Selling Secrets from Tony Robbins VP of Sales, Gene McNaughton

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Go check it out right now. Visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Hey listeners, it's Jeff Zimper. Hello, hello, hello, hello, they're boys and girls. How are you doing today? I hope you're enjoying yourself wherever you're at, wherever you happen to be tuning in and listening to this and if I hadn't told you how much I care, how much I appreciate you. I so appreciate you tuning in and listening to this podcast. If you're here listening again, it's because you found the fine value and that's what I love the most is bringing value to you by fellow Padre, the Ombre and sisters as well, brothers and sisters. Can we unite? What am I doing? I don't know. I'm just random. I'm excited to bring you this episode before I cut to the episode, the show, as they say, up a quick reminder for you guys. Once again, jump into our Facebook group or podcast listeners, only mortgage marketing radio on Facebook. Just go to Facebook, type it in, the search bar, mortgage marketing radio, or you can go to Facebook.com or slash groups, forward slash mortgage marketing radio, that's how you get there. The reason why I want to check that out is because if you like the content you hear or see here, there's going to be more there, good stuff coming in the way of additional trainings and things to help you be a modern mortgage originator and this whole concept of a hybrid originator, hybrid loan officer, which for me, just so you know, to clarify what I mean, my hybrid loan officer, what I mean by that is a loan officer who lives in two worlds, one who lives in the quote, old school world, if you will, of developing referral relationships, past client data, based local community events, things like that, but also bridging the old with the new, the modern with the more traditional, the hybrid loan officer is also somebody who's leveraging social media, online platforms, video, maybe doing some paid ads and traffic and things like that. That is the future of the loan officer and that's who I speak to and hope that you are in that camp as well. Hopefully you can go that we're helping you to cover both bases there and we're going to do that more in the group over there on Facebook, or you can check it out. Also, if you need help, if somebody said to you and said, look, would you like to never have to call agents again, never have to taste real estate agents, never wonder where your next purchase deal is coming from. Would you like a predictable system that delivers agent relationships, referrals and conversations at scale every single month on a silver platter delivered to you? Turnkey, would you want, if you do, we offer that, we offer that through our Morgan Marketing Pro membership, which you can go check out, mortgage marketing.pro, there will be a link in the show notes, watch a brief video that I put up, which is all about how do you get noticed and get agent conversations and referrals and today's noisy, crazy world. Listen, you know that the refis are dropping off in the second half of this year. Are you preparing for that? Are you looking not where the puck is, but where the puck is going? That's where it's going. So you want to shore up your purchase business, you want to grow your business, you want to add referral partners, agents to your bus, how do you reach them, how do you get contact them? There's a hundred different ways to do that. I'm proposing you check out the most predictable systematic way to do that at scale that puts you in control, it creates tremendous value and income for you, mortgage marketing.pro, check it out. Okay. This week's show. All right. So this guest that I have on, first of all, I want to thank my friend Tony Juarez. If you're listening, thanks for introducing me to Gene. And this is a conversation that it's a more long form conversation. I think we go about an hour on this and that's because, you know, you ever meet somebody that's got so much wisdom and background and knowledge and it's done so many things. You just want to keep the conversation going. And as you can tell with the podcast is I approach many of my conversations in a organic way. I may have some bullet points, which I do right here, but then we just look at the conversation flow. And so my special guest for this episode is a gentleman named Gene McNaughton. And Gene is a business consultant, he's the president of growth smart consulting. And what he does is help executive leadership teams grow sales, right? Get efficiencies drive top line revenue growth. You may be listening to that and think, oh, that's not me. However, what Gene is great at is growing sales. He's great at structuring a conversation framework. He's great at identifying the patterns of success in sales. He's great at knowing what's the difference that makes the difference. He's great at average and top performers. Gene has an amazing background. We have some similarities. Gene was the global vice president of sales for Tony Robbins from 2004 to 2007. Gene also was the president at Chet Holmes International, which some of you may be familiar with Chet Holmes. Some of you may not Chet Holmes wrote a incredible book called The Ultimate Sales Machine years ago. I suggest you get that. It's one of the best sales books ever written. And so Gene has worked, oh, by the way, Gene also took Gateway Computers. You guys remember Gateway Computers? Was there for their rapid growth that scaled up to $11 billion in revenue? And Gene was there. Gene helped make that happen with the sales strategies that he put together as I've just described for you. Gene has a book, which we're going to put links in the show notes that you should check out. And this is the book is your ultimate guide to finding, keeping, and growing accounts. And why I think this conversation with Gene is very relevant for you. And by the way, stick with the conversation to the end. Because we bounce around a little bit, but we always bring it back full circle into how you can apply it to your life in sales and prospecting. And what is your conversation framework? What are the first words that come out of your mouth when you speak to a client or a full partner? How do you structure your sales meetings with a full partner's clients, right, etc, etc? So I think there's a lot of wisdom that you're going to take from this and concepts that we're talking about. That experience does not equal effectiveness. And here's a great one. I love this one as well. I wrote this down, premium price needs a premium system, story, and process. Let me see it again. Premium price needs a premium process and story. What does that mean? Well, it means one of the biggest pushbacks you get is interest rate. What's your rate? What's your rate? I can find it a quarter or less. An eighth less. Well, here's the thing. You don't get charged a premium if your process doesn't match a premium price. If you don't have a story that supports the premium price. So we're going to talk a lot about that. And Gene's got some amazing background and stories. And so I'm just thrilled to bring it to you. And I hope you like this conversation as much as I have. I mean, this guy's on a lot. He's interviewed all the sharp-pang people, right? Kevin O'Leary, Damon John, on and on. So I think you can learn a lot from him. And his time, he spent 25 years generating top results for Fortune 500 companies spending time as Tony Robbins, president, so on. So I hope you enjoy this show. Let's get into this week's show. Gene, welcome to the show. Hey, man. Awesome to be here, Jeff. We've been working, what, 18 months to get this little time-sot connected. So here we are. Let's rock and roll. Let's add value. All right, let's make the best of it. So the listeners heard the formal interview or intro of you, you know, as they tuned into this episode. But I prefer to you to give your background, or if you will, because you've got quite a diverse background. We share some stories and, you know, who we've worked with in the past. But give it to the summary. Who's Gene McNaught and what's y'all about? What has he done? Here's a short story. I was born in a small town in Iowa, so City, Iowa, I'm the youngest of six kids. I grew up with five sisters in a small house, so you learn some techniques and dealing with females and sharing one bathroom. Whole other episode we can do on that. And I'm still working on the process. Trust me. Had a great upbringing from my parents and went to high school. I was an athlete. I was able to go to, fortunately, go to college in my same little hometown in Sioux City, Iowa at Morningside College and play football there. It was my only avenue to be able to go to college. I was the first one to graduate from college or even go to college in my family. And shortly after I graduated college, while I was in college, this little computer company was building up in Sioux City called Gateway 2000 Computers. And while in college they were teaching you to go get a, you know, get your degree, go get a job. And, you know, I wanted to be a stockbroker. I wanted to be in the financial world. And I went and got my licenses right after I got out of college and thought I was going to be a financial investment advisor. What I didn't really realize is that you're really not going to be at financially advising anybody. You're going to be making cold calls and scheduling appointments for the veteran brokers. So I had maxed out my one credit card on buying three suits. And I was sitting in a dingy little office making 250 to 300 cold calls