Special Guest Expert - Dave Combs: Video automatically transcribed by Sonix

Special Guest Expert - Dave Combs: this eJwljslugzAURX_FeouuSBAQMiBFVdWmSTrSSWpXyDUPatXGyH6GtFH-vaBu73DuPYIwDWFDBf20CBlcQACyccQbgYUsIYsX6TJOkjQA4R0Z7R3af2MezWdpHAAXwviBMIrJcpVGiwAqiaosGq5HZiUVDtjvntvaQXYEb9UgfxG1LgvDvu-ntTG1Qt5KNxVGh6WVHYZdHI5VF0YP_iO_z_PrW_O0dXF-0Hev-9XN845v9o-_75PdOVe01lhKfuaMtwLXpekbZXj5NkwFQJLU-OSlRSG5YluPjtjm0KIlNmHsinfILo3-dEO4MlZzGtK6ncHp9Ae1pWDf:1ncryU:AJSH-esBb0ySaFybWV_hvwBXnYI video file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Speaker1:
So here's the big question.

Speaker2:
Our entrepreneurs like us who have been hustling and struggling to make it to success, who seem to make it one step forward, only to fall two steps back. Who are dedicated. Determined. And driven. How do we finally break through? And with that is the question. And this podcast will give you the. My name is Brian Kelly.

This is the mind body.

Speaker3:
Hello everyone and welcome, welcome, welcome to the Mind Body Business Show. We have another fantastic show lined up for you tonight. And it's because of our amazing guest expert, Dave Combs. He is here. He's in the wings. He's waiting. He's going to come on really, really soon. He is an amazing guy. I cannot wait for you to meet him and for this show to give the up tune, to share his brilliance with everyone who come in contact with it, whether it be on live video, recorded video or podcast audio. We are on 25 different podcasting platforms. The Mind Body Business Show is a show for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs, and our mission is to bring on the best of the best, like Dave Combs, so that we can extract the secrets, the secrets that have helped them to catapult themselves to the level of success they currently have. And they continue to rise. That's what I love about this show is no two stories are the same. There are recipes for success. There are many recipes, just like a chocolate cake, but there's hundreds of recipes, and I'll bet every single one gives you a successful cake at the end. The real cool thing is you only need one. Just pick one and go with it. So if you resonate with Dave, he might be your next mentor. You never know. And that is the beauty of success. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. And so the mind body business shows based on the three pillars of success, and they are the very part of the name of this show. So mind is all about mindset. And most successful people, all those successful people that I study and I did this for about a decade, studied just successful people, they all had this these three things in common.

Speaker3:
One, they had a very, very powerful, positive and most importantly, flexible mindset and body. They literally, to a person, took care of themselves either through nutrition or exercise. Well, actually, both. And then business business is very multifaceted. To succeed in business, one must master a series of skill sets, skill sets like sales, team building, systematizing, leadership marketing. It goes on and on. And the thing is to master any one skill can take an exceedingly long time. And the good news is you as a person, as an individual trying to create a successful business or just a more successful business, you personally don't have to master every skill set because if you have just mastered one. Just one. Then the others can fall into place. And that one skill set is the skill set of leadership. The moment you have mastered that, you can now bring in other individuals who have already mastered those skill sets that you have yet to or may never master yourself. And that way you can build your business faster and get up to the level of results that you're looking for within a much shorter period of time. Because why waste time when you're here to serve people and give them answers to their pain points in a way that's in a serving attitude? That's what we want. We want to scale businesses like that all the time and help in any way we can. And that is it. That's the mind body business show in a nutshell. And another phenomenal trait I recognized over this period of studying successful folks is that to a person, they also are very avid readers of books. That's right, books. And not just any books, but the right books. And real quickly, we're going to segue into a little segment I affectionately call Bookmarks.

Speaker4:
Bookmarks for and to read bookmarks. Ready steady. Read bookmarks brought to you by reach your peak library dotcom.

Speaker3:
Yes. Reach your peak library now. Dave is coming on right after this, I promise you. Hang tight. Dave Combs is in the house. Reach your peak library. One quick word of advice before we move on. And that is as we're going through this evening on this live show, I know Dave is going to be dropping nuggets and bombs of wisdom, smart bombs, knowledge bombs. They're going to be everywhere. He is going to be dropping some incredible valuable tips that will include resources like websites. And what I implore of you to do is rather than click away and take your gaze away from the show and your attention is to write those down and then visit them after the show is over. And there's a very specific reason for that. I've spoken on stage many times and I'm speaking and I know I'm getting to the part that's going to have the profound impact on folks lives. And sometimes I'd see certain people get up and walk and leave the room because they've got to go to the restroom. They got that important phone call or text message and they just missed what could have changed their life forever in a great way. And I'd really hate for that to happen for you. And all it takes is taking your attention away for just a little bit, and that that could be the case. I don't want that to be. So it's up to you. But I would advise you to to write notes, get out a pad of paper or tape it on your computer, whatever is best for you. That's my soapbox moment. We're going to get off it now.

Speaker3:
Reach your peak. Library is a site that I had built with you in mind. The entrepreneur that's looking to build their business, to take it to the next step, maybe even to improve in your personal life, but primarily business focused. And what I did is I was not an avid reader myself until about the age of 47 when I started reading crazily because I realized, my gosh, this is having a profound impact on my life. So as I was doing this, the books that had that impact on my life ended up on this website. And the reason is, is because not every book I've ever read is in here. They're only the ones that are vetted that I vet as a successful entrepreneur so that you, when you come to it, you have a more likelihood of not wasting your time because it hopefully will have a similar impact on your business and your life. I can't promise that it will. Depends. We're all in different places at different times, but it's here as a resource for you. This is not necessarily a moneymaking website. I have no problem if you find a book on this website and go buy it at a bookstore, purchase it on Amazon directly, whatever you want to do. But they're here so you can look at them and go, Oh, someone else says, These are good books. Maybe I'll go spend some time and read those, too. I would highly recommend that. All right. Spending time with a valuable resource is exactly what we're going to do now, because we're going to bring on Dave Combs. Here he comes. Get ready.

Speaker4:
It's time for the guest expert. Spotlight savvy. Skillful, professional. Adept. Trained. Big league qualified.

