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

When I climbed Kilimanjaro, largest freestanding mountain in the world, I decided it was a last minute thing on a Thursday. I said, well, on a Wednesday, someone asked me if I wanted to do it on Thursday. I said, yes, by Monday, I’m in Africa. And normally people prep for like months or years for this kind of a thing.

And I just show up there like that’s that here I go. I’m not going to do this. And then climbing up the mountain, I could not do it alone. I have really bad altitude sickness and I, I had to lean on the two African men that helped me finally summon, and I did summon, but I never would have been able to if I didn’t allow them to help me.

And I remember the whole time feeling so upset, like, I can’t believe these men, I have to lean on them, like, I never lean on anybody. But that was my biggest takeaway from that moment, and then when I came home from Africa, That’s when I let go of the current executive team and I stepped in as CEO because I realized that I could never do it alone, but I didn’t have to because there were people around me that could assist me.

I just needed to be willing to ask for help. Here

[00:01:03] 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, smarter.

Welcome everyone to this week’s CEO mastery show. Today, I have a guest, again, my brother, Jordan Holmes. Last time we did a podcast together, it went soft viral. So, I had said before that I thought he was amazing and very articulate, and I thoroughly enjoyed talking with him, so I thought I would bring him on.

And he had said I don’t know, and then it went soft viral, and I said, you have to come back and do this again. So here we are, yet again. This topic, this time around, is the four ways that people sabotage their growth.

[00:02:01] Jordan Holmes: Yeah.

We enjoy this topic, so Jordan, for those of you that don’t have a backstory in him, not only did we have a training, facilitating father like Chad Holmes that taught us how to learn and taught us how to build a skill with cognitive discipline and determination, But he also went on to train lots and lots of software engineers in one of the most leading Silicon Valley training companies.

He has taken those skill sets further and further and I’m sure we’ll tie in some of those stories amidst here when we talk about how people sabotage.

[00:02:34] Jordan Holmes: Yeah. Yeah. And in a similar space, you work with a lot of business owners, entrepreneurs, and executives. And so I know we wanted to talk about this because scenario of crossover between the two of us that we’ve both spent a lot of time coaching people and working with people on improving their lives in various ways.

And so we thought we might be able to

identify some trends because it’s rather fascinating. I mean, if you think about it, 95 percent of companies never make it above a million in annual sales. So what’s happening that then, of that, only 0. 08 percent make it to 5 million, and then 1. 5 percent make it to 10 million, and 0.

004 percent make it to 100 million and beyond. Some of those things are what we’re about to cover. So, the first thing that people do to sabotage their ability to grow is lack of clarity on where they’re going.

[00:03:30] Jordan Holmes: Yeah, it’s a surprisingly easy thing to do. It seems so obvious. Yes. And yet, I don’t think it is like where people go, yeah, well, I want to make more sales.

I know where I’m going, but that it’s often not specific enough. Yeah. Almost, almost every time I coach someone on something, the first step ends up being, look, we actually need to get greater clarity on where you want to go. I can help you get where you want to go faster, but it’s going to be really hard to get where you want to go if you’re not very clear on where you want to go.

Well, statistically, it’s also shown, I mean, 50 percent of companies don’t have a clearly articulated goal that the entire organization knows. So, one in every two don’t understand, so, first way that you can sabotage your growth is by not knowing where you want to grow to.

[00:04:22] Jordan Holmes: Yeah. Makes sense. Or even being too broad on that.

Like you want to talk about a business vision. One of the things that drives me crazy is when you go to work at a company or work with a company and they go, here’s our, our core values and there’s 12 core values. And you know, it’s like this big thing on the wall and, and some of the core values are even conflicting with each other.

You know, it’s way too much. It’s also easy to have, you can’t do everything right. So. Part of knowing where you’re going is being very clear on what you want and part of that is intentionally excluding the things that you need to avoid. I would say, also, I don’t know if you’ve experienced this, part of that piece is identifying the things that are tempting for you to aim at, that are not actually the highest ROI things to aim at.

Because when things get difficult, with the primary thing you’re trying to work on. The thing, the ways you’re going to procrastinate are going to be the things you’re also interested in, but are not actually as important as the thing that just got hard. So I think being very specific on what you want and then also excluding the tasks that are tempting and not actually serving you.

Yep. That’s great.

