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PYPP 27 | Business Model

Understanding Your Organization’s Business Model For Success With Doria Cordova

PYPP 27 | Business Model

Entrepreneurs craft their respective business models for success and sustainability. If you lack this model, you limit your business growth and potential. There are many things to consider, but one thing is for sure, without a model, you will not work your way towards your goals. In this episode, Susie Carder sits down for a conversation with Doria Cordova as she shares her tremendous learning experiences in her professional journey. She started running her own company at age 29. She discusses the best steps in attaining and building a business success model. Stay tuned and have an in-depth learning experience with our guest Doria!

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Understanding Your Organization’s Business Model For Success With Doria Cordova

Our guest is Doria Cordova, and she is one of my long-term friends. She is an expert in the business. She’s the CEO and Owner of Excellerated Business Schools®, Money & You®, program, the organization that brought the world experiential, transformational, entrepreneurial education bond, both online and offline, since 1979 for nearly 200,000 graduates from over 85 countries. The program has inspired some of the best-known business educators, wealth experts and has touched the lives of millions globally.

She’s a humanitarian, philanthropist, author and has been in countless digital events, podcasts, films and books series. She’s a global business developer for organizations that are in alignment with her purpose to uplift humanity’s consciousness through socially responsible businesses. One of her missions is to transform educational systems around the world and eradicate poverty and hunger. Another is the greening of the world. All the endeavors that she’s involved in are must be aligned with those missions and purposes. Please welcome my friend Doria Cordova, our next speaker.

I’m so excited, Doria, for your meeting, greeting us, and sharing your expertise on our show. I like to start with every single guest that I have. I have done your official bio. Everybody knows you are great but I want you to share from your heart why we should pay attention to you. I have known you for years. I have a love for you and affinity for you but I want everyone else to fall in love with you.

Our tribe is your tribe, and we are in compliment to each other. It does different things than mine does but we both have this commitment to your financial wellbeing. Share your greatness. You have been in this industry for a long time. You are, to me is one of the God sister’s, godmothers of our industry. Share with everybody why we should pay attention now.

Number one, because I started young. I started running the company that I had owned when I was 29 years old. I had tremendous learning experiences. Another one is that I’m one of the OGs in the global space. Way back in 1985, I’ve got invited to go to Asia, and through a series of circumstances from India, I went to Australia. In Australia, we opened up the whole what I call the Entrepreneurial Experiential Transformational Training Industry, which many people are part of. You are part of. A lot of people don’t know how to identify it by you one of the stars in that. When I had the opportunity to do is to be there from the beginning, which my mentors created back in the ‘70s, and I attended the first business school for entrepreneurs of its kind.

This was a business school that took in what could be called the human potential movement, all the tools, and all the processes, alongside powerful, effective, proven business tools. We were the first people to put on the planet, a business school for entrepreneurs that talked about creating economic engines around your life purpose. One of my first purposes was self-actualization through a profitable business. Since 1985, it has been uplifting humanity’s consciousness through business, and several years ago, I added the words socially responsible business. We are the originals. You are with the mothership.

My mentors created, and I learned the principles so well. The other one is that we have trained some of the best-known people in the industry, even got them the start. You could say Tony Robbins, and I’m going to do a blog on that because people think that he did money and you were, did a few things but when you think about it, we were there for the first couple of years of when he began. We put him on his first airplane to go do a Firewalk. He had been on airplanes before but this was to do his first Firewalk in Hawaii and Colorado through the Money & You® network.

Your purpose should first be self-actualization through profitable business.

In 1985, when I inherited all the intellectual properties to the Excellerated Programs, I found this young man that had been around. He was Japanese and a Marine. I needed a Marine. I needed a guy or a woman that was going to be following directions. The business had gone through some changes. I had gotten all the rights to it. I wanted to build it into the global organization it became but this was 1985. I was only 35 years old and still extremely young. I knew that I needed the most awesome partner in this young man’s name was Robert Kiyosaki, which of course, became well known with the partnership or Sharon Lechter on the Rich Dad Poor Dad Series.

