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Tired of being stuck in the trenches while watching others build empires? Welcome to the 50/50 Accelerator Podcast, where we're flipping the script on the traditional trade business model. I'm your host, Josh Patrick, and like you, I've spent countless nights wondering if there's a better way.
We bring you real conversations with business owners who've transformed their companies from time-sucking struggles into well-oiled machines. They'll share their exact blueprints—from finding reliable teams to creating systems that actually work. There is no theory, just battle-tested strategies that have helped them double their free time and cash flow.
Think of it as your weekly meetup with mentors who've cracked the code.
0:00:01 - Josh
Since 1974, I've read a book a week searching for what it takes to achieve business success. After thousands of books, hundreds of client success stories and decades of hard-won business wisdom, here's what I know for sure Working yourself to death isn't a badge of honor. It's a failure of strategy. So thanks for joining us today. I'm Josh Patrick, and this is the 50-50 Accelerator, where we explore how real business owners are cutting their hours by 50% while growing their profits by 50%. No consultant BS here, no theoretical frameworks, just proven strategies from people who have actually done it. Because here's the truth If you're still working 65 or more hours a week, putting out fires and missing family dinners, it is what it is, but that's not how it has to stay.
So let's get started. Hey, how are you today? This is Josh Patrick and you're at the 50-50 Podcast Accelerator, and my guest today is Steve Selengut. Steve is the owner, founder, chief bottle washer for the Retirement Income Coach, and we've been having some really interesting conversations about things he's done with his business, and you're in for a treat today. So instead of me going and yammering on, let's start the conversation. Hey, steve, how are you today? I'm great. Josh, how are you? I'm doing well. Thanks so much for joining us. Hey, let's start with my favorite question what's?
the problem that your business solves for your customers.
0:01:57 - Steven
I can back into it almost, but here's what I'm going to say. Most people in the 60s, late 50s and so forth and getting into retirement find that their investment portfolios don't nearly replace the income that their salaries used to bring them, that they've been focusing incorrectly for a number of years, thinking that just the market value was enough to take care of them in retirement. And then they realize, geez, I have to sell things to pay my bills because I'm not making enough income from this stuff to get me through the month. And that's the biggest realization.
And that's the biggest realization, and my book and my service coaches people on how to avoid that problem by transitioning from a market value-based investment program to one that's income-focused all the way.
0:03:05 - Josh
Okay, Can I just interrupt Because I love you are? You just gave a very typical answer I get from everybody II ask this question to.
0:03:10 - Steven
sorry
0:03:12 - Josh
No, it's fine, it's just. You know, it's a great teaching moment for me. So the problem you saw is lack of income for retirees,
0:03:22 - Steven
right
0:03:24 - Josh
And what you just did was you described what you do for them, but not the problem yourself. And this is something I see almost every business owner I ever encounter it's like one out of five out of a hundred to answer that question correctly the first time around.
0:03:42 - Steven
Okay.
0:03:43 - Josh
You're not alone there, but the truth is you have a very cool thing you do you help people with income. Now, when you were doing advisory, you got clients through trade shows, and one of the things that I find fascinating is the amount of money I see people spend at trade shows and they get no results whatsoever. That's the majority. You're the outlier there. So what did you do, or what did you do that got you customers by using trade shows?
0:04:20 - Steven
Well, what I did was seriously different. I guess Most people have a little product or something on their table and then they had this I even forget we used to call that round thing that used to be able to paste pictures and stuff on. I used to put a uh, I used to put on that board, I used to, I, I I had, I put some numbers up there and I put a chart of income progression, you know, of my investment portfolio quarterly or monthly statement that showed the income being produced within it, and I had that there for people to look at. People look at, and I just said to them that you know, I can you know like, I'll bet you that you do not make a percentage of income in your portfolio with your investments as I do for my clients and for myself with my portfolio of investments. And I see, and you'd answer, yeah, I'm in the stock market, just like you. Yeah, I see. And you'd answer to me, yeah, I'm in the stock market, just like you. Yeah, I have bonds, just like you, you know. And so it's how I select them and what my requirements are and the fact that I trade them that makes, and so I get them roped into.