[00:05:39] Jordan Holmes: What do you think

I totally agree. You have to be able to say no.

[00:05:45] Jordan Holmes: Yeah.

And say no often. Okay, let’s jump to the second. The second way that people sabotage their growth is thinking that they know everything. You know, I’ve seen this even back when I used to perform as a musician. So I went to music school and one of the number one most prestigious music schools in America.

It was USC’s Thornton School of Music. I gigged with every person in that university. And what I found was that the best musicians were the ones that were always easy to work with and always eager to understand the direction that I was giving. Those that were not as skilled always acted like they knew everything.

It was so bizarre. I didn’t understand why that was possible. But then I also see it in businesses. You know, my eight and nine figure executive teams are usually way more inquisitive, way more open to possibility, way more acknowledging that they don’t have every answer. But then I get a million dollar CEO or a 500, 000 CEO walking in and they like, they know everything and it’s so fascinating to see that dynamic.

So just acknowledging there are things that you don’t know you don’t know is a huge change.

[00:07:01] Jordan Holmes: Yeah, I think also, like, in particular, to be looking for areas you might be oddly wrong in something you feel very confident in. Because that’s when you’re going to get a really big improvement, is, Hey, I built a bunch on top of this idea, and if that idea is wrong, That means a lot of the stuff I’ve built on top of it is not going to work particularly well.

It’s really hard for me to entertain The thought that I might be wrong about this core foundational idea, because that means if I’m wrong about this, I have to go back to the drawing board on so many things. And so I have this sunk cost fallacy, but it turns out that if you want to make the jump from 1 million to 5 million to 10 million, it often entails sacrificing some idea you have about how things work, that’s fundamental, because it’s a wildly different set of skills that’s going to get you to the next level.

And so, yeah, maybe that’s why you see that difference in the more successful business owners is that they’ve learned they have to be open to being totally wrong about something, some core idea. Yeah. They’ve already had to several times scrap their, their previous set of beliefs, scrap their previous skill set and take on something new.

I love that.

[00:08:34] Jordan Holmes: Yeah.

Okay. Love that song. So the third biggest place where people sabotage their ability to grow I call them the magic pill poppers. We live in a society where we just want to take a pill and solve all the problems. And very often that’s not the case. And what I’ll see is in somebody that’s just starting in business or has only gotten to a certain threshold in revenue, when they come up with a goal, There’s a lacking of the, the decades of trying to implement new ideas, or new concepts, or their own initiatives to get to that next place, where their expectations are so short lived, that if it’s the right solution, then it should be the right solution immediately.

And if it’s not, then we give up on it, and we look for the next right solution, as opposed to, Coming up with an idea, then continuing to test it until that idea is so far down the line that you’ve proven it could be successful or not. I liked what you said about deciding the minimum amount of time of viability.

[00:09:36] Jordan Holmes: Mm hmm. So, something that I find useful in this area is, When you sit down to try something new, saying, setting, Hey, I’m not going to question whether or not this is the right strategy or the right way to go about this until three months have gone by or six months have gone by because, and it depends on what the thing is that you’re trying some things, some new thing you want to try, you’re not going to see results until six months.

And so it doesn’t make any sense. Question the approach until you actually get to see results and you need to determine that up front because I think sometimes people make decisions in this space based off of how they feel, which means quit something new the second it gets hard and oftentimes the results come right on the other side of the thing being really hard.

Yeah, yeah. It reminds me of we were working with one core story client. And they were a startup. He had just left his cushy job to start a new business and he had hired us to build out what that marketing and sales collateral would be. And he went out and went to one door and tried to use what we bought and he quivered back in failure.

And he said, it didn’t work. It didn’t work. I give up. I want my money back. It was like, wow, we’re, we’re a weekend. I think we need a little bit more time. Right. And we ended up. Building him a whole sales process over six weeks. It was brilliant. He went from nothing to booking appointments at like 75%, 75 percent of the time he would book an appointment.

It was absurd, right? It was awesome. But his expectation of how quickly it should happen was wildly different than let’s say, like, I have a 250 million company that’s trying to get to 600 million. And they said, okay, we’re going to take this core story and we’re going to deploy it over the next year. And we anticipate that over the next year and a half, we’ll start to see more results.

But granted, their sales process is like between 8 to 12 months,

[00:11:42] Jordan Holmes: right?

So, they’re used to, okay, this will take time. This will take, everyone getting to use to this will take time, so.