The first book is based on our work, the Money & You®, the business school, the teachings that we’ve got from back to school. We are the pioneers, and we are the mothership. We are the ones who talk about leverage, income-generating activities, doing good or eradicating poverty and hunger. We are on a mission from God like The Blues Brothers.

If you read the language, a lot of us teach but people don’t know where it comes from, which now we do the mothership. We have been around those same training for years, which is juicy. You have a couple of big things that came out. You have been doing Money & You® for years. Talk to us about what is Money & You®? What’s the breakthrough I get out of that? How is it different than any other money course because it’s so completely different?

Money & You® was the leftovers of the first business school for entrepreneurs, which at the time used to be six weeks long. People said, “I can’t take six weeks to go do a business school. Can you do something shorter?” At the time, it was five days long, residential, and then now it’s only three and a half days. Sixty-five percent of the program is experiential games. Please remember this, and I know this but everyone out there is you cannot teach anyone anything, yes you can’t.

We can’t pass that information along but if you truly want to support someone to truly change, shift and transform, they have to have their own self-discovery. My mentors, Marshall Thurber, Bobbi DePorter, learned from Georgi Lozanov, the Creator of Super-learning and the Left and Right Brain Teaching Techniques. They learned from him that what you have to do is you have to immerse people in experiential games, inexperience.

The big difference between telling somebody how to ride a bicycle or putting them on a bicycle and having the experience, Money & You®, is about money. It’s about creating organizations to a thing called the business success model. If I may give a gift and I know you are going to have a link. When people can go to one of our main sites in Money & You®, you can download a book as a gift called the Excellerated Business Success Model. It’s a baby book but it talks through the different steps. I can tell you that as you build your business, you have gone through all the steps. Should I go through the steps? Would you like to know them?

I’m taking notes while you are talking. I have a whole page already.

One of the first steps is to learn from experts and masters. Thank you, Susie, because you do so much around education. You have your beautiful summit, show, programs, books, and you are very inclusive. You are naturally smart because, in your heart of heart, you know that collaboration is key, this whole thing around competition. I don’t have competitors. If people think that most of my competitors are people we graduated from, Money & You®, they are not. They are helping me create a world that works for 100% of humanity. When you learn from experts and masters, they save you a lot of time and energy.

PYPP 27 | Business Model
Business Model: If you truly want to support someone to truly change and shift and transform, they have to have their own self-discovery.

The next step is to create a niche. When you create a niche, you have the opportunity to your marketing people like yourself, and your whole team can run and put the word out because marketing is like rocket science. It’s only a few rare birds that know marketing but those of us who have tried to pretend that we know it has big learning experiences. I’m a good little promoter but not a great marketer, which it’s okay for you. You can’t be good at everything. Niche is very important.

You go to the next level. How do you leverage that niche? That’s important. In the morning, you are doing your morning disciplines. One of the questions that you asked yourself in your meditation was, “How do I leverage myself now? How do I leverage my product and services?” Now we have this whole piece around leverage. Remember Bernie Dorman? He had a word that I loved, “Now, Money, Now.”

That’s money for now. That’s money income-generating activities that you need for money now, so we can feed the family, have a beautiful car and home, all the basics but then simultaneously every day we get up in the morning and go, “What are the top five things that I can do, to be income-generating and to create leverage for the future.”

Leverage is future money. We work on now, money, now, and then we will work on leverage. Leverage is the key. This is why money is in you. This is what put us on the planet, and we have nearly 200,000 graduates around the world. Our list looks like the who’s who of the wealthy experts and transformational leaders is because of the word leverage. Leverage that principle.

We teach about masters in experts, niches, leverage, and then we go into your favorite word besides cash, and that’s systems. You and I are the system’s queens. We are the sisters of that. You are my little sister in Chinese. If we were in China, you would be my mei mei, little sister in systems. You cannot grow a conglomerate without systems.

There are three misunderstood words in any language anywhere in the world the words I love, and now we will talk a little bit about love. The word is leverage. A lot of people use the word leverage but do not truly know what it is. The other one is systems. Systems are self-correcting and they are duplicatable. People think they set something up but they always have to be there.

