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Mr. Biz Radio: Growing and Scaling Your Biz with Sales Superstar

Unedited transcription of the show is included below:

(00:03):

Welcome to Mr. Biz radio BizTalk for biz owners during the next half hour, Mr. Biz, Ken Wentworth, a leading business advisor, and two time bestselling author we'll cover topics. That'll help business owners run their companies more profitably, and more efficiently. If you're ready to stop faking the funk and take your business onward and upward, this show is for you. And now here's Mr. Biz, Ken Wentworth.

(00:27):

All right. Welcome to another episode of Mr. Biz radio. I mean, Mr. Biz, Ken Wentworth, and this week we are going to talk about something that everyone likes. Everyone wants everyone desires, and that is scaling and growing your business, growing your empire, creating that empire that we all want. We all want to grow too. And so for that you know, again, I talk about this all the time. We don't bring just anyone on the show. So we have our guests this week. Who's had over a half a billion, yes, with a B a half a billion in retail sales during her career. She was the T a TV show host on the home shopping network for 20 years. So she knows how to grow and scale a business and she knows sales. So Victoria Wieck, welcome to Mr. Biz radio.

(01:16):

It's going to be a fun time. Thank you so much for inviting me to your show.

(01:20):

Yeah, absolutely excited to have you. So I guess let's just start with talking about your entrepreneurial journey. I mean, I know you immigrated from South Korea, walk us through what that was like for

(01:29):

You. Back in South Korea, I was a kid, you know I was 12 going on almost 13. When we arrived in America, basically my father had four daughters and one son, and he was quite concerned about the lack of opportunity for women. You know, there were, at that time, we made left Korea was going through its own aftermath of the whole civil war between north and south. And also with the idea that, you know, females or girls weren't supposed to go outside the home, you know, work outside the home and all that. So he came here and upon arrival, we had all of our assets pretty much frozen in both countries by the Korean government. You know, at that time you couldn't come as easily as you could come now. So we have to start that our lives here with no money, no friends, no family, no job.

(02:21):

And also the lack of ability to understand people because we did not speak English, but you know, I can go onto the whole thing on that, but that's, that's going to take forever to get through here. So basically we specifically regarding my entrepreneurship journey having come from that background where we had literally nothing and every day was a struggle just to put food on the table for my parents. They each work two jobs for the first time and mostly manual labor to which they weren't used to, to take care of their five children. So from the coming from that background when I became an adult myself and I was, you know, trying to build a family of my own, I did not see how I could go to work in a corporate world, you know, working somewhere between 12 to 15 hours a day, plus an hour commute each way, because that was very common in Los Angeles at that time.

(03:16):

So I chose to live a simpler life so that I could be home be present for my children. Cause I really, you know, missed that when as a kid, I didn't really have a childhood. So I set a goal of making $3,000 a month so that I could pay my rent, you know, the bills, you know, utility bills and all that, and also to take care of my kids. But I wanted to make $3,000 a month working 20 hours a week. So I kind of took a leap of faith. I had no idea what I was doing. I, but I was willing to work on a lot less. I did have a college degree from UCLA and then I went out and got my masters at USC, both on scholarships. So, you know, my parents didn't have to pay like a tuition or anything.

(04:01):

And so from that point to, you know, just making a lot of mistakes or learning from them, be covering and just never giving up on hope. I eventually built a business that's well over $500 million over that career span. And my career is still not over. I'm still you know, right now actually my businesses on kind of cruise control, where I have a lot of online sales, you know, when I'm sleeping or whatever the sales come through. So, and, and the business is global. It's very healthy globally, so that I don't have to depend on any one person to you know, control my future. So that's the whole entrepreneurship journey pretty much.

(04:43):

Yeah. So we got, I got to ask you how in the world did you end up as a host on home shopping network? How'd that come to fruition?

(04:51):

Know that's a good question. A lot of people actually I gave a keynote speech actually on Tuesday and Wednesday this week. And the first question, a lot of people ask that question, you know, which is how big was your business before you went on Home Shopping Network? You know, eh, the impression is that that changed my life. Actually the opposite is true. By the time Home Shopping Network noticed me and contacted me to go on their network. I mean, at the time in 1998, HSN wasn't HSN. I mean, they call themselves home shopping club basically, and they sold mostly dolls and, you know, swords, and it was pretty much known as the grandma shopping network. So I didn't actually even want to be on it at that time. But basically by the time HSN found me and contacted me, I had distribution at places like heritage London, galleries, Lafayette Takashimaya Japan you know, say BU all of the major department stores, including Saks Neiman's Bloomingdale's Lord and Taylor, you know, here as well.