Speaker1:
Yes. And there he is, ladies and gentlemen. It is the one. It is the only. Dave Combes.

Speaker5:
Wow. Brian, I tell you what. What a intro. I tell you. And before we even get to talking about me.

Speaker1:
I brought. You won't believe this.

Speaker5:
You were going to ask me what books do I love? This is one of the books that I read when I was just a young pup trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life. And these are some of the nuggets that got me into the entrepreneurial mindset when I was in. I was probably I know I was in my twenties, so and I'm a little bit beyond that right now. But there's another one here is Psycho Cybernetics by Maxwell Models and those, those kind of books just get you your life off to a good start. When you're young and you're not sure what you're going to do, those books will plant the seeds of thought and in logic in your mind that will they will be there for the rest of your life. So amen to what you just said with that library. That is fantastic. I thought I couldn't I couldn't believe he showed my book right there.

Speaker3:
Well, hopefully we'll have another book to add to that library soon. There's one over your left shoulder. I see.

Speaker1:
I see. Yeah, that would be great.

Speaker3:
So, yeah, real quick, before we go any farther, I do need to get through some housekeeping, I call it. I want to mention that for those of you that stay on with us to the end that are watching the show live, that you are going to be given away to win a five night stay at a five star luxury resort. And that's all compliments of our sponsor. You see that red and white logo above Mr. Combs? Left shoulder, the right side of the screen as you're watching us. It is the big insider secrets. That is my good friend Jason Nast and his company. They give us the ability to give away a show or a show.

Speaker1:
A vacation each and every.

Speaker3:
Show. And I just love him for it. So be sure to stick around till the end. You do not want to miss that. And then a couple more quick ones. And then we're going to get back to the the man and myth and legend himself, Mr. Dave Combs. So stay here. Stay here. If you're struggling with putting a live show together and it's overwhelming and you want a lot of the processes done for you while still enabling you to put on a high quality show and connect with great people like Dave Combs and grow your business all at the same time. Then head on over to carpet bomb marketing, carpet bomb marketing. Saturate the marketplace with your message. And one of the key components that is contained in the carpet bomb marketing series is one that you'll learn how to absolutely master. And it's a very service we're using right here, right now to stream our live shows right here on the Mind Body Business Show. And over the course of now, jeez, ten years I've tried so many of these television studio type solutions for live streaming. And I have to tell you, stream art is the best of the best. It just combines supreme ease of use along with unmatched functionality. So write this URL down. Don't go to it. Write it down our WIP dot I am forward slash stream live one more time our WIP dot I am forward slash stream live all lowercase, no spaces all together and go check that out. We're going to bring back the man of the hour right now. Here he comes. Here he comes. Ready? There he.

Speaker1:
Is. Look at that.

Speaker3:
The magic of video. So now to give him the proper introduction. Introduction that he deserves. Are you ready, Dave? Here we go.

Speaker5:
I'm ready. I'm sitting down.

Speaker1:
Dave Combs.

Speaker3:
He is a songwriter, entrepreneur, successful business executive and best selling Amazon author. I mean, that's all we need to say right there. But there's more. Over the past four decades, he has written over 120 songs and created 15 albums of soothing, relaxing, instrumental piano music, including the popular standard Rachel's Song. His music has been played millions of times on radio, satellite and all Internet streaming media. You're going to love this guy. He gets things that most people much younger than him and younger than me don't get. I cannot wait to dig into his beautiful brain. His book, Touched by the music, as you see over his left shoulder, is about an inspired and some say anointed song, the man who wrote it, the successful music business that grew from it, and the millions of people whose lives continue to be touched by Dave's peaceful, peaceful music and his uplifting stories. And we're going to get into a few of those, I'm sure, tonight. And in his book, musician and master storyteller Dave Combs brings to life his amazing journey through his own personal, captivating stories. And Dave grew up in Erwin, Tennessee, and now he and his wife, Linda, make their home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in the USA.

Speaker1:
Whoo!

Speaker3:
There we go. Finally officially informed. Dave Combes, the one and only master musician and incredibly successful businessman. I cannot wait. I'm so happy to have you here, Dave.

Speaker5:
Well, Brian, I'm happy to be here, too. This is this is really exciting.

Speaker3:
Oh, and we were talking before we got on live here, and I learned some things about you that really impressed me in a huge way, that you were very highly interested in writing software when you were younger. And there weren't, there wasn't this availability of computers and, and software languages and all the things that I, I because I have that same background. That's what's so great about this. The cool thing is you have embraced technology faster than most that are 2030 years your your on the younger than you. I can't think of the right word. What's the word? Not your senior but junior. Your junior.

Speaker1:
Yeah. Oh, my goodness.

Speaker3:
I'm having a senior moment myself.

Speaker1:
Oh.

Speaker3:
I love the fact that you haven't you don't, you don't only embrace it, but you you like. I can't think of the right word, but you are just you champion it. You are you are one of the first to jump on it. And we'll talk into that about that a little bit. When you talked about your music and how the platforms of the media changed over time on which the music came from and played. And what I like to jump into first, Dave, like I always like to open a show, is, in my humble opinion, all of our success or lack thereof, all starts and ends in one place. And that's what's going on between those two ears in the noggin. And why I like to find out from people like you is when you get up in the morning, you know, being an entrepreneur isn't always the easiest thing in the world. In fact, it's often not. And there's always a challenge to overcome, which is kind of why I like it. But not everybody does. And when you get up and say there's arduous task looking, you know, looking you in the face as soon as you wake up, which we do have those sometimes daily, sometimes weekly. And you just you get up and you know, it's time to get to it. What is it in your mind that's going off when you wake up, you start your day. What keeps you driven? What keeps you just powering through each and every day, each and every week, each and every month, you know, continuously and and persistently and just to keep going so you can achieve level of success that you have today. What is going on in that big, beautiful brain of yours when you get up?