Everybody likes to talk about money, Josh. I mean, I find the same thing Traveling the world. At dinners. Everybody says something about what do you think about the market? So I'll start answering. You know, People love to talk about money.
0:06:19 - Josh
Yeah, no question about that. So you've got these people, you identify them about that. So you've got these people, you identify them. After the trade show, what happens for you to make them into clients? I'm assuming you're not signing people up at a trade show.
0:06:35 - Steven
Oh no, you can't possibly do that. But you can get names and numbers and say I'm going to call you.
0:06:41 - Josh
So did you call them?
0:06:42 - Steven
Oh yeah, I did
0:06:44 - Josh
See. That's the difference right there. Most businesses that do go to trade shows they collect a gazillion cards. Maybe they stick them into a database, maybe they put a big rubber band around them at the end of the thing and they never get around to calling because it gets in the way. Business gets in the way. Business gets in the way.
0:07:05 - Steven
Yeah.
0:07:06 - Josh
So if you don't have a system for calling, that means you're probably wasting all your time at a trade show.
0:07:15 - Steven
I agree you had to. Now, I don't know that I had it. I didn't have a technology, so to speak. We were still using regular telephones. Regular telephones, hard lines and stuff like that yeah, but I didn't have any trouble.
I mean, I I had a couple employees. I gave them the people I and told them as much as I remembered about it, along with the name and the number, and I had them, I had them call if addresses, we wrote them. So I had a staff that did it and we got in touch with them and I even said you know, remind them who I was and what I showed them when I talked to them about.
0:07:56 - Josh
Yeah, that's really important to do, also because you go to a trade show, you have 9,000 conversations and they all kind of blend in together.
0:08:05 - Steven
Yeah, you got to take notes and you got to write it down. It was usually two of us at the trade show and most of the time it was actually the stockbroker that I worked for that was with me, you know, so we both could handle any kind of conversation with these people.
0:08:22 - Josh
So the other question I have which I was just thinking about with these people, so the other question I have which I was just thinking about, is not only did you go to a trade show, but I assume you had a system for selecting which type of trade shows you would go to.
0:08:37 - Steven
We did. We wanted to meet particular types of people Business owners. The other guys that were at the trade show were most likely to be our best prospects. They had money, you know. If they were there and they had the money to spend on a trade show, you assume that they had investment portfolios. That's what you're looking for, and we had designed things on the top of our board that attracted people who had investments. On the top of our board that attracted people who had investments, you know. We sometimes even had giveaways of some sort, stuff like that.
0:09:11 - Josh
So what type of trade show would you go to?
0:09:13 - Steven
It's hard for me to remember all the names, but we went to places. We went to places in New York City, we went to places in Atlantic City. So we went to some big hotel-type operations and convention centers. Even we went to big and we had this little stand. Some of the things were as big as this room and we had this little stand. And I'll tell you, we always had people at our heart talking to us.
0:09:43 - Josh
So again, I'm going to try this again. Was it like industry trade shows?
or was it?
0:09:50 - Steven
It wasn't necessarily the financial services industry, it was medical Medicals. We went to medical
0:09:55 - Josh
Okay
0:09:55 - Steven
Medical professionals stuff like people that you expect were in the upper echelon of wealth of had money, had good types of businesses that generated wealth and that they needed and that they didn't have the time to take care of it by themselves.
0:10:15 - Josh
So it would seem to me that, since you're at a medical convention, it could be orthopods, it could be cardiologists, whatever it is, and I'm going to bet one of to bet you're one of the few financial service to people displaying at it. So you're different there. And number two, the people that stop and talk to you at your booth are self-selecting in because they're already showing interest in what you have, right.
0:10:46 - Steven
Exactly, and they see those numbers.
