TAKING ACTION:

• Want to know what’s keeping you from doubling your sales in the next 12 months? Take our quick QUIZ to get answers: Howtodoublesales.com
• If you’d like to have a profound breakthrough in your business, schedule your breakthrough call with a LIVE expert here: Chetholmes.com/Breakthrough
• Claim your FREE chapter 4 from the top 10 most recommended marketing and sales books of all time! Visit: Ultimatesalesmachine.com to find out how you Create 9X More Impact from every move you’re already making to win clients!

FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL: Instagram.com/UltimateSalesMachine Facebook.com/UltimateSalesMachine Twitter.com/ChetHolmes Linkedin.com/company/chetholmesinternational/

TRANSCRIPT:

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

Carson Matthews: The number one thing is if it’s good content, it will get views and it will do well. You can’t use hashtags to push bad content.

Amanda Holmes: 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, faster. Smarter. Welcome everybody to the CEO mastery show. Amanda Holmes here, your host. I also have from our executive team, Troy Aberle, our executive strategy officer. And today we have a very special power team duo on a call.

I don’t think I’ve ever actually done a father son interview besides Troy with his son, and it was one of our most watched episodes. So I anticipate this one being very well received, especially since Carson, what an amazing story you have. So for those that are unfamiliar, Carson Matthews, less than 2 percent of athletes go pro.

Carson was able to be part of the very small percentage that went pro. He played for the Los Angeles angels and he used his signing bonus to start his business, which you gotta love. Then he went from that to And transitioned into his business a couple years later, which 78 percent of pro athletes go broke within three years of retirement.

But Carson managed to, while he was still playing baseball, transition into ball boys soap boys with a Z. And in the last eight months, he has sold 35, 000 customers on his ball boys soap, and it’s mostly using TikTok, which is just shocking. Hence why this week’s episode is the three tips to posting on TikTok that generated 45, 000 customers in less than eight months flat.

Carson, thank you so much for being on. Thank

Carson Matthews: you for having me. I’m very excited to talk about this.

Amanda Holmes: Yes, yes, and I’m sure it will help a lot of people because I never talk about TikTok. So, it’s an interesting topic. And then we also have Steve Matthews on, who is the father of Carson, who obviously gets a ton of praise for just raising such a wonderful son.

25 years as a career in cyber security. He’s led as an individual contributor. He’s been the head of global sales organizations for some of the largest in cyber security. Steve. And as far as I understand, he’s now joined his son with the business. Thanks, Amanda.

Steve Matthews: Yeah, I, I basically worked for Carson, so it’s humbling to have a 24 year old boss, but I love it and it’s truly at this stage of my life, it’s one of the greatest joys that I have.

But thank you for having us.

Amanda Holmes: Oh, it’s such a pleasure. It’s such a pleasure. I would love to just dive in. Carson, so we have three tips to posting on TikTok that helped you generate 45, 000 clients in eight months. Can you give us what is the first tip that you had for TikTok posting?

Carson Matthews: Yeah, I’d say the first tip most people get wrong is they don’t niche down enough.

You know, most people that are trying to use organic videos to get clients, they’re usually starting a business. It’s not like an established business. So people are worried about niching down because they think that limits them, but you can always grow bigger, but it’s harder to grow, go from really big to really small.

So what I did, I tried to niche down as small as possible with two areas that I knew I knew more than the average person. And so that was. Baseball, sports, and skin care, when I combine those two things, and I know that’s a different thing that most people haven’t heard of before. And so I started with just baseball.

I wouldn’t obviously now we’re all sports, but I just started with just baseball because I wanted to get the smallest market possible. And if I did a product that was just baseball, not skincare, that’d be super saturated, but baseball and skincare, like that’s never happened before. And then, so what happens when you niche down to start the video, that audience clings onto it, it’s almost like a tribal mentality because they feel that they’re watching themselves in the video and that’s important.

And so like, I like to use the analogy because everyone’s seen them. I forgot what movie it is. It’s like, sell me this pen. And then like,

Amanda Holmes: it’s

Carson Matthews: like famous, but no one knows how to sell a pen online. It’s different. Marketing online is different than selling something in person. And so I think it kind of comes down to niching down as small as possible.

If I were to sell a pen online, I wouldn’t just sell a pen saying, Oh, this is a great pen. I’d sell it to left handed grandmas in Florida. They want to sell, they want to write to their grandchildren. And so that’s kind of my philosophy is niche down as small as possible as you can. And then you can grow from there.

So that’s kind of what I did.

Amanda Holmes: And I think your dad was sharing how you had the problem yourself. Can you tell us a little bit about where you came up with the idea?

Carson Matthews: Yeah, so, I mean, I always struggled with acne. I mean, I feel like a lot of people that play sports do, you’re always sweating, getting dirt, and I’d always look for something.

I didn’t trust any, not I didn’t trust it, but I just didn’t like all those chemicals, those long words that I couldn’t read, like I shouldn’t be putting those on my body. I didn’t want to use Accutane because I know it has some hormone imbalances, and so I always did a bunch of research on stuff that’s been used for thousands of years, And what worked best, and I’ve always created my own, and so the formulas that we’re using for ball boys is stuff that I’ve always used on my face.

Amanda Holmes: Wow, interesting. When was the shift that happened from, oh, this is a good idea, to I’m actually going to try this? Did you ask around, think that maybe it might be something that other people would be interested in?

Carson Matthews: Nope, I was I was actually on the road, I was in Ohio, at a Red Roof Inn, taking a shower, and I was like, ah, you know what, this would be a great idea, because I was looking at the soap and it was some random soap at probably 99 cents, like, this is not good for me, and I was like, you know what, this would be really cool, I’m just going to do it, so on the bus ride home from that trip, I created the logo, created the site, and did everything, and I was like, alright, let’s just roll it.

Amanda Holmes: Really?

Carson Matthews: Yep.

Amanda Holmes: Wow! How cool! And Steve, I love how You have guided him, and something that you had said earlier I found really interesting. Can you share to everyone about, as a parent watching your son and what you wanted for him, how did you guide him on this process?

Steve Matthews: Carson came to us this way, but he’s always been curious and I’ve never seen a library of a young person where he’s got at least 250 books on some aspect of life that he’s interested in.

And for him, I would say the majority is a growth mindset. He’s always been committed to lifelong learning and I remember when he called me and he said, Hey, I’ve been researching how to do better skin care and I’m thinking I might want to, you know, make some stuff. And and then I know his teammates noticed it.

Hey, Carson. Wow. You know, your face and everything. What are you doing? And can you make me some? And then all of a sudden he goes, dad, because I, I wonder if there’s other people out there that might. Want to have the same benefit that I’m getting. And I said, Carson, I’m over my skis on soap and online marketing.

So put him in touch with a good friend that was the co founder of stance socks. And he and Carson collaborated. He said, well, Carson, go ahead and set up a site. See what happens and it kind of went from there, but I guess the point is, is that Carson’s was never driven by, I got to make money. It was how can I help other people?

And as a parent is more gratifying. Of course, I want him to be successful, but his ethos of helping others and putting their needs above his own is to me, the bigger success story.

Amanda Holmes: Love that. Anything you want to add to that Troy? Cause I know that you’re so big on helping your children be entrepreneurs.

Troy Aberle: I love what Steve said because most parents get nervous and I feel like it’s hard for them to be empowering and I can hear that thoughtfulness in your voice and what you said he was brought to us this way, meaning you were allowing him to be a product of who he was designed to be. And I think that that’s really noble.

I think that’s really cool. I think Carson has a lot to be grateful for there, but I think you have a lot to be complimented for there as well.

Amanda Holmes: So good.

Troy Aberle: Yeah.

Amanda Holmes: Aw. Okay. Carson, it’s back to you. I’m throwing the ball over. What is the second biggest tip for posting on TikTok that helped you generate 45, 000 customers in eight months?

Carson Matthews: The second tip, nobody cares about your product at all. People come to me all the time. They’re like, Oh, I have this protein powder. It’s so good. You know, like, how do I sell it? I was like, okay, well, what, like, what’s the story? Like, Oh, it’s like really good. I’m like, yeah, everyone’s protein powder is really good.

Everyone’s product is the best in the world. It’s not the best products that sell, as I’m sure you guys know. It’s the emotional connection at least to start, you know, I’d rather buy shoes from I see a video from some 12 year old kid. It made him with his bare hands like that’s cool, rather than by like, it just is people care about the story because people want to feel like they’re helping people want that emotional connection they want that tribal mentality.

So when I tell people I started this during a minor league baseball season, these moms are like, Oh my gosh, my kid plays sports. I get it. That’s such a cool story. I’m going to buy it. And you almost Trojan horse your way in because then once you’re in, the product is actually good and like, wait a sec, this product is great.

I’m going to keep buying it. And it’s a good story. So it’s a plus, especially to start, you need to dial down that story. You need to nail down that story is the most important thing. So you got to find whatever your story is like. There’s a book, what was it called? Creating your story brand or whatever.

And it’s just, it points out all the things like no one, no one cares about your product. People care how they perceive themselves. They perceive themselves being like, wow, I’m supporting a minor league baseball player. I’m a good person. People want to feel like they’re a good person for buying your product.

They want to feel like the hero. So you got to do whatever you can to make them feel like the hero in this scenario. Don’t lie. Don’t like lie about it, but make it a good story. So people feel good about buying it.

Steve Matthews: Carson’s sincere about that though, right? It’s not. It’s not a ruse. It’s an ethos, right?

It’s just part of his DNA. And I do think that that comes across to those that have invested in his product.

Carson Matthews: No, the, the first, I mean, still now, like my best videos are, cause obviously what’s good about TikTok too, is that. It’s a free testing platform because obviously you want to move into paid ads. The best testing platform is TikTok.

If it does well on TikTok, it’s going to do well on ads most of the time. I would say 90 percent of the times if it, if it rips on TikTok, it’s going to do really well on ads. So that’s something. And in my videos, I don’t even talk about my product. I don’t go like, it has this and this and this. I just say, yeah, there was a problem.

Then I did this and that, and that’s what happened. But I don’t talk about the product.

Amanda Holmes: I’m curious how often, cause I. I find this in my own posting. I wonder how many times to post the same kind of story. So do you take that same story of like, I’m a minor league baseball player and I was getting really annoyed about my acne.

Do you repeat that same story over and over again in other scenarios? Like how does that look from posting on a regular basis? I

Carson Matthews: rinse and repeat it as much as possible. Just I changed a few different words of different visuals. I’ll change the fonts. Cause in reality, people are like, Oh, I’m posting the same thing.

I’m posting the same ad. Like people are getting tired of this. No, there’s so many people out there, unless you’re McDonald’s. If you keep posting the same thing, people aren’t going to notice because. Your goal is to have 99 percent of your viewers of, at least if it’s not a retargeting campaign, if we’re talking about paid ads, organic stuff, you want new people being reached.

So, no, I see no problem reposting the same thing. I mean, that’s what successful companies do. They do, they know it’s successful. 20 percent of your messaging is going to give you 80 percent of your profits. So, whatever is the 20 percent that’s giving you the most, you just have to keep dialing that down.

Amanda Holmes: Mmm, I love that. Anything that you wanted to add to that, Steve?

Steve Matthews: You know, honestly, I’ve been in B2B cells forever, and so the whole social media phenomenon, and especially in Carson’s demographic, I’ve been learning from him from that regard. And there’s some things that I’ve tried to take and incorporate into my other life, if you will.

Uh, and so really it’s just been a learning experience for me as well. And oftentimes it’s kind of funny cause Carson would say, but dad, you don’t understand. And he’s right. A lot of times I don’t understand. So I definitely have to consume a little bit of, uh, you know, humble pie and realize that I don’t have all the answers, right.

And I have to also get better each day with learning this new route to market.

Amanda Holmes: I remember the first time that I interviewed Troy’s son. I hired Troy’s son first, Luke, before we brought on Troy, which is hilarious. He Dream 100 ed me, which was just brilliant, this kid. And he was educating me on all of the hashtags.

I was like, so do you Have you ever posted on social? And he’s like, yes, well, on this particular, on Instagram, you can only have this many hashtags on, on Facebook. You can have this many. And I’ve gotten kicked off a couple of times cause I did this wrong. And so then I realized that this is what I need to do.

And at the time he was like 12. And I looked at him like, you know, so much more than me. And here I am thinking I’ll educate him. And he just kept teaching me. That also, that makes me curious how much you use hashtags, Carson.

Carson Matthews: Never. Well, sometimes, but I don’t think it’s that

Amanda Holmes: important. Never! I don’t

Carson Matthews: think it’s that important.

The, the social media, I mean, I use it sometimes just like if I’m just like Subconsciously writing hashtags, but I don’t think it matters. What I do is so, Because I mean the, the AI on these social media platforms are so smart, like your hashtags aren’t gonna do anything. They already know, they’re, they’re messaging within it.

They know who to send it to. But I will say what I do, I don’t even know this helps, but I’ve heard it does. I’ll put text on the videos and I’ll make it super small. And I put it select, save my finger. I put it out of the camera so you can’t see it. But when you have words in your video, apparently it helps, but I’ve honestly stopped doing that.

I don’t think hashtags are any, you can’t, it’s hard to manipulate it. The number one thing is if it’s good content, it will get views and it will do well. You can’t use hashtags to push bad content.

Amanda Holmes: Mm hmm. Uh uh.

Carson Matthews: All that matters is the content.

Amanda Holmes: And another thing that you had said that was very important was realizing who actually buys from you.

Going back to number one, needing to be super niched, it wasn’t always the ball boy that was buying from you. It was their mother.

Carson Matthews: Right. Yeah. Originally, I thought that it’d be a bunch of athletes and, like, these, I mean whoever was buying it and then I see the orders coming through it’s 99 percent moms.

I’m like, what the heck? I guess I’m I was like, okay, that’s good to know now. So now I market to moms. I’m like, is your kid sad that he’s ugly? You know what I mean? Like, and they’re like, Oh my gosh. Yeah. And then it just helps. So when I messaged the moms, it’s a lot better.

Amanda Holmes: And this ties back to, I mean, our whole chapter four of ultimate sales machine, right?

Speaking me, we talking only to the ones that are ready to buy versus talking about what keeps you up at night and who is that person that you’re speaking to. And it’s so great that you had social to be able to test that to a market without having to spend on ads at first, right? You were just doing it organically.

Carson Matthews: Yeah, I’d say, I mean, tick tock and organic can only go so far until you have, millions of followers, but it’s a great place to test proof of concept. Proof of concept is everything. That’s what makes me super upset. That’s like my pet peeve is people all have like buddies that start a business and like, oh, I got my site so good.

I got, I ordered the products. I’m like, why did you order products? You don’t even know if you could sell it. Don’t order. You should never order a product. You should only order one mockup and then try to sell it. I sold my stuff with zero products on hand. Zero. I just used random mockups that I got online.

And I used a bar of soap. There was just a random bar of soap. I didn’t even use. And then when people ordered, I was like, Hey, we’re a small company. Thank you so much for supporting us. We’ve grown so quick, so fast. We’re going to have stuff coming in super soon, but you can get a refund or you can wait a little bit.

And a hundred percent of the time, people are like, wow, this is so cool. Yeah, of course I’ll wait. I love to support a small company. And so you need to get proof of concept first. That’s the biggest thing. Cause you’re going to spend all this money. Like you can start as many businesses as you want with 0.

With proof of concept. If I were to start a clothing company, I wouldn’t buy 5, 000 shirts. Yeah, I wouldn’t even get one, I would just get a mock up, put it online, and then whatever messaging I want that clothing company to have, I would tell that message and be like, oh yeah, here’s a shirt. I wouldn’t never.

That’s the number one product or thing people make. When it comes to e comm, I would say.

Amanda Holmes: You’re so young. So you have no idea how simple and how brilliant what you’ve done is yet. Because we talk to people all day long that cannot articulate one, who their ideal client is. And then two, what is the painful problem that they are solving?

Just the one simple. And it seems that you’ve been able to hit just so specifically in what their pain is to the right person. That’s buying. that managed to make that flow. So congratulations there.

Carson Matthews: Thank you.

Amanda Holmes: Troy, anything that you’re thinking that you want to say before we go to tip number three?

Troy Aberle: I love that because, you know, my brain, Carson said, if my kid came to me, there’s got to be nothing worse as a parent.

Knowing that your kid came and said, mom, dad, am I ugly? I’ve got zits all over. I’ve got all these problems. And you say, just go to bed. It’ll be better tomorrow. Knowing they’re getting on the bus. Still feeling horrible about themselves that they’re gonna have another crap day the way you said it seems so blunt but yet it’s so true and it actually resonated better with me as Man, I gotta go to work knowing my kids think that they’re ugly What is it I could do and here’s this other kid that said he had problems with acne He figured out a solution take my credit card Right.

You’re not even looking at the price at that point because you’ve related to me at such an emotional level. That’s what, how I felt

Amanda Holmes: so good. Okay. Carson, the third tip to posting on tech talk that helped you generate 45, 000 clients in eight months. What is it?

Carson Matthews: A good call to action. I know it sounds simple, but a lot of people get it wrong.

They think, oh, they watched the whole video. There doesn’t need to be a call to action. There does. There definitely does. Because people that market get it wrong and they think, oh, you know, they know where to go to my site. They know, no people need to be hit in the face with it to know. Cause like most people watch a video and be like, oh, I’ll come back later.

Like, that’s really cool. Save. They’ll never come back. You have to say, click this, shop now, whatever it is. Actually, on organic videos, don’t say click the link because then it won’t push it because They don’t want people going off their platforms, but paid advertising. There’s a shop now button set. You have to tell them to shop now because it makes you the guide and not the hero.

So in a video, the person watching it is supposed to be the hero for why they’re buying it. You, the advertiser is supposed to be the guide. People would make themselves the hero in the video and people don’t care about the hero. They want themselves to be the hero. I know that’s a lot of words, but in my head, I’ll say things that make sense in Carson and I’ll say it.

And it doesn’t really make sense out loud. Okay. But pretty much guide them to your site. And when you guide them, the site will be a map to purchase.

Amanda Holmes: So you said don’t say click the link if it’s an organic piece, how did you get people back to your website then if you weren’t telling them to click

Carson Matthews: the link?

Well, that’s tough, I mean TikTok, there’s TikTok shop and stuff, but really now on TikTok I don’t even care about getting sales on TikTok, I just use it as a testing platform for my paid ads. I don’t care about getting sales on TikTok anymore.

Amanda Holmes: Wow, when did you shift over from the TikTok to paid?

Carson Matthews: Once we started capping out like We would realize, okay, we’re having, you know, we’re getting like a couple of thousand dollars, just organic, 0 ad spend from TikTok.

Like that’s pretty good, but then organic is so volatile. Cause then you’re gonna have days where you don’t make like really any money. And then, so, and also paid advertising is hard. It’s not like you have a good video on TikTok like, it’s tough. Facebook makes it hard on purpose. They don’t want bad advertisers on there.

So like, if you don’t know what’s going on, they don’t know what’s going on. So that was a big learning curve for me. A lot of lost money, but I mean, it was worth it, but I’ve kind of knew once I knew that this Officially had proof of concept. I was like, okay, we have to do paid advertisement. And from there it kind of skyrocketed.

Amanda Holmes: And would you pick the videos that had the most likes and comments or the ones where you think you got the most sales from them?

Carson Matthews: I mean, the most sales always had the most likes, comments, and views. So it all went hand in hand.

Amanda Holmes: Interesting. And Steve, were you a part of helping with that transition between TikTok to Uh, paid?

Steve Matthews: No, really what the byproduct of that was, Carson would get a lot of inquiries from some very, very large sports agencies. I mean, these are anyone that knows anything about sports or even the world of entertainment. They would reach out and say, Hey, we would like to be involved with my B2B background.

That’s kind of one of the areas Carson has chartered me to oversee. And so We are in discussions with some very large sports agencies, but again, that’s a different podcast, Amanda, because their needs and their requirements for their globally known personas. Is vastly different and so we’ve also had to educate them on what we’re willing to do and what we’re not willing to do.

It’s just a whole different conversation, but it has created more awareness to develop other routes to market. So that we’re not just beholden to a thin area of distribution. Right? So that that’s been 1 of the byproducts of positive byproducts of having such an effective advertising platform.

Amanda Holmes: Troy, anything you want to add hearing this?

Because I know you also watch your son Luke post all the time and you’re always updating me on all the experiments he’s doing.

Troy Aberle: Well, I think it’s interesting, because listening to Carson talk about TikTok and getting that information, as Amanda and I teach people on how to figure out who your Dream 100 customer is, what is the information that you can get from TikTok?

I think it’s fascinating about, is there pieces, Carson, that you’re taking then? of what characteristics are these people that are proving that it’s a great concept on TikTok? And then as you build out ads onto the other platforms or what have you, is there information that you can gather from TikTok and move that into the next ad to be that much more pointed, if you will?

Carson Matthews: I wouldn’t say I really take information from TikTok, honestly. I literally just look at whatever video performed best, and I just keep rinsing and repeating that with different words and visuals. Like in what I’ll do to now on paid advertisements, I’ll use a static ad and it would just be like a headline and whatever headline gets the most clicks.

I turned that headline into a video. So like, for instance, I call them like golden headlines where it’s something that has nothing to do with the product. So like, for instance, a couple of days ago, I launched one that says this product doubled my water bill and people like, what, how does that have to do with anything?

And I remember. Below it like it was like this cleared my son’s acne in two weeks The only problem is he won’t stop washing his face with it now because he loves it so much It’s gonna double my wall bill and it’s like that’s doing really well. So i’m gonna create that into a video this week There’s one I said this tore my family apart and it’s like I have three boys.

They keep fighting over this It’s turned my house into a war zone. It’s great. But now my kids hate each other You know, so it’s like, they’re kind of funny. But so then i’ll turn that into videos based off the static feedback.

Amanda Holmes: I love that How often are you launching new ads

Carson Matthews: every day? I launched like eight a day

Amanda Holmes: Holy cow, that is a lesson for everyone listening right now, because so many just pick one or two and run with it forever.

Yeah, you gotta be My father was the same.

Carson Matthews: Yeah, you gotta be tactical with it, like there’s an ad, say I’ll work on an ad for like, well now I’m hiring people to do the ads for me, cause it takes 17 hours, but like, you gotta be tactical with it, some people will look at an ad and be like, wow, I love this ad, it’s gonna do so well, and then it does really bad, and then the ad that you worked 5 seconds on does well, Like, you gotta be able to turn them off, turn them on, know what works, know what doesn’t, take your ego out of it.

So that’s something I had to learn. It’s a content game. People work organic or paid, you gotta feed it, because you’re gonna hit it. If your product’s good, you’re gonna hit it, but. It’s a lot.

Amanda Holmes: I love that so much. I used to go back and look through all my father’s ads from radio and I have hundreds of recordings of him doing, trying different kinds of ads.

And when he found the one that really landed, then he kept trying to, you know, make one, produce more than that one, but that one ran for years. So very interesting. You find those sweet spots. If you just keep working at it, that’s that master reason about doing 4, 000 different things.

Carson Matthews: Exactly.

Amanda Holmes: Well, the three tips to posting on TikTok that helped you generate 45, 000 customers in eight months flat.

It’s been such a joy and a privilege. And I have to also thank Steve for being a fan of Ultimate Sales Machine and reading the book and then handing it to your next generation. That’s, that’s what we’re seeing more and more, and it, and it means a lot that you’ve brought, I’ve seen both of you come into this world, because it’s so inspiring to see what Carson is doing, and what you’ve been able to do to assist him, and how you’re working together now, it’s just, It’s really special.

Well,

Steve Matthews: I think we need to thank, you know, starting with your father, I felt like I’m part of the family now, especially meeting you, Amanda. And, but just hearing, reading and listening to the book on a consistent basis and for your viewers out there, that’s the one advice I would give each of you is, You have to look at the ultimate sales machine, not as a book, but as a reference guide, because there’s constantly, I’m constantly going back and say, what, no, what did, what did Chet and Amanda and Troy say about, you know, my dream 100.

And there’s always little tweaks I’m making in any endeavor that I have. And so again, it needs to be a reference book. It needs to be, you know, constantly, I mean, I’ve got, I, my mind is dog eared. I mean, it just, you know, I have it on my desk at all times. I’m always referring to it. And thank you. Thank you for your father’s sharing this message with the business world.

It’s helped me become a better person, a better father, a better, I think, sales executive. So I’d like to put it back in your court and just say, thank you for all that you do for us.

Amanda Holmes: Thank you so much. And Troy was the one that was like, Oh, this is such a great story. You have to meet these two. So thank you for.

For making that happen, Troy. Any last final words, Carson?

Carson Matthews: Anyone can do it. I don’t know. That was cheesy, but I wanted to say something.

Amanda Holmes: I think that that’s very true, so. I

Troy Aberle: think he’s got pig headed determination, Amanda, was what he was trying to say. He’s going to go places and you’re already doing wonderful.

Good job, Carson. Good job, Steve. So it’s a pleasure to thank you.

Amanda Holmes: And so the best way for people to find you ball boys with a Z soap is it. com?

Carson Matthews: Yeah. Ballboys soap. com. B A L L B O Y Z. Soap. com.

Amanda Holmes: And then they can find you on Tik Tok

Carson Matthews: and Instagram. Check us out.

Amanda Holmes: Well, such a pleasure you two until next time.

Carson Matthews: Thank you. Thanks guys.

Amanda Holmes: Make sure to get your copy or copies at the ultimate sales machine dot com There’s a lot of special bonuses that you can’t get going to amazon So make sure you check it out at ultimate sales machine

dot com

TAKING ACTION:

• Want to know what’s keeping you from doubling your sales in the next 12 months? Take our quick QUIZ to get answers: Howtodoublesales.com
• If you’d like to have a profound breakthrough in your business, schedule your breakthrough call with a LIVE expert here: Chetholmes.com/Breakthrough
• Claim your FREE chapter 4 from the top 10 most recommended marketing and sales books of all time! Visit: Ultimatesalesmachine.com to find out how you Create 9X More Impact from every move you’re already making to win clients!

FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL: Instagram.com/UltimateSalesMachine Facebook.com/UltimateSalesMachine Twitter.com/ChetHolmes Linkedin.com/company/chetholmesinternational/

TRANSCRIPT:

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

Larry Bradley: People are so stressed out. They’re so anxious. And guess what? They’re not leaving for more money. They’re not leaving for more benefit. They’re not leaving for a richer life. They’re leaving for this. They want a calm life. By the way, it took me forever to learn this, but I’m still breathing so I can use it.

I finally learned that calm Is a superpower.

Amanda Holmes: 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. 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.

Welcome everybody to the CEO mastery show. Amanda Holmes here, your host I have with me, our executive strategy officer, Troy Aberle, and our guest for today is Larry Bradley. I have to tell you, it’s such a joy to have Larry on this week because our research team had just pulled this data, which is just the beginning.

I can’t even believe how shocking this data is. 75 percent of C suites say they’re seriously considering quitting their jobs and looking for something that will support their well being. So, I happen to have Larry at the same time of me looking at this data. Data and going, we need to find out some of the simple tips we can do to ease that burden.

And that’s what this episode is going to be about because Larry has such a wonderful, I mean, he speaks around the nation talking about leadership now, which he also was able to do because, well, maybe I should tell the backstory of how we met. What about that? Larry.

Larry Bradley: I love it. Please do.

Amanda Holmes: I love it. I tell this story from stage actually, so it’s so fun to have you on now.

So, I had intercepted a Facebook comment left on one of our ads. Larry had left a comment asking, and I Thought I just had this gut feeling of, I need to investigate further and find out what, who is this man? So I went into the messenger and started saying, Hey, I saw that you commented on this ad, tell me more about you.

And you had introduced yourself as, I think it was something along the lines of like, I love what you do. I’m trying to make this happen in my, the business that I’m running. And what were you running at the time? What, what was the business?

Larry Bradley: The business I reached out to you for was the national health care plan, and we wanted to, I hesitate to say rebrand, we want to brand it because it wasn’t branded.

And if you remember, I asked you to write me out of the script because I was the face, and I was too much the face and we needed a bit broader, bigger brand and identity and you guys.

Amanda Holmes: Oh, can you just for those that aren’t familiar with that particular company? Can you give a little bit of understanding to the magnitude of what you were running?

Can you share? Yes,

Larry Bradley: it was a very large national health care plan. It was for the electrical workers union. And their employer counterparts and they started many years ago, a idea that they would build a national plan so that all the local areas could aggregate into it and they would use size as leverage to better purchase health care.

Well, it became so much more than that because we really started to dive into innovation. Once I became a health care insider, I saw so much. Let me just say I saw a lot of problems in health care in our Western medicine, and I thought that more could be done. So I wanted to dive in, but I needed the help of Amanda Holmes and your organization because.

I was stuck. I didn’t know where to go from there. I knew what we needed to do, but I didn’t know how to get there. And it came to me, and maybe it was that Facebook ad, I don’t know, but I realized

Amanda Holmes: we

Larry Bradley: need to brand this operation. Why couldn’t we take Amanda’s company and work and apply it to a healthcare plan?

You know, we don’t sell widgets. We’re a massive non for profit healthcare plan, but we had to sell a story and we had to sell value and we had to sell change and innovation and all these things that we figured out, if we bring it all together, we can have the best healthcare plan in America. And I’m so happy that we engaged here because we were able to do exactly that and it’s still going on.

Amanda Holmes: It’s such an awesome story. Larry, I was so shocked to see how your business was set up, just the magnitude of how large it was, and that you were the marketing, Head and the only salesman.

I mean, can we share a little bit of numbers? Like, can you give a little bit of insight into

Larry Bradley: what went on there?

Amanda Holmes: Either just like, I used to just be baffled by how much business you would bring in just from like referrals a year on average. Can you give like figures?

Larry Bradley: The leadership of the union and the management organization asked me back in 2011, the plan started in 2006 and 2011, it had just over 10, 000 members and she’s fine now.

Thank, thank God. She’s doing great. And it just adopted her baby girl. So she’s got her whole family of two boys and a girl and her husband. But between Kate’s situation and my exposure as an insider now in healthcare, I saw so much. And I said, a lot of this has to be addressed. And the way we can address it is to seek out the most innovative people on the planet that we can find and bring their value to our membership, not just the classic health care, what I actually refer to as sick care.

Someone’s going along about their life, they suddenly feel nauseous or ill, they go to a doctor, they get a prescription, they take it to the pharmacy, they get the script, they take that, they feel better, and life goes on. And that’s people’s general exposure to healthcare. It’s so much more than that. It’s so much bigger than that.

So we were able to retell the story. Thanks to you and your organization and the help you gave us to really, I want to say branded really for the first time we were, we were flying by the seat of our, you know, us, but, and even then we managed to do well, so I’m looking forward to the explosion now.

Amanda Holmes: I’m amazed at how many hats you held, right?

The marketing hat, this only salesman, the entire thing, and then also managing all of your staff and then also innovating to make sure that the leading edge of modern discoveries in science and health were available to your, all the people that were on your plan. So, and now Larry travels around the world speaking and I love his fervor For knowledge, you always have, have you seen this?