Speaker5:
Well, for one thing, I have several decades of experience in doing that. And earlier on, obviously, when you are not sure about your success or whether your business is going to be a success or not, you wake up with all these questions about is this going to work, that going to work or whatever. But over time, you will develop a set of things that happen positively that give you confidence. And so today, when I wake up, I know there is probably not a single problem that's going to confront me today that I will not be able to handle. And if I can't handle it by myself, I certainly can handle it with my wonderful wife, Linda. She has been a partner and my best friend, my my soul mate since we first met in 1969. We've been married 52 years coming coming on 52 years. And so between the two of us, there's hardly a problem, whether it's technical or personal or has to do with people or marketing or ideas, we just complement each other. So when I wake up and I know that I'm going to maybe I'm going to appear on four podcasts a day I have I always look forward to those like these because I love talking to these hosts. Eventually most of them become good friends of mine because we just connect that, that well. And so I have the confidence that knowing that if I don't know the answers to my problems, they're going to have people like you, Brian, and other folks that I talk with. Now, if they've got that problem solved in a heartbeat and like you said, you build your team around you.

Speaker5:
If you don't know the answer, just have the leadership and be humble enough to know that I can't do everything. I've got to bring in some my team to help me with this. And so I think that's the secret, is that you have you have your mission in mind. Of course, the overall thing that you want to do, like in my case, I want to spread my music around the world as best I can. There's millions of people who have heard it, but there's tens and hundreds of millions that have not heard it yet. So my mission is to spread the word about that. Well, I can't do that by myself. But with the help of folks like you and others that I've talked with, their who knows when I'm going to talk to one person who has a contact that has a way to get it to 10 million people. You just never know. And it's the same way with marketing a product, you know, you never know when you're going to meet somebody that's going to help you and give you the idea that's going to change your life with your business. You're going to go in a direction you never thought of. So that's kind of how my mind works. My my wife says that, my, my, I'm an idea of minute kind of person. I make her mind brain spin, she says. Sometimes I got too many things going, but you just have have to have those ideas and concepts and just keep take action. Don't stand still and fret and worry about things. Take action. Just move ahead.

Speaker3:
My goodness, I didn't share this with you before we start the show, but that is what I call a bomb dropping moment, if there ever was.

Speaker1:
Oh.

Speaker3:
Bombs. Bombs of wisdom, bombs of knowledge. That was my gosh, that was an entire seminar in a couple of minutes right there. I hope everyone was listening. Confidence that is like the mean the main ingredient that I see that keeps people from success is they don't have enough self confidence. Other people could have confidence in you, but if you don't have it in yourself, it's a difficult road and we've all been there, I think you included, Dave, we've all had that, that lack of confidence in the beginning when we haven't proven to ourselves we could do it. So that was huge. Married for 52 years. God bless you. I mean, we've got 36 over here, my high school sweetheart. And the way you talk about her, thank you for being what I consider to be a real man when it comes to that. I appreciate that. And we need more people like you to say stuff like that publicly about their spouse, whether it's man or woman, you know, husband or wife. I just that I have nothing but respect for you for that and then be in humble enough. I mean, that's just basically getting out of your ego, right? Getting throwing that ego away, having enough humbleness to ask for help. And what I mean, being a guy, Dave, was that one of those things that took quite a while to finally get over that and on a regular basis and ask for help?

Speaker5:
Yes, I'm lucky. And I think you can appreciate this, that we're both computer programing kind of guys that very analytical. And it's tough to admit sometimes I don't know how to solve this problem because I'm I'm a I'm a problem solver at heart. And it's I'd always like to think there's hardly a problem you can throw at me that I can't figure out a way to solve it. But sometimes you just have to say, I do not know how to solve this. Let me go ask somebody else. You just have to have to bite your tongue and do it. So that's you've got to learn that lesson real early, I think. Otherwise, you're wasting time.

Speaker1:
Oh.

Speaker3:
Amen. And yeah, I've got to tell you, and I even go to the point where, you know, there are times where I know I could solve it, but do I really want to spend the kind of time I'm going to need to spend to do that? Why not bring somebody in who already knows how to do it like that and get it over with and tear out that.

Speaker1:
Band-aid and be done with it, right? Exactly.

Speaker3:
Oh, my gosh. Yeah. It's like marketing. Take my gosh. I mean, I'm I'm writing notes to myself. So for those of you that are thinking, man, gosh, I don't want to write notes. Well, I'm running the show and writing notes. So I always I don't ever suggest people do things that I myself won't do. That's another thing I live by. But that my gosh, every nugget I want to get right into your music, how that came about. I love your back story about how you started off in the corporate world and you are one of the few, one of the rare that loosened yourself from the grip of the corporate chains that bind so many people that one out. If you don't mind a quick back story of how old you were when you finally found that that golden what they call those not the golden the golden.

Speaker1:
Handcuffs, they got rid of them, not the golden parachute of.

Speaker5:
The golden parachute is when you get a retirement from that corporate place that enables you to retire. But I was too young for that. I was 44 years old when I was able to finally quit my job, but I was too young to retire and too young to start drawing retirement. And so I had to make a difficult decision because it had been ingrained in me from my youth that when you get a job with a good paying, big corporation, you stay with that company til you retire. I mean, that was the mindset of my my parents generation. And so it was difficult to say, you know, I've been working for AT&T Western Electric for 22 years and I just going to say goodbye to those 22 years and and just launch out onto my own. That's a huge decision. But I didn't make it blindly and I didn't make it without some certainly some forethought and some some soul searching on my own part. And ironically, I had gotten some letters from some of my fans who wrote to me. They didn't know me. They didn't know that I was trying to make this decision. But that very week, I got a letter from a man that says, Dave Combs, writing music and producing the music that you've done is what God puts you on this planet to do. And I thought, whoa. You know, sometimes you pray for divine intervention or divine guidance. Well, what I learned was that the good Lord doesn't speak to you through claps of thunder and strokes of streaks of lightning.

Speaker1:
He speaks to you through.

Speaker5:
Your your other fellow man. I got 10,000 letters from people telling me what my music meant to them, and it dawned on me that I was expecting some big revelation. And I had it right in front of me in terms of all these communications from these wonderful people. And so that made the decision easy because at that point, the numbers were there. I was making a lot more money with my music business than I was at AT&T. So it wasn't a rough financial decision. It was more emotional than anything else. And so I had lunch with my boss and he he knew about my music business anyway. And we'd talked about it many times, but I had lunch with him and I said, Well, Bill, I'm sorry, but I cannot afford to work here anymore. I need the time off, please. So I handed in my resignation, and that was in February 1992. And I haven't looked back. It was a good decision, but it was one where I had to build my business from 19 and 81, when I wrote my first song up to that 1992, that was 11 years. And so it took me 11 years to build a music business sufficient to offset my income from my full time job. And it wasn't until then that I made the leap.