The test is, can you leave your business for 1 or 3 months? Everything functions, and possibly when you come back, it’s even better than you left it because the systems are so groovy to use the word from the ‘70s. We are going up the scale on the business success model, and then next thing, the way you do systems is through wonderful people and create an aligned team.

I have new distinctions after being around for many years in this industry. One of them is that you have your own team. You can have your family team, your family, members, spouse, children, parents, sisters, and brothers, that’s one team and a very important team. The next team is your business team, which is how you build your organization. That can include your suppliers, customers, clients, all that. That’s another team.

The ultimate team now in the 21st century is about the other, which is the world or community because it is such a high need for us to create products and services that will solve a problem, a major role is that. Now you have this beautiful group of people that you have teams. You and I are teammates. You are doing your thing and my thing. I love you to say something about this because you are my teammate. What do you say about this subject?

You need a great business partner if you want to succeed. The way that you do systems is through wonderful people.

I get chills when you talk about it because it’s hitting all the key components. I am who I am because of my team and because of my community. I learned that a long time ago, being a single mom, raising two little kids of a different ethnic background. I needed to find my tribe and community. Our community is people who come for education but stay for the community that we create because we create a safe and vulnerable environment. We create a bunch of profit and millionaire makers inside of that community. People stay because of everybody else. It’s not about me.

The more you make it about you, the less effectiveness you have. I have to bring other people in my community like yourself to go, “You need to know Doria, Lisa, Theresa, Pam.” To go, “Who are the people that have been the biggest game-changers for me?” My working team, the people who helped me produce the results, can’t do what I do and make a global difference if I’m trying to be the butcher, baker, and candlestick maker. My community creates the listening for me, who I am in the world? My family team supports me in doing the work I do in the world.

They support me when I’m getting on a plane, work long hours, take time off to make sure we have that balance. My girlfriends are my rider dying, I can call them. It was a safe place for me to take my superhero cape off and be just a woman, person, and be. I don’t have the answer. You need all these people in your life and your business to help you run that economic engine that you are desiring so that we can do better work in the world. That’s what I think.

Right here is from Money & You®, which is the proof theory in business and how you create a team in your own organization and aligned team. You don’t just create a team. You create a team that’s going in the same direction. You have to have a purpose that people are inspired. People will say, “How do you get all those people to volunteer and continually come back.” All these promoting partners and people have been with you for decades. We have the most successful instructor in all of the industry. He brings in revenues of $400 million a year in office supplies, Dominique Lyone. How do you keep a guy like that since 1992, leading money, you, other business school and other programs? The way you do it is by having a very inspiring purpose.

You have then a mission. One of our missions is to transform educational systems around the world and eradicate poverty and hunger. Another one is the greening of the world. Now we are going back to how we started, which was peace through business. Buckminster Fuller used to say, “People do not bomb their customers.” Now you create purpose, a mission, clear rules of the game, so as you can see, the fruit bowl is you have to have clear rules of the games and policies. The purpose is like the fruit bowl, and then all the people, policies, missions, unique selling proposition, all the things that you do in your business are the fruits but you as a leader have got to have that fruit bowl that is holding everything in place. Now we have beautiful fruit.

PYPP 27 | Business Model
Business Model: In life, you either have reasons for why you didn’t create what you wanted to create, or you have the results that will speak for themselves.

You always hear that story about the great photographer that says, “How do you take such beautiful pictures of the fruit?” He says, “I start with beautiful fruit.” What you have is the fruit, people, systems and all that. You have to go back to learn from experts and masters. You create a niche. You leveraged that niche through systems, which I carried out by an aligned team. The last part of the business success model is that you create synergy. Another word by Buckminster Fuller is a beautiful man with a spaceship with the beautiful map that he created to show that the world is connected. We are not separated from each other, and Buckminster Fuller was that one that honed the word synergy, and you can not predict synergy.

You can do everything I can that I have gone through, which will guarantee you create synergy, which has much greater results than you ever expected. The last part is the result because, like our friend, Marcia Martin, learned from winning art. The creator of EST Landmark Education. In life, you either have reasons for why you didn’t create what you wanted to create or you have the results that will speak for themselves.