(05:51):

And I was on duty free shops all over the world insight duty-free, you know, in the first class the section in something like 40 different airlines around the, around the globe I've had a very healthy distribution in the middle east Dubai Abu Dhabi shards you know, just all over the world. So it was a very healthy business before they found me. But then I would say that they actually getting there gave me a lot more visibility because they grew, they changed, they are a very modern company now, and I was in the middle of their whole upgrading and make-over so you know, it was a great experience all around, but without those credentials in the beginning, you know, it wasn't like a lucky thing that I ended up.

(06:35):

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's gotta be, I mean, not gotta be, it is a huge Testament to you, you know, coming from, you know, being a, an immigrant from South Korea to, you know, being on HSN for 20 years. I mean, that's quite an accomplishment.

(06:48):

Yeah. It's 19 years and 11 months or something. And I think that the thing that, you know, your listeners should kind of remember is that on, you know, every distribution network every distribution, like for example, department stores versus duty-free stores versus TB, they all have different margin requirements, different ways they judge your brand, for example, in duty free, they, they kind of figure out your sales by, by weight because you know, you're on flight. So when the planes fly fuel costs are pretty high. So if you were selling liquor versus jewelry, which does, it takes very little time and very little weight. So they, they value it higher. For example on TV networks, they judge us by sales per per minute. So it's dollars per minute. And if you don't do so many thousand bucks a minute and every network has different requirements for that, they basically take you off.

(07:44):

So being on it for 20 years and they will take you off, like with one bad show. So it's really, really rough to consistently generate those multi thousand dollars per minute, every single minute averaged out, you know, no matter what time of the day you're on, that's, that's, you know, incredible amount of work to sustain that. And it's, it's almost, I think it's harder than a regular TV, like you know, there are very few TV shows that last 20 seasons. Yeah. It's it's a lot of work I will say too. There was no you know, a lot of luck or, you know, just a fluke involved in there.

(08:19):

Yeah. Yeah. Well, again, this week we're talking with Mrs. Victoria Wieck you can find out more about some of the things she does and we're going to talk through that in the next couple of segments stuff from a render of the show, but you can find out more victoriawieck.com and her last name is actually spelled W I E C K , but pronounced WIC. So Victoriawieck.com, you can also follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. And she's also the host of a podcast “Million Dollar Hobbies”. You can find out more about that www.milliondollarhobbies.com. So we are going to hit a break here. We're going to come back, get the Mr. Biz tip of the week, which actually has a pretty cool quote from Russell Brunson. And we'll continue talking with this week's guest Victoria Wieck.

(08:59):

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(09:30):

Thank you for listening to Mr. Biz radio. Did you know our show airs seven days a week for more than 30 hours. Now, if you are in the B2B space and we'd like to reach thousands of business owners every week, including our more than 250,000 social media followers are thousands of daily internet radio listeners, our email list fans and Mr. Biz Solutions members email us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to become a sponsor, tap into Mr. Biz nation to help grow your business.

(10:01):

Check out both of Mr. Biz’s national bestselling books, “Pathway to Profits”, and “How to Be a Cash Flow Pro” on Amazon. Now, once again, here's Mr. Biz.

(10:11):

All right. Welcome back to the show and it's time for the Mr. Biz tip of the week. And as I mentioned this week, it's actually a quote from none of them, Mr. Russell Brunson, for those of you in the e-commerce world, I'm sure would be familiar with his name and his brand of ClickFunnels, but his quote that I really liked a lot was how many people's lives can you change if you don't slow down or give up? You know, it kind of goes along with that theme, we talked about on the show pretty often about consistent perseverance, one of the most critical traits in my mind, the most critical trait of being a successful entrepreneur is exhibiting that consistent perseverance. You're going to get knocked down. You have to continue to get up and continue to get up and continue to get up and keep fighting until you get there.

(10:51):

And that's a great segue because our guests this week, Victoria Wieck is definitely a Testament to exhibiting that consistent perseverance in her career, as she mentioned during the first segment. But Victoria, I wanted to talk a little bit more about, I can't even imagine the daunting task you faced as you were building your business. You've mentioned all the distribution networks that you had set up. How did you even get started? I mean, the vast network that you've built over the years, how did you even get started to, you know, go to a Neiman Marcus or all these other places and get your products featured in there in their distribution networks?