Speaker3:
And it's tough to do that when you have a full time job. I mean, now that means you're doing you're working 40 hours a week for them and then you get home and you're working the rest for yourself. And what that does is say you had a great high degree of passion for what you did, you loved what you did, or you probably wouldn't have done it and spent all that time.

Speaker5:
You're right about that. It was every every evening and all weekend long working on building that business and building my retail outlets through gift shops. I sold my music back then, CDs and cassette tapes through gift shops, not through record stores or the big box stores they didn't have wouldn't have anything to do with me. So I had to develop my own channel, my own market, and it became known as the play and sell market, which they play the music, and then you hear it, they sell it and you buy it. And me and two other musicians were the only ones in the whole country that were doing that for a living. And it was later on discovered by everybody. And now the music stores are out there. They're out of business and music. This day and time is you can buy it at Cracker Barrel. You can buy it at the card shop. You can buy it anywhere now. But back then it was just me and two other people and we developed that market and thank you very much. We did real well at it.

Speaker3:
And I love how you've just continually retained your flexibility going from cassettes to to then CDs, which are now on the way out as well. Yeah. And now then it was iTunes and just electronic media that you still had to have a player for. Now you don't even need a player. You can just get it from the Internet directly and just play it directly. It's amazing what technology has done, but walk us through what that was like for you as a musician or as a person who wrote music and created music and then sold it. What was it like for you to have to continually change how you went about marketing and delivering your music when the medium kept changing on you?

Speaker5:
Well, that was very difficult. If you recall in the mid nineties perhaps the CDs were kind of at their peak and then the latter part of the nineties was the introduction of the internet and the digital media and digital delivery. And you probably remember Napster. Napster was they were the group you remember that basically took music from the copyright owners, gave it away. Well, that is not a business model you can make money at when you give your product away. Well, what they did was basically kill the sales of music because the teenagers and young people were saying, why would I pay $15 for a CD? I can just go to Napster and I can download it for free and I don't have to pay nothing. Well, that was really, really bad. And it hurt not just me. It hurt the entire music industry. And fortunately, Apple came along in the early 2000s and came out with iTunes and were basically offering one song for download for $0.99. Well, that. That model basically worked. People were were willing to pay $0.99. And I think their conscience got hopefully got the better of them rather than steal it by getting it for free. They were oh, I'll pay $0.99 for a song, surely. And so basically that that model took over. And fortunately, the courts also shut down Napster in their stealing of the music. They paid dearly for that. But in the meantime, they they had killed our sales for several years there. But that was painful. And we were wondering how are we going to still be able to stay in business as a music business? And fortunately, the digital world began to evolve and and grow.

Speaker5:
You had it grew from downloads to start with. And all of a sudden somebody introduces streaming Pandora. Pandora comes out and says, oh, we got this new way of analyzing music. And Dave Combs, you can submit your albums to us and everybody else can. And and if your song sounds like another song, we'll put those two together and make that a station, so to speak. So when they played my music, the next song that came on may have been a Barry Manilow song or some big name, so it really helped the little guy a lot because if your music was good and sounded like the other big name, big popular music, you got played on Pandora and that's still today. The way you can do a Dave Combs or a Gary Primm channel on Pandora. You'll hear my music and you'll hear a bunch of other music as well. So that was early on and I jumped on that, like being an ATV kind of person. As soon as I found out about something, man, I'm uploading my files just as soon as I possibly can. Spotify comes along and how do I get my stuff on Spotify? I just upload, upload and get that stuff there. I wanted to be early in. I think the term you were looking for a while ago was early adopter. I have always been an early adopter for technology and gadgets and I love gadgets anyway. I'm a sucker for all these gadget ads on TV. Yeah, I got to have one of those, you know. So anyway, music was kind of the same way as soon as something new came along and I jumped on it.

Speaker5:
And now I have all my songs at 170 plus that are on every streaming media in the world that exists today, I believe. So there's no place in the world that you can't easily get to my music. Now, there's a there's another caveat here. Most people don't know what how much a musician like myself gets paid every time one of their songs gets downloaded. I always love to ask people. They give them a wild guess, you know? But the real answer is point to pennies. Point to pennies, not even a penny. 0.2. It takes five plays, five streams to get one penny of royalty from me. So now you do the math on that and say how much how many streams do I have to make to make, let's say, 25,000 out of my music business? Well, that's some big numbers there. So that's the that's the hill we've got to climb in terms of of the margins and how the the flow of money comes down from the big boys down to the US, the songwriters and the producers and the the people at the bottom of the of the pyramid, so to speak. So that's that's an uphill battle. And it still remains that you'll hear a lot of congressional hearings about this. And everybody, you know, not only are we complaining about it, the the record companies, the big Sonys and all these places that own the catalogs, they're not happy with it either. So it's a it's always a battle, a struggle between who's going to get their fair share of the pie of the money.

Speaker3:
I think we're cut from a similar cloth, though. You know, you're everywhere. Your music is everywhere. And that's that was my philosophy with the show is to have it in many places it can it's funny you mentioned Pandora because they recently and I'm talking right around the pandemic time or right before that opened up podcasting as another channel, if you will, in there. And as soon as I saw that, like you, I jumped on it and it took a while to get it approved. But we are you are going to be on Pandora in the spoken word as well as music now soon after this show airs live. So that's cool. And that's why I coined that term. It's called carpet bomb marketing, which means saturate the area and you're doing just that with your music. You're saturating the marketplace with your music. And that's phenomenal because like you said, you can go nowhere without if anyone were to ever look you up, I think they'll have no problem finding you by name, right?

Speaker5:
I would hope not. Yeah.

Speaker3:
And that's the whole key. And I'm loving listening to this because this is such a great lesson for everyone in business to learn. And the cool thing is to be on all those platforms. It doesn't really cost a ton of money in a lot of cases, especially in podcasting. It costs nothing. It's an RSS feed that gets syndicated. Is it similar with music or does it cost money to be uploaded in certain platforms?