Have you heard of this man? You were, you were voracious in your wanting to learn. So with all of that knowledge with having such a successful career managing health, I think you’re the perfect person to come here and share with our audience. Can we just come up with. Three simple tips to ease the burden of leadership.

So what would you say, Larry, what is the first, the simplest tip to ease the burden of leadership?

Larry Bradley: A lot of people that end up in a leadership position get there because they’ve done something good at some other position, somebody recognizes them. It says, Hey, Let’s promote Larry or Amanda because they’re really good at what they’re doing.

Now, that does not always translate. In fact, often, it doesn’t. You find somebody in a chair. They don’t belong. And so you lost a good employee over here doing what they were great at. And now you got a lousy leader. So, and this is going to maybe surprise you, but so I’ve been doing a ton of speaking and I’ve been doing a lot of consulting to C suite and then throughout organizations.

And I’m finding at the highest levels of organizations, and then throughout the organization, people are So stressed out. They’re so anxious. And I think it’s obviously not COVID per se now, but it is post COVID world we’re living in, I think has lent itself to this. And then also COVID opened a lot of eyes to people because we talked there earlier about someone, the C suite people leaving, and guess what?

They’re not leaving for more money. They’re not leaving for more benefit. They’re not leaving for a richer life. They’re leaving for this. They want a calm life. By the way, it took me forever to learn this, but I’m still breathing so I can use it. I finally learned that calm Is a superpower and not everything needs a response, but as I navigate and speak and teach and learn in organizations and see what I’m seeing and hear what I’m hearing about the people being so stressed, it’s obvious to me number one tip has to be learned to learn strategies and techniques to manage and mitigate stress.

Our Centers for Disease Control tells us the number one delivery system for disease in America right now, and has been for a little while, is stress. Why? Very simple. Stress inflames the body, and an inflamed body is a perfect host for a diseased state to begin and to grow if you don’t change things.

Beginning with just a simple negative thought can interrupt the flow of a human body and open a venue for disease in different parts of the body. Just start thinking alone. Think about that. Right?

Amanda Holmes: Hmm.

Larry Bradley: It’s incredible. So I would say learn and that’s one of the things I teach is teach people how to learn to manage and mitigate stress.

Most people are winging it and you can’t wing it when you’re dealing with it from the moment you wake up to the moment you close your eyes. If you can even get to sleep, right? Most people I know don’t spring out of bed and say, gee, I get to go to work today. I’m so excited. Most people, their minds are grinding away before they even lift their head with all that they got to deal with that day.

Whether it’s family, friends, money, health, delayed flights, all this stuff is on us in addition to our day job. And I think that’s why you’re seeing the C suites say, you know what? Hey, 68 percent of corporate employees are self reporting as being checked out. That equals, well, not only the human suffering among these people, the people I just described, but also these people are trying to manage a whole world around them that’s getting tougher.

And more stressful, and they don’t have the tools per se most to figure out. What do I do about this? I’m really anxious. I’m really stressed out. What do I do? So I teach a lot of that strategy with people. And you know what, Amanda, it’s a lot simpler than people think. We humans tend to complicate everything and it’s not really that complicated.

It really isn’t.

Amanda Holmes: I love that. I know some of the data too. I know. I love when you give me data. So I have data back. So what we’re seeing from the data is that we’re so incredibly stressed that now we’re seeing chronic illness has increased, as you were saying, because of the inflammation of stress. So for the ages, 35 to 44.

Okay. Chronic illness from pre COVID to post COVID has increased by 20%, a freaking whopping 20%. I wanted to say another curse word just then, and then another 12 percent from 44 to 64. So we’re already seeing the disease enter in the body. And then, Who’s really experiencing the most amount of stress are those 18 to 34, right?

The incoming workplace is just, I mean, they’re so stressed. They can’t operate. They can’t function. They are overwhelmed. And as businesses, we need to start taking that responsibility to solve this. Give them the tools. Troy, you want to speak to this too? I know that you do so much with this as well.

Troy Aberle: I love what you just said, because you look at the way that we’re.

It feels like everybody’s in such a reaction mode right now, and they’re trying to just look for the easiest way out. But that easy way out is not only taking the dis ease of the executive, it’s being pushed out and through all levels of the people that report to them. And then that, That is now translating out into the market and the economy, and it’s starting to change the buying criteria where people don’t feel as confident in the people they used to do business with, because it’s not as great of a community or emotional feeling, which is now starting to change the way people are buying.

And some of the online spaces are becoming more attractive to that. However, online can’t replace that human interaction that we need, or we need those humans to be at a place of dis ease. So I appreciate that.

Larry Bradley: It’s interesting that you say that, Troy, because The suicide rates among school aged children post COVID have doubled.

School aged children. And one of the reasons they’re saying that, to your point you just made, is the thing called social isolation. Meaning, I don’t want to have the face to face. And you take these, Amanda, you just talked 18 to 34. These are people that are largely on unsure footing about who they are.

You know, they’re real talent, so they lack some comfort. They lack some level of esteem. Now you put all this other junk on top of them and no wonder they’re saying, Hey, I’m checked out. I just want things to be easier. So one of the things I do, I say to people now when I’m going to speak or work with someone, especially one on one, I’ll say, how are you doing?

And they’ll say, fine. How are you? Well, okay, let’s get that lie out of the way. Then I say, no, how are you really doing, Amanda, Troy, how are you really doing? And I just listened and I am blown away at how many times that that person will begin to open up because when you said, how are you really doing?

You exhibited care. You said, you know, I really do care. I don’t want the peripheral. Yeah, I’m fine. How about you? Because we all say that and most of us don’t mean it because we’re all dealing, as they say, everybody you see is dealing with something you have no idea what they’re dealing with. So please be kind and kind is a learned behavior, by the way, and it has a lot of benefits to personal benefits.

It’s actually, it could be selfish, like, forgiveness is selfish. You don’t forgive for them. You forgive for you, but it makes you a better person. It makes you feel better. And kindness doesn’t cost anything. But let me scare you a little bit. Okay. Back on the stats. I know Amanda, you liked the statistics and we talked about various age groups.

You know, our children, our babies. Right. Our Children in 1965, which really wasn’t that long ago in the great grand scheme in 1965, less than 2 percent of American Children had a chronic illness, less than 2 percent today, over 54 percent of our Children. Now, these are tomorrow’s employees. These are tomorrow’s parents.

These are tomorrow’s leaders. And look at all. First of all, I always look at the personal suffering of these people, which is the most horrific price we pay. But look at the price society is going to pay. They’re saying now, right now, in corporate America, absenteeism, presenteeism, which is skyrocketing, but right now it’s costing American employers over a half a trillion dollars a year, over a half a trillion dollars a year.

Absenteeism and presenteeism. Think about the implications of that in the less safe occupations. Like, I come out of the electrical workers world, where we deal with something, you can’t see it, you can’t smell it, you can’t taste it, but it will kill you, and you don’t want to go in there absent minded, just like we don’t want our pilot in the cockpit absent minded or practicing presenteeism, right?

We can’t avoid that. So this is you see the broad implications across all layers of society. It all matters so much is why we have to. It’s not something we should do. It’s something we have to do. I say all the time. America needs a wellness revolution, mind and body, and they need it now. And it starts with you and me.

Amanda Holmes: That is so good. So let me just summarize. So the first Tip you’re saying to ease the burden of not even just leadership, but just the workplace life. The biggest takeaway I got from that is identifying that we are in a serious struggle of mental wellness and then doing something about it. Just asking somebody how they’re really doing and showing that you care is the first simple tip.

And I think that that’s something that everyone can ask. How are you doing? How are you really doing? That’s such a great takeaway. So, if we were to go to the second simple tip to ease the burden of stress in the workplace, what would you give

Larry Bradley: us, Larry? I would say this, number two is, it starts with awareness.

I tell people when I, anymore when I speak, I, before I say what I want to say, the first thing I say to them is, I said, take out a pen, pencil, and write this word down, awareness. Everything in life begins with an awareness, whether we have it or we don’t, and life doesn’t care. So I consider my mission is creating awareness.

Create an awareness in you that you didn’t previously have so that hopefully I trigger some self direction in you to do something about what you now know. I eat an unexpressed emotion cannot die. And if there are negative emotions, fear, guilt, anger, upset, disgust, those emotions are killing us from the inside out with the literal chemical cocktail because our mind creates real chemical reactions inside our body based on how we think and what we think.

Right. If I tell people this, here’s a quick exercise. I tell people, all of us, given that unexpressed emotion cannot die, all of us, I do this in rooms, no matter what size. I said, don’t raise your hand because I’m not going to call you out, but in your own mind, I want you to think of there’s a conversation that you need to have.

There’s a problem you need to work on or resolve, and you’re not doing it because you’re afraid. You’re afraid of how it’s going to turn out. You’re afraid it might get go south. It may not go well, but I challenge people before the sun sets that day that we’re talking. Make the phone call, send the email, set up the meeting, do something to begin to express that emotion with that person.

And by the way, I tell them if you go trying to add value to whatever it is, let’s say it’s a relationship, you’re going trying to add value and you’re going to speak as sincerely as you possibly can to make things better. You can’t lose because even if it goes south and it’s the same relationship ends, was it ever really there?

But you’ve carried it around for how many years now? Right? So. And back to number two. Let me say this about that. And this is another thing that I’d love to teach people because I was such a victim of what I’m about to talk about myself. Not a victim. I was self inflicted. A lot of people think that their behaviors are random.

And there’s nothing they can do about it. There’s another group of people think that we’re pre programmed locked in. And there’s, you know, by the time we’re eight, we’re that’s it. Old dogs can’t learn new tricks, but there’s a neuroscience of the science of neuroplasty now tells us the brain and mind is very malleable well into old age.

And you can, in fact, teach an old dog new tricks. So I teach something called a self management sequence. It is the basis or origin. It’s the sequence we go through in our mind. With every single behavior that we exhibit or fail to exhibit. So, and everything you do and everything you fail to do gives us our reality.

Behavior equals reality. What we do gives us our world. Good, bad, or indifferent. So wouldn’t it be wonderful to learn exactly how you arrive at your behavior? And I’ll give you a tip. It’s not about logic, because I know that also in this call, and everybody that’s listening has done this before. Jeez, why did I do that?

I know better than that. Well, that was logic talking. We’re not logical beings, we’re emotional beings. Everything we do ultimately or fail to do is based on how we feel, and that’s part of the self management sequence that I teach your feeling at any given time will create your behavior or lack of behavior, which will give you your results.

So doesn’t it make sense? Imagine mitigate your stress, but learn how this person ticks and are no exceptions to this. This is a process, and it begins with programming, and it ends with feelings and behavior, right? And I love to tie in, have those conversations, step up because I tell people when you’re done having a difficult conversation or handling that difficult problem, I said, I don’t care how it ends.

You’re going to feel 10 feet tall when you’re on the other side of it. And you’re going to start the process of creating a new habit to say, you know what? Yeah, maybe that was a little difficult, but look at how I feel right now. I’ve got this 60 pound backpack off of me now that I’ve carried for 30 years or 20 years or 10 years.

In a relation, and you’re going to find out the truth about, let’s say it’s a relationship. There are typically the issues, you know, my relationship with my mom, my sister, my significant other. You might as well bear it out because it’s going to bear itself out at some point anyway. Just maybe a lot more years and a lot more disease that you’ve created or allowed to be created in you because you didn’t deal with it.

And I know it’s not easy. I’m not saying what I’m telling you is easy. But my God, is it rewarding. And talk about mitigate stress. The stress of that thing disappears. The feeling that emotion can now die a natural death because you’ve expressed it.

Amanda Holmes: I am working so hard on what you’re saying. I recognize that it’s a place where I fall short.

It’s a daily battle for me to continue to stretch myself, to feel uncomfortable, to share what I I’m feeling in the workplace and in my personal life, and I have to say, working with Troy is just such a joy for me because he’s so great. This is one of his skills is he’s just so great at having difficult conversations and bringing things to light and.

Anything you want to add to that, Troy?

Troy Aberle: I love what Larry’s saying and I appreciate the kind words, Amanda. If I could take it to the next step, I have a circle drawn on my wall here where it’s got my thoughts plus the feelings I give it plus the actions equals my results. And so I know if I don’t get the results, I can work it backwards to see which part of the equation I’m missing.

And it’s pretty hard to get mad at something if you haven’t made the cake the way that you’re supposed to make it to get to the result, right? So I love the way you place that because I think too that you have programming, yes, And it’s not that you’re, something’s wrong with you if the programming is wrong, but you got to impress upon it something else and keep practicing that so that you can start to create some new paradigms or some new results that are going to be different rather than just get frustrated over it.

And I appreciate that Larry.

Larry Bradley: You’re welcome. You know, the average child is told no. Or what they cannot do over 150, 000 times by the time they turn 18 years old. And then we wonder, what’s the matter with this child? Why is this child doing this? I was asked the question by Dr. Shad Helmstetter one time. He said, if you were stepping on a plane in Philadelphia, heading to Maui, Hawaii, and you overheard him in the cockpit saying, Hey, 77 percent of our programming here on the plane is wrong.

It’s bad info. He said, what would you do? Will you turn around and get off that plane? Yeah, you would. Well, 77 percent of what we tell ourselves and what we hear is negative, wrong and works against us. So we’re by default program negatively. And I don’t blame parents. I was one. We did what we call generational pairing.

Our parents parented us, so we just tried to do a little bit better for our Children. But There was no book on it. There was no knowledge shared to say, this is what’s really going on. I wasn’t told in school or anywhere in my life, the power of my own thoughts and the power of my own words. And listen, Amanda, to your point a moment ago, I teach this stuff.

I’m passionate about it. I’m in love with it. I struggle every day of my life with it still. But you know what I am, which is the gift of beyond all gifts. As I said, when I speak now, I tell him, write this word down. The first thing I do awareness. I’m now aware, and now I have a fighting chance to say, Hey, Larry, no, no, no, no, no, we’re not going to, we’re going to, we’re not going to go down that road.

I did it this morning. I was lying in bed and I was thinking about a couple of problems that I’m experiencing right now. And the thought came to me. I said, all right, what’s good about this. Thinking I wouldn’t have any answers and believe it or not, I wound up with a short list of answers on both of them that what’s good about this and it totally transforms your mindset to say, I focus on, because now that puts me on the path of positivity, not this just Oh God, Oh, what am I going to do?

I don’t know what to do with this and take action, you know, I’ll give you this tip too. If you want to change your emotion, if you’re feeling a little groggy, a little, you know, negative, a little whatever, whatever, Get up and move your body. Take a brisk walk. Just walk around the room if you want to. Just move your body because motion equals emotion, and that’ll work faster than the other way around.

Right? It’s our emotion that changes our emotion. Right?

Amanda Holmes: Third tip for easing stress in the workplace. Motion!

Larry Bradley: Well, I had another third tip.

Amanda Holmes: Oh, I’m sorry. Okay. Well, that one was so good, we’ll give them four. Why not?

Larry Bradley: Motion equals emotion. Trust me on that. Every time I speak, and Amanda, you do this a lot, and I learned this from Les Brown.

When I studied with him, he said when he get to a venue, he first immediately asked for the bathroom, and he would go in the bathroom, and he’d start pacing the floor in the bathroom, and then he would start his breathing exercise, deep breathing, to take the pressure off the physiological body, right? And then he would start his self talk pattern of saying, man, today, I am going to land with some incredible value.

These people are going to love what I presented them. I’m just going Burn this place down. So he said, by the time they say, ladies and gentlemen, Les Brown, he’s like, I’m here, right? That’s the warmup, right? But it’s all based on what? Motion. He starts walking, starts pacing, gets the blood flowing, gets the breathing going, right?

So that’s key to, especially people are like, I call some people, they’re like, Eeyore. Remember Eeyore? The, I forget what kind of, he was the, the unhappy animal, whatever. I forget the name. What kind of animal? Winnie

Troy Aberle: the Pooh.

Larry Bradley: Yeah, Eeyore was the real sad donkey or whatever. Oh my, that person needs to get up and move.

All right. So third tip or three and a half or whatever you want to call it.

Amanda Holmes: Fourth tip for reducing the burden of stress in the workplace.

Larry Bradley: So I talked about mitigating stress strategies and techniques, learn them and apply them and teach them to everyone you love and care about. Secondly, I talked about self management sequence, understanding what creates our behavior, which gives us our world, gives us our reality.

The third one is to affect behavior. And I think A lot of things so much that by the way, all these things I’m telling you, we brought into our health care plan. Doesn’t sound like health care, does it? Well, stress may be self management sequence. The 3rd one is habits because I have found that you’ve got to meet people where they are.

Because if you take any population of people, like in my health care plan, I had people like morbidly overweight or obese that couldn’t get out of bed. I had the premier athletes, right? And everything in between. Right. So if I take a class, a group of people and say, all right, listen, we’re going to get in shape.

Let’s use physical fitness. And I say, all right, everybody, we’re going to run a marathon next month. Well, 98, 99 percent of that room, maybe a hundred percent. We’ll check out. They said, I’m not running a marathon a month. You out of your mind? Look at me. Right. So the point is meet people where they are. And I want to embed this in the fourth tip is.

Learn how to develop a habit and learn how to eliminate a habit. It starts with being met where you are. Like if I say to that obese person, we’re going to run a marathon in a month, they’re gone, they’re checked out, and they’re going to still have the problem. If I said, Joe, listen to me, Walk to your mailbox tomorrow morning and back and then the next day walk to your neighbor’s mailbox and the next day walk to the, that neighbor BJ fog wrote the book tiny habits.

And it’s very similar to atomic habits in that what their premises is to say, you got to start small, and you got to start where you’re at. Right. So BJ himself bit overweight and whatnot he said you know I’m going to use the trigger of every morning when I wake Look in the mirror and brush my teeth. I might put that toothbrush down on the floor and do a push up.

And I’m going to celebrate a push up. One push up. Like, are you kidding me? Well, guess what? When I met BJ Fogg and talked and studied his work, and certified in his work to teach people tiny habits, He was on like 78 pushups in the morning every morning after he put his toothbrush down. So he created a habit, but he started with just one.

I think people are way too hard on themselves. They think people forget it’s easy to forget how long it took to get out of shape or to become ill. And I think it should be fixed overnight. We all want the instant fix. But it blows our minds if you tell them the price they’re going to pay all up front, most people will say, I’d rather just be suffering.

But if you tell people there’s a simple, easy process, learn how to develop new habits and make it simple. Remember I said we tend to complicate everything? Yeah, because we all want to run a marathon next month. No, I may just walk to the mailbox tomorrow morning, right? Whatever it is, whatever habit you want to create, learn these simple processes.

And I have no equity in BJ Fogg or the gentleman that wrote what the other habits book, but they’re great work. And I think they’re spot on with how one develops it. So if you mix the self management sequence, the understanding of that, where your behavior is emanating from, and now you can modify that behavior, I mean, I could do a whole course on changing your life with a three by five index card.

High tech. That

Amanda Holmes: also sounds interesting. I know Troy too. I’m sure you’re like me. I just keep thinking, Oh, I want to talk about this. What he just said. That was so good. That was so good. Anything that’s coming up for you?

Troy Aberle: You know, as Larry talks about that, I think of what does the current medical system look like now I’m in Canada and I also experienced a lot of challenges.

It’s interesting to think about how many tests we do, Larry and Amanda. That are focused only on our physical, right? We do a blood test or an MRI, things like that to find out what’s wrong. And that’s actually the result of the energetic thing that came from disease or inflammation and whatnot. And how often do we ever actually look at what’s causing the mental problem?

We understand that mental health is a big problem. And the number one Guinness Book World Records pill really is antidepressants, right? And anti anxieties. And isn’t it funny how we’d never figure out or look at what’s causing it with things that Larry’s talking about today. And if you did that part of it, walk through that piece to look at what your conditions are and how that matches your blueprint.

Figure out those pieces, how that would have so much effect than on the physical, that would have a total change on your own physiology, but then it would impact other people’s mental and physiological bodies in all of the layers of people that are in reaction, because when you show up to the workplace, unhappy or under duress, you know, affect someone else, they go home and take that out on their family and those family members take that out on someone else and it starts to become an evolution of what we’re seeing today, Of a mental condition that we seem to be really good at practicing.

And so I really resonate with this today. Thank you.

Larry Bradley: That is such a critical point right there, because, and Amanda, you’ll give me an amen. I know, but the mind and body are inseparable. When the body suffers, the mind suffers. When the mind suffers, the body suffers, right? We’re holistically warm and to not treat it all.

And at your point, they say the learned gardener, when she sees a rash on the leaves. Of the plan. She knows that the problems at the root, not the leaf. Well, Western medicine largely looks at the leaf and treats the leaf. They don’t think about the root to your point. And that’s what I think we need to do more of.

I think there’s a marriage that could be had between Eastern and Western medicine, if you will. You know, and the protocols, because there’s some good in both. Right, there’s a lot of good in both, but I just think you’re right. We don’t treat the whole human being and we need to. Because a lot of what tells us starts up here.

Troy Aberle: So when we look at our business or we look at things in our personal life or what have you, rather than just looking at the result, look at the rest of the pieces, whether it be belief or your actions or attitude awareness, to your point, what are the things that are causing this result to get to where they

Larry Bradley: are?

When you talk about the C suite, I’ll use my own language, the C suite checking out. There, I teach people all the time. You’re never going to be perfect, right? None of us are, none of us will be, but it’s a worthy goal to strive for. And you don’t need to hyperpressure yourself, but just become a better version of you, learn more, do more, because to me, I would be a wretched mess if I didn’t force myself in the learning this stuff.

And I think. I was driven to this stuff because they say you teach what you need to know and that my God, that’s the absolute truth with me. So I teach people become the best version of you because if you’re not full and overflowing yourself, you can’t pour into other people. Well, if I’m a C sweeter and I’m in charge of all these people and this whole operation and I’m a mess.

Myself, I’m not falling over the floor or even close to fall. How am I going to lead other people? That’s a recipe for disaster in corporate America for the wheels to come off. And I think it’s people, I think the single biggest problem on earth, I know it’s a bold statement, but this is based on now, next year will be 50 years in the corporate world and a crazy childhood.

I believe this. And to my point about telling people, have that conversation, have that email that person. I think the biggest problem relationships and business and God is just costly across the board, mentally, emotionally, physically health and business dollars is people generally do not want to confront.

And I know it’s a strong word. I’ll change it to address. People don’t want to address what they see. They’d rather let it torture them the rest of their lives. I spent 30 years thinking I hated a brother in law until I learned some strategies here about how to deal with that. Anger that I thought I had and what I ultimately concluded.

Was I, I didn’t hate him. I had apathy toward him. I didn’t care what I, when I went through this process with myself, I said, you know, let me validate my anger and hatred of this man. And I realized if I never see him again, it won’t matter. And it’s probably the reverse is true with him. So I said, I’m not angry.

The opposite of love is in hate. It’s apathy. I was apathetic. But guess what? Despite my apathy and I finally resolved to let it go, 30 years later, I carried 30 years of chemical cocktail, killing myself from the inside out with one man who, by the way, when he was at the beach or wherever he was in the mountains or doing his daily work, he had no clue I was angry with him.

Who’s crazy here? And my wife used to say, Nancy, say, why are you telling me? Tell him. I said, no, if I tell him, that’ll end it. You know, and that’s a game for me. I’m Irish. No, that was the, that was the storyline. I was feeding myself, which was crap, but learning to manage and mitigate that anger. I was able to take that 60 pound or more backpack that I held for 30 years.

Think about that, because what did that do to me over a 30 year period, right?

Amanda Holmes: I normally say that my taking over my father’s business, stepping in, it was a combination of two things. One was becoming a rabid student of reading the book over and over and over again, right? Watching his videos over and over and over again.

But then on the other side, I wouldn’t have been able to do any of that if I wasn’t working on my mental and emotional Experience, which for me, I went to divine bliss, right? The nonprofit that I talk about in chapter 13 of the book. And I’ve talked with you, Larry, about, and we need those places. We need those exercises that awareness and that take action.

Cause it’s something we have to work on. It is. We are a nation recovering from collective trauma and we need to acknowledge and then take those steps. So I want to send people to be able to find you, Larry. First off the book that you came out with recently with your daughter, what was the title of that again?

Larry Bradley: Oh, that’s the parents report card.

Amanda Holmes: Parents report card. And can they find that on Amazon?

Larry Bradley: Yes, that’s on amazon. com. If you want to be a better parent, have some fun, learn some things about your parenting skill and what your children perceive of you without being failed, because there’s no failure grade.

Okay. It’s a fun exercise. And the coolest thing is it gets family back to the kitchen table without their cell phones or their computers talking about real life subjects that matter. That really matter and that to me is important because again, go back to the individual as a consultant in corporate America, I thought I was going to go in and teach leadership strategy technique.

Right? And I do some of that, but I’m being overwhelmed with teaching the softer skill of how do I manage me? What makes me tick? How do I lay down the stress, anxiety and depression? Which, by the way, I love teaching this because you can’t unknow it once you learn it. And it really is powerful stuff. I didn’t create it, but it’s powerful stuff.

And I know that because I do it and it works.

Amanda Holmes: And we consistently continue to work on it. There’s never a mastery quite of it. Every time you learn a little more, you realize, oh, there’s more to learn. Which then gives me also a segue to when you came in and you decided, okay, I need some help. You ended up purchasing a core story.

Can you just give a little bit more? I know you gave it at the beginning and I’m so grateful. What was your experience? What was the shifts that happened that assisted you? What did the core story do for you?

Larry Bradley: At its core, the core story caused Us to think much bigger than we were thinking bigger and broader because we were living in this little self imposed, like microcosm of who we should have been, of where we should have been going the core story, because it was so broad, so full of such dynamic information and technique.

I said, my God, we’re thinking small, my God, we’re thinking tiny. And this is what really launched us into. I’m going crazy down the path of innovation, right? Because I said, that’s where we can solve America’s problem. I went to you thinking, help me to run a health care plan better. You, through the core story process, got us changed in our objective to say, not how can we run a health care plan better and grow it bigger.

How do we make our people healthier, happier, more productive. And what a distinction. That became, I’m telling you, we’re leading a parade now, even though I’m no longer running the healthcare plan, I’m consulting to it. And I’m on the phone daily. In fact, Nancy said to me last week, I thought you retired. I said, well, listen, I’m on a mission, a passion project now, because I’m working with people that are going to change the face of healthcare in this country.

And Amanda, you’re going to be part of that because you already are, but. Yes,

Amanda Holmes: we’re working on it. We just teamed up.

Larry Bradley: Absolutely. And there are some people, let me tell you, they’re doing some things that no one else is doing because kind of the system is the system and man, are we entrenched in our thought processes.

So I would say to you, the core story, you kind of pride our brains open and said, wait, look at it this way, this way, this way, this way, this way. I’m like, Oh my God, my head’s exploding. But we’re on the wrong path altogether. We said, I said, Oh, all I wanted to do is learn how to better manage and grow a healthcare plan.

Now I want to fix the world. And guess what? We’re going to be able to do it in this country.

Amanda Holmes: I love that. That means a lot to me, Larry, because we find that there’s a small percentage of people that are more strategic than tactical, right? You are, you have such a gift for strategy. You see it. Speak to the people things that are important to them.

And yet, even within this core story process, you expanded to even more. What I’m hearing from you saying is I was just talking about what I was doing. And then I realized I needed to talk about what they cared about and what they were experiencing, which is that shift from the me, we syndrome into let’s talk to the people that aren’t thinking about it.

Think that they’re not interested or definitely not right? That buyer’s pyramid. So I love that even with The brilliance of, you know, I think our first call we hopped on and you said, I want to build the number one healthcare plan in America. And since then, I tell people all the time, I was just telling a gentleman last week that runs a real estate brokerage, he was like, someday I want to have a billion dollars in real estate.

And I went, you should claim that with every conversation that I’m on the path to be a billion dollar real estate portfolio, and I would love your help. Because I can’t do it alone. And that was the mentality that you brought to the table. And when I heard that, I went, Oh, I am on board. Let’s make this happen.

And even from our initial conversation, you were interested in doing something with us, but it took six months. I don’t know if you realize, I went back and I looked at it. It took me six months of following up with you via email. I got your text. I got your assistance information, but you only interacted with me on Facebook Messenger, which I found to be hilarious.

And I tell people all the time, like, if you think your buyers are not on the internet, they are, you just have to find where they are and you happen to be on Facebook Messenger. And I kept following up because I loved the mission that you were on and you claimed it with such confidence and determination and whoever we need, let’s get on board.

Cause we need to move that forward. It’s continue to have me stay in contact with you, regardless of what your position is, because I know that we’re on the same, I say, I would love to heal healthcare in America. Cause I know that that will trickle out to the rest of the world. Let’s deal with it here.

Cause it’s a huge problem. So I appreciate that from you.

Larry Bradley: Yeah. As a business leader and you and Troy will relate to this. When you have, when you approach a problem or an issue or a subject that you have to deal with, I always say that you have to. Go through, first and foremost, a proper discovery, identify the problem, identify the options, identify the strategies and goals.

And that was my process with you when we first started. I would say, I’m not apologizing, but I think the reason it took six months to do this. It’s because every time I sat with you, my head would explode into another rabbit hole to say, wait, I’m not thinking broad enough. I’m not thinking big enough. I’m not thinking about this.

I’m thinking about that. And it was like, swirling and swirling in my head. And finally, the bell went off. I said, I got it. We got to do this, right? We got to do this. And thank God we did.

Amanda Holmes: That means so much to me because you’re such a big thinker. I mean, to hear you say that means a lot to me. I think I remember, I mean, at the time that we started, you had grown from 10 to 100, 000 in your plan.

And I, at one point, showed you that that was only 3 percent of the potential marketplace. And you just looked at me like, what? Because it was a Do you remember that moment? It was like this paradigm shift of like, we thought we were, we had it all together and we’re like one of the biggest and I’m like, actually, you’re disserving 97 percent of the potential electrical engineers in this United States that could be using your services and you are hindering them because you are not providing them this superior healthcare plan that you’ve created.

So I love that. I mean, so anything you want to add to this?

Troy Aberle: No, I think like from what I got from this is definitely awareness is changing, looking at what it is you want as a result and becoming aware of what that feels like it looks like and you really start to dive into the people and conversations that are going to lean you forward into that place of opportunity rather than stay in a place of disease and attitude and perception that is keeping you where you’re locked in right now.

Larry Bradley: Amanda, this is your fault. I was on an interview the other day with a business consulting guy that pushes out a lot of video. He wants me to do video for him. And he said, I just want the number one piece of advice you’d give a brand new entrepreneur just starting their business. Cut through it all, give me one.

And Amanda, because of you and our experience together, my answer was readily available instantly. And I said, I would challenge anyone in business, especially starting a business to say this, and I say it to my own children who are all in business for themselves. I said, you can’t think big enough. You can’t, I challenge you to think bigger and bigger and bigger because and I’m not talking about greed.

