Welcome to Close it now, an H Vac sales training podcast with Sam Wakefield.
Speaker AHere we'll build your reputation in residential H Vac sales to be the expert influencer in your market.
Speaker AYou'll get insight into the top minds in the industry as they share their skills and hacks to help you on your journey.
Speaker AThis podcast isn't just about selling more, it's about understanding your customers needs and building efficiencies behind the scenes so you can sell more but work less while being top of mind when people think H Vac.
Speaker ANow let's get started with your host of the Close it now podcast.
Speaker AThis is Sam Wakefield.
Speaker BWell, all right, well welcome back to Close It Now.
Speaker BSam Wakefield here.
Speaker BI am so stoked to have this guest today.
Speaker BThis is somebody that I've actually gotten to know across the last couple months and he is probably one of the most absolutely renowned guests that I will have had to this point.
Speaker BAnd as you know, you listeners, I love to bring people in from outside of our industry because of the perspective is so fresh and so new and so different.
Speaker BSo my guest today, he is a two time published author.
Speaker BHe is.
Speaker BIn fact we'll talk about the books in this episode because I know that a lot of you listeners would love to get your hands on these books because they're very, very powerful, very effective and it matches A lot of my philosophy is like here are simple steps to take action, to actually change something instead of just being this big overarching philosophy and let's hope it works.
Speaker BAnd so we've got a two time author, he's been featured in Slate magazine, he's got articles, he's written in Ink magazine, he's published all over the place.
Speaker BAlso serial entrepreneur, he's had over 10 businesses since the time he was 12.
Speaker BHis primary business is a company called Quic which is serves the financial services space.
Speaker BBut also I really feel like there's some of you might be open to checking it out when you have some of you with larger companies because it's very effective for data.
Speaker BSo we'll talk about that a little bit, see if it could be a fit or not.
Speaker BBut more importantly, in this podcast we talk so much about becoming someone worth buying from.
Speaker BWell, this is someone worth knowing.
Speaker BHe has definitely been a person that I've gotten to know in the last couple of months that I've enjoyed every single conversation, always get value.
Speaker BAnd I'm excited to have Rich Walker on the episode today.
Speaker BThank you for being here, Rich.
Speaker COh, it's my pleasure.
Speaker CWhat a great Introduction.
Speaker CI feel honored.
Speaker CThank you.
Speaker BYeah, man, absolutely.
Speaker BSo we were talking the other day, and this is kind of where we want to get started with is, you know, tell us.
Speaker BYou were telling me a story about the last time that you had somebody out to your home to do some work, Right?
Speaker BBecause obviously this podcast is for home services and H vac and plumbing and electrical and that kind of thing.
Speaker BAnd there was an experience that you had that really piqued my interest.
Speaker BIt was when we were at the.
Speaker BWe had our meeting at the spa, and the.
Speaker BIt was just so intriguing, and it made me think about all of us that do in home sales.
Speaker BIt's like we've been missing some things because when we get to hear from a homeowner of like, hey, what was your experience?
Speaker BLike, completely neutral.
Speaker BThere was no, there's, you know, I'm not trying to sell you anything.
Speaker BWe're just having a conversation.
Speaker BSo super intriguing.
Speaker BSo I'd love to start there and then we'll.
Speaker BWe'll get into some more stuff here in a little bit.
Speaker BBut tell us about that last experience because that.
Speaker BThat was.
Speaker BI think there's a lot of value there for everybody.
Speaker CSo I think you're thinking of the one with the carpet cleaning.
Speaker BExactly.
Speaker BThat's the one.
Speaker CSo, man, I was so impressed.
Speaker CYou know, when you're a homeowner, you don't know who to hire for services, and what do you do?
Speaker CYou look at Yelp and you see a bunch of stars and you just don't know.
Speaker CYou talk to your neighbors.
Speaker CAnd so we saw somebody who had been cleaning in our neighborhood carpets, obviously carpet care, on the side of their van.
Speaker CAnd so I asked a few neighbors, and I said, okay, let's take a chance.
Speaker CCalled him up, talk to me, came right over, walked in, and the thing that I loved about him is that he wasn't really trying to oversell me on things.
Speaker CHe was trying to educate me.
Speaker CAnd he said, look, our process is a little bit different, and it's different in a couple of ways.
Speaker CI want your carpet to be the softest it's ever been after I leave.
Speaker CDo you know how many times people leave the carpet and it dries firm and crisp and just not comfortable?
Speaker CHe's like, so I. I actually take the care of working a little bit harder and using higher end products and services, etc.
Speaker CHe showed me his van.
Speaker CHe had the most incredible machine.
Speaker CNow, maybe I'm just overly impressed because I've never looked at these machines, but he's talking to me about how it's custom built and how it was manufactured, and it was probably double the cost of a normal one, et cetera.
Speaker CSo he was telling me all these things, and then he says, and by the way, when I'm done, you won't need me for twice as long as you expect.
Speaker CI'm like, what do you mean?
Speaker CHe's like, I'm going to do such a good job that you just won't need me back that often.
Speaker CSo, in essence, I'm putting myself out of business in a way, because you're just not going to call me as often as other vendors might have you come out or have themselves come out like, that's incredible.
Speaker CHis price wasn't necessarily more expensive either.
Speaker CIt was just.
Speaker CI felt that I could trust this guy.
Speaker CHe was so passionate about his business, and he was telling me his story of being an entrepreneur, how he had built this business up, and he was finally ready to get his second truck and his second set of teams out there.
Speaker CSo, you know, look, as an entrepreneur, and I think a lot of homeowners are entrepreneurs in some ways.
Speaker CWe love small businesses because we're small businesses.
Speaker BYeah.
Speaker CAnd so we love to support people who are truly passionate and interested in helping their customer.
Speaker CUm, so, yeah, that.
Speaker CThat's why we hired the guys.
Speaker CAnd frankly, our cost, our carpets are amazing still.
Speaker BI love it.
Speaker BI love it.
Speaker BThere's so many nuggets in that, that one story.
Speaker BThat's why I wanted to start with that, because everybody listening is like, how often do we go in?
Speaker BAnd, you know, we think we're educating, but at the end of the day, if we don't tell people, it doesn't.
Speaker BThat we might as well not be doing it right.
Speaker BSo what if we have this cool machine that's like, we had custom built that maybe cost more than everybody else, but if the homeowner doesn't know about it, then does it really even matter?
Speaker BIt's like, okay, yep, we're going to do the best job, but how are you going to do the best job?
Speaker BReally, unpacking that and breaking it apart is so powerful.
Speaker BSo everybody listen.
Speaker BHow can you apply that to what you do?
Speaker BApply this story and use it in your daily life, Everybody.
Speaker CSam, I think one of the things that happens because I have my own business and we have to sell, too.
Speaker COne of the things that happens is you sometimes think you shouldn't tell customers these inside secrets or these inside details, because haven't we all been told, don't get too technical.
Speaker CLike, don't go into so many details because it doesn't matter to the consumer.
Speaker CBut I think the difference here is when it matters to you and you're passionate about it and you're invested in it, that energy alone is worth bringing forth.
Speaker CSo it's not good enough just to say, oh, we're the best in the industry or we're really good at what we do.
Speaker CWe're really good.
Speaker CAnd let me show you why, Let me show you how we're good and what we care about.
Speaker CAnd that to me is the difference.
Speaker CAnd it's no longer arrogance, it's not bragging, it's just this confidence of why you're in the business you're in.
Speaker BRight.
Speaker CAnd how much you love what you do.
Speaker CAnd what are customers going to say, oh, I don't care about all this, just clean my carpets.
Speaker CGuess what, you have a choice.
Speaker CIf that's a customer to you too, maybe you don't want to work with that person.
Speaker BYeah, absolutely.
Speaker BWell, and the way that it sounds like he went through it as well, it was not really the technical side of things, but he, he did a really good job of keeping the benefit lens in front of the, the technical conversation.
Speaker BIt's like, let me show you my machine.
Speaker BHere's a handful of the details, but more importantly, then he turned the corner and said, and here's why that's important to you.
Speaker CWell, and look, the machine was not the leading thing.
Speaker CThe machine came up because my kids were like, what is this what we want to see?
Speaker CIt really what came up first was the quality of the outcome, you know, that, that experience that you're not going to need to call me that often.
Speaker CAnd he started with, your carpets are in really good conditions, so this is going to be an easy job for us to do really well for you.
Speaker CAnd talking about the chemicals and how it's non toxic and it's not going to hurt my kids and things like that.
Speaker CYou know, then seeing the machine was just kind of like the cherry on top that sold it because it was like, man, this guy's really invested in what he does.
Speaker BYeah.
Speaker BSo you know, he's not going anywhere.
