Creating An Emotional Experience With Your Customers

THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW

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Episode 121: Bruce Poon Tip

Creating An Emotional Experience With Your Customers

In this episode, Travis talks to successful entrepreneur Bruce Poon Tip. Bruce is a travel

enthusiast and an industry leader that transformed his small company into an international travel

company that not only caters to its clients but also tries to make a positive impact on the

countries they're visiting. He also an author and wrote the New York Times Bestseller book

Looptail which aims at helping entrepreneurs learn from his experiences and how they can

achieve their own success through his vision and ideas.

Travis and Bruce share their insights on how they grew their business and how other business

owners can do it as well. Bruce believes that his business not only provides a unique travel

experience for his customers but also benefits and affects the countries that these people visit.

He feels his company has the social responsibility to create a positive impact on the countries

that tourism should provide. Aside from that, he also gave his tips on how to achieve success,

which include creating a purpose around why your business needs to exist in the world, and

assuming a leadership that is adaptable and caters to the needs of your company. These and

much more are what's in store in this episode of the Entrepreneur's Radio Show.

TRAVIS: Hey, it's Travis Lane Jenkins, welcome to episode 121 of the Entrepreneur's Radio

Show, a production of rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com, where my main focus is to teach you

the tactics that will help you grow your business and serve others in a way that's meaningful to

you. And then secondary I want you to see that successful people are really just average people

that achieve extraordinary results. Now today I'm going to introduce you to Bruce Poon Tip.

Bruce has built an incredibly successful business from nothing. And today he's going to share

that story along with many things that turned a small start-up into a thriving empire, I mean

thriving.

Before we get started, I want to say thank you to Vinny for the 5 out of 5 stars on Stitcher.

Vinny's headline says, "Straight fuel for the fire." Then he says that he loves the show and it

helps keep the fire burning to get everything done that he's working on. Vinny, congratulations

on the three separate businesses that you're working on right now. You must be an extremely

busy man. I'm impressed especially since you're only 26. We need more people just like you

brother. So, hang in there and keep up the great work. Congrats my friend. And of course, I

want to personally say thank you for taking the time to write the review. I know it's a pain and

very few people do that. So, I really appreciate that. So, thank you very much. Now, just in case

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you don't know writing a review does help us reach other entrepreneurs just like yourself. The

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subscribe there if that's what you want to do. So without further ado let's get down to business.

Bruce, welcome to the show.

BRUCE: Thank you, thanks for having me.

TRAVIS: I know you're a busy man. I'm super excited that you took some time from your

adventures to come hangout with us.

BRUCE: Yeah, it's good to be here.

TRAVIS: Yeah, I'm excited to hear the back-story. You've done some pretty impressive things in

business. Can you share that with us?

BRUCE: Well, I guess the main thing is I'm the head of the largest adventure travel company in

the world now. And next year we'll be celebrating 25 years. So, I started the company when I

was very young.

TRAVIS: Right.

BRUCE: And from that, we started the Planeterra foundation which somewhere along the way

as we evolved we became more of a social enterprise where we stared doing international

development and community projects that coincides with our trips. And kind of spearheading the

whole movement towards sustainable travel.

TRAVIS: That's cool. Define sustainable travel for me?

BRUCE: Well, it's quite a wide definition. People define sustainable very differently depending

on what's important to you. Some people think sustainability has to do with the environment.

Some people think sustainability has to do with alleviating poverty in local people communities.





And some people believe in sustainability as a combination of the two. So, people define it

differently. Even people who go travelling sometimes thinks human rights are issues in terms of

sustainability and some people think it's animal rights, that the animals are important to them.

So, sustainability really to me is about local people benefiting when it comes to travel and

tourism because travel is growing so quickly and more and more people are travelling. It's

cheaper and easier to travel today.

TRAVIS: Right.

BRUCE: And local people aren't benefiting and tourism is kind of doing the opposite thing in

that it's become a more inclusive, there's more all-inclusives than ever before, cruise ship

industry is growing. And people aren't actually spending locally, and people aren't benefitting

from the growth in tourism. So that's not sustainable to me.

TRAVIS: Okay, that completely makes sense. Hey, give me the back-story, because you've

built this business to some pretty serious levels. And our listeners are entrepreneurs. And I just

feel like it's instructive for people. I think so many people believe that either you're this incredibly

gifted businessperson or you're not. And you know the truth is really a great businessperson is

developed over time. And so, that's why I think the story of how you got there and kind of the

bumps and bruises along the way really define who you are. And so, do you mind sharing that

story?