I’m just talking about what impact you want to have on what business or what industry you’re going to be in. And a lot of people think small. I mean, look at the book. 10x is easier than 2x. I thought that’s bullcrap till I read it. I said, Oh, my God. That’s phenomenal. By the way, Amanda, my children are all reading your book.

Amanda Holmes: Oh, good. I’m so glad. I still have to meet your daughter. We still have to make that happen. Yeah. Yes. Uh, so yet again, a wonderful episode of The CEO mastery show, we’ve covered the three simple tips to ease the burden of, we started with leadership, but then I realized it’s really just workplace and life for anybody.

Really? They were such great, actionable takeaways. I’m so grateful to have you on, Larry. I could have 10 more episodes with you. I just thoroughly enjoy them.

Larry Bradley: There’s a lot coming. Let me tell you, there’s a lot coming. It’s so, it’s just, I’m so fired up and excited about the future. It’s. It’s, well, I never thought I’d feel this way about where this can take us.

And honestly, you and your organization were the trigger. You taught me how to think beyond myself. And I didn’t know that for almost. 45 years. So think about that. That’s why I’m so passionate now. Say I’m telling my kids dig into this material because it’s gonna change the trajectory. It’s gonna be generationally changing your family, right?

This is amazing work, and I have no equity in this. As you know, I just fell in love with your father and the work he did and the teachings he did. I said, I just got to know more and then coming to know you and having our experience, literally applying your work and your advice and strategies. You just said, changed my world, changed my world.

And because of that, it’s going to change my children, their children, and then everybody I know, because people ask me, give me some sales advice. I said, you need to talk to a man. That’s the advice I give.

Amanda Holmes: Well, there you go. That’s Larry Bradley for you again. You’re on LinkedIn as well, right? Can people find you on LinkedIn?

Larry Bradley, go find him, find him, say hello. He is, this is just a piece of so much more wisdom. Thank you, Larry. Make sure to get your copy or copies at the ultimate sales machine. com. There’s a lot of special bonuses that you can’t get going to Amazon. So make sure you check it out at ultimate sales machine.

com.

TAKING ACTION:

• Want to know what’s keeping you from doubling your sales in the next 12 months? Take our quick QUIZ to get answers: Howtodoublesales.com
• If you’d like to have a profound breakthrough in your business, schedule your breakthrough call with a LIVE expert here: Chetholmes.com/Breakthrough
• Claim your FREE chapter 4 from the top 10 most recommended marketing and sales books of all time! Visit: Ultimatesalesmachine.com to find out how you Create 9X More Impact from every move you’re already making to win clients!

FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL: Instagram.com/UltimateSalesMachine Facebook.com/UltimateSalesMachine Twitter.com/ChetHolmes Linkedin.com/company/chetholmesinternational/

TRANSCRIPT:

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

So the stadium pitch really is 70 percent of company leaders, both executive and mid level are anxious, frustrated, and tired, but there’s ways to reduce that. And the way to reduce it. is learning the top five reasons that commercialization strategies fail and how to combat them. 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 Chat Homes International. What you’re about to learn has assisted a quarter of a million businesses to generate billions of dollars working faster, better, smarter. Welcome everybody. Amanda Holmes here, CEO of Chet Holmes International, and you are on the CEO mastery show this week.

I have with me, Craig Ingram, who is a 26 year old veteran in the med tech and health tech industries. He’s brought products. To patient care facilities across the United States and hospitals. We’re going to talk about some of the case studies of some of the companies. He’s been a part of the successes, the failures.

He’s been voted the salesman of the year or multiple years. He’s been rehired by CEOs over and over again, because he is just that living, breathing superstar. And he has shown. Ultimate Sales Machine Dojo. I said, Craig, will you just come on to our podcast? I’d love to have you. So I’m so glad to have you on today, Craig.

I’m super excited because podcasts are fun, but I’m a huge fan of Chet Holmes International, both you and your dad. And honestly, even an old dog like me, who’s been in my industry for 26 years at 49 years old, I still am learning and trying to incorporate the foundations and the fundamentals and the basics because no person can remember it all.

And I know I can’t. So that is why I think I’m part of your dojo. And that’s why I’m constantly making sure that I’m getting reinforced. What’s easy to forget. Well, and that’s also a key characteristic of superstars. They are perpetually looking to learn. It is only 10 percent of the population, whereas 90 percent are just after high school.

They never look for more education. They’re never looking at continual education. Hence, why only 0. 04 percent of colleges in the United States have sales as a major or minor. We’re just looking. We’re lacking that. I also pulled up a statistic from last week saying that 74 percent of sales reps fail.

We just don’t have enough to support sales. And right now with 84 percent of buyers pulling back on purchasing because they just don’t have the money. There’s a lot of people struggling in the marketplace right now. There’s a lot of people that are feeling overwhelmed. Burnout is at an all time high. I was actually looking at.

Suicide rates because it’s so intense and what I saw was that from 2000 to 2018 We saw an increase in suicide rates and then from 2018 to 2020 We actually got a little bit better It did dip down and then as soon as 2020 came we went up again and from 2000 to today We’re at an all time high in history for amount of suicide.

So burnout obviously, it’s just one version of it We’re also seeing an increase in chronic illnesses because of the amount of burnout that we’re experiencing. So, people are just tired. So, I thought it would be great. I’m going to just break down for everybody listening this four part framework. My father had 12 steps and I just had to Boil it down to just four.

Four simple steps that could either make or break your go to market strategy. It’s the reason why so many people are wasting money. It’s the reason why 40 percent of companies are not making money. Can you imagine that only, that 60 percent of companies either break even or make money, 40 percent actually lose money?

Did you know that? That it’s that high, Craig? You know, it’s interesting. I actually think that’s better statistic than what I had, because I remember talking with a private equity business coach that I meet with about once every six weeks or so. I’m going to, I’m going to remain nameless for his sake, because I don’t know if he wants me to say his name, but he was telling me that only 6.

6 percent of companies out of the 32. 9 million companies in the U. S. Registered meaning LLC, C corps or S corps. Yeah. Only 6. 6 of them ever reach a million in revenue in a 12 consecutive month period. Only 4. 1 percent of the 6. 6 percent that do make it to a million ever make it to 10 million and 40 percent are profitable.

So your statistics are actually better than, than the ones I taught. So I would rather have your statistics, you know what I mean? Because. 40% being profitable is obviously worse than 60% being profitable. But either way, bottom line is, even if you average it out, the cards are stacked against us to succeed in business.

Yeah. Yep. And I love what you were saying there. I would love to get that study because I’ve continually keep trying to find what percentage of companies make it to a million. Yeah. Make it to five. Make it to 10. And this one particular study that studied SaaS companies. Mm-Hmm. that opened from 2005 to 2022.

Those that got backed, venture backed. And made a 3 million in venture backed funds. Only 1% of them made it to the a hundred million dollars mark. And what the study found from analyzing the 13,000 that got venture backed and then the 238 that made it to a hundred million was that the path to growth is discontinuous.

So when you’re trying to get to a million, it’s just, do I have product market fit? Then once you get to a million majority don’t make it to three because they have to get past founder led sales. How do we actually get somebody into here that can sell besides just the CEO? Then from three million to ten million, it’s how do I get a go to market strategy that I can actually put some acceleration behind and grow?

But then the 10 to 100 million, it’s really that they don’t have a repeatable go to market strategy. So that’s what we’re going to cover today, because I know that that’s your expertise. And we have a couple of case studies on this, right? We do. We do. It’s so good. Some are failures, some are really successful.

So we get the dichotomy, right? We got to show it all. We got to show it all. So I break this down into a four part framework. So the first step of this framework is you have to know your goal. What are you trying to accomplish? 51 percent of companies do not have a clear goal. 75 percent aren’t amidst within the team don’t know what that goal is.

So the clarity of a goal throughout an entire organization is absolutely critical and majority miss this point. So step number one, because if you know your goal and especially with C suites, if you’re thinking, okay, my goal is that I want a second home and I want it in a different state. Well then who you’re reaching out to could change because maybe that person that you want to reach out to lives in that state or you’re going after more people in that particular area because that’s part of your goal, right?

So your goal depicts who you need to work with to achieve that goal. So how do we find the people that will help us achieve that goal the fastest? And for those of you that are familiar with the dream 100, right? That is a great way. Who are those? The fewer amount of people that get you the most amount of money.

And then step number three, what do you need to say to grab their attention? Because we don’t want to just me, we, we call it the me, we syndrome, right? Where we’re only talking about me, me, me, me, me, which only gets 3 percent of the marketplace. You need to Educate those ideal prospects with what’s keeping them up at night.

You need to speak to them exactly where they’re at. What is the pain problem that they’re bringing to their Monday morning meeting that everyone is discussing? You should know that type of dialogue. To speak their language, to then lead them and educate them into the buying now category and about your product or service to then number four, where do you need to say this information?

Where do you need to deploy to get them to take action and to really create a high ROI? Because so many people are wasting money and what they’re doing with their marketing and sales efforts. So what’s your goal? Who do you need to get to, to achieve that the fastest? What do you need to say to get in the most amount of doors and where do you need to say it to get the fastest, to take action and get the highest ROI?

So. With all of that said, let’s talk about the first case study that you had. And I loved this. So it was a company that you worked for the gentleman before you had 18 months to sell a hundred K. And then you came in and sold 2 million in one year. So obviously, yeah, roughly just a little hair over one year.

Yeah, basically there was a, there was a gentleman who was a national sales director before me. He was there for somewhere around 16 to 18 months. I didn’t get the full details and I should have asked more detail, but I just didn’t. And so. Around 18 months, he was there and he only sold around 100, 125, 000 in total revenue.

And they were using distributors and the CEO was looking for somebody that really knew how to build a field sales organization, but they couldn’t afford somebody in the mid two hundreds. So they’ve got somebody like me that came from a fortune 500 company, Johnson and Johnson being a startup division from J and J.

Yeah. And then I went to an actual venture capital based startup company, and then we got bought by J and J. And of course, they didn’t want us back. So, what happened was, I ended up going to this startup company because I was more affordable to them. And it was an opportunity for me to have a national Sales director, sales manager title and responsibilities to show what I could do.

Right. Right. So what I did was I literally made a clean slate. And so we ended up getting some funding and I had a hybrid sales force. So I managed distributors. Stocking distributors, and I had a handful of direct employee sales representatives to their goal was an exit strategy. Right? Successful exit.

But when you’re only selling less than 150 to 200, 000 a year, nobody’s going to want it. Right? Because the concept’s not there that people want it. Yeah. Well. After I was able to completely put a whole new sales training program together to teach the reps what to say, how to say it, what are the competitors, what’s their disadvantages, what’s their advantages.

I made them understand that knowing your competitors better than your possibly your own product will allow you to ask more effective questions that will get the potential customer to rationalize why they should use your product or service. It worked. It did really work. CEO was happy. The founder was happy.

And they ended up selling that company to Stryker Endoscopy. So basically we sold ourselves without a job because they didn’t want middle and senior management when they bought us, right? It was a really good situation. And so that CEO was happy and still one of my references. And we did it on a smaller scale.

And I look back and go, if it doesn’t work small, it won’t work large, no matter how much investment money you get. And we made it work small to go literally from around a hundred grand, 120 grand up to almost 2 million in a year and four months. And because of that, we got on the radar and they wanted our technology.

So it sounds like what I’m taking away is that it was more around the messaging. Did you have to change who you were reaching out to? Or was it the same as what the gentleman was before you? Yeah, really, really good question. It actually was the same target market. It was laparoscopic surgeons who worked at hospitals and surgery centers that were looking for a technology that gave a little bit less risk of an adverse event.

Oh, so you’re selling more like insurance, like just in case this goes bad. Yeah, there was a little bit less risk of patient injury with this product. Still had patient injury, just like the other technologies, but it was less risky because of the safety mechanisms of this laparoscopic surgical technology.

So tell me a little bit about understanding these surgeons. But you weren’t selling to the surgeon, you were selling to the hospital that was buying it. Correct. But you had to have the surgeons. request the technology because the hospitals wouldn’t see you. So we had to, so it was like, it was very weird, right?

So we would bombard these general surgeons, urology surgeons, bariatric surgeons, you know, gynecology surgeons that were doing laparoscopic abdominal surgery and saying, here’s the product, here’s a new technology. Here’s why you want to evaluate it if you would. And here’s what it brings to you compared to what you’re using now.

It’s not what you’re using. That was bad. This is just an advancement in technology. And here are the reasons why. And so because of that, they would go to the hospital and work the process in the hospital for us. Because if we went to the hospital, we would immediately be told you’re not on contract.

You’re not one of our priority vendors. We’re not interested. But when the surgeons do it. It lets the hospital personnel know that they really want to evaluate it because they’re the ones malpractice is on the line. And is that a normal process in your industry to go to the surgeon’s first to get the buy in to then go to purchasing?

100 percent yes. Fascinating. And then how did you reach out to them? Was it just cold calling? Was it showing up to the hospital? It’s a multi prong approach, right? And so I didn’t know that I was pretty decent at marketing at this time to be cruelly honest with you. Cause I never had any, I never had any formal marketing experience coming from a fortune 500 and then going directly to the antithesis of it, which is a startup venture capital based company.

You can’t get more polar North pole, South pole, polar opposite. And what I found out is that the bland marketing just blended in with everyone else. And so I went to our marketing director and said, listen, I know I’m not in marketing. I know I’m kind of encroaching on your space here, but here’s some ideas I want you to think through.

And so I gave them a bunch of uncommon actions and strategies and ideas to be the neon green fish in a silver fish lake. Right? Because we can either be in an ocean of sameness or a link at like a distinction. And so, because of that, I was like, wow. So she started making some ideas. It would come back to me and be like, what do you think about this based on your idea?

And I’d be like, yeah, let’s give it a shot. And they started working. So, then our reps then would go directly to the physician’s offices, literally show up. Yep. Ask for a meeting for the future or see if they had like four to six minutes in between patients, right? Sometimes we would get in right then and sometimes they would be like, Oh, can you come at breakfast time or can you bring us a lunch or can you do this?

Even though I’m so anti lunch and anti bringing in food you know, but it is what it is. It’s just the nature of the beast. And you sit down with them, you have a sandwich or like bagels and orange juice or something and you just start talking to them for four to six minutes because that’s all you’re going to get.

Wow. So your message has to be right on to get them. I call it, people call it hunting and fishing. I call it in a way fishing because you’re going to have a lot of fishing poles in the water and you’ve got to figure out what bait. Magnetizes them in to bite on the hook. I love that. Okay. So let’s jump to the next case study, unless you want to add anything else to this one.

No, we, we, things just really worked out. And I was like, wow, this is either really luck or maybe I’ve got some success. Like maybe I really understand this well, in all fairness, I think being part of a fortune 500 at seeing what doesn’t work there and what does work and then going to another. I’m going to a venture capital based company before this case study that we’re talking about to see what works and doesn’t work there, knowing what not to do, in my opinion, gives you more of a trampoline opportunity to know what to do.

Absolutely. So the biggest takeaway that I heard from what you said is that the messaging was off to these influencers that would then give to the person that would decide to buy. So 100 percent really have to make sure that you have that product market fit messaging, which segues to the next, a failure in telemedicine.

So please tell me, cause right. We learn a lot from our success, but we learn a whole. Well, a lot more from the failures. So what happened there? Tell me a little bit about the. Well, it’s the bumps you climb on, right? You can’t climb on smooth surfaces. So the failures are our bumps. So I recently came out of a telemedicine company that has an absolutely an amazing.

Product service that they’re selling. In fact, I really, truly believe even to this day that I’m no longer there. Every single hospital should have this service because it really does transform patient outcomes and patient healthcare. It just does without getting too far into that. The way this company over 20 some years built a 44 million business was focusing on hospitals that was around.

60 to 70 beds or smaller. So critical access hospitals are hospitals that are like 25 beds and smaller and community hospitals are pretty much anything like 26 beds to 80 beds are considered community based hospitals. And so they grew their business. over like 26, 27 years in the critical access and community hospital space.

They got bought by a private equity firm. So a bunch of money came in that they were able to use. And they said, let’s go for the medium to large market hospitals. Let’s focus on hospitals, a hundred, 200, bed hospitals. And let’s start targeting them to use our product and services because we can augment and supplement the healthcare staff.

And take some of that pressure off them makes total sense. Right? So a person got hired that just covered pharmacy. And then 2 of us got hired 1 for the East of the Mississippi 1 for the West of the Mississippi, which I covered everything West of the Mississippi. As directors of business development, and our job was to focus on critical care access.

Emergency room support support system as well as ICU and critical care. What we found, what I found after 47 meetings with approximately 41 hospitals is that they wanted to build their own telemedicine platform and service support structure themselves. Most of them were, I mean, these are large hospital systems that have multiple community hospitals that they own.

They just were not interested. In spending anywhere from 300, 000 a year to 1. 5 million a year for the services that we were trying to provide because they, even though it cost them more, they had full control of how they wanted to build. That telemedicine service platform and program. Well, you can only sell and build a company.

On what people are willing to spend money on and pull money out of their pocket flat out. They were not interested. Now, the smaller hospitals that are 25 beds to 80 beds or so they buy in this all day long because they’re like, we don’t have the support structure of a large facility over a large system to do this.

And to be quite frank, as of February 1st, 2024, this company is no longer even focusing on any hospitals above a hundred beds. I love this. This is so critical. So you’re talking about product market fit, like I mentioned at the beginning, right, that first million, you have to get product market fit. And I’m reading Noah Kagan’s million dollar weekend, where you come up with a business, a million dollar business in a weekend.

And I think that more corporations should read. Noah’s book because it’s such a fast actionable way to prove a concept and one of them is, okay, in the next 48 hours, call three people that could be your ideal prospects and sell what you want as a service and see if they’ll actually want to buy it. If they don’t, Probably not an idea, and yet corporations all day every day will hire a ton of staff, build out a whole system to sell something that they had to spend so much time in energy building, and they don’t even know if there’s demand for it in the marketplace.

So the next time you have an idea, those of you that are listening, that you want to try something new, before building it all out, ask the person that would potentially buy it if they’d be interested in it. If they don’t, don’t build it. Cause if you build it, they may not necessarily come. Yeah, right.

Market research is critical, critical. Okay. And then that takes me to the next, which is what you’re doing now, consulting now for medical tech and health tech companies. And can you define for others that are not in that, in those industries, what they are just for those that are listening, because I liked your definition of them.

Yeah. So med tech. Would be more medical devices, whether it’s surgical, diagnostic or therapeutic health tech would be more on the digital health care side, your software, your telemedicine, right? Where it’s service and software and platforms. That would be more of your health care technology. So I know that you’ve been going through the dojo and reading ultimate sales machine, and we call it a stadium pitch, but I loved what you were saying there.

Thank you Yeah. And I’ve got it right open, too. I love it. Yes. So, can you share with us what, I loved what you were saying about your education for the marketplace. Yeah, it’s interesting, right, because my stadium pitch is, and I’ve got a program going on right now on LinkedIn and my stadium pitch is, and I’m going to read it, 78 percent of company leaders, whether executive or mid level are severely full of anxiety.

They’re very frustrated, which can lead to irritability to one another in the workplace, and they’re extremely exhausted. And it is humanly impossible not to bring those feelings and repercussions of those feelings into our home. So the standing pitch really is 70 percent of company leaders, both executive and mid level are anxious, frustrated, and tired.

But there’s ways to reduce that. And the way to reduce it is learning the top five reasons that commercialization strategies fail. And how to combat them. And for those of you that aren’t familiar, commercialization is like go to market strategy, right? As you’ve done for the last 26 years, helping companies go to market.

I would love to know the five things, because I also have six things that are holding companies back from go to market strategy. So for those of you that would be interested in finding out, well, what are we missing that are critical pieces to a successful product being sold to zero to a hundred million and beyond, where would they find you to be able to go to one of your trainings?

They can get ahold of me right on LinkedIn, Craig T Ingram, or they can get on medical sales growth. com. And when it comes to knowing what the five reasons that commercialization strategies fail, most people, no matter what income level they’re at, no matter what level of business they’re at, they really don’t know what are the 10 components.

That make up commercialization. And so in order to know what not to do, you have to know what to do or vice versa. And I think it’s more vice versa. It’s not necessarily knowing what to do. It’s knowing what not to do. And you’re going to stay clear of knowing what not to do, which stacks the deck in our favor of getting to know what works and what’s effective.

I have noticed this as well when I taught the three things to double your sales in the next 12 months people like that but if I say Let me teach you the three things holding you back from doubling your sales people were more Interested to hear the things that were holding them back than the things to double So people move way quicker to avoid pain than they do moving towards pleasure.

Yeah, they do. I do I’ll be the first one to raise my hand So then I want to go to the fourth. So wait, before I get to there, actually, how do you spell your last name so people can find you on LinkedIn? So Craig T and then how do you spell Ingram? I N G R A M. Perfect. Yep. And they can just get on medical sales rep.

Or medical sales growth dot com. That’s just super simple to remember as well. Okay. Medical sales growth dot com. Okay. And then I loved your fourth story, which you had shared in the dojo, which I think we actually did also share in our dojo in one of our past recordings. But that fourth step of that four part framework is where do you need to say the information to get people to take action?

For them to actually see it. And you had a successful LinkedIn post go viral. Can you share about that? I did. I’m, I’m still kind of, this is only literally like eight days old or no now. So a week and a half ago I had a, so I was on stage. I was talking to, I was nervous as heck. I will not joke there. There were 23 people in there.

That were literal liquid net worth billionaires. I’m glad I didn’t know that till afterwards. Cause I really don’t know if I would have made it like survived on stage. I mean, they would have been like, this guy’s a clown, right? Because I’d have been so nervous, but it is intimidating speaking to people who literally can write a check for a billion dollars and it not bounce.

Like that is extremely intimidating. Right. I’ll be the first one to admit it again. I’m glad I did it. I learned about that afterwards. However, I talked about. Effective hiring and people want to know why they have trouble hiring. It’s because they use the same questions that are quite frankly, ineffective and just dumb.

It doesn’t lead to anything. So I did a speech on how to hire effectively from a sales standpoint. And I had a gentleman. Splice that video and add some emojis and things to it. I just loaded it up on LinkedIn and literally I’m going to look right now as a right now it’s 101, 624 impressions. I’ve never had that ever.

That’s been my only one. There’s been a similar one that I had 45, 000 about nine years ago, and it actually had to do with your dad’s stuff in the original ultimate sales machine. And seriously, and I got 45, 000, the rest are like 5, 000 and under, but I couldn’t believe that I had 101, 000 impressions.

That’s just. That’s just crazy. Me, like, that’s just crazy. I love that. And then I remember you saying that you commenting with each person, making sure that you’ve interacted with them. Yep. Have you actually found any potential business or leads from the people that There are people that have called me, that have got on my website, put in their info.

And like, so this past Saturday morning, I had a, a Zoom call pop up and I was like, Oh, gosh, I got a zoom call in a half an hour. I don’t even know who this person is got on. I’m like, Oh, you know, and they’re like, Oh, yes, I saw your video. And, and so I got on your website and I thought I’d talk to you. So, yeah, I mean, there’s definitely people that are reaching out.

Right. And, you know, they could pay now or pay later. And if you wait to find the gaps on how to commercialize effectively, you’re going to pay later and it’s not going to be good. Right. It’s either going to be more because you got to go back and fix stuff. I always say it’s cheaper to pay now, prevent as best as humanly possible, the hiccups and the gaps that you have to prevent those from happening.

I love it. What a great story. And as I had mentioned before, the dojo, right. Treating people that are online as if they’re in your living room, one of our coaches had said that and I’m and I, gosh, I am struggling to remember who it was, but so it wasn’t me that came up with that. But I love the analogy of thinking of somebody in your living room, if they were in your living room, how would you interact with them and really start those conversations?

See if it can lead to an appointment. So I hope you look more within those, those contacts to find reasons to get them on the phone because well, I personally interact with every single person. I do not hire out my social strategy. I do it myself. Right. And, and the reason I do it myself is number one, I can number two, I can do it still while I’m somewhat small.

Right. As, as a solopreneur, I’ve got other people that are interested in other people that I partner with around the world. One of my business partners is out of Rome and he’s done all his stuff, but he’s growing big, and so now we’re thinking about putting what he’s doing and what I’m doing all under my company, international commercialization growth partners, and doing that together and keeping the social media personal.

As long as we humanly can. Yeah, it really makes a huge difference. I know just with email alone, if you personalize your emails, your conversion rates increased by 14%, which an email could make a huge difference. I’m telling you, I got an example of that real quick. Oh, okay. So in September, 2020, I had 576 people on LinkedIn that were first line contacts.

I now have 12, 441 contacts as of right now, that was all done by me making a Two sentence message asking people to connect on LinkedIn. And now I went from 576 to over 12, 000. Wow. And since September, 2020 and this we’re in what, March of 2024. So in 20 years, yeah. And in our last few moments, I’m just curious, you’ve been a part of the dojo and as some of you know, we go through just one hour a week and we work on the ultimate sales machine, helping you craft your ultimate sales machine.

Can you give some feedback to others that maybe would think about joining the dojo? What’s been your experience? I should have done this sooner. To be quite frank with you, there’s theory and there’s reality and practicality. I do not like theory. I know we need to have it, but I even questioned, do we really need to have it?

But according to growing up in school and the way we’ve been educated, we probably do need it. But practicality is where it’s at, right? I’ve probably spent 140 ish thousand realistically in six years in business coaching. And people look at me and like, Are you kidding me? Why would you spend that much? I will never get a negative ROI.

By making myself more effective business coaching makes you more effective bar none. I should have been part of it sooner. I literally could do it three times a week for an hour and I’m not exaggerating. I would book my schedule around three hours a week on the dojo because I can never hear what I already know enough because it reinforces what I need to remember.

I just can’t remember everything. And so I’ve got to constantly remind myself What I’m doing, right? How am I doing it? Why am I doing it? What’s the tonality? Am I making sense and having other people who are more effective in certain situations and business principles than I am? I need that input. Right?

And so it’s kind of like. I love this analogy. And I just had somebody say to me, they’re going to make me a marketing piece for this. And it’s like, I’ll just use commercialization. Commercialization is one of the most critical portions of a business because without effective commercialization, all companies die, right?

Commercialization is your forest. The 10 components of commercialization are individual trees. So there’s 10 trees that make up the Every. Buddy that is in a company can only see the trees. You have to have somebody from outside to be able to look at the whole forest and to find the gaps because you can’t do it on the ground looking at the trees.

So you have to have fresh eyes, fresh perspective. The dojo is a way to get fresh perspective of people in the helicopter, looking at your whole forest. And no matter who we are, we on the ground can only see the trees that are in our forest. We don’t have the capability, no matter what level we are, CEO, all the way down to a new associate that just graduated from college.

We don’t have the ability to see the forest because we’re too in love with our product. We’re too in love with our service. We have biases. We think it needs to be done this way. We have to be coachable enough to spend a little bit of money to bring outside person in who’s demonstrated that they are obsessed.

And in my view, obsessed with commercialization. So good. I’ve been having a lot of fun. So one week I’ll do a training based around our ultimate sales machine. Next week, we’ll do more of a breakout where we break out into smaller groups and then everybody shares their specific problems that they’re facing and we mastermind them in smaller groups.

And we’re finally getting to a point where people are. Really opening up and sharing a lot more about what’s going on in their world so that they can get very actionable advice. Like for you, when you were pulling up a graphic for one of your trainings, and we just went super detailed into how to make a visual pop.

Cause I don’t have all the answers. I have to have input and you and Troy and other people, you know, Jerry, you guys can see things again. I’m in my own forest. I can’t see the whole forest, but you guys can, because you’re not in it. Right. It’s helpful. So I’m actually doing what I’m telling CEOs and C level executives of companies.

Yeah. Why they should bring me into their company. I’m actually doing what I’m telling them to do. I’m doing with you guys. I love it. So if you want to connect with Craig and his other 12, 000 followers, you can go on LinkedIn to Craig T. Ingram, I N G R A M, and go say hello. He’s a wonderful human being, always brings 150%.

I can definitely say that from watching him week after week. If nobody has anything to say, Craig always has something to say. You may not like it, but it’s usually great. It’s usually very insightful and helpful. And you know, you play full out and that’s what we need. More people that play full out, especially right now with what’s going on in the economy.

And there’s a lot of people that really burned out. So, yeah, I’ll tell you, man, I mean what I say and I say what I mean. Your program is not only worth every bit of money. This is probably going to be hard for some people to hear, but I’ll say it to myself. There’s foolishness and there’s wisdom. Wisdom is the proper use of intelligence.

Foolishness is the improper useness of intelligence. And I’ve been foolish many times. By not getting outside coaching. And finally, six years ago, I made that choice to change. And you guys have been part of this coaching existence. And I’m only where I’m at because you guys are a portion of my whole pie or you’re one of my trees in the forest that has given me the tools to be really successful in business.

But I’ve still got a long way to go. Well, I appreciate that. For those that want to sign up for the dojo. If you go to chet holmes. com, you click on that solutions bar and they’ll show up all the things, but dojo will be in there. So chet holmes. com go to the solutions page. And I’d love to see you to join the dojo along with Craig T Ingram.

Thank you for your time today. It was so much fun. Yeah, I love it. This is great. And I’m just thankful for you and Charlie and Jerry and building a real relationship. You know what I mean? Where we put all 52 cards face up and loyalty is a huge thing with me, but I think it starts with me first and that’s what I try to bring to every single person.

I appreciate that. Well, until the next episode, goodbye, everybody. Make sure to get your copy or copies at the ultimate sales machine. com. There’s a lot of special bonuses that you can’t get going to Amazon. So make sure you check it out at ultimate sales machine. com.

TAKING ACTION:

• Want to know what’s keeping you from doubling your sales in the next 12 months? Take our quick QUIZ to get answers: Howtodoublesales.com
• If you’d like to have a profound breakthrough in your business, schedule your breakthrough call with a LIVE expert here: Chetholmes.com/Breakthrough
• Claim your FREE chapter 4 from the top 10 most recommended marketing and sales books of all time! Visit: Ultimatesalesmachine.com to find out how you Create 9X More Impact from every move you’re already making to win clients!

FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL: Instagram.com/UltimateSalesMachine Facebook.com/UltimateSalesMachine Twitter.com/ChetHolmes Linkedin.com/company/chetholmesinternational/

TRANSCRIPT:

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

Peter Afiuny: [00:00:00] I had letter of credit financing. I took risk of transportation and it was close to 10 million worth of rebar at that time. While it was in transit, the markets tanked and my buyers backed out.

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 been million businesses to generate billions of dollars, working faster, better, smarter.

Amanda Holmes: Welcome back everybody. Amanda Holmes here and today’s CEO mastery show. We have a special guest.

I also have Troy Aberle, our executive strategy officer on, but today we’re talking to Peter Afiuny, who is the chief commercial officer at Noveon. I am so thrilled. We got some data recently that says [00:01:00] that CEOs and founders are younger than they’ve ever been. It’s actually shocking. High net worth individuals, the average high net worth individual, It used to be 62 years old.