Speaker BThe length of time in the business and all those things.
Speaker BSo, man, it's such a cool story.
Speaker BAnd there's so many like useful nuggets that we can apply.
Speaker BSo.
Speaker BAnd every piece of it was not just, you know, hey, it's non toxic, it's non toxic, so it won't affect you.
Speaker BRight.
Speaker BSo there's always this benefit of, you know, it's fine to say technical stuff, as long as we include the piece of.
Speaker BAnd here's why that's important to you, and here's the benefit to you.
Speaker CYeah, yeah.
Speaker CThis is something I tell my team all the time, because designing software is actually quite hard.
Speaker CYou can design software because you like it, because it looks cool to you, because you think this feature is neat, whatever you want.
Speaker CBut if you can't talk about how it benefits the customer, the user, I don't want to hear it.
Speaker CYeah, it won't matter.
Speaker BLove this.
Speaker BOh, so good.
Speaker BSo let.
Speaker BLet's.
Speaker BNow I want the.
Speaker BI'd love for all the guests have, like a highlight reel of their life.
Speaker BRight.
Speaker BSo I'd love for you to give everybody just kind of a highlight of.
Speaker BYou know, you started entrepreneurship at 12, and, you know, all of these businesses along the way, where was the big turning your big aha moment when you even could have been?
Speaker BThen when you're like, I was made to be a business owner.
Speaker BI'm supposed to be an entrepreneur.
Speaker BWhere did that spark come from and what got you on that path and on that journey?
Speaker COkay, you didn't ask to go this far back, but I'm going to go all the way back to the beginning.
Speaker COkay.
Speaker CMy parents divorced when I was four and a half years old.
Speaker CWe were part of a church that had a very strong religious hold on people.
Speaker CYou could call it a cult, because I think technically it was.
Speaker CAnd not like a cult in the movies, just more strength of how you belong and things like that.
Speaker BOh, man, I 100% know exactly where you're coming from on that one.
Speaker CSo when we left the church at four and a half, and my father was a minister, by the way, so he was really invested in this since he was a little kid.
Speaker CWe left the church and all the beliefs that my parents held were now in question.
Speaker CWell, my father, because he felt like he was doomed for the rest, for.
Speaker CFor eternity, he turned to drugs and alcohol.
Speaker CSo my.
Speaker CMy parents divorced.
Speaker CWe were super poor, on welfare.
Speaker CI mean, literally, my mom would go to the back of a grocery store and dig out produce they're throwing away and cut out the bad parts and just to feed us.
Speaker CMy father was not helpful to pay the rent because he was addicted to drugs.
Speaker CWe had people come live in our house so we could afford to pay our way.
Speaker CAnd we proceeded to move pretty much every year.
Speaker CYou know, I'm gonna turn 50 this year, and I have moved 33 times in my life, and a lot of that as a kid, every year, new school, new city, etc.
Speaker CAnd it was trying to escape bad situations and get into better situations.
Speaker CSo part of what happened is when I turned 8, a friend of mine had a radio controlled car, a kit that you put together, it did 35 miles per hour.
Speaker CI was like, I have to have it.
Speaker CAnd back in the 80s, that cost $300.
Speaker CToday it's a $1,200 car today.
Speaker CSo imagine being dirt poor and wanting such an expensive thing.
Speaker CSo I started doing anything I could to make money and save it up.
Speaker CAnd it took me four years.
Speaker CI raked leaves, I sold chocolate bars, I did anything.
Speaker CAnd I came across this idea for a water toy, which my neighbor was a supplier to physicians.
Speaker CAnd he got surgical tubing, the stretchy kind that you see put a pen tip in the front end, tied a knot in the other end, took a garden hose nozzle and put the pen into the nozzle and it filled up a long balloon of water and that squirted 30ft.
Speaker CWe were calling them water weenies.
Speaker CYeah, this is before Super Soaker came out.
Speaker CSo your option was water balloons, the garden hose, which didn't leave the house, or little squirt guns that went five feet.
Speaker CAnd here my brother and I and our friend, the neighbor, we come around the corner, we've got these water weenies squirting 30ft.
Speaker BYeah.
Speaker CSo I fell in love with that.
Speaker CAnd I went to my neighbor and said, hey, how much for this 25 foot reel of tubing you have in your shed?
Speaker CAnd he told me, I went, ran home, grabbed, gave it to him, destroyed every pen in my house, built like 20 of these water weenies and sold them out.
Speaker CSold out within a week to all the kids in the neighborhood.
Speaker CWent more tubing, Sold out.
Speaker BI'm sure you were the parents favorite because now everybody's shooting water for miles.
Speaker CYeah, we were having a blast.
Speaker CAnd over that summer, I made enough money that I could buy my car, right?
Speaker CSo I bought the car, had a ton of fun with it.
Speaker CAnd then my uncle says, rich, this was such a good idea.
Speaker CI will get you a booth at the fourth of July and you can sell these out.
Speaker CSo I then go back to my neighbor and I proceed to say, how much for a thousand feet of tubing?
Speaker CAnd he says, it's like 300 bucks.
Speaker CI said, I don't have 300 bucks.
Speaker CI just spent that on my car.
Speaker CYeah, your son's birthday is coming up.
Speaker CWould you trade barter with me?
Speaker CI'll give you my car engine, everything, extra parts for your kid's.
Speaker CBirthday, you give me a thousand feet of tubing.
Speaker CAnd he did it.
Speaker CWell, I mean, God bless him, he did it.
Speaker CI wrote to the scripto pen company and I said, I'm doing a project.
Speaker CI need sample pen tips.
Speaker CWould you send me some?
Speaker CThey sent me 5,000 pen tips at no cost.
Speaker BLove it.
Speaker CSo I assembled all these water weenies.
Speaker CWe go to 4th of July, sell out by 1pm I have paid my brother 75.
Speaker CI bought everybody dinner and I netted over 1100 dollars in that single day in 1986.
Speaker BAnd you were how old?
Speaker C12 years old.
Speaker BI love this story.
Speaker BIt makes me.
Speaker BThere's a quote that I say really often is most people don't lack resource resources.
Speaker BThey lack resourcefulness.
Speaker CTrue.
Speaker BThis is a perfect example of that.
Speaker CSo true.
Speaker CYes.
Speaker CWell, at that moment, I mean, I remember having dinner with everybody at the Chili Cook off at the end of the day.
Speaker CAnd I don't know, maybe my uncle asked rich, what are you going to do with this experience in your life?
Speaker CI said, I will be a millionaire by age 23 because I was going to turn 13 in a month.
Speaker CSo I was, I was close to being 13.
Speaker CSo I'm like 10 years.
Speaker CI could be a millionaire by then.
Speaker BYeah.
Speaker BAnd.
Speaker CBut here's what happened.
Speaker CI mean, you asked about this pivotal point.
Speaker CI stood there in front of a big table with these water weenies.
Speaker CI had people 6ft wide and 20ft deep trying to buy these water weenies.
Speaker CI was taking in fistfuls of cash, stubbing it in my pocket.
Speaker CThey were overflowing.
Speaker CMy mom would come up from behind and pull money out of my pocket and put it into a little bank.
Speaker CAnd this experience was amazing.
Speaker CI'm like, wait a minute.
Speaker CPeople will pay you money if they want something and you can provide it to them as a service or a product.
Speaker CI'm like, I'll be an entrepreneur.
Speaker CThat's what I'm going to do.
Speaker CI can't believe you can make money so easily.
Speaker CIt's unreal.
Speaker CSo that's what struck me.
Speaker CI knew I was going to be an entrepreneur from age 12 because of that experience.
Speaker BOh my gosh, this is so powerful too.
Speaker BAnd it's like that moment of realizing that, like, we can compress time that way too.
Speaker BIt took you four years to save up enough for your car, doing it the old fashioned way.
Speaker BAnd now you, you know, the first car you did in one day.
Speaker CWell, and here's the cool thing.
Speaker CI saved that eleven hundred dollars.
Speaker CAnd when I turned sixteen, I bought A real car.
Speaker CWith that money, I turned an RC car into a real car.
Speaker BOh, I love that.
Speaker BSo where did that entrepreneur journey go after that?
Speaker BBecause you mentioned that, you know, you've had 10 businesses along the way.
Speaker CYeah, I tried a lot.
Speaker BWhat were some of those highlights along of your, like, big moments in that journey?
Speaker CWell, I kept trying to sell water weenies, but Super Soaker came out and effectively put me out of business because they didn't break as easily.
Speaker CThey squirted just as far, they held more water, that kind of thing.
Speaker BSure.
Speaker CSo that was one thing in college, I kept trying things.
Speaker CSo I think we all get groceries delivered from.
