully understand what coaching is, how it works, what it is for, and what effect it should have.
Valerio: Sure.
Anthony: I remember, I was the first one to do interviews with my clients, you were one of the clients I interviewed. Now I don't do them anymore, but I get reviews written and I'm so full, I don't even use them all. I remember, however, an interview by a coach with one of his clients. In this interview, the coaching client said, "Now that I've been on the coaching path for a year, I have a much clearer idea of what I need to do to succeed my business." Heck, after a year of coaching these have a result that we get with less, in fact not even after a month, but after only two sessions.
Valerio: Yes.
Antony: Very often we get it in the first session, you know it well.
Valerio: Confirmed.
Antony: It is dramatic that one client only. For goodness sake, then everybody is happy with what they buy and if you're happy that's fine, but a client needs to know that if they go to a coach, clarity of purpose has to be something you achieve at the first session, in the most dramatic situations at the fourth.
Valerio: Sure.
Antony: It is not reached after one year.
How to scale the business
Valerio: In my opinion, among the most interesting things you address in this book, aside from methodology, is the whole strategic aspect of coaching that you need to scale your business. There is always the problem that you trade time for money: the coach usually charges by the hour or by the session, and the day is obviously made up of 24 hours. You can't work more than 8-9 hours a day because you're exhausted, so how do you scale your business?
Antony: Yes, within this book I talk about that. One of the results that I've been able to achieve, that I've been able to achieve, is not something that started this way: from the very beginning I've always organized myself to then scale the business. Currently we have 14 coaches, 7 of which are still in training and the others are ready and working.
The fact is that a coach works with a method, but the initial condition is: if a coach works with a scientific method whereby at the first session he clarifies your ideas, at the second session he points you out, etc., he has a methodology that can be applied and he can begin to protocol it, write it down in a manual and use it to train other coaches. That's what I did, in fact I have a business coaching academy (I don't advertise it now), exclusively business coaching (it's the first academy just for business coaching)...
Valerio: Sure.
Antony: ... that he didn't have, where entrepreneurs, professionals, or sometimes managers who are our clients, decide to come in to become coaches as well, which is interesting. As I said before, there is an aspect of personal ambition and a spiritual aspect, of wanting to help others. My coaches are all entrepreneurs, managers, salespeople or professionals who also want to do coaching as a second job, obviously not because it is well paid...
Valerio: Sure.
Antony: ... but because they take pleasure in helping others. This is the way to scale the business, I started out on my own and today I have 14 coaches.
Valerio: You climbed it, absolutely. Sure. Look, one question: how much do the personal vicissitudes of your coachee affect his business in your experience?
Antonio: Everything. I'll explain. Here you are giving me a beautiful assist to the effective side. The 80% of our work has to do with managerial protocols, from how to hire people to how to sell the company, from how to open the company to sell it, and everything in between. I am now accompanying the international company. However, this is the 80% of our work, the 20% is instead working, generalizing, on the emotionality of the entrepreneur.
It is not only about emotionality, there is much more. Here the concept is just this: when an entrepreneur or a manager, or a professional, who has a very important, impactful effect on his business (we're not talking about Debecchio who in his business doesn't do anything anymore except look at the numbers...
Valerio: Sure.
Antony: ... and counting money) ... If you are an entrepreneur and you still have an impact in your business, if you are worried, angry, nervous, or your emotional tone falls and you are down, that has a very negative influence on your self-efficacy. One of the main sources of self-efficacy development is precisely emotionality, emotional condition. If you are down in emotional tone--emotional tone is related to IQ, so a person who is down in emotional tone is less intelligent than when they are happy, satisfied and interested.
Valerio: Sure.
Anthony: So he makes less intelligent choices, because he really has less ability to process problems and solve them. On the other hand, this negatively affects your performance, but also the performance of the people around you. You know this because you work with a team: your state of mind affects the state of mind of others.
Valerio: Absolutely.
Anthony: For this I say state of mind, but the aspects are really many.
Valerio: Sure.
Anthony: Personal vicissitudes affect everything under certain conditions. A person down in tone obviously cannot perform as well as when he is up in tone. Salespeople know this well, in fact....
Valerio: Yes, yes, absolutely, they know that when they are "down" then they don't bring home any contracts, so yes.
Anthony: In fact, I always tell sellers, "The best time to sell is when you have closed a sale."
Valerio: Of course, because you are super gassed and so ...
Antonio: You don't give a damn about not closing it, so go easy.
A model based on self-efficacy
Valerio: Look... self-efficacy so it keeps on being there, it's your common thread, right? You have been following...