In the last five years, that has dramatically decreased by 11 years, making the average be at 47 years old. And that inspired me to say, Peter, can you please hop on this podcast? Because they have raised over a hundred million in Eight years before they even turned 40. So Peter’s also a co founder of Noveon and we’re going to dive into the stories of what it takes to the blood, sweat, and tears that it takes to grow that.

And the opportunity that so many have to be able to create a more sustainable future in their business. So. Thank you, Peter. Thank you. Thank you for having me. What a fantastic introduction. I really appreciate it. I appreciate being here and the opportunity to spend time with you to talk about our journey.

I know. So I first met Peter. [00:02:00] This is so great. We went to college together at University of Southern California, and we were both in the The Entrepreneur Club, which was the largest organization at USC. And Peter was president at the time. I think I was maybe two years younger than you or so. And I just kept hearing about this president.

I didn’t see him much. And I, at the time I had no contacts. All I knew is everyone said he’s very successful. He’s never here. He’s too busy running his company. Oh, get out of here. I literally had no idea what you were doing fast forward, right? Like 10, 15 years later, I find out that you’re like charging through China, trying to understand the supply chain, which, which ended up paying off wonderfully.

But can you, can you tell me a little bit about what you found diving through China that led to this successful business venture?

Peter Afiuny: Yeah, it was an opportunity that Really was made available to us through some of our other co founders who had really taken their career deep into the world of [00:03:00] magnetics in China.

When you’re talking about magnet manufacturing, China is the dominant player. And so if you want to learn about making magnets. You have to engage in that environment and in the APAC region, a lot of the intellectual property came out of Japan and a lot of the mining through separation through refining.

And then, of course, magnet manufacturing occurs. And so I spent a lot of time visiting different companies and meeting a lot of really wonderful people to absorb as much as I possibly could about the industry.

Amanda Holmes: Yeah. And I don’t know if you can share this story. You had told me something about like some of the crazy war stories.

Cause A lot of people are in a lot of pain at the moment that you’re lucky. You’re in a wonderful space, but there’s some that had some serious problems with supply chain issues. I remember one in particular about you on a boat. Can you share that?

Peter Afiuny: Oh, oh yeah. Yeah. So that was apparently the company that I was running while [00:04:00] being a part of entrepreneur club.

Yeah. Yeah, that was a really interesting experience. It was probably my first. Huge failure. Yeah. As a, as a, I’ve had a, I had a lot of minor failures, but that was probably one of my big ones. And it was also very important moment in my life because it became a very self reflective moment in my life in terms of.

What I was pursuing and how I was pursuing things and what I was getting involved in. But, yeah, I had essentially started a company that was dealing in hard commodities trading and, you know, it was essentially just buying steel and lumber and things that were used for construction projects and leveraging price arbitrage regional price arbitrage to make the margin.

Okay, and so I had bought a barge load. Literally a barge load of Turkish rebar, and I had financed it using a letter of [00:05:00] credit. And I did this, this was right as I graduated from the university of Southern California, and I turned down all my job offers, which is in hindsight, still really great move that I did, but I don’t know if everybody remembers.

I graduated in 2008 and 2008 is when we had the global financial crisis. And so a lot of markets tank, the steel markets being one of them. And so graduated in May and then October hit. And I had this deal where I had letter of credit financing. I took risk of transportation and it was close to 10 million worth of rebar.

At that time, while it was in transit, the markets tanked and my buyers backed out. So that was, so that like just made the company insolvent overnight. And then that’s what put me into sort of a self reflective mindset about what am I doing and what am I involved in? Because. Ultimately, I had realized that what I was [00:06:00] doing was a lot of paper trading and brokering, and I was really questioning what is the value that I’m really bringing to the table, right?

Because I was creating sort of a derivative off of the value that was already created. And that’s fine. You need that level of service, right? But it wasn’t something that was fulfilling for me. And so it put me in a different mindset as far as what I wanted to do and how dirty I wanted to get my hands.

Amanda Holmes: Yeah, I can see Troy’s face too. Were you going to say anything? Cause I could see you reacting like, Oh my God.

Troy Aberle: I’m just thinking about the feeling of when you know that something really didn’t go well, how that feels when it hits your spinal cord, if you will, of, of the emotions.

Amanda Holmes: Well, that’s the journey of the entrepreneur, right?

You succeed and you fail and the fails. I associated that story with your success because now what do you do, right? You’re the only manufacturer in the United States that makes magnets [00:07:00] without outsourcing, right?

Peter Afiuny: Yeah, that’s right. So, and it’s a very specific type of magnet that we make. There are, of course, other magnet manufacturers, but what we make is a neodymium iron boron magnetic material, or a shorthand form of that is a magnet or a neodymium permanent magnet material.

And it is the most powerful permanent magnet material that you can get on the market. What that means is that it has a lot of energy in a very, very small form factor. You know, this magnet has. Contributed to the miniaturization of technology. It is a critical material that acts as a junction for energy conversion, right?

It’s all around us. It’s in your kitchen in the form of. Refrigerators it’s in your house in the form of HVAC systems, blower motors, fans. Pumps in your car in the form of power windows, power door locks, power seats, [00:08:00] sensors, of course, you can even take that to a much, much larger scale. And it spans across industries, whether it’s motion control in aerospace or defense applications, or medical applications or energy applications, it’s all there, right?

It’s really at the heart of electrification. My journey into. Magnetic materials started with exposure to the fact that as a critical material, that was so important to society and really an age of electrification that would feel sustainability or more sustainable environment or more energy efficient environment.

Our waste infrastructure was. Not even considering this material as something that should be captured and recirculated the same way that aluminum and copper and steel and sort of more common non ferrous metals are handled. And so that was really the question that sent me down the rabbit hole. And here we are today, [00:09:00] commercializing and building and delivering magnetic materials.

In the United States, we represent the only center neodymium magnetic manufacturer that is commercial in operation in the better part of almost 25 years. And so we’re really, we’re really proud of what we’ve done here as a team. For me, that’s like. A 10 million error was so painful that it launched out 100 million and more, right?

This is just the beginning. You’re at the cutting edge of what we’re seeing for manufacturing, sustainability, and I don’t know how you feel about recycling, but recycling of magnets, right? Yeah. That was really our breakthrough technology that allowed us to overcome a lot of the barriers, and they were very, very real barriers.

Capital intensive industry. It’s an infrastructure project, right? Also, a lot of intellectual property that were really surrounding the industry. And so our ability [00:10:00] to take a end of life magnet and extract it from an end of life application and turn it into a new high performance magnet. Pave the way as a piece of our technology portfolio to enter this market.

And it has so many different layers of benefits.

Amanda Holmes: It’s absolutely amazing. Cause there are a lot of companies out there right now that are hurting, right? Inflation is so crazy. We’ve. Just gone year after year of just this questionable market where what’s going on with the economy? What’s going on with war?

What’s going on with this pandemic? And I feel like there’s so many CEOs out there that just feel beaten to a pulp and they’re like, I can’t handle it anymore. But to hear this story of what you created in a time of despair, and then changing it into an opportunity that innovation, I mean, I also read that Fast Company celebrated you as the most innovative manufacturing company of 2023.

That’s magnificent. So innovation, right? Necessity breeds innovation. And you are a [00:11:00] walking demonstration of that.

Peter Afiuny: I really appreciate that. You know, it takes a team, right? I can’t take all the credit. You know, I’m, I’m one of four founders. We have A wonderful technology and engineering team that has really propped up the technological capability of this company.

We have close to 100 people now, and every single person plays an important role in helping us accomplish our goals. And so I cannot. Stress that enough, there’s no way that I would have been able to do this by myself. That’s for damn sure.

Amanda Holmes: Oh, that’s great. Can you give an example of somebody that because for all of the companies that are listening to this, maybe they don’t even realize that they may have something that could be recycled and be reused.

So, can you give me an example of a client? Yeah. So, the mobility devices are the example that Amanda’s talking about. So we had. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Set up the national sort of recycling and take back program for bird scooters, where we were taking [00:12:00] all of their end of life scooters and extracting not only all the other kind of commodities associated with an end of life scooter, like the aluminum and lithium ion battery and and the steel and so on and so forth, but especially the magnet component, which is a critical material.

And we were pulling that and using that as a feedstock. But magnets are, you know, Pretty much in motor applications. So think of them as a. Sister to, or a sibling to the battery world, lithium ion battery or energy storage world, wherever there is energy storage, there must be energy conversion and.

Magnets play a very, very important role in energy conversion. So anything that’s motion control or actuation, or taking an electrical signal and converting it into mechanical motion, or vice versa is where you will see a magnet. And in our case. There is no technological rival with regard to [00:13:00] performance to the neodymium magnet, right?

Like, that is the best permanent magnet. You can procure for most. Applications that operate in an upwards of, let’s say, 200 degrees C, which is a lot right? And if you’re getting beyond 200 degrees, C. Looking at space related type applications that will need a different type of magnetic material.

Fascinating. Fascinating. Okay. I want those that aren’t thinking about it right now. Okay. All right. So let me, let me, okay. Let me think. Let me give you a list. Hard dish drive magnets, hard dish drives have magnets, wind turbine generators have magnets. These are critical parts of our feedstock for collection.

Hybrid electric vehicle drivetrains. So, you know, automotive scrap company, maybe recycling full blown vehicles will target the hybrid electric vehicles and will extract the drivetrain out of that in order to be able to pull the magnet out. Then that, of course, adds value. Heart monitors, pumps. The cooling pumps and data centers, that’s another [00:14:00] one e mobility devices, scooters, that’s an obvious electric bikes, electric vehicles.

Right? So all of these things have magnets in the drive train or within their system of components. Okay, so really our customers are companies that are tier 1 tier 2 within sort of OEM supply chains. We’re dealing with motor manufacturers. In some cases, OEMs that are fully integrated in terms of their motor development, but mostly dealing with motor manufacturers.

If I can add to that, what does that, having programs like this creates a different position than in terms of the world environment impact, because you’re able to actually provide something that saves X amount of tons of scooters ending up in a, in a stockpile. It’s very much connected to what we were talking about earlier with regard to the supply chain and.

The APAC region, and sort of the dominance of the supply chain in the APAC region, having an ability to leverage and end of life material stream [00:15:00] creates the opportunity for circular economy and that circular economy can really mitigate supply chain risk, right? And it mitigates supply chain risk against price volatility because the rare earth markets.

Which drive the prices for these permanent magnet materials are highly volatile. They are opaque markets and fluctuate on big swings. There’s a lot that’s happening in the world now with regard to U. S. China relations that has an impact, right? So our ability to make a high performance magnet using end of life material is a great way to mitigate against that risk in some capacity.

That does not take away from the fact that our capability in itself is a magnet manufacturing capability. Right? I mean, we still need to use virgin materials. We still need to buy alloys to make. Virgin magnets at scale and the volumes that we’re talking about, but being able to leverage a circular economy.

To its maximum potential is [00:16:00] beneficial for our business and it’s also beneficial for those who sort of engage with us as a part of their supply chains. And I mean, coming out of COVID, right? It was as if sustainability went from a level one to a level nine or 10. Everyone decided, oh, wow, we have to care about sustainability.

And what, what is the word I’m looking for? I think sustainability is the point of it. I think it’s more supply chain resilience, right? We saw a lot of risk and dependency. And I think that COVID was sort of the straw that broke the camel’s back, right? Because in our industry, there was a bunch of other things that happened, right?

There was massive price spikes for rare earth materials. I’m talking like thousands of percentage points in terms of how the price increased and that frustrated the market, but it wasn’t enough to do a full departure. There were section 301 tariffs that were put on, and that sort of created a whole level of frustration, right?

With regard [00:17:00] to how businesses were able to operate effectively within their supply chain. And then COVID happened when I talked to customers. Now, everybody has a multi sourcing strategy. Everyone is looking for ways to diversify their supply chain. How can they. Mitigate against a centralized supply chain in the APAC region.

Can they look at regional supply chains and price becomes sort of tertiary to the conversation, right? It’s not even that right. So that in a world where everyone, I mean, statistically, we’re seeing this, that across so many industries, people are more focused on price than they have ever been because of inflation.

But you’re living in a space, this special rainbow land,

Well, I’m not going to go as far fetched and say they don’t care about price, but, but, but I will, I will say that if you, as a [00:18:00] customer, as a buyer, if all your focus is on price, Then it’s very, very short sighted and you’re not looking at the strategic implications of building out a supply chain when you’re only looking at price because.

There are considerations that need to be taken into, to account like resiliency, diversity, lead time, there are other functions and levers, market volatility that will ultimately impact total cost of delivered goods. Yeah. And the sort of cherry on the cake is the sustainability piece, right? Which is then on, on top of all of those benefits outside of price, right?

There is this ESG concern or the sustainability concern that has now become a major narrative within corporate governance, really. And so, so being able [00:19:00] to demonstrate that carbon reduction, I mean, when we deploy our magnet to magnet recycling process to make a finished product, we’re talking about a 90 percent improvement in energy efficiency.

When you look at the minds of magnet manufacturing process, if you look at our life cycle analysis, which we’ve done on our process with Purdue University, they. Measure close to like, a 48 percent reduction in the overall life cycle impact assessment when compared to a traditional magnet manufacturer.

Well, these are real numbers, right? I think based on a very, very, very preliminary calculation. And I think this number is even more now for every ton of magnet that we produce. It’s like an 11 ton CO2 reduction. Wow. Right. Right. And then that sort of opens up the world of carbon credits and like, whether you play in that market or not as a whole nother thing, but like, That has an impact and it becomes more [00:20:00] a part of our toolbox then, Hey, we make a magnet that leverages the end of life supply chain and now can be cheaper.

Right? Like, that’s not what we lead with. That’s not even, it’s not, that’s not the focus. What would be the top three things that you think a customer in the magnet business should be looking for, if you will, and how does your company be able to do that? Because I’m sure you guys are proud of what those three things are.

Quality performance and reliability. I’d probably say off the top of my head. And I think how 1 customer over the next will value. Each 1 of those things will depend on the industry. If you’re operating in. Automotive industry versus if you’re operating in a sort of industrial environment, the focus on each 1 of those things will vary automotive.

For example, is very much focused on a price. [00:21:00] Price is a big part of what they do because they’re looking at 10 year programs and millions of vehicles. And that translates into 10s of millions of pieces could be 10 cents swing on price can be. Millions of dollars in swing and on a total spend for a particular program.

So that makes sense. Right. But I, I would even rate above that if you have a lights out, fully automated assembly line. Okay. And you need a part to fit within a subassembly if your part isn’t too spec and you don’t have the proper controls in place as a magnet manufacturer or as a manufacturer. Period.

To make sure that you don’t have any defects and that’s a big risk because if all of a sudden I deliver a batch that has a part that’s out of tolerance, then I’m putting that customer’s entire fully automated production line at risk. To downtime, I was just going to say, Peter, when you really think about it, you know, I was going to ask you what is the big [00:22:00] failure, but I can just imagine a, an automotive manufacturer or farm equipment manufacturer, having a row of semi trucks, ready to pick up the final product.

There can’t be anything worse than saying, well, we saved 10 cents on a magnet, and now we’ve got 300 cars that can’t be built today because we cheaped out on it, didn’t have consistency and quality, and there’s that part of it, but we also didn’t support a company who actually looked out for that ahead of time for us.

And was actually able to save us 20 cents because of carbon programs and all of the things that people don’t even think about when getting a quote spot on that spot on. And we’ve been very blessed in the sense that we’ve been able to greenfield a project in the 21st century and we’re ramping up capability and we’re ramping up a production capacity and we have really the opportunity to tack on to our sales pitch the ability for customers to participate in And how we build out process to make them feel [00:23:00] comfortable from a quality perspective.

And for those that think about becoming your customer, it’s just such a topic right now. We’re seeing it with our clientele. I was just at a mastermind this weekend where a manufacturer was saying, I’m trying to find more ways to be sustainable because it’s something that my competition is doing. It’s something that my clients are asking for.

Do you have this, especially if they’re millennial buyers. Much more millennial buyers are asking if you have some sustainability that they want to see that competitive edge and that you’re thinking about it. This is, this is critical. And then also if for those that are listening, those that are on the selling side, we had just one of the keynotes that I gave a couple months back was talking about the, the ROI of somebody that’s looking for an immediate ROI versus the sustainability ROI.

The it’s I mean, there are why they’re expecting to get 10 years from now, 15 years from now, if you put it into the sustainability bracket versus if you’re just talking about, you know, how [00:24:00] quick can I get an ROI as fast as fast? It changes the whole buying criteria when you start putting more eggs into that basket of sustainability.

So it’s fascinating that you’re saying if pricing is such a big. conversation, then they’re not my ideal client because we’re more about quality, right? We’re more about making sure that you don’t break down so that your ten million dollars isn’t sitting on a barge in the middle of the ocean and you have nothing to do, right?

That’s very true. And I mean, I’m even seeing it now in contracts, right? I mean, when I see contracts. I’m starting to see very specific clauses tied to sustainability reporting and how often that can be reported. So that they can capture that information and they usually want it for free and I never give it to them for free, but that’s the nature of the game.

Yeah. I mean, we just recently had a client where their whole world is around recycling in a different industry completely. They do it in trade show booths, they recycle trade show [00:25:00] booths and they report on that, but they only report to it in their biggest clients. And we thought. Why wouldn’t you report to it and your smaller clients too, because they should be celebrating that they’re saving landfills, two minutes left.

Where do people find you, Peter? Where do people find the company? Yeah. Okay. So website is no beyond. co spell that. N O V E O N dot C O, you can find me on LinkedIn, Peter F. Uny, message me. I’m pretty responsive. I’ll eventually respond. And then, of course, you can contact us through our website and somebody will get in touch with you if you’re interested in learning more.

That’s pretty much where you can find us. Well, I have to say that I, this is other, another, so I teach in, in our training programs about how there’s people in your network that are doing wonderful things that maybe you just haven’t contacted in a while. And I hadn’t talked to you in man, like, I don’t know, like a decade.

I saw your phone. I randomly reached out and found out that you [00:26:00] were in Austin when I was in Austin and we got to meet up and here we are now we’re celebrating, you know, Your wonderful achievements. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. And, and yours too, Amanda. I mean, there’s, there’s a lot that you’ve done over the last 10 years since we last spoke.

That’s been remarkable. And I’m very, very proud to have reconnected with you and to see the level of growth that you’ve been able to achieve with what you’re doing. And so it’s been an honor to be a part of it now and in a more formal way. And, and I’m happy that we’ve taken the effort to continue to stay in touch now.

It’s pretty, pretty great. It is great. Anything you want to add, Troy? No, congratulations. You’ve proved that, to me, a new concept is, rather than getting a lower price because of sacrificing on quality, maybe it’s because you’re able to offer a different pricing and value because you’re utilizing other programs and sustainability that governments are promoting and behind, and also with recycling, you’re having an impact on it.

At a micro and a macro level. And I think it’s notable that that should be part of [00:27:00] criteria that everyone should be looking at when making an offer of their product or service. So thank you, Peter. Thank you. Thank you, Troy. All right. Until the next CEO mastery show, bye bye everybody. Make sure to get your copy or copies at the ultimate sales machine.

com. There’s a lot of special bonuses that you can’t get going to Amazon. Make sure you check it out at ultimate sales machine. com.

TAKING ACTION:

• Want to know what’s keeping you from doubling your sales in the next 12 months? Take our quick QUIZ to get answers: Howtodoublesales.com
• If you’d like to have a profound breakthrough in your business, schedule your breakthrough call with a LIVE expert here: Chetholmes.com/Breakthrough
• Claim your FREE chapter 4 from the top 10 most recommended marketing and sales books of all time! Visit: Ultimatesalesmachine.com to find out how you Create 9X More Impact from every move you’re already making to win clients!

FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL: Instagram.com/UltimateSalesMachine Facebook.com/UltimateSalesMachine Twitter.com/ChetHolmes Linkedin.com/company/chetholmesinternational/

TRANSCRIPT:

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

Amanda: [00:00:00] I closed a 56 billion health insurance company from a random guy that posted on my Facebook. He posted a comment, I went into the DMs, I started saying, Hey, Who are you? It was interesting that you posted and it turned into a consulting engagement. 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 been. Assisted a quarter of a million businesses to generate billions of dollars working faster, better, smarter. So what did we cover last week? Recognizing sales superstars, designing the perfect ad, how to screen through the hay to find that special sauce and how to interview the superstar.

So I’m going to do a little bit of recapping and then we’re going to just dive right into our breakouts and just. Find out what’s going on for everybody. I love to [00:01:00] actually find out what’s going on in your world and answer any questions and just build more of our community here for the ultimate sales machine.

So then next week we’ll talk about Dream 100, but for now we are in hiring sales superstars. So again, I wonder if any of you had epiphanies around sales superstars. What are they? I wonder if you thought about who you are and how you show up every day because sales superstars are naturally relentless.

They’re clever. They’re entertaining. They’re persuasive. They’re compelling. They’re highly communicative. They, they’re a pleasure to deal with for clients, but very often a pain to manage. Within months, they’re outselling people who have been their best for years. They perform well even when put in a bad situation with poor tools, right?

They’re learning quickly. They’re quick to innovate and improve. They succeed no matter what. And there’s really this balance, right, of ego and empathy. [00:02:00] Empathy, Very often they’ll say, I’ve never met somebody I didn’t love. You know, they just find something to appreciate in every person. And then you also need to have that ego strength too, where they’re compassionate and they can relate and they want to become friends with everybody that they meet.

But then you have to have the ego that never gives up because you have to accept that there is, in sales, right, you are gonna get rejected. Eight out of the ten times, very often, so you should have that tough skin to be able to be okay with the rejection and then keep coming back. What a superstar is, is they just get more determined the more they fail.

I’m reading a book right now, Million Dollar Weekend, by Noah Kagan. He just recently hit the bestseller list for it. And he gave a great story about how his father used to sell Xerox printers. And he wouldn’t actually, he would go after, A week he tried to get a hundred nos. ’cause if he got a hundred nos, he knew we’d get three yeses and it made him determined and [00:03:00] lean in to get those failures.

So it was a TA teaching in rejoicing in the failures. ’cause you knew that so many nos would eventually lead to a Yes. So instead of being afraid or worried about the failure, you’re leaning into it ’cause you know that it leads to the path of least resistance. Troy, you want to cover these around sales superstar, right?

We’re just recapping here.

Troy: Yeah. I just start with the end goal in mind, defining, making sure that they are someone who is driven by goals and that those goals can align with the objectives of your team. Do you want to say a little bit more about that? Because it’s shocking how often people don’t do that.

Cause you’re so good at that. Yeah, I think people get afraid to find out what the temperature range is of a specific employee or salesperson. And if you know that the top person in your level can make 80, or a million, whatever that target is, finding out what temperature rating that person can actually see themselves doing to [00:04:00] that point.

And a lot of times people are finding out they have somebody who wants to go after 70, is the high, and yet they need someone to be at 300, 000. Because that’s going to mean the type of level of revenue that’s going to actually get to the company goals. So you, you have somebody who’s so short sighted that they can’t see that far.

You’re going to have a challenge with seeing that opportunity.

Amanda: And what I love from watching you work with teams is the way that we work. Alongside one another all day, every day. And yet we don’t even know the actual personal goals in our lives. So we’ve incorporated this much more into our processes here at Ultimate sales machine, because it’s shocking if that’s supposed to be a motivator for you, whatever your personal goals are, like, you know, I want to get a home, I want to buy a boat, I want to be financially free, I want to live in two locations, whatever that may be.

Nobody actually knows what your goals are, which you should, right? [00:05:00] Troy, you want to speak to that?

Troy: Yeah, Stacey, Deja and I went through that even where we were looking at people that, you know, some people are so short sighted that they wouldn’t and then the next person is higher. I did a, I did a, A mastermind with a company customer yesterday, and it was interesting because there happened to be exactly 10 people in the room and and 3 of those people only wanted to make a quarter of what the rest of the room did, and you could see some very different alignment then that was was set up that way and 2 of the people of those 10 were the ones that had crazy high numbers.

So you can see how really. You know, the 80 20 rule applied in the room and 20 percent really do want to make 80 percent of that, that revenue and then the others were, were trickled off. So it was a really interesting exercise, but I think having that, that goal piece so that people not only have a why, but they can actually get creative and take a look at your company and the opportunity and find out a way that they can actually present themselves to you, how they could see themselves making that money and also helping you achieve your goals that you’ve laid out too.

I think having the [00:06:00] goals, both sides. And when you’re hiring, somebody is being able to say to them, our company goal is this. How do you see yourself after studying us that you could help us get to that level?

Amanda: So maybe a good takeaway for everyone on the call too. Do you know what your personal goals are that align with what your professional goals are?

And then do you know that of your coworkers? And if you don’t. You should do an exercise around this because it makes such a huge difference to know your why. Right? You get there way faster if you have a very strong why. I think we talked about all of these as well. I just wanted to dive deep on the one that you are so wonderful at.

Troy: I just real quick is to also be a person who is always looking to be a learner and a leader at the same time. Because that’s somebody who’s going to nurture your team and also be someone who can guide them. And that’s going to be really good. Someone who is consultative and has a follow up process that they insist on, it’s going to be huge the whole way through making sure that they can illustrate that process to you in the sales [00:07:00] process.

Amanda: So when hiring, we want to look beyond the resume. We want to design a challenging ad and perfect the specific interview techniques. You want to talk a little bit about these four mistakes, Troy?

Troy: Yeah, I think when you’re looking at the people, you don’t want is just simply order takers. And again, back to that piece of being hungry for something and have a process in there.

Just reading through here, what we had done is looked at ads that most people do, and it’s just simply a job or a role. And it isn’t super inspiring or it doesn’t even attract the conversation that I’m trying to look for in what with what I’m teaching today. So if you have them going through a process that they can understand what your goal is and what the outcome is, and then you have them studying your company and the things that are going on, you can then start to put in goals and an onboarding process that keeps both them and you accountable for 30, 60, 90 days and craft the job ad to make it so that.

That ad actually becomes part of seeing how they would handle the sales process [00:08:00] on that example. If you guys remember, I showed you what a typical LinkedIn ad or indeed ad looks like. They’re pretty boring. And then, but if you have it so that you’re studying and going through a process where you can actually see this person perform and work is going to give you a lot of credibility.

So, you know, I just go back to Stacy because she’s a client of ours as well. You know, we even used a video ask series where we could actually have interactions and seeing how quickly people would react and how they would perform and how hungry they were at hunting us down to get those answers as well.

Amanda: Well, I think also to a novice eye, if you click a button and say, yes, indeed, please generate me an ad and it writes this and you think, wow, I’ve saved myself so much time. But we know how people are deciding where they want to work and so much of that post COVID is based around culture, right? Is based around the company that they’re working for.

More people are looking to align themselves with core values of a company. That’s why we had [00:09:00] the great resignation. All the studies kept coming back to, are you going to give me a hybrid workplace? And do you have a culture and values that are in alignment with what my personal are? Because I don’t want to work for a place that I don’t agree with anymore, which was a fascinating realization that came from COVID.

So this was an example, right? Where you want to talk about how it spoke more to the company.

Troy: Yeah. Cause we talked about like our equipment and their current client as well. And really telling them where the company’s going, what type of values are important to us. And then we’re on the hunt for a dedicated territory manager.

And it’s not just a sales role. We’re looking for someone who’d lead. And we’re talking about like someone who’s an enthusiast of agribusiness and someone who can take a look at territory management and managing people and being an entrepreneurial mindset. And then I think on the next slide is where I talked about then going through that research and creating a video ad.

or [00:10:00] presentation to tell us why you should even be the person hired. So on this particular one, I had them go through all of those different products and whatnot. And then if you see there in number three, create a video presentation and that presentation could even be on video. So we can see how you crafty you are and innovative.

And if you really hate video, set it up. So you’re doing a presentation, come in the boardroom and actually show us exactly a presentation of why we should hire you. And your passion and determination of building on a roadmap to sell these products that are going to get us to the goals we’re looking for.

Amanda: We heard it a lot from the group too, of, wow, it makes so much of a difference when you actually ask something of applicants before they start working for you, right? Well, Chad said it’s really making sure people are hungry for the job and not just going through the motions. And when you have, you know, this type of process, this is some of the things that can happen.

We got lots less applicants in that particular spot. Like normally hundreds, I think three to 400, we went down to a couple [00:11:00] dozen. And it was awesome because they were all, most of them were people that really were hungry. There were still a few people that, Just simply sent in a resume, but the quality was way better, saved us hundreds of hours of combing through it, and then we could really see where their weaknesses and strengths were, um, actually ended up hiring a salesperson from a dealership who wanted to find a more emotionally exciting place.

They actually took probably a pay cut. But they saw the other things that typically would cause them to be part of the great resignation stats, felt more important, more significant, more certainty and security, and their family felt that as well, won that person. Then also the way that the process worked, another company I saw and really liked the atmosphere, you know, like they had said, look in the newspaper, there’s so much negativity and things that are going on, or, you know, go online, they found this company to be very positive.

An action based with good values and they ended up actually creating a partnership to sell this company’s product because they like the values that they aligned with. [00:12:00] Amazing. How many of you have gotten more business from putting out an ad to find a new staff member? I mean that, that is something else, right?

To sell from your recruiting process. Pretty remarkable. Yeah. Did you want to say one more thing? No, I’m just kidding. I know I said last time, I’m just reiterating even a big company like Microsoft, they said their hiring process We were doing a little bit of work there and they is so bad that people have such a bad hiring onboarding experience that they’re definitely not customers after they’ve gone through that piece.

And I think it’s important to realize the way that you publish your company and the types of people is actually what’s going to attract more people to becoming a customer. And even if they don’t get hired with you, They’ll at least be interested in working or buying from you after because they see inside and outside how you really are.

So, as we want to spend more time in the breakout rooms, I’m not going to go deep into the relaxed probe attack. Just the [00:13:00] basic understanding, right? When you actually do the interview, you want to You want to make them feel comfortable so you see what they’re like in their natural habitat. And if they’re a superstar, they’ll want to build rapport with you because that’s just naturally what they should be doing as their job.

And then also in the interviewing process, then we probe and we really get to understanding who this person is rather than a resume. So we’re looking at what kind of accomplishments they’ve done. Where did they get their confidence from? I mean, dating back to their childhood, their first memories, how their best friend would describe them.

Then we get into, once we’ve started to develop and understand who they really are as a person and what has created them to be who they are today, then we get into the attack where we give them some rejection and just say, you know, I appreciate you and I could see how you’ve been successful other places, but we’re looking for only the best.

And I just don’t think you have what it takes to be [00:14:00] at the best at this particular company and see what they say as a response, right? If they can’t handle your rejection. They’re not going to be able to handle the rejection of all of your prospects that are continually going to reject them if they can’t sell themselves.

They won’t be able to sell what you offer. So this relaxed probe attack 3 pronged approach has. Helped find more sales superstars than really anything else I have heard it over the last decade from our clients over and over and over again So with that said I want to make sure that we get into our breakout rooms So typically what we do is we have three but today we’re down a member so there will be two breakout rooms There will be one breakout room One will be with me, and then two will be with Troy.