Speaker CWhether it's Whole Foods or.
Speaker CWe tried different things.
Speaker COkay.
Speaker CBack in 1992, how did you get groceries delivered?
Speaker CAnd on campus at usc, University of Southern California, which is pretty much in a ghetto, what were your options to get groceries?
Speaker CSo I decided to start Grocery Express.
Speaker BOkay.
Speaker COh, my gosh.
Speaker CIt was crazy.
Speaker CI'm putting up flyers everywhere trying to get people to buy the business, and I finally get an order, and I realized, this is stupid.
Speaker CI have to go to a store, spend my money, carry all these bags, double park, and potentially get a parking ticket to carry it up to make a $5amount of money.
Speaker CI'm like, no, no, this is a bad business.
Speaker CSo I think along the way, most of my businesses were failures because I was learning a lot.
Speaker COne of the businesses I started with a friend was a video recording service to inventory the goods and items in your house.
Speaker CSo if your house burned down and you went to your insurance and said, hey, I had these things, they would say, prove it.
Speaker CIf you could show them a video of everything you owned down to your silverware, how easy would it be to prove that you own things?
Speaker CAnd so we had a business called Instant Replay that would do that.
Speaker CFor those of you who remember, in 1994, there was a huge earthquake in Northridge, California.
Speaker BYep.
Speaker COne of our.
Speaker COne of our clients had the tape and could show evidence of things that had been destroyed in the earthquake.
Speaker CAnd they use that tape to get their money back.
Speaker CIt was great.
Speaker CUnfortunately, my friend went bankrupt trying to run that business because it.
Speaker CAny of these types of physical businesses are hard.
Speaker CAnd we didn't have you, Sam.
Speaker CWe didn't have you to help us learn how to sell to these types of consumers.
Speaker BRight, right.
Speaker CNo, but look, by far, my software business is the most successful.
Speaker BSure.
Speaker CI started it in 2002.
Speaker CAnd so here's what happened.
Speaker CIn the 90s, after college, I became a expert in Technology and big systems, Fortune 500 company type thing.
Speaker CAnd then in the year 2000, I decided I'm going to become a financial advisor.
Speaker CAnd this is another business I started, which I did for a few years.
Speaker CBut the problem was I was making 200 an hour as a tech consultant.
Speaker CAnd now I become a financial advisor.
Speaker CAnd I work really, really hard to earn somebody's trust, respect, rapport in order to invest their money.
Speaker CAnd they finally say yes.
Speaker CAnd then I had to handwrite their forms.
Speaker CIt took me 45 minutes to fill out paperwork by hand.
Speaker CI'm like, this is the stupidest thing in the world.
Speaker CI hate filling out paperwork.
Speaker CWhy do I want this as a job?
Speaker CAnd on top of that, I realized with the commission, I'll make.
Speaker CI'll make about $4 an hour of my time.
Speaker CThis is just terrible.
Speaker CSo I built software that would fill out my forms.
Speaker CAnd everybody around me kept saying, rich, I hate filling out forms.
Speaker CHow are you doing this?
Speaker CSo I show him my software, like, give it to me.
Speaker CI'm like, no, it's a hack.
Speaker CIt's not commercial software.
Speaker BYeah.
Speaker CAnd finally, after about six months of hearing that, I went to my technology partner, my mom, and said, why don't we build this?
Speaker CSo we installed our first commercial product on February 11th of 2002.
Speaker CAnd the person who got it was full time, 40 hours a week, handwriting forms for a financial advisor.
Speaker CShe called us up two weeks later, practically in tears.
Speaker CShe's like, you know, you're changing my life.
Speaker CI now fill out forms for four hours a week instead of 40.
Speaker BOoh, a 10x type of change.
Speaker CYeah.
Speaker CSo she then.
Speaker CI mean, this is her career.
Speaker BNot.
Speaker CNot my fault.
Speaker CI mean, she.
Speaker CShe worked really hard.
Speaker CShe went and got certified as a financial planner.
Speaker CThen she became VP of marketing for the parent company.
Speaker CLike, her career flourished because we empowered her to do her best work, not paperwork.
Speaker BOh, love it.
Speaker CSo, I mean, look, along the way, I've started other things.
Speaker CI started other businesses on the side for fun.
Speaker CI've had a wholesale frozen yogurt business to sell powdered frozen yogurt internationally.
Speaker CYeah, we really didn't do that great with it.
Speaker CI actually sold drugs at one point.
Speaker CNow, seriously, it was non.
Speaker CWhat do you call it?
Speaker CA non.
Speaker CControlled substance.
Speaker CIt was lidocaine powder.
Speaker CLike, Dennis, use it to numb your mouth.
Speaker BSure.
Speaker CI helped sell.
Speaker CI built a website and helped sell this online.
Speaker CAnd it was doing really, really well, but left that business.
Speaker CI even have another side business right now where I rent out my motorhome Just as a way to offset costs, improve my tax situation.
Speaker CSo there you go.
Speaker BOh, I love this.
Speaker BOne of the cool things that I know about you that I think everybody listening would really love to hear about too, is that that process there of so many people in the trades, especially in sales.
Speaker BYou know, for years I've always had side gigs.
Speaker BAlmost every place I train, at least half of the room has some sort of side gig that they've got going on.
Speaker BAnd so kind of a qu, because I know you're, you're actually really good at this, is that efficiency of managing your time between the, all of the things you do.
Speaker BAnd so what is a hack for somebody that's like maybe they got their full time thing going, but also they have their side gig that they're, that they're building.
Speaker BWhat's kind of an efficiency hack to keep those separate, but also make sure that they're not like completely abandoning the family and, you know, all of the important things in life and letting those take over.
Speaker CSo I love this question because my favorite topic with business is the business model itself.
Speaker CIf you think about how a business works.
Speaker CSo like I love power washing, I have a power washer.
Speaker CI love doing my own driveway and stuff.
Speaker CWhat I do it as a business.
Speaker CI wouldn't because I don't like the business model.
Speaker CThe business model is physical.
Speaker CI have to be out on the street, I have to spend my hours of labor, et cetera.
Speaker CNow obviously I could hire somebody and do that too.
Speaker CBut again, now I've got other considerations.
Speaker CI have machines to manage, I have direct customer relationships, et cetera.
Speaker COne of the things I love about software is software is ethereal.
Speaker CIt comes from your brain through your fingertips into a computer and it turns into something of value and you can sell it infinite number of times without ever carrying inventory.
Speaker CYou can digitally transport it.
Speaker CSo there's no shipping cost.
Speaker CIn fact, there's no sales tax because it's a digital product.
Speaker BYeah.
Speaker CAnd so that's a model that I love.
Speaker CNow it's also a really difficult model because there is very, very few software products you can bring to market for less than six figures and one or two or three years of work.
Speaker CSo then I think about other products, like what about digital products?
Speaker CIf you could create a video training series and train people indefinitely.
Speaker CI've got a friend who did that making $25,000 a month.
Speaker CNow it's not easy.
Speaker CIt took him years and years and years to get to that level.
Speaker CBut the fact is it just keeps making him money.
Speaker CSo number one, think about the business model of your side hustle or your, your side business or the new thing you're interested in and ask yourself, how does it complement or distract from what I'm currently doing?
Speaker CAnd that's also a question of what is your skill set.
Speaker CSo yeah, if you do run that power washing business, ask yourself what's complementary to what it is you're doing.
Speaker CNow, you guys may already be doing this, but maybe it's adding in solar panel washing, maybe it's now adding in car washing to it.
Speaker CMaybe that's a bad idea, I don't know.
Speaker CBut if you already have the equipment, if you already have the means to do something, you know, I've got a friend who started a business where he was doing H vac and then he added in plumbing and then he added electrical, then he added handyman services into it.
Speaker CWell, because they're all complimentary.
Speaker CYou're already at the house, you already got the truck, you already have the equipment.
Speaker CSo that's the kind of stuff I think about.
Speaker CNow there's one other thing I also think about.
Speaker CWhat am I going to learn?
Speaker CBecause Sam, these other business I've started since I was in quick and I did it on the side, honestly, most of it was just to learn.
Speaker CYeah, I, I built websites because I wanted to learn how to build better websites.
Speaker CI learned search engine optimization.
Speaker CI have been able to rank several websites to the number one position in Google without spending money on ads.
Speaker CAnd I love these skills.
Speaker CNow it all comes back and benefits my main business.
Speaker CThat's the most important thing.
Speaker CSo I don't feel that bad about trying to do other things.
Speaker CThe other life hack is you've got to dedicate time.
Speaker CYou know, you have to put time into this.
Speaker CSo schedule it.
Speaker CAnd that's what I would do.