Antony: Absolutely. My model is made up of managerial protocols and protocols on self-efficacy. I'll tell you again, the 20% of time -- I calculated that 20% of our time is devoted to protocols on self-efficacy etc., so on the more personal part. This 20%, however, is critical.
Valerio: Yes.
Antony: It's critical because a business plan also has to be done, and if you're spinning your wheels or you're down in the dumps, you do the business plan poorly.
Valerio: Sure, sure.
Antony: When you're down in the dumps, angry, or you don't see a future, strategic planning--trivially, a person who is down in the dumps can't even see their future well, they make wrong predictions, so a business plan made while you're down in the dumps doesn't work.
One method for all
Valerio: Now there are two oppositions that might come up, the first from a coach who might say "eh whatever, but Antonio's method is Antonio's, it is not applicable to others, it follows what are only his ideas, his philosophy or his way of working, so this book is useless to me."
Anthony: Well, in this book I don't explain the details of my method, but how to build a method for yourself. Okay?
Valerio: Okay.
Anthony: I also give, I also show some of my protocols (in fact in the discussion within the book I refer to some of them and explain them), but I mainly explain how to protocol their activities and build their own method.
Valerio: Perfect.
Anthony: The coach, or a person who wants to learn my method, must participate...
Valerio: Going to your Academy.
Anthony: You must participate in the selections to enter my Academy. Of course it is open to everyone but...
Valerio: Sure, sure. So this is a guide for coaches to work better, not to do exactly what you do. Even a life coach can use this book profitably, right? He can come up with his own methodology, his own scaling strategy, his own client acquisition strategy.
Anthony: Absolutely.
Valerio: Perfect.
Anthony: But also a customer retention strategy, a strategy for, the marketing strategies that I have used, tested and verified how they work. In the course there are two sales methods, in the book there is one. The salesman had given me pages of words, but in the course that I then give along with the book there are two sales methods to sell coaching. I really explain everything to the coach on how to do it.
Valerio: Now okay...
Antony: A method-as you see.
Valerio: We get it, we get it. The second opposition that someone might make to you is, this time, from a potential client who says, "eh whatever, but Antonio only follows big companies, CEOs, I have a used car dealership."
Antony: Yes, of used car resales we never ran any, so.
Valerio: But, I mean ... obviously that's a question I already know the answer to, because you've worked with so many niches, so many entrepreneurs of all sizes, from the small freelancer to the CEO or owner of the big company that makes millions. Your method, your coaches and you, Antonio, help potentially any kind of business, right?
Antony: Absolutely.
Valerio: Because one hears "business coach" and maybe thinks you only work at stratospheric levels, when in fact your method applies very well to any situation.
Antony: Absolutely, yes. Look, by the way I had of the, I showed just the slides of the growths of the businesses, because I was happy to show them the results (if you want I'll show you). The condition is this here: we do business coaching, so your -- unless your business is about guns, sex, drugs or drugs of a certain kind, with everybody.
Valerio: Sure.
Antony: Here I don't want to go into, because my values contradict this. We work on all kinds of businesses, I give an example: last year, in January, I took a lawyer who had made a turnover of 70 000 euros and in 2018 she closed the year at 180 000 euros. This year, however, we are working to reach 350 000 euros. From my point of view you can reach 500 000, but of course I am not the one who has to decide the budget, however, the budget...
Valerio: Sure.
Antony: 350 000 euros. We also helped small professionals who were billing 40 000 to 50 000 euros to become 150 000 to 160 000 euros professionals. Then recently, we even worked with salespeople, although of course we were doing coaching sessions that were a bit more dilated also to lower the cost. We had some that went from 40 000 euros in annual sales to 250 000 euros. A salesman making 15 000 euros a month for nobody. That's a good thing.
Valerio: Of course, of course. Absolutely. Look, is there a gift in here for people who buy the book?
Anthony: Sorry, and then of course we worked with companies that were making millions. I have a company that started out making a million and now we're up to 5 million this year. You, when we started, were billing about less than a million, and within a year you have far exceeded that. We work with everybody. We have a bakery in Livorno that when it started with us was not even making 15 and in two months has come to make +20. So we can work on everything, of course the initial condition is that the entrepreneur wants to do it, trusts and gets help to achieve the results. There is some work ...
Valerio: Sure.
Antony: Then we also work with multinational companies. I have multinational clients, but my targets are mainly the small business, the freelancer, and the average company that wants to become a big company.
Valerio: Sure.
Antonio: It is easy to be a coach for a Ferrari. I've also had so many multinationals call me, I've worked for multinationals including...
Valerio: Yes.
Antony: ...multinational pharmaceutical companies who know me in the environment and call me all the time.
Valerio: Sure.