BRUCE: Yeah. First of all I think entrepreneurs are-- there's different types of entrepreneurs. I

think that people kind of define entrepreneurs into internet billionaires. It's become quite sexy to

be an entrepreneur because when I was young there wasn‟t 27-year old billionaire. So

entrepreneurs are defined very differently and I think the first thing that people have to

understand is where they fit into that category. People who own franchises are owned, coffee

shops or small businesses, those are entrepreneurs of one kind. And there's people who work

under the confines of a big corporation like Federal Express or IBM. And they're entrepreneurial

in their thinking, and thinking out of the box, and really driving innovation. And that's just as

entrepreneurial. But there's just a smaller group of people that really drive industries, change

industries, and put new products in front of people. And those entrepreneurs are very different,

and those are the ones people always think that they want to be but it's a very small group of

people and it's not for everybody. For me I started out to change the way people looked at their

holiday time. What I wanted to put travelling back in 1990. There was no options for me, you

either took a coach tour, went in all-inclusive resort, or you went on a cruise ship, those were

the options. Or, you got a guidebook and did it yourself. And so, when I went travelling I didn't




really want to backpack but I have no choice. When I went out backpacking I saw that there was

this group of people in the middle, caught in a wasteland in the tourism industry that didn't

necessarily went backpack but they were young professionals with disposable income. But they

wanted more of a cultural immersion type experience. They want to see countries for what they

really are. Experience the people, kind of have that kind of cultural exchange experience and

meet people along the way. And that didn't exist in the tourism landscape at the time, and that

was kind of my vision. But going from that to being the international brand that we've become.

We have people from 160 countries book trips with us every year. We don't have any kind of

dominant country where our passengers come from so. We've become truly an international

brand. And the idea that someone in Germany will book African safari with a North American

based company is the magic that we create every day. So it's a brand that means something to

people. And over time my leadership has evolved, and the idea of exporting tourism has had to

change because the landscape in the business world has changed as well. When I started there

was no internet. I didn't even have a fax machine when I started.

TRAVIS: Right.

BRUCE: I used to write letters to make hotel reservations to hotels. So, we've evolved as the

world has evolved. Business and society have been living parallel of each other and they've

always done so. So, as society changes or as the tools in business change, they follow each

other. And the world has changed so dramatically, whether it's first the internet which took away

that element of surprise for people because suddenly you just can search anything in any

destination. And you no longer just have that mystery of having a guidebook and landing in a

new destination. So, the industry changed so we have to change.

TRAVIS: Right. So, has business drastically changed for you over the last 10 years maybe due

to the proliferation of the internet? Because it's so easy to do business all around the world

these days.

BRUCE: Yeah. My experience obviously is specifically the travel industry and how people have

changed, how they research travel, right? So, in the last 50 years it's changed dramatically with

the internet. Because there's two things that have changed my business. And I think most

businesses is the information age and the social revolution which I call. So the information age,

the idea that people have more information and everything available at their fingertips changed

the way people research and the way people decide on where they want to go. Now, in the last

10 years, which is what your question is about the last 10 years, it's the internet but it's more of

a social side of the internet. The way people communicate, the way people make their decision,




and the way people engage with brands is very different. And it's changed the landscape

because all the tools to engage customers today are free.

TRAVIS: Right.

BRUCE: So the idea of iconic brands spending $100 million on ad campaigns isn't happening

as much anymore because people are engaging with brands very differently. And we've got a

highly engaged customer, and we sell life-changing experiences. So, we have a greater

opportunity we engage with our customers than someone selling books, or someone selling

shoes, right? So, the social revolution, it's happened out say one of the last 7 years has

changed the way we've done everything. And the main thing being engagement of customers

and delivering exceptional customer service.

TRAVIS: Yeah. I was going to say what you do has a high potential for becoming viral on a

social platform because people love to share their incredible experiences with all their friends.

And then that has a natural path that leads to back to you guys as well, right?

BRUCE: Yeah. That's the main-- I should say, it's amazing what some businesses are able to

engage their customers with like-- If you look at companies like Netflix which does amazing job

at-- Video streaming is the most unsexy thing on earth but they engage people to their brand

through social means. And we changed people's lives. The trips that we offer people who take

our trips, it's such an emotional purchase. And so we have an amazing opportunity. So, I always

say the world has changed in my favor in many ways because we are such an emotional

product. And 20 years ago when we engage customers it's such 1-way conversation with

advertising in newspapers, advertising in magazines, call for a brochure and book a trip to

Thailand. But now we can show video, we can engage in conversations, you can talk to past

travelers. There's so many ways in which you can engage customers.

TRAVIS: Right. How do you go from 0 to 1,350 employees? Just to give people perspective,

that's a pretty big group of people there. Was it a fairly easy path for you? What were the ups

and downs?

BRUCE: It's been a long one. People often ask and I said, next year we're celebrating 25 years.