a day out of the phone book. In the meantime, all my buddies that had gone to work at this computer company were love and life. And they were buying jet skis and they were wearing jeans to work. Life was amazing and I'm frigging miserable. And I finally just said, okay, I got it. I got to check this out. And fortunately, it was the very, very early stages of the company and I got hired for the night shift selling computers over the phone. And I quickly fell in love with it. One of the things I fell in love with was something I'd never heard of before, which was called direct response marketing, which when I got out of training, I sat down in my cubicle and I said, okay, who do I call? Where's my list or is there a phone book? Well, how do I sell these computers? Because they never taught that in training. They taught, here's how a computer works. Here's on a motherboard and a hard drive and all the technical training. Somebody goes, no, no, no, you don't call anybody. I'm like, why do you make sales? They said, they called you. I'm like, what are you talking about? Yeah, we advertise in these magazines. And I remember they're going, look, there's a call coming into your phone right now. And I'm like, hello, welcome to Gateway. My name's Gene. And every once in a while in life, and this is something everybody needs to get, is that there will be a constant series of windows of opportunities that open for you. Fortunately, most people, even when they see and sense the opportunity, they don't take advantage of it. And my dad had always taught me, you know, they're going to meet little windows that open up. Maybe it's somebody you meet or the girl you want to date or a job that you want to get, but when that window opens, you've got to run through it. And I quickly was like, oh my gosh. In those days, Jeff, you know, one out of four calls, we're not somebody shopping, is people calling to say, yes, I'd like to buy this computer on page 76 of the computer shop or magazine. I'm like, okay, like I didn't, when you go from one extreme of pure cold calls, no, think about calling out of the phone book, how many times you get hung up on or yelled out, you know, my boss thought, well, we've got to call people when they're home. So we'll call between 5.30 and 7.30 at night, or we'll call on Saturdays, we'll call on Friday nights. So I go to this, this land of opportunity. And fortunately, I was in the right place at the right time. I had good work ethic. And I was just, I could see it. And I just went all in. I bought in. I learned as much as I could about computers and time management and sales techniques. I started reading books. I read the book, how to win friends and influence people in the Polian Hill, you remember that one, right? But once I read this first book, I'm like, oh my God, the answers are in there. All these things that I'm supposed to be expected to know at 22 years old, the answers are in these books. I didn't learn that stuff in college. And I'm not by any way, shape and form. I am so grateful for the college degree and the school that I went to. But I didn't learn these people skills. I didn't learn influence and persuasion. I didn't learn about goal setting. Now, I knew about goal setting from sports, but not as it applied to my life, not as it applied to creating the vision for the ultimate future and everything went perfect. What would it look like? I was learning that in the books. Think and grow rich. How to win friends and influence people. Then I got into the Tommy Hopkins work. Masters of closing, right? And then it just went nuts from there. I got turned on to a guy named Jim Rohn. I know who Jim Rohn is. Not the sports guy, the personal development guy. And that led me to start studying Tony Robbins' work. As I was investing in myself, and in those days, it was books or tapes. That's those were your options. CDs were still new and a little, you know, not quite there. And certainly there was no cell phones or anything like that. I would listen to these tapes. While I was driving in the car, I would, I had one of those little boom boxes that when you play to tape at the end of it, it would go click click. And then it would play the other side and it would just keep playing all night. Because I learned from Brian Tracy, I don't know whether this is true or not, but even when you're not listening to something, subconsciously it's soaking into your brain. So I thought, okay, what a better time to do that than eight hours of sleep or seven hours of sleep. I started listening to Zig, Ziggler, Jim Rohn, Tony Robbins. And here's what was interesting, Jeff. While I'm at this little company that suddenly is starting to get very popular, the computer revolution hit us in 1991, 1990 through two, where suddenly people at home realize that I can have a computer in my house. So right place, right time, window of opportunity, I invest in myself. I work as hard on myself as I do on my day job and things start to radically accelerate. So this company is taking off. I'm working, I was single at the time. I recognized the opportunity. I could work many hours, 50, 60 hours a week and I loved it. It wasn't like I had to get myself out of bed to get in there and make a paycheck. I saw the opportunity. And as the company grew, I grew, got moved into management. Then I realized that as I was taking on the new hires that would come out of training, that none of them were taught how to sell. So I would say, okay, you got your five days of technology training. Now you're gonna go, we, I didn't call it lunch and learns in those days, but we worked the 1 PM to 10 PM shifts. So I said, bring your dinner in, or go grab a sandwich, whatever. And for an hour, I'm gonna teach you the seven steps of selling. Now I had just built this, step one is mindset. We gotta set goals. You gotta have the mindset of success. Step two is you gotta establish rapport. Step three, you gotta ask questions. Step four, you gotta present. Step five, you gotta ask for the business. Step six, you gotta be prepared for the, four or five, six objections you're gonna get and step seven, you gotta have to have a great follow up. And part of that would be referral program. And I taught it over and over again. And lo and behold, what we started finding was this group of new hires. Many of them would outperform people that had been selling on the phones for two, three, and four years. And the VP said, what's going on here? And I said, look, I'm just teaching this stuff, what I used to do on the phones. And he said, I need you to go teach that to everybody. Now by the time I had gotten into management and had three months of management under my belt, now we had 120, 150 sales people selling on the floor in a call center in cubicles. In North Sue City, South Dakota, he said, I want you to take that. And if you wanna go to some seminars, you can go to some seminars, but I want you to create a sales training part of our business. And I'm like, okay, I had never been a public speaker anything like that. I just took the common principles. And then, you know, the window of opportunity, the window of fate, you know, what do they say Jeff? You set your targets in the universe, conspires to drop these little nuggets. Exactly. And you're favored. A facts came in randomly. Now we're on a huge call center floor. And it was an opportunity to go see a seminar on the art of sales by Tom Hopkins. And somebody knew I was, you know, trying to do the sales training manual. Like, when I had never seen a manual and there was no Microsoft word back then. There was word processing programs, but there was no word like the stuff we have now. There was no voice to text, right? It's me trying to hack away at it. And I take it to the boss. And fortunately, she said yes. And in fact, she took herself, one of the other senior managers and another director of sales. And we all went to see a seminar. Tom Hopkins in New Orleans. And I remember walking in there. And there must have been 3,000 people. They're pretty good, you know, that's good crowd. He came out and within minutes, I was hanging on every word, laughing, like he was entertaining, he was funny, he was good looking. Now, I was in the nosebleed section. I mean, truth be told, we didn't get front row seats. But I just, from that very second, I was like, that's what I want to do. Well, that's what I want to do. I want to be the teacher, presenting teaching. Yeah, I mean, it was like, you know, he was part comedian. He was part entertainer, the sequences and the processes. And in those days, it was, you know, sounds good, doesn't it? You know, understanding what a trial close is. Understanding steps to building rapport. Standing the right questions in the right order. Really going through a real life goal setting program. I'd never done that. And that catapulted everything. Ironically, I must have got put into some database, which I didn't know what a database was, but two months later, facts comes in from the Ziggs Ziggler Corporation. Oh, okay, I got it. Yep. Have you going to these events and learning, developing skills you're watching Ziggs present? You're like, oh, he's amazing. Well, better yet, it was an invitation to a seminar called See You At The Top. And it was a three day goal setting workshop. Now, I had realized by that stage, just being an athlete and, you know, to getting a scholarship, all the things, I knew there was some this power in setting goals, laying out in advance what it is you want to accomplish, writing it down, looking at it every day, but I didn't know the wisdom behind it. And again, I convinced my boss, I'm like, this is the other, you remember you said, I could go to a seminar. This is in Carrollton, Texas. Can I go? He said yes. The senior manager said yes. So I go down to Texas by myself. And I'm next to him and I'm preparing for this and I get a phone call. Jeff, this is where I learned the art of the cross cell or the up cell. And the call was from Matt. This is Katie from the Zig Ziglar headquarters. She said, you're coming to the seminar and I wanted to give you a heads up that Zig is teaching a class on public speaking, a very next day when your seminar ends. I have a question for you. Is public speaking something that's important to you? And I went, well, I'm gonna be doing sales training. This is exactly, you need this. How much training do you have? I've never been trained in speaking. And then I got introduced to the up cell and cross cell and I go back to my boss. He goes, well, you're gonna be here anyway. You're coming a long ways from South Dakota. We had moved across the border. And my boss said yes. I went there for the goal setting seminar. It was called Born to Win is what it was called. And I still have my seminar notes. 