So, for those of you that are normally with Jerry, you can pop in with me. And then I think also we were going to have some others that were joining from Cottingham Butler. So you [00:15:00] can join in with Troy. And, uh, we will see you all in the breakout rooms then. And I think that was my favorite. Yeah. What we noticed with the, with the breakout rooms is that people start to feel more comfortable after they start seeing the same people and people start sharing more.

So at least on my side, I think our group. Opened up a little bit more than I’ve seen in last week, so I’m very happy about that. Brian, what were you saying? Can you finish your thought? Brian was just sharing that their outreach for Cunningham Butler has changed recently for getting new sales reps and it’s, and it’s been a lot more successful.

Brian: Yeah, I think, uh, I was, I was just saying our reach outs have been a little bit more direct, a little bit more to the point around what we’re looking for, what the actual upside of our businesses and being unapologetic, it is hard, but it’s rewarding. And I will say I think we’ve gotten one more feedback from it in the sense of candidates replying back.

These are all LinkedIn reachouts. And then the quality of candidates that actually get to the conversation piece are much higher [00:16:00] quality. So it’s like less time invested, but we’re getting better quality and more. So I think we’re seeing a lot.

Amanda: That’s so great. So for those of you that know that there’s some hard parts about the job to don’t hide them in the ad, actually highlight them.

Yes, it’s hard, but there’s a reward to it and talking about that reward. That’s great. Thank you, Brian. Troy, you were saying Tony showed up.

Troy: Tony did a great job today. I appreciate him. And I think we learned a lot about. You know, the types of questions and actions to helping learn how to build rapport. We talked about using the disc assessment ahead or of doing it as a suggestion I’d came up with, but it was a couple of people that already done that of their executive now, and then being able to study the people ahead and using groups of people to do various levels of interviews and then also having some social.

Mixtures of, you know, the, the, the one group had said, talked about having a beer moment with people to see how you interact during people of the same ages without the boss there [00:17:00] and whatnot. And being able to really take a look at how this person is going to either elevate or destroy the current culture of the group.

Tony, Stacy, or anybody, sorry, I’m just so used to those two guys, but if there’s anything I missed on what Reece said, please, I’m happy to add in there.

Amanda: I wanted to highlight Craig, because he had a great win this last week. Yeah, Craig, you want to tell everybody? Because, and then I think the follow up to that is critical.

Craig: So, it would have been three years ago this coming December, I got asked to speak on stage. so much. And so I spoke on effective hiring and so I used some of the Chet Holmes content and principles that I learned back in the mid 2000s. And I talked about effective hiring and to stop the nonsense of questioning.

And instead of doing a 5, step interview, let’s do a 3 or 2 step interview because it’s not a safer hire. The [00:18:00] longer you interview, you’re not any safer, right? And so I talked about stop doing. questions that, you know, give me three things that describe you. Tell me about yourself, which is the dumbest question on the planet to start an interview, to be quite frank with you.

And that’s just lazy managers and hiring directors that don’t want to review a resume, right? And start asking questions that is at the heart of the matter of how they do their sales or how they do their marketing or how they do their accounting or whatever the position is. So this week I had a video.

That I put on LinkedIn. And as of a few minutes ago, I looked and Amanda, I quoted it wrong. I was 101, 000 views on LinkedIn and I posted it on Monday. And that’s the first, very first time I’ve ever had any video go above basically 5, 000 views on LinkedIn. And I’m now getting, I’m now getting random C level executives and people [00:19:00] asking to connect with me.

And so I’ve been on a college tour this week with my daughter. And so I haven’t had time to really dig deep into the, to the posts. However, I have responded to every single post I’ve had. Um, 22 Amanda just checked a few minutes ago at 22 reposts and I had 129 comments. So on one of them,

Amanda: and for everyone to take away, I mean, congratulations, Craig.

That’s awesome. For everyone else to take away as well. If you get a post and people are replying, commenting, liking, you should treat those interactions as if they’re in your living room. I closed a $56 billion health insurance company from a random guy that posted on my Facebook. He posted a comment. I went into the dms.

I started saying, Hey. Who are you? It was interesting that you posted and it turned into a consulting engagement. So we all too often overlook the people that comment like or share [00:20:00] on posts, treat them as real human beings and go and see, is that an ideal prospect? And then if you know that they’re an ideal prospect, what are you doing to engage with them to try to get them to the next step?

Whether that’s getting on a phone call, how can you engage them with some kind of education to get them on that phone call? What do you need to do? So treating those online likes and things that feel like just ones and zeros as human beings is a critical takeaway that I got from Craig. That’s awesome.

Good job, Craig. Right? Two more minutes. Oh, before we go, right, we’re reading chapter six this next week, so that next week we’re covering Dream 100. I think I learned a lot just from our talks today and hearing everyone, so I thought it was really, really good reminders of the best practices and the ways to elevate your culture and your community that you’re working in to a new level.

Another thing that we had talked about in our group, too, was the idea of Dream 100s being something where [00:21:00] there’s Facebook groups that have your ideal prospects in them. So, maybe you can think about that as well over this next week. Where are their groups where your most ideal clients spend time online?

Because we’re going to talk more about it next week and the week after, and we’ll keep honing 100. Yeah, Tony? I just wanted to say what you said at the end. Is taking a very casual comment. And react to them as a human being. I’m just thinking how much business we all are leaving on the table by not doing that.

It’s in the billions. Oh, heavens. Yes. Oh, just that, that comment alone. What we would look as a nonchalant comment was worth 156 billion client. Holy cow. That’s all I got to say. We overlook them. We don’t even know. We do. We just think it’s nothing when it’s, you just gave us the ultimate potential. [00:22:00] We’re all, we’re all equal.

We got to treat each other as opportunities for long term relationships. Right. And we’re not looking for that. We’re looking for a sale, not a long term relationship. I think that’s what this all came boiled down to in that comment. Thank you. I don’t even know where it came from, Tony. I just pulled that out somewhere.

But that’s what it is. Every chance for a long term relationship is the opportunity for a gigantic sales opportunity or a relationship opportunity. You’re helping them and you’re, they’re helping you. It’s a mutual relationship. I love it. All right, everybody, we bow out of our wonderful dojo and we’ll see you next week.

Bye everyone. Bye. Thank you. What an awesome call. Make sure to get your copy or copies at theultimatesalesmachine. com. There’s a lot of special bonuses that you can’t get going to Amazon. So make sure you check it out at ultimate sales [00:23:00] machine.

 

TAKING ACTION:

• Want to know what’s keeping you from doubling your sales in the next 12 months? Take our quick QUIZ to get answers: Howtodoublesales.com
• If you’d like to have a profound breakthrough in your business, schedule your breakthrough call with a LIVE expert here: Chetholmes.com/Breakthrough
• Claim your FREE chapter 4 from the top 10 most recommended marketing and sales books of all time! Visit: Ultimatesalesmachine.com to find out how you Create 9X More Impact from every move you’re already making to win clients!

FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL: Instagram.com/UltimateSalesMachine Facebook.com/UltimateSalesMachine Twitter.com/ChetHolmes Linkedin.com/company/chetholmesinternational/

TRANSCRIPT:

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

[00:00:00]

Good day and welcome to your CEO Mastery conference call with your host, Chet Holmes. Hello, everybody. So again, the title of this conference is CEO Mastery and what I find that makes a difference between the companies that do really well in those that don’t is that CEO is committed to mastery at every level of your organization.

My personal companies that I run, there’s 12 of them. Now, again, as evolve and change, if you don’t evolve, then you devolve. They say if you’re not growing, you’re dying. But in my experience, with my own [00:01:00] companies, we have a weekly meeting with every single one of them, and the whole focus is improving some aspect of the business.

And then we have a meeting with all the. Department heads to look at synergies. And then there’s a couple of the divisions that work really well together, so now we’re merging a meeting with them. But the point is that there’s all this activity to work on improving the business, not just working in it.

Because we know you work in it. We know you’re working in it all the time, but you’ve got to stop and work on it. So congratulations to those of you who are joining us today because you’re here to work on your business. My question to you is, if you look at the bgm Business Growth Master series, and I ask you if I spot quizzed your salespeople today, would every one of them be able to name the seven steps to every sale?

Because that’s a minimum. That’s remember, the lowest level of learning is [00:02:00] memorization. So that’s where you start. Does every salesperson at work for, the seven steps to every sale? Could they tell me the six questions they would ask every prospect? Would they know how they create desire, build value what are the most common objections?

And what are the five different ways you have for overcoming the various objections? And then how do you close the sale? So like you’ve got that down, that’s mastery in your organization. Then the actual sales process in terms of what’s the first thing we do? What’s the second thing we do? What’s the third thing we do?

If the client says no, what’s the first thing we do? What’s the second thing we do? What’s the third thing we do? Each one of those levels. So in our companies, we are set up like that every single. Step that is taken by someone has been something that’s been expertly planned. That doesn’t mean you tell people what to do.

It could mean you ask them what to do. But then it becomes a policy, a [00:03:00] procedure, a set plan. And the people who are working in those areas every day are the most anxious to solve the problems and create a better company. So again most of you on this conference are not like, a one person army because this is a CEO Mastery conference, which means you’re at least a gold plus or platinum member in order to be even allowed on this conference, which means you probably have a pretty good size company.

So you made the commitment in your coaching to take your business to the next level. And my message to you is, what are you doing to achieve mastery? And at the very least, the place to start is with memorization. And of course that’s where I’m laying out the 10 follow up steps or the seven steps to every sale, or the six steps to time management.

And those are just three areas that if you had mastery in your organization, you’re gonna be better than any competitor you’re ever gonna come up against because they don’t have mastery in [00:04:00] their organizations. It’s a very rare thing that I see any company that’s really run well, at the level I’m talking about.

And again, remember that in addition to all the speaking that I do all over the world and in front of this week, it’s crazy. I have four speaking engagements and then next week, only two and, and some of these are in front of 2000 people. Some of these are in front of 600 people, and I always do q and a and interaction and.

When I get done, I have a two and a half hour standard speech that typically I will give. That’s an overview of the philosophies that, we teach in the bgm and at the end I’ll say to the audience, I say, is anybody in here have this kind of precision in their organization?

And not one hand will go up. And I’m talking whether I’m with small businesses or large businesses, and yet we have we as Chatham’s [00:05:00] International, we have that kind of mastery in our companies. Not all of them, because some of them are new, some of them are just developing, but in most of them it’s pretty carved in stone.

And the people are extremely well and expertly and regularly in training to improve their skill and of course to innovate. Yesterday feels like a week ago with how much I did yesterday. But yesterday I sat in on a training session where we were listening to recordings of the salespeople on the telephones with all the other salespeople listening and with their managers listening.

And I’m on there and I’m tuning the sales guy up, and he said something backwards of what we normally say, meaning that I know every word these guys are gonna say because we’ve tuned up every word. And then they know we’re gonna be listening to the conversation. But he said something backwards. When he was talking to the prospect, and this guy’s been with us a while, [00:06:00] so he knows his stuff pretty good.

He’s very good at what he does. And so he’s innovating and I don’t care if they innovate as long as it’s an improvement, but in some cases it’s not. And anyway, he innovate this one thing and he said it backwards and I liked it better. And so we changed that in all the scripts immediately. And, but that’s how well run your organization should be.

There should be scripts, and of course the best people are gonna get off those scripts. It depends on what you sell. Let’s see. We’ve got Joe Knop, he’s the fellow, I think I hot seated him a couple months ago and he was he sells to farmers and he’s out there selling to farmers and, and he has no leverage.

As I remember, Joe, if you’re listening I don’t think you had salespeople and I think I was encouraging you. You gotta get salespeople and you gotta get them out into the field and, you gotta get that kind of leverage. But, what’s the first thing they do? What’s the second thing they do?

What’s the third thing they do? What’s the fourth thing they do? Mark woods is another CEO on these conferences on a regular basis. And Mark, I am gonna try and tune up your [00:07:00] radio spot today, but mark has two store. And with the kind of training that we’ve done, I wonder, mark, and feel free to comment on this when I open up your line, how how well you’ve instilled mastery at the store level.

When someone walks in there or when someone calls in there, do you know exactly what your people are saying? Do you know the five questions they ask every single prospect? Do you then know what the process is that they take them through in creating desire and overcoming objections and, closing and, has all that mastery been instilled at every level in your company?

And then I’ve got a fellow on here named Andy, who owns a weightless weight loss clinic. And Andy, I will get to you too. And one of his competitors is undercutting his price, or all of his competitors are undercutting his prices by half. So I have to ask more questions before I can help you with that.

But the point is, Are you achieving mastery? Are you now masters of time [00:08:00] management? Because some of you’ve been in this program for six, seven months, a year. Are you a master of the seven steps every sale? Do you have your Dream 100 effort fully executing at the expert level on a daily basis?

Cuz those are the things that really make a difference. So I’m going to now start with some of the people who want to have questions answered. And again, I strongly encourage you, you can’t even buy my time, but if you could, it’s $5,000 an hour and I. Saying I’m great.

I’m just saying that, it’s supply and demand. As your time gets more and more precious and you have little or smaller amounts of it, you keep raising your prices and then you hit a ceiling at a certain point where you know that price levels off. And I started, I used to get $250 an hour and then you go to $500 an hour and people still keep paying and and right now I’m at $5,000 an hour, but I’m not even available.

You can’t, if you went [00:09:00] to my assistant and tried to buy an hour of my time, you’re gonna be out into mid-February. So I’m that crazy book solid. And And that just is maybe a testament to the fact that I have over the years with lots of practice and thousands of situations, gotten some experiences that enable me to help you maybe profoundly and sometimes in a very short period of time.

And sometimes I’ve just done 10 minutes with a company and just, check back a year later and the guy’s revolutionized his company based upon the 10 minutes of insights that you know, and it’s just like you and your business. You work in it all the time. So after a while you get to be quite the expert.

So if you were sitting where I’m sitting all day long, and all you did was help businesses grow, you know you’re gonna, even a blind squirrel’s gonna find a nut every now and then

 I’m gonna go over if there’s a Bruce Road  if you’re there, let’s hit one, one time. Here you go. Go ahead Bruce. There. Hey Bruce, how you doing buddy? Hey. [00:10:00] Hey, how good. How are you doing? I’m doing good. Good. Yeah. Quick question. I know we’re short on time here. I had a salesman that wasn’t doing his job and I let him go.

And now he’s out trying to sell the same thing that we’re selling and picking up my old accounts. Oh boy. Yeah. And he is probably underbidding you and so I’m trying to working on a defense for that. Working uh, there’s nothing like great follow up.

And the thing is you gotta have a reason that they would not do business with him and keep doing business with you, and I’ll give you a great one. But, again, I am not a lawyer. I am not giving you legal advice, and a lot of times too, by the way, even if you wouldn’t win, a lawyer can scare someone where they’d stop doing that.

So even if you wouldn’t win, you go to your lawyer and you say, look, I want to send this guy a letter and tell him he better not call even one of my accounts and that we will pursue to the fullest extent of the law for damages and anti-competitive, this and that. Even if you wouldn’t win, it doesn’t matter.

You understand? If he’s [00:11:00] just a salesman, he might get a letter from your lawyer and go, oh, and. And now he’ll go sell shoes at the mall or something and get outta your hair, right? Yep. Yep. I’m, and I’m working on that already. So it’s worth it just to threaten the crap out of him. We will proceed this to the fullest extent of the law, but in addition to that what I do is I have twice as much follow up as normal with your current clients.

And and then if you lose somebody to him you can say to them, have you asked him if he’s bonded and insured and licensed? Because, there is a case in New York State where somebody who bought something from somebody else, and I’m making up some stuff here, but we had a client that had a lawn care business, and stop me if you know this story.

And every year he, and he got to be really big, like most lawn care business, two guys in a truck. We all have lawn care people in California. They’re all solopreneurs, or it’s two guys and they come in the truck and but this guy has let’s say a thousand clients and 50 guys in trucks.

[00:12:00] He really built a heck of a business. But what happened is every year at the end of the year, a couple of those guys who are a little more ambitious would go to their clients and say, Hey, you’re paying my boss $50 a month. I’ll do this for 45. And hey, I’m the one doing it anyway, so do you want to pay less money and hire me?

And so the average person goes sure. Yeah, why wouldn’t I? Yeah, go ahead. Boom. . And so every year he’d lose a couple hundred clients like this. So we, the Empire Research Group, to their credit, they found a case where some guy had fallen on a lawn care guy had fallen on somebody’s lawn.

And the state of New York, this is a New York state, went after the owner of the property and made him pay the worker’s compensation on that guy because he didn’t have his own worker’s compensation insurance. So then all he did every year was go to anybody that would leave him and say you, I know you’re saving $5 a month or $10, or whatever, but have you seen this case where they made this guy pay, [00:13:00] $58,000 over two years for workers’ compensation for this guy?

Because, and as long as you’re inuring him and you have workers’ compensation insurance and you have all that stuff, then I think it’s fine to save $10 a month. But if you don’t, you might want to be with a license and bonded company. I don’t know how much of that can apply to you, but maybe some aspect of it where you’re a real business, you’re not just a salesman, you have customer service, you have support, you have, what can you say that this guy doesn’t have, and I wouldn’t bring attention to it first.

I try and stop him legally. And what I, but what I would do is have lots of follow up. I might even do a survey with clients, like just some reason to touch base. Sure. Hi, this is company? Company, yeah. And we’re calling you because, every couple of years we do a survey of offices like yours and we look for breakthroughs that can be valuable to you.

And in fact, if you just answer five questions for us, we’ll give you the results of the survey, which is a $25,000 survey, and [00:14:00] some of it will contain insights to help you save money and make your office run more effective. Can you answer five questions in five minutes? and most people will say yes. And when you call it a $25,000 survey, if you call every one of your clients and you put the time, the man hours and management and the database and all that go into that, you could easily say that in your time and manpower and, staff and this and that.

But a survey is a great way to get into conversations with all your clients. And if you ask questions that like what’s the biggest time saving trick in your company? Or what’s the biggest way that you have found to reduce costs in the struggling economy? And and you ask every person five questions and maybe one or two of them talk about in cartridges, how sophisticated are you and your knowledge and insight on what’s going on in the in cartridge business.

Most people are gonna say, not at. And that’s your opportunity. Maybe that’s your fifth question to say, okay, then you know, that’s why it is valuable because actually we’ve done this for you, we’ve done that for you, we’ve done these things for you, [00:15:00] you don’t even know it. But we’ve gone out, we’ve reduced your costs.

We make sure that we’re licensed and insured. We make sure that if there’s a problem, you get an answer within 24 hours, just so you know. But I’ll have the results of the survey soon and I’ll get them back to you and they’re gonna be really terrific. But if you have any questions or issues by the way, around your in Cartes or anything like that, I just want you to know my name is Joe and call me back and call me anytime.

But it’s a way for you to touch base, get deeper, maybe get some insights that will help you sell more, pitch yourself strategically right at the end, and maybe get some tips and, money saving devices so that when you go back to these guys, you can actually give them a report that helps them save money.

Yeah, great. Yeah, that’s an excellent idea. All right. Good luck with that one. Alright, thank you.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, I did go over today, which I normally don’t have the time, but I’m about to jump on an airplane, so I do have to get outta here. Thank you. And I can’t wait to speak to you all next month. Bye.

TAKING ACTION:

• Want to know what’s keeping you from doubling your sales in the next 12 months? Take our quick QUIZ to get answers: Howtodoublesales.com
• If you’d like to have a profound breakthrough in your business, schedule your breakthrough call with a LIVE expert here: Chetholmes.com/Breakthrough
• Claim your FREE chapter 4 from the top 10 most recommended marketing and sales books of all time! Visit: Ultimatesalesmachine.com to find out how you Create 9X More Impact from every move you’re already making to win clients!

FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL: Instagram.com/UltimateSalesMachine Facebook.com/UltimateSalesMachine Twitter.com/ChetHolmes Linkedin.com/company/chetholmesinternational/

TRANSCRIPT:

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

Who will bring joy relationship. Sometimes the answer isn’t to get everyone on your list. It’s to get someone who matters more on the list, becoming a master is not about doing 4,000 things. It’s about doing 12 things. 4,000 times the ultimate sales machine presents the CEO mastery show for entrepreneurs looking to grow faster, better, smarter.

If you would like to have a profound breakthrough in your business, talk to our team live by visiting Chet homes.com forward slash breakthrough. Good advices, contextual. Get your [email protected] forward slash breakthrough.

Good. It’s so good. This is what makes you so brilliant are these ideas that are just so out of the box. They’re just so big that that’s how you get these huge success stories. Hi, ideas are in the box. They’re getting, um,

sometimes you don’t have the budget to do that. So you might wonder shark. You put on this shark and you put a message in the shark. Have you ever gotten a shark in the mail? Never. They tend to be open. I’m going to choose to laugh and I’m going to choose to create joy. I’m going to choose to create wealth and everywhere I go, I’m going to celebrate that.

Whereas other people go to work, I go to play, but everybody Amanda Holmes here, CEO of check-ins international. And it is my honor and privilege to have Tom Schaff here. Tom shaft to me is one of the top three most brilliant strategists in my world. Whenever I am in a real bind, it is Tom that I call. And I’m so grateful that you took this interview, Tom, because people need to understand.

How to effectively deploy a sales strategy and you have a gift for innovation that I know very little have. I mean, I’m reading your bio here in one of them. It says that as a co-founder of solution people, you had half of business, week’s top 50 most innovative companies in the world as clients. I know that you had clients with us, uh, with my father and Tony, for brands like Intuit and Jiffy lube and us bank and Costco, and the list goes on and on.

And just to also say that you bring you everywhere you go, you also have this amazing amount of information about baseball, and you’ve bought the field of dreams and all of this wonderful things that are coming up because of the gift that you have with sales. I’m so grateful to have you here. Thank you.

Well, it’s great to be here before we start. I have to say some, um, you know, I knew your dad and. I would tell me, get together. He would show pictures of you and Jordan, like every single time, I’d say, look at how good looking they are. My kids are so good looking and look at how smart they are. And he would play a song that you wrote it say, isn’t she amazing?

And, um, as I watched, you know, for the last nine years or eight and a half, since you’re probably past, um, he would, he would say, look at my kids. I’m proud of them. And he would talk about all the great things you’re doing. And so, um, it’s great to be here. I’m proud of you and you are extremely gifted and you’ve done wonderful things.

Not only to continue your brand, but I think you bring, um, a purity in a wonderfulness that your father had. He wouldn’t always release. And, uh, it’s, it’s really wonderful to see you come into your own and leverage the family legacy, but not be confined to it. So. Ah, that’s amazing. You make me want to cry.

Okay. But today we’re talking about one crying in baseball.

Well, today we’re covering dream 100 and I’m so glad that you’re here because people get stuck on the very first step. Who is your dream? 100. What would be your advice to so many businesses that have realized, wow, this is so great. I can get a really big client and it’ll change my world and then I’ll get 28 more of them.

And then I’ll build out my hundred list right here and I’ll go after them. What, what is your advice to somebody that’s trying to build that list right now? Yeah. Um, and I don’t mean to like cut away from the family religion, but maybe it’s not dream 100, maybe the a hundred is the problem that it’s so burdensome.

Um, maybe. 20% of anything gives us 80% of the value and maybe it’s 20 people. And if we take that and say, 20% of 20 is 4% and 80% of 80 is 64% maybe for give a 64% of the value. Like maybe it’s who do I really want. So, you know, when I look at it, um, you know, one of your dads, if you look at his dream 100, I don’t know that after he got out of working for Charlie in the advertising business, that he did a lot of hundred personally, he had like a dream one treats, Jay Abraham, you know, then after that chase Tony Robbins for 17 years, he had pigheaded discipline and the, the, uh, Udacity and tenacity.

You know, whatever other words that can end with city, right? I have to get, uh, you know, Les brown to help me out with this. Um, but he had that kind of drive and he could follow up on people. The average person does not have that certainty. So, um, here’s what I advice. It might start off with who do you love?

Who do you love spending time with? Who are your people? Look at it instead of a dream 100, look at it as these are my tribe. These are the people that are my people. Like there are all these people on the world. I was put on the earth to serve these people. I call it humble swagger. And here it is, I can’t help everybody.

That’s humble. I can’t help everyone. But when it comes to these people, there’s nobody that can help these people like, like me. I can’t help everybody, but the people I can help. Moral obligation for me to get in front of him. It would be like stealing if they didn’t get me. So I will pay the price for my people.

And, um, so that’s a good place to start. Like who do you love? Who do you get out of bed? Who will you work day and night for? And think it’s a joy and a gift and an honor to serve. That might be a good, a pretty good place to stay. Maybe you’re not that a ball. Yeah. I love that prompt. I was just going to ask, do you have a live example of this?

Like here’s a client that I did this for or even yourself? Well, I’m doing it now. Um, so, well, I’ll give you an example. Um, for, since I stopped working with your dad, you know, um, your dad, uh, gets sick and, uh, 11, uh, about this time, um, and then passed away on August 12th, I think, uh, uh, I remember the dates for way 13th, August 12th.

They, they, it on your birthday’s August. Uh, everybody, third two. Um, so I remember all of the time, but, um, today is March 12th and on this state, the world ended, the world stopped this day, a year ago on March 11th. I had my whole 2020 sold out. I didn’t have a moment in my calendar. Everything was sold out, but in all my corporate contracts, I have 30 day outs, 30 day outs that if they’re not doing the work, I can leave because I don’t want to drag somebody.

It never occurred to me that the world would end and people would opt out because they had fear. And on March 12th, as I was in Indianapolis with my buddy, Tom CERSI, we started seeing people leave the hotels because the big 12 big 10 tournament was. And then other things were canceled. And then it was like a power out where everything in the world was shut down.

And the next week I started getting calls and private equity said, gotta keep our powder dry. We don’t know how it’s going. We’re going to take her 30 days. And our 30 days by March 20th, I realized that after April 20th, I would have no clients, zero revenue. And that I got to start over the senior in high school and another one in college.

I’m like, what am I going to do? And for me, I sat back and said, where’s the opportunity in the problem in the world. People are going to die are going to be fear about dying. I expected there would be significantly more market volatility, then there’s. Our market’s actually gone up, which is weird to me, but I mean, the world’s falling apart and stock market goes up, but didn’t make sense to me, but it did happen.

But I thought, you know what? There’s going to be volatility. And people are going to worry about dying and the rich aren’t going to get poor, but they are going to be more exposed. So I said, we’re going to go after the rich and, uh, on March 12th that afternoon, immediately, I said to Tom Searcy, I’m only going to train wealth advisors.

I’m only going to train insurance people. They’re number one. I said, that is all I’m going to do. I am going to pivot right now. And then I went after the top insurance advisors, I didn’t say who are people I needed to create cashflow because I didn’t have any. So rather than go after corporations, that there might be a sales side.

Yeah. I said, who are individuals? And then I made my list of top advisors and then I asked for referrals and then I went after them. And I rebuilt a practice from nothing to seven figures in 45 days. Um, I’m happy to say right now, I bet you like, for example, at mass mutual, I bet you, I have 25 of the top a hundred advisors today.

Um, and every day today I got one, a 30 year old did Chicago, Michael Schoolcraft. He sold a $432,000 insurance premium. He made more money yesterday. Then he hasn’t any year in his life. He’s the ninth person this year, it’s March and nine of those people have sold more this year than they ever have in a year.

I created a psychographic. What kind of people coachable, not satisfied have a reason to win some of it’s to avoid failure. Some of it’s not to be my parents, some of it’s to please my parents, some of it’s to be, you know, have options that might never parents had. One of them it’s to take care of my parents.

But so a lot of parents kind of issues, but like people that care, people that love people that are service people that are willing to be coached, people that I could tell the truth to and people that wanted to win. And so here’s the thing that, that the dream 100 can evolve. I started with let’s get top ones and get referred, bought, you know, small companies, your hundred doesn’t refer you up.

It refers you down. So start big, but start big on where you can make a difference. I’m I’m happy that if a person gives me a dollar, they get at least 10. Um, so, you know, and by the way, I made a list, I can’t do that for everyone. I’m not magic. I’m not that good. I’m good for one. Good for it. And I’m not for other people.

And there are plenty of people who I’m not right for, but the ones I’m right for, there’s going to be magic. So I spend my time there and if they won’t get the return, I’m out, I changed my demographic. I changed my second graphic. Now here’s the good news we’re coming out of it. The world’s evolving and I have people that are winning everywhere.

And now those individuals, it’s general agents with 600 agents that are calling me. It’s the presidents of companies. And now having worked and dominating the biggest company in the industry. Well, now my dream 100 is interesting because I have social proof. Um, I do some work with Bob Cialdini and Bob sheldini said that when people are like looking to make a decision, uh, they look to a.

And they look to social proof if you’re not sure. Just think about how you buy at Amazon. I want to buy Himalayan salt. What do I do? I don’t know which one sold the most, which has the most stars. What do I do? I look at? Who’s got the most, I read the ones on the top. Then I read the ones that have zero stars, one star, right?

I can live with that. Let’s go for this. And then I’m done. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about Himalayan pink, salt, um, right. When you have the top people, the rest of the people want to find out why they’re doing business with you, but it’s not about having the top. Cause if you go off to the top and you don’t have a gift for them, they have nothing to save for you.

You’ve got to underwrite your spots. Sometimes we make our list. Um, we’re a little desperate and it’s like, who is proximity? You know, it could be, we make our lists out of ego. What will make me look good? I did that when I was I’m 30 years old to start a business. I just said, let’s go after, uh, the top 30 companies, uh, that are innovative companies.

So we can say we have them. I did that out of like, mine need to be compelled by that. I don’t really care about that so much anymore, but I did them. Um, it could be, what are you passionate about? Um, I lost a job once I was advertising. Um, and, uh, we, we lost an account and I was the young man on the totem pole and I got, I got sacked.

I register makeup. This wasn’t dream 100, but it was the same, uh, uh, advisor, uh, in the employment space said make a list of a hundred companies that you believe in. So I went in my house and I had lots of books. I’d pick up a book and a page through it, you know, in search of excellence and passion for excellence, Tom Peters, I’d say I could sell that.

I could sell that. I pick up things. I make my list of a hundred companies. I print it out and it says jobs, you know, places comm shop would like to work page one through, I put it on a word processor that was like a typewriter back in the day. Uh, um, okay. So I had, I had 20 copies and I put it into my briefcase.

There was this thing called a briefcase back then we didn’t have computers or backpacks. Um, I’m walking around without a job, trying to go get a job. And I run into a guy that I, uh, Took all of his money in student government. I cut his budgets. When I was a freshman in college, I ran into him on the street in Minneapolis and he said, you know, I walked by him and he did the same thing.

Turn around. He goes, are you Tom shop? I said, are you Brian Wilson? I said, what are you doing? Spend a while? And it was kind of nice given, we didn’t have the greatest experience about seven or 10 years earlier. He says, what are you up to? I said, I’m looking for a job. What are you looking for? I handed him the list.

He looks at the list. Number seven on the list was creative learning international out of Nina, Wisconsin. He said, why do you want to work at creative learning? I said, oh, they have this little gizmo called the pocket innovator. He goes, you, you have one? I go, yeah. Why? And he goes, you’re the only one that bought one.