Speaker CI would schedule from 9pm to 10pm every night on my calendar, whether I actually did it or not.
Speaker CA different question.
Speaker CBut I would schedule it so that, you know, kids are now in bed, dinner's done.
Speaker CI have a question.
Speaker CDo I watch TV or hey, my calendar just popped up, I should go do this thing that I decided to work on.
Speaker CAnd so then most of the time I would choose to work on it and put that hour, hour and a half into it and then go to bed and.
Speaker CAnd it just kept adding.
Speaker CI mean, this is how I wrote my books.
Speaker CI stopped watching TV and wrote a book in 30 days.
Speaker BI love this.
Speaker BEverybody's like, I don't have enough time, I don't have enough Time.
Speaker BI'm like you.
Speaker BI argue with them all the time.
Speaker BIt's like you have the time.
Speaker BEvery bum has the same amount of time as every billionaire on the planet.
Speaker BIt's how you use it and how you leverage your time learning the ways to hack the system like this to be consistent with your activities.
Speaker BRight.
Speaker CYeah.
Speaker CAnd look, I'll put a finer point on this.
Speaker CIf you're, if you're saying to yourself, I'm starting a business on the side, and you also say to yourself, I'm doing this to learn to be better.
Speaker CSo it impacts my other business positively that you're doing that to avoid the stress or the guilt of having another side business where you think, oh my gosh, I could have made more sales in my current business if I had just worked harder.
Speaker CLike, why am I not working from 9 to 10pm on my current business?
Speaker CWell, look, there's something called burnout.
Speaker CI've had it three times in my company's history.
Speaker CYeah.
Speaker CAnd you need to stimulate yourself and try new things.
Speaker CThere's also plateaus of level of success where, look, the measure of your company's growth is really dependent on the measure of your personal growth.
Speaker CSo I wanted to learn things like sales.
Speaker CI'm not a big fan of network marketing.
Speaker CMultilevel marketing, sure.
Speaker CBut I took on one of those courses, one of those companies, because every Wednesday night forced me to get out of my house, wear a suit, meet new people, get up and talk and learn new sales skills, most of which were bad, by the way.
Speaker BRight, right.
Speaker CBad techniques.
Speaker CBut nonetheless, I was learning.
Speaker CAnd I was realizing, okay, I don't like that.
Speaker CAnd I don't like that.
Speaker COh, that was a good thing.
Speaker CLet me try that.
Speaker CAnd it gave me a reason or an excuse to go exercise new skills that I wasn't getting to do in this business.
Speaker CSo, yeah, to answer your question, look at the models that make sense to you and match your style of work and.
Speaker COr complement what you're currently doing.
Speaker CDo it because you want the training and the education more than just money or something.
Speaker CMoney is great, don't get me wrong.
Speaker CAnd learn constantly.
Speaker CLearn.
Speaker BI love this.
Speaker BAnd it's the.
Speaker BIt's funny that you mentioned network marketing and mlm because that was my life for so many years, was.
Speaker BThat was my side gig.
Speaker BI was always worked five different companies I've been in.
Speaker BAnd what.
Speaker BI guess I'd never really have talked about it.
Speaker BWhat most people don't realize if they've never been in that space is a ton of the Things that I train now in, in home sales and for H Vac.
Speaker BAnd all of this actually comes from all of the learning that I did there is like the rights and the wrong things to do.
Speaker BBecause I mean, what better way to like flex that entrepreneurial muscle than just like getting out there and doing it right?
Speaker CYou know, it's funny, you said, you said the other day, don't ask somebody if they're interested, ask if they're open.
Speaker CAnd that comes a lot from network marketing where you say, Sam, are you open to other ways of making money?
Speaker CAre you open to building wealth for your family?
Speaker CAre you open to creating a legacy that your family never has to worry about again?
Speaker CThat, that's a, that is a direct question from that industry.
Speaker CIt is, it's an open ended question that creates interest on the other person's part and intrigue, etc.
Speaker BOh, you got it.
Speaker BYou nailed it.
Speaker BThat, that's exactly where that comes from.
Speaker BBut it's.
Speaker BAt the end of the day though, that's an industry that's like nailed the psychology of it.
Speaker BBecause, you know, psychology is just the way people function, the way people think.
Speaker CYeah.
Speaker BAnd it's a universal truth.
Speaker BIt doesn't matter what the topic is.
Speaker BIt.
Speaker BIt just works.
Speaker BIt's powerful.
Speaker BSo, yeah.
Speaker BOh, I love this.
Speaker BSo thank you for catching us up with all that.
Speaker BAnd man, that's, that's a great answer.
Speaker BBecause recognizing that business model of is it something that we want to do?
Speaker BI think a lot of times, I know, myself included, I would slide into a side business.
Speaker BNot because I did any work ahead of time to figure it out.
Speaker BMuch more.
Speaker BLike, somebody came to me and said, hey, you're good at this.
Speaker BWill you do this also?
Speaker CYeah.
Speaker BAnd so I just said yes, without.
Speaker BWithout any intention of.
Speaker BIt was very spontaneous and impulsive.
Speaker BInstead of being like, okay, is this a model that I can work in?
Speaker BIs this something that will benefit my main gig and will time wise as well as the learning and all of those things?
Speaker BSo my lessons along the way were like, okay, I suck at doing multiple things.
Speaker BI'm good at one, maybe two.
Speaker BYeah, three.
Speaker BAnd everything suffers.
Speaker CWell, I was gonna say, you also have to really know who you are in this.
Speaker CMy wife hates talking on the phone.
Speaker CLast year we started a business with her and another partner and it ended up that most of what she did was talk on the phone.
Speaker COh, she hated it.
Speaker CShe didn't like it.
Speaker CLike, how are you supposed to do a business that requires you to do the things you absolutely do not like to Do.
Speaker CWhich again goes back to model.
Speaker CAnd we have to design a model for her that is not her talking on the phone to people.
Speaker BRight, right.
Speaker BYeah, exactly.
Speaker BOr like replace you with somebody that does like that.
Speaker CRight, yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker BI love this.
Speaker BSo let's turn the corner a little bit because the titles.
Speaker BAnd I absolutely want to go through your books for sure.
Speaker BJust yesterday I found out that you had written two books.
Speaker BSo let's go through those a little bit because I love the titles and I think it's very applicable to this conversation right now, especially about, you know, creating change in your life and creating habits, creating belief systems, all those kind of things.
Speaker BSo.
Speaker BSo take us through a little bit of that.
Speaker CYeah, I'll talk about my first book the most because.
Speaker CBecause the second one's about how to get the job that you love.
Speaker CAnd I assume that your audience has something that they love.
Speaker BPretty close.
Speaker BYeah.
Speaker CAnd I'm happy to talk about it too.
Speaker CBut my first book is called it's my life I can change if I want to.
Speaker CAnd the premise of this book is that it's a four step methodology for how to create personal change, behavioral change, habitual change, psychological change, things like that.
Speaker CNow look, I'm the first to tell you, you have a drug addiction.
Speaker CGo get professional help.
Speaker CLike, yeah, my book might help you, but seriously, go get professional help.
Speaker CBecause it's chemical, it's different.
Speaker CThis started actually when I was 12 years old as well.
Speaker CAt the age of 12, I had grown a lot.
Speaker CBut my mom was also going through a lot of personal development.
Speaker CShe was reading books by Dr. Wayne Dyer called pull your own strings and getting to yes and negotiating and communicating.
Speaker CAnd the cool thing is she was using my brother, my younger brother and I to articulate what she was learning.
Speaker BOh, good.
Speaker CAnd challenging us to learn it with her, just through osmosis.
Speaker CAnd so we did things like we'd go to a restaurant and she would point at somebody and say, hey, look at how that guy's walking.
Speaker CWhat do you think that person feels about themselves?
Speaker COh, low confidence, high confidence.
Speaker CYou know, things like that.
Speaker CAnd we started people watching and addressing.
Speaker CI don't know if we were right.
Speaker CDidn't matter.
Speaker CIt was the fact that we were practicing and trying to understand.
Speaker CSo from age 12 on, I started to mirror my mom's personal development.
Speaker CAnd one of the things that happened was I realized I wanted to change something about myself.
Speaker CAnd the real story is when I was a sophomore in high school, I had my first love and I felt jealous.
Speaker CI saw her Talking to another guy, I felt jealous.
Speaker CGive a hug to a friend, I felt jealous.
Speaker CAnd I asked myself, is jealousy serving me?
Speaker CLike, is this a good thing?
Speaker CAnd I didn't think it was.
Speaker CI felt like this is a bad emotion that serves no purpose.
Speaker CSo I want to change that.
Speaker CAnd that was the genesis of my methodology of how to create change.
