Becoming More Self-Aware

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Summary

The last freedom we have is the freedom to choose our attitude

Are you aware of yourself?

How much do you know about your strengths, your weaknesses, and your emotions?

How will you react when the going gets tough?

Self-awareness is a crucial tool, one we all need for success.

Choosing an attitude, controlling your reactions, staying calm in a crisis—they all require self-awareness. Being self-aware means being able to check-in on your emotions, your thoughts, and your reactions at-will. It means understanding what you’re doing, how you’re feeling, and why.

If you aren’t self-aware, you aren’t in control of your life—Ilan Ferdman knows this better than most.

In this episode of Making Bank, we meet this resilient and philosophical entrepreneur. Ilan went from bankruptcy to become a Facebook marketing master and co-founder of SatoriPrime.

Listen to hear Ilan talk in-detail about:

●       How he made $23k in cash one summer at age 19

●       How the financial collapse was the best thing to happen to him

●       Moving past having $10k stolen from his business

●       How to surround yourself with the right people

●       Becoming a master of Facebook marketing

●       Building valuable client relationships

●       The single most valuable online marketing trick Ilan uses

●       Staying motivated to climb a mountain

Transcription

I am Josh Felber and you’re watching Making Bank where  we uncover the secrets of the one percent most successful entrepreneurs to  help you and give you the unfair advantage. Whether it’s for you in your  life, in your business to help you become more successful. Today one of the  things that I really want to dive into and hopefully it will help connect  with you and rage you to new levels is self-awareness. There’s so many of  [inaudible 00:00:38] going in day after day after day after day and with no  self-awareness. Self-awareness is one of those things that you have when  you’re first born, you’re a baby maybe one year old and you’re starting to  discover your hands and your feet and your stomach and all these body parts  and everything that are all attached with you. It’s just these new answers  that you’re really starting to learn about yourself and understand in detail  about yourself. One of the things with self-awareness, what the definition  is, is having a clear perception of your personality including your  strengths, weaknesses thoughts and beliefs and motivation of all your  emotions.

Self-awareness allows you to understand how other people  are thinking and perceiving you as well as your attitude and your response to  them in the moment. With self-awareness it’s going to allow us, allow you to  raise how you look at yourself to a whole another level. Think of when you  dance or if you’ve ever danced for the very first time and you’re watching  how your feet moves, how your partner moves, where you connect that and just  how the whole process flows. It’s almost like you’re seeing it in slow  motion. You’re analyzing in detail each step of the whole process. Another  example might be say you get into a car… If you’ve ever been in a car  accident and you see everything in slow motion. You recall everything but  everything is plain in that slow motion. That’s a self-awareness to what’s  happening and to what’s going on.

For you being more self-aware of who you are, the  situation that you are in will help become a better person and It’ll help you  become better entrepreneur, leader as well as spouse. That’s going to give  you the ability to have the unfair advantage to connect with people, to be  more present in the situations that you’re in. Self-awareness is helping you  master yourself. As we grow and as we learn more about ourselves, learn how  to connect with others. Mastering who we are, ourselves, our emotions, our  behaviors, is going to help set us up for better success. That helps set us  up for being able to influence others. Be able to communicate courageously to  others by understanding how we act, how we react and who we are. By you  having the self-awareness is going to allow you to have more control over  your life. More control of yourself as well as give you the advantage of  being able to assess the situation you’re in.

That’s great for relationships. Whether it’s personal  relationships, whether it’s a business relationship and you meeting somebody  for the very first time the self-awareness is going to give you the innate  ability to see how they perceive you and see what you need to adjust and see  what you need to tweak on your side so you could become more authentic,  become more genuine, and become that person that is creating that value,  caring and giving for others. When you can do that that’s going to open up  your world to whole new possibilities as well as giving you and bringing you  into the forefront of who you really are in your life.

One of the big things self-awareness it’s just not one  of those things that you can read out of a book and hope it’s going to  happen. There are certain skills you have to start practicing and by  practicing these skills it’s going to give you now the ability to understand  yourself. These skills are going to be able to help you learn who you really  are and they’re going to help you move yourself to the next level of your  success, of your learning of who you are and you’re connecting with your own  self.