1993 of what my dreams and aspirations were then from a small town. The secondary course on how to speak in public, I took it because I wanted to be comfortable speaking in front of training classes of 10 people, maybe 12, maybe 20 tops. Little did I know that that seminar is what catapulted everything to allow me to do some pretty cool things that you've covered in the bio, including becoming the opening speaker for Tony Robbins on the biggest stages. Traveling Australia with Donald Trump and Robert Kiyosaki and Tony Robbins and being the, I mean, who would have imagined that small town gene, McNaughton, buddy McNaughton is what they called me there, would end up being the guy kicking off these mega seminars and being shoulder to shoulder with some of the giants. It all came. The reason I say that, Jeff, not to try to brag or impress anybody, but it all came because I took advantage of the opportunity. I did the work. I went to find who I thought was the very best in the world. And in those days arguably Ziegler, Tom Hopkins, Tony Robbins was still was was was big. The infomercials had just started. So he was in the beginning of his big, big fame. And I listened to these people and I did the work. I did the workbooks. I did the incantations or the affirmations as they were called before Tony changed it to incantations. I did all the little things that, frankly, a lot of people during those days were laughing at me for, oh, it's Mr. Motivation. Oh, Gene's reading a motivation book. There we go, getting motivated, Gene. And I just ate it because I knew that I knew where I was going. You know, when I hear your story like that, by the way, thank you for sharing that. You had used a couple of words like small town boy or whatever, but you also use this word vision. So I'm curious is because it's not small town like you, but originally from kind of New England. And you know, there's a certain mindsets of certain areas of the country, you know, like small town. Might have a small town mindset. And I'm curious, what do you think? Like I don't know where your siblings are, but like if you can do a comparison to what gave you your vision? Why, why, what do you think in you, you're upbringing or whatever, like rated that bigger? Hey, I can leave that. I can be something more. You know what I mean? Yeah, I had five sisters and they were all older than me. I have one of my sisters, Debbie, she was 18 when I was born. And I was like, I might as well have been her child. She took me everywhere she went. And I was like her pride and joy as she was 18, 1920 in that, you know, prime time of age. And she was somebody along with my mom that just always believed in me. Oh, like you could say I was even spoiled, not with things and money and stuff because we didn't have that. But in terms of love and care and you can do anything you set your mind to and you know, I wanted to be a rock and roll singer that didn't go anywhere. But I found a way to entertain them through sports. And I had a knack for, not that I was a great athlete, but I had a knack for getting pretty good at sports like baseball and football, basketball. And I knew that they would come to my, they would be at every single game. We're in a small town. It's not like they had a drive, you know, 10 minutes you're at any field you wanna be at. And this constant belief of an overindulgence of love and attention, almost an overindulgence of doing good and being good and wanting to earn more of that. Yeah, positive feedback loop, you know. What was it said? Your kids will behave in the way they repeatedly hear from you or something. I heard a great saying was, you know, the more you're positively affirming to others. I had so much of that. And I loved, I'd still love my city. I'm booking tickets to go back to Sioux City. I go back to the college homecoming and I go back to the high school. I love it so much. I live in California now, but home, that's always home. And it wasn't, you know, I didn't have a chip on my shoulder. I did, I have always in my life felt like an underdog. Like I had to outwork people. I felt like in good, better and different, my wiring is, you know, I can outwork. I may not have the God-given talent. I didn't have God-given athletic skills. I wasn't born big or fast or unusually muscular. And some people are biology or whatever that is. But I always had this chip on my shoulder underdog that I can read more, I can listen more, I can seek mentors more. I can, my dad at 13 years old said, you see those guys that you admire, and they were playing high school. Go watch what they do when they're not on the court. Watch how they work out and watch, how they behave. He didn't use the word modeling like you and I know it, Jeff. He said, do what they do. All right. Well, then if they've applied themselves in a more direct, deliberate way, you know, and obviously their commitment level is higher. And we see that in the sales space too. A lot of sales people, as you well know, wing it, right? Don't have like to reference your book, which, you know, we'll put links in the show notes and we'll talk about this obviously, but your book, The Sales Edge, you walk through a lot of stuff in there about what one of the key takeaways that I got from that is, you know, the whole thing about preparation, right? And doing your homework and having a dialogue or a talk track, being intentional with your time, you know, like the story you tell in there about the meeting you had with that big executive, that luncheon or dinner meeting, you know, where he just sat down, all right, let's get to it. And you prepared like the night before, done all your homework and you knew where their gaps were and you knew who exactly how to present a case that was gonna be compelling to him. Instead of like, yeah, so what's up? You know, what are your needs? You know, which is how a lot of people approach sales. You know, my book is a summary of some of the greatest lessons that I had the good fortune of learning from others. And I think I do a pretty good job of talking through the mistakes that I made as well. Because, you know, at the end of the day, you were all gonna make mistakes. And the question is, are you gonna learn from it? Or, you know, be yourself up over it. And that, what I like about how, you know, I worked with a writer, of course. You know, I wrote a lot of it, but you turn it over. You speak it out, the professional writer writes it and you feed it back and go back and forth. And I wanted to really, I think the art of a great story is the pain, is embarrassment, is the feeling of not enough, the feeling of trying something and not knowing the outcome and the outcome not turning out in your favor. The world loves an underdog. If I were to tell a story or write a book about, here's all the great things I did. Here's the top 10 greatest things, Gene Zed. Who would wanna listen to that? Yeah. But the people, I know, like my favorite movie is Rocky III. My favorite movie series are the Rocky movies. If I, you know, if you only watch one more movie, what's your favorite? Because the story, the hero's journey, the everyday guy gets an opportunity, turns it down, tries and fails. Mentor comes in to give advice, he denies the advice, he gets further and further to the bottom, hits rock bottom, decides to listen to mentor, takes a new action, begins to get some positive feedback or response or feedback or progress, takes more action, takes more action, then at the end, overcomes the giant, the foe, right? And it's a mindset, I mean, the ET, every Star Wars movie, I mean, the model, the hero's journey model is that's the stuff that people wanna hear about. I know that's what I wanna hear about. Yeah, well, that people have stories, that's for sure. And I'm sure you've got a lot of good stories, and I don't wanna overlook your accomplishments either. I mean, obviously you're being very humble, but you've alluded to a couple of those, you were, if we roll back to the one thing, we share some commonality, you were the VP of sales for Robbins Research for Tony for several years there. And I like the story you have in the book there, which is the company had been around for about 20 years and you came in and like blew all the old records away, like two, three times over. Yeah, 29 years the company had been in business, and there were 11 different, it's called revenue streams and that would be eight teams producing different revenue streams. Think