We started in 1990. And it was a natural path and was certainly organic. And we've certainly

arise in the last 10 years that we've become really dominant in our space, in the small group

adventure space. But we've had to evolve and we've had to continually innovate. And we've had

25 years of double-digit growth. So, we've been like a 25-year start-up.




TRAVIS: 25-years of double-digit growth, I love it.

BRUCE: Yeah. We've grown 40%-- We're on another growth curve, we've grown 40% every

month, month over month kind of since January 2013, I believe so.

TRAVIS: That's insane.

BRUCE: Yeah. So as a company we do a lot of things right. But it has a lot to do with the

momentum and how we look at business. We don't look at business traditionally. We believe

what we're doing is more of a movement in terms of getting to believe that their holiday time is

precious. And a week on the beach at an all-inclusive resort is not the way to see any country.

And when someone gets off a cruise ship they never talk about the destination, they talk about

the food and they talk about the ship. We want to kind of help people discover more kind of

passion, purpose, and happiness that has been lost over the information age with travel.

TRAVIS: So let me give you some perspective from my side about what you do.

BRUCE: Sure.

TRAVIS: Not your business but the industry that you're in. So, I've been in business about the

same amount of years as you and early on, me and my wife, when we got to travel, we would

go to resorts like you were talking about and we might spend a week on the beach, right? And

as 3, 5, 7 years passed, me and my wife we talked about it and we couldn‟t hardly remember

those vacations, right? And so, we started doing something different when we went on those

vacations. We started seeking experiences. And so the experiences were maybe renting 4-

wheelers, and when we're in Mexico and going up the mountain and eating tacos up at-- We're

at cloud level and doing some incredible things like that, right? And I still remember those

vacations 15 years later almost as clear as a week after I took them, right?

BRUCE: Yeah, for sure.

TRAVIS: And so, we instantly saw that it made the experience of our traveling much more

memorable, much more dimensional, everything. And so, from that point forward, even like we'd

go to New York, I'd find a local that can afford to spend time with us, we'll pay him, and he takes

us everywhere because he lives there, right?

BRUCE: Yeah, sure.




TRAVIS: And that was my way of kind of figuring out how to do a lot of thing. I've always

would've loved to have somebody like you handle these things for us because a lot of times we

got to get our feet on the ground there and then figure it out, right?

BRUCE: Sure. Your motivation has been creating the experience for yourself and wanting to

see something different. You created the stories that you'll tell your grandchildren.

TRAVIS: Right.

BRUCE: But what you also might not know that you've also contributed to is you've also gone to

another country, spent money, and you've distributed your wealth. Wealth distribution is a big

part of what we talk about in our business model. You've hired locals, small restaurants, you've

maybe taken a local bus, gone into a craft market to buy your souvenirs as opposed to buying

them in a resort gift shop.

TRAVIS: Right.

BRUCE: And that money has been spread and you've created happiness locally by local people

benefiting from you actually being in that country.

TRAVIS: Oh yeah.

BRUCE: And that's what defines sustainability. At the same time you've also created memories

and special experiences for yourself, and local people are benefitted. And that's really the key,

to know what we're talking about and in terms of that movement. And even if it's not with us,

we're constantly talking-- one of our big sayings in the office is if you can't travel with us, travel

like us. Because we want people out of the 40 poorest countries in the world tourism is the

second largest form of revenue next to oil. So, travel has the ability to transform lives, and to

change, and have a positive impact on the 40 poorest countries. But it can't be done behind the

walls of a resort that's owned by a foreign holding company that just sucks the money right out

of the country, and local people aren't benefiting.

TRAVIS: Right. And you're really not even getting the experience when you're in other countries

and you're walking along the area where all the tourists are, with a fanny pack on and a camera.

You're not seeing the real place.

BRUCE: No, if you knew the industry of building these ports, these countries that cut these

deals with the cruise ships to build these manufactured ports for ships to arrive, they create a




Western environment for people. And just outside of the walls of those ports people don't have

basic medical services and access to clean drinking water. So, there's just so many things

wrong. And I don't want to turn this interview into a political interview about travel, but I'm just

saying that that was also my eureka moment in business.

TRAVIS: No, I've had the same thing.

BRUCE: I thought there's got to be a tipping point.

TRAVIS: Yeah, I've had the same the thing and I know exactly where you're coming from

because when you get off the beaten path, we've gone up the side of mountains and you see

people, a whole new level of poor. Kids playing in water that smelled so bad that we didn't want

to drive through it very fast. And again, I agree with you that I don't want to turn this into a

political message. But what it does is it changes you from the inside because you see some

things from a complete different perspective. At one time I could speak quite a bit of Spanish, I'd

lost almost all my Spanish. But after being outside the walls and living in their culture for a

couple of days almost all my Spanish came back instantly. And living in this culture, eating as

they do, driving as they do, all of that stuff is hard to quantify.