[00:11:50] Jordan Holmes: But that’s the, that’s a great example of, Like, Hey, we know from first contact to a sale is like a minimum, whatever, eight months or seven months or something like that.

So it doesn’t make any sense to try a new sales process and abandon it before the six month mark. And so they had the wherewithal to know in advance, Hey, it’s going to take this long to see results. And so that’s when we might check in and go, is this working or is this not working? Yeah. Feelings are not a good.

It also makes me think about like, we’ve had some of our greatest success stories have come from people that are in so much pain. You know, the house is on fire, they’re losing money month after month and they have to solve the problem. Therefore, their ears are so wide open and they have accepted that we are going to help them and they’re following everything we say with clarity.

It’s actually kind of an interesting thought.

[00:12:51] Jordan Holmes: That’s, that’s an interesting one because I actually was thinking, I’ve experienced where when it feels like an emergency to people, sometimes they’re even more quick to want to change strategies. Yeah, I’m helping a friend of mine through a job search process right now trying to get his job done.

His career in order, and the job search has not been going particularly well, and that’s hard financially. And so, he’s thinking really short term. How do I get this job that I’m trying to land? And it might not even be possible over the time frame he’s trying to do it. And so, sometimes, instead of going, I’m in this fear mindset, this emergency mindset, and I need to do something, and I just, I try this, and it’s like it’s not really working, try something else.

Versus taking the coldly logical point of like, Okay, realistically, how long is it going to take to do this thing? And if I’m on such a timeline where it’s like, I can’t realistically expect results here for six months, and I need results sooner than that, then like, again, that’s not the approach you should have.

You should figure out how to extend the timeline. First, sometimes making the right change requires stepping back and figuring out how you can allow the right change to take longer. Yep. You know, like, oh, hey, I need to make, I need to make a dramatic change in, in three months. And it’s like, well, that’s not possible.

So you need to figure out how, how to let it take six.

Yep. And that leads to the fourth way people sabotage their growth. Which is, struggling to ask for help. When I climbed Kilimanjaro, largest freestanding mountain in the world, I decided, it was a last minute thing, on a Thursday I said, on a Wednesday someone asked me if I wanted to do it, on Thursday I said yes, by Monday I’m in Africa.

And, normally people prep for like, months or years for this kind of a thing, and I just show up there like, da da da, here I come, I’m gonna do this. And then, climbing up the mountain, mm hmm. I could not do it alone. I have really bad altitude sickness, and I had to lean on the two African men that helped me finally summon.

And I did summon, but I never would have been able to if I didn’t allow them to help me. And I remember the whole time feeling so upset, like, I can’t believe these men. I have to lean on them. Like, I never lean on anybody. But that was my biggest takeaway from that moment, and then when I came home from Africa, That’s when I let go of the current executive team and I stepped in as CEO because I realized that I could never do it alone, but I didn’t have to because there were people around me that could assist me.

I just needed to be willing to ask for help. So I’m one to be, have a hard time asking for help, but it really landed for me. I was listening to Tommy Mello talk. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Tommy Mello. I was listening to Tim talk last week, and he was saying, you know, my greatest strength is that I’m great at asking for help.

And I thought, wow, that is actually a great thing. That’s a good

[00:15:49] Jordan Holmes: way to think about it.

Yeah. Yeah. Because you’re never going to get there, right? What’s the African saying? If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

[00:15:59] Jordan Holmes: Right? Yeah. I was just telling Amanda on this point that it’s easy to notice this maybe in an environment that’s not your environment.

But when I was teaching software engineering to people, which is, you know, it’s hard, a hard intellectual task. And a lot of people have this sense that, like, if I can’t learn this, I’m stupid. And so, they’re in a school setting where they’re learning this material. And if they were struggling to learn the material and they could feel that they were not quite getting it, they were having a hard time, some people would do this fascinating thing.

Of trying to hide that they didn’t understand. And so they’re dodging, answering questions. They’re trying not to talk to me as the instructor. And just like trying to cover up the fact that they’re not getting the material. And that’s precisely the opposite of what they should be doing. Because I’m literally there and being paid to help them understand the material.

How often do you experience where you’re having a hard time but you don’t want anybody to know you’re having a hard time?

[00:17:08] Jordan Holmes: Yeah, and nobody can help you if you don’t let them know that you’re having a heart, but it’s hard on the ego to admit.