(11:25):

Like you said, I love the consistent perseverance. You know, it, you have to be committed to your success. You have to be committed to what you believe will help people, because if you don't then no one else actually will believe you. And frankly, you don't actually deserve the sale. You really have to believe that you're adding value to your customer's lives. So once I was absolutely convinced that that I have something that no one else can about myself and I can do this better. I was, you know, pretty tiredness in my pursuit of convincing, you know, one person at a time. And I got lots of reductions. And I've, you know, I failed in a lot of different things, but I would say at the time I didn't really know what I was doing. But looking back it just seems to me, like I was forced to a business model, which was kind of like test then tweak, test some more tweak and then build it and then I scaled it and accelerated it.

(12:28):

So basically if you believe that you really are adding value. So in my case you know, I defined when people ask me, what do you do for a living? Instead of saying I design jewelry, which is what I do physically everyday. And I think I do pretty, you know, pretty good job of that. I felt like how I changed their lives is to help them memorialize their, the most important moments of their lives. Because if you think about it, jewelry is bought to memorialize, you know, weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, bar mitzvahs, you know, all these you know, christenings, graduations, you know, promotions. So I felt like it's such a privilege to be a part of their lives. And I need, you know, that's an honor, I need to do a great job of that. So if I'm going to believe if I'm going to really believe that I help them memorialize the events in a way that's truly memorable for generations to come.

(13:22):

The quality of what I'm offering has to be, you know, the best quality of possible. So that was never a compromise. I, you know, when I went to HSN, that was a huge issue. They wanted to offer something at a certain price point. And then secondly my styling has to be somewhat timeless. It has to be something that a lot of people could wear proudly and it has to be something that would last many generations. So the challenge then was, well, if it's going to be so timeless, how do you then make it so distinctively unique and fun and modern and not boring because you know, things that are timeless, look how it kind of look pretty simple and basic. And so that was, you know, a little bit of a challenge. And then the other thing too, was jewelry was bought and sold mostly like you know, this is two carrots, you know, it's a such great diamond and, you know, it's high quality and, you know, it's, it wasn't really sold more as a status rather than to truly adorn a woman and to have meaning.

(14:19):

So I kind of focused on my, my joy was made for a woman going to work for the first time. You know, I was part of the generation of women who worked outside of the home in a managerial capacity. And a lot of in those early days of females working in ma in a managerial capacity, there were not a lot of jewelry that you could wear during the day. It was very fancy jewelry, you could wear it, you know, at night. And in fact, they used to have daytime, Toby, nighttime jewelry. I felt that women needed something that softened up their, their persona. Also something that distinctly distinguishes one woman versus another woman. And I had to do it affordably so they can, you know, buy multiple pieces. So, you know, they don't wear the same thing every day to work.

(15:04):

So I focused on that working women who actually had a need to look elegant stylish, but not ostentatious and to kind of complete her look rather than as a status type thing. So, you know, there was nobody doing it at that time. So that was really great. So basically a lot of my styling, the way I added the timelessness is I added design elements that were timeless, such as, you know, florals you know, flowers, wild flowers have been here probably early on two years before humans got here. Same thing with, you know, with like the role nature, like ladybugs, butterflies, you know, just, just a hint of something like that really made it very timeless. So then the next thing you know, is I was kind of defined by the look, the creativity and their artistry of the jewelry.

(15:54):

So what happened was because it was such a void there, you know, everywhere I went and people kind of like looked at it, gave you a chance to talk to them. And then once I fell in love with my customers and you got their feedback and then they fell in love with me. And they then started to you know, talk about my jewelry to a lot of other people. So they then created I mean, I have legions of fans that have followed me for 25, 30 years. I mean, I was in department stores 10 years prior to being on HSN. So all those people still, I mean, a very, very loyal following. And I think that's how you build a brand. I mean, making sure that you really do have something unique and different for them. And and the only other thing I will say is that if you're in business whether you're in business to business or business to consumer, you still have to worry about the end user.

(16:50):

So whoever was going to eventually use your product and make sure that you have a customer centric message. So if you, you know, for example, when I go on TV and in fact I'm going to go on TV today, like half an hour from now, when I go on TV, I talk about, you know, it's very used centric message. Instead of saying, I love somewhere. I love blue. And you know, I love designing these pieces and I love this and I hope you like it too. Instead of saying all those I words, I would say something like, I know you love summer. And when summer times comes around, you know, you love blues. Like a lot of other people, like not the color blue. And so I designed this wonderful collection for you, so that when you go out and mingle with your friends and, you know, have enjoyed those fun summer moments, you get to glow, you get to radiate, you get to do all of these wonderful things and you get to permeate your positivity and, you know, you get to glow in bask and all the compliments you get. So, and you can do this without, you know, breaking the bank. You can do this without, you know, really feeling ostentatious. And you know, you can also leave it to your future generations because these are very timeless. And so I used the word you nine times for the one eye. And I think that a lot of times, even on a website, you need to figure out how many eyes you have in there, or how many ways, because that's not customer centric message.