0:10:49 - Josh
If you're at an orthopedic convention and it's a hip replacement, they might stop because they want information about hip replacements and not the hip replacement piece itself replacement. They might stop because they want information about hip replacements and not the hip replacement piece itself. So you have a different sort of thing and because you're different at the trade show, you're getting people to self-select in. So when you follow up with them, I'm going to bet you had a very high follow-up rate.
0:11:17 - Steven
Yeah, it was really good. I mean, we grew a lot from the trade show. The other thing about the way we ran our business for investors it wasn't a we think or we do type. We weren't with a big brokerage firm that we were just pawns for them selling. We were an independent manager.
You were looking at the guy who's going to be making your investment decisions and and I had, and I had, I was fortunate enough to be able to say this to people and we even had it like a promise type piece and he says that we my broker and I will never, ever put you in a security that we don't own ourselves in our own portfolio. And that was our promise to them that they knew that if we were investing something for them, we owned it ourselves. And that was a big, big selling. It's still a big selling point In my community. I have these universes of the closed-end funds that I use and I prepare them myself, and I prepare them myself and I tell them I own everything on this sheet of paper and I'm giving it to you as a source of things to research on your own. But you can know that I own them too, and that's cool,
0:12:49 - Josh
Did you help them learn how to research also?
0:12:52 - Steven
Yeah, yeah, I do Q&As with them and you know where to go to. You know, cef Connect is the site that I use. I said this is where you go to this tab and do this, go to this tab and do that. Don't look at those two tabs. They don't mean a thing to us. So, yeah, I have a whole. We have a whole educational program for people using interactive Q&As with members to teach them everything they need to know.
0:13:18 - Josh
So while we were chatting before we went live, you mentioned that podcasts are your new trade shows.
0:13:25 - Steven
Yeah, and you actually drew that parallel. I would have never thought of that. But you know, when you said it, I said you know, that's really what this is. It's almost the same type of thing, what this is. It's almost the same type of thing I'm getting. You're giving me the opportunity to speak to people and to just explain, like what I just said. They're not going to find any other advisor that's going to tell them. You know what I mean.
So yes,
0:13:50 - Josh
Why are podcasts good for business owners to be guests on?
0:13:56 - Steven
Oh my God. It just gives you exposure literally all over the world and instantly you almost get a brand from the podcast. You almost get other podcasters calling you because they saw you on somebody else's podcast. That's happening to us now. They saw you on somebody else's podcast. That's interesting and you can find dozens of podcasts like specialty apps. You can use not apps but podcast businesses that match podcasters with people like me.
0:14:33 - Josh
You know, those are podcast agencies.
0:14:35 - Steven
Or podcast agencies. Like you and I got together through an agent.
0:14:39 - Josh
Yeah, and most of the time with me, podcast agencies are a real pain in the neck Because they don't know what the podcast is about and they keep pitching on people that don't fit.
0:14:52 - Steven
I have experienced that, but I don't pay this guy unless I actually get on a podcast. Yeah.
0:14:58 - Josh
Well, the interesting thing that and I think this is an important piece for if you're about to become a podcast guest, if you're a business owner and you're thinking a few podcasts might make sense for me, I want to get on a few podcasts. We invite people who own businesses all the time to come on and most of them never respond, and I think that's a big mistake. Now, what we do and you and I did this we had a short conversation to see if this podcast would be good for you and good for us, and having that pre-interview really helps you know whether this podcast is going to be right for you and it's going to help you get to where you want to go. Does that make sense?
0:15:45 - Steven
Oh, absolutely, because with you and I initially we weren't really sure. Right, our conversation has made it. You know, we put that fit together. Like you just said, the podcast and the trade show of the past are, you know, just a new technology for that very same type of activity. You know where you get to meet people. Even though I'm not meeting all those people now, anyone who turns this on they're going to get something out of this particular conversation that we're having.
0:16:19 - Josh
I mean.