Yeah,

[00:17:16] Jordan Holmes: I’m Struggling with this thing. I think at the end of the day What’s really important is that you acknowledge you are having a hard time doing a thing by yourself You know, if you’re having a hard time with something a really really good strategy is to get help from people who know how to do that thing well.

Yeah. And acknowledging that you don’t have to know how to do everything. That’s also important. Stick to your stripes.

[00:17:39] Jordan Holmes: Yeah, have you seen that with business owners struggling to ask for help on things? Have you ever

I think so. I see a dramatic difference between those that get great results and that continually grow year after year.

I’m thinking about like some of the CEOs that have hit the Inc. 5000 list multiple times, versus those that will stay in the same revenue bracket for decades. And that’s a huge part of it. You know, someone, like I’m thinking about DLP Capital, I’ve worked with Don Weiner before, I’ve spoken at many of his events, and they’ve hit the Inc.

5000 list 10 years in a row, he is 39 years old, and he’s very clear that his goal is he wants to be a privately held Fortune 500 company. That’s his one goal. How he gets there, there’s many different iterations, but you’ll hear him say it all the time, and he says, hey, you wanna rally with me so we can be the first privately held Fortune 500 company?

Let’s do it. And everyone gets on that bandwagon because he recognizes that his goal is bigger than just him being able to do it all. And I love that about him, and he inspires people to want to join in on his mission. And, and because of that he can Create affordable housing, he does these amazing things where he does, like, every one of his staff can submit a wish that they’d like for him to accomplish, and I think it’s like once a year or twice a year, he picks one person, like, he’s given a couple in vitro, like, he paid for them to have their baby, he’s given people a master’s degree, education, he’s given, like, he can do so many wonderful things, and he gives back so much more because he’s willing to ask people for help.

Versus somebody that says, I know what I know, I’m already the best, I’ve been doing this for two decades. Yeah, but you’re still floating at 500k in revenue, I mean, I get it, like, you’re doing more than most, because 95 percent don’t even make it to a million, you know? That, there’s this shift in mindset there.

[00:19:38] Jordan Holmes: Yeah, and how do you think Now, we discussed this a little bit, like, how do you actually make that change of struggling to ask for help, and then there’s a reason you’re not asking for help, so how do you actually shift?

Well, I think some of the ways that you can avoid sabotaging, right, that you can be proactive, is number one, just getting clear on what your goal is.

Because if you know, without a shadow of a doubt, what’s important to you, you will do whatever it takes to get there, right? That goal has to be truly something of value to you. So what we do in our goal setting process when we go through, like, getting a new CoreStory client, we’ve actually started incorporating goal setting into our process because we find that people are more motivated to implement something of change when they’re invested.

And, like, we had one client that wanted to give back a million a year. In revenue, because he wanted to make more to be able to give more. It wasn’t even about him putting more in his pocket per se, he just wanted to do bigger things. And within the first 30 days, he closed an 8 figure contract. So when he got bigger about his own mindset, you can ask Troy about that one, it’s a pretty wild story.

When he got bigger about his own mindset, and went past the limitations of what he felt he deserved, or what he, it was all about him, very often in that goal setting workshop, we find that people want to give back more, they want to do things with their community, they have things that they’re passionate about, and that adds to them creating greater wealth.

[00:21:11] Jordan Holmes: Yeah, yeah, that’s interesting. We didn’t really talk about that so much in the goal, in being clear on where you’re going, but like, part of that is also finding a goal that resonates

with you.

[00:21:23] Jordan Holmes: Yeah,

critical.

[00:21:24] Jordan Holmes: Because there’s a lot of people who are like, this is what I want, and I’m looking at you and I’m like, Hey, it’s not seeming like you want this.

That’s

[00:21:31] Jordan Holmes: awesome! This is what I want, but I don’t want to put the work into it. I don’t want to be proven wrong. I don’t want to try anything new. I don’t want to, you know, it’s like, man, maybe you don’t want that very much.

Yeah, it takes quite a good skill to actually pull out of somebody something that actually resonates.

I watched Troy do this, Troy Iverley. He does a great job of it. Calling on your bluff and seeing if it really resonates or what’s important or not important. That’s awesome. Okay, the second thing you could think about is potentially finding an expert. Because there are experts that know things that, right, you can get there way faster if you just find some expert on whatever you need help with.