BRUCE: Yeah, that's exactly what we feel that we sell. We don't look at ourselves as travel

company. I think that's also, when I talk about the brand we've created, we have this amazing

responsibility and great opportunity everyday to change people's lives. And travel just happens

to be that vehicle. What you're saying there is how it changes you and there's something

different. That's that noble purpose of travel that I always talk to people about that, that you

grow because you have a greater appreciation for what you have and you go home stronger,

you go home more knowledgeable. It also gives you a great appreciation for other cultures of

the people. And one of the grander things I talk about quite often is travel, there's no faster path

to peace in the world as people getting to know other cultures and other people. And getting to

know how other people live around the world. Because there's a lot ignorance that causes a lot

of violence around the world. But people getting to know each other know how each other live.

And how other people live on the world is a great developer of peace. And travel can just be that

vehicle. And I really believe that. And we started our purpose and our message of what we

wanted to accomplish as a purpose-driven business, travel was our vehicle to create that

change.

TRAVIS: Right. It definitely changes you inside. It's hard to be compassionate about something

until you've seen it, smelled it, touched it, and then your eyes are open. It matures you. It's kind

of like maturing as a young individual as you have more experiences in your life, you mature.




Well, the same thing happens when you travel and you see different cultures. It matures you in

a way that's not visible but to other people that have gone through the experience, on some

levels they can pick up on it.

BRUCE: You always grow when you take yourself out of your comfort zone. We all know that.

And I think that the mainstream travel, the goal is to create that Western environment so you

have all the comforts of home. And so, you don't really feel like you've ever left home. I just don't

understand that side of travel. And so, when we started back in 1990 we actually had in our

brochure. If you want the comforts of home we suggest you stay at home. If you pay us to go to

Africa or Latin America and you felt like you never left home we really didn't do our job because

you've never really seen the country. And taking yourself out of your comfort zone is really what

life is about. And that can be that ability to grow and experience something new.

TRAVIS: Right. So, take me back to the business metrics. What do you feel like are the key

aspects? I completely understand the mindset of you and your company so far. But give me

some of the metrics of business. What do you feel like the key elements are for other business

owners. What can they take away? What are the 3 things or 4 things that you feel like were

critical to your success?

BRUCE: Well, there's a few things. First, you have to create a purpose around why your

business needs to exist in the world. And there's many different types of businesses and

sometimes people are creating businesses in an industry that's already flooded, and you're

going to somehow do things faster or cheaper. But you know, in terms of really be innovative

and different, you have to have a purpose, and what your purpose is. And then from that you

have to wrap that around core values and what your core values are in order to achieve success

in your business. And what's important to the people to attract the right people. So you have to

get all those things right first because when you bring in your first employees and you bring in

the first people that now represent your brand they have to fully understand your purpose and

you have to wrap that around your values.

TRAVIS: Right.

BRUCE: And then, once you do that you have to be able to hire and fire based on those values

and that purpose. Because quite often people come to want to work for you and they don't fit

your culture and they don't fit what you want to do. But they might be able to do a good job or

bring business, so it's really tempting because they can bring customers or bring partners

because they have great experience.




TRAVIS: Right.

BRUCE: It's not worth it on your culture if they can't represent your brand and your culture. And

then through that it's leadership. Leadership is the next step, because leadership has to go

hand and hand with that. But your leadership has to be able to be adaptable. Because

entrepreneurs are notoriously self-centered and they have unnatural level of confidence

because you also need that as an entrepreneur. But at the same time being a leader is a very

difficult job because you have to continually self-evaluate. You have to continually look at how

you can get better and stronger every day, and that's a painful process for someone who is

someone who's generally self-centered and overconfident. So, that leadership process is a

constant growing. You have to be able to constantly grow. You never reach a pinnacle. And it's

a constantly painful process. So, leadership becomes-- defining what type of leader. The easiest

type of leadership is leading by example. Where you have everyone that you hired in the room.

