248 MINISODE Susan Bratton: Health First

Susan Bratton has built an extraordinary empire advising men and women how to put the intimacy and passion back into their relationships. Known as the “Dear Abby of Sex”, Susan is CEO and co-founder of Personal Life Media, and she shares how she is turning back the clock on aging, detoxifying her home and her life, and why its vital for women to “know the numbers” or the KPI metrics that drive your business growth.

Melinda Wittstock:         Susan, welcome to Wings.

Susan Bratton:                 I just want to sing the Wings song for you, but I don’t think I can.

Melinda Wittstock:         I know. It goes a little high. It goes a little high pitched. I know. I wish I could sing that, too, sadly.

Susan Bratton:                 It’s so cute.

Melinda Wittstock:         I know. Right? I just love getting together with these amazing women. We put on our wings, and what I really want to know right now from you though is what is inspiring you most in the world right now?

Susan Bratton:                 Reversing middle age.

Melinda Wittstock:         Now that’s something to get … Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I’m down with that. What’s that?

Susan Bratton:                 I’m really focused on structuring my day around the things that I know I need to do to whack back the time machine. Getting up every day … I put an activity tracker on my phone and I get up every day and I do three miles so I can get 20 miles in. I wear a laser hat to keep my hair thick ’cause your hair starts to thin in middle age. I use a RedRush infrared light on my skin to try to keep the skin toned good. I’m going back to yoga again ’cause I fell off the wagon. I take a lot of supplements for various things like NAD, that nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide that you’ve been hearing about.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, NAD, yeah, that’s amazing. I know people who do that intravenously.

Susan Bratton:                 I know. That seems a little excessive to me, but yeah, I’m doing NAD and taking some hair vitamins and I’m going on my whole body vibration machine and I eat organic salads for lunch. I make my own salad dressings and I’ve been lowering all the toxins in all my health and beauty products and my cleaning supplies and my laundry detergent. I’ve been doing a whole vaginal rejuvenation [stack 00:02:25]. Because I’m a sexpert, I got to keep my equipment in good working order. I’ve been doing O shots, which are orgasm shots and all kinds of intravaginal lasering because I’m already lasering my skin to keep the age spots down so now, I’m lasering my vaginal mucosa to keep it more healthy and robust. I’m just doing a lot of things that are health related and structured because if I don’t have a structure, I don’t do it because I just work all the time. I’m a workaholic.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, there’s so much to do on your business if you’re a business owner or an entrepreneur. Your work is never finished, right?

This is like a whole new world, which I feel like I’m just entering into.

Susan Bratton:                 You know what else I’ve been doing? I know you’ve been doing a special diet. I’ve been doing … You start to get belly fat in middle age and I’ve gone two rounds and I’m going to do a third of the ProLon Fasting Mimicking Diet, which is a diet that allows you to still eat enough that you don’t get “hangry”, but you go into a five-day fast that … I worked all the way through it. I had incredible brainpower and energy. The only thing you miss is just kind of like nga-nga-nga-nga-ngang, not gnawing on things when you’re working on stuff sometimes. Like there are certain tasks I do where I always eat blue corn chips, my blue corn chip processing moment.

I’ve been doing the ProLon diet and I’ve lost 8 pounds’ worth of belly fat on that thing. It literally shrinks your middle. It resets your [crosstalk 00:04:35]. It releases stem cells. It does something called autophagy, which is where your own cells, if you’re not constantly digesting food, your cells go in and do cellular clean up. If you’ve hurt yourself, if you’ve had a knee pain or a ‘this’ or a ‘that’, your body is actually taking any damaged cells and getting rid of them. On day 4 of the diet, you take this giant [poo 00:05:00] and you’re like, “Okay, I’m not eating very much at all. Where did this poo come from?” It’s all the dead stuff in your body that your body is getting rid off when it’s doing autophagy.

I love this ProLon diet and I’ve been telling everyone about it because it’s backed my Stanford University. It’s based on the Valter Longo Longevity Diet. It has patents and they ship you the box of food for 250 bucks and you just eat that food for five days. You don’t have to think about it and I’ve been doing it when I’m like okay, head down, one-week, five days, I’m just going to like bomb out all my work, get stuff done and lose some weight and reset my insulin and reset my health. As I said, I’m reversing my middle age. That’s one of the key things that I’m doing right now to do that.

Melinda Wittstock:         I think that just where science is leading us … I think this is fantastic. What’s a big challenge for you right now in business or life?

Susan Bratton:                 Yeah, my big challenge is really my business. My life is good. It’s stable, steady. I’m happily married. My daughter’s thriving. I’m solid on that stuff, which is awesome, and I haven’t always been, right? I’m a human. We go in our ups and downs, but right now, I’m in a good situation. But I’ve been doing my business for a dozen years and I realized that my business has been flat the last three years and it’s because I have a constraint in my business and that is getting cold traffic to my offers, to my websites.