Antonio: It's easy to work for a multinational company because your value added is small, it's low, and that's why I don't do it. First of all because they pay little, because you entrust a coach to the Fiat group with this worker who works 500 hours a day. I for 500 hours a day I wouldn't even answer the phone now. I understand that there are people who move in these circles, I did too in the beginning, but today I don't even answer the phone anymore.
Valerio: Whatever, it's a matter of evolution, right? When I started hacking with computers there were liras and I was getting 20 000 liras an hour and I was jumping for joy, then things have changed enormously. Values change, views change, commitment changes, training changes, what you have invested changes, everything changes.
Antony: Even when I started, in the early days (when I was still working as an employee), I was also getting 350 euros for a month of coaching. Beyond the earnings, when you want to work on a big company, your contribution is really minimal, you can instead help an individual stand out. When you work with the small company, making this 800,000 company become a 3 million company....
Valerio: Man, it makes a huge difference.
Antonio:
A big company, a big corporation, you do stress management with the manager who wants the coach just because he is cool. Very often there is...
Valerio: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes...
Antonio: That I don't accept, I don't want managers contacting me, I don't want it like that.
A gift for readers
Valerio: Look, I was telling you -- inside the book there is a gift, a surprise, right? What is it about?
Antony: So, in the book I couldn't write everything I wanted to say....
Valerio: Okay.
Antony: ... so I had an idea that by the way you gave me (you passed it on to me, I don't know if you know), however, with a substantial difference. You know how I think, I don't sell "low ticket" products like 200, 400, 500 euro products. I have done tests, I have also sold them, we have also made money, but that is not my goal. My goal is to help coaches become coaches: that means in an indirect way we create a contribution for the country.
The GDP of the country is not made by all of them; they administer the country. It is the entrepreneurs and the people who work with them who will increase the wealth of the country. That is my goal. Inside the book, those who read the book all the way through (because they have to read it all the way through), will find directions to register for free for a course that I do not ma...
Valerio: Is this an online course?
Antonio: It is an online course worth about 500 euros that I for now give away completely to those who read the book (then in the future I don't know what I will give). The concept is that I wanted to make an additional contribution so that I could also be in relationship with these coaches and help them achieve important goals.
Valerio: Great, great. Look, the book is for sale on Amazon...?
Antonio: Yes.
Valerio: It is also for sale at The garden of books. I know sales are starting to come in and it's really liking it, I know different people have taken pictures, selfies, I've seen various things on social.
Antonio: Look, the book -- I want to say one thing about this, Valerio, forgive me. The book became a best seller on IBS after two days (IBS is a portal that sells books).
Valerio: Ah yes, you mean a bookstore.
Antony: Yes. On IBS it became best seller, more best seller than IBS, so not best seller in classroom 2, but total best seller already after two days from when it was launched. They sent an e-mail and it became best seller immediately, now I think it is third.
Valerio: He is third.
Antony: It's for sale on Macrolibrarsi and it's obviously for sale on Amazon, but here, unfortunately, there's constantly last-of-stock, meaning they come in and after two hours they're out of stock. It's an aberrant thing.
Valerio: Okay, so you have to search IBS, Book Garden, Macrolibrarsi or Amazon.
Antonio: Yes. Amazon, or go or the bookstore...
Valerio: Okay.
Antony: ...because it is distributed in all of them. If you can't find it.
Valerio: Sure.
Antony: On Amazon.
Valerio: Yes?
Antony: ...if you make a space for a moment you can see, it's there in the flexible cover at €12.59, but underneath it says "€10.96": if you click there you go to the Amazon window... They're not on Amazon right now, but they're coming, so if you reserve it, as soon as they come they'll distribute it to you.
Valerio: Okay, I'm going to put all the links at the bottom of the interview anyway, so everyone can buy the book and with it get the online course that is hidden inside. You have to go and find it, it's not like you can open it, find the little tab with the link and suck up the course without having read the book first; you read it first and then you get to the course.
Coaching advice
Valerio: Okay. Antonio, before we say goodbye, would you have a coaching tip to give to entrepreneurs, a pill of wisdom, something they could do today to improve even a little bit?
Anthony: I really like this question of yours, do you know why? Because it gives me a chance to respond to something I hear around. Lately the news has been making a terrible tam-tam of the technical recession. There is technical recession.
Valerio: Yes.
Antony: The answer is -- can I say a bad word in my interview?
Valerio: Go.
Antonio: Or maybe-otherwise I won't say it. I mean, 'sti****i.
Valerio: Yes?
