People First Then Profit With Don Mamone
November 13, 2020
Don Mamone is a Relationship Marketer, Speaker and Educator with the core belief of "People First Then Profit!"
Website: https://donmamone.com/
---
Are you trying to scale your business but forced to use multiple sales and marketing software’s that just don’t work together?
Then you should go check out Authority Entrepreneurs CRM at https://www.authorityentrepreneurs.com
AE CRM provides business owners, just like you, a single sales and marketing platform with all the tools you need to run your business from one window.
To know more details, book your free consultation call today here – https://bit.ly/AECall
--
Transcript
Vamsi Pannala 0:01
Hey, everyone, this is Vamsi Pannala here and welcome to another episode of the authority entrepreneurs Podcast. Today, we have Don Mamone. So Don Mamone is a relationship marketer, speaker and educator with the core belief of people first, then profit. Don, thank you so much for coming on the authority entrepreneurs podcast. Really a pleasure to have you here.
Don Mamone 1:07
It's absolutely a pleasure to be here. Thanks for inviting me, I appreciate it.
Vamsi Pannala 1:10
Not so I know, you know, you have been an entrepreneur with certain values and you know, people first then profit, that's the old message that you have been passing through with whatever you have been doing inside your business. Can you tell me a little more about how this whole mindset about people first, then profit actually came up? Sure.
Don Mamone 1:32
So I'm a hospitality veteran, an artist and an entrepreneur. And so I spent 10 years in the hospitality industry as the director of events for a variety of hotels around the country. And it was there, that my key performance indicators started with something other than sales, which for a lot of people is counterintuitive. Most people are concerned with sort of your bottom line and conversion and lead tracking and all those things. But for 10 years, my entire responsibility was to ensure that clients were well taken care of that we promoted loyalty, and our key performance indicator, Where were those things, okay. And so when I started a business, as an event photographer and wanted to open my own studio and my wife and I said, we're going to do this thing, everything in the way we found it our business, the way that we found our clients, the way that we found our audience was through this concept of if you treat people first, the profit will come and that's an important part of this Vamsi is that you? It's not a correlative relationship. It's causal if you put people first then the profit will come.
Vamsi Pannala 2:41
No, I was, in fact, the first time I kind of really introduced to you was when you were on Tony Caggiano's show inside his Facebook group, I was actually watching that night and I thought, okay, so there is this guy, who really believe that not the profit will always come. But you have to serve people. So I think that's a message that almost every other entrepreneur, in today's generation have been kind of trying to put on in terms of shared value, don't worry about expecting anything from what you're giving out to the world, things will automatically come back. So that something, what do you also believe, as a part of the message that you are providing?
Don Mamone 3:25
Yes, and I'm so encouraged, because having started interacting with more and more business owners and entrepreneurs as a strategist and a coach, and by hosting the podcast, which is aptly named people first than profit, that's something that we talk about a lot. There's a number of entrepreneurs that have gotten into the industry of owning their own business, not because they failed, or they were doing poorly in corporate America, but because they weren't fulfilled. And so regardless of a six-figure paycheck, and the comfort of a corporate job, and the benefits that they were provided through healthcare, and all those things, they oftentimes would say, that was all wonderful. But there was a point at which I just no longer felt fulfilled. And there was this thing pulling at me, and I wanted to go out and strike a path and become an entrepreneur. So that necessarily states basically that if they were already making money, and they already had the profit, then there must be something larger at work there. And I think oftentimes what it is, is that fulfilment is a need to serve someone else. Right. And so when we talk about People First than profit, the other point of clarification, in addition to it being causal and not correlative, is that profit is not just money. Yep. Right. Obviously, people first then profit means there's something in your life that will come from serving people first. That could be money through a successful business, it could be fulfilment and satisfaction and knowing that you're having an impact on their lives and the lives of the people that are their clients and their family and their thing. So I'm very encouraged by the fact that it seems like most people that are endeavouring to become an entrepreneur or business owners are doing so because they want to also serve and they want a level of fulfilment in their life.