about products, coaching, mastery university, UP, the unleash the power of thin seminar, I'm guessing your audience knows Tony and UPW and all that. There's ad event sales, there's post event sales, there's rollovers from a six month coaching contract to a 12, I mean, these are all different sellers selling different things in each of these half sales targets on them. I'm super proud of the fact that during the three years eyes with Tony, we broke every single record at least twice. We break the record, break that record. Some we broke three times, four times, including event attendance. Right. You know, first UPW I went to was 1800 people, by the time I left, we had 7,000 in an event, right? I mean, you know, then fast forward that to 10 years later, I was in the LA, unleash the power of thin, 16,000 people, live, these are live bodies. Yeah, that's crazy. And here's another thing that I think is just, you know, hopefully people hear our fans of Tony Robbins, and if you're not, let me give you another reason why you should be. Think about the fact that that man has been doing live seminars for 30 plus years. That's how he has catapulted his fame. That's how he gives back to, you know, champions that want to get better or people that are desperately struggling and need something. The guy has dedicated his life to helping other people become mentally and stronger to evolve themselves. His business model was shattered 11 and a half months ago in COVID hits or 10 months ago in COVID hits. He had a 12,000 person event in San Jose that was ready to go right before the first, we got to shut everything down. Like, what do you mean shut everything down? I mean, he had to cancel that. I mean, just do the math. On an average ticket price of, let's just, I'm guessing, a thousand bucks. Just do the math, the financial math. Let alone all the deposits that have to be put down for travel and airfare and hotels and arenas, like devastating to the speaking business. And he didn't give up. And it wasn't 120 days later. Once we determined in COVID that this isn't gonna be a one month, two month, three month thing this could go on for a long time. If you remember back in April, Jeff, we were like, okay, yeah, we should be back to normal by September, October, November. Yeah. No. And he invented, now he had help and technology people, but he invented by the time August came, he was doing his four day event in what I imagine. I've seen pictures and probably same stuff that people have seen online of, like the half the size of a basketball court. And if you can see me, it's like a you horseshoe shape series of giant screen, like a like a drive in movie theater, but in a horseshoe shape that he could walk in the middle of. And for the people that paid the premium amount, he would see 10,000 little squares of people watching his seminar from home. One of the most difficult parts about public speaking and doing a seminar, public speaking doing a keynote is one thing. Doing a two day, three day, four day event. The easiest part of that Jeff is the actual on stage performance. You, me, Tony Robbins, whoever, getting up on stage and delivering their magic in a succinct order with a workbook, that's the easiest part of the whole thing. The hard part, the travel, getting there. If you're international, the overcoming when you're in Australia or you're in Asia or you're in Europe, I mean, we're talking drastic time zone changes. And, you know, that has an effect on the mind, it has an effect on the body with that much travel. And he's six eight, right? And he figured out a way not only to serve people, you know, 23,000 people pay full price as if it was coming to their city virtually for four days to sit in front of a screen or a TV or a laptop for four days, right? Then he did the next one, it was 35,000. Now, currently, as we speak right now, he's doing a kind of a free live, it's kind of a teaser, like two hours a day. According to, this is an unverified number. There were 200,000 people from around the world. So if you think about, if he's doing it at three o'clock in the afternoon in Florida, I don't know what the math is, that's gotta be three a.m. somewhere in the world. China, Asia, Australia, whatever. Think about it. He's re-in, this is the power of having an unstoppable mindset and living in a world of possibilities. He could have rolled over, as many people could have. Could have rolled over. Said, okay, we're gonna ride this out. And he's such a great example of that kind of mindset. Now he's figured out the fact that, not only does he not have to travel to Beijing to do a seminar or Sydney or Birmingham or London, he can do it within, I don't know how close this place is to his house, but you know what I mean? He has the best of all worlds. He's serving people at the highest level. He's delivering his gift. Yeah, and it's actually being in his own bed at night. It's profitable. And there's lessons all of us can learn. Regardless of where we are, there's always a way. I'm curious, so while we're on this topic, and then for those listening, we're gonna go back into the book and get to my notes about sales, the conversation framework. But so you talk about Tony, and obviously one of the greatest things about Tony to use him or live events in general, of course in my industry real estate mortgage, also crushed a lot of those events and so forth concerts. But do you think like in the case of Tony, right? Or other business related events? I mean, do you think what's the future? Has COVID created a permanent kind of preference or expectation for the virtual event now? I think that the world as we knew it 12 months ago will forever be altered. I think that as humans, we have proven that virtual delivery, very similar to what we're doing right now, can be very close to as effective as live delivery. And when you work out the factors, one is going to the seminar, flying there, driving there. If it's getting a hotel overnight, your food, unpacking, packing clothing, and so forth, as an attendee. But then you get to be in the live magic, right? Versus getting the content from the comfort of your own house. I mean, we, you know, let's face it, a year ago we were kind of using Zoom when necessary, when people couldn't be together, but the preference was in the business world. Everybody can come to us to one of the offices and you have already sits down and they put their coffee down and looks at the screen and the person gets up and presents in front of the screen. And what we've proven is that we can virtually run a business through, you know, whether it's Zoom or Google meets or Microsoft Teams. And what I've experienced is the speed of business has rapidly increased. And the involvement of virtual meetings, in March and April, you know, I'm a business to business. I'm a consultant of mid-sized and large-sized companies. It was first the Zoom thing. People would be in their T-shirts. They'd have their hat on backwards. It'd be a jumbled mess in the background. You know, it was a temporary thing and they were home and probably, you know, in shorts and flip flops. Then once the general population became open to the positive impact of virtual meetings. Like, you know, like I work with companies out of Europe, so that means I can start phone calls or Google meetings or Zoom meetings at five in the morning because they're eight hours ahead of us. And I can have four, five, and six quality, highly impactful meetings completed now by nine AM, 10 AM. So in the global nature of it, if it's Australia, there are different time zones. If it's Asia, there are in a different time zone. But the global nature is absolutely accepted. Now, frankly, and it sounds, it looks like you do too, Jeff. I mean, you pay attention to your background. Cool, right? Yeah, because I get up and I get up and take a shower and I shave and I put on a, you know, I got a sweater and a undershirt on, but I'll put on a button up shirt if it's important client meetings because this is now the first impression in many cases. So do you want to have a messy background with terrible lighting? Do you want to pay a little bit of attention to your lighting, put something behind you that looks good? Are you going to comb your hair and shave? And, right, this is the new norm. Yeah, so you made me think, so productivity, that's the word that popped in my head or you talked about the speed of business and productivity as well, right? We're just much more, I would guess, productive, right? Because we don't waste time with all the other between stuff going to the office and commuting. Well, Jeff, think of the day when you would have to, you're going to go to an appointment and you got to get dressed, drive in your car, deal with traffic, park, walk in, sit in the lobby, have your half hour, 45 minute meeting and then do the reverse. I mean, you think about what kind of time that you've burned in that process. If you had a one hour meeting, the odds are you've burned three hours, going to parking, walking in that meeting. Now, it's absolutely normal to have that meeting. Right, yeah, I'm going to do it. Just like we're doing it right now and accomplish the same thing, I can still look in somebody's face, I can still see their eyes, I can still read their body language, but is it as good as a face-to-face meeting? No. Does convenience factor balance that off? I would say yes, absolutely. That's interesting, because for those listening and you might know this, part of what I help deliver for mortgage originators is classes or an educational platform to help them drive engagement conversations