Episode 20| Clint Powell: How To Create A Genuine Connection As A Salesperson From A Serial Entrepreneur Who Seems To Know Everyone.

Clint Powell is a Chattanooga area native who is well known by many as someone who you need to know. Clint has 15-20 years of media and advertising sales experience, and has owned his own billboard company, cleaning company and most recently a sales and life coaching business. 

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But on that relationship building to your podcast, that relationship building is how you build that's insurance against bad economy, too. I say that all the time. That if you want to insurance against bad economy, doesn't mean your business won't go down, but you better have people that care about your business because they know you care about theirs. Cause that's when you lock hands and go, we'll get through this together. Yeah, that is the number one insurance against the economies. Hmm. Is your network. I love that. Absolutely. Welcome back to the art of connecting podcast. This is your host Hayden Fike and we are back with another guest today. Today we have Clint Powell with us. I met Clint through a connection, just like almost all of my guests come through onto the podcast here. I was at lunch with my friend, Susan. And talking to her about what I do, she's listened to the podcast and she was like, you need to have Clinton. And anytime someone says, I need to have someone on it's a no brainer as shoot them the text and have them on. So how are you doing today? And I'm good. Thanks for the invite. I appreciate it, man. I'm more than happy to have you. I was kind of like, I've been stalking you on LinkedIn for a little while. And several people have been like, Clint, you need to talk to Clint. And just didn't have that connection bridge there. And. Finally worked out. Happy to have you here. I'm glad you invited me. Thank you. Yeah, my pleasure. So before we got started on the show here, Me and Clint, we're talking just a little bit about kind of what, what I do, what he does. And I was like, man, this is going to be such a good episode. Absolutely. All right, so let's go ahead and get rolled on into it. I was telling Clint before we started kind of. What the art connecting is here for we're here to help people who want to make connections with people. But don't really quite know where to start. And can you tell us a little bit, maybe about some of your past career and really I want to hit on what you do now, because I think it really wraps around the subject perfectly. Yeah. I spent a number of years in owning my own business. Three or four small businesses. I was in the media sales world for. 20 years, 15 or 20 years. And networking was a big part of it. So meeting new people is, is, was key for me. Now I was kind of forced to meet new people when you own your own business or you're in you keep what you kill in sales. You don't have much choice. If you don't want to meet new people, you're not going to make it in those businesses. So it kind of forced me to a young age. I owned my first company when I was 25. And I just had to go start knocking on doors. And so whatever fear was there was overcome by the fear of being broke. And so he learned the skill set to toughen up pretty quick. In the networking air quote sales side of it, because it all ties together. Right? Networking, sales success, whether it's in business or in life. Who, you know, you know, that's what they say all the time is the key because you then don't have access just to them, but you have access to who they know. And all of their past mistakes. Right. And I'm not gonna live long enough to make all the mistakes. So I'd love to find out what you've made. That way I can possibly avoid them. And then, you know, it's kind of morphed through the years. Now I, I still do my own stuff, but I'm older. So I'm at a place where I can pick and choose what I do. So I do podcasting and sales and business coaching. So tell me a little bit about your first business. What did that look like? And the process of going from all right. I'm going to do this thing to, oh, wow. This is like, this is a business. Yeah. I was 25. I had graduated college a couple years earlier, I was working at a gym. I ran a gym for quite a while, and then also worked part-time. It ended up being full time towards the end of a group home of teenage kids that were in trouble and not kind of directed that for about a year or two. It was a guy that worked there and he came to me and he was a year or two older than I was. And he said, Hey man, we should start our own business. And I'm like, I'm on land. What do you wanna do? He goes, let's start a commercial cleaning business. Now this is in 19 93 94, something like that. And I'm like, okay. They can't. How can, I know how to clean, I can figure it out. What his, he was already married. His wife was a CPA. So she had the book book of the money side of it. As far as keeping the accounting. He was really outgoing guy, but I was, I was kind of a sales guy, my communications degree. I had already done some sales and running the gym. So within 30 days we had a business license, had a name of a company, KC cleaning. And it was really, it was really odd the day I quit my job, I turned my notice in. The day I quit and it was not that kind of job where you had to give a notice. They're like, cool. No worries, man. We'll talk to you later down the road. I had no money coming in the next paycheck next month. And within the first two weeks, because I had to sail knock on doors. We had about 20 clients. Well, 15 clients. Wow. Yeah. So now I used to tell people this all the time, I did it in radio too, and in billboards to a degree, but. I would go park my car on one side of the road. And I would walk. Down to three blocks. Knock on every single business door. Cross the street hit every business backup to my car, walked back across the street, drive back down to the, like a leapfrog. Go to the next three or four block section and do the same thing. All day. Every day for a week or two. And that was sales. So I have a question because I'm in sales. Well, I mean, if you're an entrepreneur, like you said, you're in San Jose. If you've ever dated you're in sales. Yeah. You're in sales. Whether you know it or not in life, but controlling yourself. Absolutely. Yeah. And not in a weird way. No, not in the illegal way. But you're half the first. All the things you should consider in professional sales, you usually consider impersonal representation of yourself as well. That's. Yeah. So what was something that kept you. Motivated cause I, I I've sold life insurance before. And it is freaking tough when you get. Cus that, you know, I didn't get spit on by I'd imagine that they were spinning on their phone, like with how much they were yelling at me. And, you know, how did you keep yourself motivated to like, just take that no. After no after, no. And then keep moving on to the next door, a couple of things. And one of them came later on that. I'll talk about don't let me forget pin this one. I'm going to talk about numbers and how they can motivate you, knowing your numbers, but. First of all, like I said, I was, I had no money coming in. So I didn't have an option if I was going to quit after the third. No, I was not built for Tomo business. Second. I was a, I'm a terrible employee. I'm just anybody. It's a romantic to me will tell you the man, he has a fire. I got fire lit under me special when I was younger, but I don't lock reports. I don't like to be micromanaged. I'm a hard guy to manage. I will make you money. But you're going to earn it. And then I realized that about myself pretty early. There was a story. And I think I can help answer that question a long way around. I. I like telling stories. I had been at talk radio 1996 or 