Speaker5:
No. I mean, you're you're basically providing them a revenue stream as well, because they don't I don't get 100% of the revenue. They're going to take some off the top for themselves, for their overhead, for their profit. So, you know, a 99 cent sale from Apple, I may get $0.67. So Apple keeps the you know, the difference, whatever. But there's no charge for me to put it up on their platform so that that part is really great. And it's even the same with books. You know, when I got my book printed, written and ready to upload, I've uploaded the digital file, the word document basically of my book along with the PDF of the cover and all that up to Amazon. Well, guess what? Amazon prints one book. If you order one book, this is a print on demand. No more of these order 10,000 books and have your garage full of boxes of your book anymore. I basically when they somebody orders to books down in Greenville, South Carolina, they print two books and mail them to them. And quickly I mean, quick, it is a quick turnaround because it's all digital.

Speaker3:
That's. That's pretty awesome. Yeah. Print on demand is also great. Yeah, I remember I've seen friends of mine.

Speaker1:
And they've had the big old boxes full of their books and they're like, Yeah, what do I sell? And you had to.

Speaker3:
Pre-purchase these if you wanted to publish. And it was like, Oh yeah, so you do book signing after book signing after book signing. There are all these bookstores and you still have a massive.

Speaker1:
Pile of books in your garage.

Speaker3:
Well, it's nice to have that print on demand ability, and that's what I love about you and talking to you. You work smart. And I always hear this term and I'm sure you've heard it, too. It's always work smarter, not harder. I don't I don't resonate with that. I think it's work smarter and harder. Yes. Continue to hustle, continue to work, continue to and to me. And it sounds like it is with you. It really isn't. I don't consider it like work. It's not like yet. It's I enjoy it. And so I have no problem working harder and going after what I can. You know, you have a great eye and ear for something new, a new gadget. You're going to try it out. Will, that worked. I'm going to employ that in my business model. Now, my business strategy, it sounds like we're I mean, I know we're a little bit different in age, but you might be my twin brother that I never got connected with. Separated, birth or something. You just happen to come out to be the better looking one. So I don't think you do that.

Speaker1:
But and you're.

Speaker5:
Getting deep in here now.

Speaker1:
I better get my feet. I love it. But yeah.

Speaker3:
I have nothing but respect for what you've done, how you've gone about it. Everything you're saying just resonates so wonderfully in business and in life. How to go about things, being an idea man, always throwing ideas out. You know, you've been through this for quite some time now and I'm sure you've had some great wins. I'm sure you've had some difficult times, too. And like you just mentioned with Napster, some struggles. But if you were to if you were to single out one moment in your in your business after after you were 44 years old and you went into the industry you're in now with the music, if you could pick out one moment, that was the most absolutely satisfying moment since you started. What would that be?

Speaker5:
I think it probably stemmed from the article that I wrote in Guidepost magazine. Of course, I enjoyed the the progress up through being able to quit my job. But by 1994, my music business was really on a on a tear. And I got a phone call from one of my fans who called to tell me how much my music had helped her through her pain and suffering. She had a terrible disease where she needed surgeries all the time, and it was very painful. And I found out through her that she was a writer for Guidepost magazine, and she loved my story about Rachel's song, how I wrote it and all this and a lot of what we've talked about. She thought it was very inspiring about being able to quit my job and she says, I love that story. Why don't you let me submit that idea to Guideposts? I said, okay. All right. So she she did. And shortly call me back and said, they love it and they want us to do an article. So she goes through it. She she was a ghostwriter. So she wrote the article for me in the in the magazine and basically submitted it. And they, they published it and it's called two part harmony with my picture there on it. And it's a story about Rachel song and how it led to my being able to quit my job and and that spiritual inspiration that I got that I told you about a while ago, that's in the in the book. Well, this little magazine, a lot of most of your listeners and readers are watchers are going to have seen this magazine. It's been around forever. But it's a it's one of those full of good stories, magazines. It's it's circulation in the hard copy was over 2 million people. And the day this was September issue, 1994, the day that magazine hit the street, I could tell I could have told you to the second when it hit the street, because they put my address and phone number in the back of the book.

Speaker1:
Oh, no.

Speaker5:
My phone started ringing, Brian, and it was an 800 number. And I would you'd answer it, pick it up. It was somebody I just read this article in the magazine. I want to order my cassette or our CD of Rachel Bob. And I'd take the order and just put the receiver down. Ding it, ring it again. It was you didn't even really didn't even have to wait for it to ring you pick it up. There's somebody there. I had to hire two people to help me answer the phone. And then two days later, my mailman comes to the front door, the doorbell rings, I go to the door, and here he stands. And he's standing there with this big old canvas bag, and he can't even it's too heavy for him to even pick up. And I said, and he says, Dave, what in the world have you done? I can't even pick this bag up and it's full of mail for you. I said, Well, I just wrote a little article in Guidepost magazine, and I guess people are reading it and writing to me. And he it took us all night long just to zip open the mail and pull the contents out and put a paper clip on it. And it in two weeks time I heard from over 10,000 people from this little article and my phone was just amazing. So if I had one thing, I guess, that I'll never, ever forget was the the impact that this little publicity and this is not advertising, this is publicity, and it's the importance of good, positive publicity. What it did for me, it basically basically it put me in high gear, but it also was super confirming and affirming that I was doing the right thing. And that was just an incredible watershed event in my life.

Speaker3:
That's amazing. I love stories like that. Oh, goodness. That's. I can see why that was that moment. My gosh, I could imagine, you know, the phone's lighting up two days later, the mail coming in, having to hire people, getting to hire people. Because I like the refreshments. They didn't have to. I got to.

Speaker1:
That's awesome.

Speaker3:
Oh, Don Hopper, it's. How are you doing, buddy? He's a local city of commerce. He runs a Chamber of Commerce. Chamber of Commerce here, local where I live. He's an amazing guy, always giving, always helping business.

Speaker5:
Hey, Don.

