Gain The Edge With Jim Padilla
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Meet Jim Padilla. Jim is a master saltrainer, an expert team builder, launch expert, and one of the founders of Gain The Edge LLC. Jim has great success in helping entrepreneurs gain the edge in their business such as building teams and leading them to find their true potential. He is also great at busting everyday myths such as the “win-win” or “not being attached to the outcome”. Join your host, John Livesay as he sits down with Jim to talk about his five core values in his business and how he applies these pieces of wisdom every day.
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Listen to the podcast here
Gain The Edge With Jim Padilla
In this episode of The Successful Pitch, Jim Padilla busts some myths about getting people to know, like and trust you. He busts the myths that win-win doesn’t work, and also the myth that you shouldn’t be attached to the results. He talks about the importance of curiosity driving the day. We get into a deep conversation about when you’re protecting yourself, you’re not serving others. Enjoy the episode.
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Our guest is Jim Padilla, who is the visionary captain of the ship for a company called Gain The Edge. He is a master sales trainer, an expert team builder, and a launch expert. He’s got over twenty years of experience in building teams and leading them to success. He has a solid track record of achieving results. More than that, he’s a launch expert. He and his team, which consists of his lovely wife, Cyndi, have led dozens of entrepreneurs to huge success in their launches, driving sales, and surpassing goals and expectations. He shared the stage with Jay Abraham and Les Brown. Jim brings an exceptional level of experience and talent to the world of sales. His real talent is that he can inspire his team to achieve their full potential. Who doesn’t want that? Jim, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me here, John.
Let me ask you your own story of origin. You can go back as far as you want. You can go back to childhood or to when you were in school. How did you start thinking about, “I have a talent here of inspiring people, I see that there are some problems when people try to grow a company that I might be able to fix?”
I will go back to childhood because it sets the context. I was born in a pretty unfortunate situation with teenage parents. My dad took off right away. Mom pretty much freaked out and responded with a lot of fear, rage and anger to a tough situation. It was an abusive, loveless and Godless home that I grew up in. I ended up in foster care and on the streets at sixteen running in gangs and getting into lots of trouble and in jail by nineteen.
You can imagine spending every waking moment trying to read the room and figure out how to influence people in your direction, not because you needed them to buy something but because that was the only self-defense mechanism I had. If you didn’t close the sale there, there was a lot more at stake. Little did I know that years later, I’d be making millions of dollars teaching other people how to read the room and influence people in their direction, so that they won’t see you as a threat and they’ll let down their defenses and be able to buy from you.
There’s so much there. First of all, you’re an amazing storyteller. I love that line, “Little did I know.” Suddenly we’re on the journey with you. The premise of any good storyteller is that the stakes are high. If you’re in jail at nineteen, it doesn’t get higher than that. The stakes are pretty high for basic survival. Let’s talk about reading the room. I joke with people now, you still have to read the Zoom even if it’s a virtual call. That’s why I’m big on having people have their cameras on. Even if people are on mute, you can still read the Zoom, the room or the energy a little bit in my humble opinion. Let’s go back to some basics of reading the room in general. Everything from, “This is where I lost them, where they got confused and where they got distracted.” Pick any one of those three things to talk about how people can be better at reading the room.
[bctt tweet=”Curiosity drives the day.” username=”John_Livesay”]
We can touch on all three of them. There are some common threads, a through-line if you will, for all of them. The first and foremost is you have to come to complete surrender to the reality that it’s not about you. If it’s about you, meaning you have to make the sale. You’re positioned a certain way and you can’t tarnish that. You can’t say certain things but you’ve got to say others. You’ve got to self-censor. If all of those things are in play, you are not focusing on the audience. You are not focusing on the other person, which means you are not going to serve them because you’re in conflict with serving you. That is going to impact all of this.
You have to get to a place where curiosity is what drives the day. You have to assume the best of the person you speak to always. If I assume you’re trying to hurt me, then I now have to start protecting myself. If I’m protecting me, I’m not serving you. Everything has to be outward-focused and you have to come to that place where you believe the best intentions of other people. We have five core values in our company and they tie into our values as people. It’s ownership, relationship, partnership, flexibility, and optimism.
I am an eternal optimist. I don’t mean glass half full, I mean, if you turn around and see that your dog took a crap on that rug, your immediate thought should be, “I have been wanting a new rug.” You have to see the high side of everything. In transparency on that, I had a big blessing from God to help make that happen. He dropped me in a bombshell of an upbringing. I learned at a young age that everything is overcomeable. When I see a problem, I don’t go, “Oh my God, a problem.” I go, “How do I solve it?”
Let’s reframe and restate those wonderful values, not just business but personal because that’s the first takeaway. They’re not separate. We’ve all experienced that now in a much greater way than we ever did. I’m one person at home and one person at work. Now that’s been blended for a while, people are like, “Oh.” These all have to be consistent: partnership, relationship, ownership, flexible, and optimist. This concept of ownership, to me, means you’re not pointing fingers, you’re not blaming other people. The framework of being a partner means that when someone is a little down, you might be there to help boost them up and that it’s a win-win thing. Of course, the relationship is the premise of that long-term view. Even if I get mad or I say something that hurts your feelings, we don’t throw the whole thing away.
If you notice, they’re all tied together. All of them are interwoven. We talk about them so much here. We make business decisions based on that. We’ve let people go from our team who were fantastic humans. We started realizing, “How come there’s all this friction here all the time?” We started evaluating. We say, “The way they handled that demonstrated no ownership. They didn’t take partners. They didn’t demonstrate any flexibility. There was no optimism, there was only finger-pointing.” It didn’t work and it’s not because they weren’t great people, they don’t fit here. We look at that through all things.
Here’s another huge takeaway you gave everybody, Jim. If you don’t define your brand, values, culture, whether you’re a one-person company or not, then you don’t have a moral compass to decide whether you should take an action or not, “Is this a fit for me or not?” That comes back to what you were also saying about this premise of reading the room and building trust. When you have these five values, as you described, defined, integrated, and not just pieces of paper somewhere, what that allows you to do is to trust your gut even more because you know who you are at such a defined level. That is where most people think, “I don’t need to define my culture. My values don’t matter.” They then wonder why things are hectic, chaotic and not streamlined. Without this map and this compass, moral or otherwise, no wonder you’re lost, both emotionally and in your business.
Gain The Edge: You end up teaching people how to read the room and how to influence them so that they won’t see you as a threat. By doing this, they’ll let down their defenses and be able to buy from you.
Part of the success of what you do with companies is you’re digging things that are hard for people, like getting leads, closing business, and getting people to trust you. I’ve never heard anyone say what you said, which is, “If I’m protecting myself, I’m not serving you.” I need to take a minute and let that land not just intellectually but emotionally. You start looking back on personal relationships, maybe breakups or conflicts with friends. What this reminds me of is years ago, when I was in my twenties, someone said to me, “It’s the old question, do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?” It was the first time I’d ever heard it framed like that. All these years later, I’m hearing you say it differently but still equally impactful. Are those things connected?
Yes, very much so. You mentioned the term win-win a little bit ago. Not to douse out your fire on that, but we take a different perspective. I had analyzed this for a while because you hear everybody talk about the win-win. It’s a common term. When I hear the win-win, it implies equality. It implies that you and I are both here to give something to this. Most of the time, it requires me to give you a certain amount and you to give me a certain amount. Usually, there’s some measurement involved. John, neither one of us is equal. There are things that you’re better at. There are things that I’m better at. For us to both be equal, then one of us has to compromise. I’m going to say, “If John is going to give me this much, I’ll reduce what I’m going to give,” or you do the opposite. We’ve tweaked that term and we come from the perspective of win-them. What that means is we show up to ensure they win. That means I give 100% of me and you give 100% of you. If my 100% is bigger, that’s the way it goes.
I love busting myths. We talked about another one we’re going to bust later. That’s why I wanted to go through all of those five to make sure that I was having the same semantic meaning. I’m glad that you said no. Let’s put it in terms of personal relationships. People sometimes can go, “I see myself in that story.” If you’re in a relationship with someone and they’re keeping track of how many times they take out the garbage versus you taking out the garbage, first of all, that’s exhausting. People can get caught up in that minutia because they are coming from that premise of everything has to be equal.