97. I can't remember what year I started. I've been at talk radio about three or four months. And I was already doing really well again, because I just had the, from only my own business. Let me make that transition. I'm on business for about three or four years. Got married. When I got married, we had a step son that, you know, I didn't want to be gone all night, watching employees or cleaning. I wanted to be home with my family. So I sold my share to my business partner. Went and got a job in radio. So I've been there three or four months. And they hand me my lead, my first lead, the first three or four months, you got to go good. You got to go knock on doors. Then they start handing you stuff every now and then. The hammy, this lead from a guy downtown. And I go talk with it. I'm super nervous. Cause there's a sales process, you know, and I've got this towel on it's in the summer. I was, I looked like a barely put together. Cause my shirt collar wouldn't it wouldn't connect. Cause I I'm a weird build. I've got big neck, but short. So, you know, anyway. I look kind of sloppy. And I'm sitting in front of this guy and I'm, I'm just, I'm just doing what I'm doing now. I'm just talking too much, just so anyway, we're going to be great. I've got these packages for you and if you, I don't know what your. Blah, blah, blah. And he's turned around and he starts looking in the file cabinet behind him. While I'm talking. So I'm looking at the back of his head. And then he turns around, he looks at me, he goes, by the way, are you the guy they hired off the ad off the radio, where they were looking for sales help. And that's how I heard about the job. I had got the job because they said we need sales reps and I went and applied and got it. And I went, yes, he goes, Hmm. Okay. And he turns back around and starts working on his files. And I'm sitting there looking at the back of his head in the middle. My president of middle me talking to him. And I go, should I come back another time? He goes, yeah, if you want to. And I get up and go sit in my car and I'm like, I got a family now. And I'm like, I've just, I've made the wrong decision. I'm not any good at this. That's the worst? No, you can get complete just apathy. And just, oh, it was terrible. And I doubted myself all the way back to the office. And by the time I got back to office, I got pissed off. I was like, okay, well that's not going to happen again. So what did I do? I started getting better. I started training more. I started going to more sales calls. You know, the best time to make a sales call is either after you failed or after you succeeded. That's the best time to make another sales call. Either one, you're either proven yourself that you can do it, or you're riding the wave of that, you know, dopamine that you've just got to be hit. And I got back to the office and I just hunker down. Come back around about a year and a half later, that same guy called in and I took that same lead. And I reminded him of that conversation. About halfway through. I said, you don't remember. We met before and I told him about, he goes. You're the guy from the radio ad. I said, sure, I am. He goes, I'm not getting a discount. And I said, you're sure not. He owns a travel agency, downtown Chattanooga. So taking knows is part of it. Part of it, I think is just your mental makeup, your personality. The other part is remembering, and this is about doing sales, but why are you doing it? I mean, if, if I'm providing for a family, if I'm trying to build for the future, if I have no plan, then I'll quit. But if I remember that Hayden doesn't like me. But in the big picture of things, I'm doing this for something five years down the road, then Hayden can not like me. It's, I'm not doing it for Hayden. I'm doing it for something down the road. I make calls for real estate buying houses from sometimes people that. Yeah. We, we solicit to buy houses from people who have not raised their hand and said, I want to buy. And I want to sell my house. And started with my business partner the other day. And I was like, I don't know. Just something about cold calling. It's just, I hate it. Like I hate cold calling. Huh. And he's like, well, just think about it this way. They don't know who you are. They don't care who you are. The worst thing they can say. It's a screw off. Right? And then they go about their day and you go about yours. Like, who cares? Like. What. Yeah. And it's your job. Yeah, that's the other thing that I tell people in sales, that's the expectations. If everyone got yeses. Everyone would be in sales. It's not that that's not the essence of sales. The essence is being able to take the nose. So if, if, if you don't understand that the bad stuff comes with the good stuff you're going to, you're not going to have a good life anywhere. Period. You don't get a stick without picking up both ends. So the no's are part of it. That's true. If you can't take nos, then you might want to look at something else. That's right. If you want to take orders, go work it and that's okay. It's okay. That's what I've said to theirs. It doesn't mean that you makes you a bad human, right? It just means you haven't found your niche and that's all right too. And it, plus it takes a little time. I'm not going to lie. It's getting told no. Or getting told no in a hateful way. Sucks. You have to build your, you have to build up a callous. And the weights. Yeah, you have to. You know, bleed the first few times. Absolutely. And you get that callous built up. Yup. So tell me in your, in your sales experience. How do you create connections with people? So we were talking about this before, and I talk about this all the time on the show. You can go and you can meet people. You can network, you can be known by people and just not at all, create a connection with people. So, how do you, when you were doing your sales calls and we're building your coaching business, even now, how do you create personal connection with people? What are some tools that you use? Well, so a lot of people have the misconception and I'm a good talker. Or I talk a lot. I may not be good at it, but I can talk a lot. But really. My, when I'm one of the things that I think most good salespeople do is listen. And I know that sounds cliche. Everybody's like, whoa. But it's a hundred percent true. Being curious about the person in front of you or the business in front of you, that's the best way. And I say this all the time. What do people love to talk about when you start talking to them? Themselves a hundred percent ever. And it's really odd. Everybody will say that, but very few people build. The skillset to leverage that. Every sales person I talked to will go, well, people love talking about themselves and I've been on sales calls before where I've driven, you know, like go with other sales reps. They'll be like, Hey, can you ride with this sales rep and see why they're not closing or something? And the odds are. They do what I did when I was young and feel like I'm going to tell you how good I am. I'm going to tell you how I can help him fix you. But I don't know where you broke at. I don't even know if you're broke. I don't know if we're a good fit. I don't even know about your business. I don't know about your kids. And so what I've done is in, I become a commodity. I'm going to get price checked. Are you the cheapest version of what I think I need? And that's what business owners do. They're big, they're fast. They're moving quick. And the person that usually slows down long enough to just ask questions. And get the person talking all of a sudden they feel like, okay, this person cares that old quote, nobody cares what you know, till they know if you care. That's it. And I wish there was a magic button. Excuse me. But there's not the magic. Is in honing that skill set and