I go, why do you say that? Cause it’s going bank. I’m like what? So how do you know? He said he had my job in student government the year before he went to school at our school. I said, you’re kidding me. He goes, do you want to meet him? I say, yes. He goes, come to my house in two days for Thanksgiving dinner.

And you know what that on my list, I took over that company. That’s how I got into the creative space. And that guy turned out to be my best man. And in my wedding.

Yup. He’s been, um, no distance of things moves. I still talk to him every week. He spend less time together in the last, uh, maybe five years. But, um, we used to for 20 years inseparable, um, got me to leave my business. I was an advertising guy and I left to join him. Uh, That’s dream 100. It was what, so how did I come up with that?

What do I have a passion for? What would I sell? What the straight face, what companies would I’d like to have on my business card? It could be that simple. It could be what are companies? I have a son, two of them, but one’s a business kit 19. And he’s looking for internships. He’s like, dad, how do you get an internship?

I said, well, there’s a lot of ways to get an internship. Why don’t you start with things you’re interested in Hearthstone. Write that down, write a video game. Right? Like what are you passionate about? My oldest one when he was a kid, he’s an artist now, but, um, he wasn’t sure what he would do. Thought he might be a programmer and he loved taco bell.

He went to taco bell every day. The drive in the drive in at his college was. And, um, are though the restaurant was being reformed rather. So you could only go to the drive-thru. So they went through the, through walking, they said you have to have a car to go through the drive-through. They built a cardboard car.

They went to the drive-through every day in a cardboard car went. Beep beep I swear to God. I said, son send that story to the president of taco bell. You’ll have a job at the headquarters in Irvine, California. Like what are you passionate about? Um, uh, build a dreams. I have a vision for what the field of dreams in Iowa would be.

You know what I did? I said, I said, you know what? I want celebrity investors. So I said, well, who would care? I said, well, Jack Nicholson is the Lakers guy. Right? You and you don’t have to be under a rock to not know that the number one fan, but Blake was Jack Nicholson. Every team has one. So I said, here are the 30 baseball teams who are their top fans.

Then I went through the other room. I had the largest baseball bobblehead collection in the world. I said, what are all the celebrities that have been bubble heads that were given away at a stadium? And I said, okay, if you’re a bubble head and you’ve thrown out the first pitch or sang the national Anthem are considered the face of the franchise, you’re a baseball fan.

Then I checked out their net worth. I said, all people that had a bobblehead that sing the national Anthem or throw out the first pitch and have a net worth of at least $40 million for my people. I now have a dream 233. Those are my. Well, the average person doesn’t care about the field of dreams, a baseball fan with money it’s Jerusalem, you know, it’s sacred ground it’s holy ground.

So that’s what I, that’s how I come up with my lists. Like, what do you care about? What are you passionate about? What turns you on? What do you think will be an adventure? Um, behind me is a little fella, six and a half feet tall named Dwayne Johnson. It occurred to me that he’s literally the biggest star in the world right now.

And he’s also the best page. He made about 230 million and that’s before he started his new show on NBC young, uh, young rock. And he’s about to become the new Marvel character, black Adam. He will be even larger than life in the coming year. Um, he was on the show that I love called ballers. He was a sports agent in Miami and he wore the coolest.

Coolest suits in the world, every suit he’s got, every they’re just ridiculous colors. I saw there was an auction. So I bought all of the wardrobe for the show. I had 40 of Dwayne Johnson suits. This is his velvet tuxedo that he wore to the Emmys complete with his name inside of it. I have

21 sets of his shoes.

So you and I said, I said, this will be fun. Listen, we’ll be fun. I said, what are you going to do with all of that? I am going to carpet bomb, my dream people that are ballers. People that are innovative, that push the edge that are benevolent and good. You know what? I don’t think we’re ever going to see Mr.

Johnson win an academy award, but I’ve never seen a movie that I didn’t enjoy a piece. He’s an entertainer. And what I like about him is his ability to make fun of himself. At the end of the day, he’s a larger than life character who can take a shot at himself. It makes you feel good. He’s family friendly.

Um, you know, you as a dude, you’re admire him as a girl. You’re like, well, look at him. He’s just magnificent. It’s hard to hate the guy. And he’s good. He does good things. He has some big trouble in the world. So I said, you know, I like that. I like this guy who pushes it is always relentless. He’s number one, he physically, you know, pays the price to be physically who he is.

He’s smart, he’s charismatic. So everything they want. So, um, I decided you get attached to worse things. So I made my list of people who will give a darn ballers, the kind of my second draft. And I actually, uh, blessed Saturday, um, wrote a letter with, uh, Jay Abraham. Oh, okay. So Jay and I put together your dad’s former business partner and we crushed out a letter for them.

And I, instead of like these suits, I’m sending a hundred of those six and a half foot cardboard cut out. In six and a half foot boxes, a box is going to come to an executive and I’m going to put so much tape on it that it’ll take a crowbar to open it. There’ll be four people pulling this apart going because the journey is the thing.

It’s not the destination. It’s the journey. It’s the, what is in it. What’s in it. It’s Christmas. They open the thing up and when they get it open, it’ll be like, Hey, stowaway Johnson. Why is Dwayne Johnson here? I must know. One thing in his hand will be a letter. And in the letter it will be, I’m sending you this letter for a big reason.

I’ve sent you the biggest star in the world and the biggest box in the world to tell you the biggest idea in the world. If you’re 20, 20 sucked, it’s not because of COVID it’s because your ideas are. If you want bigger ideas, if you want to get in front of bigger people, you need bigger ideas. Now, if you don’t believe that you’re reading this letter and then it also be a picture of 50 soaps and all these shows and all the stuff, I’ll be like, I’m sending you a picture of the largest collection of Dwayne Johnson memorabilia from my personal collection from ballers, because it represents excellence of going the distance of paying the price and the rewards.

What happened when you refuse to be average? I’m just making this stuff up. I don’t remember what the letter is. This isn’t bad. Right? And then it’s like for the 50 next clients that are retained in order, you will be able to select from my class. His suit from the Amie, his suit from the Oscars, his suit from this, um, and we’ll ship it to you in a mannequin so that every time you look at it, it reminds you of who you could be.

If you would pay the price, my shoes, I’m going to send them a shoe. My dream, 100, I’m going to send out a shoe. I’m sending this shoe to get my foot in the door, but this is no ordinary shoe. First of all, it’s larger than life. And before you throw it out, realize it’s the biggest star in the world shoe.

Why would I do this? Same copy set up the meeting and I’ll give you the other shoe.

So good. This is what makes you so brilliant or these ideas that are just so out of the box. They’re just so big that that’s how you get these huge success stories, ideas, or in the box there.

Sometimes you don’t have the budget to do that. So you wonder shark, you put a shark and you put a message in the shark. Have you ever gotten a shark in the mail? Never. They tend to be open. You know what? Sometimes, sometimes I’m mailed people. I’m going to take out my, I got two garbages by show garbage and my real garbage.

You don’t need to see my real garbage, but this is a garbage. Yeah, you put stamps on this. You can mail this, just like this.

I didn’t know that return address that here, the address here comes a postcard. Wow. So I put all of this on it, right. I put my best CIJ. Then I write my letter. I put up arrow up. I tape it in a plastic sack inside. And the letters all scrunched up. It says, I have sent you bottles. I’ve sent you video emails.

I’ve called I’ve sent voicemail. And it all goes in the garbage. I thought I’d save you a step before I give up. There’s a reason I’m so persistent, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This is a smaller version of that. Oh, nice. Yeah. So here’s the thing. You can get in front of anyone. If you have a reason, I wouldn’t invest the time or the money.

Um, I got a new one. I, you know, I do well hunting. So I send somebody, the book went on hunting and then after that I send them a quote. So tick off from Ernest Hemingway. It says, Ernest Hemingway said, once you’ve hunted, man are men and liked it. You’ll never hunt anything, but our men again. So I wrote it once you’ve hunted whales and liked it.

You will never hunt anything about Wales. Again, I had it made into this nice piece of art. They get a book, they get a piece of art. Then they get an eight foot harpoon, a whale harpoon. And then the next mailing again is a two gallons of tartar sauce on the tartar sauce that has a sticker. And the sticker says I’ve redone the sticker over there.

Put their picture on the sticker. And then as this quote, optimism is going after Moby Dick in a rowboat and bring in the tartar sauce. Um, they don’t listen. What I’ve done is I made it, but there, see all my crap on my walls, their walls have my crap.

So when you’re a hoarder, you know, the psychology of hoarding at, so I just to be a dream 100 pounds. You must master the art of accumulation and terrorizing people with mail. My job, my job is to terrorize. I’ve had four male people that have quit because the amount of crap that they deliver and send out, they just say, I cannot work this route.

I must move on. I’ll just something easier. Like a sanitation worker. But I just, you know, what I get from you also is it’s not like, okay, I’m going to do a dream 100. So I’m going to put out a direct mail and I have to do this check and check these off the box. You just genuinely do what you enjoy and what you love and what just you think will be so freaking hilarious.

Right? That, that is something that I hope that every single person that watches this takes away from you is that it can be fun. How can you make it entertaining? How can you laugh at yourself? Because it’s so freaking funny. I just love that. You know, I heard somebody you’re right. I’ll tell you where it came from.

Um, two things as a child, my mom said you’re weird and wonderful, weird, and wonderful. And she encouraged our weird. Uh, as a 12 year old, I had a lot of options. I was weird. A lot of ways I played the accordion. Um, so, um, till sister Calavera died and then I got out of that soccer. Um, but, um, one thing I had 25,000 baseball cards as a kid.

And when I thought about it, somebody I read a book and it said, um, they know what made you weird when you were 12 and do that for a little bit. And I was a consultant, but I will tell you I was passionate shameless. I was not, I did not have my level of passion when I worked with your dad. It wasn’t your dad.

It was, I thought I was going to be a screenwriter. I had the same lament. And what attracted me to your father is as much as he was a great consultant, that’s not what he wanted to do. He wanted to make movies. He wanted to create art and he wrote a thousand songs and he pursued it and it just didn’t happen for him.

Um, despite his amazing talent. I was attracted to that because there was this part that said, if I wasn’t a chicken, I’d be in LA and I’d be making my ideas happen. Um, but I did not have this passion for baseball. So I said, I’m going to make my company major league sales. I’m going to buy baseball crap.

I’m going to sit with my arrows of my youth all day long. I’m going to make it so I can go to the world series every year, throw the first pitch at every game. I’m going to know every hall of Famer. I’m going to do it. You know why? Because I can. And then one day I went to the field of dreams and I remember coming out of the corner at the fields of dreams at a game where I came out, I paid a bunch of money to play.

And I was there with Reggie Jackson and Pete rose and all these great players from my childhood. And it was the greatest day ever. And I said to myself, why don’t I do this all the time? And the answer was because I didn’t have enough time and. And I decided I will do stuff that will create time and money.

So every day is a joy because not unlike your father, I had other friends that passed away. I said, you don’t know how long you have. So I’m going to go out squeal on the tires. Like every day I’m going to squeal tires and instead of endure, same old, same old hit my dream. 100 people that don’t give a rip.

And I don’t give a rip about, I am going to laugh on every call. I’m going to choose to laugh and I’m going to choose to create joy. I’m going to choose to create wealth and everywhere I go, I’m going to celebrate that. Whereas other people go to work, I go to play and all day, and part of this was, you know, I was a failed comic.

I also thought it was going to be a comic. I did stand up. They told me to sit down and that was my best joke. Um, Okay, thanks for the courtesy laugh. I appreciate that. Um, so it’s not getting any better. Um, but you know what I had, I found that I had a unique way of when I was calling, I could make people laugh.

Like when, when people would call, you know, they’d like baskets call and I’d be like, yes, tell him it’s one tough own break. They’d be like white, one tough own Bray. H O M B R E. And they said, are you serious? I’d be like, yes. And then they would giggle and they go, Hey, call for you. Who is it? One tough own Bray.

H O M. And then on the other side, there’d be some major executive gone. Okay. Tough on Bray. What the hell is this. And then I would say something and then they would laugh and they go, can you teach my people to do that? So I, and I made up new words, big swift kicker, troublemaker. I do anything that just supported my habit of like no attention span.

Like I needed to laugh all day. I’m very, not a mature person. Um, I am not, I’m a broken toy at a lot of levels. So somebody said, make your mess your message. Oh, wow. I’m a mess that you start like corporate America. They put me in the doghouse for that crap. Be a bad boy, kicked me in the nose. Right. I’d be like, I’m not in corporate dude.

I’m straight fighter. I will crush you corporation. So, you know what I found out, my dream 100 used to be. Go after corporate logos today, I go after David to crush corporate logos. I take the underdog who has it, who can, who has something of value and as a consciousness. And it’s not just their business it’s they want to do something else.

Um, my wife and I, we support building Wells in Africa. You know why when there’s no water in Africa, they don’t send boys to get the water. They send girls that girl doesn’t get to go to school. That girl gets raped and pillaged on the way to and from, and a child is lost. But when you have a well in your city, all the girls get to go to school.

Okay. They aren’t defiled. So, you know, I found out there are people that support those missions. They don’t care about their businesses, but when they make more money, they’re building Wells in Malawi, the poorest country in the world, um, when people die of kerosene burns, then, um, then, uh, um, aids like aids is the Africa is the aids continent, but Cara seen people get burnt.

There’s no lights. So they have care. Kerosene, a disproportion of their wealth goes to just so they can see at night. But the answer is solar light. A solar light means they don’t have to spend any money and they cost us nothing. Two weeks ago, a top producer in the world. Legend and Rick Scruggs in Virginia in the insurance business said, I’m going to tell you about Watts of light Watts of light.

It’s a mission. To bring solar power, light to the S the most impoverished countries in the world where they can see at night so they can study and they can have a life, uh, so that, um, they can protect themselves from, you know, bad people. And, uh, so they don’t have to spend money on kerosene. We decided we would start a foundation to drive.

It presents people, sounds, people like to have. So, you know, sometimes it’s, our people don’t really care what you sell. We care about who you are and what do you want to support? And if you want to support, um, indigenous peoples of other places that don’t have the opportunities, and you’re thankful that you were born on third base, you hit a triple in the United States.

Um, maybe there’s something more to than just having a bigger car or another house, maybe. So those are good. Now, how do we come up with your dream? 100. You got to start where you are. When I was 30, uh, I called on little people cause I was little. And then somebody said you have to call them decision maker.

So I said, I’m going to be a decision maker, meet with decision makers, for the purpose of making decisions. It was kind of a nice little pitch. I put decision-maker on my card and I, I give someone my card and they would laugh. You’re a decision maker and say, are you, and it’s kind of dorky, but you know, it got my beliefs to change.

And then one day I didn’t need that gimmick. But then I said, is that all there is, um, what if we were difference makers who called on difference makers for the purpose of making a difference? And so now my list a little evolved, you know, I’m now a little older than your dad was when he passed. Not a lot, but just like a year, but, um, you know, like.

If I’m blessed with 30 years, that’ll be great if I’m blessed with the day. But today my list is going to be people that are up to something and that’ll be my legacy. That’ll be my legacy. Um, so, um, that’s how you make your list can at work. You’ve got to find your list of people. Um, I was 22. I think the thing that I would like to drive home when it comes to dream, 100 is you can come up with your list of people you want, but that’s what you want.

The question is who will want you? My brother-in-law is a priest and he celebrated our wedding. He was the official, you know, he’s the pastor, the priest in the ceremony and the Catholic tradition. They give a homily a message in the middle of the ceremony. And he said there once was. Man looking for the perfect woman.

And when he found her, she unfortunately was looking for the perfect man. Um, sometimes we look for our perfect dream. 100, not understanding that the one that we think is perfect is looking for the perfect company and we all have our warts. The question is who’s perfect for you. Um, as I took my kids through the college X, you know, I have great kids and I love them and I wasn’t looking to get them in the best school.

I wanted them to be in the best school for them. I read a quote that said college is not a prize to be won. Colleges have fit to be made dream. 100 is not a prize to be. It’s a fit to be made to marriage, to being made. It’s not who do I want? It’s who can create, who can I create the most value who’s harmed the most because I’m not here.

And when I can get my list of who I can make the most difference for weirdly enough, they’ve been waiting for you to show up. And that tends to go exponentially now on that list of the hundred people that I can make the most difference. There are people that you can make more difference for. They gotta be on your first wave of 10 companies or so.

And like, why go after a hundred equally when there’s 10, that you can make more difference for? I’ll kind of bring this back as a summary. Now I’m 23 years old and selling life insurance. I’m broke. I’m living with three guys. We’ve used furniture from all of our parents. Our fridge has two beers, two pieces of molding pizza and a baking soda thing to make it.

And that stink. This is our place. They told us, go sell your friends and then your rubber debris be referred to their parents because doctors and captain of industry want to buy insurance from 23 year old drunk roommates of their children. Um, but I’m telling you it didn’t work. And I struggled. I must have the ugliest friends in the world because nobody got married till they were about 30.

And, um, but one friend did and, uh, they shortly later got, uh, they were very successful. Um, came from good stock, as they say, um, they quickly got pregnant with their first. And I got invited to a couple shower and then no one was, I called my sister, what is it? A couple of shower. They’re like, they’re going to have the baby.

And so they’re going to have a party for all their friends, bring a date, and then you got to bring them a gift for. So what do you get them to go, go to Dayton, Hudson, the department store in Minneapolis. Now target go to Dayton, Hudson. They have a computer it’s called the stork registry in it, all the list of all their crap.

That’s the best store in town. Dayton, Hudson. There they have money. There’ll be there. I go in, I put in, asked for my buddy’s last name, put in, see his name pops up. I print up the list. It has their name, their address, their phone number. People were stupid in 1986. Um, it had the day the baby would be born.

It had a list of everything they wanted. You know what occurred to me on duh? I don’t need to dream one. Huh? I need this box. I said, I went in and go, Hey, and I looked through and go, good Serber printed, good suburb. Printed, big, good, sir. Berg. I printed out all of the list cause you know what I found out, I didn’t know anybody that had a lot of money that was 25 or so that lived on the right side of town that was pregnant.

But that box had a mole. I printed out this pile. I looked till there was nobody and I ran for the door. Like I was the Heisman trophy. I’d call him up and I’d say, Hey, ring, ring, ring, ring her now I Amanda’s not in, Amanda’s not in issue. Oh yes. The sushi. Oh Amanda, uh, Tommy shop is my name for mayor. No. Um, can’t say that.

I know. Did we speak before? Uh, this’ll be a short call, a big picture. I’m an insurance guy. I’m not even really good at this. I can only help one kind of person. I typically help young families, right? Side of town, probably starting their careers, expecting a pretty good future and maybe contemplating, or just recently had kids.

If you’re not that you should hang up on me and you would say, oh, how funny you should say, I expecting I’m expecting a child. Yeah. Out of the town. What is that? And I’m like, you are not. And then you would talk and I’d say, well, listen, before I wasted a lot of your time. First of all, congratulations.

There’s two kinds of people, people that believe in churn, some people that don’t, which one are you? Hmm. I think insurance is even more important now that I’m having a family that’s too bad.

Well, then you’ve already taken care of this. No, I haven’t. Sorry. I haven’t. What do you mean? I thought you believed insurance. Yes. Now that you bring it up, I think that that would probably be pretty important. They didn’t usually give that easily. I usually have to go to this next one. Dumb question.

Something happens to your spouse today. You’re still having the kid, right? Cause you’re going to raise them without any coverage. And that’s when they would ask me in. And I did that three appointments a week. I got two of them and I made 9,000 a week in 1987. You know what? I got awards and I came on this stage and they go, okay.

So here’s what I do. I go to Dayton, Hudson. I print out these things, but I go, Hey, would you still have the baby? If your husband died, they’re like, no, no. And that’s why quit selling insurance. But here’s the point of the story. I didn’t know anything about selling. I found people that needed me worse than I needed them.

Find somebody that needs you. When you look at your dream, 100, think of the antecedent events that caused a need. Someone gets pregnant, they buy a different house. They buy a different car. We bought a van. My wife had a sports car. We bought furniture. We bought these things. We buy life insurance. There are antecedent events.

When somebody changes, when a president of a company changes, everything’s going to change. Don’t just look at raw numbers going. Here’s a hundred. That’s a list. If you’re going to do that call disease, no one ever gets to him. Okay. That was supposed to make you laugh. Okay. So start at the bottom. As everybody quits, they never get called, but what’s works better is to think.

I studied the Inuits and the Intuit, um, indigenous people of the north. They lived in sustained by whales. But if you wait to hunt whales and you wait to see one, there’s a whale, let’s go get mobi. It’s too late. By the time you navigate through chunks of, you know, thousand pound ice, like all over the place, the whale will be gone.

You have to know where the whale will be right there, 45 minutes before. But how do you now you don’t have GPS. You don’t have a satellite

They put their children to play on the coast, play by the beach. When birds gathered over the water, they knew there were krill in the water. The birds were over that spot because they were feeding behind a bunch of little fish or a bunch of big fish behind the big fish are seals and behind them are whales.

The answer is, look for the birds. You’ll get the whale in 45 minutes or some time when you’re looking at your dream. 100, the question you should ask is what are your birds? What’s the sign that somebody is going to buy? The thing that we sell, they just don’t know it yet. What’s the problem we solve. What happens before that, that creates that problem.

If I can get the list, if I can create analytics, if I can be alerted to people that are in transition that are in changes, everything will change. All of a sudden my head. I don’t have to chase them forever. My last message. And then probably, I don’t know anything else is, um, you get sent to who you sound like you could send to who you sound like.

If someone calls you out and speaks Chinese, you might know Chinese, but this buddy, I am going to be like, ah, I’ll be looking around somewhere. I’ll be like, I’ll call siblings gone. Do you know anybody at work just speaks Chinese because I don’t speak Chinese. I’ll be like, why is it from a to speak? You get sent to who you sound soundbite.

When you talk about your product or things related to your product, you get sent to people that buy your product and all they can do is buy it on price. They’re usually going to be commoditized. You’re not going to be the lowest price. You’ll get a chance to do a lot of work. And at the end of the day, they’ll even if you drop your price, they’ll just lower their existing vendors, price cause changes.

What I’ve learned about dream 100, does I needed to transform the language I needed to transform the language of what I talk about to the language they talked about. And I needed to move from the person that I used to call on to the person that doesn’t think they need to see me. I’ll give an example is I call on larger institutions as a guy who works on sales.

They want to send me to the sales leader who can’t buy pencils. They can’t do anything. They have to get permission for anything. I don’t want to call a sales VP, by the way, if you’re a sales VP, I don’t want you to call me never. Why you don’t have any money. Ideal was CEO’s. I don’t care what the size GM’s.

If you’re not the head, I’m not talking. I needed to rechange my message. It’s not what I have. It’s the problem you have. And the executive problems are risk mitigation, growth, sales, and profits, and specialization differentiation, blue ocean. So I’ll take a look and say, how does what we do mitigate their risks?

How does it give them growth? How does it give them difference that helps them acquire new customers? I can’t talk about what I have, or they’ll say, tell me about it. What makes you better different? What I want is to transfer the relationship to problems that this person went to a meeting today at. And then when I called they go, that’s funny.

I was just talking about that and now I get access. And when I get access, my last lesson in that in dream 100, if the deals are big and you know, I I’ve helped people close deals, uh, with frequency over a hundred million to a billion dollar. For some firms, there are a hundred million is three and 5 million for individuals.

Maybe it’s a $432,000 case like the kid yesterday, but he made $211,000. Um, these, these range individuals, the larger scale problems, salespeople do not win deals. They get access to decision-makers to disqualify the opportunity. Whenever there’s a lot of juice on the bone, whenever there’s meat on the bone, whenever there’s a lot of stuff, when there’s a lot of opportunity,

they’re not going to believe the salesperson. They kind of believe that you’re saying things because you’ll get a commission. A salesperson never makes claims. They say we solve these problems. Here’s what we can do. Here’s what we can’t do. Let’s see if, what, if you have a business case, I think we can help you, but you should never trust me.

I’m a sales person. Do you mind if we get your team of experts to meet with my team of experts and see if there’s a reason for us to play further, it takes a cast of characters. You were an artist, performing artists, singer beautiful. And by the way, great singer a guitar player, et cetera. But you would never, if you chose to go that way, you never made it on your own.

You need an agent and you need an accountant and you need production and you need backup musicians and other vocalists and sound mixers and a host. There’s a cast of thousands that it takes to make an artist. You need a costumer and an exercise person. Cause it’s your brand and all this stuff, right. We see the face in the voice.

But there’s a, like success has a thousand fathers. Um, that’s what it is. And sales of large deals for. So the companies here that are selling things that have zeros, the more zeros, the more people show up, the biggest mistake I’ve seen when people are hunting large deals in the dream, 100, our person comes, makes a list of a hundred calls them and it never occurs to them.

What are they going to do? If they get in front of them, what will they do if they hook their attention? When there’s one person that has the answers to everything, you look small and small as scary, big companies buy from small companies because they’re creative and they’re responsive. They don’t buy from them because they’re risky.

There isn’t redundancy. And if it doesn’t work, they’ll get blamed. When you’re hunting whales, you should in dream 100. And most people, they, when they say dream 100, they’re looking for bigger, not better. So if you’re looking for bigger, you ought to figure out who’s going to come with me. Um, another consultant that worked with your dad, good friend of mine was named gene McNaughton, Jean and I did a deal for a college football, uh, team member in Iowa.

They had a call center, they had 969 after your dad passed. We did some things together. Um, this company at 969 clients, I think was the number 13 of them did 91% of their business. They hadn’t won a deal of size in some year. I said, well, first of all, we’re not going to try to sell 9 69. I think you should get rid of 956 of your clients fall.

They are a mess. Yeah, that didn’t go well. Um, then I said, I said, I don’t think we should go after your top 13. And I don’t think we should go after anything new let’s figure out what we’re really good at and let’s sort it out and let’s go after four. Let’s just go after four of your 969 clients, we went after one and one created a hundred million dollar sale.

They were only as $67 million company. They had 969 clients that did 67. We went after one of their clients that we looked at, we thought through and figured out how we were going to win it. And it was a time and a third of their whole business they’d hire, I think 2000 employees, you put 2000 people to work.

Do you need a hundred? Maybe not. You need a hundred when you’re looking to get going and deduce something. When you have insight, maybe it’s less when you’re not desperate. Maybe it’s not who could pay me, but who will be a joy to work with who will bring joy relationship? Sometimes the answer isn’t to get everyone on your list, it’s to get someone who matters more on the.

Because once you have it, the bring you everyone else. So some Sue said, um, if there’s a thousand of them in 10 of you, you’re like, don’t fight them. Like, you know, against like, there’s the thousand of them. There’s 10 of you. But you’ve got to do is you’ve got to flank them. Number one. And then what you really do is you do guerrilla marketing.

You go after the leader and take up the leader. If you can take out the leader, the chickens will run when you cut them off from the head. Okay. And dream 100. Sometimes what you say is who’s the leader. Who’s the one that if we get them all the dominoes fall, rather than taking your acts and shopping at a hundred trees, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop hurting a hundred trees, maybe oughta trap shop at one tree a hundred times, but pick the right tree.

And when it falls, they all. These are my weird ideas that I’ve come up with since working with your dad, they are brilliant. I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. I don’t think I’ve had one interview where I’ve smiled as much as I have with this Puerto Rico that helps I’m only looking out at the ocean and not there yet.

No, I am so grateful that you were able to shed such wonderful light on the dream 100 with so many interesting stories and just mostly you just being you that’s, that’s the biggest takeaway for me and always been your guiding light for me to follow my own path. And it may be different from what’s been before, but it’s what brings us joy.

So thank you for not only showing us how to win a big deal, but also how to do it with joy. I think, you know, at the end of the day, The word sales. Person’s an interesting one. We often leave the person out of the sale. So I think at the, if we really look forward, the easy lock, the key to turn the lock is to put the person back into sales person, to not be anybody else to be you.

That’s what I say to you all the time. Don’t be your dad, the you, why? Because you’re never, you know, you went to USC, this is the best way to end. USC had a guy that taught there far before you enrolled. So name is Leo, but Scalia taught a course on love and Hannity. He would do this poem and I won’t have it exactly right, but it would be directional.

He said, I’m a plum. Not everybody loves plums. Some people like bananas. Sometimes I want to be a banana because everybody loves plums, but. Um, I think I said that wrong. Anyhow, everyone wants bananas. Everybody wants a banana, but I’m a plump, right? So you know what? I am a Bluhm. See when you’re a plum, not everyone gonna love you, but the ones that love plum will get you.

When you try to be a banana, you will always be a second rate banana. The problem with dream 100, you come up with a list and it never shows up that they are banana buyers. Find a list. People that are looking for you, that when you show up, you will be taller and smarter and wiser, and you will be all the more joyous.

Thank you, Tom chef. That was brilliant. Uh, and for people to find you, would it be major league sales.com? They can go that, but to be honest right now, uh, the best way is probably LinkedIn. So reach out on LinkedIn. Oh, perfect. You can see all the lies I told you about myself.

Thank you so much. The elevated dream 100 bootcamp. Visit the dream one hundred.com. That is the dream one zero zero.com. Subscribe for more videos, claim your free chapter four of the ultimate sales machine. This chapter helps you get nine times more impact from every move you make. Visit ultimate sales machine.com.

This has been the CEO mastery podcast brought to you by the ultimate sales machine.

TAKING ACTION:

• Want to know what’s keeping you from doubling your sales in the next 12 months? Take our quick QUIZ to get answers: Howtodoublesales.com
• If you’d like to have a profound breakthrough in your business, schedule your breakthrough call with a LIVE expert here: Chetholmes.com/Breakthrough
• Claim your FREE chapter 4 from the top 10 most recommended marketing and sales books of all time! Visit: Ultimatesalesmachine.com to find out how you Create 9X More Impact from every move you’re already making to win clients!

FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL: Instagram.com/UltimateSalesMachine Facebook.com/UltimateSalesMachine Twitter.com/ChetHolmes Linkedin.com/company/chetholmesinternational/

TRANSCRIPT:

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

[00:00:00] Amanda: Welcome to the CEO Mastery Show. I am your host, Amanda Holmes, co author of The Ultimate Sales Machine. This week our topic is, we’re going to talk a little bit about how Last year, we were able to increase our core story sales by 63. 5%. 

Becoming a master is not about doing 4, 000 things. It’s about doing 12 things 4, 000 times. The Ultimate Sales Machine presents the CEO Mastery Show for entrepreneurs looking to grow faster, better, smarter. If you would like to have a profound breakthrough in your business, talk to our team live by visiting Chet Holmes.

com forward slash breakthrough. Good advice is contextual. Get your answers at Chet Holmes. com forward slash breakthrough. 

[00:00:53] Amanda: I’m going to break down how that was possible and talk to you a little bit about how you can think [00:01:00] about this next year and what you can do to have some great growth in your business.

So Jack Ma said this quote, never ever compete on prices, instead compete on services and innovation. And I have to agree with Jack Ma, thank you so much, because that is exactly what we did and have been doing for the last several years, is we’ve really focused on how can we innovate based on what’s going on in the marketplace to get our clients the best.