You work hard, they work hard, they see how passionate you are so they're passionate. That's

really easy. But when you start getting employees that you never meet or don't have contact

with on a daily basis, that becomes more of a coaching type of leadership because you now

have to coach other leaders. But then when you become a multinational and you have people

all over the world that might work their entire careers with you and you'll never meet them, that

leadership is very different. And that path to leadership wrap around your original purpose and

your original values is what shapes you which allows your company to grow. When your

leadership stalls your company will stall. I've seen that over and over because I've had my own

plateaus, peaks and valleys and plateaus, in my own development as a leader. But as you get

older you get wiser, and as you get more people you get better people. And they put demands

on you to continually grow and develop as a leader. And then love what you do. I know that's

really cliché and people hear it all the time. I was speaking at our conference a few years ago

with Donald Trump but he even said love what you do. And I thought, well that's such a canned

answer but if you love what you do you'll never work a day in your life. And that's really what's

contagious with anyone who touches your brand. Because it rubs off on all the people you

recruit and you retain within your business who also relay that positive energy and that message

to your customers. And then your customers feed off that too because everyone wants to be

part of that kind of infectious energy. And so, it's that kind of circle that I believe that drives

businesses outside of traditional ways of measuring business success, which is obviously top-

line growth and bottom-line profitability.

TRAVIS: Right. So, what I hear you say is you feel like there's kind of 3 stages of leadership.

Would that be fair?




BRUCE: Yeah. And there might be another one, I just haven't reached it yet.

TRAVIS: All right, good point.

BRUCE: So, I know where I am right now.

TRAVIS: Right. It's always easier looking back and kind of reviewing that, right? It's crystal

clear. You know one thing that is a common denominator with all successful people that I

interview is they're naturally-- well, I should say naturally because I don't know if that's true or

not. But they all have the 80-20 Principle in common with each other. They're really good at

getting crystal clear on the important 20% and not worrying about the other 80% of business

that they could have, right?

BRUCE: Yeah.

TRAVIS: And you're clear on that, right?

BRUCE: Focus is everything. Focus and execution are the two keys for entrepreneurs. Because

when you start out you to be focused, right? But when you become successful you even have to

be more focused, because opportunities are falling out of trees, everyone wants a piece of a

successful company. And you have to be more focused and not be distracted by bright, shiny

objects because there's so many of them in your path.

TRAVIS: Right. And I mentor a lot of businesses that are wanting to get to the million and

beyond mark. Number 1, it's a little dangerous to focus on just top line growth because a lot of

times top line growth is more of a vanity number. And bottom line growth is really, of course,

where the important stuff exist. Because I've ran a business that generated a million dollars and

netted virtually nothing. And so, that's a major problem.

BRUCE: Oh yeah

TRAVIS: Right. And so, there's a lot of critical aspects to running that business like you

mentioned. But most of them lack the focus. The focus of the client, their ideal avatar, and then

making sure that everything they do speaks to that avatar or multiple avatars, ideal people that

they serve. And so, without that focus they're all over the place and they're not able to

consistently produce profitable business.




BRUCE: Yeah. It's very hard in the initial stages because when you set out with a purpose and

you set out with ideas on how you want to start a business. But at the same time you have to

pay the bills until your business stabilizes. And so, those first 3 or 4 years is when you have to

be focused as possible.

TRAVIS: Take anything just about.

BRUCE: But a lot of people have to end up having to take anything and then they get

distracted.

TRAVIS: Right, I completely agree. Do you guys use Google, Facebook, paid traffic and things

like that to generate a lot of your revenue as well beyond just the free social stuff?

BRUCE: Yeah, you mean like pay-per-click and that kind of marketing?

TRAVIS: Yeah, exactly.

BRUCE: Sure. Because our product specifically, people will go to the internet and search very

specific terms and keywords. So, our industries is catered to that. So we've certainly spent-- We

get presence all the time from Google, so I think we're a big, large travel customer for Google.

But it's a combination of the two things. We do want to get people's eyeballs as their research

mode for their travel. And Google is, or online, or-- the web anyway is where people are going.

So we have many ways in which to attract people's eyeballs, whether it's viral or social means,

or whether it's actually attract through search terms. It's kind of an all-encompassing marketing

program. But our goal is to get our products in front of people and give them that option.

Because when you say you want to go to Peru or Machu Picchu, there's many different options

and many different ways you can see it. We want to just be one of those options that you would

consider.

TRAVIS: Right. So yeah, I would imagine the majority of your paid traffic comes through Google

then, right?

BRUCE: Yeah, a big part of it does come to Google, but globally we go through all kind of

different ways. And as well with affiliates that attract-- we have literally hundreds of thousands of

affiliates that bring traffic to their sites and then on to us.

TRAVIS: Right.




BRUCE: The way people do business these days, it has changed so dramatically, but it's been

motivated by the way people research brands and the way people consume. That's changed.

TRAVIS: Yeah. Affiliates is a whole new level of things that a lot of businesses don't even know

exist about the affiliate thing, which is really incredible. You know something that is-- I own

multiple businesses and Google has been the dominant player for me for years, well, ever since

online marketing. And Bing is a far, far second. Bing probably does 10%. But as far as paid

traffic, Facebook is starting to eclipse Google for me.