[00:22:11] Jordan Holmes: I think that probably should feel self evident to pretty much anyone. It’s like, hey, get help, get help from an expert. And the thing that I think is really important there, from my perspective, is find the expert and then really, this goes back to this. Part of people feel like they know everything or have they have this really close mindset is like find the expert and then really listen, really.

Cause the number of times I’ve worked with someone where I’ve been brought in and I really like coaching people. So I’ve, I’ve coached people on a wide Variety of different areas like including including tennis I’m a pretty decent tennis player and I’ve given tennis lessons to a lot of people that like I would like to get better and Then they come I give them a tennis lesson and I say hey, you really need to focus on this thing And they’re like, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I know and it’s like Okay, I can see that you don’t know so whatever you thought I said that you know You need to pay a little bit more attention to me or ask me questions because I’m thinking I’m telling you this for a reason, and I’m the expert you came to, because I am objectively better at this than you are.

Yeah. And, and so if I’m saying something, if I’m taking the time to say a, a particular thing, I must feel it’s important, and I’m the expert. And if you feel like I’m wasting your time with what I’m saying, You might want to take a step back and instead think, how do I listen more carefully to this here as though the expert is communicating something I don’t already know.

Yeah. That actually reminds me of, we recently got hired for a company and they were trying to figure out if their sales leader was going to cut it. So we came in and we helped them build out a plan for how to grow. And never once did she ask me a question.

[00:24:00] Jordan Holmes: Oh, the sales leader? Yeah. Oh, fascinating.

It was fascinating.

And the CEO kept getting bothered. Because they said, you know, Why isn’t If I were in that person’s shoes, I would have been asking a million questions. Because that plan The details, you know, I’m still trying to figure out what do I do on Monday, what do I do on Tuesday, I have an idea for my 30 day, and my 90 day, and my 12 month, but I have plenty more questions, and it was fascinating to see that there was not even questions, it was like, okay, I’ve checked off the box that I’ve done what I was told, that I was supposed to bring in an expert, and now they, I have, so now everything will be sunshine and rainbows.

Well, only the beginning, because they only hired to come in and give the plan. Right? It’s fascinating.

[00:24:47] Jordan Holmes: Yeah. Well, I mean, even I would say in any learning environment, if someone is not asking questions, they’re almost certainly not paying attention.

Yeah.

[00:24:56] Jordan Holmes: You know, because language is too imperfect of a medium of communication.

I used to, in our boot camps too, we’d have maybe like, let’s say 30 companies in a room and there was one gentleman, Akshat, who would always have like five questions for me every single time. And it was very clear to me that everyone else Was working on it and doing a little bit, but Aksha was dedicated to mastery.

He attended every single bootcamp I had. He watched the recordings of them five, six, seven times. And because of that, he walked out. You know what he got from the Coarse Story Bootcamp? What? He built out a 52 week email series to make sure that every lead he got would turn into a client. And he changed his whole business approach to instead of Reaching out, he sold door handles in, in India, fine door handles.

So instead of reaching every consumer possible and going after every kind of store possible, he identified 50 that he thought would be great, that would produce him 50 X what he was getting from any normal B2B interaction. And he just harassed them like nobody’s business, right? Pick out a discipline and determination.

And he basically turned his business on autopilot. He now makes. Double if not triple the amount he’s working two days a week instead of five days a week or seven days a week All because he was committed and you tell the questions He was asking was showing that he was trying it and failing and trying it and failing but he was committed.

It was fascinating

[00:26:28] Jordan Holmes: Yeah, that’s a really good point that maybe we should have started with here that like I’ve worked with a lot of people and you can tell pretty early on like There are some people who, some students, where I could spend 15 minutes with them and dramatically upskill them. Because they were really listening to what I was saying.

They were gonna ask follow up questions. They were gonna try and digest the thing. They were gonna immediately go out and try the thing that I said. And then come back and say, Hey, you know, I tried what you said. This and this didn’t work. Like, they were just They were determined they were going to learn the thing, versus And so it was almost like on autopilot on my hand, like I barely had to do any effort for this person to get all this value.

Because they were gonna pull the value out of You know, versus the person where, like, they come to you and they’re like, I want your help. But some, for some reason, I’m chasing you, trying to figure out how to help you. I’m, I’m like, trying to get you to ask questions. I’m trying to, I’m, I’m like, you know, listen to what I have to say.