it can come easy to some people. And then some people. I was one of those guys I had to work on that. But if you get good at it, that's how you build the connection. That that's the hammer. That is the overall purpose tool. In a toolbox learning to ask questions and then. Get comfortable with this. Yeah. The questions and listening to the answers. And not just cause I I'm guilty of this all the time. I'll ask you a question. And then I'll be like, we'll say the first two things and I'll already be thinking of my response. And I have to like tell myself, no, no, listen, like Aiden, shut up. Yeah. Tell you, you have to tell your mind, shut up, listen to what the person's saying and then respond. Because I feel like it happens so many times where I just, I say, Hey, Clint. Well, how's the radio business. And then you start saying something I'm like, oh, I have a friend that's in the radio, but you know, you start thinking about that ahead of time before you even just absorb what's being responded to you. It's almost like being on a road trip and being, and then, and sometimes you got to, you know, you're timing yourself. You need to get there at a certain time, but if you're on a leisurely road trip, And you don't really enjoy it. You'll miss the little side streets. Hmm. So when someone's talking to you, If they say something that gives you the opportunity ask, well, Are you. Are you a fan of Tennessee? I didn't know that. Or do you went to Tennessee or you got three kids? Oh my goodness. I got two. Your kids go here. You like to boat. You miss these opportunities. To connect because odds are, I'm not going to build this super strong bridge between you and me with one thing, it's going to be a lot of tethered. I'm going to tether myself to you through these smaller connections, and then we'll build the ones over time. And we miss a lot of that. But thinking of what's the next question I need to ask rather than what's the next thing I need to listen to. And I did this real time. I've done this several times and I made a mistake. The first time I did it, I was in Nashville. I was talking about 30 business owners. And sales reps need to get comfortable silence. In personal relationships. It's good to ask questions and be quiet. Or let someone say something and sit in silence before you answer. Sales reps are not comfortable with silence. We just hate it. Because we start assuming that you're thinking of reasons not to do business with us, or you're going to, I've said something wrong. I didn't answer the question and that's not how human brains work. We, we rationalize with ourselves and solids, right. So Nashville one time I was going to get, make the point. Of how awkward silence can be. If you can master the art of being comfortable in awkward silence, you'll be a success. You just will. So I set my timer and now I do it 10 seconds, but in Nashville, excuse me. I did it for 30 seconds on a state, on a platform. And I'd never really done it for 30 seconds on purpose. Right? I. I said, I want y'all to see how uncomfortable it is. Well, I said it for 30 seconds. In front of people looking at you, 30 seconds. Isn't eternity. I would, I would have rather God come back than me do that again, man. It was, it was horrific. And about 15 seconds into it, people looking at each other, they're checking their watches. They're looking away from me. It's getting really awkward, but it gave to the, to the point. When you ask a question. And you feel the space with words. I'm denying you the opportunity to get comfortable enough to answer me in an authentic way. And so that's the key is listening. So that was a long way around the barn. Yeah. And using silence as the key to As a tool. I I was making offers to somebody on a house. We already were getting it for a really good price, but there's more stuff that we need to do. It's going to cost our company a lot of money. And I said, well, we can give you this price. It was just silent. I was probably only for five or 10 seconds. But like you said, it felt like, I mean, turned absolutely. And I wanted to talk, but I know I've heard from so many people that are way, way smarter than I am and, and way more intelligent and sales, you know, about how important silence is. And I just stay quiet. And he he's like. Well, I wanted this much. But I guess I can do that much. Yeah. And then I could have just been like, Kept rambling on about why we needed to blah, blah, blah, blah. And, but just need to be quiet if you sit in silence. What they're going to do is they're either going to tell you the real objection or at least give you an objection to talk to, or they're going to say yes. Or they're going to give you something valuable. You can use down the road. It, most of the time, if you keep talking, they're just going to D they're just going to deflect and go. You know what? This is a little too much money. Let me think about it. I'll call you back tomorrow or we're not ready yet. They're just going to default to one of the. The The expected objections. And now you're stuck in that cycle of you don't know if you're talking about the real thing. Are the made up thing just to get me to shut up and go away. Yeah, I need to talk to my wife or prices too much, or any of those. Like the board, like the very broad. You know, or, oh, I just need some time to think about it. I need the night to think about it. It's like, In sales. I learned. Most of the time. That is not it there's something else there. And you don't yet. You want to ride that fine line of not being pushy and annoying. Also still like pulling that out. But a lot of times I feel like when you get those objections, it's not issue with the product isn't issue with the relationship you haven't created that relationship and trust there. Usually what I found it's you've not asked the right questions. So there's times to ask questions to get agreement or yes, and nos. Like the Plinko chip game where I know which way to go. And then there's times to ask questions that are long form and listen. Right. Sometimes I'm saying, does this make sense? Yes. No. Okay. If it's no, let's stop. Yes, I can move on. Then there's times I say, well, you know, tell me, you know, how the marketing is going. You've been doing the last 12 months. Well, I need to shut up at that point. And so a lot of times when we get to the end of anything We kind of know. W we, we are sales reps. You kind of know how it is going. And usually if you're getting just a standard objection, It's it's usually because we've not asked the right questions. Yeah. Most of the time. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think that that's super important too. And not only just in sales, but also like connecting with people too in life, being a new person in life, asking the right questions. I let me know what you think about this by here. This from my mentor is the way to be the most interesting person in the room is to be the most interested. Person I'm slow. We were talking about before we went live. Our recording is being, staying curious is the key. So if I'm in a relationship. I was married for a long time, but if I came home every day and said, Hey, so how was your day? And when she started to answer, if I picked up my phone, Or I picked up the remote control. R whatever I grabbed the newspaper, whatever sheet I'm telling her, whatever she says is really not that important. So the ability to ask the question in a, in a meaningful way, I would rather you not ask me questions. And people will pick up on that real quick. If you really want to know something. Their gut, you know, we speak 70, 80% of how we communicate is non-verbal. And salespeople don't work on that. We work on what we say. We don't work on how we communicate. There's not the same thing. And if I act. If I ask a question and then act an