(18:09):

Yeah. I think that's a, that's a great reminder because I find the same thing, Victoria. And honestly, if you think about it from a consumer perspective, it becomes a little off-putting because it becomes, you know, it becomes it seems more like about the seller and less about you as the consumer. And I think, you know, that even those subtle things like that make a huge difference in how people receive the message. So a really important thing to keep in mind as you're going and marketing, as Victoria mentioned on your website, et cetera. So again, this week you were talking with Victoria Wieck, you can find out more, more victoriawieck.com. And again, our last name is spelled W I E C K. Follow her on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. She's actually out of as a free ebook as well on her website www.milliondollarhobbies.com. So check that out too. And come back after the break, she's going to teach us how to grow and scale our business.

(19:00):

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(19:29):

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(20:00):

To submit questions to the show, email them to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Now, once again, here's Mr. Biz.

(20:08):

All right. Welcome back to the show. And as I promised Victoria to give us some, some tips on how to grow and scale, but I did want to mention, we didn't get to it in the second segment, Victoria, and I did want to mention though, you are, are developing and I think close to releasing some online courses. Is that correct?

(20:24):

Right. That's correct. I need to find a, I needed to find a way to bring it to my potential students affordably and, and still keep the sizes very, very small so that they could actually get something out of it. So about four weeks away from that. Okay.

(20:40):

And what, what are those courses? What's the, you know, sort of the, the teachings in those courses.

(20:45):

So the first one is to start, grow and scale your business. You know, if you're stuck in a commute and you want to start your business, you can do this, but it's really mostly designed for people who already have a business that are either stuck at whether, you know, you're at a six figure seven figure. I mean, I have a person who's already signed up. Who's, who's doing about $180 million a year right now, her goal is to obviously do much more and take it public. So it's designed for you know, there was a system that I've used to grow my business, and I think that I'm hoping, you know, right now I'm not, I'm not trying to be braggadocious or anything like that, but after having done somewhere between 500 million to, you know, to a lot more than this I'm not looking to make more money.

(21:32):

I'm really looking to help people who are really willing to work hard. I don't have any like a fast trucks or anything like this, you know, but really there are ways you could minimize your risks because I believe in testing small and, you know, scaling and growing it where you can elevate and you can basically elevate and amplify your brand and your, your message and your services to help other people. And eventually you're going to need to dominate your industry, which is what I've done. So I hope it will help a lot of people. And I am looking to really offer it at a price where anyone can afford it. That's my big deal. Cause what I want do is I want to create cause I'm not that old yet can believe it or not. So I want to create 1 million preferably female entrepreneur entrepreneurs and have them pay it forward. Awesome.

(22:26):

Awesome. Well, again, you guys can find out more information about that at victoriawick.com. Those will be coming out as she said in about four weeks. So definitely stay tuned to that, which is a, which is a great segue from the online courses too. So give us some tips. Obviously you've grown and scaled the heck out of your business. And so, you know, give us, give us some insights, Victoria, how, you know, what are some key steps that business owners, entrepreneurs need to take in order to have that type of success that you've had?

(22:54):

You know what don't be, first of all, I've been told that my story is very inspiring to a lot of people and that's great, but I'm not happy with that. I really would rather that you start taking a single action. Any action is better than no action, because if you, if you start something and you keep doing it, you're going to find the right way eventually. So number one, embrace failures because without failures though is no success. You know, somebody who has never fallen on ski slopes and they're not going to be ever a world class skiers. In fact, we see them fall, you know, during the Olympics. So, you know, embrace failures because without that, you're not going to have any, the trick is to plan your failures so that they actually end up in successes. What that means is, you know, Hey, if you don't know if this style or that style of the other style is going to sell or what price point, you know, it has that it'll test it out to five people and see what happens because you know, if you don't, if you knew the outcome, then it wouldn't be called a test.

(23:53):

So make sure that you take enough risks, but calculated risks. And when you fall, don't have a fallback plan, have a fall forward plan. And then the other thing too is make sure you keep on elevating because one of my favorite quotes there are two favorite quotes that I have. One of them is success is not final and failure is not fatal that's by Winston Churchill. I would say that's true. And he did this in context, you know, when Hitler came in and he had some successes using the same, same tactics. So he came to England, use the same tactics and obviously he didn't succeed. So but what I want to say when it comes to business, a lot of times when you have a little success, many of you who are listening to the show have some success, you might be doing six figures, you might be doing seven figures, but when you have that success, your number one thing that entrepreneurs tend to do is to protect that success, which then leads to failures.

