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TRANSCRIPT:

*this transcript was mostly generated by AI, please excuse any mistakes

[00:00:00] Here is your daily dose of the ultimate sales machine coming to you from the new edition, visit ultimate sales machine. com to get your copy or multiple copies. I am your host, Amanda Holmes, CEO of Chet Holmes international. What you’re about to learn has assisted a quarter of a million businesses to generate billions of dollars working faster, better, smarter.

Jonathan Goldhill: Hi, it’s Jonathan Goldhill and welcome back. There are countless books, seminars, and consultants that offer the secrets to everlasting business success after heating their advice. Perhaps you manage your time more efficiently, write a compelling pitch letter or close a few more deals, but after a week or a month, you revert to old bad habits and mediocre performance until the next hot program comes along.

The only lasting way to enhance your productivity and growth is to focus on a handful of basic concepts and repeat them week after week and teach your staff to do the same. The Ultimate Sales Machine, one of [00:01:00] the best selling business books of all time was first published in 2007 by legendary sales expert Chet Holmes.

In this book, he explained how to tune up virtually every area of your business systematically with just a little discipline focus. All you needed was to focus on 12 key areas of improvement and practice them over and over with pigheaded discipline. 

Amanda Holmes breathe New life into her father’s classic advice by adding new content and adjusting it to today’s environment. Amanda is the c e O of Chet Holmes International, which has worked with over 250,000 businesses worldwide. At age 24, she inherited her father’s multimillion dollar enterprise.

Which help specialize in helping companies double their sales. Amanda, welcome to the show. 

Amanda: Thank you so much, Jonathan. 

Jonathan Goldhill: All right. Let’s start off with [00:02:00] that letter. Everyone’s talking about the forward Dear Dad. I hear it’s made some men, grown men, I should say cry. And I can tell you for one, I, I am one of those.

I, I cried when I read that letter and that is what had me reach out to you. Of course, I’m very familiar with the book. I read it long after I had read many other businesses, books, but it seemed like the bible for sales, for marketing, for time management. And can you tell us about what you wrote and. 

Amanda: Yeah, though, so I inherited the business with no real succession plan, which was a bit crazy considering my father was diagnosed with cancer 11 years ago, and we, he spent 352 nights there and never once a night alone.

So it was between me, my mother, and my brother. So I spent easily a hundred all-nighters with him, and yet he never sat me down and said, [00:03:00] Amanda, here are my businesses. Here’s who runs my businesses. Here’s what I’d like to see for my businesses. We never had that dialogue after he passed, which I was very close with him, so it was utterly devastating for me.

He was my hero. After he passed, then they didn’t know what to do with me, a couple hundred staffs, so they made me chairwoman of the board, and I didn’t really wanna be there. They didn’t really want me there, but we were just stuck in. In this situation, and the only way that I really learned my father’s business was just like all of our clients.

I watched his videos over and over again. I read his book over and over again, and I read his emails, and one night before the manuscript was due, I wrote the new edition of my father’s book. It took me four years. So one night I found this email where he said that he had generated more wealth in the last six months than the prior eight years combined, and it was because of this one thing.

And I went, I’ve hit [00:04:00] gold. This is it. So I called it the encore. My father never got to give on how to live a rich and full life, because in the last. Year or so of his life, he really changed his modus operandi, just how he viewed the world and his purpose in it. How to be more at peace. Um, cuz my father was extremely driven.

So when I first inherited the company, I thought, I don’t wanna just bury myself in early grave right next to my father at 55. Why would I want that same fate? I watched him go through it. Thankfully. I had a mentor who’s an Indian saint, I call her Guruji. She’s the founder of Divine Blessed International, and she was the one that said you could step in.

And you can be c e o. And I’d look at her like, you’ve gotta be kidding me. I was a singer-songwriter prior, just released my fourth record. I was touring. I’d gone to music school. She’s like, yes, you can step in as c o. And she said, but you can do it differently. [00:05:00] You can approach it differently. And what she taught me was the same thing I found in the letter.

And so when I first stepped in as ceo, I started running webinars. Where I would sell, it would be me. I’m 26 years old, I have 400 CEOs in the room, and I’d be teaching you how to double your sales, right? It was, I don’t know where I got best to do this. It was insane. One day I had finished a webinar and I didn’t sell anything at the end of the webinar and I was a bit down and I saw my guru and.

I bowed and I said, hello? And she’s like, you seem sad. I’m like, oh no, I’m okay. She said, no, what’s wrong? And I said, I just did a webinar and I didn’t close any business. And she went close. She’s an enlightened being. It’s not like she really knows the sales vernacular. I’m like, close like a vice. You win their business.