with real estate agents to drive referrals. And of course, pre-COVID was all in person because there was no like a thing forcing us to do virtual. But now of course post-COVID, there is. And I'm getting two camps. One camp is like people will say, like last week on our call, you know, a guy says, hey, you know, I asked all my agents who attended a meeting, do you guys want to go back to in person? And 80% of them said no. We're cool doing it just like this. But then we get the flip side where people are zoomed out. All right, so here's my take on it. I think my answer to that, and you'll probably appreciate this being a presenter, is I think people say they're zoomed out when you're zoom sucks. And it's boring, right? Right? Or it's like content that's irrelevant, I don't care. And then on the other side is like, what you're alluding to here is with the backgrounds and now we have to like, you know, not have a baseball cap on and have your lighting now, just like when people started with video, organic straight from your phone video was cool and it still is, but the expectations go up once it becomes more of something normal for us. And we're like, you know what I mean? Oh, look at that dude, he's like, you can't even hear him, can't see him, he's not shaved. Now people are going to be judging you in this more critical, I guess, micro experience of engagement with you. Does that make sense? Nope, no doubt. Here's a, this is a little epiphany I had. In today's new world, you get no extra credit for being to a meeting early. Mm-hmm, but you do get dinged heavily if you're one minute late. That's true, that's true. Right, yeah, if it's a team meeting, if it's a customer meeting, aspect meeting, being on time is huge. Now here, again, here's the plus and the minus of this new world. Well, I have six kids, four of them are homeschooling. Oh yeah, you're doing some challenges, mm-hmm. Right, and I'm in an office in a house where they're over there and three of them are boys. So it's not a crazy fact in the middle of something to hear a, oh, I'm gonna kill you. Right, so there are some challenges with this, but here's the truth, be told, Jeff, I've been working with a single client, a one client that has hired my full time and attention to build a company, build an entire legit company. I'm not talking, it's me, myself, and I, and I'm gonna do, and I'm not judging it, but I'm talking about a one man band and get on quick books and get a LLC established. And now I'm, quote unquote, in business. I'm talking about building a real corporation, real corporations with lawyers and bookkeepers and accountants and HR professionals, salespeople, marketing people, delivers of the service which are engineers. I've done all of that from this exact computer on, I don't always use this microphone, but this is being recorded. I have not met one person in person, not one. And I've hired 15 separate resources. If you think about even HR, you've got to have an HR person, you've got to have contracts drawn up that have to be approved by attorneys, think about health insurance, you think about business insurance, you think about taxation and bookkeeping, like building a legit business, and you just made me think about it, like I started this at the end of October, so we're 90, you know, 90 days in, actually about right now, and I've built the entire business without meeting one person. That includes shopping for property. I didn't meet the commercial real estate broker for the office space that will be, and now we're in London, we really need an office, but it's an engineering company, so there's equipment and stuff that we've got a house. Yeah. Well, let's pivot then back to sales, and back to your book then. So, are you training, or do you think that virtual selling, even though it's been around a long time, is that now like a skill that we have to have to be relevant in this quote new world? 1000% on virtual selling, so what has changed with virtual selling? Well, organization is critically important. Being able to send a file and receive a file and open it and look at it, or share a doc on a screen, absolutely critical. Using programs like eSign or DocuSign, getting contract signed like that. I'm going to send this to you right now, Jeff. All you got to do is click here, click here, and click there, and we're done. Let's go ahead and do that now. You know, the old days of, you know, you slip the contract over and hand them the back. Do the old Tommy off, you just put the pen in front of them. Well, that's now DocuSign. If you're a buttoned up. Yeah, I was going to say, so just not leave the two quick. This is the thing in our industry, and the mortgage and real estate industry is, those who aren't yet adapting, or have, you know, aren't building these skills to virtually conduct a business. Are they going to be left behind? I think so, unless their referral network is so strong, when you can't replace brand identity. So if somebody's been in this business, they're tried and true, you've got an army of former clients that either can become repeat clients because they re-fi or they move and need a new mortgage, but they're also talking about you. That's important, but I think there's a lot of people that miss the boat on their own public relations, basic stuff like their social media pages, their activity on social media. Are they using email to stay in contact with the people? Do they even have a database or a CRM? I mean, if you don't these days, it's just a matter of time when it's going to overtake you. It's interesting. It's something I'm thinking about a lot with virtual selling, if you will, or conducting business virtually, you just establish, you can build a business and never meet the people individually in person. There's so much we can talk about, like vetting off of some of these topics. If you don't mind, I want to bring it back to some of the notes from the book, if we can, because there's a lot of stuff in the book. Okay, so conversation framework. As I'm thinking about, and I'm reading through your book, and I'm thinking about, how do I apply this to the people who are listening to this, which is largely mortgage loan officers, who obviously are selling direct consumer right now. And you may well know the challenge in the space. Well, first of all, it's crazy busy, the housing markets on fire, people have refried like crazy, so it's just their throwing business at you, you know? And I think the need for selling in that environment has come down, right? Because it's like, look, if the rates are X, and you know that's a point less than I'm already getting, I don't need a lot of convincing, you know? And I kind of already know you or whatever, it's like, so let's just go with it. But, and so I want to have this conversation in the structure of, for those listening, is think about this conversation framework, which Jean is going to walk through in a moment, about it's still vitally important, like the first words that come out of your mouth, that first impression that you talked about, whether you're on Zoom or on the phone, and then a conversation framework for your partners, to me, which is equally and sometimes more critical, but big set up there. But, could you just unpack a little bit kind of what you mean when you talk about conversation framework? Yeah, there's, you can establish leverage or B leverage in a conversation, and one of the greatest ways to think about it is this, it's called frame control. The simplest way to put it is, the person that's asking the questions is the person in charge of the conversation. They're the leaders. And if you just understand some basic notions of what's called a pre-frame, what happens before you get on that collar in that meeting? How do you set it up? And you have establishing the dominant framework, the frame of reference, which means you are the one asking questions. Here's the most profound question that you can ask at the beginning of a meeting, or the beginning of a video meeting or in person. How can I help you? I know that sounds stupidly ridiculous, but you would be surprised at how many people miss this simple thing. Okay, you get on now. Now, imagine this. I've talked to you, Jeff. You're the, you're the mortgage guy that we had referred to me. Before we meet, you send me a series of emails. One is, hey, I thought you'd be interested in this long list of testimonials I have. Or the second one is, is, oh, thank you, you know, hey, John, thanks for referring gene to me and there's a connected email there. John, I won't tell him about your golf game, whatever. Something funny right there, right? So you got, there's all these little persuasive, simple things that you can do to pre-frame the meeting. So that person is excited to talk to you. They know they're talking to somebody that is intelligent in something they're not intelligent in, right? Like, for a lot of you listening right now, mortgage and points and title and that's like second nature, but to the normal person like me, that's foreign language. I want to be taught how to be a better buyer. So you pre-frame in advance. What are your touch points for somebody to say, yeah, I want to talk to you, let's schedule some time. Then it's saying, your first question out of the shoots is, hey, I'm so glad we both know Jeff, that's super cool. Let's get that right down to it. Here's what I like, here's what I like to say, Jeff. I want to be respectful of your time. So let's get right to it. How can I help you? Well, I'm looking to do this. Great, tell me more, okay? And then you just, you go right through the who and the