Think of yourself in a situation. You’re having friction  maybe it’s with a business partner, maybe it’s with your spouse and you guys  are just not seeing an eye to eye. Self-awareness is going to allow you to be  able to understand where you’re coming from, but also be able to figure out  hey am I heading down the wrong path here? Am I going to start reacting in a  negative manner or a negative way that is going to affect this relationship?  Am I going to just blow up and say the wrong things? By having  self-awareness, that’s going to allow us to see what’s happening and what’s  going on and be able to make and modify changes on the fly. That way we can  then help dictate and predict what the outcome will happen in this  conversation or this relationship or this discussion that we’re having right  at this moment and time.

The self-awareness is a huge part of really what I want  you to start connecting with. You’ll start seeing dramatic changes instantly  within your life by understanding where you’re coming from, how are your  behaviors and how they are affecting others as well as how you just operate  in life in general when you’re interacting or when you’re by yourself. I want  to challenge you to get out and start taking the steps to become more  self-aware of who you are. To become more self-aware to better yourself and  to raise yourself to the next level of high achievement. I am really excited  up next we have a special guest on Ilan Ferdman. Ilan has owned multiple  businesses, started multiple businesses with his brother, he’s really become  and has the ability of self-awareness and that’s what’s propelled him forward  in his businesses as well as be able to connect with others and create  success in his life. Stay with us, we’ll be right back, I am Josh Felber and  you’re watching Making Bank (music).

I am Josh Felber and you’re watching Making Bank. I’m  really excited today. We have an awesome entrepreneur on the phone with …  Or on Skype with me actually we’re live. It’s Ilan Ferdman and he is one of  the co-founders of Satoriprime along with his brother Guy. Ilan and his  brother their mission is to break down the walls of what you believe is  possible in your life. They have spent over twelve years and over a million  dollars investing in their education boom, and business and now help  thousands of entrepreneurs around the world turn their passion and talents  into money as well as their bank accounts. That’s always good. Their training  is diverse to say the least covering everything from mindset, to online  internet marketing and business strategy. They’re most well known for being  the world class masters at the Facebook marketing.

They’ve also launched many successful Facebook products  as well as incredible masterminds for Facebook if anyone is starting out in  the online space, as well as seasoned Facebook marketers. I want to welcome  you to the show Ilan. I’m excited to have you today, man you’ve got an  awesome background, you have some awesome information, I think we’re going to  be able to share with our listeners today.

Ilan: I hope we’ll make a difference.

Josh: Cool man. Give me a little background here. Has  entrepreneurship run in your blood? Is it something that just came few years  ago? Tell me a little background what got you started as an entrepreneur?

Ilan: I think as most entrepreneurs I have very very big  issues with authority and people tell me what to do.

Josh: Sure.

Ilan: I think I figured pretty early on that I needed to do my  own thing. I mean the earliest thing I can remember was when everyone was  getting jobs in high school, I would call myself a moron at the time but I  think now I’m looking back and going,  well I was really smart. I was the only person that got commission  jobs. I was sticking to people that people that would tell me like if you do  X, we’re just going to keep paying you. That’s always what I looked for. I  had every odd and ends sales job but the best one I had we were actually  selling speakers out of the back of a white van, literally yelling out the  side of the window, “Hey do you want some speakers?”

Josh: You’re the guys I’ve seen. I see them in the malls  they’re …

Ilan: It’s unreal.

Josh: That’s awesome.

Ilan: I was nineteen years old and in the summer I think I  made something like twenty three thousand dollars cash.

Josh: That’s phenomenal.

Ilan: That’s when I just realized I can never go to work for  someone. I had one stand right out of college for about three months but ever  since then it’s always been doing my own thing.