That goes back to childhood. I have two younger sisters and my mom would make us lunch and put out the three glasses of milk and pour it. My sisters and I would hold the glasses next to each other, and if one person got half a millimeter more, we would complain that it wasn’t equal. The poor woman, she’s trying to make kids’ lunch and now we’re like, “It’s not equal. It’s not fair.” If you do that with your relationships outside of your siblings, let alone in the business world, it’s not just exhausting but it’s counterproductive, isn’t it?
It is. I’ll give you a real-world example and our company is involved. We provide outsourced sales divisions for scaling entrepreneurs. We have a strong, well-known client we’re working with who has an internal team. We have our team. There are two different initiatives that are usually happening. While we worked on a project, their team and our team were working. My team kept coming to me. Even if we have a situation, they’re like, “We need to get them to do this. We need to get them to do that.” If the client needs this, I’m like, “All those things we need to get them to do costs money, time or both. What are we going to do?”
Taking ownership. Are we taking partners in that or are we dictating? Are we being flexible in saying, “How do we adapt?” Are we being optimistic and saying, “How do we help them get there?” Are we taking the partnership? Are we taking ownership? Here’s my definition of ownership, so you have it. My part of ownership says I’m going to help you. However, I can get the result. Your part of ownership says that you’re going to get the result whether I help you or not. That’s ownership. That means I’m going to get it done somehow. We’re not taking ownership of that situation. We’re saying, “They need to do this and I’ll do that.” I’m like, “No. We need to bring solutions, optimism, strategy, vulnerability and flexibility often.”
[bctt tweet=”When I protect myself I am not servicing you.” username=”John_Livesay”]
We need to show up as a partner. That’s how this works. What that’s going to help them do is they’re going to help them go, “They’re awesome partners. Look at what they’re doing. They’re thinking of us first.” We’re showing up going, “I can’t be all in for you because I’ve got to cover my back.” That’s the whole definition of win-win. If I show up to ensure you win, I automatically assume you’re doing the same for me, and I don’t have to worry about anything else.
You also talked about seeing the best in people and trusting. Do you ever find yourself regretting that sometimes or saying, “Somebody took advantage of me. They didn’t keep their word. How do I navigate that so I don’t make that same mistake again?”
I answer that a little differently than I would have when I was 22. At this point, I have to assume. To quote my good friend Susie Carter, “The tongue in your mouth and the tongue in your shoes are misaligned for some reason that I can’t identify.” If your mouth says one thing and your tongue in your shoe says something else, there’s something going on that I haven’t been able to figure out. You’re promising me something because you feel you need to, but then you’re doing something else. I have to look at that as much as what was my part of that. What do I own in that process? Was there something I could have said or done differently? Could I have chosen a better partner more wisely? It’s easier for me to go, “Jim, this is a you problem. How do we fix it?” If I created the problem, then good news, guys, I can fix the problem. If the problem is yours, I can’t do anything to fix it.
Who owns the problem? It has always been a big part of that analysis of that and emotional intelligence. I want to get your opinion about this, Jim. Is it not being attached to anyone’s outcome or anyone’s sale having to go a certain way? Is that part of it too?
As a generalization, you could say yes, but that phrase has always bugged me a little bit.
Let’s talk about it. We’re trying to come up from not being attached to one thing making us happy or successful are changing our self-esteem. How else can we look at that?
Gain The Edge: Name one thing that you’ve bought recently from somebody you didn’t know, like or trust. You didn’t buy it because you knew, liked, or trusted it. You bought it because you wanted it.
First of all, in the way I see it, if I don’t care enough, if you purchase this product, on some level, I’m having to admit that I don’t care if you solve your problem. What does that make me? I have to do a better job of preparing you for what we are trying to solve or make it crystal clear that this isn’t a good fit if you’re not committed to solving this problem. All we do is solve your problem and help you get there. I have to be able to own that frame. Do I claim all of my future success on whether or not this transaction goes through? Absolutely not. I’m a smart business owner. I know how to do this. However, I have to be attached on some level, otherwise, I probably shouldn’t be in business. That’s my lens on this.
I get it. We can be attached to solving a problem but if that person is not attached or committed to solving a problem, then we go, “That’s not a fit then.”
We have to be real. If you and I were in a sales conversation and the opportunity was presenting itself, at some point, I have to be able to come to the fact that my job is to make sure you had crystal clarity about all options on the table, and all consequences of not taking action. That way, I know you made an eyes wide open decision to do what’s best for you. That’s all I can do.
Let’s talk about that because that’s a big thing that most people don’t present or think about, let alone tap into what is the cost of not making a decision or taking action now? They come up with all kinds of excuses why they can’t take action now or something’s changed, “I said I was going to, but now I’m doing this instead.” The endless rounds of reasons why. There’s one thing when people say, “No, this isn’t a fit,” and there’s one who’s like, “I’m going to do it,” and they change their mind and you’re like, “What?”
A lot of times too it’s about being incredibly aware and present at the moment. Let’s say you and I are talking, and we spent twenty minutes and you’re saying, “I am so done with this situation. I cannot stand having to decide, do I go serve this client or do I go to my son’s soccer game? I am so tired of lying to my wife about the fact that we’re not making money in this business because I don’t want her to think I’m a failure,” or whatever that is. Then they say that they’ve got the option to take advantage of the business offer and they go, “I’ll wait until next year.” “I’m good with that. I’m good with you waiting until next year because I’m going to be in business next year and I need clients too.”
This is all good. However, I want you to be crystal clear on whether you’re going to survive that, and I’ve got a real challenge for you, John. Why is it okay for you to continue to live your life? Why are you making a choice every day of, ‘Do I go see my son’s soccer game or do I go serve a client?’ when you should be able to do both? What are we going to do to solve that? Are you interested in solving that? Because we’re not solving the problem of you getting more clients. We’re solving the problem with you having more choice and freedom, and being the man that you told your wife you were going to be. All that is, is me being an unapologetic truth-teller.
[bctt tweet=”You have to come to complete surrender to the reality that it’s not always about you.” username=”John_Livesay”]
Without making them feel horrible.
Was that abusive, the way they laid that out to you?
No.
It’s truth-telling and it’s because I care.
You can teach other people to do this. That’s the other thing. Some people are like, “Ugh.” We talked before the show that one of the big myths out there besides win-win or not being attached to the outcome and now we have a third one. To get people to buy from you, they have to know, like and trust you. Get people to know you. Start networking or whatever. We both are on the same page that that is the worst way to run your life and your business. What are your thoughts on why that doesn’t work?
I call it the myth of the know, like and trust. It’s in our realm. We’ve got the KLT with a line through it. That’s what that means all the time whenever we write that because we talk about it a lot. It’s funny, even from a simple list perspective. Anybody reading this, name one thing that you’ve bought from somebody you didn’t know, like or trust? I guarantee it’s happened, whether it was a burger or a car. You didn’t buy it because you knew, liked and trusted them, you bought it because you wanted it. We do that all the time. Somewhere and some way, I want to know who this guy is. I want to give him all the credit for it.
Gain The Edge: A win-win implies equality between two parties. The truth is that neither one of them are equal. In order for there to be equality, one has to compromise.
Some guy somewhere was the first person to use the know, like and trust as a factor, and everybody thought it was so good that they started repeating it. It’s in every sales book in the history of man and I don’t get it because it’s not a factor. Here’s the biggest one. First of all, you need to be able to know yourself and know your outcomes as a result of moving forward. You need to be able to like the path that is laid out. You need to be able to like the fact that you can make a great decision about this and like the decisions that you make.
You need to be able to trust the fact that you are in a position to make the right decisions and that whatever decisions you make are good ones. You do not need to know, like or trust me. Here’s the thing, as a salesperson, here’s the number one killer for you. Salespeople, are you paying attention to? Stop what you’re doing, pay attention right here. Pause on whatever it is you’re doing right now. If you are focused on getting people to like you, you are your biggest problem because you need to be able to speak the truth to clients, and not being liked is in direct conflict with speaking the truth.
You gave us an example of speaking the truth without being worried about whether the person who heard it liked it or stopped liking you. Zooming back into personal relationships, so many people struggle with the rule of a parent is, “I want my kids to like me.” Sometimes they’re not going to like you. You give them boundaries and structure. If you give them everything they want all the time so they would like you, they don’t need another friend. They need a parent. That’s the same fear that happens in the business world. It’s like, “I’ve got to be friends with everyone who buys from me, otherwise I don’t feel good about myself.” You’ve reframed that up to, “You need to be a truth-teller.” It’s the same thing with your kids, “I’m sure you don’t feel like doing your homework, but you have to do it before you get to do something fun or whatever it is.” It’s the same structure. I love that instead of getting somebody else to know, like and trust us.