BRUCE: Yeah, it's funny, I actually just got some statistics last week about how Facebook can

get you-- We have over a million followers on Facebook, which is very large for a travel

company of our size especially. And literally in the last 6 months it's gone through the roof. Our

engagement is like 40% up, it's the number that I was looking at, 45% up I think from going

through Facebook onto finding out about products or booking our products. So, yeah, It's all

social. It's funny, even TripAdvisor. TripAdvisor has seen as something that's been so negative

for the hotel industry because people only right negatively when they stay at a place. They won't

go and put something positive when they have a good experience. But even that's driving the

industry.

TRAVIS: Yeah, I think the paid part of Facebook, just the organic part for you is always going to

be a dream. But the paid, using it the way that it really should be used, there's so many metrics

right now that you can pull with Facebook that you can't do with Google.

BRUCE: Yeah, I know.

TRAVIS: Where you can target very, very specific people. So, the amount of targeting is

unbelievable. And Facebook's kind of the sleeping giant for a lot of people. Most people just

maybe will promote a post or something, but it's much deeper than that. And so, some really

incredible things going on there. Hey, let me ask you, what book or program made an impact on

you related to business that you'd recommend and why?

BRUCE: I read a lot of books, so there's tons of books that have impacted me. One that stands

out in my mind would be Primal Leadership. I don't know that you've heard that book.

TRAVIS: No, I haven't.

BRUCE: Daniel Goleman. Primal leadership was a big one for me. It's about emotional

intelligence, and it's really the rise of a modern leader that has a higher level of emotional

hhttp://amzn.to/1yrC10l

hhttp://amzn.to/1yrC10l




intelligence. When you look back at the tradition, the evolution of leadership when you look back

in the 80's and 90's of that kind of that Wall Street kind of leadership, with a Braveheart follow

me into battle type leadership. Leadership today through the kind of social tools and social

evolution that we're kind of all experiencing is leadership is very different. Primal Leadership

was way ahead of its time I thought in terms of understanding how emotional intelligence place

such an important factor in leadership. And leading people, and getting people to understand

what your business is. And following your brand or following your business, whether it's an

employer or a customer on how compassion in leadership is such an important part of modern

leadership. It's not a new book, it's quite an old book but it was way ahead of its time. I think it's

very relevant now to how leadership really works today.

TRAVIS: And so, to make sure that I've got this right P-r-i-m-a-l?

BRUCE: Yeah. Primal Leadership.

TRAVIS: Okay, Primal Leadership, all right. Something that struck me early on in my career as

an entrepreneur is someone had made the point, and I don't even remember where it came

from but it made sense to me as a leader. And they were talking about that a man would not

give his life for a million dollars but he'd give his life for a piece of metal in defending his country.

And that speaks to some of the leadership skills that you're talking about. It's being able to lead

people in a way to where they'll walk with you through fire. And a lot of people don't understand

that. And so, they may try to crack down on someone and they had not built that relationship

with that person. And I see a lot of people misunderstand this and therefore can't ever keep

anybody working for them.

BRUCE: Yeah. When you look at our industry, we have an industry that has a 35% average

turnover in the tourism industry for companies in terms of stock retention. We're less than three.

TRAVIS: Oh wow.

BRUCE: So, that's how you engage your employees isn't very different on how you engage

your customers today because they're all intertwined. It's all out there in the social world, right?

So understanding people-- Customer service driven companies have always been

understanding of the age in where you are everything for the customer. You tell us what you

want and we'll supply it. But that now expands to anyone who touches your brand because

when you look at the people that drive your business they're equally important as customers.

And so when you kind of start blending those two things together is when you created an

amazing company that's capable of extraordinary things. And then using social tools as well to




get that out as part of your brand. We often say it, our culture is our brand because people

relate to our people and our culture as much as they do our product.

TRAVIS: Yeah, great point. Hey, what's one of your favorite tools or pieces of technology that

you've recently discovered, if any, it doesn't have to be brand new but new to you, that you'd

recommend to other business owners and why?

