Business growth happens in a vacuum, right? Wrong! What do savvy business owners do to recharge and invest in themselves and their businesses? They go to the GROW Retreat! Anna and Stephanie let listeners know the amazing caliber of speakers and content that will be presented at the GROW Retreat in January 2020. Rub shoulders with great people like: Mike Michalowicz, author of Profit First and Clockwork Jesse Cole, the Yellow Tux Guy Dean McFlicker, marketing genius for the show Survivor Dana Pharant, the Bad Ass Business expert Cindy Ashton, Presentation Strategist Garrett Gunderson, Author of "Killing Sacred Cows" Larry Levine, Author of Selling from the Heart There are only a few spots left, so if you expect to rock your business in 2020, then go to https://www.thegrowretreat.com/get-started to get into this exclusive event tailored for the hungry business owner who is ready for more!

Cindy is CEO of Minerva Enterprises, LLC, an elite level presentation strategist, professional speaker, singer and award winning TV show, host of Cindy Uncorked on E360 TV. With 20 years of experience, she's an authority on presentation skills, speaking voice, body language, content delivery and leadership experience. She's going to bring so much to the Grow Retreat and whether you're networking in a sales conversation, pitching the media or onstage or speaking to your team, how you present yourself will make or break the sale. Isn't that the truth? So even the most confident person can lose a sale by unconscious habits. Little things we don't know that we're doing. And that's what Cindy is going to be helping us with during the Grow Retreat. People either come across as overly aggressive or overly insecure. So there's a few things Cindy always teaches business owners and one of those things, the first thing, is that we need to learn to take time every day to breathe and ground. And that sounds really strange, but when you're present in your body, then you can hear and listen to others. Because one of the things that's really interesting, and we're going to do Improv at the Grow Retreat because it's not just fun, but when you do comedy Improv, you can tell who's losing sales and why they're losing sales, because you can watch the interactions of how they're listening, how they're responding. For example, if we do the storytelling one, you can always see the people who are thinking ahead when they're listening to the other about what the response is and they are actually stopping listening to others. At the Grow Retreat we're going to be doing some really fun posture exercises. We're going to be up and moving, releasing all the habitual tension that we all live with. These things actually affect how you come across. So when we have a lot of stress that we're holding in our body, it actually changes our speaking voice and our posture and our body language and our energy. And those are the things that are the subtle pieces that will make or break the sale. The power is in your voice. Let your voice be heard. The world needs you. This isn't about self aggrandizement. This isn't about building a six or seven or eight figure business. This is about giving the world your gifts in a way that they want what you have. It's a powerful, powerful tool.

We're so excited to have Mike Michalowicz back with us on Black Belt Selling. Mike is the only speaker from GROW 2019 that we have invited back to the stage in 2020. Mike has been an entrepreneur his entire adult life. He had some great successes early on, but it also set him up for his greatest failure. Mike up on a mission, a life's purpose, to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. The day you start your business, the world thinks you're wildly successful. You're a millionaire. You sit at the beach drinking margaritas. The reality is we're not making money. We're working ridiculous hours. We're under constant stress. In this gap is what he calls entrepreneur poverty and living it. His life's mission is to now fix that, to resolve that. At this Grow Retreat, Mike will be talking about Pumpkin Plan, his recent book. It is a methodology to grow your business healthily and organically. That's the part many people miss. We want to grow our business, but we think that it requires investment that we have to run those Facebook ads, that there's certain processes we have to do, that sales is an extraordinary effort and what he found, ironically or interestingly, is that there's a faction of pumpkin farmers, these colossal pumpkin farmers that grow these massive gourds and they follow a simple modification to the established process. We're in business for two reasons. One is for financial freedom. Another one is that you do a vocation that brings you joy and happiness. The majority of our waking hours are spent working. So if it brings us joy and financial freedom, we've won. Sadly, most businesses don't achieve financial freedom and people are stressed out beyond belief. So we're going to address those two elements. We're going to maximize your profit and revenue, and as importantly, if not even a little bit more importantly, we're gonna maximize your joy factor, the people you love to work with. So you love going to work.

How many times do we hold ourselves back worrying about what somebody else thinks? Do I really need to be like everybody else or can I be me? Our guest, Dana Pharant combines her 20 plus years experience in the wellness and stress management field with building a seven figure business. She's also a two times best-selling author. Dana shares keen insights about having those difficult conversations that are necessary to grow your business. Dana has been transitioning into coaching with helping people throughout the years but just hadn't been charging for it as coaching on its own. When she hit a really big roadblock in 2012, she went through a massive restructuring with her seven figure business and they had to lay everybody off. The handling of difficult conversations is something that all of us have to do in our businesses, in our day-to-day life. And you know, whether you handle it well or you don't can be a real turning point of the success of your business. So day to day when you're dealing with your employees, the people who are on your team, that ability to have the conversation that most needs to be had and handle it in a way that both of you come away feeling empowered, feeling lifted up is a way to actually propel your business forward. And same thing with having difficult conversations with suppliers or, maybe the haters who are coming out and saying nasty things. We have to handle situations all the time. So getting to this place where we can handle them with some grace and some ease is vital. One of the things Dana really wants to drive home at Immersion 2020 is this piece of how do we get into the state that we need to in order to be able to have these difficult conversations? She is going to pull in different tools to really lock it in. How do you get out of your monkey mind? How do you drop into this place of knowing that it's in their best interest and your best interests? Even though it feels awkward, even though it feels uncomfortable? She has lots of fun tools and techniques that she's going to dive into to make it easier to have these conversations that really need to be had. This as a huge piece that will propel a business forward if you are willing to have the conversations that you most need to have. Have them now and not 10 years from now or not waiting until the whole thing falls apart.

"Don't be afraid to get people's attention in a noisy world. In order to make an impact, you have to be remembered." Before Jesse Cole became the owner of Savannah Georgia's college level baseball team, Savannah had had a professional baseball team for over 90 years. So when he came in, he did what everyone else did to market the team. Guess how many tickets he sold in the first 2 months? Not 10, not 20, not 100. One. Just one! It wasn't until he got attention in name, the team of Savannah Bananas that people started taking notice and saying, you know what? Who are these guys? Jesse is our special guest on today's episode of Black Belt Selling. He share how he turned a college level baseball team into a Fortune 500 company by his unique approach to sales and business. In this episode you will hear: 1. How he created raving fans without spending a single penny on traditional marketing 2. Three words to know what that you are creating an experience that people with talk about. 3. What pink slippers, food trucks and a car wash can do to build your greatest business asset. Jesse will be one of the keynote speakers at the GROW 2020 Business Retreat in San Antonio, TX. To learn more, got to https://www.thegrowretreat.com/jesse-cole