Lighten Your Day With Professor Pete Alexander
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
No amount of career success is ever really worth killing yourself for. We need to take stress management seriously if we want to be our best selves and be truly of value to the people who matter in our lives. This message resonates clearly in Lighten Your Day, a book written by the inspirational Professor Pete Alexander. Joining John Livesay for this interview, he shares his own story of how he almost lost everything by being stressed out. He also shares some cool tips on how to deal with pandemic stress and introduces us to the ancient Hawaiian art of Hakalau. Feeling a bit stressed lately? This episode has everything you need to get out of that situation. Listen in and start lightening you day!
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Listen to the podcast here
Lighten Your Day With Professor Pete Alexander
Professor Pete Alexander is an expert in helping people reduce their stress. His book is Lighten Your Day. He talks about his own story of how he almost lost everything by being stressed out. He said, “When you trade in your health for focusing on your business over your health, that’s always a bad trade.” He has some tips on how to deal with pandemic stress. Don’t try to control what you can’t control.
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Our guest is Professor Pete Alexander, who’s a recovering hard drive leader with years of sales, marketing, educational and entrepreneurial experience. He successfully battled the negative effects of stress head-on and developed the LIGHTEN Stress Model. He also has a book called Lighten Your Day. He helps people get motivated to take action in a few minutes a day where they learn stress management techniques, which allows them to become better leaders. Professor Pete, welcome to the show.
John, thank you for having me on.
Let me ask you to take us back and hear your own story of origin. You weren’t always a professor. At one time, you were a young lad in school. You can take us back to your MBA days or even before that where you started to experience the stress or were aware that there’s another way to live.
The stress goes way back to when I was a kid because I grew up in a dysfunctional family. I had to deal with a lot of alcoholism, suicide attempts and a suicide that was successful in our family. For me, it was a challenging experience because as a young kid, I had to be the adult in the family. In a lot of cases, it was stressful because I wanted to stay straight. That was my way of figuring that I would be able to get out of this crazy situation. From there, I was grateful in my mid-twenties to come across a twelve-step program. It’s Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families. When I started that program, it taught me not only to like myself, but to also love myself. My whole life changed after that. It was an amazing experience to be able to realize that there are other people that could understand what was going on with me as a kid.
Career-wise, from a stress standpoint, it continued to be high. I always was putting my career as either one A or one B in terms of my priority list. Doing my sales, doing marketing for different companies, I was always the one driven to be the number one employee. It’s a good work ethic I have. The problem is that when you don’t listen to your body about what stress is doing to it. I didn’t do that in 2008 because not only did I have a business I had to run, my dad was dying and needed to have his affairs taken care of. My mom had major surgery and didn’t have the insurance to have physical therapy afterward. She had to be cared for. I had two small kids at the time. By the way, I had a marriage that was heading for divorce.
[bctt tweet=”There is only one person that you need to compare yourself to and that’s yourself.” username=”John_Livesay”]
All of a sudden, I lost 30 pounds in 30 days. That was in my mid-40s, John. At first, it was like, “Fantastic.” I wasn’t doing any special dieting. I wasn’t doing anything unique in my exercise regimen, but it started coming off. I hadn’t lost weight in twenty years. I thought, “This is fantastic,” until that 30th pound came off. I thought, “I better get it checked out.” Sure enough, it was stress-induced diabetes. I listened to my body about what stress is doing to it. For another ten years, I ended up burning the candle at both ends until I ended up in the emergency room with a severe case of diabetic ketoacidosis. For your readers who don’t know what that is, my body was eating itself alive because of my stress.
Here’s the crazy thing. I got transferred from the emergency room to my first ever and hopefully, last time, stay at the ICU. It was on my second day in ICU when my blood sugar, which was high when I was admitted to the hospital, they were 8 to 10 times higher than they were supposed to be. The doctor said I was an hour from being comatose. It was skyrocketing. My boss knew that I was in the hospital. On the second day, around 6:00 in the morning, they were checking my blood sugar every half hour. I get this text from my boss and he says, “You have a webinar you need to run at 8:00. What are you going to do about it?” I went into fix-it mode. I got to make sure everything is taken care of.
My blood sugar, which had come down into closer to normal range, all of a sudden, 90-degree angle, skyrocketed up. The nurse that was working with me at that time, she happens to say, “You realize this is what put you in this hospital bed in the first place.” That was my epiphany moment. I needed to have a complete stranger tell me that I was killing myself. When you trade your health for your career or other responsibilities, that is one bad trade.
That’s a great line, “When you trade your health for your business, career or responsibilities, that is one bad trade.” It’s such a great analogy when it comes to trading stocks and stuff.
The way to think about it is whenever you are sick, let’s say with the flu or something like that, did you feel like doing anything other than lying in bed?
Stress Management: Most stress is self-inflicted.
No.
If you just want to lie in bed and you don’t have any energy for anything, you’re no good to your business. You’re no good to your spouse. You’re no good to your kids. You’re no good to anybody. Take care of your health.
You were a professor at Berkeley, hence, Professor Pete. What lessons did you learn there? What stresses did you see your students going through those years?