I sell sex techniques, passionate love making techniques, bedroom communication skills and sexual health and vitality information. The problem is that I’m boxed out of buying traffic on Facebook and Google and things like that ’cause I’m about “Oh, my God, sex,” like it’s some freaking thing that you’re not supposed to talk about. Because I can’t get enough traffic to my offers, my business was flat.

I was like “All right, I’ve got to find something that’s not sexual that is also continuity, something where … ” Like if you buy one of my titles, one of my online programs, you buy it and you’re done. You’re kind of like, “Okay, I’m good. I need to go learn how to do this thing. I want to learn how to have these kinds of orgasms or whatever I want to do.” But then I’ve sold you something and then you’re full. You’re complete. Maybe you’ll buy something in a year from me.

What I needed was something that was something you could consume, something that you would be able to buy and you’d want to reorder because it was awesome. That’s what’s called a continuity business. So I am moving into sexual vitality energy bars, supplements. I’m bringing out a product line of things that you would reorder because they work well for you and so you want to keep taking them or eating them or doing them. So I’m getting into physical goods whereas I’ve been in information products for a decade.

I’m continuing to basically run my business and keep that business going. It’s not like I’m just nurturing it along and it runs itself. Trust me, it takes a ton of time, but I’m also launching a new company and a new brand, structuring that organization such that it’s advantageous from a tax perspective so I’m not overpaying because I live in California. I even looked at moving to Puerto Rico-

Melinda Wittstock:         Everybody in California has looked at moving to Puerto Rico, right, but …

Susan Bratton:                 I know, exactly. I gave up on it though. I thought to myself I can’t move out of Marin County. Organic lettuce is too good. The air is too fresh. The water is too clean. The lifestyle’s too perfect. The weather is too great. I got to find an alternative tax structure for my business.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right, right, right. There’s a challenge right there.

Susan Bratton:                 Definitely.

Melinda Wittstock:         Absolutely. Susan, you’ve done so many things in your life, just working for tech companies in Silicon Valley as this amazing sales executive, really creating millions of dollars of value and then pioneering a business that’s not an easy business and you yourself admitted it’s pretty hard to-

Susan Bratton:                 Yeah, it’s a hard business, really hard business. It’s way harder than anybody can possibly imagine. Everybody thinks, “Oh, sex sells. You must have it really easy.” It’s just the opposite. I’m traffic constrained. I can’t get enough traffic. It’s like having a store in the middle of a desert. I’m not selling anything.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yet what you’re doing is so, so important. Along the way, what are the top three go-to pieces of advice you would give women in business, female entrepreneurs, just like over the years everything you’ve learned, what are the top three things they should take away and they should learn and adopt immediately to succeed?

Susan Bratton:                 Number one is having a KPI dashboard, knowing where you’re going, what your goals are, always have three goals that I call my three outcomes. I learned that from my girlfriend, Meredith Sasseen. You should definitely have her on Wings. She’s really good too with her three outcomes thing. I’ll introduce you. I always have three numbers I’m targeting and I’m always keeping my beady little eye on those suckers, on [crosstalk 00:10:30] report.

Melinda Wittstock:         Know your numbers, yes.

Susan Bratton:                 Know your numbers, number one. I’m sure a lot of people say that, but God, it’s like how many people that don’t do it. I’m shitty with numbers. It’s just not my thing. I’m the letters person. I write the copy. I’m the face of the brand. I do the deals. I’m the networker, but I’m not the numbers girl so I literally need an email which says three numbers, how well I’m doing on them.

I hired basically a marketing analytics manager to just track all my data and numbers for me so that I would have really good reports all the time. Now most of my business, my team is outsourced in the Philippines and they’re like our family and they’ve been with us for years and years, and they’re awesome. Even if you think, “Oh, my God, I can’t have a full time person just working on my analytics,” you can. You actually can have that if you are willing to train a person who has the raw firepower and knowledge and is really good with numbers, maybe has been an accountant or something like that.

A lot of people think about the Philippines as being like outsourced VAs and that does such a horrible disservice to the level of intelligence of the people in the Philippines.

Melinda Wittstock:         I just want to say that Wings of Inspired Business, which I mean we get great reviews for the audio quality and the production values, my audio editor is in the Philippines, Florante Valdez. He’s amazing. Thank you, Florante.

Susan Bratton:                 Go, Florante. Thank you, Florante.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, obviously, it’s not as expensive so if you’re at the early stages of your business, yeah, you need to hire, right? I think you’re moving into advice number 2, which is kind of like hire your weaknesses. Hire the things that you don’t want to do yourself.

Susan Bratton:                 Or can’t do.

Melinda Wittstock:         Or can’t do.

Susan Bratton:                 I’d have to sit here and cry like a baby if I had to come up with that stuff, not ever be able to do it.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right.

Susan Bratton:                 I suck at numbers. Who cares? It doesn’t matter. I still run a profitable business. I employ 25 people. I make people tons of money. It doesn’t matter. You do not have to be good at everything. That is totally cool. Own your strengths and your weaknesses. Then that leads me to my third thing, which is my strength, which is networking. I like to dial for dollars. I like to do deals. I like to network. I like to get business done. I like to support people and be supported. I am not afraid to ask for people.