Flipping that back as a mirror to them and saying, “You’ve got to know yourself, like what decisions you are making, and trust that you’re on the right decision that you trust your own.” That is a big reason why people don’t buy and it’s an unspoken one in my observations. They’ll give you 101 excuses or objections but at the bottom of all of that where your intuitive skill is able to go do that is they don’t trust themselves to make the right decision. Therefore, it leaks into every area of your life. This is the person that can’t decide what to order at the restaurant or can’t decide where to go to a restaurant. Everything is so overwhelming to them, so why would that suddenly stop when they have to decide what car to buy, what house to pick or whatever, let alone hiring someone.
Here’s the beauty of this. When you learn to tell the unapologetic truth, you’ll learn to do it in such a way that people won’t run. You’ll start recognizing that this is what keeps them closer to you, not pushes them farther away and it becomes something that you start to own and appreciate. I can tell you that I am more direct. The Bronx Puerto Rican to me comes out a lot but I also lead with my heart. I care about people immensely. I’m at a place where I don’t censor myself about anything. I say what I’m thinking.
Do you know how many people hang up on me? It has been a few years since the last person who hung up on me. Why? Because the truth is magnetic. We’re wired for the truth. They may not like it, they may not want to hear what you’re saying but they need it. That’s why they don’t go away. Here’s a great one. The last time that I can recall somebody specifically hanging up was when one of our sales managers was running an event years ago. We had a client who was in Sweden and he came to this event in San Francisco, a week after his parents died. It was a big effort. He was going through this big emotional weekend and he got to this place that’s going to make a $12,000 investment.
[bctt tweet=”You have to mentally get into a place where curiosity is what drives the day.” username=”John_Livesay”]
He had all kinds of excuses and our sales manager, Mike at the time said, “Here’s the deal. You’re not committed. You don’t want this. I don’t want to spend my time trying to convince you of something you don’t want because you’re not committed. You don’t have a dedication and commitment to what you say you want. I’m going to wish you well.” He hung up after he yelled at him for five minutes, “How dare you? I flew across the country a week after my parents died. I committed. I want this.” He hung up on him, and the next day called him back and gave him his credit card. He goes, “You’re so on point. If I want this, I’ve got to do something about it.” He hung up on him, but then he couldn’t sleep because he knew the truth hit him in the face.
If people want to work with you and learn more about Gain the Edge, you do everything from a done-for-you sales team, to launching products for companies, to continuing to help them grow. It’s one of three different kinds of buckets. They can check out your website, GainTheEdgeNow.com, but what’s the best way for people who want to learn more to see if what you have is a fit for what they need?
I’m going to do something bold here. I don’t know why I felt compelled to do this but in the interest of truth-telling, authenticity and taking partners, I’m going to drop my number here. You guys can call me. I can give you any one of our opt-ins, all that stuff. I was going to say, text me. My phone has been on silent for over years. I don’t even know if it’s ringing. I can’t afford the distraction. If I’m here with you, I can’t worry about what’s happening on the phone. Text me and tell me that you heard me on this show here and let’s talk. Please, don’t spam me and stuff. The number is (916) 587-1946. Give me a text and tell me what’s up. I’d love to talk about what you are doing, how are you scaling your business? What problems are you trying to solve? Who are you trying to solve them for? How can we help you? How can I introduce you to somebody who can?
Thank you for sharing those words of wisdom and your own vulnerability. I could talk to you forever. Anybody would be smart to take you up on that offer to text you to take a look at the truth, as they say, sets us free. You’ve got the proven track record that I’ve seen in action and working for a lot of mutual friends. I’ve seen it in their actions as well. Thanks again, Jim, for being on the show and telling us all that we needed to know.
Thanks for being able to share. Guys, please go put this stuff in action. Trust yourself. You’ve got everything you’ve ever needed to be able to have great, powerful and influential conversations at any time. You’ve got to stop thinking you can’t because you’re the only hurdle that you’ve got.
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Profitable Relationships With Dov Gordon
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
When you think of leaders, you often think of the celebrity-like leader—someone charismatic and loud-spoken. They have a big fanbase and are all over social media. While they work for others, they’re just not everyone’s cup of tea. Opposite that, did you know that there is also another type of leader, the under-the-radar type? If you’re someone who’s looking to be more low-key but still get the results you want, then this episode is for you. Join host John Livesay and his very special guest, Dov Gordon, the CEO of ProfitableRelationships.com, as they talk about forging profitable relationships and what it takes to be an under-the-radar leader—someone who naturally attracts the right people because they’re genuinely interested in who you are.
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Listen to the podcast here
Profitable Relationships With Dov Gordon
Our guest is Dov Gordon who has created a company called Profitable Relationships. He talks about a backwards network giving you a laser focus, as well as how you can become an under-the-radar leader. Enjoy the episode.
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Our guest is Dov Gordon who helps consultants get ideal clients by becoming under–the–radar leaders in their industry. He helps them use backwards networking to reach their ideal clients consistently. A lot of experienced consultants know that the best clients come from referrals and relationships, but referrals are unpredictable and relationships take a lot of time. Instead, Dov helps you become this under-the-radar leader in your industry. It gets better because he also shows you how to leverage the relationship marketing he had been doing for free into a six-figure revenue stream. Dov, welcome to the show.
John, it’s good to be here.
I would like to ask you to take us back to your own story of origin. You can tell us where you’re living now, but if you can even come back to childhood or university days where you started learning about the importance of relationships.
I grew up in New York. I live in Israel. I’ve been here for quite a number of years. I never went to college. I never had a real job but I had spent my teenage years reading business books. At some point after getting married at 21 and realizing, “I need to figure out what I want to do when I grow up. How am I going to support this little family here?” I came across the idea of business coaching and somehow that called to me. I’ve never worked for a company. I didn’t know anything, but I knew that I had an ability. I knew that I genuinely cared and I had what I’ll call talent.
I’m going to offer a distinction because an early mentor of mine said to me, “Dov, you’ve got a lot of talent. You need to turn that to develop skills, systems and processes.” I remember it was such a shock because I had never made that distinction. I didn’t understand that at all. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I knew I had the ability. I knew that I could coach people even though I never had a job. That’s the typical thing like, “Who are you?” I’ve got answers for that from many years of doing it. A lot of people suffer from imposter syndrome because of comments like that. I’m happy to address that.
I knew that I had a lot to offer, but I didn’t understand why I was struggling. I didn’t quite understand this whole idea. I remember when he said to me, “You need to develop skills,” I was thinking, “What kind of skills? Playing the piano is a skill. Maybe carpentry is a skill. What kind of skills do I need as a consultant? What does it even look like? What is a consulting skill?” I’d been learning a lot of different things. I never realized that they were skills or I never understood what’s a skill or a skill of asking a good question or a skill of telling a good story as you teach or skill of articulating an idea in such a way that it meets people where they are and then leads them to the next small step. The skill of leading elegant sales conversation, making a recommendation and listening. Each one of those can break down into many different, smaller skills.
What’s a process? What’s a plan? It’s a series of steps that you follow to go from here to there. I was just doing things. The first 7, 8 years that I was trying to make it as a consultant, I had some success but it was like Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll right back down, and then you start all over again. I had that frustration and that epiphany that my mentor gave me was one of countless. Thank God, I’m still alive. I still have my epiphanies where I like, “How come I didn’t understand that before?” That’s what happens. I’ve come to understand that’s the way life is. Life is where you keep moving forward despite the fact that you can’t see all the way there. You have to move forward imperfectly. You’ve got to listen to that inner knowing. We all have this conflict, the inner knowing, balanced with the inner doubt. Some days one is stronger and some days the other is stronger, but we all need to keep moving. It’s that forward motion that gives us the clarity that we think we need before we take the next step.