It was a wonderful experience to get the honor to teach students. When I went through college, I’m probably ahead. Ninety percent of my professors and instructors were sadly, forgettable because they would either teach right from the book and teach in a boring way. I always said that if I had the opportunity to teach, I would teach in a much more interactive way, the way that I would like to be taught. When I started teaching back in 1999, the opportunity I had was to experiment with different gaming-like activities. Engage the students and get them to learn what was most important by applying what they were learning.
For me, my stress was always experimenting with different techniques to see if they worked or if they would flop. It’s like a great presenter going out there. As much preparation as you possibly can have, there’s no guarantee that something is going to be delivered the way that you intended to the audience. Every now and then I get some sort of a flop. It was like, “Let me try something different.” For the students, it was almost always about the grade. Sadly, that’s something that we have in life. We’re comparing ourselves to others.
[bctt tweet=”Fear is a four-letter acronym: Fictional Evidence Appearing Real.” username=”John_Livesay”]
The grading system, A through F, if you don’t get an A or B, whatever you expect, you feel like a lesser person. For me, what was awesome about my class and why the students connected is not only because they applied what they learned. If they did the work, they get As or high Bs. They just had to show up and participate and they would learn. It wasn’t about memorization. Let’s apply what you’re learning to a real-life situation because my promise that I would always have to my students was that no matter what career you’re getting into, you’re always going to have to do some marketing. Think of every career.
It even comes to the point where when somebody says, “I’m an accountant,” whatever it happens to be where you don’t think you’re doing any marketing. That’s not true. There’s personal marketing. You have to sell yourself to others, sell yourself to get a job, sell yourself to a client, etc. There’s always marketing. If you learn a couple of techniques that’ll help you improve your career, that’s what I would promise in my classes. I never had a single student say that they didn’t get something that helped them in their career.
There are many things you said there, Professor Pete, that I want to double click on. One is I always tell people, “You’re always selling yourself all the time.” That’s why I’m such a big proponent of whoever tells the best story is the one that gets hired or gets promoted or gets a new client. We’re not taught storytelling techniques in school. Many people think, “Am I ever going to need this algebra?” Nobody is ever going to question you, as a professor, about, “Am I ever going to need to know how to market myself or sell myself or tell my story?” I’m completely in sync with you on that.
The other topic is this concept of comparing ourselves. I tell people all the time, “Let’s not get on that self-esteem rollercoaster where we only feel good about ourselves.” In my case, in sales, making my numbers or not good about myself if I’m not or my dramatic situation of being laid off after fifteen years and then winning an award. If you let yourself go on this self-esteem rollercoaster, comparing, and only looking outside of yourself for how your self-esteem is, it’s exhausting. It’s not consistent. What I love about what you’re doing is you’re teaching people easy real-life skills in both your book and your workshops on how they can get off that rollercoaster because it’s stressful. The other thing you’re tapping into here is the imposter syndrome, comparing ourselves to other people. How do you avoid the imposture syndrome for yourself? Let’s start there.
One thing is you have to get away from comparing yourself to other people because there’s only one person that you need to compare yourself to and that’s yourself. Think about that. You need to prove to yourself and nobody else. I always remind people that the key thing to remember is that most stress is self-induced. We do it to ourselves. When we’re comparing ourselves to others, we’re doing it to ourselves. Let’s say the next-door neighbor, who’s driving the fancy car and has this big house or something like that, you think, “They must be doing well.” Maybe they are. Maybe they’re leveraged to the hilt. If they were to get laid off, the house and car goes and they’re back to square one. You’ll never know.
Lighten Your Day: Fast, Easy and Effective Stress Relief for When Sh*t Happens
The only thing you can control is yourself. Comparing yourself to somebody else doesn’t do you any good. It’s going to add stress. The great thing that I like to mention to or have them think about when we get into this imposter syndrome is it’s all fear-based. We’re thinking, “We’re not good enough.” First of all, I like to remind people that fear is a four-letter acronym, Fictional Evidence Appearing Real. We’re doing it to ourselves. We’re assuming something is bad when it isn’t the case. When somebody is thinking, “I want to go for this promotion.” “I want to go for this big fish client.” “I have this important presentation.” That fear of, “Am I good enough?” The question that I always suggest to people is, ask yourself, “What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?” What that does, John, when you hear that question, it opens up the world of possibilities.
It turns off our fear mode. We’re always in fight or flight. When you have that question posed to you, you get out of your fear or fight mode in your brain and say, “Let me go to my imagination where storytelling lives and see what all that’s going to be.”
You can be storytelling to yourself, “What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?” I asked this of my eighteen-year-old. First of all, trying to connect with a teenager as a parent is a challenge in itself for anyone. However, he was struggling with what he wanted to do for a career. I asked him that and I said, “Think about that but don’t tell me right now. Think about it and let’s talk tomorrow.” The first thing he says to me says, “Dad, that was an interesting question.” First of all, I’m like, “I got through to him.” He came up with three different possibilities, things that were way out there. Instead of being stuck, he was thinking about one of those things and he’s pursuing one of those.