Vamsi Pannala 5:08
So, doing business, inside the corporate world versus coming out and doing it on your own is like two different sides of the coin. So as an expert yourself, when you decided that you wanted to become an entrepreneur, what kind of things had this paradigm shift inside you to ensure that people do not just perceive you as an expert, but also as an authority in what you're doing. So what kind of things you had to change from the way you were putting your business in the corporate world was when you actually came out and wanted to be an entrepreneur.
Don Mamone 5:46
So first, let me say that hospitality is one of the most thorough boot camps you can go through as far as learning how to treat people and how to operate at the highest levels of energy and efficiency. And, you know, people in the hospitality are in first out last as long as it takes to get the job done. And so that was an unbelievable foundation for me. When I started the business, I think, one of the things that my wife and I Emily did first was recognized that saturation in the marketplace for certain disciplines, especially inside the events industry was immediate. So a photographer is an example. It's one of the most popular hobbies in the world. I think second only behind gardening. It's, there's a very low barrier to entry, you can have a good camera and some reasonable skills. And you can build a WordPress website, and you're a professional, which I'm 100% in support of providing you do it responsibly. And so here we were entering the marketplace wanting to pursue a passion, realizing that there was a ton of competition. So we basically decided at that very moment that we were not going to be photographers, we were going to be the Maloney's whose trade was photography, and who could uniquely provide the service that that person was looking for, to a point where you no longer competing against the marketplace around you. And that has a number of benefits. Number one, in order to do that. MC, you have to be a subject matter expert. It doesn't mean that you're right in all things. That doesn't mean that you don't have to learn and grow and change. But it means that you've spent the time to learn the trade, understand how it works as a business, and are prepared to not only answer the questions of the client but be proactive, to make sure that they know what they don't know. Right, a client coming to you only knows what they know. And so you have to fill in the gaps and make sure that they know what they don't know. Yeah. And when you start doing those things, people see you as the authority, right. And so I'll be perfectly transparent with you. I don't think there's much you can do to create a place of authority, except for doing all these things for the client. And then they determine that you're the authority if that makes sense. So that was one of the very first things we did was differentiate ourselves, both from a brand and marketing perspective. But ultimately, from a sales and experience creation standpoint, people can't help but say, you can hire any photographer you want, that's fine. But if you really want it done, right, you hire Mamone's.
Vamsi Pannala 8:31
So I think one of the things that you really pointed out was, there are so many people doing the same thing. But if you can figure out how you can differentiate yourself in terms of how you do it differently. I think that's how people can see you as an authority and not just as an expert.
Don Mamone 8:49
So that's a great distinction. And I think that the word that we use when people start to see everybody in a certain discipline, as the same is a commodification. And especially when you're in a service-based business, but it doesn't essentially matter, right? You could be selling widgets. And there could be a million people in the world that sell widgets. But if you create the right brand, you share the right marketing, you are intelligent about your sales and you create an experience, you can differentiate yourself you won't be commodified. And a number of things come from that you 100% can be seen as the authority from the sale, but you also get to a point where you start to charge premium prices, and you elevate yourself outside of the market. So once again, you're not commodified based on the trade. You're seen as incredibly unique and the go-to person so so the authority part sort of is created without even focusing on how do I become the authority you just are.
Vamsi Pannala 9:49
Do you see a lot of people around you know in whatever they are doing with you because you are a speaker, you have probably gone on 100 different platforms? You're active, you know, an entrepreneur who called on a lot of different podcasts. So when you get this opportunity to interact with so many other entrepreneurs, do you see, they actually suffer from not being an authority in terms of their message is not taken into me, it doesn't reach the masses. Otherwise, if they were perceived as an authority, or actually, or an authority in their niche, they probably can't charge in premium as much as they would have loved to charge for their courses or the coaching programs. So do you see that self that kind of thing happening when you interact with other entrepreneurs, within your industry niche or even in other industries as such?
