Important: Brand Secrets and Strategies has been rebranded to Retail Solved. Please swap all BrandSecretsandStrategies.com URL’s with RetailSolved.com. This is now the Bulletproof Your Brand podcast. Thank you for listening!

You listen to the Retail Solved podcast because you are tired of giving away margin while commoditizing your brand. Ready to take your sales and profits to the next level and beyond? Let’s start the show.

Welcome,
The fundamental problem the retail solved podcast strives to resolve is how to maximize the value of your brand. I believe that CEOs should not be perpetual fundraisers and I believe that shoppers want to support those brands that add value and do good on our behalf - for example, mission-based brands. So how do we do that?

We change the conversation from how low can you price your brand to how you fuel incremental profits and sustainable category growth. We highlight how and why shoppers value your brand over others. We look to experts who have a proven track record.

And I see what you're saying is very similar. But if we keep doing the same thing over and over and over, then what ends up happening is it comes down to commoditization at that point. The lack of value that somebody perceives, it's like it just comes down to like a purchasing decision.

Okay, how many units, what price, and how quick can you get it here? Right? And so purchasing agents are actually rewarded in that matter.

But that's not going to spark innovation in the growth, especially for the smaller folks that you're talking about, the retailers, other than the manufacturer or the wholesalers. So even on the wholesale though, they got to get creative at this point. And let's face it, 2020, it's kind of changed some things for people, right?

So innovation is something that people value and they will pay for when it has tangible value to that or even behavioral value to that. You know, it changes how somebody can think and act. Therefore, they have a better life.

So what I would challenge people to do is really think about, okay, what kind of innovation could have put in there? But a lot of times they don't think that way, Dan, because they've been doing it the same way.

You know, you listen to the Retail Solved Podcast because you're tired of giving away margin while commoditizing your brand. Ready to take your sales and profits to the next level and beyond? Let's start the show.

Let's roll up our sleeves and get started. Welcome. The fundamental problem that this podcast strives to solve is how to maximize the value of your brand.

I believe that CEOs should not be perpetual fundraisers, and I believe that shoppers want to support those brands that add value and do good on our behalf. For example, mission-based brands. So how do we do that?

We need to change a conversation from how low you can price your brand to how you fuel incremental profits and sustainable category growth. We need to highlight the how and the why shoppers value your brand over others. To do this, we need to look to the experts who have a proven track record.

Would you like to know the secrets of icons like Tony Robbins, Chet Holmes and Russ Whitney? How they use these strategies to build their brands? Today's special guest served as an independent president of sales and training for companies of Tony Robbins, Chet Holmes and Russ Whitney.

Doug teaches companies how to accelerate your sales, profits and growth. So why does this matter? Nothing happens until someone sells something.

And this can be as simple as selling a point of view or your preference for a particular restaurant tonight. Selling in its most simplest form is to the transference of enthusiasm. The focus of today's episode is on the incremental value your idea or product provides.

The result is more money to fuel innovation, support for mission based causes, better valuations to investors and you make it easy for retailers to say yes to your recommendations. This show is about you and it's for you. Before we go any further, I want to remind you that there's a free downloadable guide for you at the end of every podcast episode.

I always include one easy to download, quick to digest strategy that you can instantly adopt and make your own. One that you can use to grow sustainable sales and profits with and compete more effectively. Take the 30-day data prosperity challenge to take your brand to the next level and beyond.

It's a free on-demand foundational mini course to give you the competitive edge that you deserve. Go to retailsolved.com forward slash 30-day challenge to get started today. If you like the show, please share it with a friend and subscribe.

Help me raise the bar in natural. Here's today's episode with Doug. Hi, Doug.

Thank you for coming on today. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got to where you're at today?

Well, thank you for having me on and a little bit about myself. Well, business wise, I started working at the age of three years old. For my father's business, I was sweeping floors for 25 cents a week.

And I got to buy a lot of candy at the end of the week. So that was really, really cool. Probably not good for my teeth.

And then I worked with my dad and I was hustling side businesses all the way through until I was about the age of 19. Then I went into the military. And then I always had businesses on the side through the military and different businesses all the way through my life.

And eventually what happened was I went into a medical field and I applied for jobs and I couldn't find one. So I ended up going back into what I used to do, which was selling. And I was selling music equipment at the time and I was working.

It was a great job. I worked with all the bands, Aerosmith, you know, the Eagles, all of those folks had a great time. But what I realized is I was making way more money and way more leverage in selling at that point.

So I ended up pursuing a career in sales and ended up working for large companies and ended up usually being, you know, one of the top one or two sales reps. I was always building businesses all the way through. And then that eventually led me into working on my own companies and then working with a guy named Chet Holmes, who wrote a book called The Ultimate Sales Machine.

And I became Chet's president of training and sales and worked with him and then Tony Robbins and a bunch of other people for about seven years. And so I've been helping companies expand their revenue ever since because that's what we did there. So I've been doing that for now over 15 years.