You have something specific for people who might get nervous before they have to pitch or have a big interview and it’s called Hakalau.
It’s a light meditation that comes from the Hawaiian culture. What it’s designed to do is exactly what you said. If any of your readers are about ready to go on stage or go into a conference room, let’s say a Zoom conference where you have to give a good presentation, there’s pressure there and you’re thinking, “What’s going to happen?” A great way to ground yourself is to use Hakalau. This is a minute or two beforehand. What you do is you pick a spot on the wall, a stationary spot anywhere. If your readers want to practice this, I’ll walk you through it.
[bctt tweet=”Gratitude is the best stress reliever.” username=”John_Livesay”]
As you stare at this spot, which is preferably above eye level, if you’re either sitting or standing, you let your mind go loose and you focus all of your attention on that spot. If you notice, within a matter of moments, your vision starts to spread out and you see more of the peripheral than you see in the central part of your vision. As you start to see the peripheral, pay more attention to the peripheral than the center of your vision and you stay in this state for as long as it feels comfortable. Notice how that feels. You do that for 30 seconds or a minute maybe. You open and close your eyes, come back into the room and you’ll notice that you’re calmer, more aware of your surrounding and ready to take on that perceived stressful event.
In a way, it sounds like a little bit of self-hypnosis.
It can be.
Your book, Lighten Your Day: Fast, Easy and Effective Stress Relief tips and you have this whole LIGHTEN Model that you’ve created. Who do you work with for this? Is it individuals? Is it companies? Is it both?
It’s both. Usually, it starts off like a Zoom workshop for an hour. I have a team of people. I walk them through certain activities. Hakalau is one of them that I walk them through. If any particular individual might be struggling and needs a more in-depth stress relief, I’ll work one-on-one with somebody.
Stress Management: Don’t try to control the uncontrollable.
We’re in a pandemic, which a lot of people are experiencing a whole another level of stress from the isolation part of it. Do you have any tips for people on that?
The most important one there is don’t try and control the uncontrollable. This whole COVID thing and having to be stuck at home in many cases. We as humans, our human nature when we’re faced with a stressful situation is that we stress about all aspects of that situation. Inevitably, only some of it is within our control and some of it is outside of our control. We can mentally think about creating two lists, our controllable list and our uncontrollable list.
Let’s take COVID for example. Thinking about that, what can’t we control? We can’t control the government response to it. Let’s say if you have small kids and whether or not they’re going to school physically or online, we have no control over that. You don’t even have control or we don’t even have any control over the person next to us wearing a mask. We don’t have control over that. You list out whatever things you don’t have control over.
On your controllable list, you list things like, “I can wear a mask. I can wash my hands frequently. I can make sure to keep six feet distance from the next person. I can focus on my own mindset to make sure that I’m not worried about or try not to stress about all aspects of this situation.” If you separate those two and you say, “The uncontrollable stuff, I’m going to do my best to forget about that. I can’t do anything about that.” You focus as much of your mindshare on the controllable. What happens is, when we feel like we’re in control, when we can affect change, our stress goes way down.
If somebody wants to reach out to you, your website is PeteAlexander.com. Any last thoughts or a piece of advice you have for people on stress or a quote you like?
People ask me, what’s my favorite stress relief tool? I tell everyone, consistently, “It’s gratitude.” Have gratitude for what you have. What happens is a lot of people think, “That means I have to have gratitude for the big things. I’ve got a great paying job. I have a big house. I have a fancy car,” whatever it happens to be. Gratitude is for the little things in life. My wife and I, every night, we have a gratitude exercise where we ask each other, “What are you grateful for today?” I always start with, “I’m grateful for my health.” All else is secondary. Both of us will bring up things like, “I’m grateful that I got home from work safely. I’m grateful that I got a chance to go out for a walk because the weather was nice. I’m grateful that I had a chance to talk with one of my kids on the phone.”
When we lose track of the small things and think, “I have to win $1 million to be grateful.” We’re not giving ourselves a recipe for success. When we focus on what our own progress is, as opposed to comparing ourselves to other people, that seems to be the big takeaways that you’ve given us. What a great reminder of only compare yourself to your own self. I say, “Focus on your own progress and you win.” That’s the race you have to compete in. Thanks for being who you are in the world and helping us all realize that stress is something that we’re choosing to respond to, as opposed to being victims of any one event.
John, thank you so much for having me on the show. It’s been an absolute pleasure. I appreciate the time of your readers. I hope they got something out of this.
I’m sure they did. Thanks again, Professor Pete.
Important Links
- Lighten Your Day
- LIGHTEN Stress Model
- Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families
- PeteAlexander.com
- Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course
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Road To Revenue And Happiness With David Meltzer
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Pain is a turn signal, not a stop sign in your life. This is one mantra David Meltzer has always believed in his whole life. David is the Cofounder of Sports 1 Marketing and formerly served as CEO of the renowned Leigh Steinberg Sports & Entertainment Agency, which was the inspiration for the movie Jerry Maguire. Today on The Successful Pitch, he joins John Livesay to talk about his life mission to empower over one billion people to be happy. He also shares how you can be happy and successful without being pushy. Don’t miss this episode and be on the road to revenue and happiness.