Results physically possible. It’s the goal. So we have done some intense work as a team and it’s been a really collaborative effort. And the reason why this is so important is because the data shows that 95 of companies Never make it to a million in annual sales. 

And then of that, 0.8% make it to 5 million.

Of that, your chances improve from [00:02:00] 5 million to 10 million. It jumps to 1.5 make it from 5 million to 10 million. And then 0.004 make it to 100 million and beyond.

I have to say that I’m very lucky that over the last 11 years, I’ve had personal experience watching hundreds, thousands of companies go from 7 figures to 8, from 8 figures to 9. 

I haven’t been a part of any of the billion dollar ones yet, but I look forward to it. 

So why is it that so few get to those different points of revenue? Well, very often it’s because what got you to 5 million in revenue will not get you to 15 in revenue, right? It takes a different skill set at each level. 

What got you to 20 million Will not get you to 100 million.

Very often we see the CEO run companies where the CEO is the driving force in the marketing and sales process.

And [00:03:00] here they are, maybe they managed to get their way over the 10 million mark with just that CEO driving, maybe even to the 20 million dollar mark, but to get from 20 million to 80 million or 100 million, it cannot be that sole force of that CEO that just has the pig headed discipline and determination to put everybody on their back and make it go.

It has to be a part of the team. It has to be a team effort. But then the skill set to train and systematize and give the right tools to the team to be able to take that next step, all in the skill set, right? So there’s different skills at every level of the revenue growth.

Now, very often companies come to us because they’re saying I’ve got big goals. I’m at 20 million now. I want to get to 100 million or I’m at 6 million and I know this can be a 50 million company. They have big aspirations and they’ve read ultimate sales machine and they say, yes, the roadmap to get there is here.

I know it’s clear. It’s made [00:04:00] sense to me. I’ve read it. I just don’t know how that works in my business. Or they’re selling B2B, very often we get a lot of clients that are selling B2B, have a longer sales cycle, have a more complex sale, very often we get clients that are in the higher price market compared to their competition. And they’re trying to figure out how to sell more, even though they’re at a higher price point. 

That’s one of our specialties.

We see time and time again that companies just have a hard time articulating what actually sets them apart from the competition. It’s not an easy thing. Everybody has a different way of explaining it. There’s no cohesion amidst the group.

We also get clients very often that are Just about to do a rebrand, or they’re just about to put, they want to put out a new website. So they’re looking for how they want to position themselves. 

maybe they’re going to a new market that they’ve never reached before, or they’re launching a product or service from what they already have, and they need some [00:05:00] better understanding of how to go to market stronger.

So like I said before, they read Ultimate Sales Machine, they go, Okay, the roadmap is here, I get it, I just don’t know how it works for me. And where we saw the growth this last year was in the, Okay, I don’t have time to continue to watch your courses, I just need you to do it for me. Can you do it for me?

So that’s where we saw some great, record breaking growth this last year was in the done for you services. 

The way that we’ve delivered this has changed immensely, and let me explain to you the innovations that have happened since my father, Chet Holmes, started.

Chet started writing core stories in the 80s.

And if you think about a consumer, the average consumer saw anywhere between 500 to 1, 500 ads a day back in the 80s. Today, we now see an average of 4, 000 to 10, 000. 4, 000 ads a day. How many did you actually remember of those 4, 000 [00:06:00] to 10, 000? Very few. We are blocking out. We are, we are so inundated that we’re having to push out.

We hate ads more than ever before. It’s up to a shocking 63 percent from, it was like 30 percent just a few years ago. It’s insane how much we vehemently hate being marketed and sold to. It’s because there’s just too much of it, right? That’s just what ads are doing. That’s not even counting the 3. 8 billion people on social media now that have a voice that everybody is sharing their voice.

So you’re competing with all the consumer traffic and you’re also competing with all of the commercial traffic and every mom and pop shop can now put ads on Facebook.

My father called it the clutter factor. The clutter factor is to a height where it’s almost ad nauseam. People don’t want to be marketed to.

It also affects how they remember you and you piercing through that clutter factor. 

[00:07:00] So 20 years ago it would take seven different, um, impressions with your prospect for them to remember you. We’re seeing studies that are citing it takes over a hundred Impressions for your prospect to remember you. A hundred impressions.

That is absurd with the amount of information, right? They’re scrolling through their Facebook feed. They have to see it a hundred times before they go, Oh yeah, remember. Oh yeah. That’s catching my attention. I might actually take action on this. 

So you have to be reminded, you have to remind them over a hundred times. And yet when we look at the average sales rep, well, 90 percent of sales reps give up after three attempts. 90%? And we have to get to 100? What are we doing? It’s insane. So one of the things that we have recommended more and more, we’ve gotten more vigilant about with our clients, is we tell them when you market to everyone, you market to no one.

It is so hard to [00:08:00] do just the spray and pray model today. Let’s just go out and talk to everyone. And eventually the people that we need will come to us. The more that you can get very clear who your ideal buyer is, who is that better buyer, who are the ones you love to work with, who are the ones that are actually a good fit for what you sell for the product or service that you provide.

When we get more in alignment on who that is, then there are so many gifts that technology has given us, and the advent of the internet, to be able to hyper focus and target them. Then, when we build out the messaging for what that person, what’s keeping them up at night, we can speak to them as if they, we were in bed with them, trying to coax them down from their nightmare.

Right? We’re so clear on that messaging because there’s more data than ever before. There’s so much more information happening every single day that we [00:09:00] can pull from. So with the advent of the clutter factor getting so crazy, we have to hone in on who, then what are we saying is critical because there’s so much information out there.

We’ve become hyper tactical and remember. That a strategist will outperform the tactician every time. They will slaughter them, right? 

If you think about the, the basics of the buyer’s pyramid, right? My father’s famous buyer’s pyramid where 3 percent of the marketplace at any given time, you’re sending cold emails, you’re putting something online, you’re posting on social media, you’re cold calling.

3 percent are in that buying now category, 7 percent are open to it, but then 90 percent of them are not thinking about you. They’re 30 percent are not thinking about you. 30 percent think that they’re not interested in the last 30 percent are definitely not interested. So majority. of people are deciding, okay, I’m going to [00:10:00] talk about my product or service, and I’m going to do it on the 21 different marketing mediums that we have today, because there’s so many more than what there were just 15 years ago.

And I’ll just go after that 3 percent of the marketplace, because that’s what everyone else is competing for. But what we teach and what true strategists do is they educate the entire buyer’s pyramid to bring them from, I wasn’t thinking about it, but now I know and I’m going to buy, right, into the buying now category.

So then you’re not competing with all your competition if you’re speaking to the 90 percent that majority aren’t. That takes becoming a strategist. 

I’ll give you an example of this. We had a client that, uh, sold, it was a pharmaceutical company that had started a new product line in consumer goods, and they were selling an all natural cramp cream. It’s called Control. And, uh, They didn’t really know much about the [00:11:00] marketplace. They’d spend quite a lot of money, um, on ads, trying to pierce the marketplace and let people know about this new product that had come to, uh, market.

Then, They identified their, that box stores were the most important for them to go to because when people needed, when women needed help with their cramps, they weren’t ordering something on Amazon or online, they were actually just going to a Walmart or going to a CVS and picking up the product right then and there.

That was the best place for them. So, we did a Dream 100 with them. They identified that Walmart would be the great, a great place and they actually got an appointment to potentially be on the shelves of nationwide Walmart. So they hired us and said, we got to figure out what our stadium pitch is. We got to figure out what our messaging is because we don’t know what we should do in that meeting.

Um, and [00:12:00] we did all of this research. So instead of going to that meeting saying, hi, we are all about empowering women, we want to promote, we want. you to try this all natural cramp cream. It’s called control. Here are some of the ingredients. This is why we’re great, right? That’s one approach that’s a bit more tactical versus the strategic approach that we came up with through the core story.

So I’m going to read for you some data. 

So did you know that up to 40 percent of adult women suffer from PMS. It’s the number one reason women miss work, school, and activities, and it accounts for an average of 23. 2 days of suffering annually. That’s the equivalent of three weeks vacation ruined. Okay, what have I done there?

I have put together market data to make it so clear that this is a critical problem that a [00:13:00] huge percentage of their marketplace is having issue with that Walmart needs to think about. So what have I done? I’ve gone from I’m going to be a product pusher that’s just talking about crab cream to here’s a serious issue that your consumers are facing that you need to think about.

Then they went through an education on well then what do they do when they have this problem right and all of the ways that they go wrong with trying to find relief. And ultimately it leads them to still have so many issues. And then they educated about everything you need to think about when getting any kind of relief from cramps.

And every single one of those reset the buying criteria to explain why control was the best. And this was a very short presentation, some great market data to back up what they were saying. Not only. Did they get that product placement? So they went from four stores in [00:14:00] Walmart to 800 with one appointment.

But they also, because of their education, Walmart decided to kick off one of their competitions. One of their competitors kicked them off the shelves because of the education they gave on where people go wrong when they’re looking for solutions. That was a great example of changing the narrative.

Instead of feeling like I’m going to just push my product and I’m going to pitch why this product is the best, let me educate you about the problem that’s being faced. Let me tell you where people make mistakes and let me show you what you need to look for when purchasing a product like this one. It’s a strategic approach we call a core story.

So what is a core story? It blends story because that’s what grabs people’s attention and keeps them relevant. Then we add in market data because we’ve lost the trust as consumers. We’ve lost the trust in [00:15:00] society as a whole for the most part. So that market data blends the scientific logical side of the brain with the emotional side that wants to hear the story.

So between those two Grabs the attention of the prospects. You educate them through that market data and story. We have to reset the buying criteria during that process so that by the time you’re done, you are the only logical conclusion. And they know it. And you don’t even have to pitch. What a great course story would do is you don’t even have to pitch your services because through that education, they’ve come to the logical deduction that they need you.

Pretty magnificent. 

So it’s really about thinking strategically. And we’ve been doing this, right, for 30 years now. And seen successes in every kind of industry you could possibly imagine, which has been really wonderful to watch.

So what used to happen is our clients would buy a course story. We’d build this magnificent story of [00:16:00] market data and visuals that were very compelling and this deck that, you know, is like your bible for marketing and sales that you can use for the next decade and beyond. And they’d look at it, and some would engage with us for coaching ongoing to help them implement it, and others would just go on off by themselves.

And what we found is that people would get overwhelmed by all of the pieces and this plethora of information, and they wouldn’t know how to just take the bite sized pieces. So, very often, people would use a fraction of the potential of a core story because they didn’t have the step by step on how to implement.

So this is where we’ve had a critical and unbelievable turn of events. It actually started three years ago. Uh, I worked with Julianne Sim, uh, to create, once we finished the [00:17:00] new edition of the ultimate sales machine, then we created these boot camps. Cause I wanted to test my theories with, with a bunch of, a bunch of people in a room and I taught them how to write their own core stories.

So typically when somebody goes through a course. Only 3 percent of the people that buy a course actually finish them. And that’s just asking if you’re finishing it. That’s not asking, have you gotten results from it? So we were tracking, not just finish rate, we were tracking results. And I will tell you that 42 percent of them generated leads within the first 30 days and 30 percent generated sales within the first 30 days.

That is a 10% X response, right? That’s 10 X from what the industry standard is. Industry standard is have you completed it? 3 percent we’re seeing 30 percent closing deals. And very often we have clients that are in B2B, right? So their sales cycles a lot longer than just 30 days. So I would have, it would have been better to track it longer than 30 days, but.

So we realized that we had this [00:18:00] system for helping people take bite sized pieces of a very large concept, like becoming a strategist, and giving them actionable steps to start testing how to make that switch from tactician into strategist. Right?

A tactician is just purely focused on the task before them.

I have to write a Facebook post. I have to write an email. I have to do a sales call. I have to write a blog post. And they’re not, they’re thinking about just how do I pitch? How do I sell? How do I sell? How do I pitch? 

Versus a strategist thinks about the long term strategic objectives. 

Would you like to be considered number one in your marketplace?

Would you like to Uh, have every client refer you, become a raving fan and refer you lots of business everywhere they went. Would you like to, right, all of these strategic objectives, somebody that’s thinking about the long term creates a completely [00:19:00] different experience on the tactical level when they know that these strategies are in place.

So what we did was we took the bootcamp and we implemented it into our done for you core story process. So just because we built the core story and handed it to them didn’t mean that the clients would know how to implement it. So I actually said we need to increase our prices and we need to add in that it is mandatory to go through this training on how to use a core story, how to become strategic, how to use market data to make you the most relevant logical option, how to reset the buy in criteria, how to get in up to nine times more doors.

So just taking the bite sized pieces. So when I first said we’re going to increase our prices, I had one of our team, um, come back to me and said, no one will ever buy a core story at that price. Um, and they were pretty adamant [00:20:00] that my idea would never go anywhere. And I said, you know, okay, thank you. Well, we’ll see how it goes.

And I am proud to say that this last year for core story, we had 50 percent more clients than we had the year prior. at a higher price point. And, um, we had an increase of 63. 5 percent in our revenue. And the best part is that our clients are getting better results. How freaking awesome is that? They’re winning.

Even they’re winning. We’re winning this whole process has been such a great it’s it’s really the biggest success that I had in 2023 was seeing the success of our clients with this process. 

So what used to be a plethora of information we’d hand it off to a client and say, okay. Let’s say the end product turned out to be, uh, a [00:21:00] hundred slides of market data and story and analysis the market and how to reset your buying criteria and how to pitch and how to, you know, uh, walk them through a process for understanding the ROI of your system.

And I mean, there weren’t so many great things, but they just didn’t know how to take it one step at a time. 

we now have, okay, the writing team meets, pulls from you what they need to, they come back and deliver you something, then the implementation team comes and says, okay, what’s going on with your marketing right now?

What’s going on with your sales right now? What campaigns do you have that are running? Where, where are some clients in the pipeline? Okay. Let’s see from what was given from the writing team. Let’s see how we can implement it now. Then the writing team comes back and says, okay, here’s another piece. Then the implementation team comes and says, okay, let’s figure out where we can get more sales with this.

Okay. Where can we test it? Okay. Let’s get some feedback. How did that work? [00:22:00] So it went from taking. Two months to five months, depending on how long it takes to get feedback from our clients, right? Two to five months to build the story, then hand it off and say, Okay, now you figure out how to use your story to, Now within weeks, our clients are getting traction.

They’re shifting the way that they’re thinking about They’re speaking about their business. They’re getting more appointments. They’re getting their clients to, to, their prospects to understand them quicker with greater ease. They’re able to sell not based on price. There’s all these shifts that keep happening as we go through because the blend of, I took the implementation team and the writing team and we worked hand in hand in hand, which had never happened before in the organization.

Hence why we had to increase the price and hence why we’ve had better successes than we’ve had in the last, I’d say 10 years.[00:23:00] 

I can’t speak to before I was a part of the company, so I don’t, I don’t know, but our success rate with the amount of clients that are coming through, it’s just very exciting.

So what we’ve realized, we boiled it down to just four steps that very often. It’s what people are actually missing. It’s what majority of organizations are missing. It’s where your strategies are, are failing. It’s where you’re, you know, wasting money and resources. Uh, and that gap of how to actually grow with more simplicity.

Gets very clearly defined in this four part process that we have. So we have this just, it’s very simple, four steps. I mean, it’s so simple. People just laugh, but, but majority of organizations come back to us and say, yeah, I actually can’t answer your four, four part framework. It’s the four part framework for the ultimate sales machine.

Um, so if any of you are hearing this and going, wow, that sounds interesting. [00:24:00] I wonder how this applies to my business. Well, actually. hop on a call with you and go through that four part framework and find out in under 20 minutes what’s going on. Are there some holes in your process that you’re wasting money on that could be improved?

We can make some suggestions of how you could actually better systematize your growth and your strategic objectives to reach greater heights faster. It’s what we do all day, every day. And we’d love to be a resource for you. So if that’s something that you’d like a little help on, it’s compliments of the house, all you have to do is go to HowToDoubleSales.

com HowToDoubleSales. com And we’ll help you with that four part framework. 

So, in total, what am I trying to say here? Yes, you can grow your sales. Yes, you can do it. With still increasing pricing. Yes, as long [00:25:00] as you are coming from that place of I am here to serve my clientele. And there is a balance there, where you know. When I think about pricing, I think about it as a karmic exchange.

What you give is what you get. So when people pay more, they pay more attention. And it just so happened that we have this good place of balance, where we’re giving a better experience that looks at all of the pieces. That a client needs to help support them better than just one piece of the puzzle.

We’ve seen great results from that. 

So, hope this inspires you to think about your marketing and sales process and how you plan to grow in 2024. It’s an exciting year with a lot of opportunity ahead. So you have heard from the ultimate sales machine once again, stay tuned for our next episode. And again, you can visit howtodoublesales.com to find out your four part framework to create [00:26:00] your ultimate sales machine. 

TAKING ACTION:

• Want to know what’s keeping you from doubling your sales in the next 12 months? Take our quick QUIZ to get answers: Howtodoublesales.com
• If you’d like to have a profound breakthrough in your business, schedule your breakthrough call with a LIVE expert here: Chetholmes.com/Breakthrough
• Claim your FREE chapter 4 from the top 10 most recommended marketing and sales books of all time! Visit: Ultimatesalesmachine.com to find out how you Create 9X More Impact from every move you’re already making to win clients!

FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL: Instagram.com/UltimateSalesMachine Facebook.com/UltimateSalesMachine Twitter.com/ChetHolmes Linkedin.com/company/chetholmesinternational/

TRANSCRIPT:

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

[00:00:00] Welcome, everybody, to the CEO Mastery Show. This week, I have a very entertaining guest. I was having a conversation with Justin T. W. Hall. And he said that he hyped this so big that he would be the best episode ever that I thought, Okay, let’s have you on here.

I’m curious what you have to say because very often, over and over and over again, we hear this saying of, I’m not a salesperson, or I don’t feel good about being a salesperson, or even my father, Chet Holmes, the ultimate sales machine, hated. Being a salesperson, you’ll hear a little bit about that in a minute, but I am curious, Justin, and just to give them a little bit of backstory, do you know anything about sales?

Are you qualified to talk about this topic?

Becoming a master is not about doing 4, 000 things. It’s about doing 12 things 4, 000 times. [00:01:00] The Ultimate Sales Machine presents the CEO Mastery Show for entrepreneurs looking to grow faster, better, smarter. If you would like to have a profound breakthrough in your business, talk to our team live by visiting Chet Holmes.

com forward slash breakthrough. Good advice is contextual. Get your answers at Chet Holmes. com forward slash breakthrough.

I’ve taught a couple people to sell a little bit of, a little bit of stuff, over the years. I’ve run tens of thousands of hours of sales training for people. It’s a really. Common belief that people have, right?

Selling is bad or this negative connotation with sales. And I actually fundamentally believe that it comes from a misunderstanding of what sales fundamentally is. It’s essentially, if you want to boil it down to its most basic essence, sales is simply decision making, right? But it’s decision making in an assisted manner, almost like you have a guide who’s there to.

To bring forth information to assist in that decision making [00:02:00] and when you think about decision making, we all make decisions all the time, right? So we’re really all selling ourselves all the time on everything that we do internally, and we just don’t like the feeling of having to do that to somebody else.

But when you boil it back down to what it really, really means, the misunderstanding that people have is that you can actually sell Anything because there’s no such thing as selling. You can’t actually sell. The only thing that you can actually do is compel people to buy from you. And so when you flip the script in that way, you’re not actually doing anything to someone, but you’re actually empowering people, right?

You’re equipping them. You’re enabling these individuals to make the best decision for themselves to make the right decision for themselves. Because I think fundamentally, when you think about sales in a negative aspect, it comes from that kind of sleazy. Pushy or like selling something that somebody shouldn’t be buying anyways, kind of attitude.

And that’s where like a lot of negativity comes from. But when you break it all down and you say, Hey, how can I empower somebody to make the right [00:03:00] decision for themselves? How can I give them the information that they need? How can I help them feel the things that they need to feel to be compelled to make the decision and move forward in the correct direction.

That starts with a. Understanding that no is a perfectly acceptable outcome, right? That’s a real easy way to take the pressure off of yourself in any selling situation. But ultimately just remember, you are there to empower people to buy and you can’t actually sell anything to anyone because They’re the ones who have to make the decision to say yes, right?

If you are actually forcing somebody to say yes, you’re probably employing some illegal tactics that I definitely don’t recommend anybody’s listening to this episode used to compel somebody to make a decision that they don’t want to. But if you’re fundamentally sitting there thinking, I don’t like selling, do you like helping people make the right decision?

Do you like helping people make decisions that benefit them? Because when you look at the outcome and you say, Hey, if this is the right fit for the right person at the right time for the right price and the right payment plan, then of course it’s going to [00:04:00] empower and it’s going to build their life, right?

It’s going to. It’s going to better where they are, what they’re doing and how they’re living in some way, shape, form or fashion that makes them able to show up as a better version of themselves as a better version of their business or their company. And it boils down to so much more than just like asking for dollars, because when you think about decision making.

Everything in business is decision making. So if you’re trying to get an employee to buy into a new program or you’re trying to get a group of people to buy in on a new team where you’re trying to get investors to pull the trigger and write a check and invest in your business. If you’re trying to get customers to come to you, all of that, it starts with understanding and empathizing with the person on the other side and saying, How can I empower this person to understand how to make the right decision so that they can do so?

Excitedly, proactively and really in a way that leaves no buyer’s remorse. It leaves no bitter taste. It leaves people feeling great about the decision they’ve made. And most importantly, [00:05:00] the customer, the salesperson and the company or the product of the service or whoever is going to receive that they all benefit, right?

That’s how you can take all the negativity out of the equation and that’s how you can start to empower yourself to have a healthy relationship with selling and decision making and getting people to buy into the decision that you want them to make. Right? There’s nothing wrong with being able to influence that.

So I’m interested when you identify, do you identify as a salesperson? 

I identify as the greatest salesperson who’s probably ever lived. I can sell anything to anyone for more money than what you’re charging and do it faster and easier and with less resistance and greater buy in. And they’re probably going to be fired up to go tell their friends about how they just paid so much for what they just bought and then recommend a bunch of their Okay, give me an example of this.

It’s like, how is it so different? 

Let me break down the question and just make sure you want an example of like selling something for more, faster and [00:06:00] et cetera.

Okay. Yeah. Versus, you know, someone comes, Hey, I want to sell you knives. They say, no, I’m not interested and they move on versus what made you different that you are the greatest salesperson ever. Hey, I’m sure, I’m sure plenty of people would like the challenge for that title their own world.

It’s actually very few that will actually say that and hone in. I’ve heard you say it a couple of times now. So I’m just curious to, I need an anecdotal example of how it proves that you do this differently. Okay. Okay, cool. So I actually start by going for no immediately. I am trying to, yeah, and some people who have watched me sell, they’re like, this is so counterintuitive because the first thing I usually do is I throw a gigantic price and I’m like, Hey, if this is a scare for you, like we shouldn’t even be talking, I’ll let them know how the payment plans work.

And it’s like, and if that’s not going to work for you, then like we shouldn’t even be talking. And then it’s like, Hey, does this shoe fit? And if it does, like, all right, awesome. Do you want [00:07:00] to, Go ahead and check out and get them out of the store today. That’s a medical metaphorical example. 

If you want a real life like anecdote, I have a number of people that I know in the copy world.

And I do this with a lot of services where I’ll have a friend or someone I know, and they’re like, man, I’m struggling to get some work. And I’m like, cool. Tell me about what you do. What do you charge? And, I’ll use an example of somebody who has written copy for a lot of really heavy hitters out there.

And they were like, oh, this is what I charged. So I find somebody else out there and I’m like, Hey, Are you looking for this super simple solution to your problem called a killer copywriter, right? Okay, here’s what I want to charge because I know what I want to make on middling this service. And I basically have a three second conversation where it’s like, Hey, is this what you need?

Is this the right thing? Are you willing to pay this much? Okay, if I can get you the right solution for all of that. Are you ready to rock and roll? Okay, cool. I actually have the right person in my back pocket. Let’s get you connected. And then I just middle and make the margin and tend to make thousands of dollars or sometimes tens of thousands of dollars to do literally none of [00:08:00] the fulfillment and have a conversation that the copywriter themselves would have fumbled and probably not sold the job because they get, to bog down in the details of what the work is instead of connecting fundamentally on what the other person actually needs, right?

What are they really looking to buy? They’re not looking to buy copywriting. They’re looking to buy the new sales mechanism for their business. That’s going to put the lift in when they actually turn on the crank and run the ad dollars through the machine to get the ROI out the other side.

When you boil it down to understanding what decision are they fundamentally trying to make, right? You’re able to get to the point a lot faster. And you can also extrapolate a higher level of value because you’re a, you’re respecting people’s time, you’re moving quickly and B, you can say, Hey, What is this worth to you?

You can have a frank and candid conversation and say, okay, cool. So if I can provide this solution, it’s worth that much. Then you basically have carte blanche to come in anywhere under that. And it’s going to be a great deal for them. And so you empower yourself to move very quickly to the [00:09:00] highest

profitability on your sale for the best service. That’s the best fit. And then again, it all starts from being willing to say, Hey, no, this isn’t gonna work. It’s not a fit. I’m not gonna sell you the wrong thing at any time for any reason whatsoever, because you have to be fundamentally sound in your belief and your conviction in that manner.

Another great example. If you want to go back to the knife days

there was fixed pricing, so you couldn’t necessarily sell The same thing for more money, right? That would kind of break company rule, but you could do things like say, Hey, this is the set that everyone gets.

And by the way, one of the most popular upgrades is to swap out these basic versions for these more expensive pieces. Did you want to just go ahead and do that? Like everybody else. So there’s ways to find add ons and additions, right? Like things that people used to give away for free.

I just kind of. Bundle them all together and just sell them as a package and then throw in something else for free.

Higher revenue, better commission, higher sales. 

At the end of the day, I think that the biggest thing that people misunderstand when it comes to, again, quickly getting to an exchange of the right yes, [00:10:00] it’s understanding where is the value and how can you leverage that as much as possible for both parties so that both sides feel like the deal is a serious win for them.

And genuinely, the person who’s spending the money, who’s making the commitment with the yes, is actually getting a great deal that they’re excited about and that they’re going to feel great about in the long run, because if you’re selling for now at the expense of tomorrow or later on down the line, you’re really just doing it.

Damage to your brand and your business and your bottom line in the long run. And you’re making future yeses that much harder to get from anyone else in the marketplace. And so it’s very important that you become fundamentally aligned with understanding what the right yes is in your business. And that’s the right yes from the right person at the right time for the right reasons at the right price for the right payment plan.

That’s somebody who’s always going to be excited to do business with you. when you stop trying to sell quote unquote to everybody and like force people to do things and you focus on how do I get the right people to self identify as ready to [00:11:00] buy right now, then you’re actually going to set people up to be begging to buy from you, which is the process that I teach people that I work with, but it’s fundamentally

empowering again, those people to make the right decision on the right. Yes. For the right reason. So that they’re happy. Now they’re happy tomorrow. They’re happy down the line and they’re always happy to refer people and bring you repeat business themselves because that’s fundamentally where the big yeses happen is when you get the right yes, that paves the path for you in the marketplace for future yeses.

Thank you so much, Justin. I think the biggest win that I got from what you said is that you’re leaning in looking for the no. Because once you get your first no, then you can move right past it. That I find to be so fascinating. That was my biggest takeaway from what you just said, actually.

Well, and you know, the other thing about that is why would I waste anyone’s time if it’s definitely going to be a no because of some fundamental thing like price or payment plan or something else that’s just like [00:12:00] not going to be a fit because when you have to bend over backwards to make the deal work, it’s not a deal for anybody anyways, because those are your worst customers.

They’re the biggest naggers. They’re the people who are going to be your time wasters, your energy vampires, your customer service nightmares, your people asking for special treatment. And. So yeah, I actually fundamentally try and disqualify and go for the no as fast as possible so that I can get to that high quality, right?

Yes. ASAP. And with that, we’re going to go to the next segment where I show a example of this when I was in Milan, Italy. Thank you so much, Justin. Very welcome. Pleasure. All mine.

I am in Switzerland right now, and behind me are the Swiss Alps. I just went to the top of Europe, Jungfrau, which was a miraculous experience. 

I wanted to talk today about not feeling like a salesperson.

I wanted to touch to this because so often I hear people say, Well, I don’t really consider [00:13:00] myself a salesperson, or I never knew sales until I read the Ultimate Sales Machine.

I find it funny because Chet Holmes, the author, original author of Ultimate Sales Machine, hated being called a salesperson.

That’s why he created superior access vehicles like a Dream 100 campaign, like a core story where you’re leading with education and market data to set yourself up as number one expert in your field rather than just someone that’s pushy because 10 years ago, the average prospect thought that 63 of sales reps were pushy.

Today it’s now at 97 feel that sales reps are pushy and it’s because of the advent of the internet and the apocalypse that is Amazon. So people can buy online without a sales rep. So you need to be a true expert there to assist. 

And I have a great example of this. 

It was just in Milan two days ago in Italy.

And you ever had that experience where you walk into a [00:14:00] department store and you see the people that are working in the department store and they look at you like in terror because they know you don’t want them to be there and they don’t want to be there bothering you. So they may come a little bit closer and say, is there anything you need?

And they’re really just saying, Hey, I really don’t want to bother you. And they have the whole energy of I’m here to bother you. And because of that, you put up the guard of, Nope, thanks, or Nope. I don’t want to talk to you. I had an experience that renewed my faith in retail sales two years ago, where a woman who.

would not identify as a sales rep. She was going to college for economics and finance. And yet, this woman, I’m telling you, I came in there and she treated me like family. She was such an expert, It was such a small boutique and yet I walked away buying more than I ever have in one transaction at a retail store, just to say.

But so I walk up and I pointed out, I would [00:15:00] love to try this on. She went absolutely right away. She got me that and she said, you know what? You know what would match that so well? Let’s get you out of what you have and let’s put you into this dress. Here, I’ll give you this dress.

She brings it to me. She insists that she has to button every button and zipper every zipper. I literally did not have to touch a thing. Even at one point, she then brought me another jacket and I went to go button and she went, please. It is my duty and service to be here to button your buttons and I looked at her and I went I have never Had anyone more helpful than you in a clothing experience and she was in her early 20s but she Walked the walk.

She was truly there to serve me and because of that I had a delightful experience I wanted to buy a pair of boots. I walked away with a pair of boots two dresses Two jackets, a hat, a belt. It was a [00:16:00] $1,300 experience instead of just a $200 experience. 

 What am I trying to say here? One, stop acting like you’re annoying people.

Actually think about how can I be of true value because when you are of true value and they can feel that and they can feel the joy because you are coming from that place of service, they will be grateful, they will buy more. 

So what do you have to do to be in that space where you feel that you’re giving and you’re there of service and you’re joyful at that exchange because you know you’re making their life better?