And she looked at me like, Why would you ever wanna put pressure on somebody? To put pressure on them means you’re putting pressure on yourself and pressure steals the pleasure from life. Mm-hmm. Why wouldn’t you, with all those people on a call, why wouldn’t you put a [00:06:00] seed in the ground and let it bloom?

And when you put that seed and let it grow, you have enough people to build an orchard. And then when you look at that tree to grab the fruit, you could approach it in one of two ways. You could either go up, take an axe, and with force and pressure and anger and manipulation, you could cut off a whole tree branch just to grab that one piece of fruit.

Or you could look at a tree and be so grateful that it has such a beautiful bounty. You could be. Humbled by its beauty and then lovingly plucking apples. So then you have two apples. Both you have gotten the apple, but one was in anger and pressure, and the other one was in humbleness and gratitude. And that one that’s in gratitude will be the sweetest apple you’ve ever tasted.

But the one in pressure will steal the sweetness from every bite. So I found that metaphor that my guru gave me. I something clicked in my head, and after that, We doubled clients. We doubled our clients multiple years in a row. I increased [00:07:00] our conversion rates by 1100%. I increased our leads by 1176%. It just, it completely shifted me from feeling I needed to do things in pressure and manipulation into I can just be me and enjoy myself and be humbled and grateful for the opportunity to serve.

And that was exactly what I found in the letter that my father had written about how he generated more wealth in six months than the prior eight years combined. 

Jonathan Goldhill: That’s amazing. What a beautiful story and how it’s come full circle. And let me just back up. What was it like to grow up the, the daughter of Chet Holmes?

Did, did you have other siblings? And so tell us a little bit about that childhood. 

Amanda: Yeah, I have a brother. Um, he. He wasn’t really interested in the business so much. Brilliant. I tried to get him so many times. I think he only, he worked for us for a couple of months and he wrote some of our most successful campaigns.

He’s a storyteller like my father’s and a brilliant [00:08:00] writer. But yeah, I couldn’t keep him in the business. 

Jonathan Goldhill: But you had that creative spark being a singer songwriter, recording albums, and what was it that led you to want to step up and step into this role? 

Amanda: My, my father. He had always wanted to be a director and a, and a movie producer and a, so he wrote several screenplays, sold one to Warner Brothers.

He, he recorded an independent film we put on a play in Hollywood. That was his dream was to be, um, create movies. And he had, he wrote. Thousands of campaigns for the Fortune 500, and he was so prolific in marketing and sales. He just was so good at that. It was harder for him to leave it. So he said that he sacrificed his life and he worked so hard so that me and my brother could do whatever we wanted.

Whatever we’d like to do. And he was so passionate about the arts. My brother at one point had become a writer and an actor, and then [00:09:00] I went into singing cuz he’d also written hundreds of songs with his best friend. So he supported us in our passions. So there was never really the talk of either of us would be a part of the business.

Jonathan Goldhill: Yeah. And you were the younger in the birth order, I take it? 

Amanda: No, I was, I’m older. 

Jonathan Goldhill: Oh, okay. So tell us a little bit about the moment of transition Hand, the handoff. Did your brother step up at that same time that you stepped up, or no? Did it just, did you, was it became obvious that you, like, I gotta keep this going.

What was it? What was that experience? 

Amanda: I hired and fired D four different CEOs, a president, a c F O, a c o a, CTO O, all just trying to fill the void of my father. It’s a personality brand, Chet Holmes International, right? And, and it’s not as if he was in the day-today, and he hadn’t been for years, but it was as if it was a body [00:10:00] and all these moving parts, and without my father, it was missing the heart.

So none of the parts feel felt like they could work anymore because it was missing him. Mm. And my guru just kept telling me that I could step in and I really thought that she was bonkers, and I just kept trying to pull in all of these other people. I think the changing moment was I went and I, one of my staff said, I’m climbing Kilimanjaro next week.

I think you’d really like it. Would you like to go? And I looked at him like, Yeah, maybe When are you leaving? And this was on Thursday and he’s, I leave on Monday for Africa. And I was like, okay, how much time would I have to tell, give you to tell you if I’m gonna go or not? He’s, I would need to know in 24 hours.

I didn’t realize. Later on I found out that he was joking. He didn’t actually think I’d say yes. And then I said yes. So then I went and climbed the largest freestanding mountain with 72 hours notice. And he was like, and no training. No prior 

Jonathan Goldhill: training. Training. 