Love it. Thank you. And this is exactly what I wanted to have you on today.

I was so intrigued by what you do. Backing up a little bit, the challenge in this industry, the natural foods industry, or actually in consumer packaged goods, is typically there's a rinse and repeat strategy. There's a lot of this is what I did last year.

FSo this is what I'm going to do this year without a lot of creativity. I know from my experience, Doug, that one of the most successful accounts or persons that I've ever worked with within that camp, he was able to create different strategies and always reinventing things. As a result, he and I had together a huge double digit growth every month, where most CPG brands, if they're lucky, if they get one or two percent, we were doing 30, 40, one quarter we did 82 percent, huge numbers like that quarter after quarter because we didn't just accept the status quo.

So that's why I was so thrilled about when you guys reached out to me is exploring what do you do or how do you help brands, how do you help anyone understand, first of all, how to do that? And secondly, how to get from point A to point B. And let me throw out one other caveat.

Well, the cool thing about sales is that when you wake up in the morning, you can to some degree decide how much you're going to make, where you can't do that in any other field. So anyhow, please, your thoughts?

No, and I agree with you. This is one of the reasons. I mean, I was I was actually making three times more in sales than I was actually working in my degrees were nuclear medicine.

So you would think, you know, I have a specialty, you know, I can go into the hospital and do really well. But, you know, it was crazy. I was making three times more than I was like, OK, so then I went on to a career in sales and I made far more than three X.

Right. So I've never looked back in that regard. But you know, how you do this with a company or even an individual that's selling is the first step is you got to get brutally truthful about what do you really want as a goal?

Like you said, you can get up every single day and determine what you make. But most people are not very clear on what is that truthful goal, not honest goal, because we all think we want to grow to whatever. But you know, there are some years that I don't want to grow.

I don't want to double this year. I mean, I just had enough stress from doing that the last three years, something like that. So, you know, everybody has their own individual journey, somebody always has a bigger boat.

And so whatever somebody determines, so getting very truthful, you know, honesty being subjective, truth will be in quantitative, right? This is where we're going. This is where we're going to do that is the first step in this whole process.

Because if you're if one's not truthful, at the end goal, what I found out is they, they want to go in this direction, but then what is needed to grow to that point is not supported because they're not committed to the truth. They're committed to the honesty of I would like to have this happen.

Gotcha. So how do you help someone bridge that gap? I mean, actually, let me back up.

I understand what you're saying from my experiences and how I've been able to grow and double and do all that, you know, those they have those huge benchmarks, those huge wins. For someone that doesn't have that wherewithal, how do you first help them identify what they should be thinking about? And then for a team leader, how do you help them identify what they should be thinking about?

And notice that within the people they're working with. Loaded question, I know.

It is, but I mean, it really comes back to goals, right? So in an organization, I'll start with the team leader first. In an organization, most team leaders do not know what the individual goals are of their people.

And why? They just never really paid attention to that. They come in, they do, you know, they're they're working tactically.

We got something that we got to get done, we're going to get it done, etc, etc. But there's always, always, always, always professional goals and personal goals. And there's always a, you know, left brain, right brain, right

I mean, logically, this is what I know I have to do. But right brain, I want to grow and expand. I want to have a better personal life.

I want to send my kids to private school, whatever it might be. But team leaders don't generally know that personal attachment to the professional objective. And so they, that would be the first step.

You know, let's get clear about what are the goals of the people. Now once you understand what the goals are, are they achievable? I mean, is it something that can happen?

You don't want to leave somebody in a place where, you know, I had a guy who wanted to grow from $3 million to $53 million in a year, and he had no budget whatsoever. And so, you know, that's not highly achievable. And so with high probability, he's not going to achieve that, because he needs money to actually start promoting the brand and bringing in new people and doing things.

He just didn't have it in the in the thing. So we had to get very truthful. So once you understand the goal, the next thing is to gently push back to find out, do they really want it?

So let's stay with salespeople, because salespeople are fun, you know, it's like they're making, let's say, I don't know, $120,000 in sales. Always the next number is 200 to 250. I mean, it's always one of the other that I hear.

So then the question becomes, OK, so if you want to go from there, you essentially want to double your business to 250. All right. Here's the question.

If you get to 250, you're going to be really happy. Yes? Yes.

What happens if you hit 170 or 160 or whatever? That'll be fine too. They're not committed.

So we have to gently push back to find out their level of commitment to the actual. Now, if they say to you, the right answer that we want to hear, if you will, is, listen, 250 is just a starting point. I really want 500, but we got to get there next year.

So how do we do it? Now, you know you have a more committed person.

Love that. I mean, that's great advice, because that's something that I don't think a lot of people think about. So let me throw one other caveat at you.

In this industry, there's a belief that things are, everything's kind of already set up, everything's already determined in terms of what your growth is or what you can do. In other words, the rinse and repeat strategy that everyone uses is what this industry uses a lot. In fact, actually, you'll probably get a kick out of this, it'll resonate with you.