interested. The greatest words in the world. Why do you think, and I've heard this before Jim Rome. All the great motivating speakers are the great sales coaches. And I've experienced this a lot with, with people that have helped me. There are people that make millions of dollars a year I've been on, been to lunch with. And when I leave there, they have made me feel like the most important person. In the room for that last hour. Now I'm not their peer, right? I'm a thousand air. They're a millionaire, right? So I really offered them nothing. But yet. They switched the tables on me. And when I left there, I feel like they cared. Now whether they did or not, I don't know, but they did a great job communicating. And they're effective. And as soon as I walked out of that room, I went, I know why they're successful. Because they, they fish they're not doing the Donna mountain, the lake fishing, they're doing the line fishing for a specific fish. They, they treated me very special and there there's room for both of them. But on that relationship building to your podcast, that relationship building is how you build that's insurance against bad economy, too. I say that all the time. That if you want to insurance against bad economy, doesn't mean your business won't go down, but you better have people that care about your business because they know you care about theirs. Cause that's when you lock hands and go, we'll get through this together. Yeah, that is the number one insurance against the economies. Hmm. Is your network. I love that. Absolutely. I haven't heard that one before. Well think about it. When, when something goes wrong in your life, car breaks down relationship issues. You have core people in your life. You call. Why do you call them? Because you know, they're probably going to help because they care. Those same people are probably going to call you when they're going through something, because they know you care. So why would it be any different in business? Why would it be any different when the things are going bad? I don't pick up the phone go, Hey, Hayden, man. Connie's kind of crap right now. Yeah. Why don't mean you get together. Let's go to lunch. Let's figure out who we can help and who can help us. So we come on the other end of this and have our unfair share of the market. Hmm. There you go. That's how it works. And so tell me about, I want to, I want to hear about radio because I mean, Okay. How long did your radio show run? Well, I was in radio and sales side of it and managing side of it for about 12 or 13 years. I had a radio show marketing mix radio. We had several hosts, the last three or four years old. There was rich Mingo, the Chenin lookouts. It ran for about six years, five or six years. It shut down. Right. About COVID killed it because we couldn't go in the studio and we tried doing it live and we just, it kind of ran its course. So for six years, people heard your voice. Yeah. You know what weekly? Yeah. Weekly. He ran on a Sunday. So Saturday's how how did that kind of impact your network and your ability to be able to like command presence in a room and, and learning from that? What did, what did that process look like going from alright. I know all these things in the sales side, but now I'm going to actually be getting on the microphone. So it was, it was kind of the other way around for me. I had built a network of people I had already spoken to probably three or 400 different groups. By the time I started the radio show, I had my ad agency. And my marketing company, where people were paying me to connect them with either solutions to problems or other people. And I'd been in sales for 20 years at that time. So the radio show was a by-product of the comfort level I'd already had with, with that. It just added to it. And it allowed me to leverage some of those past relationships and amplify them a little bit. But I, I think the life I had before radio. Actually made radio better. I'm not sure radio made anything. The one thing it did for me is it instilled in me that's how I got into podcasting. So radio was more of a gateway drug for me into podcasting, which I love doing. And and once you find your niche in that, once you, if you're good at it, It's the same thing, being curious. That's, that's how radio impacted me more than anything. I met a lot of great people. It was great experience. Thanks to Sean Whitfield and all the cohost. You know, Rebecca and Sarah and rich. But it opened the door for me later on to think. Well, if I could do radio unplugged, do podcasting and podcasting has a lot more flexibility than I think, than, than radio does. Yeah. Coming from someone who was supposed to upload every week and now uploads every two weeks. I think it gives you a little bit more flexibility sometimes for the good and sometimes for the VAT, I feel like it does. That's. It's it's consistency's key. I get people calling me now because I've been in podcasting for about seven years and I think I'm like 1700 episodes in. Wow. And so I get people calling me like, Hey, can I pick your brain about podcasting? I'm like, yeah. And they go, what's the first thing I said, first don't overspend. When you first start thinking, you're going to do it forever and go out and spend thousands of dollars. And second. Whatever you're going to do, be consistent with it, whether it's once a month for the year or once a week. But if you start it and try to be consistent with it. Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly why we're sitting in the studio. We are, yeah. Because I was going to start a podcast and I knew I had this concept and I said, you know, I want to make a podcast about creating connections with people. And. And I started like looking into it. I got into a mastermind with a guy who runs a really successful podcast. And looked up to him. It was like, man, his podcast is incredible. The action academy by Brian Lubin. And I was like, what do I need to do to get started? I started asking those questions. It was like, well, you need a microphone, you need equipment and you needs software and a brand. And I was like, all right. 90, I think it's in like 98% of podcasts or get past 10 episodes or some of the others. There's millions of episodes and only a couple of hundred thousand that are active. Most, most podcasts haven't posted anything in six months. Yeah. And I looked at that and I was like, okay, well, I don't want to be that. You know, if I'm doing this, I want to do it. And so some advice I got was exactly that don't go out and don't spend$3,000 getting the fancy microphone set up. Right. Cameras and everything start with what you got. Start creating and just improve gradually. Make improvements get better guests on improve the questions you ask. I wouldn't relisten to them and say, oh, that sounds awful. I need to fix that. And then now not that I'm some successful podcast. I have, I think about 19 episodes will be episode 19. I believe. But I've learned so much along the way. Well, and, and to your point, The consistency's key. The only caveat is when you get six months into it and you realize this, okay. This is, this is part of what I'm doing as part of what up, one of my tools in my toolbox. It does benefit you to start investing somewhere because then it starts requiring you to become more discipline. If you have no real skin in the game after six months, like I can do it in two weeks. I can only just one a month wanting to. Then you start actually hurting yourself. I think discipline on releasing and I release a lot every week and I've not always abided by that. I mean, the re I call myself the failure avoidance coaches, because I can't tell you what to do, but I can tell you what not to do. The reason I say do it this way is because I did it wrong. Right. I did it wrong for a long time. And so once you