Amanda: That’s great. Um, but I worked out a lot. But [00:11:00] as I started, I realized I don’t know much about altitude sickness, but people that smoke.

Oh, 

Jonathan Goldhill: you do? Yeah, sure. I’m a skier, so I know altitudes. 

Amanda: Ah, okay. So what I didn’t know, so I worked out a ton, but what I didn’t know is that smokers have a much easier time in altitude cuz they’re used to restricted breath. Okay. Whereas me, I’m a trained vocalist, so breath for me, I’ve studied this for, at that point it had been 15 years of vocal lessons and I’d just gone through my yoga teacher training.

So I breathe much deeper than the average person. So when I got there, I was devastated on day one. Like I, I had such a hard time, headaches and nausea and interesting. Yeah, and I barely made it to the top, and that’s a whole story in itself. But after that, I realized that things that feel completely insurmountable and impossible can be achieved just one step at a time.

And then I also realized that [00:12:00] I couldn’t do it alone. There was about, on the day of summit, everyone had left. And it was just me and one African man on my left and one African man on my right, so that I wouldn’t fall down the mountain and my eyes were rolling to the back of my head and I could barely, I was.

I couldn’t really control my body and I realized that I never would’ve been able to summit without the help of others. And I realized that I would never be able to take over the company without help of others and to be grateful and humble enough to accept the help from others cuz there’s plenty of staff around.

I just needed to lean on them and I had never really leaned on others before. I’d always just been a. Rogue one woman armies, that that metaphor really helped me come back and I was like, okay, let’s do it. So I let go of the current c e o and I stepped into c e o. And that week, man, everything went wrong.

I got served papers for a lawsuit. My C F O came to me and said that we were in transition. We’d spent half a million dollars on [00:13:00] Salesforce, but we didn’t think that we, he didn’t think that it was a good time to go into Salesforce, so we should just. Cancel that contract and just stay without a A C R M or go back to our old c r m.

And then that same week as well, the merchant servicer shut down my account. So I couldn’t pay the hundreds of staff, and I’m like, what’s a merchant service company? I didn’t know what a CRM was when they, he was asking me, should we go? You remember? Not I was in over my head, but I had just climbed Kilman.

Juro. Amazing is what it’s worth. And here we’re eight years later, I’ve been C 

Jonathan Goldhill: for eight years. Incredible. And do you see yourself more in the visionary role or in the integrator role to use terms that popular with eos you’re probably familiar with? Yes. Which role are you? Which hat do 

Amanda: you wear? I’m definitely, I’m similar to my father in like the visionary.

I love to innovate and that’s what I spent the last four years working on with the new edition of my father’s book. So my father came out with all these concepts before the internet. He was so before his time. Mm-hmm. And he was teaching, he was doing [00:14:00] content marketing from radio ads. Right. Nobody was doing that at that time, you know?

Right. Um, so I had to reinvent everything that he did. It’s all the same strategy. Strategies. Those are timeless. It’s just the tactical implementation of them. So what he did on radio, I’ve proven in Facebook ads and what he did on fax machines, I’m doing in Instagram dms, what he did on voicemails, I’m doing on ringless voicemails.

So all of the concepts are still the same. It’s just the tactical. Shift that needed to be implemented. So I’m definitely more of the visionary and I surround myself by integrators, so, so that we can get the visions into paper and into dollar 

signs 

Jonathan Goldhill: That’s amazing. Yeah. He reminds me of people from the a different era, Dan Kennedy, bill Glazer, the direct marketing sales letters that were all too popular back then.

So, alright, let’s talk about the strategies. There used to be only seven different marketing mediums 10 years ago that [00:15:00] companies would deploy today. It’s double that with 13 different marketing mediums. We’re doing double the work for a fraction of the results. So what’s changed over the last 10, 15 years that we should know to assist us in the next decade of business innovation?

Like you 

Amanda: just said. Right? So the amount of mediums that we’re on has duplicated. Not to mention 15 years ago, social media wasn’t really a thing either, and now we have 3.8 billion social media pages all putting out content. All the time. So if you felt like my father used to call it the clutter factor, people see 40,000 commercial messages a day.

If that was just, if just businesses were able to put out their message just on Facebook alone. Four years ago there were 3 million advertisers. Today there are 9 million advertisers, so the B2B landscape of commercial messages has. Tripled. And then on top of that you have another couple billion people putting out messages every single day.

[00:16:00] The amount of clutter factor has gotten so intense that people today have to get hyper focused on who their ideal buyer is because. The biggest mistake that companies make, and it’s the biggest misconception too. They think they know who they’re marketing to, but with just a couple of questions, I recognize very quickly and my staff realize that majority of businesses don’t know who they’re speaking to.