Don Mamone 10:41
Yeah, I think I think people are doing it well, but I don't think people are doing it as well as they could be. And I think that the biggest struggle is, when you determine the industry in the discipline in which you're going to operate, and you try to find your niche. Part of the struggle is even in your niche, there's likely a fair amount of competition, right? I mean, you can work all day long to try to find the blue ocean. But ultimately, you're probably going to operate to a certain degree in a red ocean at one point in time, in order to operate and succeed in the red ocean. You have to work harder than everybody else, not on client acquisition, not on lead conversion, not on ad sales, but on yourself and your business. So that you can basically show people why you're unique. And here's the struggle and sort of the analogy I use. If you start to dig, and you turn over dirt, you're gonna find stuff. And as you find stuff, when you find the first layer or even the second layer, you're like, okay, great, I got it. Yeah. And unfortunately, I think people just don't dig deep enough. And so the recommendation I make, and when I coach my clients, I tell them, You got to dig deep, yeah, deeper than you would ever think you need to deep dig, and you got to keep digging. And when you keep digging, the more you find, the more unique you're going to be, the more well crafted your message is going to be. And the one thing I think people oftentimes really don't recognize is sometimes it doesn't matter the size of your shovel, you can keep digging all day long. But the best thing you can do is bring a bunch of shovels, give them to the people around you. And I mean everybody, beta program clients, your preferred partners, your spouse, your friends, your family, have them dig with you. And I'll bet you you're going to find unbelievably unique things about you that are going to make you the authority and to make you unique to a point where you elevate yourself from your very own marketplace.
Vamsi Pannala 12:29
Absolutely. I mean, no, as you said, digging deep is what probably one needs to really go and find how much they want to explore what they are doing. And that's what I want to do on this episode as well. So if we could, you know, come back on another episode, whenever you have time, I would want to dig a little deeper inside the journey, the story of your success, the kind of roadblocks that you had inside your entrepreneurial journey. So would you be happy to come back on another episode?
Don Mamone 13:02
Yeah, this has been incredibly pleasant. Let's do that. Sure.
Vamsi Pannala 13:05
So I look at your availability again and block the calendar for a longer conversation at some point. So thank you so much for coming on the show, Don, and really appreciate your time.
Don Mamone 13:17
Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure. Thank you.
Vamsi Pannala 13:22
Hey, this is Vamsi again, and I want to ask you a quick question. Are you an entrepreneur or a business owner who is sick and tired of paying for multiple expensive tools, and duct tape them to scale and automate your business? Then you should go and check out authority entrepreneur CRM authority entrepreneurs.com, the number one sales and marketing automation platform. Now imagine running your entire business from a single window that hosts all your sales funnels websites, email and SMS marketing calendars, sales pipelines, CRM memberships, courses, and all your client's messages from different channels in one single place. Sounds interesting. Then visit authority entrepreneurs.com And Book your free consultation call today. I will see you on the inside
Don Mamone is a Relationship Marketer, Speaker and Educator with the core belief of "People First Then Profit!"
Website: https://donmamone.com/
---
Are you trying to scale your business but forced to use multiple sales and marketing software’s that just don’t work together?
Then you should go check out Authority Entrepreneurs CRM at https://www.authorityentrepreneurs.com
AE CRM provides business owners, just like you, a single sales and marketing platform with all the tools you need to run your business from one window.
To know more details, book your free consultation call today here – https://bit.ly/AECall
--
Transcript:
Vamsi Pannala 0:01
Hey, everyone, this is Vamsi Pannala here and welcome to another episode of the authority entrepreneurs Podcast. Today, we have Don Mamone. So Don Mamone is a relationship marketer, speaker and educator with the core belief of people first, then profit. Don, thank you so much for coming on the authority entrepreneurs podcast. Really a pleasure to have you here.
Don Mamone 1:07
It's absolutely a pleasure to be here. Thanks for inviting me, I appreciate it.