What I want to always encourage everyone is that when you catch yourself making all these excuses, know those true leaders and people who are successful, we will stand for a little while with the excuses but all of us have gone through so much and we freaking get up and do it. We have to do the personal work for us to get up and do it and have community the way you share it.

That is the core teaching of Money & You®, and we teach it 65% experiential games, and then 15% is a lecture where the instructor pulls out of people. We have food, music and dancing. We are the original with the network table. It’s like a party for three and a half days. People come out, and because we do personal work too, people usually let go of what Marshall Thurber created the word, Chuck Berry.

It’s a negative emotion that you would be holding in your consciousness that you finally release, let go and forgive yourself with the understanding that we are making mistakes constantly. We learn by making mistakes. A great article that I can provide for your network is called Mistake Mystique by Buckminster Fuller. I want to give that as a gift to everyone. I will give you a link to the Access To Cash book. That book is in Amazon, and I can’t remember now, I think it’s still at $1.97 but it doesn’t matter. It’s going to be $10 to $11.

Accessibility is my part where I have to do my thing here. We want people to have access to cash, network, education, resources because poverty is bad for everyone. Now, what we want you to do, is you need to adopt someone. You have to take them home but see how many people you can begin to provide resources to. Susie and I get wealthier and richer. Every time we have a conversation, we get wealthier because I bring in something to her. She brings something for me and our world expands. That is called accessibility.

You cannot grow a conglomerate without systems and processes.

My new definition of wealth is having access to cash, investments, context, support, and ultimately, my new book is the second edition, Access to Cash. It’s not what you think it is. It’s the name of the book. Several years ago, I wrote the original one, and this one is to give you more distinctions. Accessibility is the key. Remember Lynne Twist, and our beautiful friend says, “There are no poor people. There is only resource for.” If you are reading this, you are very wealthy because you have resources to take resources. You have access to resources.

I love the seven steps. It’s clear and concise. We speak so much of the same language that was result-oriented, not excuse-makers. One of the things I do in this show is because this is all my great friends. I’m like, “I want to create a show where we talk about the real stuff.” It’s not all sugarcoating and speaking from our mountain top. I have learned the biggest lessons from my breakdowns and failures. I never liked them. They are not fun but I learned the biggest lessons from them. What has been your many years of doing this that will you consider one of your biggest failures but became one of the biggest learning experiences?

When I was in Asia, we had a thriving business. Maybe for people, $100,000 a month is not a lot. To me, it was a lot. I still have value on money, and $100,000 a month is good money. $1.2 million a year is nice. It’s what we call good sushi money. It all disappeared in one week when the financial crisis happened. In 1997, we had a thriving business in Singapore. What happened was that I was married to my business partner. We started as sweeties, and then we became business partners. That’s a tough thing to do. If you want to look for cash and not a good relationship going to business together. It’s very rare to see, and I admire those couples that make it.

What happened was that I thought that I had clear rules of the game, and I did not have clear exit agreements. I grew up in the legal field. My past life before this life was in the legal field. I was an official court reporter, and I was going to grow up to be an attorney, so for me, the law is a huge thing. I thought that I did but I didn’t. I did have a prenuptial agreement but I didn’t have a prenuptial for the business.

The learning experience that I had was him saying, “You are in debt, $500,000.” That doesn’t sound like a lot of money but for a person that has never been in debt, that’s a lot of money to be in debt. I was like, “What do you mean I’m in debt, $500,000. What do you mean me? What about the we?” This is where the gift came in. I didn’t know this about myself, which is what came out was. “That’s no problem. I have made $500,000 many times. I’ve got this.”

Later it was a little bit tougher because it was a little bit more than $500,000. Your reputation was on the line and all of this. It took about three years to do all that but ended up and paying everybody back, which you have to do. It’s not so much. In America, they have all these bankrupt things that you can do. Please, I know that sometimes you have to, especially when you have children but avoid it. That is not plan B. Bankruptcy should not be plan B because it doesn’t allow you to come out as a true entrepreneur, for you to go, “I’m not going to bankrupt myself. What do I need to do to get out?” That is the great thing you need to step forward.