what and the where and the when. Asking questions and yes, you need to know this information. But what you're unconsciously doing is taking charge of that situation. And so with a conversation framework, what you've done as I've read, I mean, you've come in and you've grown companies and done this amazing growth. Like you did at Gateway, you grew them, I forget what it started at, but you helped them scale to 11 billion with a B in sales. That's a pretty good win. You know, to the up there. But what you did, did you put a strategic framework together that was repeatable? And basically you follow that over and over again, right? Well, yeah, I mean, there's there's there's steps and sequences to every type of selling. I mean, if you're selling to the government, that's different than selling to an individual, right? But there are patterns and processes that if you study the successful people in any of the fields that you see it over and over again, you can understand what the typical patterns of what they do, how they do it, when they do it, when they ask for the business, when they ask questions, when they back off, but if you're looking at and studying the people that are the best, I mean, people are listening to your stuff, Jeff, because you've got a history of success. You're a hunter of the patterns of excellence in your job is to orate that, to synthesize that and feed it back to the audience. That's why people are you're listening right now, listen or wherever you are in your car or at the gym, right? Yeah, for sure. And so pattern recognition is, you know, Tony Robbins says is, what is the number one power in business and sales is anticipation, right? To anticipate, you've got to understand the patterns. Anticipate what? Anticipate buying behaviors. Anticipate what are the things that somebody needs to know or should know about you or your company, even prior to having the meeting? Anticipate what is the way you're going to run that meeting? You mentioned just winging it like, okay, hey, how's it going? Yeah, what are we doing? Like having a pattern and a process and a methodology, a roadmap of what you want to take somebody to, the customer journey that leads them to, yes, answer a conversion and ultimately referrals. If you, there are no shortage of training programs available. And Jeff, I'm assuming you have one yourself. Now, you have resources, you have tools. There is no shortage of resources and tools. But what I would challenge everybody to think about is this, anything you want to do, you can Google it or you can YouTube it at minimum, anything. Want to lose weight? Google it. Want to run a marathon? You never run in your life? Google it. Want to learn how to cook a five star meal? Google YouTube, right? It's all there. So here's my question, Jeff, why doesn't everybody do it? Why isn't everybody wildly successful, happy, proud of their body in a loving relationship? Why? Wow. That's a great question. In a simple way, I think because they choose not to, maybe consciously or unconsciously, but choose not to do what's required, learn what's required to achieve that outcome. Yeah. I mean, you're spot on. I mean, that's what has been in my head, since it's always in my head, it's like getting in shape. There's no, there's a gut, the zillion diets, right? What's that? No secret. I'm how to get in shape. It's like, eat less than you write and work out, right? It's like, it's not rock signs, but people don't. Because they're getting into all these choices and stuff. Let me bring it back to sales for a minute, because I wrote something down, maybe answer this question, because this is kind of what you did at Robbins and probably other companies as well. Take the same product and pricing and yet grow and outperform people who attempt to do the same before. And that's the perfect setup for largely what we have in the mortgage space is the products are pretty much the same. The pricing is pretty much the same. So how can somebody write, how do you grow and outperform if everything's baseline is relatively the same? Like, what's the, the other question to add on to that? Like you said, I think this is Tony's question. What's the difference that makes the difference? I was just going to say that. So what's the, you know, I just, there's no science behind this, but typically the, the clients that have hired me, I've consulted 159 companies. This was as a consultant, not working for the company and I spent 12 years at Gateway, almost four years with Tony and the rest has been, you know, I come in as the six, for six months or in some cases, that's a year or some cases two or three, is that most of the companies that I work with are the premium price. Okay. And what I say to them is if you have a premium price, you got to have a premium sales process and a premium story, okay, we all get that. But the truth is, unless your organization is dynamically and radically different than the marketplace, which is just very rare these days, unless you're the new one or you're the cheapest of everybody, outside of that, 90% of what you do is considered the same. Like, I would think mortgage agent A versus B versus C, you're all the same. It's kind of like hiring an attorney and I found this the hard way just because somebody used an attorney, doesn't mean they're a good one. It doesn't mean they're organized, it doesn't mean that I'm going to get along with them. It doesn't mean that I'm going to approve of what they say or do or agree with it, right? Well, that person's an attorney and I got referred, I'm just going, you know what I mean? So, there's a 10% difference that makes the difference and that's the human factor of what it is we do. Now what are some controllable elements in the human factor? How we build rapport? How we anticipate buying patterns and processes? You control the level and the quality of the questions that you ask. You control the speed at which you give responses, control the quality of those responses that you give, control the networking, you control what people say about you that are networking on your behalf called referrals for errors. You control how you stay in contact with former clients to say, hey, thought you'd appreciate this by the way, if you know anybody that's looking, make sure and keep me in mind. All that's controllable and I'm a huge fan, Jeff, of saying, I've done this for 30 years now, of spending the money on something, a course, event, a book, the tapes, the CDs, of spending the money because you give yourself personal obligation to actually follow through on the material. So there's so many people out there that just, you know, I've even sent people my book. I mean, the great thing about having a book, especially if it's a, you know, best selling book, which, you know, I'm honored for that, is that when I meet somebody and I get their address, I can send them a personal sign copy and that shows up. I mean, what a calling card. And my net cost on that is with shipping is probably seven or eight bucks rolled up. But my point is, is I do that to master the initial impression, to give them something of value first and not every time to somebody get the book and they read it cover to cover and they get on and write me a recommendation, no, I'm not doing it to get something from it. But I am doing it to master the frame up and build a lasting impression. Right. So if we say the 10% difference that makes the difference is the human factor, right? So. Yeah, there's a lot in there. If there are programs, I know I have a several friends that are in the real estate coaching business. I have other friends that are in the mortgage coaching business. And I'm just like, all of those people were super high level top performers in their day. And now they've chosen to teach other people how they did it. This old saying of those who can't do teach, I mean, I got riddled with that when I became the sales trainer and I'm like, dude, I was the number one seller. So shut up. But anyway, just STF you somebody's like, what about Lou Holtz, all right? My point to anybody listening right now, if you want to be great, it is highly unlikely you're going to do it just out of the biological wisdom you were born with. It requires intervention of somebody who's done what it is you want to do. And if you want to get yourself to follow through, put your money up, you'll follow through a lot higher. I had a personal trainer and the only time you could train me was at six in the morning. This is a few years back. I said, okay, I was all gun hoe and you know, New Year's resolution and my best body you're ever. And it was a hundred bucks a session, which whatever you think of a hundred bucks, it's a lot of money to me. You know, I don't care if I'm a gazillionaire, a hundred bucks going to be a lot of money. I'm going to still get the deals that McDonald's when I can't, just how I'm wired. I'm like, you're eating a McDonald's, I'm sorry. What's that? I'm fully eating it. The McDonald's. The metaphorically speaking. I think that's. There were many times I did not want to go to that session. I'm hitting snooze, hitting snooze and hitting snooze and I went because of the hundred bucks. Yeah, for sure, because you're on the hook, man, you got skin in the game. Anyway, that's my, I don't, I'm not pitching anybody's product. I'm just saying, I am the product of investing money in myself. and I would, the only thing I would have done 20 years ago is double down on those investments. Yeah, well, you said something that's very... I wanna make sure people don't overlook it and I wrote it down, premium, if you have a