I think it was Paul Harvey was at his son's house for Thanksgiving. His son's wife was cutting the ends off the ham. He said, why do you do that?

She said, I don't know, because my mom did it. The mom was right there. They said, why did you do that?

And she said, well, because my pan was too small. The point being is that that's kind of that frames really how this industry looks at things. This is what we do because this is what we do it without a lot of that creativity.

And yet the reality is the customers that you're serving, the retailers that you're serving, they want to need that creativity because that's how they get the competitive advantage. Your retailers and your customers want that because they want the personalization. They want all the benefits that come with knowing that you're there to serve them.

Your thoughts? I mean, how do you cross that bridge with someone?

Well, sometimes you can't and sometimes you can't.

Right?

So, you know, if they keep doing what they're doing to get to a higher level, sometimes that doesn't, many times it doesn't work.

Right?

So there's a story I once heard about, you know, a man wants to make it to the top of the mountain. So he goes to the side of the river and realizes he's got to cross the river. And so he builds himself a raft out of sticks, logs, whatever.

And he finds his way across the river. And then he's at the end of the river edge. He's looking up at the mountain.

He's going, well, you know what? I probably ought to bring some of this wood with me, because if it gets cold at night, I'm going to have to, you know, put a fire together or shelter or whatever. Right?

And so he starts making his way up the mountain, and he gets up to the mountain to a certain place, and he spends overnight, and it works fine, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Puts all the wood back on his back, and he starts ascending up the mountain again. Well, now he starts making up halfway, two thirds up the mountain, and all of this stuff he's carrying on his back is weighing him down, where he can't get up the mountain anymore.

So what's the lesson? He had to cut loose all of the sticks and rope and everything else that he had in order for him to make it to the rest of the height. And I see what you're saying is very similar.

If we keep doing what's... Now, by the way, it works, right? So the system works.

But if we keep doing the same thing over and over and over, then what ends up happening is it comes down to commoditization at that point, the lack of value that somebody perceives. It's like, it just comes down to like a purchasing decision. Okay, how many units, what price, and how quick can you get it here?

So purchasing agents are actually rewarded in that matter. But that's not going to spark innovation in the growth, especially for the smaller folks that you're talking about, the retailers other than the manufacturer or the wholesalers. So even on the wholesale though, they got to get creative at this point.

Let's face it, 2020, it's changed some things for people. So innovation is something that people value and they will pay for when it has tangible value to that or even behavioral value to that. It changes how somebody can think and act, therefore they have a better life.

So what I would challenge people to do is really think about, okay, what kind of innovation could have put in there? But a lot of times they don't think that way, Dan, because they've been doing it the same way. We used to have this running joke when I was in the Army.

I was in in the early 80s and they used to say, this is not the way we did it in Korea. Wasn't that in the 50s or whatever? So we have things now called computers.

So it's about constantly trying to innovate regardless of the position you're in. And eventually, I mean, there are many companies that have been spawn and grown like crazy on innovation.

True. And when you said we were talking about, this is not the way we did it in Korea. My first thought was, how did that work out for you?

So, I mean, because that's really what these brands do, what different companies do is that they're not thinking about, let's be creative. And when you're talking about small disruptive brands that are responsible for all sustainable growth across every category and every channel, etc. they've got to be creative.

They've got to be very disruptive. They've got to be very tactical, etc. Where the big brands, they apply those same cookie cutter strategies.

And by the way, I love the fact you use commoditize because that's a term I use about it for everything to describe this, because that's the mold that we need to break out of. So can you talk a little bit more about what you mean by commoditizing and how does a company look beyond that? I guess the question underneath that, Doug, is what is the possibility?

What does infinite look like?

Well, so commoditization happens due to the lack of perceived value, right? So when we are not, as the selling entity, being able to position value, value being the perceived meaning of what they deem to be a benefit or worth to them, then that's got to be unique to them, right? So we all buy on value, and as the value of worth goes up, the higher the margins, right?

I mean, higher the price goes up. So lack of innovation, for example, is a belief system. And innovation is a belief system.

So when people have been entrenched in a certain way, a belief system, you know, hey, the world is flat. You go on, you sail your boat off, you're going to fall off, right? I'm sure there were people who believe that.

Oh, yeah. And, you know, we know it not to be true. So in the absence of value, there will be commoditization.

There was a study I read, gosh, I'm going to date myself now, probably 20-something years ago, which said people buy in the order of this perception. Number one, it was value. And value is determined by whatever the heck they deem it to be.

What's the definition? The second one is service. The next one is selection.

Do they have a little bit of variety? And the fourth one was convenience. And the fifth one was price.

And I was like, man, you know what? I hear price objections all the time, right? So maybe I should try this value thing.

Like, what is it? So I started studying up on that. And all of a sudden, you know, I go from in that particular company being one of the guys who's selling a lot to a guy who's selling a lot of high margin.