0:16:20 - Steven
I've gotten some ideas already. You know, you hope so. You know I hope so.
0:16:27 - Josh
Well, I've been doing this for a while and I can tell when there's good ideas and not good ideas. I have to say I've done 438 episodes,
0:16:37 - Steven
Wow
0:16:39 - Josh
And I don't think I've ever had an episode where we talked about how to use trade shows and how to use podcasts. This is an unusual thing for me. It's my first and the truth is, when we bring business owners like you on, what we want to see is where are the successes they've had in their business? You know what's worked really well, and for you it was trade shows and now it's podcasts.
I guess we were talking about Amazon ads for your book. I mean, how many copies of your book have you sold?
0:17:11 - Steven
Over 7,000
0:17:12 - Josh
Okay, 7,000 copies of a book. That puts you in the top one-tenth of 1% of all authors.
0:17:19 - Steven
I think so
0:17:20 - Josh
The only other business writer I know who self-publishes in your range is a guy named Tom Deans who lives in Toronto and he sold a couple of million books.
0:17:31 - Steven
Wow
0:17:32 - Josh
Because he uses a. Well, he has a really interesting strategy is that he's a public speaker and instead of getting a fee, he has a sponsor buy one book for everybody in the audience.
0:17:45 - Steven
That's a great idea.
0:17:48 - Josh
And it is absolutely brilliant. I think he charges $28 or $27 per book and it costs him like $1.35 to publish it and he speaks to 500 to 1,000 people at a time. I wish I put those numbers together. Those are big numbers.
0:18:07 - Steven
Yeah, I wish I still had the energy to speak. You know, there are places today. I think there are places you can go on the Internet and find connectionists to do anything. There are people who are organizing retreats that I could speak at. There are people like you can go on these things that says for speakers and I could go on them if I wanted, but I don't have the energy for that.
0:18:32 - Josh
It's a lot of work. You know, when I was doing a lot of speaking, what we did, it was really the only thing that worked well, unless you're a major name like a sports person or a politician or somebody like that, I would ask everybody I ran across who owned a business. I say are you in a trade show? I mean a trade group, are you a member of a trade association? In a trade show? I mean a trade group. Are you a member of a trade association?
If they said yes, I would ask them if they were in leadership. If they said yes to that, then I would say would you introduce me to your person to hire speakers? And I would often give speaking gigs that way. And what I found and I think this is a really important thing my friend Tom Deans, who speaks to 500 or 1,000 people. He's not looking for clients, he just wants to speak. In fact, he won't accept clients. But if you want clients, you don't want to speak to 500 people, you want to speak to 50 people and you want to speak to them for two and a half to three hours doing the work.
0:19:36 - Steven
Yeah, okay.
0:19:37 - Josh
And the reason you want to do this is you're able to create legitimacy and create a connection with the people in your audience.
0:19:51 - Steven
Okay, right.
0:19:52 - Josh
And if you do that, you'll get business.
0:19:56 - Steven
Yeah, there's a place. It's not an outfit, it's an organization called the American Association of Individual Investors. Yes, and they have about probably about 60, maybe 50 or 60 chapters throughout the country. Yep, and I used to go speak to them and I'd have my uh, my board, you know, I I don't know if I used to ship it out or what no, no, and I did. I I developed, um, a show that I could put on a screen and I got up on the stage and I showed my, all my things and I talked about I didn't even have a book back then. Now I'm trying to see if I can get to visit him to pitch my book and I would do it exactly like you said no charge, just everybody buys a book. But I haven't been able to. I haven't been able to make that connection.
0:20:48 - Josh
Well, going back to selling, although I won't use the language, I was thinking of a ton of books with a word before it. It starts with S You're using Amazon ads to, mostly sell your books, am I correct?