premium price, you need a premium process. Yeah. This pause for a second, thick because so many of people, the first words out of people's mouth, when they're calling this mortgage person is, yeah, what's your rate? What's your price? And to your point earlier about anticipation and you talked a lot in there about its sales process and the questions you ask and how do you show up before the meeting. So those that are listening right now, you guys know there's a lot of tools you have. Some of you currently use them, some of you could be, but to better control the perception, if you will, or the feeling that somebody has about you before you even talk to them, including if you're getting referrals from real estate agents and how do you tee up, how do you teach that referral partner to tee you up? For example, but I'm gonna come back to that, like for those listening, and probably some later later episodes, whatever, premium price needs a premium process. It's cool. Premium price requires a premium story and a premium process. That means when that I can get the same rate, I can get a better rate down the street comes up that you've gotta be prepared to answer that. Well, I'm sure you could get another rate. There's a reason why I have this many clients. There's a reason why you were referred to me, and it's this. Do you mind if we talk about that a little bit? How important is A? How important is B and how important is C? Because the truth is, Jeff, there isn't anything available on this earth today that you cannot find cheaper. Right. Right? You want to though, yeah. Yeah, I mean, you can have a cheap cell phone. You can have a cheap car, and I'm not judging it. You can buy cheap clothing or good clothing. There's a radical difference. The other key point you make in your book, there's so much, I mean, it's like, man, we could do like three different podcasts on your book and all the content. So, I wanna make sure before we forget, we're gonna put a link in the show notes, but a website for you guys to go get, you've got kind of a free preview of your book if people want it, right? Yeah, totally. Go to, it's a landing page. Go to the, the sales edge. That's the name of the book, the salesedge.co. And what you get, that come wasn't available. Yeah, what you get is a series of videos there. You get a free chapter review, but just go to Amazon and buy the book. Come on, you guys can afford it. Yeah, I mean, you know, if you, here would be a great example. Go to the salesedge.co, and I asked for your first name and your email address. We don't hound. I don't put you into some un-stupid drip campaign. You'll get a couple emails from us to invite you to and look at other programs, but the notion here is that you give something of value for free and let people make their own decision. If you like the chapter, then there's a chance you're gonna go to Amazon and drop 12 bucks for the book. Truth be told, how much I make on a book sale, Jeff? I know, very little. Yeah, two bucks, two dollars. So I'm not ethically bribing you for your $2.75. Right, but if you follow the sequence of a very inexpensive landing page, somebody puts in their name, it goes into a database. That database will allow me in an unobstructive way to reach out and say, hey, I just did a new video. I have this series I do on LinkedIn called the sales two-minute tune up. I thought it was cute. It's hard to get people to watch a half-hour video anymore. That is just a fact. I have a hard time watching a half-hour video. I can listen to a podcast while I'm driving in my car, no problem if I have that kind of a trip and I live in Southern California sometimes going 20 miles is two hours, right? But my point is I had to think of something that would give a quick hit of killer content. Like here's the other thing is, I give away my best stuff. I learned that from chat homes. So the chapter I give away at the salesedge.co is the best chapter. It's the chapter that's most unique to me on how to run the perfect first meeting. Yes, there's somebody's in sales and they're meeting new people and they've got to run that first meeting. This is a roadmap that I learned from another source, I modified that source because it was a little bit old, it was spin selling, remember that? I upped it and what I thought, I give all honor and homage to spin but I said, look, I've got a better way that works for me. I want to teach that to you. And it gives you a roadmap of how to run those first meetings. It doesn't matter whether you're in person on the phone or virtual. There's a certain sequence of events that has to happen. Number one, educate yourself on what they're trying to do. Number two, understand their gap. They either have a problem to solve or they have a situation they want to make even better. Three, take them to the future. I learned this in NLP. What's it going to mean for you to do this right? What's it going to mean for you to do this wrong in the future? And what if you do nothing? Where do you see yourself in six months to a year? Future pace them. Four, establish an emotional connection through a story of another client just like them that said, yes, and are glad they did. Then offer that case study, offer that phone call. I mean, that's how I want to be, you wouldn't be surprised, Jeff. As I've been building this company, I've had to interview, I don't know, I don't want to say hundreds. That's an exaggeration. Probably 50 vendors. Everything for who's going to be our SEO media spend buyer to who's going to build our website, who we're going to have for HR, who's going to do our bookkeeping. I've had at least five occasions where I liked the company. I liked what they were online. Maybe I got referred to them or I found them on Google. And the seller was so awful, so effing bad that I said, you need to go to the salesedge.co. You need to download my chapter. Do not call me back until you read that chapter and you follow this process. You're like, come back second approach. Let's see it better. Well, if you're always putting yourself in the buyer's shoes, think about it when somebody's selling to you. One thing I like about going to Best Buy is they're not commissions salespeople. They're walking around saying, what can I help you? How can I help you? How can I help you? Yeah, can you tell me how this plug-in, I need a docking station. I had to buy one and it was going, well, tell me what you're trying to do and what are you plugging in? And I had a Mac monitor, but I had a Google Chromebook. And the dude just educated me on the whole situation. And I didn't give a shit. What he was selling? I wanted the best one he had. Yeah, that happens hard. Show up to serve. Which by the way, thank you for sharing that your acronym edge EDGE, right, hence the title of the book. And I guess to close it out, it really kind of brings back front and center. This other thing you write in your book, which is experience does not equal effectiveness. You know this job, there's people that would say they've been in sales for 20 years, but they've done the same thing just 20 times a year or 20 times every year. They haven't grown, they haven't evolved. They're not working on their game. They're not studying their market. They're not studying their industry. They're not working on the skill set. And I don't have any judgment for them. It's, I gotta believe what's that? Dude. Okay, well, you can say it, but I have no judgment on those people, but you know, somebody isn't listening to this podcast in my voice right now that isn't an achiever of some level. Yeah, right. Success, there's plenty of room at the top, it's the bottom that's crowded. And I keep, you know, we get into the tactics of the sales process and everything it is I know. And I've studied as, you know, probably more than the average duck in terms of, let me go find the very best in the world. What are the number one selling books? And I always buy that and read it. What is out there that's new? What can I try? Well, you know, I was challenging my own self, but you know, it's achievers that are listening and reading and doing. It's the achievers. If you're listening to this now, it says something about you. You're hungry for more. You're either really good and you want it. You know, there's another level. You're getting lackluster results and you need help or you really suck, but you finally hit a point where you're like, I've got to go find a resource. Whatever stage you are on, it is the changing of your actions that will dictate your results. And if you understand the power of delayed gratification, that would suggest that. You don't, I mean, I'll just silly metaphor. You don't go to the gym for one week and expect to be in shape, but you do know, compounded that if you alter your diet in a positive way and you exercise over the course of time, you will lose weight. Over the course of time, delayed gratification, your body will start to shape differently. Your brain works the exact same way. And it's the same as true with like marketing, if we talk about like social media, for example, which is an area that I know a fair amount of people struggle with, how do I show up on social? What do I post? And you know what I mean? Figuring out that whole structure. People, ROI people often ask and it's like, they need to have the same principle of delayed gratification. Just before we had you and I recording, I was interviewing a loan officer out of the Bay Area. She did $200 million last year, pop one percent of the country. And she heard number one source of business is YouTube. Four years ago, she started on YouTube. Four