Josh: Cool man. What was kind of that first business though  you did some to commission sales jobs and got the entrepreneurial bag moving  and realized like hey I can’t work for somebody else I’ve got to go and do it  man. What was that first business? Is Satoriprime your first business that  you guys …

Ilan: No, no no no. I actually was in a job for like three and  a half months. Someone like desk whatever, bitch just call me. After three  and a half months I just hated it and just left. I pretty much left. Then  went to the city, did some other ordinary job, left that as well and then  ended up just working with my dad construction while I was sending out  resumes. Then ended up working on this guy’s house who looked at me he goes,  “What are you doing at my house?“ This is like twenty something  year old, graduate of business school [inaudible 00:11:49] and he’s like,  “What are you doing here?” He brought me for an interview and my  first actual job was in commercial real estate. I was a loan officer. Within  less than a year and a half I became an equity partner and we built that  company from a half million dollar investment to I think at our peak we had  about one hundred and million dollars in assets under management.

Josh: That is awesome.

Ilan: I think that’s about eight years and then the world or  the economic world I should say collapsed which was the most painful, but  looking back the best thing that’s ever happened to me as most things I  guess. That’s when I partnered up with my brother and that’s when Satoriprime  was built. We started Satoriprime it was June 22, 2011. We just had our  fourth anniversary.

Josh: Awesome men. When you guys started Satoriprime, what  does that mean? What is that really …?

Ilan: Great question. I love this story because it just goes  to prove that accidents are not a thing. We wanted a name and everyone was  doing something like work with their name or their name dot com and our last  names Ferdman, that’s not a sexy name and work with the brothers that just  didn’t make sense. I have always loved Satori. Actually in my previous work  when we had a fun we called it Satori capital. Satori means a moment of  enlightenment.

Josh: Awesome.

Ilan: The names kept coming up, but we wanted a different name  and the funny part is we had just seen transformers, we both grew up loving  Optimus Prime. Prime Primo type of thing. Sounded good together we put it and  then three months later someone asked this question what does it mean? I was  like you know what I never actually looked up the name prime. I just go on  Google I type in prime and it means a moment of greatest strength, vigor or  financial success in one’s life. So a moment of enlightenment to your  greatest strength, vigor, or financial success.

Josh: That’s awesome.

Ilan: That’s all we tried to accomplish, so it’s just amazing.

Josh: That’s really cool. You just put those two together and  it’s boom …

Ilan: We’ve got a big name to live up to. That’s pretty much  it.

Josh: Yeah, set the bar high.

Ilan: That’ it.

Josh: Awesome. With Satoriprime and you guys are getting  going, as you started to build this, was it just something that really took  off for you or did you guys kind hit some struggles along the way? Give me a  little background how it ramped up for you.

Ilan: I don’t think anyone does anything and it flies up the  way. I think we all have to learn lessons along the way. Ones that will get  you ready for when it actually takes off. It was a hard road. Both of us  obviously left a very successful … My brother actually worked with me  previously in my previous company. We were both doing really great and then  the rug got taken from under us. I pretty much invested everything trying to  save that company. When we started building this company I was on welfare  checks, my house was being foreclosed on, my brother ended up moving back  with his parents, so we were just hustling every day and we tried not to  focus on money which I know is impossible to think of when you’re in that  situation but we just realized if we can gain enough value. If we can learn  enough skills that we can help others with, then it will all work out. Along  the way it took us months before we made our first dollar. Along the way we  had money stolen, we had bad partnerships. Everything that you can imagine.

Josh: Hey can you hang on that note for a minute? Awesome, can  you stick with us?

Ilan: Yeah.

Josh: Awesome, cool. Hey guys. We’re going to be right back. I  am Josh Felber you’re watching Making Bank and we’re here today with Ilan  Ferdman. We’ll be right back (music).

I am Josh Felber and you’re watching Making Bank and  today we’ve been talking with Ilan Ferdman of Satoriprime. Ilan was just  telling us a little bit about how they got started with Satoriprime, kind of  the struggles that he was going through, kind of paycheck or not even a  paycheck.

Ilan: Not even a … Welfare paycheck.