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Listen to the podcast here
Road To Revenue And Happiness With David Meltzer
Our guest on the show is David Meltzer, who has many great takeaways for you about how to be happy and successful. He said, “Pain is a turn signal, not a stop sign in your life.” Also, he said that the secret to a great pitch is credibility. Read the wonderful stories he tells about how you can be happy and successful without being pushy. Enjoy the episode.
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Our guest is David Meltzer. He’s the Cofounder of Sports 1 Marketing, and formerly served as CEO of the renowned Leigh Steinberg Sports & Entertainment Agency, which was the inspiration for the movie Jerry Maguire. I’m happy to have David on board. His life mission is to empower over one billion people to be happy. This simple yet powerful message has led him on an incredible journey to provide one thing, value. In all his content and communication, that’s exactly what you’ll receive. As part of that mission for the past many years, he’s been providing free weekly training to empower others to be happy. David, welcome to the show.
Thank you. I’m excited to be on a pitch show. I’ve done so much to help people share a vision and they neglect the pitch so much. I’ve executive produced Elevator Pitch with Entrepreneur the TV show. My TV show is called 2 Minute Drill, which is a two-minute pitch show on Bloomberg and Amazon. I do a Perfect Pitch on my free Friday training as well. It’s nice to have someone that understands the value of whether it’s a 1, 2 or 10-minute pitch.
That right off the get-go is a big value. You need to have variations of your pitch. Most people only have a ten-minute version. They don’t have a 2 or 1-minute version and they get completely overwhelmed. If your ten-minute version, it’s not the first minute of your pitch, it still has a beginning, middle, and end. Before we get into all your expertise around this, let’s go back to your own story of origin. I’m always fascinated to hear if you can go back to childhood, school, college, what was it that made you start your whole journey into business? I want to hear how you came up with your own personal mission statement because I think that’s important for people to realize the why of what you’re doing besides making money is crucial. Take us back as far as you want.
[bctt tweet=”‘Pain is the turn signal, not the stop sign in my life.'” username=”John_Livesay”]
My journey started with money. I wanted to be rich at five years old. My dad had left. Six kids and a single mom, a terrific mom. She worked two jobs as a second-grade teacher, packed her dinner in a paper bag, put us in the station wagon, and filled up the turnstiles at convenience stores with greeting cards. I said to myself, “Someday I’m going to be rich. I’m going to buy my mom a house and a car,” and that was going to make me successful. I wanted to be rich because the only time I wasn’t happy in my childhood was when there was financial stress. I’d catch my mom crying because we didn’t have enough money for food or a summer camp or the car broke down. There’s always something and it always revolved around money and so I believed that money bought happiness and love.
One advantage of that journey is that I was always looking at opportunities to make more money. Unlike a lot of kids, including my siblings whose parents tell them to be a doctor, lawyer, or failure, and they stay limited in their scope of what they’re supposed to do in life, I was completely open-minded because I wanted the highest paying gig. I used to tell people I’d shovel crap with my hands six days a week, twelve hours a day to buy my mom a house and a car. I didn’t care. I wanted to be rich. My journey led me through wanting to be a professional football player. I played football in college but got ran over by Christian Okoye, better known as the Nigerian Nightmare, AFC Player of the Year. That’s when I realized lying on my back, “Doctor, lawyer, failure.”
I thought I’d be rich being a doctor. That’s when my oldest brother who was a doctor gave me the best advice of my life. I told him I hated hospitals. He said, “Dave, you’re eighteen years old. What do you mean you hate hospitals? You’re pre-med. What are you talking about?” I said, “I want to be a sports doctor. They’re not in hospitals are they?” He goes, “David, you need to be more interested than interesting.” That became truly a perspective of mine. I no longer was going to be an interesting person. I was going to learn what I call, “Find the light, the love, the lessons, and everything.” Ask as many questions as I could, which ended up being a great tool not just in pitching, but in selling in general. You are an expert at selling and you know how important it is to be more interested than interesting.
Being Happy: The lens of gratitude will give you the ability to find enjoyment and the lesson in what you’re doing.
I went to law school instead, but while I was in law school, I kept my options open. I ended up with two job offers. One to be an oil and gas litigator, which is one of the highest paying jobs out of law school. I also had found a sales job in this new thing in 1992 called the internet. This new thing piqued my interest and I told my mom, “I’m thinking about taking the sales job. I’m not going to be a litigator.” My mom almost died. She is like, “You’re going to ruin your life. The internet is a fad. Don’t do it.” That’s the next lesson that I like to teach people. Just because somebody loves you doesn’t mean you get good advice. That helped me throughout my whole career. Voting for what you want, not seeking other people’s approval, knowing your own values, these are all tools not only in selling but in pitching in general. To understand what the objectives are, what your aligned values are in seeking advice from people who sit in a situation you want to be in. I took the sales job nine months out of law school, millionaire, bought my mom a house and a car, had a little bit left over to pay my loans.