find, oh, It's better to release once a week, every week, then. Once every two weeks or five, one week and nothing for two weeks and then three, one week, because the listeners, whether you know it or not, most of our habits are driven like under, like an iceberg. We don't know why we do what we do. We just do it. Right. Well, if I don't train you that Hey, on Fridays Chromecast, every other Friday, Chromecast is going to come out. Well, you just, you forget about me. I know that every, so my favorite YouTuber is Ben Mala. Okay. And every Sunday he posts a video. There you go. And then when he doesn't post one, I'm not looking on this channel. I'm like, why, why didn't Ben posts? Yup. And then it'll come up Monday. I'm like, oh, sweet. I get an episode for Monday. There you go. It's actually exciting. And, but like I got, so, you know, your brain is trained on your habits and your daily routines. And so yeah, that's something like. We didn't know we were getting podcast coaching here, but I know that this is a, this is one of my failures is I'm not saying consistent, but I'm working on it. Well, Well, this is a human beings are so unpredictably predictable. It's kind of weird. If I were to tell you to drive home, you're gonna drive home the same way 99.999% of the time. And I'm not saying this is a life hack at all. I'm just saying every now and then personally, I will drive home a different way. And this is going to sound really weird. So this may be the part you can cut out of the podcast. It's fine with me. You can edit as much if you want to. But sometimes if you're stuck in a rut. Finding a new way for a while to get to the same place. Just like in a workout. I've been doing the same workout for six months and I feel like I'm hitting a plateau. The best thing I can do for a couple weeks to change it up, get my body resetting going, Hey wait, whoa, what's going on. This is new. I challenge. If you listen to this and you feel like you're stuck in a rut, Just test this drive home a completely different way. You don't usually go. And what happens is you'll see Nate, the neighbor, the houses around you from the other side. Hmm. Sounds really weird. You'll see a different side of the yard. You'll see what they have in their backyard and be like, I had no idea the siding was falling down on that house, or I didn't know. They kept that Bush on this. It sounds really weird. Yeah. But it's a good example of how our brains just become so accustomed to stuff. We don't understand why. And we don't. We are the only ones that can shake our cage. Whether it's in sales, if you're still in a relationship, if you're still in business ownership. Find something for a couple of weeks that scares you. The challenge is you to make you look at the world a different way. And driving home, just a challenge. If you listen to this, drive home a different way and just look around and be like, I had no idea. Wow. That's pretty cool. Now some people do that all the time, but I don't. And about once every three or four months, I drive home the other way. And I'm like, okay. The world's a different, different look, come in this direction. I think I might drive home in different shots. I'm going home right after. Give it a shot, man. Tell me what you think. You'll see things a different way. Oh, hot to let you know. So you started with coaching before you got on the radio. And how, how did you get into that? Because coaching is really another one of those things where you, like, you got to create a connection with people. And you really got to want to work with them because there's some people that aren't super coachable and. You don't want to be a coach to someone who's not coachable. How'd you get into that industry? I just have people start asking me questions and I really want to kind of back up a little bit. And before we get off the podcast, I remember I asked you, I want you to tell me about numbers, how they motivate you. Yes. I got a couple of other things I'll throw out about networking because I love what you're doing. And I, I think there's some things people do right and wrong when they go to networking groups. There's two things. Don't let me forget. I won't let you forget. So coaching side of it. I've I love official coaching. I think it's great. I'm working on some other platforms inside my coaching. Cause it's on. I did it for awhile, went away for three, four years. And about two years ago, I started it back up. But it's All it really is. Is asking questions. At coaching does one or two things. We look at life. Either in a mirror or through windows. And what happens is when we don't sit down with ourselves on a weekly basis and evaluate our habits, our numbers in business, our relationships, at least every two weeks. What happens is life happens so fast. The windows get smudgy and dirty. And the mirror gets smudgy and dirty. And so we don't have a clear view of how we look in the mirror. Or how the world looks. And questions allows us to clean those things off. So if you don't have somebody in your life that you trust enough to ask you, that sounds kind of bullshit, dude. Or why did you do that? You said you didn't want to eat this, and now you're eating this. Well, and let you say stuff out loud, let you say all the excuses I was in a hurry. I blah, blah, blah. I had one in three days. I worked out really hard the day before, whatever it is. Sales habits the same way you say you want to get to work at eight? Why are you still getting to work at nine 30? Oh, my car broke down. Once people start saying things out loud, they'll call themselves on their own bull crap, 99% of the time. And that's when you know, you're working with a good client when they go. Everything. I'm about to say to you as a 100% an excuse. I don't have to say anything at people pay you for that. But they don't pay you because you have the answers they pay you because their life is full of people who are busy too. And your only job is to ask questions. So they're paying you to take the time out to ask them the questions that they wish they would ask themselves. And once people start saying stuff out loud, they know. They know it, they were like, oh, that doesn't sound right. It doesn't matter. No. Does it. You sent me your goals and objection or your objectives over here. Does what you're saying, match up with that and they'll go. Not really like, well then. It's up to you to do it or not. Yeah. And all of a sudden they go as genius. Genius. Th there's nothing magical about, I wish it was something I did better than other people, but there's coaches out there do way better job than I do. I'm a very casual coach. So my 30 minutes to an hour of time is me asking you questions about last week and how it went. And letting you tell me, let you tell you. How it went.'cause most people don't slow down to reflect. Well, and a lot of people, especially in higher positions like CEOs or, you know, these high achievers, air quotes. They don't get asked questions. They're the leader. Their job is. Pave the way. But no one ever asked, you know, why they use that kind of pavement. And a lot of these guys that I've experienced. When I've met with people who I shouldn't even be talking to to begin with, but ask insightful questions. And there'll be like mans. I haven't talked to someone like that in a long time. Like, no, one's asked me these. And you know, I'm asking challenging things, you know, it's, it's not like just, oh my gosh, you're so amazing. You're so great. I'm like, why, why do you do things this way? That seems like an interesting way to do it. And when they start explaining things, They, you know, you can kind of see a switch flip and people's brains sometimes. Well, most of the most successful people, I know that make a lot of money, still find a way to get coached. The other thing is one of