(24:48):

You know, for example, like blockbuster video, how, you know, they went out of business because they spent all their money protecting on old technology. When streaming was obviously in here, you know, Netflix came in and nobody paid attention to them. You know, that's a great example. So, you know, make sure that when you have a little success, you've got to keep evolving. You've got to keep elevating because that's the only way you're going to dominate your industry. And then the other thing I would say is personality traits is be curious, really cute. I did a whole research on gifted people. You know, people like Mozart, Mother Theresa, Beethoven, DaVinci, all these people that none of us would ever argue that these people weren't gifted obviously. And what I th th the one common thread that they all had was curiosity.

(25:36):

So, you know, DaVinci, for example you know, a lot of people know him as the artist, but he actually was a better scientist. And you know, a better inventor of machines and things in his day. And the art was the last thing he did. So if you think about it, you know, he was always curious because when you're curious, you never accept the status quo. You're always looking for how does somebody else do this? Or how does that work? Why did somebody fail and all those? So be curious, never be satisfied. And then and the other thing I will say is when you're an entrepreneur and you're faced with failure after failure after failure, you know, you have to keep charging ahead because one time I had a horrible, horrible show and I mean, everything bombed. And I was just devastated because, you know, as I told you, they'll just take you off.

(26:22):

So one day I was walking out and the CEO of the company at that time was walking towards me and he said, what happened? You know? And I said, I don't know. I, I swear to you, I tried 10,000 different things. It does, it didn't work. You know, I have no idea what I just give up. And he said to me, oh, great. You know, you found 10,000 ways something doesn't work. So there aren't that many more ways left for you to try, you know, something work. And so, you know, you got to keep charging ahead and then lastly, believe in yourself, cause it starts with you. Everything starts with you and everything ends with you. You have the world in your hands. And you know, I came here as a, as a penny immigrant and without speaking English, I had no parents. Really, my parents couldn't even help me do my homework because they didn't speak English.

(27:07):

So from that point, and I'm not saying I'm a brilliant person by any means, I kind of I'm here on the show showing, you know, sharing my story simply because I never gave up. So don't give up and keep charging and you never know what's going to happen. You know, my American dream really was to make $36,000 a year. That was my goal. And I met that goal first year, second year, I did 1,000,030, or there are 10 million, you know, and I don't even know when I hit the a hundred million, but at some point I completely stopped counting money. Money is the last thing on my mind. So you focus on the right things like your family, your family, time, your character as a person, what you're doing to impact lives of other people, then money just comes. What, even if you don't want it. I mean, that's the funny thing. So that's, you know, that's all the tips I have. I don't have any tricks.

(27:59):

Well, I, you know, you said a lot of great things in there, Victoria, and I think a lot of them again are the seeds to success. I mean, you have to plant those seeds and some of the things you mentioned, I love the fall forward plan, not a fall back plan. I believe in that as well, because you know, someone who has a plan B you know, the, the story of Cortez of burning the ships. So he, you know, is leading his men into battle and they were outnumbered 50 to one. And he told his men to go burn all the ships. And they said, well, gosh, why wouldn't we do that? He said, because then we have no successes. Our only option you either die or you're successful. And you know, I'm not suggesting that you, you know, have your life on the line, but, but that's, that's the most extreme example of it. There's no plan B the only plan B is making plan a work better.

(28:43):

So, and

(28:46):

That's, that's really your fall forward plan, you know, you had mentioned, I think that's great. Again, this week we've been talking with Victoria Wieck. You can find out more www.victoriawieck.com. You can listen to her podcast, million-dollar hobbies at www.milliondollarhobbies.com. Follow her on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, connect with her on those platforms. Victoria, it has been a pleasure having you on the show. I really appreciate you being a guest.

(29:06):

Thank you so much for inviting me. And until next time we'll talk again soon. Hopefully. All right.

(29:12):

Sounds great. Sounds great. Well, again, guys, thanks for listening. I'm sure you got a lot out of this episode, Victoria shared with us all sorts of golden nuggets to make this more successful in growing and scaling our business. Have a great week. And don't forget as always cash flow is king.

(29:32):

This has been Mr. Biz radio to learn how to become part of Mr. Biz nation. Visit www.MrBizSolutions.com for access to free weekly, subscribe to the Mr. Biz YouTube channel and follow him on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter, to listen to archive shows. You can find them on the Mr. Biz Solutions website.