Speaker CBecause I decided I'm no longer going to feel jealous.
Speaker CSo back in 2007, my brother in law and my sister started going through what became a divorce.
Speaker CAnd what I did, I didn't know that at the time, but I was friends with both of them, started a business with my brother in law, frankly.
Speaker CAnd so they both started talking to me independently about what they were going through.
Speaker CAnd I'm giving them feedback and mirroring them, et cetera.
Speaker CAnd they both said, ed Rich, you really should write a book about this someday.
Speaker CI'm like, I never thought about writing a book.
Speaker CThat's not in my wheelhouse.
Speaker CI don't even like to read books, so why would I write one?
Speaker CNo.
Speaker CThanksgiving that year, I got fed up with them because they tried to make me the conduit between them.
Speaker BOh, no.
Speaker CAnd so I went home after Thanksgiving Day.
Speaker CAnd that's when I started writing the book one to three hours a day.
Speaker CAnd I delivered it on Christmas as a gift to both of them because I was trying to get them to read something and take me out of the picture.
Speaker BSure.
Speaker CHere's the funny thing, Sam.
Speaker CIt took me four years to publish the book.
Speaker BOh, wow.
Speaker CBecause I was afraid.
Speaker CI was afraid of like, hey, I'm this tech guy, I'm this efficiency expert.
Speaker CHow am I also a self improvement guru?
Speaker CLike, how does that work?
Speaker BSure.
Speaker CAnd a friend of mine challenged me.
Speaker CHe's like, rich, have your employees read your book?
Speaker CI'm like, why would my employees read my book?
Speaker CWhat do they need to know about it?
Speaker CHe's like, they need to know you.
Speaker CYeah.
Speaker CWhat do you mean?
Speaker CLike, you're the leader of the company.
Speaker CIf they don't really understand you and know you, and you are the brand, you are the presence here, you're not showing them all the sides of you, then how can you expect them to trust you and want to follow you and do their best with you?
Speaker CLike, wow, I hadn't even thought about that.
Speaker CSo that inspired me to publish the book and give it out to everybody.
Speaker CSo it came out in 2011.
Speaker CAnd do you want me to go through the four steps?
Speaker CDo you think that would be helpful?
Speaker BYeah, I would love that.
Speaker BYeah, that's that'd be perfect.
Speaker BGreat.
Speaker BCouldn't set you up any, any better for that.
Speaker CSo, I mean, I have to stop because I get passionate about this.
Speaker BNo, please go through this because so before you do, some context here because I know you haven't really listened to a ton of the of my episodes is this is something that's very.
Speaker BWe're very passionate about in the Close it now community is, you know, work to become someone worth buying from.
Speaker BWell, when I'm doing trainings, I take everybody through.
Speaker BI call it just the wheel of life.
Speaker BAnd with sales skills being the smallest piece of actually of top performers, if somebody doesn't have the elements of their life in order.
Speaker BAnd we talked about this a little bit yesterday on your podcast, which we'll mention to everybody in a minute.
Speaker BBut if we, if, say, who cares if you make a million dollars a year if you get a divorce and a heart attack along the way?
Speaker CYeah, right, right.
Speaker BAnd so it's about keeping, you know, having all of the elements of our life in order and Rick doing the as is mode of like, okay, I'm going to rate myself 1 to 10 and just being honest with ourselves.
Speaker BOkay.
Speaker BRight now I'm a three in this area.
Speaker BBut the only way to improve it is taking steps towards improvement.
Speaker BWe're not a tree.
Speaker BRight.
Speaker BWe can move.
Speaker BYeah.
Speaker BYou know, so the only way to get changes, make change.
Speaker BSo that's the context of a lot of the conversation that we have within the Close it Now community.
Speaker BSo that's actually a perfect thing to love to hear from you on these steps and how people can apply those and to improve their lives in those different ways.
Speaker COkay, awesome.
Speaker CAwesome.
Speaker CSo I'll say this first.
Speaker CI think my book is like a primer for any other self improvement book you're going to read.
Speaker CBecause the problem I have with most self improvement books, and I've read many of them, is you read them for three, four, five, six weeks because that's how long it takes.
Speaker CAnd then you're like, okay, but what do I do?
Speaker CI understood who it hurts, why it's happening, but what steps do I take?
Speaker CSo let me tell you the four steps.
Speaker BSure.
Speaker CNumber one, you have to believe you can change.
Speaker COkay, I know this sounds trivial, Sam, but honestly, there's so many reasons people believe they cannot change because of circumstances.
Speaker CThis is the way I always did it.
Speaker CThis is what my father taught me.
Speaker CThis.
Speaker CI don't have the money, whatever.
Speaker CI'm not asking that.
Speaker CWhat I'm asking is, do you believe you can Change.
Speaker CHere's some simple examples.
Speaker CHave you ever had a haircut, then you changed?
Speaker BYeah.
Speaker CDid you ever read a book, then you changed.
Speaker CDid you complete a course in school?
Speaker CYou've changed.
Speaker CAll I'm asking is you believe you can change.
Speaker CNot that you can change the thing you want, but that you physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually can change.
Speaker CSo that's first step.
Speaker CAnd honestly, it's an easy one once you get past that.
Speaker CSecond, this is a hard one for a lot of people.
Speaker CYou have to want to change.
Speaker CAnd I don't mean you say to yourself, I want to change.
Speaker CI mean you have a motivational desire that is so strong that it will overcome the cost or the pain of changing.
Speaker CThe simple one, dieting.
Speaker CEverybody thinks, I want to lose weight or gain weight.
Speaker CAnd to change your diet's a hard one.
Speaker CYou have to give up things you like, like sugar, ice cream, soda, eating at night, all those types of things.
Speaker CBut you have to have the desire that's so much stronger than that that you are willing to go through that pain to change.
Speaker BRight.
Speaker CSometimes you don't know if you have it or not.
Speaker CAnd so part of the technique in my book is to address it.
Speaker CAnd it's literally to write out pros and cons.
Speaker CIf I change, what would happen.
Speaker CIf I don't change, what will happen?
Speaker CGive some weighting to it and add up the values and say, oh, my gosh, it is actually in my favor.
Speaker CI do have a stronger desire to change.
Speaker CSometimes just doing that kind of exercise helps you see it more clearly, and then you can commit to it.
Speaker CSo those are the first two steps you have to believe and want to change.
Speaker CAll right, Step three is where the meat is.
Speaker COkay, here's what happens.
Speaker CYou need to identify the core belief that is driving your behavior.
Speaker CSo I'm going to give you an analogy.
Speaker CIf you think about a tree and you see a tree, for all of its beauty, its limbs, its leaves, et cetera, let's say that one leaf on that tree is one of your behaviors.
Speaker CIt could be your belief, your.
Speaker CYour behavior around money, friends, love, you know, work, whatever.
Speaker CSo let's say you want to change one of those behaviors.
Speaker CWell, what happens if you prune the tree?
Speaker CI mean, the typical thing is you go cut the leaf off.
Speaker CWhat happens?
Speaker CThe leaf grows back.
Speaker BSure.
Speaker CRight.
Speaker CWhy?
Speaker CBecause what's feeding it is the root system down in the ground, and what's feeding it has to be stopped.
Speaker CSo what?
Speaker CThe brute force willpower methodology of change is go cut off the limb or cut off the branch or the leaf is not a good enough methodology because you're not addressing what's feeding it in the first place.
Speaker BRight.
Speaker CSo what I want you to be able to do is look at that behavior on the leaf, trace it back down through the branch, down to the root.
Speaker CAnd what you're doing, and I'll describe this in a second, what you're doing is you're finding the core belief that's driving that behavior.
Speaker CSo I'll give you an example.
Speaker CLet's say that you feel like nothing's ever good enough for you.
Speaker CLike, you want your best friend's car, you want your sister's vacation, you want your neighbor's house, whatever it is.
Speaker CAnd you're like, ah, never feel good enough.
Speaker CSo what you need to do is ask yourself how this is happening.
Speaker CI want you to ask questions about the behavior, except do not use the word why.
Speaker CI want you to ask how does it happen?
Speaker CWhen does it happen?
Speaker CWho does it impact?
Speaker CWhere does it happen?
Speaker CThose types of questions.
Speaker CSo think about this.
Speaker CI'm going to explain why.
Speaker CWhy is such a bad question to ask.
Speaker CYour brain will always answer the question you give it.
Speaker CThis is one of the things I love about your brain.
Speaker CIt's the best computer system in the world.
Speaker CYou give it a question, it will give you an answer.
Speaker CBut let's.
Speaker CI'm going to use an example that is more poignant here.
Speaker CLet's say you wanted to lose weight.