the things that I did as a sales rep really early on. And I would love to attribute this to somebody cause I know I learned it from somebody. I just don't remember who. As a small business owner, and even as a commission only sales rep, I think it's important. To create your own. Informal board of directors. If you're not good at money. Become friends with somebody that's good at money. If you're not good at marketing as a business owner become. And I'm not talking about get, become friends so you can suck the energy out of it. I'm talking about, have a relationship with them where you can contribute to them. You can con they can contribute to you. I love networking groups, BNIs the chambers, all of these things. And I love the fact that some of them are free and some of them are paid for, but sometimes. It's good to have people on your unfold, your informal board of directors, intentionally. That you really connect with. It's not somebody I met at a networking group. I know this person I need to, or I get to know this person and all of a sudden they're one of the three or four people going back to the insurance. When business goes bad, there were three or four people that are good at things that I'm not good at. And so I'm going to have a free exchange with them. They can pick my brain about stuff that I'm good at. I'm going to pick theirs. I'm not giving away to everybody. But it's important to surround yourself with people, either with a coach. Oh, it would just people they're going to call. I ask you questions. Why are you, why are you hiring somebody right now? I had this happen. Great example. I want a small business. And I was doing really well with mark and advertising. And two of my friends took me to lunch they're business owners and they were way more successful than I was. I told them I'm hiring. By that time I'm busy, man. Shake and moving and shaking. And they go, why are you hiring somebody? Oh, well, there's this, this and this. And they go. How much is it going to cost you on what this. That's going to be fine, man. I'm making plenty of money and they go. Well, Is that not something you could delegate to the other two or three people you have, or is that a moneymaking service that you're hiring this person to provide? And what I did is what exactly what I coach against. I gave every well, you don't understand, you just don't know my business. And so I hired him and I became top heavy and now I'm a couple thousand dollars a month more spending than I should spend. And it was fine until it wasn't fine. And then when it wasn't fine. I realized why they were asking me to wait six months before I pulled the trigger on hiring. And so I didn't listen. And I ended up at let him go and it cost me about$10,000. I really shouldn't have been spending. And so to your point, and to my point we were talking about here is surrounding yourself with people. That you trust, you've given them the permission to call you out on stuff. Is vital. That is key. That's an informant that informal board of directors. And when someone calls you out on something, Oh, I mean, I know I get defensive. That's what I'm saying. You give excuses. Yeah. But then right after that conversation, Yup. Like you leave that conversation after you've been defensive. And you're like, That right. A hundred percent you just know, and then, and then you start making the changes. And so it's uncomfortable in that short little moment, kind of like silence kind of thing. It's uncomfortable in that short little moment. But then, you know, you get back, you sit down at your desk, you mold over, you think about it, like. Maybe I do need to think about this and sometimes they're wrong. And see the power in the question being asked. Allows me then the magic in that is odd. Then get to justify why I'm right. And I go, oh no, I'm right. Or I get to say it out loud and realize it sounds stupid and it's probably stupid. It's the same one that comes to religious beliefs and politics. I'm a big believer on not judging people by headlines or what you say. So let's have a conversation about it. And halfway through if you are getting defensive because I'm asking the question, then I realized, well, this is just true. I'm offending your identity, not your idea. So we're not going to have a conversation about ideas. You are so tied into whatever you believe that just by questioning, you're going to get offended. What human beings do that with our business ideas and sales at Y. Habits or we are so attached to our habits. We don't let people quit. Why are you getting up late or you don't understand? I'm a while. I'm just asking, man, I'm not a morning person. Oh, God. Yeah, you're not a morning, but we're now here's the thing. Of course we're not, we're not anything we've never tried not to be. You know what I'm saying? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. I get the fact that some people operate better at different times, but insert I'm not that person here. And I always say when that was, but that's not who I am. I go. Right. Because you've never tried. And what happens on things is we try just enough to say, we've tried to check the box. We've not all gone all chips in the middle. We tried just a little bit of this in that. I'm going to try little intermittent fasting. I'm going to try drinking a little more water are in sales. Right. I'll make a few more sales calls until I hit the uncomfortable wall. Then I'll pull. Oh, so when I ask you, do you make cold calls? Oh, I make cold calls. They just don't work. If I stop there. Then. You just don't make cold calls. You just don't work for your industry. But if I keep asking questions, how many cold calls you make a week? How many times do you actually talk to people versus leaving voicemails? When do you usually stop? Why do you stop? How many, if there's other questions that come up and what is going to fall, I'm going to find out is you do enough calls. To check the box. So then you can tell everybody why it doesn't work and justify staying the way you are. And what we don't understand is the difference from where I'm at and where I want to get is usually all the stuff we're dismissing. I want to be like this person. But you don't want to be like that person. Have you ever looked at their schedule? Have you ever looked at their habits? Because everything they're doing that you say doesn't work for you is why they are where they're at. I can think of a very, very successful real estate agent in the Keller Williams umbrella over here. He's a very young. And he is literally crushing it. But every real estate that I met, that it knows this guy and they're like, but that guy cold calls like two to four hours a day, or he, I don't know if he still does. I think he has pipeline net of duty. Okay. He started out two to four hours a day. Literally just getting in the office and pick up the phone calling. All day long. And you know, and then go into the showings and then go into the, all this stuff. Working seven days a week. But that got him to where he is now in one year, he's done more than most real estate agents will ever do in their career. Momentum is a real thing. I tell people all of a sudden, when it comes to habits or anything in life, When your car breaks down in the middle of the road, the first four or five steps pushing it. Is the hardest. What you don't want to do when you're trying to get it over. The hump in the parking lot is to stop right before you get to the hump in the parking lot. Most people do habits until they become difficult than they stop. Well, that's not a habit. Typically blue all the time. They'll say, well, the market, this and this and this happened, and I'm not saying you don't miss a day or two, but if a habit is only a habit, when it's easy, then it's not a habit. It's a convenience. So the, the, the test of