Vamsi Pannala 1:10
Not so I know, you know, you have been an entrepreneur with certain values and you know, people first then profit, that's the old message that you have been passing through with whatever you have been doing inside your business. Can you tell me a little more about how this whole mindset about people first, then profit actually came up? Sure.
Don Mamone 1:32
So I'm a hospitality veteran, an artist and an entrepreneur. And so I spent 10 years in the hospitality industry as the director of events for a variety of hotels around the country. And it was there, that my key performance indicators started with something other than sales, which for a lot of people is counterintuitive. Most people are concerned with sort of your bottom line and conversion and lead tracking and all those things. But for 10 years, my entire responsibility was to ensure that clients were well taken care of that we promoted loyalty, and our key performance indicator, Where were those things, okay. And so when I started a business, as an event photographer and wanted to open my own studio and my wife and I said, we're going to do this thing, everything in the way we found it our business, the way that we found our clients, the way that we found our audience was through this concept of if you treat people first, the profit will come and that's an important part of this Vamsi is that you? It's not a correlative relationship. It's causal if you put people first then the profit will come.
Vamsi Pannala 2:41
No, I was, in fact, the first time I kind of really introduced to you was when you were on Tony Caggiano's show inside his Facebook group, I was actually watching that night and I thought, okay, so there is this guy, who really believe that not the profit will always come. But you have to serve people. So I think that's a message that almost every other entrepreneur, in today's generation have been kind of trying to put on in terms of shared value, don't worry about expecting anything from what you're giving out to the world, things will automatically come back. So that something, what do you also believe, as a part of the message that you are providing?
Don Mamone 3:25
Yes, and I'm so encouraged, because having started interacting with more and more business owners and entrepreneurs as a strategist and a coach, and by hosting the podcast, which is aptly named people first than profit, that's something that we talk about a lot. There's a number of entrepreneurs that have gotten into the industry of owning their own business, not because they failed, or they were doing poorly in corporate America, but because they weren't fulfilled. And so regardless of a six-figure paycheck, and the comfort of a corporate job, and the benefits that they were provided through healthcare, and all those things, they oftentimes would say, that was all wonderful. But there was a point at which I just no longer felt fulfilled. And there was this thing pulling at me, and I wanted to go out and strike a path and become an entrepreneur. So that necessarily states basically that if they were already making money, and they already had the profit, then there must be something larger at work there. And I think oftentimes what it is, is that fulfilment is a need to serve someone else. Right. And so when we talk about People First than profit, the other point of clarification, in addition to it being causal and not correlative, is that profit is not just money. Yep. Right. Obviously, people first then profit means there's something in your life that will come from serving people first. That could be money through a successful business, it could be fulfilment and satisfaction and knowing that you're having an impact on their lives and the lives of the people that are their clients and their family and their thing. So I'm very encouraged by the fact that it seems like most people that are endeavouring to become an entrepreneur or business owners are doing so because they want to also serve and they want a level of fulfilment in their life.
Vamsi Pannala 5:08
So, doing business, inside the corporate world versus coming out and doing it on your own is like two different sides of the coin. So as an expert yourself, when you decided that you wanted to become an entrepreneur, what kind of things had this paradigm shift inside you to ensure that people do not just perceive you as an expert, but also as an authority in what you're doing. So what kind of things you had to change from the way you were putting your business in the corporate world was when you actually came out and wanted to be an entrepreneur.