Speaker CAnd you ask yourself, why can't I lose weight?
Speaker CDo you know what your mind's going to do?
Speaker CIt's going to say, because you're lazy.
Speaker BAll the responses of why you can't.
Speaker BRight?
Speaker CYeah.
Speaker CAnd what do those do?
Speaker CThey're negative.
Speaker CThey hurt you.
Speaker CIf you say, when can I lose weight?
Speaker CHow could I lose weight?
Speaker CWhere could I lose weight?
Speaker CYou get more constructive answers.
Speaker CBut going back to this behavior, you ask yourself, when do I feel like I'm not getting.
Speaker COr nothing's good enough.
Speaker CWho do I feel like that with?
Speaker CHow does it impact me?
Speaker CEt cetera.
Speaker CAnd what you start to see are answers to these questions that you're giving yourself.
Speaker CSome answers are irrelevant and some are really powerful.
Speaker CThe ones that are most poignant to you, I want you to ask questions about that.
Speaker CAnd as you keep asking questions about those feelings that you're or those answers you're giving, you'll be able to trace it back to a point in time in your life where a belief was set.
Speaker CSo let's say you trace it back and you remember you were Nine years old, you were on the soccer team, and you went and ran the field as hard as you could and you guys lost the game.
Speaker CAnd your dad comes up to you and says, hey, man, you did a good job.
Speaker CBut look, you'll win next time.
Speaker CJust don't settle for second best.
Speaker CKeep working hard and you'll get it.
Speaker CSo what happened?
Speaker CYou started believing.
Speaker CDon't settle for second best because I'm going to be the best.
Speaker CI'm going to keep working hard.
Speaker CThat's a totally great belief when you're nine years old for the soccer team.
Speaker CBut what happens now?
Speaker CYou're 39 years old, or 49 in my case, and you're saying to yourself, oh, I never want to settle for second best.
Speaker CRight.
Speaker BAnd it's making you unhappy, the whole Ricky Bobby syndrome.
Speaker BLike, second place is the first loser.
Speaker CThe first loser, yeah.
Speaker CSo you start to realize, okay, that belief served me back then, but now it's festered into something ugly and it's no longer serving me now.
Speaker CSo step three was to figure out what is the core belief that's driving this behavior.
Speaker CStep four, believe it or not, is one of the easiest parts of this whole thing.
Speaker CIt's the actual change part.
Speaker CWhat do you do?
Speaker CChange the belief.
Speaker CSo let's say that you choose a new belief.
Speaker CAnd here's one of the best things I love about our mind.
Speaker CYou will never choose a worse belief than the one you currently have.
Speaker CYou're not going to say, I'll never settle for second best, and say, oh, what's the worst belief I can choose?
Speaker CYou'll never do that.
Speaker CInstead, you'll say something like, how about this?
Speaker CI'll never settle for unhappiness.
Speaker CSo now, because you asked all these questions, how does it happen?
Speaker CWhen does it happen, who does it impact, et cetera.
Speaker CAnd let's say you start to see a pattern like, oh, I look at somebody's car and I don't feel good enough.
Speaker CI look at somebody's job, house, money, whatever.
Speaker CThose are all the points in time where you insert this new belief.
Speaker CSo the next time you come across somebody driving the car you wish you had and you start to feel that unsettled instead, just remind yourself, no, my belief is to not settle for unhappiness.
Speaker BYeah.
Speaker CSo this doesn't make me happy to think this way.
Speaker CSo I'm not going to do it anymore.
Speaker CAnd what happened is you stopped feeding the root, which is the core belief.
Speaker CYou put a new belief in its place.
Speaker CIt may not even be the ultimate best Belief, but it's a better belief.
Speaker CYou put a new, better belief in place, and what happens is you stopped reading, feeding the entire branch.
Speaker CAnd that one behavior you tried to fix now became a ripple effect against a series of behaviors on that branch.
Speaker CAnd, Sam, the more you do this, the easier and easier it becomes and the faster and faster you change.
Speaker BSure.
Speaker CI want to tell you one more story, if you're okay with it.
Speaker BAbsolutely.
Speaker BPlease.
Speaker BThis.
Speaker BThis is so good.
Speaker BAnd, you know, I'm thinking of all the ways that this can apply to.
Speaker BBut before you.
Speaker BBefore you do this other story, it's like that belief system is so powerful.
Speaker BAnd that's.
Speaker BWhen I work with so many people across the country is, you know, they've got all of the ingredients to be top performers, except they're stuck in this place where they.
Speaker BThey've hit these walls of like, well, I only.
Speaker BI can only sell 2 million a year because of my market and because of this situation.
Speaker BThis situation.
Speaker BThis situation.
Speaker BThis is what I do.
Speaker BAnd.
Speaker BBut what they don't see is they've, you know, they're just as good as that person that, you know, maybe does 5 million or 7 million, but they don't think they are.
Speaker CYeah.
Speaker BSo it's like that belief system around that is like, where did this come from?
Speaker BSo constantly working to help people uproot those belief systems.
Speaker BAnd.
Speaker BThank you.
Speaker BYou're giving us much better tools to be able to do that.
Speaker CYep.
Speaker CSo I was going to pull up a graphic on my screen so I can remember it perfectly.
Speaker CIt's.
Speaker CIt's really around the idea of how we perceive reality and how we look at the world.
Speaker CSo I had a bullseye chart.
Speaker CMaybe we can post this on your website or something for everybody to see.
Speaker CAnd in the bullseye, it's really describing this.
Speaker CIf reality.
Speaker CReality is the center of the bullseye, that.
Speaker CThat is how you feel.
Speaker CThat's how you experience things.
Speaker CIf the outer ring is facts, facts are immutable.
Speaker CYou cannot change them.
Speaker CRight?
Speaker BRight.
Speaker CSo the sky is blue.
Speaker CThe temperature is 55 degrees.
Speaker CThose are just facts.
Speaker BOkay.
Speaker CSo facts are the outer ring.
Speaker CBeliefs are the next ring in.
Speaker CIt's what you believe about the fact that matters.
Speaker CSo if you believe that 55 degrees is hot or cold, then you will have the next ring in which is thoughts.
Speaker CAnd thoughts are how you feel or how you think about how you feel.
Speaker CSo if the fact is 55 degrees and you think 55 is cold, then your thoughts are, it's cold.
Speaker CIt's very simple.
Speaker CRight?
Speaker BRight.
Speaker CSo Therefore, your reality is you feel cold.
Speaker CSo how you experience reality is based on what you believe.
Speaker CTherefore, the way I say it is what you believe defines your reality.
Speaker CHow you interpret facts through your beliefs is how you think or how your thoughts manifest and therefore how you feel.
Speaker COkay, Right.
Speaker COkay.
Speaker CSo that's.
Speaker CThat's a.
Speaker CTo me, that's one of the best premises to try to describe why beliefs are at the root of who you are.
Speaker CAnd I.
Speaker CSo this is a side story.
Speaker CReal quickly, if any of you have read about Shackleton's journey to Antarctica to try to find the South Pole where he shipwrecked and was down there with all of his men for a year and a half, starving and freezing, there's a point in that story that the weather warms up to 34 degrees.
Speaker CFahrenheit.
Speaker CFahrenheit.
Speaker CLike, just barely at the freezing point.
Speaker CAnd they're sweating.
Speaker CThey're taking off all their clothes and sweating.
Speaker CIt's so hot for them because they became so acclimated to negative 10 and negative 20 degrees.
Speaker CSo now you think about that fact of 34 degrees to you and I, that's like, oh, I gotta get my gloves on, my hat.
Speaker CThis is cold.
Speaker CRight?
Speaker BThat's colder than your cold plunge.
Speaker BYeah.
Speaker CAnd they're shedding all their clothes and literally sweating.
Speaker BHuh.
Speaker CSo what's a fact?
Speaker CIt's interpreted by your beliefs that.
Speaker CTherefore, how you feel about it.
Speaker CIt's.
Speaker CAnd.
Speaker CAnd look, your beliefs can be manifested in your body, too.
Speaker CSo this isn't.
Speaker CThis isn't just how you think.
Speaker COkay, I'm gonna go back to the other story, when I was so powerful.
Speaker BThank you.
Speaker BThis is so good.
Speaker CWhen I was 27, I was single.
Speaker CWasn't no, you know, no responsibilities yet I had my company.
Speaker CIt was very new.
Speaker CAnd I said to myself, I want to get married.
Speaker CI want to eventually have kids.
Speaker CI want to have the life that we dream about as men.
Speaker CAnd I know women do, too, but I was just thinking for myself as a man, so how do I become the best man I can be?
Speaker CHow do I prove that I'm the person I've said I want to be?