Here’s the interesting thing. I graduated law school at 24, 25 in 1993. Everything I did reinforced that money bought love and happiness. I became the favorite child of my mom in my mind. 1995 came, we sold the company I worked for $3.4 billion to Thompson Oils. I then went to Silicon Valley and raised hundreds of millions of dollars in the wireless proxy service space, the middleware space. I then became CEO of the world’s first smartphone. I worked with Microsoft. It was a Windows CE device. I worked with Samsung manufactured by them. I was a multimillionaire by 30. I married my dream girl from the fourth grade. Every single thing that I did reaffirmed that money buys love and happiness. That’s when the journey shifted because I then became the CEO of Leigh Steinberg Sports & Entertainment. You’ve interviewed Leigh, the most notable sports agent in the world.
I surrounded myself with celebrities, athletes, entertainers, and I truly started to realize one thing, that I had moved from a world of not enough, where I was a victim. I was always looking at, “Why me? Why does John have that and not me? I’m as good.” I was a victim. I then became a millionaire and it was everything enough for me. If I wasn’t happy, I’d buy things I didn’t need. If I wasn’t happy, I’d buy more things I didn’t need. If I wasn’t happy, I’d buy different things I didn’t need. If I still wasn’t happy, I’d buy things to impress people that I didn’t like. This was not the best world to live in. It wasn’t a world of abundance. I was barely philanthropic. I gave to receive. Everything I did was to help other people, but I wanted something back. I wanted acknowledgment, recognition. I wanted some quid pro quo or trade. I wasn’t living in the world of more than enough.
[bctt tweet=”Be interested, not interesting.” username=”John_Livesay”]
That’s where my journey took me is I learned to shift the paradigm of value to understand, to receive so I can give. I talk about a world through me to others. I’m always looking from, what am I going to receive? How’s it going to come through me for others? I’m inspired, not motivated, to receive as much as I can. That value paradigm, that value shift, that transformation has helped me. I am a natural salesperson. One who oversold, backend sold, lied, manipulated, and cheated like a lot of salespeople in the name of commissions, territories, and quotas to somebody who provides more value than I receive. I guarantee more value in everything. I carry an energy of providing more value than I receive. That’s the context and basis for why I wanted to come on your show to share these ideas of how we can and truly make a lot of money, help a lot of people, have a lot of fun, create abundance for everyone, and to empower others to be happy.
There’s much to unpack there. Let’s start with the myth that it can be fun to make money. I think a lot of people think, “It’s going to be hard work, grit, pushing, and frustrating.” I think you are showing that is not the case when we come from a place of, “Am I having fun?” That is not mutually exclusive. The concept when we were growing up was you have fun on the weekends and at night, but not at work. Now that the whole wall has come down in a big way and the more fun you are to be with, the more people want to buy with you and hang with you.
I came up with this definition that aligns specifically with what you’re talking about. Instead of attaching my emotions to an outcome to the weekends, to the nights, I have shifted my emotions to enjoying the consistent every day, persistent without quitting, pursuit of my own potential, my own objectives, my own what tied to my own why. By doing so, I don’t believe in the word we’re working more, talk about a shift in the paradigm and perspective that people have. I believe there’s an activity you get paid for, an activity you don’t get paid for, and you should enjoy them equally. You should try to maximize the activity you get paid for that you enjoy more than the activity you don’t.
Being Happy: When we can be accountable as salespeople, we become empowered and in control of everything.
One of the things that you offer are these wonderful quotes on your Instagram account, which is @DavidMeltzer. The one that stands out for me, David, is “Be kind, not right.” Let me tell you why that resonates with me on two levels. One, from being in the traditional sales training, it was ABC, Always Be Closing. I shifted that to ABK, Always Be Kind to the way you talked to yourself so you can be that way to other people. That in a nutshell is a huge paradigm shift. You’ve taken not just be kind, you’ve added this premise of not right. I remember years ago someone saying to me, “The question for you is do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?” Since happiness is part of your branding as well, I’m completely thrilled to be able to ask you about this whole concept of happiness and choosing kindness over being right, and how that all connects for you.
It connects by the fifth daily practice. The most important daily practice that I have learned over all these years and that’s practicing ending fear. What I realize is we have primary and secondary fears. These are the interferences, the corrosion between us, that unbelievable source of light, love, lessons, and happiness that we’re connected to at all times. It’s the thing that creates resistance, voice, and shortages to the sales that we’re making in our pipeline and energy sucks that exist out there. What I realized was why don’t I have a practice to end the need to be right? I guarantee you, if you take the need to be right or the need to be offended which is closely attached to the need to be right, the need to be separate, inferior, superior, anxious, frustrated, worried, and angry, any of these, if you took the time, emotion, and money that you wasted trying to do these things, it wouldn’t matter how good of a salesperson you were.
You’d be a millionaire, a billionaire if you could get all that time back and harness it towards what you want. I decided what was the higher frequency over being right, over being separate, inferior, superior, offended, resentful, guilty, and all these feelings. It was happiness and kindness. It was a truth that was so much easier to have gratitude in my life. The pain would present itself as it always does when you live in an expansive world and you’re trying hard with what I call the Law of GOYA, Get Off Your Ass, like you and I, people who know how to be productive. We don’t sit around dreaming about what we want. We dream, but we go ahead and we take action to go get it.