[bctt tweet=”Become an under the radar leader.” username=”John_Livesay”]
Let’s talk about the imposter syndrome since you’ve hinted at it. Who am I? That is something that can haunt you even at the highest levels unless you heal it or work on it. I remember watching Oprah being interviewed once. She said, “I can have the biggest star, CEO on my show, and you think that person needs reassurance?” I know for myself once I was speaking at a summit, there are a lot of other speakers on a two-day event. I started reading the bios of everyone else, which I don’t recommend. There’s a Harvard graduate, a New York Times bestseller and I thought, “I don’t have any of those.”
You can do such a game with your mind where I’m like, “The woman who hired me is going to get fired.” I started stressing out and I thought to myself, “Wait a minute. What do I care about when I hear a speaker? Do I care where they went to school? No. Do I care how many books they sold? No. I care about how they make me feel, think and if I learn anything. I have to trust her that she’s been doing this for several years and that she knows what she’s doing enough to say, ‘I deserve to be on this stage with everyone else.’” That’s how I talk myself out of that imposter syndrome there for a minute. I would love to hear how you help others to possibly do that.
I don’t know that I work on that directly, but when you work on yourself, that definitely improves. I remember during those first eight years, I was leading a strategy project. I started a CEO peer group for companies between $10 million and $200 million to $250 million in sales. I remember asking one of my first clients. I assume he just liked me and felt like I could probably help him with something. My fee was so low that he went along with it. I remember asking him like, “What does a million-dollar business have? How many employees do they have?” He gave me the obvious answer, which is, “It depends on what they do.” At the same time, I was comfortable enough to ask him. I wasn’t afraid to look stupid.
When I was a kid, I learned that if you’re embarrassed, you’re not going to learn. I’m very shy by nature. I’ve overcome it to some degree, but it’s still my nature. Over the years, I’ve come to care less and less about what other people think because I’ve come to realize more and more that these people that I thought are such geniuses are very often idiots. Sometimes they’re incompetent and they don’t realize it. Sometimes they’re incompetent, but they try to compensate with their strong personality, arrogance and disdain for the people that they’re supposed to be serving.
Two things are going on here. There’s a little bit of imposter syndrome and then there’s a shyness issue. One of your attributes and what makes you so likable is you’re confident without being arrogant. You are able to explain your benefits, for example, why you’d be a great guest on the show even without being pushy. If that’s something that a shy person can do, it doesn’t come “naturally” to you, then that inner confidence, that energy you put out when we were getting to know each other, comes through. I’m like, “That’s the energy I want to be with. That’s the energy I want to bring to my show.” There’s a fine line between no confidence and arrogance, especially if you tend to be someone who’s shy or might have in your past the imposter syndrome. I’m trying to give as many different things that people who are reading to go, “That’s me and how did he overcome that?” A lot of it has to do with the awareness that at the end of the day, what people are engaging with is our energy and our likeability factors.
I remember when my speaking agent called me after I was being interviewed for a speaking engagement and she said, “Congrats. They picked you over the other speakers. They liked your energy.” They literally said it that way. We think we were being hired because of our content, our book, our video or what you say in the interview. Later the person who hired me said, “You made me feel good talking to you. I figured if you’ve made me feel good interviewing you, you can make all 300 people in the audience feel good.”
I want to emphasize that as a starting point for these Profitable Relationships, which is one of the companies that you are offer and help people. I’m sure a lot of readers are saying, “John, already get to the question, what is an under-the-radar leader?” Because most people think the opposite, “I’ve got to be everywhere. I want to be on the top of everyone’s radar.” The first person they think of when they think of a sales storytelling speaker, “Bring John in.” You’re flipping that on its head, which I always love. That grabs your attention. You’re saying, “No, be an under-the-radar leader.” What is that defined as?
Profitable Relationships: We’re human beings. We don’t buy the products and services that are best for us. We buy the products and services that are best marketed to us.
I’m not sure where people are coming in with this, but at ProfitableRelationships.com, we talk about helping consultants, experts or whoever become under-the-radar leaders in your industry, as opposed to this famous celebrity type, which is the model that we tend to see more often. I’ve found that it’s important for most of us. It’s not just the right model for most of us. I discovered that myself. You wake up in the morning and you think, “I’m good at what I do. I’ve got a lot of value to offer, but how do I get clients?” You discover that there’s a big difference between being good. People do not beat a path to your door just because you’ve got something good.
We’re all human beings. We don’t buy the product and services that are best for us. We buy the products and services that are best marketed and sold to us. We buy a good story. It doesn’t matter if the story is true or not. Not that it doesn’t matter, but in terms of our decision, we might regret it later on. It’s remarkable. We buy a story and then we convince ourselves that we buy logically. Who is it who said, “A man buys something for two reasons, the reason he tells his wife and then the real reason?” I forget where what that’s from.
This is an important foundational point to get out there. This is not the right path for most people. That celebrity, “Look at me. I’m posting 5 or 10 times a day on Instagram and Facebook.” I came to understand that from frustration, from getting up and thinking, “How do I get clients?” All the models that I saw were people who I felt like there was no way that I could be like that and still be true to myself. I’d have to be faking it. I’m not interested in getting clients because I’m pretending to be somebody who I’m not. I want clients who want to work with me because of who I genuinely am. Most people want that.
The celebrity approach, there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s totally fine for people who are naturals at that. That is a fit for their personality and their values. As long as they’re being honest and ethical, that’s what they should do, but the rest of us need to become comfortable being ourselves, which is our greatest competitive advantage. We need to become comfortable and as some would say, “Find your voice.” Another thing is that most consultants, experts or coaches are not looking to build a multi-seven-figure business and scale. That’s not what most people want.
Most people either avoided the corporate world or left it after 10 or 20 years. What they want is to be doing great work with great clients, and making a great mid to upper six-figure income, and have some time to enjoy it with their family, their friends, by themselves or whatever they happen to like. They want to feel like they’re doing good work. They have an opportunity to take the skills that they’ve honed over the years, that they’ve mastered and applied to important projects that matter. People listen and appreciate their expertise, and to be well and fairly paid for it. That’s what people want. When you take those two things together and you recognize that 85% of the people should not be on the path of the charismatic guru. They should be instead on the path of mastery.
Once you realize that, “I’m not even trying to build this multi-seven-figure firm. I don’t need to do what they’re doing. What do I need to do? What’s the value of what I sell? If a new client is worth $5,000, $50,000, $150,000, how much am I trying to bring in?” You develop a very simple model. It’s rough but it does not have to be absolute because things change, but you need something that’s clear enough to be a target to aim for, and then you build simple steps towards it. That is a path of mastery and that comes from a deeper understanding of who your ideal client is, how do you talk to them, and what are the things that get them to move.
Over the years, the idea of becoming an under-the-radar leader in your industry develops because going back several years now, I was shifting from more of a corporate focus to working with other people like me, who I realized that I finally figured a lot of this out. I won’t say all of it. I still haven’t figured all of it out. I see that there are people who are a few years behind me and they’re struggling. I seem to have this ability to suffer through certain things and then teach clearly to others in a way that saves them some aggravation. Everybody’s got to walk across their own hot coals one way or the other.
[bctt tweet=”A backwards network gives you laser focus.” username=”John_Livesay”]
That gives part of the authenticity. If you’ve experienced the pain point that you’re solving yourself, you’ve been in their shoes. That’s the truth for me as a speaker to sales organizations. Having been in corporate sales for many years, I know what it’s like to have deadlines, quotas and all kinds of challenges, internally, externally and politically. My stories and my credibility are much higher than someone who maybe just wrote a book about it. One of the things I teach is your ability to show empathy and describe a problem in such a way that people see themselves in the problem, or they’re going to feel like you’re in your head. That makes you relatable and then they’re leaning into, “If you understand my problem, you probably have a solution for it.”
I would say that this under-the-radar concept is quite revolutionary because if we all think, “I have to be the next Tony Robbins in order to be happy, successful or feel good about myself,” then that’s a very high bar to hit. If you say there are a lot of people that “aren’t famous” that is doing so well that you’ve maybe never even heard of. They’re under the radar for the majority of people, but within their specific niche, there are a few names in the industry that people go, “I know that guy.”
What I came to realize is that if you get to know or if you are known by 30, 50, 100 well-placed people across your industry, you’ll have all the clients you want. You can be as busy as you want. You don’t need to be well known by millions of people. What so many people are aiming for is they’re trying to do things that they think are going to make them internet-famous or they want to have a bestselling book. There are places for all these things. Everything has its place. I never come and say, “This doesn’t work. Do it my way.” I think that’s idiocy. Everything works and everything fails. The question is, why does it work when it works? Why does it fail when it fails? When you have that understanding, then you can devise your own simple system that works for you. That’s what everyone is looking for.