Speaker3:
Thanks for coming on, Don. Great, great guy. Yeah, that's a great that. You know what that really tells me? You know, a lot of people will speak from stage or write books themselves and it's interesting or even when they present on stage, there's so a lot of them are so ingrained with the information they're providing, you know, making sure the slides are just perfect. They got every bullet point they want to get across. And what I've learned over time and through mentorship is the importance, probably more importance of storytelling and metaphors then the actual information. You want to sprinkle the information in there. But with yours, I can imagine the story is what literally sold your music, because that's all it was. Like you said, it was publicity, it wasn't an advertisement. And that just that just rung true. It's like story sell period, end of story. I mean, end of story. If there's something of interest in the story and you know, for everyone out there, make them authentic. Don't just make up some story to try to sell something. But have you spoken from stage? Have you have you I mean, you've written a book. The resonate with that. Does that make sense with you?

Speaker5:
I used to do more than I do now with the pandemic has kind of slowed everything down from public appearances. But I would do a program at a church group or whatever. And and I've spoken to lots of people and Rotary and those kind of little club private clubs and are not private clubs, but just social clubs. And the stories are what makes the, the makes your points. Yeah. What I'll do is I'll, I'll tell a story, I'll sit down at the piano and play a song. I'll get back up and I'll tell another story or two or three and say, back then I'll play another song. And it's that kind of back and forth that I think makes for an interesting program. But the story is, is the key. And in storytelling was what I really had to learn to fine tune my art of storytelling to do my book. I wanted my book to bring for example, when I did the recording of Rachel's song in the studio, I wanted you to, when you're reading that story, put the song on and put it in your headphones. And as you're reading it, I want you to be in that room with me. I want you to hear that music coming out of that piano and the synthesizer and and feel the joy and emotion I'm feeling about hearing my music played by somebody else for the very first time. And it's that bringing it to life in a story is what I think is so important.

Speaker3:
Yeah. Bringing them into the experience. And that's very key. And I talked to a guy who was a publisher, a book publisher, and he said something I'll never forget. He's like, No matter what you're about to write about, I'll guarantee you it's been written about before you. He said, So what? Why would anyone want to or even consider writing another book? Because it's going to be on a topic that's been written about. And he said the reason is because what makes it unique to you are your stories that you put in that book. No one else has your stories. Nobody has your stories that that's what makes it unique to you. And you will resonate with a certain percentage of people. You won't resonate with everybody. We never do. But you'll resonate with a certain percentage of people that the person that wrote the book before you may not have resonated with. So you've just hit a whole different market and it's like, I never forgot that that plus my mentor about talking on stage about the importance of stories and like I'd watch this guy who was masterful. I was like, Geez, Louise, this whole thing's been a story. And I haven't cared about the fact that there wasn't anything of meat, but there was because it had a purpose that he would lead into the story. But I was just like, that was it really gets people to ingest what you're saying. And so that my whole purpose is to get them to get the result they came for whatever that takes.

Speaker5:
That's exactly right. And it's a real privilege sometimes to share your stories with people as well and see them. You can tell when you're talking to an audience, whether you're connecting or not. And if they're if they're looking around and looking at their phone or whatever, you've lost them. But if they're there on the edge of their seat and really paying, looking you in the eye, you know, you've got them and they deserve for you to give them your best effort and your best story. So they get the message and they enjoy it and remember it. Everybody remembers a story.

Speaker3:
Okay. I can't resist that one. Oh, I missed a miss swinging to miss it.

Speaker1:
To the wrong page.

Speaker3:
I've got gremlins going on behind the scenes here. Messing with my. My production quality. That was a bomb dropping moment. But you just said it's it's basically what I heard from you is it's important to get the impact for the audience. And it's not about, you know, a lot of people before they go up on stage, me included. We get nervous right before you're being called up if you're a guest speaker and you start getting those nerves and then I finally just call myself down. Mentor taught me this as well. It's like, you know what? This is for the people. This is not about me. This is about the audience. And I just want to do everything I can to make it the best experience for them as I possibly can. And then I'm instantly calm down.

Speaker5:
It's amazing and I feel the same way. Brian About my music. Yeah, I enjoy the recording myself, but the best thing that I feel about it is I know when I hear a song I've always been able to tell a hit song when I heard it on the radio. You may have to when even when I was a kid, if I heard a song and I said, as I hit it, I never missed it. I mean, it was always a hit. And so when I heard my own music being arranged and performed by Gary Prim and the way he did, I knew in my heart that maybe it's not the hit is not the right word, but it's going to be received by people that are going to say, Wow, that, I like that and I want to hear that more and more and more. And it's that confirmation to me that was really important that that I connected with my potential audience of my music. And that's still true today. I know that when people hear my music even on streaming and satellite or wherever it is, they're going to be touched by it. And and I still get emails and letters that from people that tell me that's still the case.

Speaker3:
Isn't that the God? It's got to be the most joyous feeling in the world that knowing that you had a positive impact on someone, it could have been they were not feeling so wonderful that day. The state of mind was maybe they were sad, or in reminiscing about someone who's passed and then they put in your music and they they're lifted and then they tell you about it. I mean, that to me, that's that's worth more than all the money in the world is to help people, you know, lift their spirit in any way you can. I love to talk to like if I go to Starbucks, those baristas, my God, they are so busy, unbelievably busy. And they're in this state and they're just grinding. And I will look at their name badge. I'll see their name. I said, you know what? You are doing such a phenomenal job. I just want to tell you, I appreciate how hard you're working or I'll say whatever comes to mind, but it breaks that state and just that moment and kind of smile and like there I did my job, I planted a seed and I walked away and I felt good about helping them break out of that state for just a moment. Whatever it takes.

Speaker1:
Mm hmm.

Speaker3:
And I imagine you get that from your music all the time.

Speaker5:
Yes. Now, when you get my.

Speaker1:
Book.

Speaker5:
On, chapter 21 is full of it's 22 pages where I have extracted out of my 50,000 notes and letters, I've taken 22 pages of them and put them in my book. And I'm telling you that I still read that Chapter 21 periodically myself because I cannot read it without getting that. Feeling of a connection between me and my music and my fans that have gotten something out of it. They're so personal and so touching. Some will make you laugh. Some will make you cry. But they're they're all so personal. And that connection is really I devoted a whole chapter to that. So when you get the book, you'll be able to read some of those wonderful notes that I got as well.