a habit is do I do it when I don't feel like it. That's a habit. That's that's that's a knee jerk reaction. So to your point. Maybe he does have a pipeline. That's fine. But now he knows what it takes, if that pipeline dries up and he knows he can develop that skill because he's done it. And that's the whole push in the car until it gets its own momentum that all the steps become easier after that. I don't hate the person that's got the pop line that's built because you're not looking back and seeing the year that he spent 75 hours in a month doing sales calls. You're you're looking at the top of the mountain. You're not looking at the rocks. He had to get up to get up there. Yeah, the view's great. The climb sucks. If you don't want to, if you don't want to climb. Don't want the view. That's that's the way it rolls. I love that. Yeah. A little small hill and that's fine. And see this. The other thing real quick, I want to say is one of the things I tell people is learning how to define our own terms. What is success to you? So I use this example in talks all the time. If I asked you, and by the way, am I going too long? Because I ramble. Okay. I say this all the time. If me and you right now, if I was in a room of 10 people, but me and you specifically, if I were to give you five words to define our five phrases, what does it mean to save money? What does success mean? What does health mean to you? What does happy mean to you? We wrote them down, put them in a bucket and somebody read them out loud who are gonna be different. My idea of saving money. Maybe I need to have a hundred thousand dollars in the bank because I want to bet that dah, dah, dah years may be, if I get a thousand dollars saved up, I'm happy, but we're using the same term. But we define it differently. Most people, business owners and sales folks never define. What success is, what is happy? What is the life you want to live? They define success. So the reason I bring that up is I'm okay with your heel. I've spent a lot of my life living on a small hill. That made me happy. It was enough to take care of my obligations and I was content. Then there's other times in my life, I wanted to be at the top of the mountain. But if you don't slow down long enough to define those terms, You're going to live your life based off what everyone else thinks you should be doing. And you're going to find yourself being uncontained. I know more people that make great money that are miserable. Because they've not sat down long enough to go wait a minute. What would it take to make me not just happy but healthy. And so they're living their life by all these other terms. And it's ridiculous. So that's the way it goes. Yeah. Yeah, it's very true. I think about that too. I know a lot of people. That make a massive amount of money, but they sit in their mansion alone. Well, or they're just mean to people. Yeah. Are there just, they're just unhappy because they've. Their identity is around that. And that we've. You know how these old sayings. You're not really rich until you have stuff that have no financial value, whatever the old quote is, it's stuff that money can't buy. That's the stuff that you should, all your mission board. All your business plan. I got, I got a challenge for you. Next time you talk to a sales rep or a small business owner, especially sales reps. Ask them. If they have a business plan. 90% of sales reps do not have business plans. And I don't understand why. If you are in charge of keeping what you kill. And you say, well, I'll work for ABC company. That's great, but you have a business inside of business. I would love to see your sales reps business plan. I started doing that in the early two thousands. It changed my, it changed everything. Because I was operating as a business inside a business. So their minimums. Weren't my minimums. They will make some money on my minimums. I wasn't. That's like learning versus training Chinese based on the company learnings based on me. If I learn enough, I'll go start my own. I don't need you anymore. So let's talk about numbers. I think that perfectly rolls in with that because your business plan will include numbers. So let's, let's roll into that. Well, the numbers aspect is pretty simple, but reverse engineering. Most of the time we sales reps have burnout. I've been, I've lived this several times when I've done it right and wrong. The numbers can be in a really good motivator. If, you know, That every action I do as a sales rep has a value assigned to it. So it may be a little convoluted. I have a YouTube video I did on it. And. If I do a poor job, it's just cause I'm brushed in my brain right now. But if I have. If I have a goal and I let's say I take last year's total sales I had, and I reverse engineer that. How many total phone calls or leads did I get, how many people did I actually talk to? Let's use real estate as an example. How many leads did I get last month? How many did I call? How many did I actually talk to? How many appointments did I have? How many contracts that are, right. How many got accepted? How many closes did I have? Right. Well, if I reverse engineer it for 12 months, what I'm going to find is, so you're telling me how to get over nose and objections. Is it every time I pick up a phone, when I start going through this. Every time you tell me no. It has a dollar value attached to it. Every no. Every get the hell out of here. I can just make$400 because every action. I've assigned a value as I've reversed, engineered this, this, this numbers game. Every time I've knocked on the door and been told no that had an N in the value gets more. Every time I go to the next level, right? These junctures from a lead to a call to talk to, to a showing to an appointment, blah, blah. Every time I go up the chain, now, all of a sudden it's showing me I have a value of$1,500 a contract, just riding a contract. Has an assigned value of$2,300. Contract, except it has a value of 3000. Now when that closes, I make$4,400. Every closing that might, the reason I bring that up is a lot of times when I asked salespeople, what's your numbers? They use words like, I guess, I think pretty close to almost they look to the sky for heaven. And, and it, and sometimes you just don't know. But a lot of times we don't know because we don't do the number one rule of business ownership and sales, and that is spend time on our business every week. Hmm. You should have KPIs and LPs are checking every week. Those key performance indicators. And life performance indicators. So not just what is my closing percentage and how many. How much money am I making, but how many times did I work out? How many times, if I want to have a Bible study to have a Bible study, how much time do I spend with my kids? How many times. We forget to track things. And if we don't track, we don't know. Numbers can motivate us. When I realized you telling me to get the hell out of your building, just made me$400. I'm going to go make another$400. Yeah, I'm going to go back another$400. Every single time. This is, which is your psychology. Cause how I think about one thing is how you think about everything. I had a note on my cubicle in the late nineties at talk radio and I had a bunch of different notes. One of them said a no equals and I think it was. 300 something bucks. So my goal was to get to so many nos every week. Because if I was going to get 30 nos every week, I knew my numbers was going to have 12 yeses. And I, how many nodes have I gotten this week? If I've only got three or four nos? I'm not going to have a good month. Hmm. I need, I need to get as many nos in there as possible because that's making me money. I don't know if that makes sense or not. I know we talked about this a lot when I was selling life insurance. Yes. Yes. Something that sometimes keep me motivated