And so, you know, where the average sale, we were doing a recurring sale of, you know, we do one to five year contracts.

My average sale per client was $3,500. So that got the attention of the executive management pretty quickly. So, but what I was doing is I created massive value perception for people.

And it's all within the conversation that it happens. And so if people can think about value as we talk about this, if you can create massive value, you will get higher margins, people will buy from you more often, people will refer to you more often.

This is exactly the argument that I've been trying to get out there, trying to challenge the industry. Again, we tend to commoditize things. We fight to the lowest common dollar versus the value.

And so kind of back up a little bit. One way I'd frame this is that when you think about a natural organic product, if I eat a generic bread, I'm hungry almost before I finish eating it. If I eat the best mainstream bread, even though it's a lot more expensive, I may be satiated for three or four hours.

However, if you are what you eat and what you eat matters, then if I eat the organic bread and the organic bread has more of the nutrients that my body needs, it's cheaper over time because I eat less of it. It has a lot higher value because I get what I need and I'm not eating a lot of filler junk to fill into it. And yet at the same time, that's where the real benefit is.

And my point being that this industry, from my perspective, needs to focus on the value that we're feeding you more effectively. We're giving you the nutrients that your body needs and not all the excess garbage that you don't need that's not going to help you achieve your goals, etc. So when you're talking about the value perception, I love the fact that you're talking about how margin needs to remain high at that point because there's something there.

So how do you... something there of value. So how do you convince or how do you help people understand how to determine what that value is?

So one of the greatest ways of doing this is monetizing everything. So you talked about people eating healthier lifestyle, right? You can make a case very easily by looking into some of the medical journals and pulling from the American Medical Association or Harvard Medical or whatever about what we ingest directly has an impact on our concentration and focus by X percent.

So if our conversation, our focus drops by, let's say, 20% throughout a day, that means we're one-fifth less productive than we are. So if we look at our company revenues, we can make an argument, you know, logical, that if everybody's 20% less effective and you're doing $10 million, then you in theory should be doing $12 million because everybody's eating the wrong stuff, you're losing $2 million a year. So monetization around anything and, you know, I mean, higher profits, reduced costs, whatever it might be, you can monetize very easily.

But what about the intangible side of it or the personal side of it? You know, better repute, you know, what does this all lead into for somebody? And we, as the selling entity, the first thing we want to do is we've got to build trust, right?

So that we can elicit the value that we want. And that value that I want to elicit needs to be unique to me and unique to the field so that they can relate to it. And so what we want to do is we want to figure out, okay, what's a clear ROI, let's say on one side of the, if we drew a double-axis graph or whatever, on one side, what's a clear ROI?

On the other side, what is the benefit of the behavior change, if you will? And we want to go at that for tangible and intangible benefits. So a tangible benefit to a lot of the buyers, and by the way, we should only be talking to buyers at this point, right?

The buyer has certain levels of responsibilities, aspirations, desires, fears. Everything that is there, understanding that buyer, you can clearly position into an ROI or some behavioral change, or some type of personal gain in the form of gratification or avoidance of pain, right? So as we have these conversations, we're asking questions to elicit these type of things so that we can look for things to actually monetize, or at least put into a percentage of growth or a percentage of drop.

And we all, as human beings, we love the emotion, right? That's why we love movies, because we get to live in the hero's journey or whatever. But we also justify with logic.

And all of us, if we're watching a film, I was just watching one last night on a rescue mission in a POW camp in France, you know, during World War II. And, you know, we all go, we don't want to be there, right? Because most of us, anyways, the logic says this is dangerous.

So we want to keep bouncing the brain between the emotional side and justification with logic. The emotional side, justification with logic. And in painting in, what is the clear ROI?

What are the tangible benefits? What are the intangible benefits? And how are we monetizing this?

Or at least positioning it so that they can clearly get to the left side of the brain, so it has logic, mathematics, sequencing, some linear thinking, something that makes sense, the facts, if you will.

Great. And that's really helpful. I appreciate you're going through that.

And on that note, when you're talking about fear, that's the underlying thing, I think, that derails most people. And this is one of the things that I think you probably talk about a lot. How do you help people overcome fear?

And what I mean by that, Doug, is, well, I know what works, I know what I need to do to keep my job. I don't know what I need, what, let me rephrase that. A lot of salespeople are so busy keeping their job, they're not thinking about how to really grow the company beyond that.

How to really expand and grow and what that could look like if they really put all their muscle into it. So how would you counsel someone in that position? And or how would you counsel their team leader to help them overcome that fear that is blocking them from going to the next level and well beyond?

So I think there's two different points there. There's definitely the fear, right? The blocks of fear.

And then how do we guide people to actually get them to the next step? So, you know, and in defense to salespeople, CEOs and owners are probably going to go no. But in defense to what I'm going to say, for salespeople, many times it's the company that's actually creating that lack of growth atmosphere for their salespeople.