Josh: Welfare paychecks to make his business happen. What  those struggles are to really push through as an entrepreneur that it takes.  Ilan welcome back to the show, excited to have you and let’s pick right back  where we left off men.

Ilan: Let me just tell you one of the biggest lessons and this  is kind of what changed the mindset along the business, every business,  anything you start. Whether it’s business or anything you want to master  you’re going to hit hurdles. What I learnt I remember at one point we got ten  thousand dollars just stolen from us. We were promised X obviously it didn’t  deliver and I’m that we’re the guy who’s been in the business for a long long  time just bitching and complaining about this ten thousand dollars. When I  see this guy I’m going to rip out his this and this. And he’s just standing  there listening to me the whole time and he goes, why would you spend so much  time and energy focusing on that. Just go and make five times that and forget  about that ten thousand. I remember it was the first time I sat back and  went, “Wow.”

It was so simple like internally I knew it, but when I  heard it something snapped and what I realized was along the way we’re all  going to have trouble. We’re all going to have things that knock us down, but  I totally believe that that ten thousand dollars that I got to spend in our  two year market I would say, is going to save me a million dollars five years  from now. Because that was a very important lesson for me to learn. All of  these lessons become more difficult and more expensive the longer you do  this, your ability to handle them though just completely transforms. That’s  why I look at everything that happened as just a gift that’s helped us be  where we are today.

Josh: Now that’s so awesome men. You’re right so many times  entrepreneurs we get stuck, like men! And you’re so frustrated with that  negative action or whatever it may have happened. Then you don’t have  yourself open to those bigger opportunities that are coming down the pipe.

Ilan: Correct.

Josh: That’s really great that you’re in that position with  that guy right there and he’s like switch it off, move on.

Ilan: Surrounding yourself with people who have done it, who  have been around longer, who are on the path that you want to see yourself on  but just further ahead, makes all the difference.

Josh: Now that’s definitely, that’s another true point is  surrounding yourself for sure with the right people. Give us a little …  okay so you’re working, struggling, pushing through, and then things kind of  started to build for you guys as you’re moving along?

Ilan: Absolutely. We are again in the world of no accidents,  we were trying to figure something out from one of our learning pages way  back in the days. My brother runs ends up finding this code, just a little  snippet which ended up being a free direct code, and during the time when  Facebook was kicking everyone off and not letting anyone put anything on  Facebook. We just thought, “Hey what if we use this redirect code on  Facebook and all of a sudden we are the only people that can mark it on  Facebook?” This gentleman who actually helped us was coming to us along  with all these other huge huge gurus at the time and we start running traffic  for all of these people. That really puts us on a map as Facebook experts and  that gave us a path to think okay or maybe this is where we need to be right  now.

We really dove deep into Facebook, started mastering it  , and since that time we have run masterminds, where we have coached people  to make their first dollar to their first five hundred thousand dollar a  month. We have a digital media agency that we are partnering up with some  people and we’ve been able to run traffic for Tony Robbins, TR Vecker, Ryan  Dais, Frank Cannon. We’ve been able to part lay that education into some  pretty amazing things.

Josh: That’s really cool. We’ve got our audience of our  entrepreneurs some of them are trying to figure, hey I’m online, how do I  start making people aware of who I am? Can you give us a couple of tip bits  of information on what they need to, steps they need to take …

Ilan: Yeah absolutely. I’ll take the one step back because I  think people misunderstand what social media is about. Social media a lot of  people try to use it as an e-commerce platform where they’re just trying to  push their products, push their agenda, push their whatever onto other  people. But if you think about it, no one shows up on Facebook, no one opens  Facebook and goes like, you what today I want to find a Facebook product that  will help me grow my business.  Or they  don’t go, you know what, today I want to find a skin care product. No one  does that. They go there because they’re bored, they want to waste their  time, they want to look at pictures all that kind of stuff. I f they happen  tour along that path, find something of value of what they’re actually  looking for, then chances are that’s why Facebook is amazing then they’re  going to look. If you can just understand that when you’re trying to grow  your brand, when you’re trying to grow your anything online, you want to  always ask yourself is, what could I add as value to my core audience? Trying  to sell people stuff all the time is not adding value.