What do you have to do? for my father He wanted to do things funny, so on his cold calling, he would, make, random, accents. He would pretend to be Scottish, or Welsh, or throughout the day. He would make random cold calls with different accents. 

for me, I love to go on social, and I love to engage with people in their lives.

I love to comment on their family photos. I love to see what’s going on with them. 

For this woman, it was [00:17:00] buttoning every button and trying to find as many cute outfits that fit my body type as possible. And she truly was an expert at it, you know? I’d say, well, is this color, do you think this color would work with it? She said, no. But this one will, and then she’d pull out another set for me to try on. How can we come with the excitement of service? How can we set ourselves apart? 

My father would send little trinkets, right? Little Funny things, sending a shoe, I’m just trying to get my foot in the door, you know, Sending a yo-yo are your sales going up and down?

We can be entertaining, we can be engaging. Stop leveling down and saying, Oh, it’s just because everybody hates sales reps that we’re never going to actually follow up with the amount of follow ups that are needed. The average sale happens between 5 to 12 touches today. 80 percent of them happen between 5 and 12 touches, but the average sales rep stops after 3.

90 percent of sales reps follow, stop at 3 no’s. [00:18:00] We have to find a way to be more engaging, more entertaining, have have more gifts, education. Make them smile, make them laugh. You should be the bright spot in their day. 

And I will tell you right now. At that boutique in Milan, that was a bright spot in my day. The way that I was treated, the service that I was provided. 

So go out there and serve, stop selling, start educating. And that is my episode from Interlaken, Switzerland.

Make sure to get your copy or copies at the ultimate sales machine. com. There’s a lot of special bonuses that you can’t get going to Amazon. So make sure you check it out at ultimate sales machine.

TAKING ACTION:

• Want to know what’s keeping you from doubling your sales in the next 12 months? Take our quick QUIZ to get answers: Howtodoublesales.com
• If you’d like to have a profound breakthrough in your business, schedule your breakthrough call with a LIVE expert here: Chetholmes.com/Breakthrough
• Claim your FREE chapter 4 from the top 10 most recommended marketing and sales books of all time! Visit: Ultimatesalesmachine.com to find out how you Create 9X More Impact from every move you’re already making to win clients!

FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL: Instagram.com/UltimateSalesMachine Facebook.com/UltimateSalesMachine Twitter.com/ChetHolmes Linkedin.com/company/chetholmesinternational/

TRANSCRIPT:

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

[00:00:00] Hello everyone. Welcome to the CEO Mastery Show. Amanda Holmes here, your host. And today I brought on my brother, Jordan Holmes. He finally makes a debut on the CEO Mastery Show.

I’ve actually wanted him to be on this show for years. Years. Really? Yes. Wow. Yeah. Because Jordan has a gift for articulating thoughts. 

Oh, wow. That’s no pressure or anything. 

So, we were discussing, because of the holiday season, what we could do as an episode. And our father [00:01:00] wrote this great article called, How to Raise Near Perfect Children.

He was a very modest man. Yeah, very modest man. so we thought that maybe we could do the opposite of that. The seven ways to be a near perfect parent. From a children’s perspective, right? From the, um, because we’re not really children though, so it’s not the right way. Yeah, well, I mean, I’m not sure you would want to take that advice from children.

Perfect parents. Ice cream all the time, and No bedtime ever. Well, no, I think we wanted to, um, honor those that are parents and share because you had said something really insightful about Dan that I really liked. You were saying that, you know, he’s great at marketing and sales, but he was also a great father.

Yeah, yeah, and we grew up not really knowing the marketing and sales side of him so much. [00:02:00] Yeah, he was always, I actually still tell people that, that my father was an amazing man and did a lot of incredible things. But, uh, the thing he was best at was being a dad. so yeah, we thought it might be nice to share a little bit about, some of the tricks.

We learned about parenting from him. I have another, I have a two year old son and another one on the way, and so I think about this stuff a lot. Yes, okay, so before we talk about things you could consider based on our own experience of having wonderful parents, specifically we’ll cover a little bit more about our father, but Trends that have happened in our families over the last 50 years.

Let’s cover a little bit of that because we all know how much we love data Okay, so I had just recently asked you do you think that divorce rates in the United States have grown or decreased So for [00:03:00] those who are listening answer your question right in the United States. Do you think it’s Increased or decreased?

I thought it increased. I thought it increased. It has actually decreased. The peak that happened over the last 50 years was actually in the 80s. I’m sure some of you go, oh, that makes sense. So it peaked in the 80s and has actually decreased over time. A lot of that actually has to do with the fact that less people are getting married.

One in four U. S. parents aren’t married. So, our family dynamics have changed significantly. People are having children without, getting married, and, many single parents as well. So, family structures have really changed. 

In 1970, 69 percent of the population was married. Today, it’s dropped to only half, so that’s a 27 percent decrease in marriage.

But, with all of this said, what can we do? As this holiday season is approaching and happening that, we can [00:04:00] increase our interactions with, children. Yeah. Let’s start with the first thing you could consider if you would like to be a near perfect parent. You had actually said it, which was the thing that your children want most at a young age is actually attention.

You want to talk about them. Yeah, and not just attention, but specifically attention from their parents. but adults in general. Yeah, I was just, I think, telling you this story about my nephew. Everyone was trying to get him to swim. This whole family were all at the pool and they were trying to get him to go under the water, hold his nose and go under the water.

he was, I want to say, seven, seven years old, clearly capable of submerging himself in water. And everyone’s pressuring him, they’re pushing him. He doesn’t want to do it, doesn’t want to do it. And I finally came over and, did something else. I think we’re gonna. [00:05:00] cover in here. Um, but I, I use this special way of prompting him to try going under the water.

And then he was like, no, I’m, I’m too afraid. I don’t, I don’t want to do it. And this child was clearly capable of doing it. And then I said, okay, well, I’ll, I guess I’ll go do something else then. And. Walked away, and he wanted to spend time with me and engage with me so much that two minutes later He immediately did it all by himself Went under the water and people in our family had been working on it for like two days So yeah, that was just proof of some of those concepts 

you pay attention. So according to, 

I keep coming back to this research, but I found this interesting, that the frequency of family dinners in America, at least, has declined by 33%, and according to a group of Canadian researchers, frequent family dinners can prevent issues with eating disorders, alcohol and substance abuse, violent behavior, depression, and suicidal thoughts.

This was something that [00:06:00] our dad did. All the time, right? We had family dinner, majority of nights we would have family dinner. He would always fight to make sure that we had that. And what we did do What was the question? What was the question? He would sit us down and say, how was your day? Right? Yeah, or what was the highlight of your day?

Right. Focus on like, the, the positive things, or what did you learn today? Yes, that was a big one. And, as we got older and older, right? We got to high school, he would ask us the same prompt, and as we didn’t really want to answer, and we’d be completely, right? Like, it’s not like we just actively gave that answer.

Some days we would when we had something, and we’d be like, oh, I don’t know. Well, I got to school and, oh yeah, I did always say that. I got there and, okay, I got there and I saw Julie. How was that? It was fine. Then I went first to period, you know, and I’d walk, he’d walk us through our day until we found something that was a highlight [00:07:00] or something that we learned, something that was significant.

So it wasn’t like we actively gave the answers. perpetually pulled it out of us because he cared and he gave us that attention. Yeah. And I think that’s a good, another good point there is that, sometimes people will push you away and you feel like, you know, and, and children, the angstier teenage, you know, we have some cousins at that age and they’ll like act like they’re too cool for school, give you one word answers to your questions, but they love.

you being interested in their lives. You know what I’m saying? Like if you, there’s something about pushing through that distance that makes someone go, Oh, this person actually cares. So especially when, when children are tight lipped. About that kind of stuff. I find it’s even more effective to be twice as interested.

Mmm, that’s so good. And we’ll talk more about that in a minute. 

So the second way that you can assist [00:08:00] to be a near perfect parent Is to hold the belief that your kids can get along. Mmm. Mmm. Right? Yeah. I think I can count on one hand how many times you and I have fought. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Pretty much. Yeah.

We, I used to, I don’t know if you ever had this experience, I remember distinctly in elementary school having in like fourth grade, some kid came up to me at recess and said, I heard that you and your sister never fight. That can’t be true, right? And I was like, no, it is, it is true. We, we never fight. Um.

But it was because, and it was specifically our dad that really held the belief system that we needed to love and care for one another and he was so disappointed any time that we showed any kind of disregard for one another, right? That was like the worst thing we could do. Abso yes. That’s a good way to put it.

Um. Yeah, what was it? It was, you know, it was, it was just like, [00:09:00] like, Oh, how could you be mean to your sister? Like, you know, she is going to be your best friend throughout life. And, uh, you know, anyway, I just, He would repeat that over and over and over again. And your closest person in your life, the one that will always be there.

could be, you know, This wonderful thing to your sister and you know and your brother. Would we want that? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that’s so good. And and vice versa, and I think we might talk about this a little bit as well, but like not just hey I’m disappointed in you, but also anytime we did anything for each other that was sharing or nice or caring or thoughtful It would be, we’d get a lot of attention for that.

Wow. You did that for your brother? Yeah, that’s the exact.

You [00:10:00] are such a good brother. Yeah, yeah. Right? Yeah. Well, 

that leads to the third tip for being a near perfect parent is, and you came up with this. I love this. To get, them to, act in a different way. You say it. Cause it was really good. Yeah. You said it. this is something our dad was really good at was encouraging behavior through, It was almost like affirmational.

Yeah, positive affirmation. He would say things like well, um, I’m so proud of you guys because I know you’re the kind of person who has that strength of character where like, you wouldn’t lie to get out of trouble for something. That you’re so honest and so forthright and like Um But just that constant thing of he would lay out a vision of Of what we could be.

And continue to reinforce it over and over and over again. Rather than like wait [00:11:00] for us to, um, not meet expectations and then say, Hey, I’m disappointed or you fell short. But it was, it was this thing of he would paint this picture of. There, there’s a quote and I don’t remember where it’s from exactly, but it really resonated with me when I read it because I think of this thing dad used to do.

Uh, where it was, if you treat people the way they are, you make them worse, but if you treat them the way they could be, you make them become more than they realized they could be. Something like that. Yeah, that’s great. so that, that piece of, and that can be really hard for some people. Morgan and I sometimes will pause a movie and go, how would you handle this situation with this, an interaction with a parent and a child?

And. She’ll say, well, I would say this thing about how we don’t do that. That’s, that’s bad behavior. You know, behavior. I’m disappointed, blah, blah, blah. And I would say, you know, I think I would probably say something along the lines [00:12:00] of like, honey, why? Why were you so so mean to your little brother? Don’t you know that you could be a hero to him?

You could be and you know what and I see you do it sometimes he just looks up to you with like I know sometimes he can seem like like he is mean but He, um, what is it, it’s, it’s like, you, yeah, you’re painting the picture of what it could be. I have a good example. And I’ll do that. And Morgan, my, my wife will say like, I don’t know how you always do that.

Like it’s, it’s kind of hard. It takes practice to think about how to phrase it in a, in a positive, yeah, in a positive way or an aspirational way. When you first said that the first thought I thought of is when we moved into the Novato house. Oh yeah. And there was one room that was. like three times the size of another room and we walked in and we looked at it and my father’s response was well wouldn’t it be wonderful for your brother to have this big of a room [00:13:00] and i instantly went yeah that would be wonderful and jordan got the ginormous room and i got the small room but But it made sense, right?

You spent way more time in your room. I was always off doing random stuff. But instead of my father saying, you need to give, you know, you’re getting the small room, your brother’s getting the big room. No, he put it in a way that was like, can’t we give Jordan this gift? Yeah, we could give Jordan this gift.

That’s a great idea. That’s such a good point, and I think that ties into the, the sibling. thing is a lot of parents try to get their siblings to get along by saying, you know, don’t be mean to your brother. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. Versus this, this sort of aspirational piece of like, you know, you could be such a mature Older brother or older sister or you could be such a great sibling or a great family member if you did Yeah, this thing and I know how kind you are [00:14:00] and and then at the end of that you’re like, yeah, I am kind I will do that thing Jedi mind tricks You know, there’s another one you you had said That I really liked was like, well, aren’t, I know that you’re the type of person that wants to be so strong within themselves that you don’t need alcohol.

You’re just so confident in who you are. I know you’re that type of person. And dad never like laid down the hammer of you can’t drink. Yeah. He would even hand us drinks. And neither of us really dove into that. I mean, my first drink was after I was 21 years old. And very rarely if that. It was because of that reinforcement of repeating and knowing, well, you can be a stronger character, right?

And then, yeah, I do want to be that stronger character. Rather than you can do this, you can’t do that, right? It wasn’t a demand. It was. Yeah, yeah. You wanted to be the kind of person he described you as being. [00:15:00] And then you became that, I guess. So I think that a critical part to three is number four.

So the fourth tip for being a near perfect parent is you have to actually gain the respect of your children, but they would probably say a cool parent, right? What does it take to be a cool, respected parent, right? When I think of like, I mean, our dad dressed up in Batman gear, and he would run around the house, and then he’d run onto the roof, and it was the thrill of our lives that dad was in his, Batman gear.

I mean, Christmases were spent, like, the parents would grab Nerf guns, and they would have Nerf gun wars across the kitchen and the living room, and all the kids were picking up the balls to hand to the parents, and the parents were the ones having a blast. Yeah, you know, this, this is a hard one, because we were sort of talking about this.

This morning and like what exactly does it mean because some of the things he did really worked because we [00:16:00] respected him so much And we wanted to gain his approval I mean, there’s one piece that’s just naturally innate in us to want that from our parents. Yeah. Yeah, but then how do you craft that? Well, and I think a lot of people sort of grow out of it a lot around like during the teenage years They’re like we weren’t rebellious teenagers.

Yeah, you know You may be a little bit late. We weren’t. Wait, hold on. I got pretty moody there for several years. That’s hilarious. But, um, you fought, you fought all the battles and then I just reaped the rewards. Amanda’s popping into my room to be like, we can stay out till 1130 now. I just had the conversation.

I negotiated on our behalf. That was funny. But I think, I think part of the thing, I don’t know if you wrote this down, uh, about having our respect was he also, he respected us in, in Turia. That’s true. He included us in decisions, [00:17:00] he wanted to hear our opinion, he wanted to hear our perspective.

The respect was earned too, like we got to do way more things than majority of people because. Like, my father allowed me to have a boyfriend very early on in elementary school, but he did go on dates with me and my boyfriend. Yeah. It would be me, my dad. And my boyfriend, like, he would sit in between us at the movie theaters, but we were allowed to go to the movies.

I, I was thinking, a good friend of mine came to visit one summer when we were, when he and I were 16. And my dad let us take the yacht out for the weekend. I was thinking that too. By, by ourselves. And I, you know, it, we had that reciprocal. Relationship where I respected him enough that I wasn’t, I was going to be responsible and he respected me enough to give me the opportunity to be responsible and, um, you know, so you [00:18:00] wanted to, you wanted to live up to that faith he had in you.

Yeah. So that’s so good. There’s probably more to this how to be a cool parent thing. No, we’re doing great Super fun. No, okay 

So number five way to be a near perfect parent is to train your kids on how to learn And how to build skills, right? This was something that there’s the tie over to the ultimate sales machine was that he knew that mastery wasn’t about doing 4,000 things.

It’s about doing 12 things, 4,000 times. I can remember, I keep coming back to this recently of like growing up, majority of parents would call their daughter, like a princess dad referred to me as a lethal weapon over and over and over again. And like, He, um, trained us on self defense from a very young age.

So every when we would ha when we would be having fun on weekends, it would [00:19:00] be like, okay, how do you fall? How do you get away from an attacker? And for years, the game was how to get out of an attack, right? How to get out of a, uh, hold. Yeah, and I also think, um, I think he was also very good at, um, if you needed help with something, he wasn’t just going to do it for you.

He was going to, like, patiently teach you how to, how to learn the thing. Yeah. Like, um, I remember in third grade I had a report where I had to memorize this. Presentation thing and he sat down with me and taught me how to memorize something, okay You work on the first line until you can say the first line from memory, you know And then you go to the next line and then you work on the next line But then you back up and go back to the first line Do you still remember the first line and I remember him sitting me down in third grade on how?

the process of [00:20:00] memorizing something and I again remember I don’t remember at what age but pretty young, him discussing with me that, uh, memorization is, and I believe this is in the ultimate service, um, memorization is the lowest level of skill, but it’s a first step. Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s, and not everybody knows how to memorize something.

And it might, as an adult, having gone through college or done things at work, um, that might seem really obvious, but if you can work on the meta skill of how to learn, teach your children how to learn, then you can do it. They can go off, you know, you don’t have to teach them all the other things because they know how to teach themselves.

Another thing, I mean, our dad always wanted us to be the best in whatever we wanted to do, right? So a big thing would be, okay, if you want to be, if I wanted to be a gymnast, then we want to make sure that we have the best gymnastics coach. I wanted to then be a singer, so we had to find the best singing coach.

And I remember, [00:21:00] Um, having a dialogue with somebody just recently about how I was saying like, when I want to learn something, I just find who is already great at it so that they can guide me so I could get there faster. And his response was, well, I always do things alone. I don’t really look for help. And I was thinking that is actually something that has been trained from a very young age and you will get.

Results so much slower because you don’t understand them very, to us, seems like an obvious thing, right? Because we’ve learned so much by training from the past. I love that you highlight that one because I think You’re much better at that than I am. Oh, okay. But I know that that’s true. Um, I just am a little more shy about hunting someone down Defending them and figuring out how to get them But you got your own and how dad taught you how to memorize.

I mean you then became an actor for a time, right? So that was a critical part in your [00:22:00] role to becoming who you have evolved over the years Yeah, well, I think the thing the thing for me was I Taught software engineering for about two years and, and I was shocked. at how little skills people had in terms of how to learn.

And I think this is why Dad was so good at teaching how to learn is because, you know, before you can teach someone how to grow their business, you need to teach them how to learn the skills required to grow their business. If they don’t have those skills, if they don’t have those skills, you need the skills to learn first, and then you can learn how to grow your business.

And I discovered the same thing when I was teaching software engineering. I would have students where I would love to teach you how to program. I would love to teach you how to write code, but you need to learn some fundamental skills about how to learn first. And I was shocked. At the degree that my students had from, you know, I had some students from extremely prestigious [00:23:00] colleges who didn’t have any of those skills.

The only thing they knew how to do was memorize. And, uh, a lot more goes into learning something than just memorization. You know, like, um, uh, here’s a simple example of you’re not going to learn something well if you simply watch someone else do it. You have to do it yourself. And the number of students I had who were like, Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I watched, I watched the presentation. Like, I get it. Mm mm. You know, anytime somebody tries to show you how to do something on a computer, like, oh yeah, here’s how you use this application. They go click, click, click, do this, this button. Boom, and you’re like, oh, okay. Yeah, got it. And then you sit down 15 minutes later, try to do the same thing, and you can’t.

You can’t do it. Dad always used to go, don’t touch the keyboard, tell me what to do, and I will do it. Um, but I learned that from him. Yeah. Well, and a little humble brag here, Jordan was valedictorian of his class at Hack Reactor, and then [00:24:00] became one of their best. You got promoted every single, uh, Right?

Every single class you got a freaking promotion. It was absurd. He ran the ranks there and then got recruited to Facebook, which is one of the biggest companies in the world, because of that skill to train, uh, software engineers in all of your, uh, reviews. So, don’t say anything, because he usually likes to say, Whoa, whoa.

Right? A little bit more of a humble brag over here. Okay, so he taught us to learn. Another thing that I think is really critical, 

our sixth step for being, a near perfect parent, we put down People skills. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah taught us how to Work with people so we went to a lot of like client dinners Which I don’t know if a lot of kids go in my experience when I go to client dinners.

Nobody ever invites their kids I have to force them to bring their kids. [00:25:00] Because that’s just normal for me, right? We were at the majority of dinners. And what would happen is, we’d drive there, Dad would tell us a little bit about them, we’d meet, and then at the dinner, can you share a bit, because I really liked what you were saying, like, he would prompt you.

Yeah. Well, I think the funny thing that I don’t see that often, he would try to get us to participate in the conversation like little adults. And it also really made you feel appreciated when he’d be talking with some client, maybe even about a business thing, and he would turn and he’d go, Mendo, what do you think?

Nine year old Amanda, you know, like it’s, and it’s crazy, but we, I think that helped us grow up feeling like our opinion mattered and to not be intimidated about sharing our opinion, and also to get practice because then one of the other things he would tell us to do is like ask a lot of questions, you know, that’s a big part of [00:26:00] being personable, it’s pretty easy just to be interested, ask a lot of questions, and then

And then afterwards, maybe he would sort of deconstruct, like, oh, that was a great question you asked. Or, You did really good with this one. When you said this, it was very meaningful. Did you see how they light up? That was really good. Like, he would then As we would drive home from the dinner, he would recap, and there’s a very funny story about Jordan.

Jordan was very good at asking questions, and we got better at asking questions over the years, but you had one. Well, so an example of going awry, was we were out with a very important Billionaire! He flew on his private jet to get there, yeah. In London, at this dinner. Like a Michelin star, yeah. I had just discovered that, sometimes dad had a lazy eye.

Which was why I was interested in this. Um, but I noticed that the client’s eye kind of kept drifting off to the side. And I was like, oh, do you have a lazy eye? [00:27:00] Um, and it got really quiet at the table. Um, because he’d actually had some kind of degenerative disease. Right, he said, he’s like, well, actually, I have a degenerative disease where I’ve lost my eye.

Yeah. It was a fake eye, and it was really painful. The guy was, looked really upset. Yeah. And it was also something that initially they had to take the eye out because they couldn’t cure that disease. And then a couple years later. Oh, you remember that. Yeah, so They found the cure. Yeah, yeah. And it was he could he did You know, a week ago, y’all would be just You can see how the saving wasn’t the best question to ask.

Yeah, afterwards, I remember sitting in the car and Dad being like Okay, Jordan. Great job for asking questions, but that one about the eye really didn’t go over well. You know why? Did you see his reaction? That’s probably not the best question to ask. But he walked us through all of that. I don’t remember him being mad.

[00:28:00] No, no, no, no, of course not. Right, another parent could have been mad, right? Scold you for doing this. It was like, no, I appreciate that you were still curious. You kept their attention. Just be careful of the sensitive subjects. Yeah, yeah. And he, he would also, if he knew you had a story you’d told that was particularly entertaining or fun or something like that.

You know, he, he might, if it came up in conversation, he might say, Oh, and this crazy thing happened to us the other day. Jordan or Amanda, you tell the story. And just constantly teeing us up for these opportunities to interact with adults or high powered individuals or, um, and kind of workshop, workshop those things.

I actually remember him teaching me how to tell jokes. Really? Yeah, yeah. About how, you know, there, there are certain rules to comedy and certain things like, oh, it’s funnier if you have a lot of contrast. So you say the first part, the setup. In a [00:29:00] normal tone, and then the punchline has to be like really loud, or really soft, or some kind of contrast.

Anyway, I, yeah, he coached me on how to make jokes more funny, and then he would, he would go, Oh, you gotta tell the one about the chicken, and then I would go, Oh God, the chicken joke. Okay. That’s so interesting. I find this so interesting. We got slightly different things. Yeah, I didn’t get coached on how to be Which you didn’t really get coached on how to be a lethal weapon.

No, I didn’t. Which is strange. I know, I know. But I have gone through my whole life like anytime someone’s like well that’s not really safe because I’ve traveled the world by myself, right? Because I have this inherent confidence that I can take care of myself in a moment’s need because so many reps of dad teaching us how to do that, right?

So anybody if anybody says anything I just go Oh, well, I’m a lethal weapon and usually Everyone laughs at that response. Nobody finds that that is actually a legit response. And I didn’t realize how Dad had like ingrained that in me until I was talking with Uncle [00:30:00] Tim. So our uncle, I was also saying, well maybe I should pick up some more self defense again and do some karate.

And he was like, why would you need that? You’re a lethal weapon. I was like, oh my god. She’s been ingrained. Yeah, I remember when he taught, he taught me how to public speak in third grade. He was like, if you want to win for student body, you have to give the crowd what they want. And the majority of third graders want candy.

So you should throw them candy in the middle of your presentation. And I won as a third grader because I threw. And then I also won for homecoming queen years later because I did the exact same thing. He’s like, you have to know what your. And every year it was, um, it was a 50, 50 school of 50 percent were Spanish speaking at 50%, um, you know, white.

And, uh, every year there would be like 12 women on the homecoming thing. And one woman was a Latina and the Latino one every year because [00:31:00] 50 percent of the population would vote for that one. And then the other 50 percent would vote up to 11 other white chicks. Uh, so I was like, Oh. To be able to win this, I need to win over the 50 percent that are, uh, Spanish speaking, so in my dance or whatever for homecoming.

I didn’t know that. You didn’t know this? No, hilarious, yeah. So to get on the homecoming board, you had to be, it was voted by the staff, but then to win, it was won by the student body. So, in my, presentation, because we did like, skits. Beforehand, I played salsa music, and I made this latino come up and dance salsa with me, so I knew I would get a few more votes there, and maybe I could win.

Yeah, and I did win. But it was because of dad repeating that, like, what does your audience want? Make sure you give them what they want. Well, they want a latina. I can pretend to be a latina. Yeah. Yeah, so [00:32:00] many tricks like that around presentations, and neither one of us is particularly afraid to get in front of a crowd because of that, even though that’s one of the top fears that people have.

But I remember, like, quizzing. I did a similar thing with Candy, I think in seventh grade, but it was like, I said at the beginning of my presentation, okay. Uh, you know, and everybody else is standing up there with notecards, and just reading off of the thing, and, and the students in the class are playing video games on their calculators.

 But I say at the beginning of my presentation, I’m gonna have some quiz questions, so pay attention, and if you get the questions correct, you’ll get a piece of candy, and then boom, you know, the whole room. It’s paying attention to your presentation. So, you know, or even So far superior than any other kid there, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No other 7th grader is being like, okay everybody stand up in your seat because we’re gonna do some movement, we’re gonna get cerebral fluid pumping to your brain and Oh my [00:33:00] god, that’s It’s so funny. Yeah, for those of you that don’t know, that’s something that our father always taught, is to take control of a room, you get them to do something.

You’re guiding them. I do it now with singing. I get a whole room, when I’m doing my keynotes, I get them to sing with me, which totally shifts the whole dynamic of the room. That’s great. That’s great. Because that’s a deep, that’s like a deep seated human thing that you feel connected with people when you sing with them.

Yeah. But it’s also a fearful thing if it’s out of context. Like in normal scenarios people would sing, but you put them in like, I’m doing a sales training for a corporate event. They do not feel comfortable singing. So once we break free from that, it’s like this really great bond. Yeah. That’s brilliant.

Yeah, but taking control of the room. So how can you take control of the room? That’s interesting. 

I said that there were seven ways to be a near perfect parent, but I only have six. So what is the seventh one? What is the number? What is the last and final? What did we miss? [00:34:00] Oh, there’s a couple of, there’s a couple of them.

I feel like dad always said that like, regardless of whatever we do, that he was really proud of us. Like he used to say, if you want to be, if you want to do like be a trash picker upper, that’s great. If that’s what you like, then you do it, but you should be the best at it. Like what can you do to truly?

So he supported me in being a gymnast. He supported me in being a singer and he gave me. If I said I wanted to sing, he’s like, okay, well, what do we need to do to make that happen? Okay, well, you need to write songs. Okay. Do you need guitar lessons so you can play your songs? Okay. Do you want to go to school for that?

Okay. Let’s do a music video. Okay. You do it, but I’ll help guide you. So he was always supporting us and what we wanted to achieve and just grateful that we had something that we were excited about. Yeah. You’re gonna challenge me on this? No, no, no, I wasn’t. I was thinking of something else. I was thinking of something else.

Well, tell me what yours is. [00:35:00] I think, so, um, the movie Armageddon is a favorite movie of mine. Yes. All of ours. Family favorite. And if you don’t know, the plot is basically Bruce Willis as an oil driller. Has to jump in a spaceship to go save the world from an asteroid that’s gonna hit the earth and wipe out mankind.

And they need a driller so they can drill a bomb into this asteroid. Um, and if you pay attention, you realize that, uh, that Bruce Willis character is going up there, not to save the world, but to protect his daughter. Um, that’s what that movie is really about. Uh, I tell people this that I think growing up, I had this sense.

That our father, you know, if there was an asteroid hurtling towards Earth, he would, he would jump in a spaceship, fly up there and blow that, you know, [00:36:00] out of the sky or whatever. Yeah. The point is that, like, he. I think, I felt, I don’t know about you, but I felt like he had our backs that much. Like he would take a bullet for us, I feel like he said that to me a, you know, a million times.

Yeah. That sense that someone in the world has, like, has your back, uh, to that degree, that they would, they would do anything to, uh, and like to protect you, to take care of you. And, and. You know, obviously no asteroids ever came towards Earth or anything like that, so he never really had to back that claim up, but it was very, like, so all I’m saying is just make the claim.

Just say to your children, like, I would take a bullet for you, I would, you know, if you got kidnapped, I, I, I [00:37:00] would be like the movie Taken. Yeah. For sure. Well, let’s bring, let’s bring him out. Oh, sure. 

Speaking of being a dad, why not, let’s, so for those that don’t know, Chet is short for Chester. My father, our father’s full name was Chester.

And so Jordan named his son Chester. Is that you, bud? Yeah. Look at that appearance. Oh, that was short lived. Yeah, that was. Oh, there’s a ball. A ball’s more important than my podcast. Ha ha ha ha. Aww. Well, I’m sure we could come up with more. So many more. There’s so many more. But I feel like this was just a gem of good Oh, thank you, Chester.

Not playing my guitar. I’m sure we could come up with many, many more. [00:38:00] But as you go through your holiday season, now that we have music, to Yuletide Carol, maybe you take a few It’s indestructible, supposedly. As you Think about your holiday season. I hope you get to spend the time to sit and, you know, break bread with your family and, um, try out some of those, try out some of those things.

Yeah, really, really pay attention to some of the things your children are interested in. You know it and And maybe I think that last one we talked about of like dad taught us his work skills You know the the people skills and that yeah how to be in a meeting maybe think about something you as some skill you’ve developed Uh, in your, your life role and, and that might be valuable to teach your children.

Yeah. Oh, that’s good. It doesn’t necessarily [00:39:00] have to be people skills or presentation skills. It could be Excel. Excel is, is a great skill to know. You got it. Coding. Chopping wood. I mean, whatever, whatever you think you have, share it. Well, thank you, Broba. I really appreciate you hopping on here with all of us.

And that is another week of the CEO Mastery Show. We still have openings for the Ultimate Sales Machine Dojo. One hour a week to take what you know from the book or what you’ve read and actually implement it. I love the musical background of Chester. So you can go to usmdojo.

ultimatesalesmachine. com Do you want me to? No, it’s okay. Uh, yes. Join the JoJo. We’d love to see you there. And have a happy holidays from us here at Chet Holmes International. The Ultimate Sales Machine. Say bye. Can you say [00:40:00] bye?

Jester! Okay, we got one smile. Bye!