Speaker CBecause I think one of the things we do as men is we say to people, this is who I am, even though we're not, and we're trying to be those people all the time.
Speaker CSo I cocooned myself emotionally, and I started testing every single belief I could identify.
Speaker CI did it for six years, and then I broke the shell and came out well.
Speaker CSo during those six years, I documented over 50 different beliefs about love, money, life, family, work, anything I could find.
Speaker CAnd every time I found a belief I didn't like, I change it using this method.
Speaker CI would just change it to something better.
Speaker CAnd it was amazing.
Speaker CLike, this is actually a funny story.
Speaker CI was 23 years old.
Speaker CI was talking to my mentor, and I was lamenting about a girl I was dating and how she was talking about the last guy she dated and how awesome this car was.
Speaker CAnd I'm a car guy, and I had a crap car.
Speaker CSo I was like, oh, man, I feel intimidated to date this girl.
Speaker CAnd I said to him, like, she was dating a guy who was CEO of a software company.
Speaker CHe was, like, 27 years old, and he'd already made it, et cetera.
Speaker CAnd my mentor said, these guys, if they're less than 30, starting a software company, they're not CEOs yet.
Speaker CThey're wannabes.
Speaker CDon't even think about it.
Speaker CDon't worry about it.
Speaker CSo guess what happened, Sam?
Speaker CLater, three years, four years later, I become CEO of a software company that I founded, Right?
Speaker BYeah, Right.
Speaker CThe day of my 30th birthday, I woke up.
Speaker CYou know, the first thing is I said to myself, I'm 30.
Speaker CI can finally be the CEO now.
Speaker CWow.
Speaker COh, my.
Speaker BI.
Speaker CAnd I said it out loud to myself, and I said, oh, my gosh, I'm such an idiot.
Speaker CI took on this belief at seven years ago, thinking it was helping me date a girl.
Speaker CAnd I ingested it and kept it and didn't identify it till I turned 30.
Speaker CThank God it wasn't age 40, right?
Speaker CBut it completely changed my view.
Speaker CLike, I can now believe I'm capable of being CEO because I'm 30.
Speaker CLike, how naive is that, right?
Speaker BYeah.
Speaker BTalk about imposter syndrome.
Speaker BYeah.
Speaker CBut this is how powerful the beliefs are, and that's why it's so important to sit down and actually diagnose what are your beliefs.
Speaker CIf you were to write out all your beliefs and you were identifying ones that aren't serving you, you change them, right?
Speaker CYou would work so hard to change it, because what's the point?
Speaker BGosh.
Speaker BYou know, I think that so many times that we.
Speaker BWe 1.
Speaker BThe big struggle, especially in our society, and.
Speaker BAnd I love everything about this because you're so intentional about what you do and this whole process and the whole steps.
Speaker BBecause, you know, I came from the place of, you know, in my religious cult upbringing, that we.
Speaker BYou weren't allowed to have emotions and beliefs outside of what this one thing says.
Speaker BThis is Your only allowable belief.
Speaker BAnd so I was horrible at even recognizing what my own beliefs are.
Speaker BAnd still it's a constant struggle to be able to put a name to and recognize my own beliefs and emotions, especially for communication and relationships and stuff.
Speaker BSo to, so to be able to step one, recognize and analyze, not just analyze, but recognize and label what your own belief is, what your own emotions are around that is huge.
Speaker BSo I mean that what I would love to be able to ask you what is a maybe a way to start to recognize and be able to label those?
Speaker BBecause a lot of people come from that same place of you weren't allowed to have beliefs of your own, so you don't even know how to recognize them.
Speaker BSo what's a good way to start there?
Speaker CWell, all of this is going to add to your own self awareness and build self awareness over time.
Speaker CThe first thing that I would say you look for is where are you unhappy?
Speaker CWhere is there friction in your life where you are unhappy, frustrated and not getting what you want?
Speaker CIt could be trivial, like not getting to eat what you want.
Speaker CIt could be just profound.
Speaker CNot having the success you want, not being with the partner you want.
Speaker CIt could be any of those things.
Speaker CAnd what most people do is they start blaming outside of themselves.
Speaker CIt's just not available to me.
Speaker CI can't make the money because the customers don't want to pay me.
Speaker CWhatever.
Speaker CAsk yourself first, where is this friction stemming from?
Speaker CAnd you can ask it from another perspective.
Speaker CYou could say, what is it I would actually like?
Speaker CWhat would make me thrive and excel and be empowered?
Speaker CWhat would that look like?
Speaker CI mean, look, my company, my software company, is founded on four cultural principles that run who we are.
Speaker CI came up with those before I ever started my company.
Speaker CAnd I came up with those because I was asking myself, if I'm going to work somewhere, what is going to empower me to want to work, to do my best work, to feel I'm doing my best work, to feel like I'm maximizing my potential because I was frustrated, working for others because I did, I had jobs, right?
Speaker CI wasn't always an entrepreneur.
Speaker CSo I was working for others and never feeling like I could reach my potential or do what I wanted to do.
Speaker CSo I just looked at that friction.
Speaker CI said, what is it?
Speaker CSo what would help me feel that way?
Speaker CAnd by defining what it is that would make me happy and thrive, I could then approach that and pursue it.
Speaker CAnd along the way you start to learn there are beliefs in there that are holding you back.
Speaker CBut you know, there's a simple thing to do.
Speaker CJust ask yourself, what do I believe about X?
Speaker CLike, here's one.
Speaker CWhat.
Speaker CWhat do I believe about stress?
Speaker BOoh, that's a tough one.
Speaker CYou know, a lot of people feel like I have to take my.
Speaker CMy work home with me.
Speaker BYeah.
Speaker CI have to sleep on it and think about it.
Speaker CI have to keep it high on my priority list.
Speaker BI think you just hit me between the eyes because I just now realized that my belief around stress is the more.
Speaker BThe harder I work and the more stressed I feel, it feels like I'm accomplishing more, which now.
Speaker BNow that I say it out loud, I realize how actually opposite that is.
Speaker BAnd that's a toxic type of belief around stress.
Speaker CYeah.
Speaker CGood for you.
Speaker BWow.
Speaker CSo what's a better belief?
Speaker BYeah, a better belief would be like, where's.
Speaker BLike recognizing where the stress and friction is coming from and then navigating my life around that.
Speaker BRight.
Speaker BSo may.
Speaker CMaybe let's make it.
Speaker CLet's make it more.
Speaker BYeah, Help me out.
Speaker BLet's do this.
Speaker BRealize, like real time so everybody listening can, like, apply this.
Speaker BRight?
Speaker CYeah.
Speaker CSo if you had.
Speaker CI'm just going to try to rephrase this.
Speaker CIf your belief is the harder you work and the more stress you feel, therefore, the more successful you are.
Speaker CWhat if you just change it to the harder I work and the less stress I feel, the more successful I am.
Speaker BWow.
Speaker BYeah, for sure.
Speaker CI mean, keep it simple.
Speaker CLook, I. I have several beliefs about stress that keep my stress very, very low.
Speaker CNumber one, if somebody else is worried about something, I don't have to be.
Speaker CSo I have a coo.
Speaker CI have a COO who manages our finances, and if we can't pay payroll, he's worried about it.
Speaker CGuess what?
Speaker CI am not worried about it.
Speaker BRight.
Speaker CI can still take action.
Speaker CI can still go raise capital, whatever, but I'm not stressed out about it.
Speaker CThat's somebody else's stress.
Speaker CThere's.
Speaker CWe don't need more than one person stressing out about something.
Speaker CI have other beliefs and, like, specifically with money stress.
Speaker CIf I need the money, it will be there.
Speaker CSo I don't care how it gets there.
Speaker CI don't care if I borrow it, you know, make it, whatever.
Speaker CI'm just.
Speaker CI just eliminate that level of stress.
Speaker CI believe that a great relationship with my wife is one where we don't fight and we don't have.
Speaker CWe don't have stress because we're not inventing stress with each other.
Speaker CAnd the stress of.
Speaker COf having uncomfortable, awkward situations is Mitigated by another belief of we're going to address it immediately and we're going to communicate clearly about it.
Speaker CAnd then you add in other beliefs like I will not do something to harm my spouse in a conversation.
Speaker CI'm not going to blame her, I'm not going to, you know, use my frustration against her, et cetera.
Speaker CSo you start, this is why I say like, you stop feeding that one belief and it feeds, fills a whole branch.
Speaker CYou start seeing all these other ones around it and from a stress standpoint, you start to live with less stress.
Speaker CHere's another one I have diagnosed when I do my best work, like when do I have the best analytical mind, when am I at the best writer, when am I the best at meetings?