[bctt tweet=”Find the light, the love, and the lessons in everything.” username=”John_Livesay”]
When you look at the number, one, gratitude. The lens of gratitude will give you the ability to find enjoyment in what you’re doing. To find the lesson in what you’re doing. What it does is it says, “Pain, mental, physical, spiritual, emotional, financial pain, and pipeline pain which is no closing. You’re an indicator. You’re not a stop sign.” I’m not going to quit. You’re an indicator pushing me to something better. You’re teaching me a lesson. That pain is there to indicate I have a lesson to learn. It’s not a stop sign. It’s a turn signal that there’s a better way to go. A better situation to be in. Using gratitude, it allows pain to be a turn signal in my life. Leading then to forgiveness because if I have forgiveness, I can forgive others.
Most importantly in sales and pitching is accountability. Asking myself two questions, one, “What did I do to attract this to myself?” Two, “What am I supposed to learn from it?” I find the biggest detriment in salespeople’s careers is they lack accountability. They live in a world of blame, shame and justification. When we can be accountable as salespeople, we become empowered and in control of everything. The lessons keep on coming until we learn them, but they start coming bigger, better and faster. We become statistically more successful and productive as well as accessible to others. This is an extraordinary thing. The number one piece of advice is ignored by most people. People think that they have all these different things about a pitch that you should have.
The number one thing you can have in a pitch is credibility. If I was 100% credible, if I could attain 100% credibility, which I’ve never been able to do, maybe in my mom’s eyes. That’s because she thinks I’m better than I am, but 100% credibility, all I would have to do for a pitch is say, “John, wire me $1 million tomorrow and I will wire you back $2 million on Friday.” If I was 100% credible, you’d say, “Okay.” The difference is most people don’t realize when they’re pitching that the minute they diminish their credibility, dissolve their credibility, create overselling, backend selling, manipulating, lying, shortages, avoids obstacles, some sort of insecurity, of credibility, people start harnessing and focusing on that. You create many more obstacles for yourself because you exaggerated something.
Being Happy: Time, emotion, and value are the three reasons people change their minds.
I told you, I had the two TV shows, Elevator Pitch and 2 Minute Drill. This guy gets on, he’s pitching and goes, “Our revenue is up 300% this year.” In my mind, I’m like, “He’s an over-seller.” If his revenue was at all decent, he would have said, “We did $1 million last year. We’re at $3 million already this year, which is a 300% gain.” I’m thinking he did $1 last year. He’s tried to BS me and sell me on an accumulated number. All of a sudden, I wasn’t listening to him anymore. I was trying to pick holes in everything that he said. He had a credible company when I ended up vetting it after the pitch, but he would have lost me if it wasn’t a TV show. People do this all the time. If you’re going to have one takeaway on pitching from me, someone who’s done six episodes of Elevator Pitch, created Bloomberg TV’s new series, 2 Minute Drill. Be credible. Make sure to fine-tooth comb. Eliminate the negatives. Be honest. Don’t oversell, backend sell, manipulate, lie and cheat. You’re going to ruin your pitch no matter how long it is.
We’re certainly going to make that one of the tweets from the show. Credibility is the number one secret to a great pitch. The other tweet I love that you said is, “Pain is the turn signal in my life.” Let’s double-click on that and then we’ll get back to credibility. A big fear that causes the blame shame justification you were referring to that salespeople can fall into is the fear of rejection. I tell people, “You’ve got to stop rejecting yourself.” If someone says no to you, you go, “I must be bad or my product must be bad.”
You take it on personally as opposed to you saying, “That’s a signal, it’s not a stop sign.” That would be helpful for people whether you’re pitching to get a new job, get your startup funded, or get new clients, rejection is part of the journey. You’ve said, “I look at it as a turn signal even if that’s not working. Let me try something else.” As opposed to, “I’m going to give up.” What else do you think about rejection and how we can build up our tolerance especially as it relates to your sports experience? There’s a lot of pain involved in sports.
[bctt tweet=”Don’t sit around dreaming about what we want. Dream but take action to go get it.” username=”John_Livesay”]
I have two rules when it comes to no. Number one is a perspective rule. I always tell myself, “I’m 25 noes from getting what I want.” What it does immediately in that framework is when you tell me no, I’m like, “Good.” When I’m at ten noes, I’m like, “All right.” I’m the only one that gets super excited after 24 noes because I know it’s coming. The idea of it is, I’m only many noes from getting what I want because I take the turn steering wheel strategy. I know that pain is indicating I have a lesson to learn. Every time someone tells me no, I have a lesson to learn. I love to learn because I’m more interested than interesting. That great line my brother told me at eighteen has changed my life because it allows me to find the light, love, and lessons, and know because I have an opportunity to grow, accelerate and expand because someone’s telling me no.