Josh: Right. Okay. Awesome. Great information. That’s one the  biggest examples I always talk about creating more value and pushing out that  content that people want, they want to see. Hey guys listen up you know Ilan  is saying we want to start adding value, start creating free videos, free  marketing, free information to send to people out there. Once we start  creating that value, and people start trusting us, they only can take that  next step to say, “Hey by the way if you love all these free contact, I  also have this you may like.” Is that kind of where you’re going?

Ilan: I’m going to give you an example from yesterday. I got on  the phone with a guy. We do these 30 for 30 consultation, just too kind of  meet our audience. It’s $30 for thirty minutes. You get your 30 bucks back,  but it’s just a way for us to kind of get rid of some of the tire kickers at  least. This guy is just listening to the podcast and starts talking to me  about affiliate marketing, little help on this, little help on that and I  just gave him the link and I said, hey check out this company. Literally  within an hour the guy was registered, signed up and going through the  process. I just kind of looked at my brother and said it’s amazing.

First I’ve never spoken to the guy, but because we’ve  built this online relationship of him getting value that had nothing to do  with go start online business. It was about mindset. It was about growth and  development. It was about brain drugs we’re trying to know your part of. But  he’s tried those things, he’s read the books that I recommended, he’s gotten  value all of a sudden the next thing that I tell him, he’s going to do just  because we’ve built that relationship. Very much like people do naturally  with their friends, recommending restaurants, recommending books,  recommending movies. Those people come back to you. When we get online people  get weird. They’re like, no no buy this, buy this, buy this. Why don’t you do  the same thing you do with your friends?

Josh: Right, just hang out and talk.

Ilan: It’s very easy.

Josh: Now it makes sense. Cool man, that’s awesome  information. Maybe you can share we’ve got a few minutes left, maybe one or  two quick key Facebook strategies that divulge in your awesome secrets that  some of our listeners çan take with them.

Ilan: Absolutely. The one thing I think is the biggest game  changer right now online especially on Facebook is your targeting. If people  are not using retargeting strategies in their business, they’re just leaving  tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table. For those that do  not know what retargeting is, you’ve experienced it but you may have not used  it. If you’ve ever been on Amazon or Staples or a million other sites, you’ve  noticed that you can start going everywhere else even on Facebook, and you’ll  start seeing that product follow you around the web. That’s targeting. Simply  put is, you show up to someone’s website, you look at something, a code which  we call a cookie gets dropped on to your computer, and that tells someone  that they can follow you based on that cookie because you’ve seen XYZ.

You can get really fancy. Some people have seven day  video series where someone if stops the video too, you can follow them around  saying hey video three is now released. You’ve already paid for traffic so if  you’re already paying for people to come to your website, you will pay a  tenth if not less to retarget people. For example one of our offers will cost  us roughly say about five hundred dollars  to generate the sale. You can do the same thing for about forty five  dollars with retarget.

Josh: Wow! That’s awesome!

Ilan: That is the best strategy. You can obviously find out  more creation online about the ins and outs …

Josh: For sure

Ilan: But this is a mandatory thing if you’re marketing online  today.

Josh: Now you know it’s really cool. That’s definitely makes  sense. I know with my wife’s business she owns Primal Life Organics. It’s a  Paleo skin care company. We started retargeting increased sales by forty  percent.

Ilan: Not bad.

Josh: It was amazing, it was like …

Ilan: You’re already paying for that traffic, that’s the thing  and its people that have already raised their hand and said, “Hey I’m  interested in this.” Now just for you wife’s company just to give an  example, she’s collecting people that earn that Primal world or looking for  these type of products, now imagine that she wanted to partner with someone  as just a partner to do some affiliate stuff with. You already have this list  of these people. You can just as easily market other offers to them because  they’re already these like-minded people and now you’re just double dipping,  triple dipping, quadruple dipping and an audience said, okay, so maybe they  didn’t like your  product but they  could like these other ones and you’ve already paid for that traffic. It’s  amazing what you can do.