And when you speak to everyone, You speak to no one exactly, so the more that you can focus in on exactly who your dream buyer is, your best buyers, and then when you can speak to them directly, then it pierces through all of that clutter. You can’t just be vanilla today. You can’t just put out a message about you and how great you are.

You have to get in the shoes of your prospect. You have to understand what they’re talking about at their dinner table, what they’re talking about on their Monday morning meeting with all of their staff. You have to know. What are the problems [00:17:00] that they’re facing on a day-to-day basis? Because if you can speak to their pain better than they can articulate themselves, they believe that you have the solution.

So messaging is critical in that, but you have to know who you’re speaking to first. So it’s getting hyper-focused. So when you get hyper-focused, then it’s just as my father taught, right, mastery in about doing 4,000 different things, it’s about doing 12 things 4,000 times. So just refining who is that best buyer?

What is the education based marketing I’m going to do to them to build that trust and respect? And then where am I going to give that message so that they get it the best? Because we’re on double the amount of mediums today, and so much of it is just a waste of time and effort because. So many businesses put their message out on a place.

I had a client that spent a million dollars a year on trade shows, a million dollars, and when we did an audit, we realized that they’d only generated $70,000 the last time that they did that trade show. Wow. And it was because they were used to, so [00:18:00] used to doing this trade show all the time, they forgot to even care about checking if there’s an r oi.

So wherever your message is, is it where your ideal decision makers 

Jonathan Goldhill: are? I can’t stop, but think I just got an email from people, or I’m getting emails from people who want me to advertise on TikTok and start, um, amplifying my brand on TikTok. And I’m thinking, that’s not my demographic. How do I communicate a message?

And then I just, in the recent, uh, I’m in the process of purchasing house and just saw, uh, a young woman, 20. 4, 26 years old, she just purchased a 4 million house in Pacific Palisades and she had 61 million views of her ten second TikTok video, which was lip synced and. There was like nothing to it. And I’m thinking, yeah, she’s the third most watched TikTok person.

Is she going into the market thinking about who her [00:19:00] ideal audience is? Or did she just, is this just a stroke of genius? Is TikTok really a medium for the, for coaches to sell their work to, to business owners? There’s a certain sense of craziness that’s taken over with some of this, and it makes me pause to think, what do I really know sometimes?

Amanda: It’s brilliant because now you can own, you’re like your own media and publishing company, right? Right. So that is magnificent. But what’s missing from so many, right? The number one job that. High schoolers wanna have today is to become an influencer. Amazing, amazing. That is their, their aspirational goal, and I hate to break it to you, but majority of influencers don’t make money, likes and follows, don’t pay the bills.

So it is still critical to go back to that. The basics, like what I just gave you, is the ultimate sales machine framework, right? Mm-hmm. You have to know your goal, right? You have to know who you’re speaking to, your dream clients. You have to know. What to say with education based marketing, and then you have to know where to put [00:20:00] it to deploy that.

We call it the seven muscle marketing. So if you have a sound strategy behind it, then yeah, it’s great if you can get some organic reach and you can grow quickly if you have all of that in place. Majority have followers and likes and comments, but it’s like you’re saying it’s a ten second voiceover that doesn’t do anything.

Yeah, I have a, I have an intern, Luke Aberly. He’s had hundreds of thousands of views on his videos too, and it just, and he’s 14 and there’s just no rhyme or reason to it. Like he has one where it plays music and it’s him putting like WD 40 on his tractor or his little, I don’t know the word, but, but yeah, it’s bizarre.

Jonathan Goldhill: Alright, so we digressed into, uh, nonsense. Let’s talk about some of the. Basics of the of Chet’s concepts, the time management secrets of billionaires. Let’s start with that. Five steps to increase your productivity by a hundred percent. W what are some of [00:21:00] those time management secrets? I always talk about the Ivy Lee method.

You’re probably familiar with that, folks on your priorities. Ivy Lee was a consultant to Charles Schwab, owner of Bethlehem Steel back in the twenties and thirties, and went in and worked with his executives and said, I’ll work with your guys. Just lemme spend a few minutes with each of them, see how they’re performing, what they’re doing, and what he told ’em to do was write down.

Your top five priorities for tomorrow. Prioritize them and then focus them. Focus on them one at a time until you finish the first one, then go to the second one, et cetera. Do that at the end of the day. Rinse and repeat, and do that for three months. And at the end of three months, Charles Schwab sent an Ivy Lee a check.