Don Mamone 5:46
So first, let me say that hospitality is one of the most thorough boot camps you can go through as far as learning how to treat people and how to operate at the highest levels of energy and efficiency. And, you know, people in the hospitality are in first out last as long as it takes to get the job done. And so that was an unbelievable foundation for me. When I started the business, I think, one of the things that my wife and I Emily did first was recognized that saturation in the marketplace for certain disciplines, especially inside the events industry was immediate. So a photographer is an example. It's one of the most popular hobbies in the world. I think second only behind gardening. It's, there's a very low barrier to entry, you can have a good camera and some reasonable skills. And you can build a WordPress website, and you're a professional, which I'm 100% in support of providing you do it responsibly. And so here we were entering the marketplace wanting to pursue a passion, realizing that there was a ton of competition. So we basically decided at that very moment that we were not going to be photographers, we were going to be the Maloney's whose trade was photography, and who could uniquely provide the service that that person was looking for, to a point where you no longer competing against the marketplace around you. And that has a number of benefits. Number one, in order to do that. MC, you have to be a subject matter expert. It doesn't mean that you're right in all things. That doesn't mean that you don't have to learn and grow and change. But it means that you've spent the time to learn the trade, understand how it works as a business, and are prepared to not only answer the questions of the client but be proactive, to make sure that they know what they don't know. Right, a client coming to you only knows what they know. And so you have to fill in the gaps and make sure that they know what they don't know. Yeah. And when you start doing those things, people see you as the authority, right. And so I'll be perfectly transparent with you. I don't think there's much you can do to create a place of authority, except for doing all these things for the client. And then they determine that you're the authority if that makes sense. So that was one of the very first things we did was differentiate ourselves, both from a brand and marketing perspective. But ultimately, from a sales and experience creation standpoint, people can't help but say, you can hire any photographer you want, that's fine. But if you really want it done, right, you hire Mamone's.
Vamsi Pannala 8:31
So I think one of the things that you really pointed out was, there are so many people doing the same thing. But if you can figure out how you can differentiate yourself in terms of how you do it differently. I think that's how people can see you as an authority and not just as an expert.
Don Mamone 8:49
So that's a great distinction. And I think that the word that we use when people start to see everybody in a certain discipline, as the same is a commodification. And especially when you're in a service-based business, but it doesn't essentially matter, right? You could be selling widgets. And there could be a million people in the world that sell widgets. But if you create the right brand, you share the right marketing, you are intelligent about your sales and you create an experience, you can differentiate yourself you won't be commodified. And a number of things come from that you 100% can be seen as the authority from the sale, but you also get to a point where you start to charge premium prices, and you elevate yourself outside of the market. So once again, you're not commodified based on the trade. You're seen as incredibly unique and the go-to person so so the authority part sort of is created without even focusing on how do I become the authority you just are.
Vamsi Pannala 9:49
Do you see a lot of people around you know in whatever they are doing with you because you are a speaker, you have probably gone on 100 different platforms? You're active, you know, an entrepreneur who called on a lot of different podcasts. So when you get this opportunity to interact with so many other entrepreneurs, do you see, they actually suffer from not being an authority in terms of their message is not taken into me, it doesn't reach the masses. Otherwise, if they were perceived as an authority, or actually, or an authority in their niche, they probably can't charge in premium as much as they would have loved to charge for their courses or the coaching programs. So do you see that self that kind of thing happening when you interact with other entrepreneurs, within your industry niche or even in other industries as such?
Don Mamone 10:41
Yeah, I think I think people are doing it well, but I don't think people are doing it as well as they could be. And I think that the biggest struggle is, when you determine the industry in the discipline in which you're going to operate, and you try to find your niche. Part of the struggle is even in your niche, there's likely a fair amount of competition, right? I mean, you can work all day long to try to find the blue ocean. But ultimately, you're probably going to operate to a certain degree in a red ocean at one point in time, in order to operate and succeed in the red ocean. You have to work harder than everybody else, not on client acquisition, not on lead conversion, not on ad sales, but on yourself and your business. So that you can basically show people why you're unique. And here's the struggle and sort of the analogy I use. If you start to dig, and you turn over dirt, you're gonna find stuff. And as you find stuff, when you find the first layer or even the second layer, you're like, okay, great, I got it. Yeah. And unfortunately, I think people just don't dig deep enough. And so the recommendation I make, and when I coach my clients, I tell them, You got to dig deep, yeah, deeper than you would ever think you need to deep dig, and you got to keep digging. And when you keep digging, the more you find, the more unique you're going to be, the more well crafted your message is going to be. And the one thing I think people oftentimes really don't recognize is sometimes it doesn't matter the size of your shovel, you can keep digging all day long. But the best thing you can do is bring a bunch of shovels, give them to the people around you. And I mean everybody, beta program clients, your preferred partners, your spouse, your friends, your family, have them dig with you. And I'll bet you you're going to find unbelievably unique things about you that are going to make you the authority and to make you unique to a point where you elevate yourself from your very own marketplace.