The second no rule that I have is interesting because people are made by the people that say no to you if you understand how no works. In the context of someone being interested in the follow-up context, when people waste time and they wonder, “I’ve called him eighteen times.” I say, “There’s a three-time closing rule.” You’ve got through the process. You’re calling for either a meeting or an order, something that has been agreed upon. The person says, “Sorry, I had a flat tire.” That’s one no to me. I’m accountable and honest to people. Even I who’s a student, my calendar, every once in a while I’d miss a call. Usually, it’s an important call that I missed. I don’t know how that happened, but if I miss it, I still count that as a no.
The third no is I love to shift the energy of it. I’ll always tell someone, “This is the right time, emotion or value I’ve been able to convey to you. I have a lot of other people who want to do business and meet with me or close. I’ll tell you what, please give me a call if you’re still interested in moving forward. If not, thank you for your time and consideration.” Fifty percent of the time the guy will call back and close, meet me, or do whatever. The other 50% of the time, I never hear back. Do you know what I say to myself? Think about how much time, emotion, energy, and money I saved. I especially as a younger salesperson who is an aggressive, hyper and persistent person, I would hit my head against the wall 50 times thinking I was doing myself a great service because I wasn’t quitting, instead I went from quitting to allowing the deal to happen.
Being Happy: Don’t hug people and make them feel good. Give them a profit and they will love you.
It’s a turn signal. I allow the deal to happen. I don’t make it or force it to happen. When you’re in that close, three times is enough to get a meeting. When someone’s already agreed on it and gave you a yes, there’s something there. If you allow it to happen, note time, emotion, and value are the three reasons people change their minds. Timing has changed. Their emotions on it have changed, or the value has changed. When someone tells you no, it means they have something more valuable to either spend their money, time or emotion on. That’s all it is. Be honest with yourself. You’re not the priority.
In addition to being an author, which we’ll talk about, you’re also a coveted speaker to major companies and talk about the value changing. It’s a great example to those of us who speak for a living or that’s a big part of our living. We’ve had to go from live events to virtual events. I’ve had the experience where a client will say, “You need to resell me on the value of your fee for it to be virtual versus in person.” Whether you’re a speaker or not, this whole exercise is valuable for everyone reading. How do we reframe value when something’s changed like this?
I take quantitative reasons you want me to speak, the quantitative impact you’d like me to have, and the quantitative capabilities that you’d like me to enhance in the readers. Whether I’m on a stage, in person, on Zoom, or whatever other platform you want to use, it’s all about quantifying the value. I’ll usually break it down to per person. I’ll say, “If I was here on stage, value-wise if I increase production 10% of 1,000 people, what’s the value of that? If I help your closing ratio, one extra sale per guy, if I’m able to have people show up on time. What is the value of people who are happier?” Happier people are proven to produce 41% more in a day if you’re happy than an unhappy worker.
[bctt tweet=”The number one thing you can have in a pitch is credibility.” username=”John_Livesay”]
I utilize open and closed-ended questions to say, “What are you doing today? Where are the quantitative reasons, impacts and capabilities? What do you like about it? What don’t you like about it?” Take out the fact that I’m not there in person. The fact that I’m not there in person, it’s only going to save you money. That’s the only difference between me being a person and me being here and also the capabilities of replay, rewinding, and a variety of other extra values I can bring virtually. What I have found is I am getting paid equal or greater to march of what I used to get in person. People are getting acclimated because I’ve been able to completely quantify. There’s a problem with selling called subjective value. The stage and the virtual stage is a perfect place to talk about it.
People love to feature and benefit dump. They love to be that purple dinosaur that’s a cartoon. We know him as Barney. Everybody knows the big purple dinosaur. I get frustrated when I see Barney sellers. I see it in speaking and authors. People who are overselling, backend selling, feature and benefit. They haven’t gotten to the nuts and bolts of, “Can you see any reason why you want to have me speak to you? I am guaranteeing to be a profit center for you. You may pay $50,000 for me, but I’m guaranteeing you’re going to make $100,000. Can you see any reason you will want to move forward?” A Barney seller, what they do when they speak, write books, consult, or do the things that you and I do is they hug you and they say, “I love you. You love me. Nobody makes any money.” Everybody feels good after you’re done speaking because you’re a Barney seller, like the meeting, you’re a Barney seller. Everybody is feeling great when you leave the pitch because you’re a Barney seller. You walk away and it doesn’t wear well. You’re not selling through the client where they’re going, “That’s life-changing.”
I do it in my executive coaching. I had a client right before the interview, all I did was give him the belief, the shift in the mindset and heart set that he’s charging too little. I have him ten times, he closed two people. Let’s say he was making $1,000 a client. I told him to ask for $10,000. I told him why and how to be a profit center at $10,000 to guarantee that the minimum they’ll make is $20,000 if they pay him $10,000 a month. Two closes where he would have made $2,000 a month for the year, which would equate to $24,000 each. He had a total gross of $48,000 that became $480,000. I said to him, “Can you see a reason you don’t want to pay me $20,000 a month? He has no reason. You can do that virtually on stage. People don’t do the work. They’re Barney sellers. Don’t hug people and make them feel good. Give them a profit. They will love you. You’ll sell through them. They’ll brag to everyone how much money they made from you.