That’s what I came to realize. That was a big insight for me as I came to understand that if you have relationships with well-placed people from several dozen perhaps to maybe 100 or 150. If you want to be a successful leadership consultant, you cultivate those relationships. You can get published in whatever publication you want based on your connections. You can get to any stage that you want. You can get into any company that you want through introduction with this network that you’ve created. It doesn’t mean that anyone’s going to just introduce you for any reason. You have to have a reason.
I know people who know Tony Robbins, but I don’t have a good reason to be introduced to him. I can’t think of what I would possibly do for him. It doesn’t mean that I can’t, but if I woke up and I was thinking like, “I have something that’s good for Tony Robbins. I have people who know him. He knows them in one way or the other. Some have worked with him and some who they’ve been clients of his or whatever it might be.” Not only they’ve attended the workshop but they were higher-level clients. If you have a reason and you have a relationship, then you can get to places that other people can’t get to.
You also talk about backwards networking. The first question I have is how do you define frontwards networking? Is that the normal get an introduction to somebody, go to an event, start hobnobbing? Is that what forward networking is, the traditional way of what we think it is?
I wouldn’t call that typical. That’s typical networking.
Profitable Relationships: People start to feel better about themselves when they get positive feedback or validation from people that they see as on a pedestal.
What’s backwards?
Backwards is what I’m talking about. It’s where you recognize that I don’t need to know everybody. I need to be known by a relatively small number of the right people. There are a few different ways to go about it. I’ve been helping clients do what I’ve done over the years, which is to form what I now think of as an alchemy network. I’ve got two alchemy networks myself right now. One is called the JVMM, which is for more colleagues and we promote each other. If you’re in that network, feel free to say anything you want or ask me anything about it. The other is a network that’s more for consultants who are looking to grow by referral and relationship.
As a consultant, I came to recognize that generally, your best clients come from relationships, referrals, word of mouth. The problem is that referrals are unpredictable. Most people don’t know how to build a system to generate referrals consistently that works. Number two, relationships take a lot of time and you don’t know when it’s going to bear fruit, whether this relationship will lead to anything. On the other hand, it’s not a relationship if you go into it transactionally. A relationship is when two people recognize like, “Let’s get to know each other and let’s move forward in a way that we’re both better off.”
The idea of now forming a network that is comprised either of a network of your colleagues that you’re all working together, marketing to similar audiences, and you can expose each other, introduce each other to your own audiences. That would be one type of alchemy network. Another kind of alchemy network is a network comprised of your ideal clients. People who you serve at a higher level. The third type would be recommenders. For example, a client of mine is a consultant and he does projects at large companies, $500 million-plus for anywhere from $200,000 up to low-seven figures. That’s like a 90-day to multi-year. For him, a decision-maker or the CEO or managing director of a $500 million division does need to be somewhat involved in the decision to hire him because the price is rather steep, but more so because it involves multiple departments in the company. The likelihood that the managing director or CEO is going to be at least somewhat involved in the decision is very high.
I’m mixing a few things together. Let me take a step back. I suggested that he form an alchemy network comprised of recommenders, people who are 1 or 2 levels below the CEO, still in a very senior position, but much easier to reach. Because when you’re forming a network, in his case he formed a network for R&D Directors at manufacturing companies doing $500 million or more. He’s reaching out to these people cold on LinkedIn, but he’s getting a lot of them responding. I remember he told me once that within 48 to 72 hours, he had five of these senior executives from $500 million and $1 billion-plus companies book themselves on his calendar as a result of some cold messaging that we had worked on together, reaching out on LinkedIn, and a little bit back and forth. That intrigued them because he wasn’t trying to pitch them something and so on. I don’t remember exactly what we did in his case, but the idea was that we were telling them about the alchemy network and inviting them to a conversation to see if it was a fit for them.
It would be harder to get a relationship with those people if you were trying to pitch them something on the get-go is what I’m hearing. The tweet I think I like is, “Backwards networking gives you laser focus.” You’re not trying to be all things to all people, whether you’re starting a mastermind free for them or you’re trying to just get to know them by the right people who can do that. That’s the takeaway that I’m hearing. I know you started the joint venture mastermind. Originally, it didn’t cost anything and you just wanted to get the right number of people in there. Now, it has become so desirable to get in that people are willing to pay to be in it. A lot of people think, “Start something for free. That doesn’t make any sense.” Yet it does, if you’re building relationships with people that could eventually help you or hire you in some form. It’s the other takeaway.
There are different approaches. One would be you do this for free, which I did in one of my groups for the JVMM for several years, and then I realized I need to know who wants to be here. It was a very scary decision at the time to switch from free to paid, but we did and it worked out well. We’ve grown stronger and stronger ever since. I don’t charge high. It’s not like a $10,000 or $20,000 or $25,000 a year membership. It’s $1,000 to $2,000 a year. That’s what I recommend for these alchemy networks. It should be relatively easy for either your colleagues, ideal clients or recommenders to say, “Yes, I want to be a part of that.”
[bctt tweet=”If you’re embarrassed, you’re not going to learn.” username=”John_Livesay”]
It’s a little bit of a different strategy depending on how you’re going about it and who it’s for. The idea of a recommender for this client, Mike, I suggested that he go for recommenders because it would be almost impossible to get a group going for the CEOs. Their area of responsibility is broad and many people and big companies are demanding their attention. If you go a level or two lower, the R&D directors don’t have access as much. He formed a network of R&D directors with who he understands their problems. Some of them will join his network and then from those, he gets to build those relationships.
Suddenly, he finds himself with great relationships with well-placed people across major companies across the United States. He now has backdoor access to many ideal potential clients. It’s like a backdoor to your ideal client’s office. One thing we designed was a simple process where over time as he gets to know them in his network, he helps identify a relatively small project with some of the members when they’re ready. Maybe it’s a $25,000 to $50,000, 90-day program or coaching of some kind, or a little project focused on something that’s within their domain.
For people who are reading and thinking, I need to form my own little mastermind, whether I charge or not,” one of the issues that come up that you probably can help them with is, aren’t a lot of those people competitors and they’re afraid of sharing private stuff or they want to open up the kimono so to speak and share that, “These are my struggles?” I’m trying to put myself in the head frame of the readers who would go, ”Ask him this.” That’s what came up for me, which is when you’re forming a mastermind, in this case, the story you’re telling us is about R&D. I’m assuming some of them might change jobs and go to competitors, and all those same people are in the same mastermind. How do you address that?
That’s definitely a question and it’s less of an issue than most people imagine it would be. The reason is this. No one is going to be asked to share their secret recipe for the cola or whatever. Every industry has associations, events and meetings where they get up and they talk. A lot of them have benchmarking of this or that kind. There are always things that people are willing to share. There’s a line and the point is that there’s enough value.
For example, in the healthcare world with COVID, the salespeople aren’t able to get into the surgeries or go to the hospital and catch the doctors between surgeries like they did. That’s a common problem across pharmaceutical sales and medical equipment sales. Those people could certainly feel free to talk about that as a challenge that the industry is facing, and maybe give some suggestions on how they’re handling it without feeling like they’re giving away their secrets. Is that a good example?
I think that’s a good example.
Cut back to your story about how you helped them and how things took off because I do want to ask you two more quick questions about your own mastermind and how you’re onboarding people in such an elegant way.
Profitable Relationships: Once you curate and bring together the right people, now you need to do things that make it easy for them to have conversations with each other.
Once you have a small project, then your client there feels confident. It’s like, “I’m not just bringing somebody in who I don’t know.” He’s built that relationship. It becomes a profitable relationship and that can lead to an introduction to a $200,000 or low seven-figure project. He’s only looking for 3 or 4 projects a year.
The masterminds are building trust. It’s the outcome of that.
Not only that but when I made that shift to charging for my first network and then I started a second network and started to focus all of my work with clients on helping them also build similar alchemy networks. I don’t use the term mastermind because that can mean so many different things to so many different people. It is a kind of mastermind for sure. Because it is its own little animal, I had to come up with the name, and it’s a way of creating alchemy. You have all these relationships from so many different places. When you bring them together in a way that is good for everybody, it just creates value from nothing or it creates value from things that you’re already doing. Sometimes it makes sense to do it for free, but sometimes it makes sense to charge. If you’re charging $1,000 to $2,000 a year for membership, you end up in a situation where you’ve created a $50,000, $100,000, $200,000 revenue stream from things that you’re likely doing already for free.