Vamsi Pannala 12:29
Absolutely. I mean, no, as you said, digging deep is what probably one needs to really go and find how much they want to explore what they are doing. And that's what I want to do on this episode as well. So if we could, you know, come back on another episode, whenever you have time, I would want to dig a little deeper inside the journey, the story of your success, the kind of roadblocks that you had inside your entrepreneurial journey. So would you be happy to come back on another episode?
Don Mamone 13:02
Yeah, this has been incredibly pleasant. Let's do that. Sure.
Vamsi Pannala 13:05
So I look at your availability again and block the calendar for a longer conversation at some point. So thank you so much for coming on the show, Don, and really appreciate your time.
Don Mamone 13:17
Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure. Thank you.
Vamsi Pannala 13:22
Hey, this is Vamsi again, and I want to ask you a quick question. Are you an entrepreneur or a business owner who is sick and tired of paying for multiple expensive tools, and duct tape them to scale and automate your business? Then you should go and check out authority entrepreneur CRM authority entrepreneurs.com, the number one sales and marketing automation platform. Now imagine running your entire business from a single window that hosts all your sales funnels websites, email and SMS marketing calendars, sales pipelines, CRM memberships, courses, and all your client's messages from different channels in one single place. Sounds interesting. Then visit authority entrepreneurs.com And Book your free consultation call today. I will see you on the inside.
Website: https://donmamone.com/
---
Are you trying to scale your business but forced to use multiple sales and marketing software’s that just don’t work together?
Then you should go check out Authority Entrepreneurs CRM at https://www.authorityentrepreneurs.com
AE CRM provides business owners, just like you, a single sales and marketing platform with all the tools you need to run your business from one window.
To know more details, book your free consultation call today here – https://bit.ly/AECall
--
Transcript:
Vamsi Pannala 0:01
Hey, everyone, this is Vamsi Pannala here and welcome to another episode of the authority entrepreneurs Podcast. Today, we have Don Mamone. So Don Mamone is a relationship marketer, speaker and educator with the core belief of people first, then profit. Don, thank you so much for coming on the authority entrepreneurs podcast. Really a pleasure to have you here.
Don Mamone 1:07
It's absolutely a pleasure to be here. Thanks for inviting me, I appreciate it.
Vamsi Pannala 1:10
Not so I know, you know, you have been an entrepreneur with certain values and you know, people first then profit, that's the old message that you have been passing through with whatever you have been doing inside your business. Can you tell me a little more about how this whole mindset about people first, then profit actually came up? Sure.
Don Mamone 1:32
So I'm a hospitality veteran, an artist and an entrepreneur. And so I spent 10 years in the hospitality industry as the director of events for a variety of hotels around the country. And it was there, that my key performance indicators started with something other than sales, which for a lot of people is counterintuitive. Most people are concerned with sort of your bottom line and conversion and lead tracking and all those things. But for 10 years, my entire responsibility was to ensure that clients were well taken care of that we promoted loyalty, and our key performance indicator, Where were those things, okay. And so when I started a business, as an event photographer and wanted to open my own studio and my wife and I said, we're going to do this thing, everything in the way we found it our business, the way that we found our clients, the way that we found our audience was through this concept of if you treat people first, the profit will come and that's an important part of this Vamsi is that you? It's not a correlative relationship. It's causal if you put people first then the profit will come.