Game-Time Decision Making: High-Scoring Business Strategies from the Biggest Names in Sports
I want to support what you said because if someone’s reading and they’re like, “What does that mean that don’t just give motivation or good vibes?” You need to be tangible. In my situation, I tell people, “I’m going to show you how to tell a case story and whoever tells the best story gets the yes.” If you’re up against competitors, no one’s telling a story and you’re the only one telling a story, that’s going to mean more money, “What’s the average sale? Do you get that? Do you understand their business that well?” One more piece of jewelry. One more airport renovation. Whatever it is they’re doing, you help them win that, then the ROI is great on having you come to speak because it’s not, “Here’s something that would be nice to have.” It’s like, “We’re tired of coming in second place. If you can help us solve that problem, then that’s worth much more money.” That’s another example of what you said in action for people who are still thinking, “How does this relate to me?” I completely support what you’re doing.
You live by it, which is why I wanted to come on your show. What I enjoy about watching your stuff and reading your stuff is that you are the exact same type of salesperson that I am. You create productivity, accessibility and gratitude. You have quantitative value in what you do. You’re able to articulate it in the way that people want to communicate because it’s not what we say as salespeople. It’s what they hear. If you know your stuff well enough to articulate a story that comes to a logical conclusion of, “Can you see any reason you won’t want to do that?” You know how to pitch and you know how to sell like John does.
Thank you, David. You wrote this wonderful book called Game-Time Decision Making. That taps into not only why you, but the why now part of any decision. You talked about time, emotion and value. We’ve talked a little bit about creating value and storytelling creates the emotion. We’re going to end on the importance of timing, how that ties into your book and your upcoming workshops that you do every week on Fridays.
The manmade construct in this vibration is time. Everybody has 24 hours a day, but the productivity, the accessibility within that time of being able to number one, align your values. Your personal non-negotiable values, your experiential values. You’re giving and receiving values to the concept of time. Asking is related to time. If you understand time, you should understand the exponentiality of saying, “Do you know anyone that can help me? How can I be of service or value?” Understanding how time equates to that profit center and the exponentiality of growth, of growing exponentially by asking each person, “Do you know someone that can help me in person, on the phone, email, or media?” When we were young, most people had their card game, their golf group, and their church group. Nowadays on average, some guy you meet on the bus stop has 1,000 people in their network.
If you’re not asking, “Do you know what it can help me?” you’re cutting off your legs. Studying time is paying attention to and giving intention to the coincidence as you want with your time, the activity you get paid for the activity you don’t. Remember, that’s the mathematical equation of luck. Attention plus intention equals coincidence. Another thing about time is do it now. One hundred percent of the things you do now get done. The difference between successful people and others is successful people get stuff done. Ask yourself, “Could I do it now? If not, put it in your calendar to schedule for tomorrow and study that.” Finally, the practice of ending fear, utilizing your time, not to accelerate in the wrong direction, not to create resistance, avoid shortages and obstacles in your life, but to stop, drop and roll when you’re in an accelerated ego-based emotion, like the need to be right.
Kindness will take you back to the center and allow you to roll towards statistical success. More people in your pipeline. More people pitch correctly. More value is provided. More sales are made. More commissions are made to give to others so you can make more money, help more people and have more fun. Time is that manmade construct that you have to work within in order to effectuate that last world, to tie everything together. No more living in a world of, “To me, victimized and not enough.” No more living and buying things you don’t need to impress people you don’t like in the world of enough for me, but utilizing time, you can live as an instant between limitlessness and infinity in the world of more than enough. More than enough of everything for everyone.
When you’re selling and pitching from an abundant attitude that it’s not going to cost you anything, but we’re going to create value between the two of us that there’s more than enough of value for everyone. It’s because I take doesn’t mean you lose. It’s because you lose doesn’t mean I take. Everybody wins in the world of abundance. That’s where we need to pitch from with credibility and emotional judgment. Quantify the reasons, impacts, and capability from a world of more than enough. That’s what you do, John. We hit it off the first minute we ever spoke, we knew a lot of people in the same circles, but you started telling me what you do. I said, “This guy gets it. I’ve got to do more stuff with him.”
If you want more of David and let’s face it, why wouldn’t you want more? For the weekly training, you can go to his website at DMeltzer.com/training. Some of the episodes talk about creating a habit machine, learning to love what you do, and health, happiness and profitability. You walk your talk. The fact that you’re giving this training for free is such a gift to the whole community. I want to thank you on behalf of everyone reading for that. I want to encourage everyone to get this, because why would you not? David, any last thoughts or comments you want to leave us with?
Be kind to your future self and do good deeds. You can always email me at [email protected]. John, thank you for having me on.
Thanks for joining us.
Important Links
- David Meltzer
- Sports 1 Marketing
- Leigh Steinberg – Past episode
- @DavidMeltzer – Instagram
- Game-Time Decision Making
- https://DMeltzer.com/training/
- [email protected]
- Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course
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