BRUCE: Yeah. I just wrote a book over the course of last year, Looptail, my book. And I typed it

on Evernote. And prior to that I've never heard of Evernote but I had an editor that was asking

me to link up with him, because I wrote so much of my book on planes, on iPads, on my phone,

in customs lines. I literally wrote about 20,000 words in lines on my tapping with one finger on

my phone. And it pieced together all of my thoughts. And then my editor could add thoughts,

and it links all my devices up together. Evernote has just become-- And so I learned how to use

it and it's such a powerful program in terms of organizing your thoughts. Because we all live in a

wired world too. We have multi devices and you write things in one place and then they're not in

the next. And then you also have executive teams where you kind of share information, share

documents, and share pages. Evernote to me is something recently that I've discovered that

has been a really powerful app. And as well as app-- not only an app on your phone but it's also

a program on your computer. And you can take it everywhere. And another thing is I learned

over the course of the last couple of years as well was I talk, and not everyone probably uses

this, but the traditional Dictaphone that people used I would say in the old days. I started just

recording thoughts. Because your mind is always racing, you constantly have thoughts, and I

started using iTalk I guess it was about 3 or 4 years ago actually. Because I just used to just

write stuff down, but you'd still miss stuff because you don't always have a pen, you don't

always have a paper. And then you lose it and you can't keep track with lots of little notes all

over the place. There's stickies everywhere of thoughts. And iTalk is the way you can just speak

into your phone anywhere when you have a random thought because I have them all over the

place.

TRAVIS: I do too.

BRUCE: You're walking down the street. But I want to remember it later in context to something

else. And Evernote just files all those thoughts based on just by titles and keeps them there

forever. And I kind of go through every couple of months and go through past thoughts and

make them relevant to what I'm thinking today. I often have read stories about how the Beetles

used to write songs and have paper all over their houses, and little recording devices

everywhere. So when they thought of it too they could write it down. There's a famous story of

https://evernote.com/

https://evernote.com/




Paul McCartney waking up in the middle of the night with Yesterday on his mind. And he

actually called it Scrambled Eggs. And he wrote down Scrambled Eggs as the tune as he wrote

down. But if they had iTalk, my goodness, who knows how many songs they played. I'm sure

they forgot more songs than they wrote.

TRAVIS: Exactly. How much more prolific would they have been, right?

BRUCE: And I think entrepreneurs do that all the time. People who have active minds forget

more than they remember and those ideas get lost. And iTalk, I use it all the time now. And you

quite often see me walking down the phone observing something and I put my smartphone

close to your mouth just whisper something that I want to remember later. It could be a saying, it

could be a unique conversation. I hear someone on a shuttle bus or something, and I just want

to remember it to kind of put it in context later to something else I'm doing. And it just kind of

harnesses my ideas. And I lose less. And I always thought that too, that I lose more ideas than I

actually-- And between Evernote and iTalk, those two things have really harnessed a lot and I'm

trying to constantly harness it and utilize my ideas as much as possible. But I constantly lost or

forgot them.

TRAVIS: Yeah. You and I would belong to the same club because I do the same thing. I'm out

for a walk or whatever, and I'm talking into my phone.

BRUCE: Yeah.

TRAVIS: I'm constantly listening to something and then I--

BRUCE: And it can be a just little sound byte and you title it and you have a whole list of them.

It was odd for me at first, speaking to myself in a phone, I had to train myself to that because I

did think that was kind of odd. But once you start doing it and you start organizing your thoughts

it's very powerful.

TRAVIS: Yeah, I completely agree with you. Hey, what quote would best summarize your belief

or your attitude in business?

BRUCE: Probably something about leadership and innovation are probably two big things in

terms of for me in business. There's that famous quote about leadership is the art of getting

someone else to do what you want done because they want to do it. That's back to that

emotional intelligence, that primal leadership that I was telling you about that leadership is about

getting people to do what they want to do. And in the end it kind of meets your goals...




TRAVIS: Right.

BRUCE: ...as a business or as a person. But also innovation, like Steve Jobs once said,

"Innovation is the difference between a leader and a follower." Because there's lots of

companies out there. But the ones that truly put new products in front of people innovate are

really the leaders, and what drive our economy forward is really what drives business forward

and evolves the way we live. And innovation is clearly that differentiator. And that's really how I

think about leadership and business.

TRAVIS: Yeah. I think that even ties back to the point that you made about creating a purpose

of why your business exists rather than creating a „me too‟ business, innovate, create something

that's different, and you'll be able to own your space, right?

BRUCE: Yeah. It's cool they focus so much on the product for years. And you have to have a

good product. When I talk about these messages, you have to have a great product. But that's

the price of admission. That can't be why you exist, right?

TRAVIS: Right.

BRUCE: Because in the modern world today someone will be able to do it cheaper and faster.

TRAVIS: Yeah, good point.

BRUCE: And if there's two products that are equal in the eyes of the consumer who looks at two

products and might not look as deep but sees two products as equal, the social on will always

win. The social one will always be the one that the consumer engages with. So, that old

business model of being a master of your craft and having that best product, you have to have

that, but it can't be what you hang your shingle on about why you exist anymore.

TRAVIS: Great point.