Vamsi Pannala 2:41
No, I was, in fact, the first time I kind of really introduced to you was when you were on Tony Caggiano's show inside his Facebook group, I was actually watching that night and I thought, okay, so there is this guy, who really believe that not the profit will always come. But you have to serve people. So I think that's a message that almost every other entrepreneur, in today's generation have been kind of trying to put on in terms of shared value, don't worry about expecting anything from what you're giving out to the world, things will automatically come back. So that something, what do you also believe, as a part of the message that you are providing?
Don Mamone 3:25
Yes, and I'm so encouraged, because having started interacting with more and more business owners and entrepreneurs as a strategist and a coach, and by hosting the podcast, which is aptly named people first than profit, that's something that we talk about a lot. There's a number of entrepreneurs that have gotten into the industry of owning their own business, not because they failed, or they were doing poorly in corporate America, but because they weren't fulfilled. And so regardless of a six-figure paycheck, and the comfort of a corporate job, and the benefits that they were provided through healthcare, and all those things, they oftentimes would say, that was all wonderful. But there was a point at which I just no longer felt fulfilled. And there was this thing pulling at me, and I wanted to go out and strike a path and become an entrepreneur. So that necessarily states basically that if they were already making money, and they already had the profit, then there must be something larger at work there. And I think oftentimes what it is, is that fulfilment is a need to serve someone else. Right. And so when we talk about People First than profit, the other point of clarification, in addition to it being causal and not correlative, is that profit is not just money. Yep. Right. Obviously, people first then profit means there's something in your life that will come from serving people first. That could be money through a successful business, it could be fulfilment and satisfaction and knowing that you're having an impact on their lives and the lives of the people that are their clients and their family and their thing. So I'm very encouraged by the fact that it seems like most people that are endeavouring to become an entrepreneur or business owners are doing so because they want to also serve and they want a level of fulfilment in their life.
Vamsi Pannala 5:08
So, doing business, inside the corporate world versus coming out and doing it on your own is like two different sides of the coin. So as an expert yourself, when you decided that you wanted to become an entrepreneur, what kind of things had this paradigm shift inside you to ensure that people do not just perceive you as an expert, but also as an authority in what you're doing. So what kind of things you had to change from the way you were putting your business in the corporate world was when you actually came out and wanted to be an entrepreneur.
Don Mamone 5:46
So first, let me say that hospitality is one of the most thorough boot camps you can go through as far as learning how to treat people and how to operate at the highest levels of energy and efficiency. And, you know, people in the hospitality are in first out last as long as it takes to get the job done. And so that was an unbelievable foundation for me. When I started the business, I think, one of the things that my wife and I Emily did first was recognized that saturation in the marketplace for certain disciplines, especially inside the events industry was immediate. So a photographer is an example. It's one of the most popular hobbies in the world. I think second only behind gardening. It's, there's a very low barrier to entry, you can have a good camera and some reasonable skills. And you can build a WordPress website, and you're a professional, which I'm 100% in support of providing you do it responsibly. And so here we were entering the marketplace wanting to pursue a passion, realizing that there was a ton of competition. So we basically decided at that very moment that we were not going to be photographers, we were going to be the Maloney's whose trade was photography, and who could uniquely provide the service that that person was looking for, to a point where you no longer competing against the marketplace around you. And that has a number of benefits. Number one, in order to do that. MC, you have to be a subject matter expert. It doesn't mean that you're right in all things. That doesn't mean that you don't have to learn and grow and change. But it means that you've spent the time to learn the trade, understand how it works as a business, and are prepared to not only answer the questions of the client but be proactive, to make sure that they know what they don't know. Right, a client coming to you only knows what they know. And so you have to fill in the gaps and make sure that they know what they don't know. Yeah. And when you start doing those things, people see you as the authority, right. And so I'll be perfectly transparent with you. I don't think there's much you can do to create a place of authority, except for doing all these things for the client. And then they determine that you're the authority if that makes sense. So that was one of the very first things we did was differentiate ourselves, both from a brand and marketing perspective. But ultimately, from a sales and experience creation standpoint, people can't help but say, you can hire any photographer you want, that's fine. But if you really want it done, right, you hire Mamone's.