0:21:03 - Steven
A good part of them. I've been using Amazon ads right from the start. I'm in the second vendor now. He also is a podcaster. That's how I got to him. I got on his podcast. He invited me. He said he wanted to market it and I made a deal with him and I've been using him for months and he's I'm my. My job is, I tell him, his job is to beat this month from last year. He's only missed one and he that was last month, april. He missed, but in May he's the total May and April. He's way up, way above last year and that's all I'm asking him to do and he's been phenomenal.
0:21:48 - Josh
That's great. I'll tell you something I'm very impressed with what you do. It's rare, I find. Well, I've talked to a ton of authors over the year and it's really rare that I see an author that actually has sold any books.
0:22:03 - Steven
I noticed that I look at statistics a lot and I see that some books sold any books. I noticed that I look at statistics a lot and I see that some books hardly sell anything. I don't really want to talk about the book, but it could be advice to other authors of an approach that we used in this book. That's very different and that has really worked. And it's the approach where my wife and I are sit down at a table next to another couple. We're on a Viking cruise. We're in Amsterdam. It's the first night we're getting to know the other people who are going to be there. It's two nights before this and there's another couple that came early and we sit there and we start talking and the book is this conversation between the four of us. Oh, cool, and that's how the book develops.
0:23:00 - Josh
So it's basically a parable.
0:23:02 - Steven
Okay, yeah.
0:23:04 - Josh
A business novel is often called a business parable.
0:23:07 - Steven
Okay.
0:23:08 - Josh
That's what my books are also
0:23:10 - Steven
Really Cool.
I always thought parables, yeah,
0:23:12 - Josh
I find them much more approachable.
Business owners don't want to read how-tos. They like stories.
0:23:17 - Steven
Yeah, so this is just one big story.
0:23:20 - Josh
Yeah, that's great.
0:23:21 - Steven
And it has other stories, other stories inside. It's even got a Q&A with a Facebook group about this process. Yeah, that's cool.
0:23:29 - Josh
So, steve, unfortunately we're out of time and I'm going to bet some people are going to want to find you and find your book and get copies of your book and read it and probably enjoy it. So how would they go about doing that?
0:23:43 - Steven
The book is at Amazon. It's Retirement Money Secrets, yep, okay, it's in all four varieties, from audible to hard copy, ebooks, everything. And it's also in all the other stores too. You can go to Barnes and Noble and order it, whatever. And I have a website called theincomecoachnet and that explains the coaching I do and a lot about me, and it also has some sample of podcasts I've been on and typical stuff. And then the final thing, after they read the book and stuff, I have that educational community that I talked about, where it's really the investment course you didn't get in college Cool.
0:24:35 - Josh
Thanks so much. I really appreciate it, and I've got two things I'd like you to do. First, Go to wherever you're listening to this podcast and give us an honest and rating review. If you love it, it's five stars. If you love it, it's five stars. If you hate it, it's one star. If you give me one star, I'll cry just a little bit. If you love it, you can give me five. And the second thing is, which is even more important is I'm looking for business owners who want to talk about their story on this podcast and if you're interested, just go drop me a line at jpatrick at stage2solutioncom. That's jpatrick at stage2solutioncom, and let me know that you're interested in coming on the show and we'll send you a link. We'll have a conversation and see if it's a good fit for you. So this is Josh Patrick. We're with Steve Selinga. You're at the 50-50 Accelerator Podcast. Thanks a lot for stopping by. I hope to see you back here really soon.
Look, I spent enough mornings thinking and writing about what it takes for business success. Spent enough mornings thinking and writing about what it takes for business success. Here's an important final thought the old ways work for a reason, but the best legacy isn't just about what you build. It's about building something that outlasts you without burning you out in the process. If you found value in today's podcast, do me a favor Take 30 seconds to rate and review the show and yes, I mean honest reviews. I'd rather have the hard truth than empty praise. Your feedback helps other business owners find these conversations. Hey, I'm Josh Patrick and this has been the 50-50 Accelerator. If you're ready to work less and profit more, make sure you subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and remember you've built something incredible. Now let's make sure you're actually around to enjoy it. See you next time.