The learning experience that I had for me was tough for the first few years because when I’ve got on an airplane, instead of going to the left side, I’ve got to go to the right side. I’ve got smart because I learned how to do seats that I could lie on. I took extra pillows and blankets. I missed the first class, but I’ve got back to it. What I call the miss piggy in me suffered a lot. I had to sell my big Rolex, couldn’t buy a new car and all these things but that was only for a few years. What happened was that I learned so much, and one other thing was that I didn’t realize how I didn’t have compassion for people with very little money or accessibility to it.

I thought, “Get to work. Get the work done.” Without realizing that a lot of times, when people go through financial learning experiences, it hits hard. It brings up shame, guilt and I should have, would have, could have, and how did I get myself into it? It’s like being this takes a hit, and it made me into such a beautiful, compassionate human being. I have always been very giving, so I never stopped giving through the whole thing.

One of my most beautiful Christmases was when I was going through the study of experiences because instead of buying people gifts, I was paying people back. I made cookies, muffins, gifts for my friends and family, and they loved it. The love that I made muffins for them. There are so many learning experiences. It was a humbling experience, and I don’t wish it on anyone but I’m glad I went through it.

I had a similar experience, and it did humble you but it also had me realize I can do anything to go, “All right.” You are not starting over. I had many years of business, and when I lost $10 million. It wasn’t starting over. I knew the system of money. You don’t have that many years of the learning curve. You learned it all to go, “Let me implement it. What will you do differently?” I have worked with my husband for seventeen years. The biggest challenge was when we’ve got ended up getting a divorce during the financial collapse. It was amazing. That was humbling, to say the least.

PYPP 27 | Business Model
Business Model: Have compassion for people with very little money or accessibility to it.

A lot of couples don’t make it. Part of that has to do with not knowing each other’s money psychology, which we will do another whole program on that. The thing is that most people don’t have money clear in their consciousness. Money is a means of exchange. You have all the systems to make money, the economic engines that you sit up, all your experiences, and now you have the whole thing around cryptocurrency, and there are all of these different things. Ultimately, when human beings have had so much emotion to money, that is a big lesson waiting to have. Be careful with that.

If I had to ask you what you want to be remembered for in this lifetime, what do you want to be remembered for? The one thing.

I participated in eradicating hunger. I was one of the millions of participants that spent her whole life. I have been doing that since 1977. Since I met Buckminster Fuller, that’s my thing. I want no hunger on this planet, no child to go to sleep hungry, anywhere in the world, particularly the United States but anywhere.

How do we find you on social? How can we play together? How can our clients get to know you and play with you more?

Go and find me on Facebook under @DoriaCordova, @DCCordova. They can find me there. I always have listed there but I do want to invite them all to come and meet the global network, which by the way, you were such a hit. I should send you some of those things. FridaysWithDoria.com. We loved you, and people learned so much. Your replay is a hit. It’s free education for the masses. That’s my thing, free education now.

We have all kinds of different things. The Access to Cash Course, I can’t remember how much it is, $2.47 or something like that. Mama teaching for six and a half hours and going to details on systems and things. That’s a good course. It’s so inexpensive that those are all the lessons that cost me millions of dollars.

Go to Amazon to get the new book, Access to Cash, it’s AccessToCashbook.com or you go to Amazon. That’s where I picked mine up on the Fridays With Doria when she talked about it. Click that by now, get the download. Doria, thank you for serving and being the godmother of our industry right in the OG. I appreciate you and that we are mei mei. We will make sure that everyone gets your information. I love sharing my great friends with my community. You are such a gift and a blessing. Every time we meet and talk to, I appreciate you. I appreciate your soul sisterness as well. Thank you so much.

 

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About Doria Cordova

PYPP 27 | Business ModelCEO / Owner of Excellerated Business Schools® / Money & You® – the organization that brought to the world the Entrepreneurial, Experiential, Transformational educational programs (now both off- and on-line), since 1979 with nearly 200,000 graduates from over 85 countries. The renowned Money & You program has inspired some of today’s best-known business education and wealth experts, thus it has touched the lives of millions globally. She is a global business developer, humanitarian, philanthropist, a best-selling author and has been in countless digital events, podcasts, films and book series.

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