Vamsi Pannala 8:31
So I think one of the things that you really pointed out was, there are so many people doing the same thing. But if you can figure out how you can differentiate yourself in terms of how you do it differently. I think that's how people can see you as an authority and not just as an expert.
Don Mamone 8:49
So that's a great distinction. And I think that the word that we use when people start to see everybody in a certain discipline, as the same is a commodification. And especially when you're in a service-based business, but it doesn't essentially matter, right? You could be selling widgets. And there could be a million people in the world that sell widgets. But if you create the right brand, you share the right marketing, you are intelligent about your sales and you create an experience, you can differentiate yourself you won't be commodified. And a number of things come from that you 100% can be seen as the authority from the sale, but you also get to a point where you start to charge premium prices, and you elevate yourself outside of the market. So once again, you're not commodified based on the trade. You're seen as incredibly unique and the go-to person so so the authority part sort of is created without even focusing on how do I become the authority you just are.
Vamsi Pannala 9:49
Do you see a lot of people around you know in whatever they are doing with you because you are a speaker, you have probably gone on 100 different platforms? You're active, you know, an entrepreneur who called on a lot of different podcasts. So when you get this opportunity to interact with so many other entrepreneurs, do you see, they actually suffer from not being an authority in terms of their message is not taken into me, it doesn't reach the masses. Otherwise, if they were perceived as an authority, or actually, or an authority in their niche, they probably can't charge in premium as much as they would have loved to charge for their courses or the coaching programs. So do you see that self that kind of thing happening when you interact with other entrepreneurs, within your industry niche or even in other industries as such?
Don Mamone 10:41
Yeah, I think I think people are doing it well, but I don't think people are doing it as well as they could be. And I think that the biggest struggle is, when you determine the industry in the discipline in which you're going to operate, and you try to find your niche. Part of the struggle is even in your niche, there's likely a fair amount of competition, right? I mean, you can work all day long to try to find the blue ocean. But ultimately, you're probably going to operate to a certain degree in a red ocean at one point in time, in order to operate and succeed in the red ocean. You have to work harder than everybody else, not on client acquisition, not on lead conversion, not on ad sales, but on yourself and your business. So that you can basically show people why you're unique. And here's the struggle and sort of the analogy I use. If you start to dig, and you turn over dirt, you're gonna find stuff. And as you find stuff, when you find the first layer or even the second layer, you're like, okay, great, I got it. Yeah. And unfortunately, I think people just don't dig deep enough. And so the recommendation I make, and when I coach my clients, I tell them, You got to dig deep, yeah, deeper than you would ever think you need to deep dig, and you got to keep digging. And when you keep digging, the more you find, the more unique you're going to be, the more well crafted your message is going to be. And the one thing I think people oftentimes really don't recognize is sometimes it doesn't matter the size of your shovel, you can keep digging all day long. But the best thing you can do is bring a bunch of shovels, give them to the people around you. And I mean everybody, beta program clients, your preferred partners, your spouse, your friends, your family, have them dig with you. And I'll bet you you're going to find unbelievably unique things about you that are going to make you the authority and to make you unique to a point where you elevate yourself from your very own marketplace.
Vamsi Pannala 12:29
Absolutely. I mean, no, as you said, digging deep is what probably one needs to really go and find how much they want to explore what they are doing. And that's what I want to do on this episode as well. So if we could, you know, come back on another episode, whenever you have time, I would want to dig a little deeper inside the journey, the story of your success, the kind of roadblocks that you had inside your entrepreneurial journey. So would you be happy to come back on another episode?
Don Mamone 13:02
Yeah, this has been incredibly pleasant. Let's do that. Sure.
Vamsi Pannala 13:05
So I look at your availability again and block the calendar for a longer conversation at some point. So thank you so much for coming on the show, Don, and really appreciate your time.
Don Mamone 13:17
Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure. Thank you.
Vamsi Pannala 13:22
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