You know, a lot of times, you know, in business, we have great months, sometimes we have average months, and sometimes we have months that are like, yeah, I don't know, that wasn't really a good month, right? But the challenge is a lot of CEOs will say, I can't get accuracy forecast from my sales team. And then when I look at them like, well, you have an environment that actually slaps them down for actually providing accurate forecast.

So if somebody is not going to hit quota one month, for example, but they've been over quota six times in the last seven months, that one month that they're not going to hit quota, everybody's going to go, you know, you're bad. You know, what happened with you? Are you are you in a slump or whatever?

No, it might just be just the natural occurrence of events, right? So what people will do is they will hyper inflate the numbers to stay safe, which is a form of fear, right? They're avoiding it's a fear they're trying to avoid the pain of what is what is going on.

So fear in itself is not false evidence appearing real. Fear in itself is fear. It is it's a real, powerful, you know, very helpful emotion, if you will, while it's being expressed in the right way.

So, you know, if we hear, I don't know, we're taking a walk through the woods and we hear a bear growling or something, right? It's probably going to kick up our fear like, OK, you know, I'm in grizzly country or whatever. I probably should pay attention to this.

That's that's great motivation. And so fear can be used for the positive and I'm getting into how you train people, right? So it's got to be used for the positive.

But there's also that that fear that just lets go and is irrational, right? So you're in the woods, you hear bears growl all the time and you see a bear and, you know, you start scurrying up the tree right immediately, right? Now, just imagine bear could walk over and say and speak English or whatever language that somebody is listening to.

And the bear says, Hey, hey, hey, hey, have you seen my wife and kids? Because I'm lost out here. And every time I get lost out here, my wife thinks I'm off with another bear.

And, you know, I get myself into trouble. And, you know, the next week of my life is just heck. I don't want to have any problems whatsoever.

And you up in the tree could go, oh, yeah, yeah, they're over there because I saw them, you know, a little while ago, you have like three little, you know, little ones. Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh, they're over there. Hey, thank you.

Have a good day, sir. And, you know, the bear takes off that that's a rational fear, right? Because we're projecting so far into the future.

That we're pulling it right into the present and we don't know what the real circumstance is. And this happens all the time in communication, Dan, where people are there, they're taking the moment, they feel the fear, they go back into the past and they go, OK, looks like a duck must be a duck. Right.

And that's serving at times, a bear is a bear. So, you know, however, they pull it into the present and then they start making it all about what the past was, not in the present moment, or they'll go out to the future and they'll go, oh, what if this happens? What if that happens?

And so now they're creating anxiety and lots of stress for future. And worse yet, they might go back to the future and then go back to the past and pull it all into the center. And now they got overwhelmed going on.

Right.

And this is where objections form in sales most of the time. So a fear is nothing more than a discomfort expressed in an emotion. That is an objection.

And so if we're going to train people, the first thing we got to do is we got to get to what I call the real it. And the real it is, what is the real reason this person is in fear? Now, a lot of times, fears are learned.

They're habitual. They come from our past. You know, I remember my oldest daughter, Rebecca, you know, when she was just one, two years old and she learned how to walk, I would hold her hand and she would walk up on very high things.

And, you know, some people in my family are like, don't do that, don't do, you know, like, what if she falls? I'm like, I'm right here. You know, she's not going to fall.

Now, that works great because Rebecca love, you know, is not afraid of heights. I grew up afraid of heights, right? My brother hung me off a roof and dangled me when I was three years old.

I got an immediate fear of heights at that point. Now, one day we're at the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge, and I see my, I think she was six year old, crawling up on the Golden Gate Bridge to stand on the railing so she could see the whales down below. As a father, it's like, oh no, right?

So immediate fear, you know, you pull back from the past, right? So I had to now interrupt that process. So the way, and hopefully the people are, you know, how do you train people?

This is how you train them, right? You got to let them be. So I walked over very calmly.

She was climbing up. I said, sweetheart, can I have permission to talk to you about something?

Right.

And so we had that conversation. It's like, the reason I don't want you up on this railing is not because you're not capable. It's because we don't have a safety strap and the winds are blowing very hard.

And so when we're going to take a risk like this, we want to take a calculated risk if we can do so, right? So to cross the gap of fear, people have to understand why they're in the fear. Now, in the military, sometimes you're in fear and you cross a gap of fear just because you have to act.

So, you know, chaos is sometimes the necessity of invention, right? But for the most part, when we're dealing with what we're dealing with now, they have to understand where the fear comes from because it's, you know, very easy to say, well, stop doing that behavior. But if you've been doing that behavior most of your life and when you get a trigger level, immediately the human brain goes, research, got this in the past, this is what's probably going to happen and they're off on this fear loop.

The way to stop that, Dan, is there's always a feeling, there's always a thought.

It's one or the other is the first dominant. In my case, it's always a feeling. In other people's cases, it's a thought.