I’m trying, I’m checking in to be like, did you do what I suggested?

Yeah.

[00:27:36] Jordan Holmes: Are, did you have any questions on that? Did you have any follow up? How’d this thing work? And there’s, so, I think a big part of this topic here is, like, How do you be a person who’s easy to help and there’s so many people who can help you out in the world There’s so many experts in so many areas and it sounds like Aksha was one of these people It was like he was going to get the value

and he did I mean he has a business nearly on autopilot He’s third generation.

So he didn’t exactly want to be doing what he was doing And now he’s doing what he loves, which is actually coaching. He’s coaching other leaders. And spending a lot of time in his garden. He really likes garden. So.

[00:28:20] Jordan Holmes: We could all spend more time. He

also paints. He sends me paintings. A lot. Pictures of his paintings.

So, you know, he’s enjoying a more fruitful life because he was actually dedicated and determined to learning. Which was actually the final way to progress and overcome your sabotage is being pig headed, disciplined, and determined to stick to that same path to get the result. Not same path, but iteration.

If you’re deploying a new concept or a new idea, it takes time, right?

[00:28:55] Jordan Holmes: Yeah. I was just having a conversation with somebody about this because I was working with someone on He was this friend on this job search thing. Yeah. I was trying to give some suggestions and I was like, well, are you doing A, B, C, D, you know?

And it was like, no, I’m not doing that. No, I’m not doing that. No, I’m not doing that. Okay. Well, you should go and do this thing. And then I checked in with him again later and I was like, how’d it go? And he’s like, oh, I did the thing and it didn’t work. And I’m and it’s like, okay, did you try and figure out why it didn’t work?

Did you try it again? Did you, like, it was just like, I had a thing. I tried it once. I ran into some difficulty and, and then that’s where it’s done, you know, so having that piece of I’m determined to try this thing and keep tweaking and keep returning back to what the plan is or what I’m trying to execute on.

I, again, this piece on communication is imperfect. And this was one of the best pieces of advice I ever got from. That it’s a very simple thing in one of his videos on, I think it was a module on cold calling where he was like, you watch this video and I’m going to give you all of these strategies and if you just watch it once, you’re going to get almost nothing out of this.

If you watch it and then immediately go and try and make 10 cold calls and try and implement what I showed you in this video. And then come back and watch the video again, and then go out and try it again, and then come back and watch the video a third time. By the time you’ve done that, you will have mastered this, this concept.

And so it’s like, that sticks in my head as, as the people who end up being successful with advice that I give them. Is, they don’t just let the advice wash over them, and hope something stuck in, but they take it and they immediately try to use it. And then Then they come back and go rate, Hey, this did or did not work.

What was I, what was I missing? Because you almost always, if you go back and revisit, you know, and this is the same thing with almost any self-help book you read. Yeah. It’s like how many people read a self-help book and then don’t try anything that’s in the self-help book.

Yeah.

[00:31:04] Jordan Holmes: You know, but if you read the book, try to implement, come back and reread the book, you notice completely different things second time around.

Yeah. So just having that, that discipline and determination to doing the thing and revisiting the expert or the. training material or the plan to, to do better the next time you, you try.

Yeah. Just a, a funny note. So just this week, somebody had mentioned on Twitter that they had a CD of our dad. It was the only CD they have in their car, and they got it 15 years ago.

They still listen to it. What? A CD? Is that not insane? That, I mean, there’s, there’s a lot of people out there that, that talk and teach and I find it to be something that speaks volumes to Chet Holm’s material is that That timeless is pretty remarkable.

[00:32:03] Jordan Holmes: Yeah.

All of these topics actually really remind me of what we’ve done with CoreStory.

There’s been so much evolution just in the last year, two years around taking something that will completely revolutionize a company and the way that they market and sell and having weekly meetings to make sure that they’re getting the concepts, that they’re trying it, that they’re trying it in the field.

We’re seeing if it’s working or not. We’re coming back and trying something more. We’re giving them more deliverables. And it’s just, it’s been a complete game changer, actually. I’m not going to get into all of the details, but it’s just been really thrilling to see such huge progress for organizations wanting to make that change.

[00:32:48] Jordan Holmes: That’s the golden ticket right there is, and I love that I once worked at CHI behind the scenes very quietly. You’re constantly iterating on how to execute on things and finding because there is a steep, steep learning curve on the core story model for selling and marketing. You can constantly be improving the way.