Antony: The economy, macroeconomic phenomena, should not concern the individual entrepreneur, the latter should not get anxious about macroeconomic factors. The "economy," this big word, economy, is composed of my economy, your economy, and the economies of the people who are listening to us. So the question is not -- when people talk about the crisis, "there is crisis, there is crisis!" the question is "but are you in crisis?" I since the crisis have been earning that I have become rich.
Valerio: Yes, yes. Well, this one. It's also one of the reasons why I don't watch the news. I mean, there are these bombshell news stories that they drop from above, which in my daily life, in my business, have no influence. In fact, they only risk giving me worry and making me go to work with a long face. Instead, I go to the studio, I work, I bring the results, and we go on like this.
Anthony: The advice is this: right now, with the technical recession and the whole thing about crises, and blah blah blah, there are two kinds of entrepreneurs. There are the ones there who retreat, turn around and then (you know very well), invest in marketing, reduce money to vendors, do these crazy things. Then there are, on the other hand, those who advance. Faced with a moment of crisis, whether it is a moment of generalized crisis or a moment of your own, personal crisis (dear entrepreneur, dear professional), faced with a defeat, a goal not achieved, the thing to do is not to retreat, but to increase your responsibility, to increase even the stakes.
It's counterintuitive, isn't it? You know it is counterintuitive, you have experienced it though. You have to raise the stakes and take more responsibility by pursuing a bigger goal. In the book I tell the case of a gentleman named Lorenzo, of a business I ran many years ago.
Valerio: Yes.
Antony: This is a small business owner who had lost turnover, lost the 4 vendors he had and made zeros. In one month...
Valerio: There you go. I read Lorenzo's case, I remember it.
Antony: They were very divided, this customer wanted to retire, wanted to close the business. He asked me for help, however he said, "Eh though maybe it's better for me to close everything and leave." I said, "No, wait a minute, let's do this: let's set a goal," and he said, "The goal is to earn 3000 euros a month." I said "sorry, why 3000 a month?" and he said "eh, why 1000 euros to me, 1000 for the call center that works with me, 1000 for rent." I said "this is not a goal, this is the minimum...".
Valerio: It's survival, this one.
Antony: "...the minimum for struggling to live. Let's set a goal of 25 000 to 30 000 euros per month." We set a goal of 30 000 euros and this reached 30 000 euros in 3 ... Are you there?
Valerio: There was a disconnect. You were saying, this reached...?
Anthony: He reached 30 000 in 3 weeks, starting from zero. He was at zero and in 3 weeks, on his own, he made more turnover than his phone agency did in the previous months with the 4 agents. He billed very little; he was a very small entrepreneur. From zero, going from months in which he had made 15 000 to 20 000 euros, he made 30 000 thousand in 3 weeks. He eliminated debtors, and from there he started again, taking himself to success.
So in a time of crisis, whether it is a generalized crisis, or whether it is a crisis of your own because you have not achieved a goal, the thing to do is not to retreat but to be even more aggressive and to go even further, perhaps getting help from a coach to set even higher goals, take greater responsibility...
Valerio: That's right, that's right.
Antony: ...and wanting to go even farther than we originally set out to go. Many entrepreneurs, when they were doing coaching, would tell me, "My goal is to reach this state, but this here is a state of abundance. No, I'm fine, though." Then I would say, "No, then, let's do this: let's triple, let's triple the result, because it's easier to want to triple the turnover than to do 20% more."
Valerio: Sure.
Anthony: It sounds counterintuitive, but it absolutely is. My advice therefore is: do not retreat. All of them-as they say-embark!
Valerio: That's right, that's right, that's right. I always say, ours is called an enterprise, we are entrepreneurs, we do the enterprises, we do the explorers, the pirates, otherwise it would be called a walk, "I am a walker" ... No, I am an entrepreneur doing the enterprises. You have to have a fighting spirit, of courage, of strength, of drive. Okay ...
Anthony: Of courage not immediately, but always based on numbers...
Valerio: Well, of course.
Antony: ...well structured, and you will see that it is easier to triple than to do the extra 20%.
Valerio: Absolutely.
Antonio: The 20% in more remittance.
Valerio: Okay, thank you Antonio, thank you so much for this great interview. Coach Rich, Coach Poor Is the new best seller by coach Antonio Panico. Thank you Antonio for being with us. I would like to remind you that the book is on sale everywhere, inside you will find an easter egg (or as they say in America), a surprise, which is access to one of his online courses where many topics covered in the book itself are explored.
Thank you Antonio, thank you everybody. I am Valerio Fioretti from Valerio.it, you can find this interview a little bit everywhere, on my blog, on YouTube, on "PODCAST", and if you have any questions feel free to comment below, where you will also find the link to reach Antonio and his book. Thank you Antonio, bye!
Antonio: Hi!