As soon as you get that thought or that feeling, you got to invite that feeling in and you got to go, hello, friend, I recognize who you are. Let's take a moment to take a look at this. Just the act of interrupting the pattern, this comes back from Tony Robbins or neuro-linguistic programming.

But just interrupting the pattern gives the person now the chance to say, okay, I want to take and go down the left path or the right path, and the left path has not served me very well, I'm going to go down the right path. The more that that person re-trains their habitual behavior to continue to go down the right path or the right side of the path, then that person's fear will drop because every time they do that, they go, oh, well, I didn't get hurt doing this, I didn't get hurt doing that.

My uncle tried off of the Airborne in the military and he told me, said, Doug, they started you at a two-foot platform. The first thing is you learn how to jump off two feet, then they bring you up to a five-foot and then up to a 10. He said, then they strap you in because it's getting too high, you hurt yourself without the strap.

He said, you just didn't jump and go right into the airplane and they threw you out of the airplane. You want to stair step people through their fears, if possible.

That makes a lot of sense. Thank you. By the way, a huge fan and student of Anthony Robbins, one of his best stories is about a baby crawling across the counter, falls off the counter under green carpet and notices pain.

The idea being that the association that green creates pain, not falling. And so, love the visual. And as far as helping people stair step into the pain and help them get through that, that's what we need to be doing, obviously.

But let me ask you about this. Conversely, you're in a situation where you're going to go into a big sales meeting. It's super important.

There's a lot of stress, a lot of pressure on you, and you succeed. So overcoming that fear, that euphoria that makes you think, look, I'm invincible, I accomplished this, that's great. And then be able to build on that.

How do you help people see what's possible in that realm?

Okay, so I'll answer it this way. I've been doing a lot of work in the training industry, and the number one challenge that people have in the training industry is, what do I do? What do I teach?

What do I have? And then, is it safe for me to actually go out and do this?

So, the key in this thing is, again, you're stair stepping it, right? So, if somebody wants to roll out something, let's say they want to be innovative and roll out a new marketing initiative, they don't go and they're not supposed to, anyways, go and put a million dollars into that initiative to find out it's not going to work. So, just like any reconnaissance, one would want to understand what the market's thinking first.

And you can do that most of the time by just talking to the people that you already have as clients, so people that are potential clients and say, listen, I'm thinking about doing this. Could you give me some candid feedback? I do not want to run down a path enthusiastically for five miles and find out I'm in the wrong place.

And most people in business or most people in life, if you just ask for help, will help. So, once you understand what that basis of a possibility can be, then you want to test the hypothesis just like we would do in a science class, right? And how do you test it?

Well, you don't go all in. You just test a little piece. So, you know, maybe if it's, I want to start a new marketing method.

Well, okay, try the new marketing method. What does the new marketing method mean? The second thing is to understand that it's always a constant generation of upgrading.

What I mean by that is it's never going to be perfect the first time. And quite frankly, it doesn't have to be. Most people are too, because of the fear of being rejected or associated or whatever, they don't take that calculated risk that I was talking to my daughter about on the bridge.

And believe me, that was really high. So when I was looking down, I'm like, oh no, right? I'm just thankful nobody had a safety strap at that moment because my heart probably would have jumped out of my chest.

But the reality is she's not afraid of that. And the reason she's not afraid of that is because we took little steps all the way through her childhood. You know, and there were times where I was barely holding on to her fingers over my head.

So she was up, you know, seven feet pretty much. You know, and for somebody who's one and a half years old, that's a long fall. And like you said, if they fall, they can make them an association.

Like you said, the baby crawled off, fell, hit the ground, green carpet, right? Now they can associate now anything to green money. So money is the, you know, pain, right?

St. Patrick's Day pain, you know, whatever, right? So it's it's really powerful how the brain works. But again, we want to we want to stair step through that process and go in small, test small, implement large, test small.

Once you're safe and you know, then you can up the game a little bit more and test that. Once you're safe, you can up the game a little bit more and test that. Once you're safe, now roll in your funds in a big way.

So is this answering the question, Dan?

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. I appreciate you getting into that. In fact, actually, one of the questions I really wanted to ask you, in addition to this nice segue, is how do you help people gain clarity?

Because you spend a lot of time talking about that. How do you help them gain clarity around the objective, what's realistic, what's not realistic, and then help step people into realizing and actually exceeding those expectations, those goals?

So, again, the first part is you got to get brutally honest. Truthful, excuse me, not brutally honest. You got to improve that.

Truthful in the process. And one of the ways, Russ Whitney taught me something. I don't know if you know who Russ is, but Russ, Tony used to learn from Russ in some capacity.

So Russ told me something, which is if you always have business partners that agree, you don't need business partners.

There you go, yeah.

Right? And I thought it was pretty brilliant all the way through my life. I've picked people who had controversial, you know, contrarian point of views so that I can learn.

And so in this case, to get clarity, we have to play the same thing. You know, I want to achieve X. Do you really want to achieve X?