For $35,000, which would be about $500,000 today. Yeah. This is a, I’m sure a secret. I don’t recall if it’s in Chet’s book. I imagine it is. Brian Tracy talks about it. Tons of people talk about this, but what are some of 

Amanda: yours? Yes, so there’s a lot of similarities. So [00:22:00] many people have heard of time management secrets.

There’s a difference between hearing. And doing Right. Of course. So the practice is something that can take five to 10 minutes a day, but it’s just discipline all day to make sure. And my father had a problem when he was working for billionaire, Charlie Munger, co-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. Oh, I 

Jonathan Goldhill: didn’t know he worked for him.

Interesting. 

Amanda: Oh yeah. He doubled the sales of nine different companies for Charlie all within 12 to 15 months and multiple companies doubled several years in a row. And so he was working nights and weekends and every moment he had not a minute to break, he would be at at the office and all it would be, hey, got a minute, and then a got a minute meeting would break out and so he.

So reactive in his day-to-day that he had no time to be proactive and actually get the work done that he needed to get done. So that’s why he would bring the work home and do it on nights and on the weekends. So he was going crazy and he was looking at all these seminars and they’d be like, okay, now you need to track everything that you’re [00:23:00] doing and then you need to record this.

And he’s, if I had that amount of time, do that amount of work, I wouldn’t be here looking for time management. So then he developed a system where the first step was touch it once. If how many times you actually, it’s the equivalent of a week’s vacation. The amount of time that we reread information. So you read an email, you go, oh, okay, I’d like to respond to that.

You put it away. You read it again, you the first time that you read an email. You need to respond in some way. Either you respond and say, this is too much to respond to. Now let’s discuss it in our weekly, weekly meeting. You can put it into a folder and you’re taking action on it that this is something I’m going to do later.

So there’s some type of action that happens. The, that’s the first step. Touch it once the second step. The second step is to list your top six. So like you’re saying, you don’t want a ton, cuz if you have 24, then you’ll just happily check off and get that dopamine hit that you’ve checked something off of your list, but it’s not the ones that are most important.

So [00:24:00] at least the top six. Then the third step is to actually take those top six and insert them into your calendar. So let’s say you start at 9:00 AM. From nine to nine 30, you’re not going to check your email because you know that will derail you from everything else that you have to get done today. So what’s the most important thing you need to get done?

Do that from nine 30 to 10 30 while you’re sending out a contract. Cuz that’s the most important thing. You’ve gotta get that proposal out. Then from 10 30 to 11. You’re saving time in your day to be reactive. You’re being proactive about your reactive time. So if somebody comes and says, Hey, I have a fire.

I need to talk to you. Okay, my got a minute. Meetings are happening from 10 30 to 11. You can come back at that time. Or if a fire happens with a client and you need to handle it, you have specific time allocated for those fires or to check your email or today checking social media if that’s part of your business that you’re interacting there.

So those, that reactive time becomes proactive time and [00:25:00] you’ve scheduled in, so before you even started your day, I’ll do it so often where when I’m filling in the things that are priorities, I’ll realize that I had six things. I filled in the four things that I wanted in this schedule, and realize that the two that are most important, I couldn’t even fit into my day.

So then I’ll have to reorganize them. Right? Cuz you have to get. Your biggest priority is done first, so it helps you set up the expectation of your day before you started so that at the end of you already know, okay, I can accomplish these things. I’m not gonna be able to get all my top six, but I can get the three most that are important because of.

My schedule today. So then you have a better expectation of what needs to get done. So by the end of the day, you feel so much more fulfilled that you’ve completed the thing that you were looking to achieve. So step one, touch at one, step two, top six, step three. Where are the. Uh, putting them into the amount of time.

So I’m gonna take 45 minutes for this. I’m gonna take an hour and a half for this. You’re chunking down different things that are [00:26:00] longer projects, okay? I can only do an hour and a half of that today. Then step number four is prioritizing them into your schedule. And then step five is, will it hurt me if I throw this away?

Because 80% of files that we file away are never referred to again. So that’s for all the hoarders on the call. 

Jonathan Goldhill: I like that one. That’s my favorite. I hadn’t heard that one. Some of these are reminiscent of, uh, David Allens getting things done, which I read many years ago. And I think these are practices that I practice.

Probably not being as driven as Chad, I’m sure, which is so interesting to learn that he was an aspiring Hollywood guy doing all this other work on the side. You’d think that the book and what he was doing in his workshops and work with Tony Robinson is late in his career. You’d think that’d be enough, but I guess it wasn’t enough for him.

