Today, some lessons learned from my journey in business. These only took me 13 years to discover and most of the lessons involved pain! But today, you can learn them in a few minutes!
LESSON #1:
There Is No Better Education Available Than Business
I went to some pretty good schools as a kid—and a world class college for music. I learned plenty of stuff about things that don’t matter. I learned little to nothing about me, which is about all that matters.
My education didn’t really start until the day I stepped out on the car lot in Scottsdale Arizona to try my hand at selling cars. A friend of mine was doing well in the business and introduced me to the manager. At the time, I didn’t realize they hired just about anyone with a heartbeat. I also didn’t have a clue about selling.
You can imagine what happened from that point on. I only ever seemed to be able to sell Corvettes to old white guys. I didn’t understand the reason for this then, but I do now. Those guys weren’t interested in being jerked around by the average slimy sales guy. Good thing, because I didn’t know anything about how to be one of those guys! Luckily, these car buyers perceived my total lack of selling ability for something special!
So even though I knew nothing about cars, even though I cared little about cars, they spotted me as a different type of duck out there on the lot. How do you stick out as a salesperson on a car lot? Simple. Just don’t jump on people when they walk on the property. You stick out like a sore thumb!
Over the next 13 years, I began an educational process and transformation that I can only describe as a modern day miracle.
And that brings me to the point of this lesson. I used to view this whole journey through life and business as some sort of jungle… riddled with danger and obstacles, that I had to navigate safely. It was hard, it was dangerous, but it made me feel like I was on a mission. Unfortunately, it also set me up for a constant roller coaster of emotions. When things are going well in the jungle, you feel good. When things aren’t “going well,” you don’t feel good.
This roller coaster is a prison you build for yourself. If you view your business life like a war with you as the warrior, you’ll get a specific experience because of that.
If you view your business life as a SCHOOL perfectly setup for you to learn and grow, your experience will be very different.
View your days as SCHOOL. You get lessons. If you learn the lessons, they tend not to be repeated. These lessons are not here to annoy you. They are here to make you the fullest version of yourself that you can be. Be GRATEFUL for those lessons and see how things transform.
You will be very surprised.
LESSON #2:
There Are Only Two Roads To Money
The first road is to lie, cheat or steal to get it. The other road is to become valuable to people in some way.
I’m going to assume that the lying, cheating and stealing path is off the table for everyone reading this. Who would want to have all the trappings of “success” on the outside only to be DEAD on the inside? Not interested.
But I could have saved a lot of time if someone had sat down with me and had a serious talk about this simple mind shift. The conversation could have taken 60 seconds. It would have gone something like this:
“Look, Jason, you’ve got it completely backwards. You’re pursuing money directly. As you’ve noticed, it is responding like a defenseless animal fearing for its life: it is running from you. Stop being stupid for a minute and think. Money isn’t a prize. Money is a byproduct of a prize. Here’s a smart way to think: First, decide you want to be valuable. Second, figure out for whom you want to be valuable. Third, figure out what problems you can solve for those people. Fourth, go do that.”
“How can I make more money tomorrow?” is a dead end that will push money away.
“How can I become more valuable to more people tomorrow?” is a question that leads to great things.
LESSON #3:
There Is Only ONE Customer or Client You’ll Have Forever
Years ago, I enrolled in a mentor program with THE Alan Weiss. He’s a very well known consultant from whom I’ve learned a TON about selling etc. via his many books.
I still remember the axiom he always repeated: The First Sale Is Always to Yourself. In other words, if YOU haven’t sold yourself on your value, you can’t expect to sell anyone else on it. The thing I didn’t realize was that, for me, this wasn’t a one time sale.
I did actually enroll in Alan’s mentor program years ago. I remember making the decision to do it and then emailing him to let him know I was experiencing some success and wanted to get to the next level. And I mentioned I was getting the $3,000 enrollment fee together. His response was vintage Alan. It went something like, “How successful could you possibly be if you don’t have $3,000 laying around?” Ouch!
It reminded me of when a pack of dogs smells weakness in one of the members. They attack. I’m not saying those were his intentions, I’m simply saying that’s how I felt. But that was then. And I didn’t die. Instead, I ended up figuring out how to MAKE THAT SALE to myself over and over again. So thanks Alan!
I tend to attract people to my universe who are learning the very same set of lessons I’ve learned. This is one of the lessons I’ve learned.
They say you have to BELIEVE in yourself. But belief isn’t strong enough. The goal is to arrive at a KNOWING. It’s hard to explain the difference. But these things exist at different places of your being.
You might believe that you can succeed.
But you KNOW that the sun is coming up tomorrow.
Sit with those two things a little while and feel and think through the differences. When you “believe” something, you often feel some sort of emotional rush. That rush either takes you up or brings you down. But it takes you somewhere other than where you are.
KNOWING is an absence of that rush. It is stillness. Because it is your truth. That’s what real power feels like.