BRUCE: The customer wants to engage with customers and if you want repeat customers you

want to attract the best people. You want all those things in businesses to have traffic, best

customer… you want all those great things they teach in business school. It's not just about the

best product anymore. And there's been so many examples of that over and over again. How it

goes beyond that, and your purpose drives that engagement to want a customer first to track

them to want to purchase, and then purchase again and again, and then tell their friends.




TRAVIS: Yeah, great point. Almost all old business models have been obliterated with

everything that's going on these days are completely changed.

BRUCE: Yeah, I mean, there's examples all around you. One of the greatest ones in recent

times is the rise and fall of Blockbuster.

TRAVIS: Right.

BRUCE: They just didn't innovate fast enough. Blackberry, the famous Canadian story.

TRAVIS: Kodak. I was fore by Kodak.

BRUCE: Kodak, their leadership position have them believing that they were untouchable.

TRAVIS: Right.

BRUCE: As I said, this little streaming company Netflix singlehandedly brought down

Blockbuster by just thinking and engaging their employees so differently, and engaging their

customers so differently. And then there was obviously, the technology solution which people

are engaged with. Amazon is another prime example of that.

TRAVIS: Yeah. Well you know, Kodak pivoted with Kodak Zi8 handheld video camera. And I

thought, "Good for them, they're pivoting. I'm glad to see an old company pivot and try to

innovate." And next thing you know apparently they waited too long to innovate and ran out of

cash.

BRUCE: Yeah. The whole time, they're great that you bring up because the whole time they just

thought they were untouchable. They had this belief that people wouldn't move away from their

brand, they were just too powerful. Toys 'R' Us is another good example of that. Levi's, I don't

know how old you are but when I grew up would you wear any other jeans but Levi's?

TRAVIS: No.

BRUCE: And they lost their market dominance by being so overconfident and they stopped

innovating.

TRAVIS: Yeah, being one-dimensional to a certain extent. Yeah, I completely agree you. Hey

listen, how do people connect with you? And also, if they wanted to learn more about possibly




booking something with you guys, or just finding more out about it, well, what's the links, where

do they go?

BRUCE: There's all kinds of ways. We're G Adventures, so you can go to gadventures.com.

You can communicate with us on Facebook or Twitter. They're all under G Adventures. You can

also look at my book. My book was a New York Times Bestseller in the last September.

TRAVIS: Excellent.

BRUCE: And I have a website for the book, the book is called Looptail, and looptail.com is also

for the book but you can also go to on to Amazon or go on to any bookstore. So that's another

way in which you engage and learn more about the business. And once you experience our

product or read my book, tell your friends, get social.

End of Interview

TRAVIS: Excellent, wonderful, thank you very much. Remember that you can find all of the links

to the books and the resources mentioned in the show in the show notes, even the transcription.

Just go to rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com. Before I close the show today, I'd like for you to

think about committing to two things that will help fast forward your success. I mentioned this a

while back although I think it's worth repeating again. And the first is find a mastermind where

you can be surrounded by the people that have an entrepreneurial mindset. So that you can

help eliminate those negative self-limiting thoughts. And also focus on constant, forward, bold

progress. Some of the most creative, innovative ideals will come from being around these type

of people. Now these people need to be outside your friends and your family circle, does that

make sense? The second is find a mentor that's already achieved what you've dreamed of and

see if that person will personally mentor you and your business. So that you can quickly

navigate your way to that next level and beyond. Trust me, it will cut years and years off of your

journey if you're willing to do those two things. So, one last thing before I close the show today I

want to share a quote with you from Denis Waitley, and the quote reads, "Happiness cannot be

travelled to, owned, earned, or worn, it's the spiritual experience of living every minute with love,

grace, and gratitude." This is Travis Lane Jenkins signing off for now. To your incredible

success my friend, take care.

http://gadventures.com/

http://www.looptail.com/





How We Can Help You

We know that finding someone that you can trust online today is hard and that so many “so

called gurus” are self-‐appointed and have never really even done what they teach you to

do. That‟s exactly why we created the Double Your Profits Business Accelerator. This is an

exclusive offer for our fans at a fraction of its normal cost.

Here's what to expect. We'll Schedule a 'One on One' private session, where we'll take the time

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We'll do this by performing a S.W.O.T. Analysis. This tells us your Strengths, Weaknesses,

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reasons are.

As the 'Business Owner' it‟s difficult to see the big picture of your own business because you‟re

in the middle of a daily management.

And you are too emotionally involved to completely impartial.

This is a common problem for EVERY business owner. It doesn‟t matter if you are a one-man

army, or an army of 150, the problem is still the same.

Travis Lane Jenkins

Business Mentor-Turn Around Specialist

Radio Host of The Entrepreneurs Radio Show

“Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs That Grow Your

Business"

http://theentrepreneursradioshow.com/

Documents

Creating An Emotional Experience With Your Customers