Right?

Why do you want to achieve X? What is the benefit of achieving X? What is the downside?

What is the upside? We're going to push back and make sure that we understand what clarity really is all about. Because stress, I believe anyway, stress comes from two things.

Number one, not having clear understanding of what we want to achieve. So lack of clarity is the root of stress. The second part of that is not being able to live in ambiguity.

So if we're not clear on where we're going and we're not committed to that, and I guarantee most of the time it's not going to go as planned, then we have to be able to adjust along that path and that's living in ambiguity. We have to be able to keep our eye on the ball, on the goal we want, take one step a day or one step an hour or whatever it is toward that goal, keep our nose pointed in the direction, and understand that there are going to be days where it's going to snow, it's going to have an ice storm, there'll be an earthquake, there'll be COVID-19, whatever we want to call the thing that's going to happen, but we have to keep our nose in that direction. So once we get clear on that, then we then assess what do we have now?

What do we have? We know we want for objectives, but do we have the ability? Do we have the ability to actually achieve this objective?

So we can make a list of objectives, that's fine, but then we want to assess, do we have the ability to actually achieve this goal at this point, or what else do we need in order to achieve it? And the assessment part is really important. You want to assess the processes that are going on within whatever we're trying to do.

We want to assess the people. We want to assess the skill sets. You know, because a lot of times when I go into companies and I help them redo their sales and get sales growth, many times they have people in sales that really don't have the DNA to be in sales, right?

And they're frustrated with those people because, you know, they're really good people people. They can speak to people. They're very good.

Yeah, that's a great inside sales role or a role that, you know, is geared, maybe even customer service that sells. But if they don't have the will to go out and actually draw the business in, and they've got all these fears around there because they were taught, you know, whatever, you know, you're not supposed to interrupt somebody's son, you know, that's rude. And, you know, and then companies like make 100 cold calls a day, and they're trying to serve mom and dad in the same time serve the company.

There's going to be this duality pulling at them. So once we do the assessment, then what we do is we build the growth plan based on the objectives from there. We look at the objectives, we go, are these still the same objectives?

Yes? Okay, great. No?

Okay, let's change this one. And it's okay to change, folks. It's all right.

Because a lot of times those changes actually turn out better. I don't know if that's universal energy, you know, surrounding people or not, but I do know that a lot of times, you know, change is good. And, you know, as long as it's not radical and destructive change.

So once we have all of that and we know the objectives, then we build a growth plan on that. And then we start assigning this growth plan to people who have committed to growing with us. And that's pretty much the path, except for one more thing.

Somebody's got to be accountable to holding people accountable. And that's usually the CEO of the company or the forerunner of the division or something. And they must measure on a regular basis the progress.

They must on a consistent basis, not once a month or once a week, must be coaching their people through and helping them cross those bridges of fear. And they must hold them accountable to what is agreed upon. And then they have to hold themselves accountable, too.

The worst thing that leaders can do is say, oh, well, you do that, but I'm not going to do that even though I promised I was going to do that. Because then people look and go, well, the fearless leader is not doing it, so why do we have to do it? And it starts creating these emotional frames from the past being pulled into the present.

So that's kind of the steps that I bring people through when I work with them. And that's kind of the steps that people can emulate to bring their people through on their own.

Makes so much sense. Thank you. I actually recommend a scorecard for people to put all those in and break them down into small bite-sized chucks.

And I forgot to mention a minute ago, one of the things I try to help brands do, Doug, is build a community outside of traditional retail where they can develop that relationship so they can innovate based upon what people want. Do you want banana? Do you want chocolate?

And then build that product according to what their community wants. So great information. I really appreciate that.

What other parting thoughts do you have or resources would you have or what things have we not talked about that you would like to include in this discussion?

Well, I would challenge anybody in 2021, since we're in the new part of the year, to put six new ways in to get business. Institute, over the next 12 months in your business, or six to 12 months, one or two new ways, one way every month or every other month. And 2021 is about massive prospecting.

A lot of people have been burying their head in the sand and the competition is down at this point. So the people who massively prospect are going to be recognized as top of mind. And again, we have not, this is not our first challenge in life with what's happened in 2020.

I mean, we had 9-11, we had SARS, MERS, AIDS, you know, different things, right? The Gulf War, I wasn't part of that. So, you know, that changed my life around.

And so, again, live in ambiguity, right? But put in the prospecting, the massive prospecting into your business in 2021. And then part of that is also building, like you said, go outside the community, right?

Build an agency, build a base of 1099 salespeople that want to sell for you because they can make money doing it and you get the leverage of having the outside community bring in all kinds of new ideas and new business. So, but I would go back to, you know, massive prospecting. And remember, building an agency program is usually a longer-term play.

So when I'm talking about marketing or prospecting, try shorter-term things, right? And, you know, then you can have one long or two long in the six, right? Because you want some success.