Speaker CI structure my day that way and then it's low stress because I get to perform really well in those times and I don't worry about it.
Speaker CSo if I need to write a document for a design of a, of our software or something, I will choose the time that it works best for me and not stress about it.
Speaker BWow, man, there's so many ways, so powerful.
Speaker BYeah, I feel like so nobody talks about this type of thing enough because you know, our society just feeds this idea of, you know, work your face especially.
Speaker BI mean, thankfully like Gary Vee has like changed the way he, he talks about stress in this.
Speaker BBut I mean all the idea of like work your face off and you know, you got your grant cardone's out there.
Speaker BIt's like, oh, you just got a 10x everything and, and you're not working hard enough or you're a loser.
Speaker CYeah.
Speaker BSo we're, we're constantly fed these ideas in our society really is just clickbait more than anything.
Speaker BBut we start to believe those instead of what we're talking about here, which is actual meat and truth to how successful people really live, not just somebody, some flashy person on, you know, say, social media.
Speaker CSo, so I want to say something about all this and I don't want this to come across as my own arrogance or patting myself on the back or anything like that.
Speaker CI, I, I want to be an example for others.
Speaker BSure.
Speaker CAnd that example is because I worked so hard for the, those six years that I was cocooned and ever since, so hard at identifying beliefs and rewriting them, coming up with better beliefs.
Speaker CSam, my confidence level is through the roof.
Speaker CYou cannot offend me.
Speaker CYou cannot do something to me that makes me feel away if I don't want to feel that way.
Speaker CI have absolute control over what I say yes to and what I say no to.
Speaker CI don't have a dragon running through my head telling me bad things over and over and over again.
Speaker CI don't have that negative tape loop.
Speaker CI don't.
Speaker CMy brain and my mind is fairly quiet and at ease because thoughts come from good beliefs.
Speaker CGood thoughts come from good beliefs.
Speaker CSo I generally have good thoughts.
Speaker CNow, look, I have stress.
Speaker CI have stress because I discover a financial thing I'm trying to fix, or, you know, I want to sell my motorhome and it's over undervalued and too highly leveraged, so I'm not gonna be able to sell it.
Speaker CRight.
Speaker CI mean, we have those things happen, right?
Speaker BSure.
Speaker CNobody's perfect.
Speaker CBut the point is that the more you know yourself, the more you spend the time to define your own beliefs and therefore know who you are.
Speaker CNobody on the outside can affect you.
Speaker BRight.
Speaker CI. I look, at one point, I lost 45% of my revenue because one big customer left.
Speaker BWow.
Speaker CThat did not stress me out.
Speaker CIt didn't bother me.
Speaker CI was like, okay, we'll figure it out.
Speaker CWe'll get to the next thing.
Speaker CWe'll go into solution mode and.
Speaker CAnd solve problems.
Speaker CSure.
Speaker CBecause I know who I am because I have this stuff figured out.
Speaker CAnd that's what I hope others can achieve.
Speaker CI hope others will diagnose their beliefs and find the ones that work for them and build this powerhouse within them that is unstoppable.
Speaker CIt's exactly who they've always wanted to be because they designed it and made it happen.
Speaker BThis is so good.
Speaker BSo I wish we could go on for.
Speaker BWe may have to do a series of podcasts on this because it's so powerful and for everybody listening, apply this.
Speaker BThis is the real deal.
Speaker BFrom coming from somebody who is clearly successful, lots of businesses, authored two books.
Speaker BI'm sure there's probably more to come at some point in your journey.
Speaker BAnd these are the things that really are the separators from the top performers in the world.
Speaker BThe What?
Speaker BThe top 1%, the top 3%, and everybody else is you are who you believe you are and the ability to change your belief system to match where you want to go.
Speaker BAnd this is so good.
Speaker BThis is so good.
Speaker BWell, it's.
Speaker BI wish we could go on.
Speaker BIt's time to land this plane.
Speaker BAnd man, thank you for being here today because I.
Speaker BIt.
Speaker BIt's such an honor to get to.
Speaker BTo do it an episode with you, Rich.
Speaker CAnd it's been my pleasure, Sam.
Speaker CI. I love this topic.
Speaker CI truly, truly Hope that I can help people and, and that they'll learn and grow within themselves.
Speaker CYou know, somebody said it best.
Speaker CYour business is going to grow at the rate at which you grow.
Speaker CSo I hope this helps.
Speaker CI appreciate you having me on the show today.
Speaker BAbsolutely.
Speaker BSo for everybody listening to so Rich also hosts a podcast and it is.
Speaker BTell us, tell us about the podcast.
Speaker BTell us a bit about the like, who, who, what the topic is, who you talk to.
Speaker BBecause if everybody listening, if you resonated with Rich and what he's saying today, one, tell everybody how they can get a hold of your book.
Speaker BAnd two, tell us about the podcast because I know a lot of people were going to want to dial in.
Speaker CSure.
Speaker CSo the podcast is called the Customer Wins.
Speaker CI talk to business leaders about how they help their customers win, how they create an excellent customer experience and customer success, something I'm super passionate about.
Speaker CAnd, you know, the conversation often talks about their business and what they do, but then jumps into leadership and personal development because again, how they're helping themselves become better is how they end up helping their customers win.
Speaker BRight?
Speaker CYou can find me on LinkedIn.
Speaker CI am the Quick Form CEO.
Speaker CYou can find my YouTube channel, the Customer Wins.
Speaker CYou can go to my website, quick forms plural.com and look, my books, It's My Life I Can Change if I Want to is available on Amazon and my other book is called It's My Life, I Can have the Job I want.
Speaker CAnd if that's going to help you or somebody you love or somebody you know, I give it away for free as an ebook.
Speaker CYou just have to ask me.
Speaker CContact me on LinkedIn.
Speaker CSend me an email rwalkerickforums.com I love to give away that book because it can help people find jobs and, you know, be better employed.
Speaker CSo yeah, that's best way to connect with me.
Speaker BI love it.
Speaker BWell, thank you so much for that.
Speaker BI know that I will definitely be reading be reading your books because the meat there is so powerful for everybody listening.
Speaker BAlso, I don't this is a fairly new thing.
Speaker BI actually am hosting a book club.
Speaker BThere's no sales pitch in it.
Speaker BIt's strictly to help everyone with personal growth.
Speaker BWe cycle through.
Speaker BThe first book we just finished was the Gap in the Gain.
Speaker BBut we're going to.
Speaker BWe cycle through business books, through sales books, through mindset books, all of these things.
Speaker BClearly your book is going to become one of the books along the way, which is exciting.
Speaker BBut so for everybody listening, if you want to know more about the book club, join the close it now Facebook group or email me sam closeitnow.net or just pop me a text 512-364-8559 and you can get me that way.
Speaker BHappy to connect you in the book club.
Speaker BIt is growing and it's really fun because we just get together once a month and talk about ideas and concepts and how it can apply to our life to grow.
Speaker CHey Sam, repeat that number one more time and the first five people who text you I will send a copy of my book too for free.
Speaker BOh love it.
Speaker BThat is 512-364-8559 so text me put books book in the or yeah put book in the text and we'll know that you're one of the first five.
Speaker BAnd I will make sure to get you in contact with Rich so he can get you a copy of his book.
Speaker BThank you.
Speaker BThat is incredible pleasure.
Speaker BSo well awesome.
Speaker BSo let's land this plane.
Speaker BEverybody make sure to the March 21st and 22nd is the the sales event of the year here in Austin, Texas.
Speaker BI am hosting that.
Speaker BIt's we're two days.
Speaker BWe're going to deep dive and I can guarantee you if you don't, your numbers don't improve minimum 30% after you've attended this course.
Speaker BI will do a one on one coaching session with you as long as it takes until they do.
Speaker BBut because I know and that will be for free.
Speaker BI know if you apply what you learn at this course you will minimum 30% improve your numbers because we see it all over the country.
Speaker BSo again reach out about that.
Speaker BGo to CloseItNow.net, you can find out more about that event.
Speaker BIt's going to be incredibly awesome.
Speaker BSo super excited about that and who knows, maybe we might just have Rich pop in for a minute and talk about some mindset stuff.
Speaker BHe's local here but everybody thanks for listening today.
Speaker BThank you Rich for being on.
Speaker BThis has been an incredible episode.
Speaker BPersonally I think one of my favorites I've ever recorded and yeah thank you Sam.
Speaker BYou are welcome everybody listening.
Speaker BGo save the world one heat stroke at a time.
Speaker BGo save the world one frostbite at a time.
Speaker AThanks for listening to Close it now with Sam Wakefield.
Speaker ASubscribe to the podcast now so you're first to hear new episodes jam packed with actionable tools and tips to make you the top H Vac professional in your market.
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