JVMM stands for Joint Venture, which is also known as being affiliate partners with people who have courses to promote, and then the MM stands for?
It’s Joint Venture Marketing Mastermind.
I wanted to make sure I understood what it was called. It is a marketing mastermind. Within that world, since I joined it, I’m very impressed with how you onboard people because that’s a big reason why people don’t feel like they want to join something. It’s “I’ll be lost in this. These people all know each other.” I knew you have a whole series of a few detailed personal introductions to the entire group. The thing that surprised me and impressed me the most at the same time was little steps like an email drip campaign, “Let me know when you have reached out to three people you didn’t know before you joined.” It doesn’t count if you’re reaching out to people you already know.
There are group comments and emails to the group of people asking questions, “Let me know when you’ve contributed some answers to that.” You’re thinking to yourself, “This is bite-sized. I can do this.” Yet, if I didn’t have a little bit of a roadmap from you, I would feel overwhelmed. How do I get to know a hundred and some people at once? You’re like, “Pick three and then comment.” I’m guessing there’s more to come. That is so unique and I wanted to acknowledge it, and then also ask you how you developed it.
[bctt tweet=”Everybody’s got to walk across their own hot coals one way or the other.” username=”John_Livesay”]
Thank you and I’m glad that it’s working for you. I appreciate the feedback. It’s good. How I developed it was just listening. That’s the old skill. Most of my creative ideas are just the result of listening and noticing what’s going on. I believe that when you’re forming your own network, whether it’s of colleagues, ideal clients, recommenders or whatever the network is for, they are two things that are valuable. Number one is curation and number two is conversation. The value that I’m bringing to my members, even with my potential clients, when you’re forming a network of ideal clients or recommenders, I’m positioning myself more as an authority rather than as a colleague.
It’s not a coaching program. It’s not necessarily a training program, but there are some elements where you’re bringing some of your expertise in a way that you’re not necessarily doing with colleagues. There are different reasons why people are joining. There are a lot of nuances here. What I came to realize in either case is that what matters in this type of approach more than anything else is curation and conversation. People can’t just pay and join. That’s something that matters. It’s not a very high fee, but if you’re not the right person, I don’t let you in. That’s something that makes us a little bit different from a typical membership community of one kind or another, or an association where pretty much anybody who can pay and has the right title can get in.
That is something that has made the JVMM solid and strong over the years, even when it was free. I’m not charging $25,000 a year for a membership. It’s not like I have the temptation to kill the goose that lays the golden egg by letting somebody in because that’s $25,000. That’s half a decent car or more. It depends on where you live or less. I don’t have that temptation because no one member is going to make any huge difference in my income here, but what does matter is that I am curating. I think a big part of the secret of this is the curation.
I’ve turned away somebody for JVMM who was probably worth about $100 million. Someone introduced us and he was interested. He had sold a start-up about twelve years earlier for over about close to $350 million, $330 million, I think it was. I imagine he had some investors or partners that had to get their piece of it and Uncle Sam had to get his piece of it. Let’s say he ended up with $50 million at the end. Over 10 to 12 years, you can grow that back to about $100 million. That’s what he was worth but in our conversation, he said something at the very end. He got his credit card and was about to sign up. This was all over Zoom. Suddenly, he said something and I said something, and then he pulled back. He wasn’t sure and then he emailed me afterwards. I clarified and said, “This is this and if that, then it may not be a fit.” That’s it. I’m not going to chase him.
What I look for in my members and this is especially key for people with imposter syndrome, sometimes people start to feel better about themselves when they get positive feedback or validation from people that they see as on a pedestal. I’m guilty of that to some degree as well. You have to learn to get past that. That’s a big part of making this work. When you are no longer concerned about that, and you care more about the total goal, the overall goal, then you’re able to curate your group properly. The second value that you bring with your alchemy network is conversation. Once you curate and bring together the right people, now you need to do things that make it easy for them to have conversations with each other. We’re also busy. You asked me how did I come up with this? I think of it as 365 days of onboarding. You’re not getting something every day to do because that would be too much.
I love that, curation and conversation. What a great alliteration and a way for people to start thinking of, are they doing both? They both need to be done. What’s the best way for people to reach out to you or follow you? What sites do we want to send people to?
We have a couple of short training videos on how to become an under-the-radar leader in your industry by starting an alchemy network if you like to. Some of these ideas are beyond that. We put up a link for your readers at ProfitableRelationships.com/livesay.
Thank you so much for being with us sharing your insights and making us rethink not only networking but relationships and whether we need to be above or below the radar.
Thanks for having me.
Important Links
- https://www.DovGordon.net/
- http://ProfitableRelationships.com/livesay
- ProfitableRelationships.com
- Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course
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Relationship Selling With Jim Cathcart
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Selling is more than just pitching your product. John Livesay’s guest today is Jim Cathcart, a professional speaker, Hall of Famer, and author of Relationship Selling. In this episode, Jim explains how effective selling combines the elements of storytelling and relationships. Did you know that consumers are guided by their feelings when they purchase? That’s right! So if you’re empathetic to your customers and you have a relationship with them, efficient selling becomes easier for you. Want more strategies on relationship selling? Join in!
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Listen to the podcast here
Relationship Selling With Jim Cathcart
Our guest is Jim Cathcart, a giant and a Leader of speakers and salespeople. He is the author of Relationship Selling. He has spoken to over 3,000 different events over many years and has been to China over 73 times, speaking to those crowds. We talk about the will to win requires the will to work. When you go for creating a story that people feel they are in, that is a success story. Enjoy the episode.
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Our guest is Jim Cathcart, who has for many years written over twenty books and had over 3,300 paid speaking engagements, including 70 plus engagements in China. He has been selected as one of the top five speakers on sales and service. He has delivered many talks in many countries that he is an industry leader. His clients span all industries. He is listed in the Professional Speaker Hall of Fame. He is the author of twenty books but one of the big ones is Relationship Selling. I’m so thrilled and honored to have him on. Jim, welcome to the show.
Thank you, John. It’s great to be with you.
Your TEDx Talk has over two million views. Congratulations. That’s the power of a good story.
We are in your line now.
Relationship Selling
You talk about your story of origin in your TEDx Talk. That is one of my favorite questions to open the show with. Would you share with us how you’ve got into the speaking business, how hearing one person sometimes can change your life and who that was for you?
There may well be someone or multiple ones reading this, who get an idea from what we are saying. Nothing necessarily that it’s our idea but that they have an idea because of what they hear. The direction of their life starts to change and becomes profoundly more meaningful and fulfilling than ever before. It certainly happened for me. I grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas. I was born in 1946. It’s the beginning of the Baby Boom. My dad was a telephone repairman. My mom was a housewife taking care of me, my little sister and my invalid grandfather and grandmother who were with us.
I expected a normal, ordinary unremarkable life. I was not a superior student. I was a good student but not on the honor roll. I never was an athlete. I had not been encouraged to go for the gold ring, try to do a big deal and make my life an epic success. I just figured I grew up, be a nice guy, have an ordinary home in an ordinary neighborhood, be a middle manager at the phone company, retire at 65 and die at whatever the statistical date was for my gene pool.
One day, in my twenties, newly married, no college degree, no money in the bank, 50 pounds’ overweight, two-pack-a-day smoker, new baby at home, I’m working for a government agency, the Housing Authority. I was an assistant to the loan specialist, which was just above entry-level. He didn’t need an assistant. I was bored to tears. I was making $500 a month and had nothing to do most days. One day, I was sitting there. I had read all the books on urban renewal for the Housing Authority. That didn’t interest me so I had read the Bible cover to cover at work in three months.
[bctt tweet=”Nurture your nature.” username=”John_Livesay”]
In the next room, there is a radio playing. The voice I heard was not John Livesay, it was Earl Nightingale, the Dean of Personal Motivation. That day in 1972, he said something that has stuck with me and changed the direction of my life, “If you will spend one hour extra every day studying your chosen field, in five years or less, you will be a national expert in that field.” I thought, an hour a day, five days a week, 50 weeks a year, that is 1,250 hours.