Speaker3:
There's so many great parallels between your connection with your listeners, your fans and with business, and the importance of establishing relationships with your clients and your people. There's a lot of similarities here where, you know, as long as you get that, you know, many entrepreneurs, most that I've interviewed on the show are not money centric. They're servant centered. And they understand this inherently, that it's about serving the individual, getting them the results they're looking for, making them get. When they get to that point, then you feel good because you did something for them versus, Oh, I got I got money from them, so I feel great. And so I see a lot of similarities between what you do and it's a business, what you're doing and your, your relationship is a is a different dynamic because it's the music that they're loving and because of that, they love you. And I see why, though, if they had ever met you, then they would love you even more and they should all meet you. But it sounds like many of them did.

Speaker1:
They called you, but that's a great story in its own right. But my gosh.

Speaker3:
Have you ever had one of those things where you get an idea? So when you go down the track of business and you're going through the music industry, you're going down that track. But then you think of these micro movements that you might want to make change the approach to this or refine this, and you think, Oh, this is it. This is going to really take me to the next stage. And you get stuck on that idea, not necessarily in a bad way, but when do you know when to say, I've taken this long enough, I need to pull the plug and go a different direction because so many of us get stuck in that rut where we just know this is going to work and we're told to be persistent and never give up, but we're never told when to give up when it's the right time. How do you know that?

Speaker5:
Well, I think, Brian, you and I probably are similar in that we are numbers people. I basically I have my MBA from Wake Forest University. So I'm a business oriented person and I look at the number. I've always looked at the numbers and graphs and charts and all those kind of things and projects. I used to be a forecast expert in AT&T, so numbers are part of that and. Essentially you go to a point and if you try something long enough and you see the numbers are just not working, you need to set a draw a line in the sand, so to speak, and say if this thing goes south beyond this, that's it. I'm not going to just hope. Hope is not a strategy. You've got to go by the numbers. I'll tell you one good example real quickly. I thought that my music would sell like gangbusters on television. You've seen these Time-Life scrolling ads where they play the pretty music and the sign and the titles of the songs, all that stuff. I thought they were selling music. They are not selling music. I can tell you they are selling mailing lists is all they are doing is they're building a mailing list. If they don't if they break even on an ad for a Time-Life whatever, that's great.

Speaker5:
But out of the process, they get a mailing list of people that ordered the book and they can sell the mailing list for more than the music. So anyway, I thought that that would be a great place for my music, you know, because my music would sound great on TV and it's as good as theirs. I hooked up with HGTV, which was a new cable channel at the time in Knoxville, Tennessee. Got my ad made, made a handshake agreement with their sales or marketing manager or vice president of marketing that he would I paid him $13,000 for, I think it was 30, 62nd ads to run on TV. That's a lot of money for me. I did not know if I was going to make any money or not, and neither did he. He could not assure me that I was going to break even, but this was early on. Luckily, he was an honest man and we shook hands on a deal that says, he says, I will run your ad until you are whole, until you make back your $13,000. And I said, I can't refuse that ad, that thing. And he had no idea what it would take. Well, long story short, they started running the ads.

Speaker5:
I'd get four or five orders, something like that. Just dribbles coming in. I was expecting thousands. Just a handful came in. Well, he was good to his word. And this is the value of a handshake on an honest person. He ran my ad for free for four years. Wow. That long? And the way they did it was they ran it in their unsold slots anywhere. They had an ad they had. And so they ran my ad. I was the king of late night TV. You could not turn on HGTV after midnight and not see a Dave Combs ad on there, maybe two or three times an hour. But eventually I did break even and I agreed for him doing that. I said, I will share with you the data that I collect on who bought it, where they were. And so he got a lot of data out of the deal where his listeners were and what kind of reaction. But anyway, that was a lesson where I decided I'm not going to do that again because advertising at that rate, at least, it did not pay off. And so that was a I had to draw the line. And but fortunately he had shook my hand and said, we'll make you whole.

Speaker3:
And I know a lot of people today can relate to those kind.

Speaker1:
Of situations.

Speaker3:
Like when you go to do a Facebook ad, especially if you've never done one yourself. And yeah, it's a complicated thing. I'm a tech guy like you, and it's it's enormously complicated the first time, the second time, even the third time. And I just said, that's it. I just paid somebody to do it. And still the same as your know. We heard crickets. We got nothing really at all. And this guy was absolutely confident that and I had no right to not believe him. And I'm not mad at him today. He honestly felt this would work really well from his past experience. He's very experienced. And just there was one little thing that was different about mine than the others that he had success with. I won't go into the details, but I can relate to this so much.

Speaker1:
You know.

Speaker3:
We're not saying I don't think Dave saying and I'm not saying either don't spend money on advertising, just be very strategic in where you do it and how much money you're going to spend like your deal. That's a great deal to say make it performance based. And when we break even, then we can pull a cord. That's great. So that's an entrepreneur approach right there. I mean, and that guy was and thankfully he was an honest guy, like you said. That's phenomenal. I'm glad that happened. And you know what? The thing is, though, you got a lot of exposure that you wouldn't have gotten otherwise, whether people got it right. Yeah, they might go to that. You know what? I don't care if this kind of music, but I know someone who might. And I'll bet some sales happen on the back end as a result. Quite a few. I'll bet if they remember if they wrote it down before they fell asleep. If it was that late at night.

Speaker1:
I wonder if I saw any of those. I'm trying to think, was it local.

Speaker3:
To your area?

Speaker5:
Oh, it was nationwide. Of course, HGTV at that point was a beginning network. They didn't they weren't in a lot of markets yet. They were still growing. And they would always tell me their reach was so many millions of people will reach is just a fancy term for how many cable TVs are plugged in. It has nothing to do with how many people really actually watch the show. So it's I learned a lot from it. And I just you do have to be wise and very careful in how you spend your your advertising or any kind of money you're investing in your business. Don't just throw throw money at something and think it's going to work. You have to throw it and maybe and test it. If it doesn't work, pull it back. Don't do it anymore.