So pretty amazing. But I think that’s great. I love that last one about throwing things away, cuz it is hard to throw things away. You want to hang onto them. [00:27:00] And there’s really no use to them.

All right. Let’s talk about some of your thoughts and Chet’s thoughts on doubling sales. You have. One of the things that you have, I think is the fastest, least expensive way to double sales.

Yes. I think you called the Dream 100. What is that all about? Yes, 

Amanda: so this one strategy has doubled the sales for more companies than any other. The Dream 100 was invented when my father was first given a list by Charlie. He was given a list of 2200 advertisers. He was selling. Or companies who were selling advertising in a newspaper.

Mm-hmm. They gave him 2200 and they said, okay, go cold. Call these 2200. He looked at the list and went, that’s a lot of cold calls. So he did some research and he analyzed and he realized that 95% of the marketplace was purchased by only 167 of those 2200. So instead of going after all of them that spray and pray, He led an intensive Dream 100 effort.

That’s where Dream 100 was invented, [00:28:00] but it was a Dream 167. So at that time, He led. It was very focused. So one week he’d send out a direct mail piece. The next week he’d follow up with a cold call. The next week he’d follow up with an email. Then he’d just send another direct mail piece, and every single week he was in their face and their place and their space.

He’d send a fax, right? So this was all the things that were available to him at that time. Today, dream 100 has a whole new life, and. I can share if you want stories about how we can do this on social media today. But at that time, so the first four months, he got not one contract. So people started to talk around the office.

This is the great sales guy, and he can’t even close the barn door like literal in here, but they were the biggest, best clients possible. So in the fifth month, he closed the largest contract that the industry had ever seen. It was Xerox. And he brought them in. And then because of that, all the others he had worked on, he got a 28 more that doubled their sales right there.

And every year they continued [00:29:00] this Dream 100. That’s how they doubled multiple years consecutively in multiple different companies. And Charlie actually called him into his office and said, Chet, I have never seen businesses double, multiple years consecutively. You sure we’re not lying, cheating, or stealing.

That’s great. Yeah, usually I had to ask my father because of the growth, and that’s coming from a billionaire, so that’s fairly impressive. The Dream 100 in its core, in its essence. And for those that are listening, I recommend writing this one down. There are always a smaller number of better buyers. Then there are all all buyers.

That means marketing and selling to them is cheaper than marketing and selling to all buyers. I can give an example of somebody that recently went through one of my boot camps as well. Would that be helpful? Sure. Let’s hear it. Troy Aberly went through my bootcamp last year and he had been studying the Dream 100 concept for many years, and he himself personally, one-on-one, has sold over [00:30:00] half a billion dollars using the Dream 100 concept.

He was the most profitable sales rep out of all of John Deere back in 2017 because he was getting triple to quadruple the amount for every buyer because he followed this method. So if you. Want more profitable clients, it’s a great method to follow. So he actually, we took an educational approach to how he used his messaging and he went to four of his past clients or past prospects that had all said no to him.

And he led with an education and in the first six weeks at, since the start of my training that I was doing for him, Six weeks later, he generated 8.4 million from four clients. Then after another seven months, he generated 42 million in total, and it cost him less than 50,000 in marketing budget, which is about the, uh, R O I on that is about 83000%.

Jonathan Goldhill: Wow. Now, 

what happens if you don’t have a list [00:31:00] to start with and you don’t know? You, you take a business like mine, right? I’m coaching family-owned businesses. It’s not easy to identify and develop a list of family-owned business. Of course, I could find the largest family-owned businesses, but those are not my prospects.

So you end up, and I think a lot of coaches do this, they end up marketing to the world, trying to communicate and educate and use a sort of a pull through marketing strategy, but you don’t have a list. 

Amanda: So there’s a couple of different ways. One would be to go back to all of your clients that you currently have, and I would ask them.

Who are the influencers that they follow online? Mm-hmm. Are there any associations, clubs, Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups that are where family businesses congregate? Mm-hmm. I would also ask them where do they spend their time online? So I’d be curious, do the clients that you have spend time on TikTok?

Ask them cuz if they’re [00:32:00] there, the chances of the others being there is more probable. But if they’re not, then you’ve already used your case, your use case. So I bet you asking them, they would be able to identify at least. Some kind of association. I know that there’s associations out there, so if they don’t tell you, then I would go and start researching who are, what are masterminds that are based on family owned businesses?

Are there publications based on family owned businesses? Are there Facebook groups on family owned businesses? I’m sure they’re out there cuz there’s they for freaking things stay at home moms that have decided to run businesses that sell jewelry. It’s like, ok. So yeah, I would go, influencer of your decision makers.