If I studied one narrow subject for that, not one subject like medicine but one like skeletal structure, bone surgeon orthopedist, at five years, take longer than that to get my Medical degree but five years of study only on orthopedics, I would be a very knowledgeable person on orthopedics. I wasn’t interested in medicine. I was interested in what the guy on the radio was doing. I said, “I want to do what Nightingale is doing but I didn’t know what that was. I knew it was the field of human development. This was at the beginning of what became later known as the Human Potential Movement.
There were no such thing as professional speakers. They existed but nobody had categorized them as such. There weren’t many of them. The National Speakers Association hadn’t yet been formed. The self-help section of the bookstore or the library didn’t exist. There were a couple of books, Think and Grow Rich, How to Win Friends and Influence People, The Power of Positive Thinking, end of the category. Now, the entire sections of a bookstore would be devoted to that. I didn’t know how to get into his field nor what it meant. I decided to take his advice. I dedicated myself to a one-hour minimum, usually 2 or 3 hours, every day I could, studying what the scientists call applied behavioral science, how to be successful. I read those books I mentioned. I met people who had read those books and that started more collaboration. I heard records, a large disk that has a little hole in them. Kids don’t even know what the records are in a lot of cases. I listened to long play records of Earl Nightingale, Napoleon Hill and W Clement Stone. This was even before Zig Ziglar. I heard audio cassettes. I became fanatical about the field of personal development.
Within a couple of years, I was leading group discussions on goal setting and interpersonal skills, things like that, in the Jaycees, the Junior Chamber of Commerce for free after working on weekends. After a year or so of that, I’ve got a job leading training courses other people had written. I then was able to go out on my own. Sure enough, five years later, I was a full-time trainer and speaker, teaching courses, at first other people’s courses, and then my own. I bought a psychological research firm. I did my own original research and now I have written twenty books and done more things than I ever dreamed of doing back in the day. There is more to that story if you want to explore it.
Relationship Selling: If you spend one hour extra every day studying in your chosen field, you’ll be a national expert in that field in five years or less.
There is so much to unpack there. Every speaker has an intention, goal and objective of making an impact. To hear a story of somebody well known making that impact, totally changed the trajectory of your life. Think of all the people that have now had that ripple effect. That is part of the reason why I love that story so much and the willingness to do the work.
I co-authored a book with Brian Tracy in 2020 called The Will to Win. My chapter was the theme chapter, the will to win, positioned his first and mine last. Other co-authors did chapters in between. Mine was the will to win requires the will to work, the will to show up, the will to endure the pain, the will to be embarrassed and humiliated from time to time by failing, the will to persist when you feel like there is no hope. Somewhere there is an answer. There are lots of will tools that total up to the will to win. The desire to win is useless. The will to win is a whole bunch of other things that combine.
We are certainly going to make that one of the tweets from the episode, “The will to win requires the will to work.” Nobody loves that alliteration more than I do, Jim. I like that on so many levels. One of your more famous books, certainly something that had a big influence on me is this concept of Relationship Selling. I heard you in another interview talking about there is no such thing as a natural-born seller.
There are natural-born talkers. It’s like your specialty is storytelling. There aren’t natural-born storytellers but there are people who have a natural ability to quickly learn storytelling. Some people find that very difficult to learn but can. Once you understand story structure, concept, how to interact with people, how to articulate a particular story in a way that makes it both emotionally and intellectually appealing, that’s learnable. I went to my 30th high school class reunion some time ago. I remember talking with one of my old classmates who said, “What are you doing now?” I said, “I’m a professional speaker.”
[bctt tweet=”The best story is one where people feel they are in it.” username=”John_Livesay”]
He said, “What do you speak about, just anything?” I said, “Sure. They just pay to hear my voice.” He said, “Did what?” I said, “No. Of course, not. I have a specialty. That is what I focus on. It’s sales and human development.” This guy said to me, “You always were a good storyteller.” I said, “What? I was?” He said, “Yeah.” I said, “I wish somebody told me.” John, I didn’t know I was a good storyteller. I grew up in a family of storytellers, in a culture in the South, where storytelling was commonplace. I’ve got a kick out of doing it. I enjoyed performing so I had a little flair to it. It was starting to develop even back in high school.
It’s so funny sometimes I will get off the stage, back in the day, literal stages or even virtual talks, people say, “You are a natural.” I used to go, “What? I worked on this.” Now I just smile and say, “Thank you.” That is a very high compliment because you can’t see the word behind it that is struggling.
Let me interrupt for a second and complete the answer to your earlier question, natural-born salespeople. There are eight stages in the sales cycle, preparation, targeting the right people, connecting with them so that you gain their trust, assessing their needs and wants, solving their problem, convincing them to commit to buying, assuring that they are satisfied, managing yourself and managing your sales career. That’s a different skillset. You might be natural at 1 or 2 of those. For the others, you are going to have to learn or buy resources or subscribe to something that will provide that for you.
I’m so glad you went through all eight. For me, the bookends are the two of the most important ones. Let’s start at the end. This is the one I think most people do not even have an awareness of let alone do, which is managing your career and your own persona as a professional and continuing to learn, refining your skills and not being so dependent on anyone’s job to be at that mercy. At the beginning of it is the need for preparation. One of my favorite quotes is from Arthur Ashe, the tennis pro, “The key to success is confidence. Key to confidence is preparation.” I know in my sales career, that was always the key to my success. I was willing to prepare for every single call. Most people, “I have been doing this long enough. I will just wing it. I will see what comes to me in the moment or whatever.”
Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century (Think and Grow Rich Series)
It’s like the person that gets up to give a speech and they say, “I had these notes,” but tear it up and they wing it. Afterward, it just makes me want to go up to them and say, “You could have been so much better.” It’s not that you need to read this. It’s just that if you don’t do that, organize everything and then follow some format, then we are not going to be in on it. What is going on for you?
Do you think Clint Eastwood gets in front of a camera without rehearsal? No. Do you think Tiger Woods doesn’t practice? Of course, he still does. Yet somehow some people think they don’t have to do that. The other thing you talked about is storytelling and selling is those little details. In your TEDx Talk about How to Believe in Yourself that has over two million views for a reason. It’s because you paint a picture in such detail that people see themselves in it. One of the phrases you talk about is going to McDonald’s regularly, getting a relationship going and then everyone’s worst nightmare. You get the audience to describe what that is. I’m going to let you pick the story up there. I think you know the detail. I’m looking for people’s mindset is as opposed to just being a crowd.
I had the habit of going to breakfast alone every morning for many years. I would do that because that was when I would get focused. That is when I would do the business side of selling, which was my first book and that was with Dr. Tony Alessandra. That was the managing sales part of that and managing your career. I went to McDonald’s every morning. I would not take a stack of work. I would take an empty pad. I would write goals and work on them. This is with McDonald’s for the first several years. When I found a cool coffee shop in La Jolla, California, I upgraded a bit on the cuisine.
At McDonald’s in Tulsa, Oklahoma long ago, I went there every morning. One morning, I pulled up and saw what you would hate to see at McDonald’s, which is empty buses in the parking lot. The way I set that up with an audience is I tell them about this habit of breakfast alone. One morning, I saw the sign of my restaurant in the distance and I do the little golden arches. They snicker and then I tell them, it’s McDonald’s. I say, “In that morning when I’ve got to the parking lot, I saw the danger sign.” Now in a McDonald’s parking lot, if you want to eat there, what would be the danger sign to you? Someone always yells out, “A bus.” I pause, I just do the gesture, “Two” and I say, “Two buses empty and a McDonald’s parking lot equals what in the lobby?” They start thinking and I say, “45 people per bus, you got 90 head ready to graze in the lobby of this McDonald’s. I’m about to add one to the mix.” When I’m telling the story, I do it this way, “I squeezed through the door into the crowd. I’m looking for the line that moves the fastest, the one that will always stop if you get in it.” Sure enough, that happened.