And, you know, the third thing I would tell people is, look at the current assets they already have and see what they can monetize within those assets. In other words, lots of people have past clients, dormant clients, people who are not doing business with one another right at this moment, but they have a familiarity or trust already built in. Go back to those people and start generating new conversations, which will lead to new business.

You'd be surprised, not you, Dan, but others would be surprised if they just focused on this massive prospecting. They'll fare a lot better in 2021 than they ever would have.

Well, I think fear is a gift, personally, and from my perspective, and the idea behind that is that you are given these gifts and if you can overcome that and grow from it, then that gets you in a position where you can rise to even greater challenges. So I could not agree with you more. Thank you.

By the way, do you still have your brother? Just kidding.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He and I still talk. We still have spirited.

He's nine years older than I am, so we still have some spirited because he's like, I'm the big brother, you're the little brother. And I'm like, you know, you're the old brother, I'm the younger brother.

There you go. You show him who's boss? Just kidding.

Well, the fact that sometimes, yeah, that's always good. Yeah. Talking about kids and where these fears are learned from.

But great analogy. I really appreciate it. Any last thoughts you want to offer?

Again, this is great information. And again, I cannot thank you enough for making time and then for having Jacqueline reach out to me.

Oh, you're so welcome. Can I plug my book?

Please do. Yes, I was.

So so is shameless promotion, right?

No, no, no. That's what this is about. The bottom line is I want this to be a value.

And you've got so many great ideas. So please share.

So I wrote a book in 2019 called Win Win Selling. And the subtitle was Unlocking Your Power of Profitability by Resolving Objections. But it's really on and around how do you communicate better.

Because, you know, salespeople, a lot of times they run into challenges. You know, owners who are selling anybody, husband, wife, they run into challenges all the time. A lot of times this is from triggers that people don't even realize.

So I wrote a book all on the psychology and the philosophy of how do these triggers form and how do they form and manifest themselves into objections. And then what are some, I'll call them formulas, not, you know, that people can use, that they can weave in and out and use parts of these things to diffuse the fear, to diffuse the discomfort, to come to a win-win play from one another. So it's called Win-Win Selling, Unlocking Your Power for Profitability by Resolving Objections.

You can get that on Amazon. You can go to winwinsellingbook.com and get it there. We'll do a free shipping and handling.

I mean, sorry, you get the free book, but just pay the shipping and handling. And then if people want to, you know, get a hold of me, they can go to www.businesssuccessfactors.com or send me an email at dougatbusinesssuccessfactors.com. A lot of people like to connect with me on LinkedIn.

That's dougbrown1234. And, you know, if they have some questions or whatever, feel free to pose them. I'll be happy to answer them.

You've got such a wealth of information. Thank you. And more importantly, you're able to contextualize it in a way where people can understand it.

And I think that's one of the biggest challenges. Again, a huge fan of Anthony Robbins, Brian Tracy, you know, Mark Hopkins, all of those big names, you know, Zig Ziglar, etc. And a lot of times, those people, when they're talking to us, say, oh, yeah, this is a piece of cake, but they don't really go through that.

How do you make it personal? How do you understand the basics? How do you, like you said, stair steps?

So thank you for going through that. And again, thank you for your time.

I appreciate that. I really do, Dan. You know, one of the reasons I think that that happens is because people, you know, when they're young, they say to the parents, you know, well, why can't I do this?

And the parent will come back and say, because I said so. And so what ends up happening is it stifles creativity within the child to ask questions like, okay, you know, what can I do to achieve this, right? So that's one of the reasons I do what I do, because I was told that a lot when I was young.

Yep, I'm the parent, you're the child. You know, this is what's expected of you. And here's the role.

And I would always ask the question, but this makes no sense. So how can we get around this, right? And so what I ended up doing is everything that I teach go into, I look at how does it form?

Why does it happen? And then we teach that in addition to the actual practical, tactical play. So it's strategic and tactical.

So I appreciate you recognizing that. And I appreciate you having me on. I really do.

It's been a lot of fun.

Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it. Look forward to our next conversation.

All right, thanks.

I want to thank Doug for coming on today and for sharing his wisdom and his insights. And in addition to that, I love the book. I thoroughly enjoyed it and highly recommend it.

When When Selling. This is a book that I think every professional needs to have. The secret of this book is that it teaches you how to help your prospects get exactly what they want.

So that both of you win. This is something that everyone needs to focus on no matter what industry you're in. You can download the book instantly by going to winwindsellingbook.com.

I'll be certain to put a link to it on the podcast show notes and on the podcast web page. I'll also put a link to Doug's company so you can learn more about him and how he can help you. His company is called Business Success Factors at businesssuccessfactors.com.

Would you like to know the secrets icons like Tony Robbins, Chet Holmes, and Russ Whitney use to build their brands? Today’s special guest served as an independent president of sales and training for companies of Tony Robbins, Chet Holmes, and Russ Whitney. He teaches companies how to accelerate your sales, profits, and growth.

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