That’s the point we’re trying to get to in terms of your understanding of your value.
YOU MUST KNOW
Getting to that point is a process not an event. But I can tell you that you don’t think yourself there, you LIVE yourself there. You develop a KNOWING about your true value when you start offering it to others and see what they do with it.
LESSON #4:
When You Are Working With Humans, It’s Dumb To Insist on Fighting Human Nature
I didn’t understand this way back when I started. And even today, I sometimes find myself trying to fight it. But if you’re really interested in helping people, then an effective way to do that is to DO THE WORK required to understand them better than they understand themselves.
But there’s more…
If you truly want to help people, you must learn to become aware of and develop the skills to manage the force of attraction.
Here’s my recommendation to you: Instead of bending down to help someone, you figure out a way to raise them up, perhaps even higher than they think is possible. This means there must be distance between you and them. That distance is where attraction lives.
During the relationship you have with a client/customer, YOU are always moving higher and beckoning them to follow. The minute you take a step back towards them to “help” them, that’s when the problems will begin.
Familiarity breeds contempt. As much as I wish this were not true, it simply is.
So you have to figure out which you care about more. You can either be disciplined in this in an effort to MAXIMIZE your positive effect on your customer/client, or you can be lazy with this and have them pay the price.
People want most what they can have least. You must use this to your advantage so that you can truly help them. Being too nice, being too accessible, being too familiar erodes this opportunity you have.
For a human being genetically wired to be nice, this is a hard current against which to swim. Except that’s implying that this “nice guy” syndrome I started life with was really something that’s part of me. As I’m finding out, it wasn’t. It was put there, by me, to survive.
For me, being “nice” was simply a symptom of being AFRAID. It was a protection mechanism for a very fragile individual. Because when you’re afraid of confrontation, when you’re afraid of criticism, when you’re afraid of RAW EMOTION, when you’re afraid of LIFE, you often use this device to protect yourself. You would rather be “nice” than real.
Don’t do that to yourself. There are people who are depending on you being the best you can be.
LESSON #5:
It’s Not About You. It Can’t Be About You. It Will Never Be About You. Get Over It.
I could go on about this, but I’m going to let someone far more eloquent than I am do it. His name is Jeffrey Lant. He wrote the book, Cash Copy. It’s a good one. But here’s what he has to say about what you want vs. what your prospect, customer or client wants.
You should probably read this a few times… slowly:
“Your prospects are not interested in your products or services, they’re interested only in themselves. In their all too often petty aspirations, floored desires, cracked brain anxieties and foolish fears, thus it is to these not the manifest wonders of your product or service that you must appeal. No-one will ever be as interested in what you’re selling as you are, particularly if you are the inventor of said wonder. Expect no-one to be as interested as you are, take please from the fact that you are the genius who’s conceived such a marvel but take your pleasure quietly, individually or gather clandestinely with other such wonder workers to beat the collective drums of hubris for your unrivaled, unbelievable, astonishing and surpassingly marvelous creation. Then go back to the real business of business, focussing on the wants, needs and aspirations of the severely floored people who are the only people who can provide you with the lifestyle you desire, your prospects.”
There’s nothing more to say about that. You either get it and put it into practice or stand by as someone else in your space DOES.
LESSON #6:
The Power of Ritual
If you’ve never read the book, Daily Rituals, by Mason Currey, read it. One of the things you’ll discover is that you’ll never be nearly as dysfunctional as many of the people in that book. Second, it will serve as a good reminder of the power of the daily ritual.
I haven’t found MUCH just skimming along the surface of life and business. That’s not to say I haven’t tried! In fact, I think most of my early business life was skimming along the surface looking for the easy way to make it.
Instead, the good stuff (like diamonds!) seems to be buried deep down. You dig and dig and dig until you get there. You can’t do all of this digging in a day, so you embark on a mission that requires you to STICK in one place and dig straight down over a longer period of time.
This is where ritual comes into it. Let it be known that sheer will power and self-discipline weren’t enough for me to make real progress. Instead, I had to invent something like a “ritual” to help me make real impact. Now I didn’t do this consciously at the time. But looking back, that’s exactly what my daily email newsletter, The Client Letter, has become for me.
Every day, I wake up and think about some piece of value or advice or insight I can add to your life. First it became a thing on my to-do list. Then it became a habit. Then it became a ritual. There are VERY few days where I don’t look forward to that part of my day.
And when you get to that point about anything, when it blends into the fabric of who you are, that’s when some pretty amazing things are possible. Because you look up one day and realize you’ve been doing the SAME thing for years. You’ve been planting a garden for years and now have fruits and vegetables and all manner of living things to enjoy.
In a nutshell, the fastest way to get anywhere worth going is to get there slowly. That probably sounds crazy, but it’s not if you’ve lived it.
I don’t think you need many rituals, you can just start with one. But it’s something you install in your life and then let it run. Over time, you get better, you get more effective and efficient. Eventually you become a master at it. And that’s when you really start learning.