[bctt tweet=”The will to win requires the will to work, the will to show up, and the will to endure the pain.” username=”John_Livesay”]
I heard my name, “Mr. Cathcart.” I look around like I’m there again, “Mr. Cathcart” and I look up at the front. It’s the woman that works there. Grandma is her nickname. Her name is Marilyn. I said, “Yes?” She said, “Your breakfast is ready.” I’m leaving out some parts of the story that set that up. She knew me from seeing me every morning and me always ordering the same thing. When the crowd was there, she got my order, fulfilled it and set it off to the side. She said, “Mr. Cathcart, your breakfast is ready,” and went on serving other people. After I have told this story and had some laughs, I go back to the audience and analyze the scene. I say, “What did it cost her to do that?” They tell me it’s the cost of the breakfast. I said, “No.” It took her fifteen seconds of extra time. Since she said the breakfast was free that morning, she didn’t charge me. It took her the net cost of that breakfast. The revenue loss is the gross cost. What do they get? Six years of customer loyalty while I was in Tulsa, followed by 45 years of free advertising, including the ad that I just gave.
You talk about the big takeaway for everyone is we do the majority of things in our life, buy things, return as loyal customers based on how it makes us feel.
We do the things we do to achieve the feelings we want, the feeling of being correct, strong, successful, safe. The feelings we want, not just to attain the things we need.
That is one of my favorite insights into human behavior, which if you understand yourself, that completely changes how you sell. From there, people can have relationships, as you said in your book.
How to Win Friends & Influence People
It also helps you be a better listener and a better empathetic person in selling because if you understand that all people, self-included, do the things we do to achieve the feelings we want then it begs the question. I’m about to make a sales presentation to John. What does he want? What feelings does he want from the things I represent as a product or a service? Does he want the feeling that he is going to be more successful with me because there is a higher margin of profit? Does he feel like he is going to be able to relax a little bit more because I’m saving him time, money and effort? Does he want to be admired more because he is the first on his blog to have one of my products? There is a feeling behind it. If you understand the feeling, everything else will commit to working.
Would you agree then based on what you just said that people buy emotionally and then back it up with logic?
People say, “They buy with logic.” No. They analyze with logic, rationalize, justify and then they make the decision. Do I want it or not? Yeah. Is that enough information? Yeah. That one, just a calculator going, “Do, do, total.” That was a shift from logic to feel. That moment of decision occurs at the feeling level but we get there through the logical passage.
What do you think makes a good story when someone is telling a story either as a speaker or as a salesperson?
[bctt tweet=”We do the things we do to get the feelings we want rather than just the things we need.” username=”John_Livesay”]
They feel they are in it. I have never given that an answer before because I have never had anybody asked me that way, not a fellow storyteller like yourself. The number one element of a story is they feel the moment has been suspended. They are now in the story. I was on my motorcycle. I pull up to the intersection. This guy looks over at me. He hadn’t decided yet, whether I’m a jerk and an idiot for driving a motorcycle or I’m cool. I give him my best Fonzie. He goes, “Hey.” I know I have made it. I just made that up on the spot while we were talking. Didn’t you feel like you were there at the intersection?
I visualized you in a leather jacket. I visualized the Fonzie. I visualized everything. I loved how it was so binary, the choices, it’s very funny. What advice would you have for someone who either wants to get into speaking or wants to grow their speaking career?
I have had a lot of people especially in China put you on a pedestal over there. “Teacher, “Master, what do I need to do to become a great speaker?” First, become a great person and then agree to speak. I’m serious about that. That is not just a flip and answer. If you are not a good person, then your speeches are going to be data dumps or performances. They are not going to be a real sharing between people. If you want to become great at something, figure upfront. You’ve got to become a great person. To achieve and sustain, there is the keyword, sustain great things. Anyone who came by accident hit a homerun one or a homerun once but you are not going to repeat that or even get close to repeating that unless you have got it all together.
How do you become a great speaker? You become a better and better person every day of your life, a more understanding, caring, disciplined, professional, knowledgeable, skilled, practice, structured, playful and interested person. Do you want people to be interested in you? Be interested in them. Like my son, when he worked at a mailbox when he was in college, he said, “Dad, you know how to get a lot of mail? Send a lot of mail.” How do you become an interesting person or get people to be interested in you? Take an interest in them. As a speaker, how do I get rid of my nervousness? Stop thinking about yourself. Think about the message you want them to receive and about how they might best receive it. Forget yourself and your nervousness will disappear.
The Power of Positive Thinking
Stop thinking about yourself and start thinking about them.
Only about them and that takes a lot of learning to do. Also, if you want to be a good speaker, go speak 100 times for no pay in any circumstance that you can find, in a basement of a church, in the summertime, in the South with no air conditioning at 160 degrees and 100% humidity. Go speak on the bay of a fire station to five people that didn’t want to be there and you have got them for half an hour, speaking on behalf of the local civic club. Go speak in somebody’s living room with kids running around and distractions and they didn’t turn off the TV. Go speak in front of a bunch of people that hate being there and resent you and would rather beat you up. Speak in a bar when there is too much noise and the jukebox is playing and people are yelling. I’m talking about giving speeches, not conversation.
Also, never speak to an audience that you can’t bring something valuable. It’s not about making a sound with your mouth. It’s about making sense with your mind and theirs, making that connection. They say, “I’m a good speaker.” Are you a good speaker when someone dies in the audience? Are you a good speaker when the building catches on fire and the rooms got to be evacuated? I have had all these things happen. I have had emergent medical emergencies. Luckily, no one died in the audience. Are you a good speaker when they announced that the founder of the company passed away this morning? Now, here is our guest speaker. Are you a good speaker when the room is four degrees and everybody is just dying to go somewhere warm? What about when they are all drunk? People say, “I’m a good speaker.” Prove it. Let me choose the circumstances. You choose the audience, I will choose the circumstances.
I see so many similarities between what you said about speaking and actors. I finished listening to Matthew McConaughey, his Greenlights book. He is a fascinating, interesting person separate from his acting career.
The Will To Win
He was a student of Og Mandino, one of my former friends. He has passed away now. He is one of my all-time heroes.
Actors are willing to work off-Broadway for very little money or no money to practice their craft. There are a lot of similarities there. I think it’s the willingness to see yourself almost as an artist, which actors tend to do. I don’t know that a lot of speakers see themselves that way. That is what my big takeaway is from what you described.
I went to a meeting in Santa Barbara one time. I was all dressed in a suit looking lovely. I remember the client was a company you never hear about anymore. I don’t know if they exist in that form, Wang computers. Wang was a big corporation back in the day. I arrived at this resort in Santa Barbara. I’m in the meeting room. I’m there early because I’m the keynote speaker. The meeting room was set up completely wrong. It’s set up in a tunnel, like a board meeting for 60 some odd people. That is like speaking in a railroad car. I said to the houseman, “Excuse me. The room is all set up wrong. It needs to be classroom style.”
He said, “Do you want to change it? You change it yourself.” It’s just a few minutes before the people started arriving. I made a snap decision. I said, “Leave my room.” He said, “What?” I said, “Go,” because it was clear he wasn’t willing to help. He left the room and I locked the door. I took off my suit, tie, shirt and stripped to the waist. I reset the whole room. I then went to the restroom. I cleaned up a little bit. I put the suit back on. I unlocked the door. I said, “John, welcome to the meeting. Come on in.” All the people came in. We went on with business as usual.
Relationship Selling: If you want to be a good speaker, go speak 100 times for no pay in any circumstance that you can find.
Doing what it takes, people. That is a great story to leave and on. That is such a visual and a willingness to do what it takes to make it right, not just for the audience but for yourself. Let the audience put you on a pedestal. Don’t put yourself on a pedestal. I know you have been on a pedestal and you have earned that. In China with thousands of people coming to clamor like a Tony Robbins experience. I can’t thank you enough for sharing your passion, wisdom and most of all your humor with us.
You are very welcome. I’m enjoying our new friendship. Since we live in the same area, we’ve got to make plans to get together. I look forward to that. This will be the first of many occasions like this.
If people want to find you, where should we send them? What website?
Send them to Jim Cathcart anywhere on the web. I’ve got Cathcart.com, Wikipedia page, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube. Most all of it is free so dig in and enjoy. Send me a message.
Thank you so much. Thanks again, Jim.
It’s my pleasure. Take care, John.
Important Links
- https://Cathcart.com/
- Relationship Selling
- Think and Grow Rich, How to Win Friends and Influence People
- The Power of Positive Thinking
- The Will to Win
- Wikipedia – Jim Cathcart
- LinkedIn – Jim Cathcart
- Facebook – Jim Cathcart
- YouTube – Jim Cathcart
- How to Believe in Yourself – YouTube
- Greenlights
- Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course
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