One of my main ways of making money is through my affiliate partners. They promote my offers to their followers and I pay them commission on the sales. I have over a hundred affiliate partners and I have four [contests 00:13:15] a year for them and they mail for me over and over and over and over again because I make them money and I make sure I make them money. I think a lot of people look at me and they’re like, “God, you’re such an amazing networker. How do you get 60 people to mail for a contest free? What are you doing?” I’m like, “I just call people up on Skype. I text them. I email them.” I just ask them if they’ll do business with me. I call them up and I make them the offer to work together and sometimes they don’t, but almost always, they do.

Melinda Wittstock:         I think the affiliate model is really interesting for women too because I think a lot of women-

Susan Bratton:                 Collaborative, we’re team players.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, women are collaborative and sometimes have a hard time advocating for themselves. It’s much easier to advocate for someone else, right? If you have a group, an increasingly large network of women all selling for each other, I like to say that, and this is very Wings oriented of course, but that we all soar higher when we fly together. This is a really interesting business model where everybody wins and-

Susan Bratton:                 Yeah, I was just down in Cancun at a big event and I’m a platinum partner for a company called ClickBank. They’re a merchant service that does affiliate management. They had their top partners down there and I’m lucky enough to be one. I was down in Cancun and one of the women, Amber, she got everybody together, all the women in her suite and we did a round robin. You were there. We just talked about what we had to offer, what we needed and then they started a Facebook group and I’ve already posted, “Hey, who wants me to mail for them? How can I help you because I’ve got a contest coming up? Let’s do some business together.” I think those … It was funny ’cause I posted in that group, “Who has an offer that they want me to mail?” and only one person replied, and I thought come on, you guys, all have offers-

Melinda Wittstock:         You’re going to mail for me, right?

Susan Bratton:                 I always mail for you, yes, definitely, yes.

Melinda Wittstock:         I mail for you, too.

Susan Bratton:                 I know.

Melinda Wittstock:         Because I think what you do, Susan, is wonderful and I’m really happy to share it because anything I can do to add value for anyone in the Wings tribe, any of our listeners or folks who watch you say, for instance, in the Wings of Success Summit, this is magnificent. It’s creating value. We’re all lifting each other up, which is wonderful.

As we draw this minisode to a close, I want to make sure that people can find you easily, especially since you’re having the cold traffic issue, where can people find you? Where do you want them to go? Do you have any kind of special offer for our listeners today?

Susan Bratton:                 I have some freebies that I really like to give away. I think that it’s like dating. Before I ask you to go to bed with me, we should probably meet and then, share a meal or something. There are two things that I recently wrote. One of my most popular books is called Sexual Soulmates because I teach passionate lovemaking techniques. I teach people the communication skills and pleasuring techniques that make you feel like you are being made love to by your soul mate. It’s that really heart-connected sex.

One of the techniques that comes out of that book is called the Sexual Soulmate Pact. If you go to sexualsoulmatepact, P-A-C-T, like an agreement, .com, sexualsoulmatepact.com, I give you a communication technique that will make it really easy for you to communicate with your partner in the bedroom. You will help them win. They will feel like a million bucks. You won’t hurt their feelings and they’ll get better at making you feel great.

Then I have another one called the Soulmate Embrace, which is at soulmateembrace.com and it’s a very tiny little e-book that shows a hug technique that increases oxytocin, lowers your stress, lowers your cortisol, keeps you feeling much more intimately connected to your partner and is the kind of thing that guys forget to do, which is to hold us women until we completely relax and not try to get sex from us while they’re doing it. It really is a way that you can teach guys to be that masculine partner who’s holding space for you literally and physically holding you so that you can calm down your nervous system so you could even possibly think about wanting him for sex. Guys, they skip that part, and this is how to teach them how to do it in a way that he’s never done to you before that really makes you relaxed and feel great.

Melinda Wittstock:         This is very, very valuable. I’m going to make sure that everybody has the link in the show notes so they can get that from you, Susan, and obviously, how to find you on social media and your wonderful Instagram feed, which I hang on all of your posts. They’re wonderful.

Susan Bratton:                 Thank you so much.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah. No, it’s beautiful. It’s creative and it’s interesting. It’s always really compelling and you always look gorgeous in it as well.

Susan Bratton:                 I don’t post the ugly pictures.

Melinda Wittstock:         What? Ugly pictures?

Susan Bratton:                 Thank God for Facetune, too.

Melinda Wittstock:         No. No, no, no.

Susan Bratton:                 Didn’t I show you Facetune when I saw you, the one that was like about how you could make all your [crosstalk 00:19:05].

Melinda Wittstock:         Actually, I got rid of a mosquito bite on my shoulder in one of them not so long ago. That was quite handy. Thank you so much, Susan, for putting on your wings and flying with us.

Susan Bratton:                 I love it.