years. That's delayed gratification. Oh, dude, I heard something that was so good and I was like, God, that's so spot on. This marketing guru said, allow people to rabbit hole on your content. I like that. Like that's YouTube. So whatever she does on YouTube. Here's this and here's that. And you know, there's four keys to this. There's three dangers you should avoid. The number one lesson I've learned. Here's a testament, whatever. I can only, I'm fairly probably accurate in predicting what she puts on there. Oh yeah. A little bit of time and attention, especially now when. Yes. We have a literal video production system in our hands that we can carry just like this. There's no excuse not to do it. Well, like rolling back to the story you opened up with was going to the seminars, driving, sitting in an event, having to go out of your way to get access to information that was gonna help you fulfill your vision. Today, you're holding up your phone as I am. Today, it's so damn easy. Well, there's dreamers and there's achievers. Okay. Always that. There's dreamers and achievers. The achievers are the ones that are getting information, looking for the information if they see something like they act on it. They know that the only way to change the long-term results is to change the current behavior. Yeah, I'm into that. You know, and I think on that, that's probably a good note to say some behavior you want to change is to get Jean's book. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, honestly, it's not a big pitchfast. Oh, don't get my book. Go get any book that's written by somebody that's done something pretty big and read it and highlight it or put it on your Kindle or put it on your mobile, what's the mobile book, the audio book, audio.com, audible.com, digest the info. Here's another one. I love podcasts. Why? Because in most cases, just like with Jeff, it's current. It's real. They're talking about subject matter and content, but it's now COVID. We're in a different stage of COVID right now. Like Jim Rohn says, life is like the seasons. You're gonna have your winters, your springs, your summers and your falls. And that is the pattern. That's the pattern of your relationship. That's the pattern of your body. That's the pattern of your business. It's the pattern of your income. And I believe it's the exact pattern of COVID. Where we're at the end of winter is my belief. Yeah. And next is spring. And we're all waiting for spring. That's true. Well, Jim Rohn says, what do you do in the winter? You don't wish you were easier. You wish you were better. You double down on personal development. Now, mortgage right now is hottest heck. I would challenge anybody listening to this at this stage right now. Pretend it's 2007. What happened then, Jeff? Remember those days? Yeah. Yeah. It was hell. What, talk about it. Well, I mean, nobody was loaned in money. It's like, your number one thing you sell is money and no one's loaning money, you know? And it's just like, okay, people don't want to buy houses. They can't qualify. There is no money to loan them. People are foreclosing and RIOs left and right. And it's just blood in the streets, you know? Well, guess what, Jeff? I feel really bad for probably a huge portion of your audience that has never had the benefit of experiencing a recession. Yeah. That's when you found out. That's when you found out who you were. Exactly. That's when many people found out they got drunk on success. They thought it would never stop. They spent money like it would never stop coming in. Multiple home, bought the rollies, got the nice cars, and actually, you know, they're overlavered. They're business stopped and they're screwed. Yeah, you've, you've got to prepare for winter because it's, it's coming. Just a matter of what? I don't want to be doom and gloom, but I'm also, you have to be an idiot not to think that, you know, winter, spring, summer, fall. It is harvest time in the mortgage business. It is harvest. Run as hard as you can if you're listening to me right now. Do not stop running. Pretend it goes away tomorrow. Jeff, your business in 07 or 0607 0809 died. And along with probably 60% of the mortgage pros died because they were not prepared. They treated the abundance of business as it's gonna be here forever. And I'm not gonna burn the midnight oil because I need to go to the happy hour and drink my face off. Don't do that. Yeah, it's stock your money away, invest for the future. And thankfully, it's not that all over again, but everybody listening knows that, you know, well, if this year already, the refires are gonna taper off in the second half of the year and, you know, all that kind of stuff. But I think the best way, it's like you said, you know, are you getting better, right? Don't, you can't be bitter. You've got to get better, whatever that's saying is, you can't be better and bitter, whatever it is, but you've got to work on yourself. We all know that. So the point is go check out Jean's book, TheSalesEdge.co. We're gonna put a link to the show notes and follow him on LinkedIn as well because you do have some cool videos up there. And it's like you've done so much, man, when you even talk about your stuff, you've interviewed like all the people from Shark Tank and, you know, the whole chat homes thing. That's just an amazing experience you had there. Chat homes are one of the most successful, like amazing. You wanna learn about sales, read your book and also, if you don't mind, read Chets book, right? The ultimate sales machine. Yeah, so good. Yeah, phenomenal stuff. So, Jean, I can't think of you enough, man. Oh, this is, it's my pleasure. It certainly is. It's my pleasure to just get a share of a perspective and if this touched somebody out there great, but, you know, here's the moral of the story. Pretend it's going away tomorrow, work like it's not gonna last forever and you'll never be sorry. There you go, yep. Work your buns off, work on yourself, plug into a program. Don't treat this time in your business that's super hot as it's gonna last forever. There was a point where I thought, when I was at Gateway, that that company would never go away. We're a multi-billion dollar company and it was gone within five years. Like the seasons changed and the company globally did not change with the seasons. And it's a 11 billion dollar, 21,000 person company that had grown over 15 years was gone within six. Gone, G-O-N-E, gone. And what's, why do you think they've gone? Like what was the thing that really, I mean, there must have been market forces or whatever or was it just internal? They didn't pivot or adapt or what was it? There was a disruption in the market. There was an over investment into retail. You know, we were traditionally a call us, we'll build your computer and we'll ship it to you. We had a manufacturing facility in Norse City, South Dakota. It was very inexpensive. Like our overhead was super low. The new CEO came in and doubled down on retail. Like retail buildings where you have leases and heat bills and employees and, and, and, we opened 300 stores in a matter of two years and a recession hit. The owner of the company was worth, I don't know, $20 billion, you know, semi-retired and then brought in a CEO who doubled down on retail and we had a recession and we got, we were thinking summer, like summer was never gonna end. Harvest time was never gonna end and I was running the government division so I wasn't part of the demise on the decision crew but when a recession hits and now you've got almost 400 retail stores around the world, you can't just shut down a retail store. You've got long-term leases. You've got overhead that is there and that began the demise of, of a company that was a Wall Street darling through the 90s that the stock split, I think four times it might have been more, runs to 80 splits, goes 40 back to 80, a lot of millionaires made and I, I never thought in my life that I would work for another company besides Gateway. I bled the cow spots. And it was gone. Wow, see that's, you just never know. So it's the, what, it's, what can you can control? You can control you, control how you respond. You can control working on yourself, you know, and who you surround yourself with. So, you become your peer group, yep. That's why listening to these things are so important. Well, I hope this has been a good one for the listeners. I know I've thoroughly enjoyed it. I got a bunch of notes and like I said, man, I'm gracious for your time and I'm incredibly busy, so thank you. Awesome, I am super busy going to my 10-year-olds basketball game. That's another pleasure of this virtual working. I have not missed a practice. I have not missed a game for almost a year now and I'm super freaking proud of that. It's awesome. Good for you, man. Well, let me sign off to you and the listeners. Thank you for tuning in. If you like this episode, you know what to do. Leave us a review. Gene will be in touch, man. Take care. Peace out. Rock and roll. See you, Jeff. Bye for now. Hey, guys, what's up? Real quick, you've heard about the Mortgage Marketing Pro membership before and I just want to quickly remind you if that you're in a place in your business where you simply need more purchased loans. You need to fill your pipeline with purchase business. Let's just face it, agents are still a solid pillar of business and sources of purchase business for you. Well, good news. Our Mortgage Marketing Pro membership helps loan officers like you close more loans without the hassle of chasing agents or cold calling. 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