People move through that learning curve and like making that learning curve less steep. And from what you’ve been telling me about what you’re doing in that space now, it’s making that learning curve a lot less steep.

Well, it’s also been fascinating as AI has come out too, because so I’ve spent, man, the last nine months working with an AI expert.

To be able to take what we do and turn more pieces of this using AI. And what I found is I was actually wildly disappointed for majority. I wanted AI to think strategically and it just put it over and over and over again. I mean, iteration after iteration after iteration. But what I did find is when we would put the strategy in place.

And know, like, for instance, a couple pieces of market data, and what the call to action may be, and set a framework with the overall tone and the general idea. Then, creating a ad, a cold email script, a voicemail script, a trade show conversation, a white paper, all of these things can happen with a click of a button now.

If I have my strategy in place, If I thought, like a human, to come up with what the most superior strategy is, just the minor tweaks that make the details possible, that now we’re rapidly creating more content better than ever before and faster because of that. But it could, I could not reign AI how to be a strategist.

[00:34:48] Jordan Holmes: Right, right. And it took nine months of work to figure out how to get AI

Yeah.

[00:34:54] Jordan Holmes: To improve the, the speed of, like, creating deliverables.

Yeah. But now it’s so exciting, right? Like, okay, here’s your, we have a client right now that needs a three minute television ad, a 30 second television ad, they’re doing magazine articles, they’re also doing SEO, and they’re doing social.

And I’m able to handle them all. Whole ton of stuff, whereas before we’d give maybe one of this, one of that. Yeah,

[00:35:19] Jordan Holmes: it’s a fascinating, I mean, it’s gotta be a fascinating time to be doing core story stuff in that regard, because like previously it was a lot of work to create. It still

is a lot of

[00:35:33] Jordan Holmes: work. But it was a lot, it was, you know, it’s a lot of work to, to create all of this content from the strategy encapsulated in the core story.

Yeah. And. I feel like it makes CoreStory even more powerful because now it’s like, Now

I can train them how to use AI to use the CoreStory.

[00:35:55] Jordan Holmes: Right. Right? Here’s

three pieces of market data. Okay, craft my next email campaign using that. And here’s the template in which I want you to follow to make sure that It’s the most compelling email possible, right?

And then they’re deploying and it’s miraculous. But we had to do 500 hours of digging through data and weaving what that story may be to get it to that place. But now it’s like, fantastic.

[00:36:22] Jordan Holmes: Yeah, yeah, it just makes the execution easier. And it also, but that also makes, because it’s so, so much easier to produce content now with AI.

It’s like, it makes the strategy of your content production that

so important. Mm hmm. And also, I see it now when I look at things, I’m like, Ugh, that was written by AI. It’s like, it’s AI ified. There should be some word to explain that the human element of this has been completely taken out, and it’s so verbose.

It looks impressive because it’s so long, but really it’s just AI saying things that aren’t really all that meaningful. Like, I keep A B testing what Dad wrote, and then I try to tell AI to write like Dad, and it just can’t. So A B misses. The human aspect, and it also just becomes so much longer than it ever needs to be, so often.

So I’m perpetually fighting that battle, but, but it’s been, yeah, been fascinating. Yeah! So here we go! The four ways people sabotage their growth. Hopefully that helped you a bit think about some of the ways that maybe you or your team do so that you can elevate your game and get to the next level of wherever you’re headed.

If you decide, oh, I’d really like some help, always picking up the Ultimate Sales Machine is a great step. Oh, only 18. UltimateSalesMachine. com. And if you haven’t read it in a while, picking it up and re reading it. If you haven’t read the new edition, I recommend re reading the new edition. Or going to EmpireResearchGroup.

com. If you need some help with core story, that’s EmpireResearchGroup. com. Thank you, Jordan. It’s been so helpful and I always love talking to you.

[00:38:02] Jordan Holmes: Yes, right back at ya. Thanks for having me. I hope this was fun for you.

It was! Leave a comment, if you will. Tell Jordan what resonated with you about what he said, or if I said something that resonated with you.

Let us know, so it makes me want to continue to do these podcasts. It doesn’t mean anything if I don’t hear from you. So, please, let us know, and until next time.

[00:38:26] Amanda Holmes: 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.