LESSON #7:
The Sifting/Sorting/Selling Triangle
I certainly did give it a go to try to transform myself into an alpha-male type entrepreneur. I certainly hung around enough of that type of individual over the years to get enamored with their “you gotta MAKE it happen” way of dealing with the world.
As I found out, however, this is not how I’m wired to operate. Not only does it NOT work for me, it ends up creating an enormous amount of unnecessary frustration in the process. It’s not pretty.
To me, if I feel the need to “sell” too hard, that’s simply a clue that my focus is required in the exact opposite place. When you feel the need to SELL, look at your lead flow. That feeling you have isn’t the problem, it’s a symptom of the problem.
Imagine a triangle. There’s one point (SELL) at the top.
Two other points (SIFT AND SORT) are on the bottom.
The sifting and sorting of leads forms the base. Those two things provide a pretty strong foundation. You can FEEL it when you’re in that mode. “Are these prospects right for me?” is what you’re asking instead of “How do I get them to say YES?”
Now imagine the triangle flipped over. It’s sitting on ONE point at the bottom (SELL).
That one point is supporting the other TWO points.
This is how the triangle is positioned when you feel like you have to CLOSE people. This is what it looks like when you are pressured to sell someone.
So that triangle there is trying to balance on the SELL point. Not exactly a firm foundation. And you can FEEL that too. It makes you uneasy. Even worse, it broadcasts a feeling of NEED.
For some reason, we’re trained to feel like we need to constantly upgrade our selling skills and our marketing skills. Maybe that’s true, maybe it’s not. But I do know that if I had spent all that “upgrade” time focused on generating more opportunities to get in front of the right people, I would have made far more progress.
The idea of lead generation is extremely sexy. Actually generating the leads, however, feels much more like real work. A lot of things fail. Your lead generation is never static. Like the moon, each lead generation campaign you have is either waxing or waning. You can never “set it and forget it.” Doesn’t that suck?
It only sucks if you aren’t able to view it as an extremely valuable opportunity. Because most people will not do this work. And therefore, they’ll be stuck talking to the same people today that they were talking to yesterday.
If you currently LACK a “ritual” like I discussed earlier, you could always start with some investment in your lead generation system as the first one to install in your daily routine.
Are you giving yourself enough chances to be in the “sift and sort” business? Or has the lack of lead flow already limited your options to trying to SELL everyone who comes into your world?
LESSON #8:
When You Stop Looking to Others For Your Answers, You Give Yourself the Space Required to Discover Them On Your Own
So I’ll be blunt: I don’t have the answers you’re looking for. And the sooner you stop searching out people who “might” have your answers, the more quickly you’ll discover your answers. But you’ll do it the only way that actually works. You’ll do it on your OWN.
Notice I didn’t say “find” your answers. They’re not lost. They’re right in front of your face. But it’s hard to see them when you don’t think they’re there.
For years I thought someone ELSE had my answers. What should I do? How should I do it? How can I be successful? Blah, blah, blah. That was the daily conversation going on in my head. The harder I “looked,” the less I found!
Now when I say “answers,” I’m talking about answers to the serious questions. “What do I want?” is one of those questions. No one can answer that for you. Don’t do what I did. What I did was to study all these people who were successful until I found one where I could say, “I want what he has!” Instead of that leading to progress, it led me to try to become someone else. Ultimately, this failed every time.
That’s an example that shows I thought my answers were “out there” somewhere. They are inside you and you must discover them and bring them out.
But when you are out there searching with the feeling that someone has the answers for you, you end up giving your power away to that hope.
Plus, what if one of your “answers,” is that you (only) want to make $50,000 per year doing something you enjoy? Well, you won’t find that story anywhere in a business book best seller, because that story doesn’t sell.
But if that’s your “answer,” to the “what I want” question, then that’s what you should do. And only YOU can give yourself permission to do that.
The way you find YOUR answers is to stop searching for them. You stop MOVING, you start becoming more still. Meditation is a great way to do this. You don’t go looking for anything. Instead, you stop long enough for all of the “answers” that are right in front of you to present themselves. And they will.
Now if you’ve never done anything like meditation, or simply sitting with yourself, you might think it sounds like a whole lot of hocus-pocus. Really, it IS magical. But only as magical as when boiling water “disappears” into steam.
Very few people talk about all of this. Because they’ve been taught NOT to. In fact, depending on your upbringing, it might even make you feel uncomfortable. POWER does make you feel uncomfortable at first. It’s up to you if you want to accept your power or continue to give it away. Your power doesn’t care which you decide.
But this type of thing has been largely erased from our modern definition of the normal. Why? Because it’s hard to control a population when they do stuff like this and start finding their own answers.
Actually, it’s IMPOSSIBLE to control them. So think about that if you’re feeling weird right about now. You sure that feeling is YOURS? Or was it put there by someone else?