and. It's something that takes time. It takes a lot of time to like, really, you got to change your, your thought process on things you have to change the way you think about. What you've been trained your whole life being told no, as being in negative, you have to train yourself to see that as positive. Well, that's defining your terms with how all this kind of relates to each other. If my D if I'm defining my terms as, as a, no is a win a no equals money. Then out. I want to get told no as many times as week as possible. Holy mackerel. Once I realized Hayden telling me no made me money, I need as many Hayden's in my life as possible. I want, as many of you is tell me to get the hell out of your office. As much as you want. Because you're making me money. Cause it's part of the process. It's part of making the meal. The other thing I was going to bring up, because I know we're running low on time and it's a networking thing and you'd asked me some questions. You sent me some questions beforehand. About mistakes about networking. Do you mind if I take it that direction? Absolutely. One of the things that I tell people about net, there's three things we do to mess up networking. One is we don't do it because it's uncomfortable or we don't see immediate value in it. Too. We do so much of it. We can't slow down long enough to me. I go to all the networking meetings every week. Well, you're not going to make real connections. And then the third one is we do it, but with no plan. So. The first two, I want to dress the one with the plan. I used to have a little trick. People can try it if you want to. I used to. Say that I'm going to take business cards. How many times have you been to a networking group and taking business cards? I have probably a thousand at home. Okay. Do you ever go by the way, exchanging business cards is not networking. That's exchanging business cards. They end up in the trash or in the glove box. My question is how many times have you gone to a networking event and given a business card and taken a business card? How many times thousands. Hundreds. You're a young guy. Hundreds of times. At least probably four or 500. There you go. Yeah. So, unless you go into it with a plan, it can be very confusing. I used to carry business cards in my back pocket or my jacket of much coat, but I carried three in my shirt pocket. So if you came up to me and there was no vibe and it was just, I could tell you're just, you're you're harvesting business cards from everybody. I'm going to give you one out of my back pocket. That's for harvesting. But once I started having a good conversation with Hayden and I'm like, okay, This guy, won't take the coffee. I took one out of my front pocket. And I gave it to you. And I took yours and I put it in my front pocket. So sometimes I would go from a networking meeting and have none given out and none of my back, my front pocket, I'm fine with that. I'm wasting my time. Right. I'll I'll follow up with you, but I'm not going to be, let's go to cough. But a lot of times I leave and I've given away three business cards. And these three up here, I'm calling you immediately to set up a coffee, a lunch there's intentionality there. And because business owners and salespeople are so busy. It gives me a plan of action. Yes. I'll follow up with these with an email or text, but these three or these two. They're going to get, we're going to get some one-on-one time. Yeah. There was a connection there. But it's a trick that I learned that helped me say it saved me so much time. And that's how I made a lot of connections. What I do now is this is a new kind of technological thing. And actually I'm gonna start rolling out a sponsorship cause I I'm affiliate with them at popple. I can get this little, a little code on the back of your phone. Excuse me. And I can literally like, They put their contact info and it saves my contact to their phone and it shoots me over there. And I can go. I have to have pop-up too for that to work. No. Okay, good. It's an online web based. You just scan the code and the QR code networks. And I was just at a networking meeting in Nashville last night. Have you found it being, was there any pushback from older folks? No, not at all. I mean, it's just, I mean, if they have pushback, I'll give them one of my paper cards and everything. I haven't had any issue with it though, because I mean, everyone has a smartphone. Yeah. Pull your camera up and scan the coat. Yeah. And that's it. Good fight. It also is you're leading someone down the step of already like accepting instructions from you, right. Hey scan this. Okay. Now click that button. Now, put your contact info in here. There's three things that someone else has done to submit their contact info to me, right. And so it, but it puts it in a list. So I already know, like, these are the three people that I met last night. Just like kind of what you do. I don't just do that for everybody, you know? I don't just go around like, Hey, scan this. And it's when I've talked to somebody and really like had a good conversation. I'm like, Hey. I would love to follow up scan this and it puts it. I get a notification today. That'll say follow up. Oh, that's cool. That's very cool. Very helpful. Yeah. A lot of people just make those mistakes. And they don't have a system like you have, which I like, but we just did a lot of times we get busy and we just check boxes. Oh, I went to four networking groups, but the reason you're doing the podcast, but I made no real connections. It does kind of become a waste of time. If you don't have a plan in place. And I love that concept, the, the, the technology side of it. I'm glad that older people like me aren't pushing back. I would probably be one of the guys that you'd be like, okay, dude. Give me, I'm not going to make you do it to stop. You're you're you're showing your age. What am I going to put my name in there? Am I registering for a car or what are we doing? That's a free gym membership. What the hell is going on here. Yeah, that's what people's email. And I'm like, you don't have to put that if you don't want to, I'm not going to send you emails. Don't worry. I just. And that's the fear, right? That's the fear I'm going to get on some list somewhere, right? And I don't know how to unsubscribe, because again, I'm not pushing buttons. I feel like I'm launching nuclear weapons. You know, click this button. I'm not clicking anything, man. What am I doing? What am I agreeing to? I always I'm like it and it looks all official. Oh, I love that technology is a friend of ours. I tell people all the time, if we're not using it and learning it. You're missing this. 30 years ago, we had yellow pages. And I use the heck out of them, yellow pages and the white pages. Right. I used a billboard. So we use what we have at the time technology. If sales reps aren't using it. They're missing golden opportunities. Oh yeah. Well, we have come up on our time here. Where can people find you for coaching or podcasting? Where can people go to listen to you? Yeah. I've got to out of front through them real quick. During the break podcast is my main one. You can find that on any of your platforms. I had the crime cast. I have five to nine, the number and five to the number nine. Coaching and that is what happens after hours affects us during work hours. That's also a podcast and then I have one on political and constitutional stuff, which is called Buying for the people, but if you go to Facebook or Google Clint Powell podcast, I pop up. Anywhere. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for coming on. This has been an amazing episode. Thanks for the invite. I know I'm going to send this out to any of my salespeople that come up to me and asked me what episodes I listened to. You're going to be the first one. Thank you, Claire.