Speaker3:
That that's key right there is to test it for sure. Yeah, I love it. I love it. My gosh. Yeah, I just looked at the clock. I shouldn't have looked, but I need to, because we're getting near the end here. Dave, you've been amazing. A wonderful, gracious guest. I mean, I know this isn't your first rodeo. I wanted to talk to you more about your podcast appearances, the number and frequency that you do, because you're doing everything that that I agree with as far as what is necessary to be done to get the word out about you, your business, your passion, and how you can help and serve others. And I just appreciate your your work ethic, your authenticity, your character. Big one. You have a solid character. You're an amazing man. And I appreciate getting to know you tonight because we never met before. We started talking about half hour before the show. And I was like, I like this guy. And, you know, and the fact that we're twin brothers, that that adds to it, right? That we were separated. But I like to end every show with a specific question. And I asked this question of every entrepreneur that graces a stage here on the mind body business show. And the thing is, I love what I love about it is it can be a little personal. It's always profound. It's an amazing question. It literally happened by accident because I ended up asking it several times, but not every time. And I thought.

Speaker5:
Wow.

Speaker3:
That was an interesting take on that one. Okay. And so I said, I'm just going to do this every time. And before I do that, though, I did promise those who stuck with us to the end. Yes. I didn't forget that. You can enter to win a five night stay at a five star luxury resort, compliments of the big insider secrets. Jason, ask my good buddy who puts that on. I'm going to put up on the screen how to enter. And so get out those pens and pencils and your notepads on your computer or whatever you're using for notes and write this URL down. You don't need to enter this second, so stay with us. Tell it we're almost done. We've got a few minutes left, so stay this to the end. Write this down and enter after the show's over and we will gather all the entries and do a random draw and can't wait to see who wins. So here it is. Write this down. We're going to put it up on the screen for those of you watching live right now. And that is you want to go to our IP dot I am forward slash vacation so it's our WIP.

Speaker3:
I am for vacation. Write that down and go to that web page after the show it commences or completes and then hopefully you become the winner and you get an amazing vacation stay. And just so you know, these aren't those fly by night. We're going to take you to the basement and water drip torture you into a timeshare, anything like that. It has nothing to do with it. It's a legitimate it's a legitimate vacation stay. And the reason I know that is because the sponsor of this, the owner of this company that sponsors it himself, did this three times, three separate times. He went on these vacation stays that were offered that he's able to sponsor us with. And he said all it is is you pay resort fees, the taxes, not the room fees, and you're in. And there is no there is no basement where there's a timeshare presentation, none of that. It's like a vacation. It's a true bona fide vacation. So definitely write that down and enter that after we're done, because it's time for Dave's big question. I hope I hope Dave is ready for this because.

Speaker5:
I'm going to let me sit up.

Speaker1:
Please get ready for this.

Speaker3:
This will help a lot. Dave There is one of the things about this question is there is no such thing as a wrong answer. It does not exist. It is is the opposite is the only correct answer is yours. That's the only thing that really makes it personal. It means it's unique to you. That's what I found is every answer was quite unique. And so you may have it like that or it may take several moments, even minutes. It doesn't matter. I'm not paying for the airtime. We're all good, however long it takes. It's just right because it's your answer. So there's absolutely no pressure or worry about it whatsoever. So whatever comes into your big, beautiful brain is the right answer. So with all that lead up, are you ready?

Speaker5:
I hope so.

Speaker3:
Yes, I know you are. Here we go. Dave Combes, how do you define success?

Speaker5:
For me, success is measured in the number of and quality of lives that I have touched. I learned this a long time ago. Success is not a a dollar figure. It's not a title. It is merely the lives that you touch for the limited amount of time that you're on this planet. And for me, that comes home really true when I realized that my music is one of my vehicles for me to touch those people's lives and maybe even my book as well. Somebody picks up the book and reads it and is touched by that, that the words that are in there or encouraged or inspired. But the number of lives that you positively impact is really the true measurement of your success in this life, I do believe.

Speaker3:
Mhm. Absolutely. Love that. And real quick, I'm going to pop up your website for folks to see where they can go to grab your music. And Rachel's song right there you see it it's at combs music dot com at. Com B's music music. So Combs like the comb that you put through your hair but plural. Combs music dot com and go ahead and head on over there and grab Rachel's you can actually play it I actually played it before the before we got on the show I had to stop because I was getting so relaxed. I wanted to get amp back up to get on the show. It's an amazing, beautiful song and he has more music there. You can see other links there with books, with music. He has videos there. He has a lot of media. He has been on many different podcasts, which is another entire lesson. We could go another hour on that by itself. Amazing, amazing stuff that you do. And I just you're what is the right word. I'm having a difficult time with the right words tonight, but they're all the right words.

Speaker3:
You're an inspiration to me. You truly are that you are still just in it. In it to win it. You're haven't stopped, you haven't slowed down. You keep going and you're there to impact people's lives in a positive way. And I appreciate you for that. I truly do, because you are a model that many people can simply follow. And that's the beautiful thing. You don't do anything inauthentic to help people. You just be you. And people can go, Oh, I want to be like I want to be like Dave. I want to do what he's doing. And all I have to do is listen to places like the Mind Body Business Show or go on to his media link in his website and listen to all of his interviews. And I would recommend people do that. Everyone do that. Go listen to all of them, as many as you possibly can. Because the wisdom this man has is is deep and broad and wide. And I appreciate I appreciate you very much, Dave. Thank you so much, so very much for coming on this show tonight. I appreciate you.

Speaker5:
Well, Brian, it is a real, real honor to be on your show with you tonight as well. And I've certainly enjoyed it. And I hope that your listeners and viewers really take this information and take it to heart. And I hope we've inspired somebody tonight to to move on onward and upward.

Speaker3:
Like you've at least inspired one. I know that for a fact. And that is yours truly. So appreciate you, my friend. And unfortunately, that is going to be the end of our show. We have to cut this off at some point to honor everyone and respect everyone's time. Dave's especially, he's on the East Coast there. And so with that, I want to say on behalf of the amazing, amazing Dave Combs, I am Brian Kelley, your host of The Mind Body Business Show. And we'll be back again next week with another great addition. Until then, so long, everybody, and be blessed. Take care now. Thank you for tuning in to the Mind Body Business.

Speaker1:
Show podcast at WW. The Mind Body Business Show dot com. My name is Brian Kelly.

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