That’s how I would do the Dream 100. So you’d identify maybe my father taught Dream 100 because of all of the mess out there today. I even tried to get people, what is your dream one? Who would, what [00:33:00] is one relationship that would interesting change the course and direction of your world? And for me, last year, the most influential one I had was I spoke for, at HubSpot.

That one speaking engagement. Got I of the 600 that were in the room, 500 of them opted into what I was offering for free. Right then and there, I got a hundred appointments made and I’ve made hundreds of thousands of dollars just in the. First year, I’m sure over the next three years, I’ll probably generate a couple million dollars from that one engagement, that one relationship.

That’s good. So good. So yeah. So who is the leveraged one that can get you the many? Yeah. That would be your dream. Yeah, and it can be, call it a Target 12. It could just be a Target 12. It could be a target three. I have. Three that are most important to me at the moment. It depends on the different verticals, but yeah, I do have a Dream three list.

That’s great. 

Jonathan Goldhill: Awesome little plug. Shameless plug here. I will be speaking and sponsoring the Capital Region’s Family [00:34:00] Business Conference up in Sacramento on May 8th and ninth, and speaking to 300. Um, folks at the Generations Conference, which is gonna be filled with next generation leaders, giving out a copy of my book and, uh, looking forward to it because it’s gonna be a game show style, uh, presentation.

Talking about the importance of playbooks, which I think is the new buzzword for a sales playbook, a marketing playbook, a business playbook. It, it’s a strategy and I think. Chet’s book your book with co-authored with Che or however you, uh, term it is essentially an amazing playbook and it’s no wonder it was called the Ultimate Sales Bible, but it’s so beyond selling.

I think cuz it got into marketing, it got into time management, such good stuff. And Amanda, it’s really. Exciting to have you as a guest on my show. I’m just in awe of your whole, your succession [00:35:00] story, your energy, your enthusiasm. So I have a really simple question. Your guru, she a fan or a follower does and she’s had an amazing sales strategies.

Yeah. No, no, of course not. But she’s had an amazing influence. It’s almost like she’s like another. Like a parent or a mentor to you. And, and I think it, it speaks to the concept of if you’re going to be a disruptive successor, if you’re truly gonna take the business in two to 10 x your family’s business, or you step into a any business as an entrepreneurial leader and you’re gonna two to 10 x that business.

You have to disrupt the status quo. You have to bring something new. You have to reinvent the product or service or upgrade it. You’ve gotta obviously leverage technology. Marketing methods like you’ve talked about, have changed. So there’s so much. That comes into play. 

So is there a single piece or several pieces of [00:36:00] advice you might give a disruptive successor, A wannabe person who’s gonna, wants to take over the family business.

Maybe the parent or predecessor is holding on, uh, to the baton, uh, too tightly to let go. Um, or maybe they’ve just stepped into it and it was unexpected and here they are. Um, any advice you’d give them? 

Amanda: Ask a lot of questions. Be humble and willing to learn. Honor what has come before you. Recognize that it has been successful because of aspects, and highlight those aspects and hold them true and dear.

Recognize that you are a completely different person from the person that brought it to where it is. And what are your strengths and how can you work towards them? And it is a transition and it takes time to [00:37:00] bring something from what it was to what it can be. So at first, I used to really honor the people that my father respected and put around him, and I held them on a pedestal.

And what I’ve come to find over time is that my father was a fighter. He was from the Bronx. He had nothing. He got kicked out when he was 16 and he had to fend for himself and he made an empire. I did not have that chip on my shoulder. I was. I, my father gave me anything I needed to be able to get done what I needed to get done.

So because of his support, I produced four records. I was able to go on tour, like I had the same determination, but he already provided me with the resources to be able to make that happen. So it was a very different energy. So he surrounded himself with people that would argue with him cuz he liked to fight.

He was a fighter. I am a [00:38:00] lover. I don’t like to fight at all. So I found it very disturbing when I tried to interact with his team and over it’s taken me, it took me six to seven years of being c e O to really hone in on what is my culture. And honoring those that came before, and recognizing some that could stay, but then also seeing that this is the way that I’m going to have to continue this business because my father’s no longer here, so I, we still teach this same methodology.