Josh: That makes sense. It’s dramatic on how much that  definitely increases your business so. Listen up to what Ilan said. You have  the business, you’re already have traffic coming in, get out and start  creating some retargeting. If you don’t know what to do, Satoriprime will  help you with it …

Ilan: Yeah, we’d love to help.

Josh: And lot of different companies on the internet.  I know I have spent hundreds of thousands  of dollars finding the wrong people for internet marketing.

Ilan: Me too.

Josh: Thanks now you own one company.

Ilan: Yeah. Me too.

Josh: Watch who you pick you know definitely get on and  connect with Satoriprime and you make sure you’re picking the right companies  to align yourself with as well.

Ilan: Honestly I am one of these people if we’re not the right  fit, I just love recommending good people. Like you said I’ve been burnt so  many times. There are so many people that will promise you the world and them  just … For lack of a better term they’ll just steal your money. But there  are some really really great people who have integrity and actually care  about making people succeed.

Josh: Cool. Awesome man. Just two extra questions, what’s the  best advice you ever received?

Ilan: Wow! Best advice ever received. I’ll keep it really  simple, one of my mentors always said to me, the only difference between  successful people and not successful people, are successful people can stand  in no result longer than anyone else.  I didn’t understand it at the time, but now I absolutely do. This is a  journey. This is a climb up Mt. Everest if you will. It’s simple and it’s as  process where you just put one foot in front of the other but it’s very  intricate in its complexity. You going to have to learn a few things, you’re  going to slide down a bunch of times, and at times it’s going to feel like  you’re doing all this work and there’s no result. Just like a farmer you  plant a seed you’re not going out there the next day and looking out and  going oh it didn’t work and you dig out the seed. That just kills what you did.  You just have to know that it takes time and effort and if you just keep  focusing on the vision and mission it’s unstoppable. I’ve seen people do  unbelievable things.

Josh: Cool man. That’s awesome. It’s interesting everybody has  kind of a different perspective on what their best advice was. It’s really  awesome to hear that. Different spin on what that take is. Really cool.  What’s the one device you can’t live without?

Ilan: Device or tool or what?

Josh: Device yeah. Phone or whatever maybe a computer.

Ilan: Well obviously I cannot live without my computer because  of my work right now, but can I share one tool that is really an evolution  itself?

Josh: Sure absolutely.

Ilan: There’s a Gmail add on called Boomerang which is just  amazing. It’s just very simple I think like four bucks a month or something.  It has a free service for about ten usages, but basically what it allows you  to do is either reply … Say you send an email someone you want a response,  you can have this thing send back the email to you within a certain amount of  time if you do not get the response.  Rather than putting stuff on your calendar saying like oh follow up  response then you see that pop up and you’re like, what am I following up on  them about? I have no idea. This actually sends you the email with all the  information. That’s one thing that I love.

Then the other is say someone says, follow up with me in  thirty days. You put a calendar thing, follow up with so and so in thirty  days, by that time you have no idea what the conversation was, what you spoke  about.  You’re sitting there for ten  minutes reading all these emails, you can literally write the email, right  then and there at that moment and then send it to them thirty days from now  and it’s just out of sight out of mind. It’s like all this stuff that covers  your booking it just completely eliminates. That’s been an amazing tool.

Josh: I know. I worked on some emails and I’m like well I want  to send that one later so I slide it off to the side …

Ilan: That’s it.

Josh: Server crashes, you lose it, it’s in draft you forget  all about it.

Ilan: You forget why?

Josh: Yeah. Ill grab that one right away. Cool man. I really  appreciate your time today and being on the show and I know you’ve got a  tight schedule so we’ll let you go here in a minute. Thanks again.

Ilan: Thank you.

Josh: Oh yeah no problem. This is Ilan Ferdman from Satoriprime guys make sure to check him out  if you need any Facebook marketing on anything and I am Josh Felber and  you’re watching Making Bank. Get out and be extraordinary.

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