It’s just the intention is a little bit different. He did everything in pressure. I’m not gonna do it in pressure. I had to change our methodology from double your sales. I’m sorry if you doubling, your sales is going to kill you, if it’s gonna make you sick, if you’re not gonna have, be able to have time with your family because of that, I’m not interested in it.[00:39:00] 

Our mission is to simplify growth. So that it’s easy and effortless for leaders so that they can have longevity in their lives and experience an abundance that is holistic. I, and so everything I do is how do we simplify? How do we make this easy, as easy as possible? My culture has changed dramatically in the people that I surround myself with.

I’m very collaborative. I recognize that I am the youngest one in the room majority of the time. I’m surrounded by baby boomers in my clientele, who I speak to when I’m on stages in my staff. And that’s okay. And I don’t have to have all the answers cuz I don’t. My father innovated his way through it. He had all the reps.

I don’t have those reps, so I have to rely on my team and I have to be inquisitive and I have to ask the questions. But at the end of the day, it’s still my intuition to make those decisions to move forward. [00:40:00] So, My culture is different, but we still teach the same and we still honor him. So there’s a blend there of.

Yeah, I think I said it. So first is ask lots of questions. Mm-hmm. Second is while still honoring everything that’s been there, respect what has worked, and keep that, and then recognize that it takes time. And then what are you, what are your strengths and what can you bring to the table working to your strengths so that it can be innovated.

Jonathan Goldhill: Love that you could remember those five points. That was amazing. So, oh, I’ve lived them, you’ve lived them and you spoke like a true disruptive successor. I was watching your eyes, you were looking up as you were like channeling, like what are these things that I need to communicate to that disruptive successor who’s listening to this podcast and figuring out how do I like step into my own shoes and my own greatness and.

I love the part about your dad being [00:41:00] from the Bronx and being a fighter. I totally get that. I’m from New York and there’s a little bit of that, Michael Jackson. I’m not a fighter, I’m a lover type of thing, but like you embrace the whole new culture in your organization, and yet you’ve kept the integrity of the materials that you’re teaching and you’ve just refreshed them and updated them, and, and you’re delivering them in a, in a different.

You’re delivering them differently. So I think the favorite part of what we talked about, So many favorite parts of this call, but 

I love when your guru told you about the pressure thing because I learned many years ago, people buy for their reasons not yours, and on their timeframe, not ours. And so that just, that story you told about the the tree, it just put it into such an elegant framework and gurus, especially from India, who [00:42:00] are have a lot of.

Sage and, and wisdom and time to communicate these stories. The power of selling through story is so important. I’m sure that, I’m sure you embrace that. It’s a huge part of your every day. It’s been such a pleasure to have you on this call with me 

Amanda: today. Yes. Thank you so much, Jonathan. It’s been wonderful.

All 

Jonathan Goldhill: right, so what’s next? What if there’s some giveaway, takeaway, call to action, what would you like to share with people? 

Amanda: I usually recommend getting the book. Yes, machine.com. You can get it. There’s a bunch of great bonuses there. Uh, there’s actually a checklist, the 47 point checklist on how to find your dream clients.

Uh, you had said, but how do I find that list of the dream 100 that it’s there and it’s a great just step by step on how you can find those dream clients. So I recommend going there and getting that book. It’s. We’ve assisted our clients to generate two over 2 billion in revenue. All of [00:43:00] that wisdom you could give for $17.

I don’t know if there’s a better ROI there, but if you really don’t wanna buy something, I guess you could get chapter four for free. But I recommend the whole book. Awesome. And if anybody wants to find me online, I’m everywhere. But I spend majority of my time on Instagram and Amanda Holmes was taken by some woman that won’t use her Instagram, so I had to go with Manita Holmes, which is my salsa name.

Jonathan Goldhill: Holmes, that’s.

You know the drill. If you got some value from this, first of all, pick up a copy of the book and check out Manita Holmes on Instagram. They have bootcamps workshops, some seminars. I’m sure you know the drill though. If you like this show, share it with others. Give us a good rating on your podcast listening application of choice, and stay tuned for future episodes.

Thanks. 

Troy: So here’s the deal. I am so grateful to Chad Holmes for all that I’ve learned, but it’s actually Amanda Holmes that taught me the exact strategies that I needed to create [00:44:00] 42 million in seven months. 

I was so reignited. I asked Amanda, is there any way I could come and work alongside you and help your clients be able to get results? Like I just got.

Hi, I’m Troy Aberly, now the Executive Strategy Officer at chi. 

a privilege to see this wonderful woman lighting up the stages with actionable strategies and creating immediate results.

It’s hard for me to imagine that you could get anyone else better at your event than Amanda because of the impact that she can create. 

Who knows if Amanda is even available for your event date? Go to chat homes.com/speaking and check out her availability. This could be the event that could change your life just as it did for me.