WEbinar Notes & Links

Show Transcript

(00:00:00): All right, guys, I have Amos Lee on the stereo behind me. I'm going to go ahead and lower that volume. It is just now 3:00 P.M., and we're going to dive in. Jean Stallings, good to see you. Eddie's here from Maumee, Ohio. This is great. I love that so many of you are here today. You don't know this yet, but you're here at a very interesting time for me in my life. The past year, as it's been for so many people, has been so unexpected. There've been so many things, and yet, within it, there've been all these gifts that have been delivered. So, raise your hand for me in the chat, go ahead and say hello, give me a yes or what's up in the chat, if 2020 has been a surprising and challenging year for you so far. Let's go ahead and see that.

(00:00:50): And here they come. "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, absolutely, it has been." So, can we agree, yes or no, that life can be hard? I'm going to go ahead and say yes. And wouldn't it be great if we had a way, a structure, a system, a process of thinking, that allowed us to face challenges with a greater sense of calm, a greater sense of confidence, a greater sense of certainty, that no matter what happens, we're going to be okay? So, give me a thumbs up, tell me yes, if that sounds like something you'd like to get today. Thank you, Cher, Matthew, Sam, Jean, Mary, Sarah, Jessica, Larry, Randy, Lorraine. The names are going by so fast, I can barely keep up. This is awesome.

(00:01:41): So, that's my commitment to you today, guys. I'm going to share with you some things that I started working on way back in 1997, and these are things that I credit with my ability to transform my life from what it used to be, to what it gets to be. And I don't want to impress anybody, what I want to do is impress upon you, that no matter where you are, no matter where you're joining us from, you have the ability, you actually definitely have the ability to set a goal and to achieve it. I know that to be the case because it's been my personal story. Many of you know me as the founder of Happy Grasshopper, they are our sponsor today. This is not a Happy Grasshopper sales webinar. We're not going to be reviewing any of our products today, we're not going to be asking you to purchase anything. We're not going to be following you with a special offer or a countdown campaign.

(00:02:36): I am going to mention Happy Grasshopper right now, and this will be the last time that you hear of it throughout this webinar today. I love Happy Grasshopper, I'm so proud of what I've been able to build. I love the people I get to work with. And most importantly, I love the people that we get to serve. So, if you're a sales professional in any capacity in any industry, we can absolutely help you do a better job of creating opportunity among the people who already know you, your past clients in your sphere, we can absolutely do a better job of helping you convert the leads that you're generating. And if you run a sales organization or a real estate brokerage, we can help you recruit and retain the very best talent for that organization. So, that's it. That's all the Happy Grasshopper you're getting today.

(00:03:24): If you want more, just shoot me an email, [email protected], or say something in the chat here now that you want me to follow up with you and I will do that. Now, we're going to dive in to the topic of the day, which, of course, is the Martial Art of Achievement. So, gosh, can we ask one more question here? I'd like to know, how many of you have practiced martial arts, have actually studied it in your life? If you've done that, give me a yes in the chat right now please. Okay, Matthew Dunn says yes, Betty Jean says no. Jim Lee has studied karate, Mark Huff Daley, "Yes." James, "No." Stephen Pal, "Yes." Pam Vaughn, "Yes." Judo, I see some nos, I see some nos, I see some yeses. So, let's talk about what this is today.

(00:04:17): This is not a class that's going to teach you to subdue an attacker. This is not a class that's going to teach you the science of striking an opponent effectively to achieve a goal. This is not a class that's about beating anyone up. It's a class about reflecting inward. It's about doing the work internally, that is part of the process of becoming an expert in martial arts, and applying that to your own ability to achieve what you set out to. Think about a martial artist who's been highly trained, who finds themselves in a situation where they have to defend themselves. Let's imagine that scenario right now. Let's imagine that that martial artist is walking through an alley at night, and someone approaches from behind to physically threaten them. Maybe they want to mug them and take their wallet or purse.

(00:05:11): Do we think that martial artist is terrified? They're probably not, right? They're probably going to avoid the situation. Martial artists are trained to do that. They don't want to find themselves in combat. They don't want to have to defend themselves. And yet, if they need to, they're very capable of being able to do that. So, what it is that we're going to talk about today is that attacker that lives between our ears. We're going to talk about defeating that inner voice that comes out of nowhere and prevents us from achieving what it is we set out to achieve. And I am going to review with you exactly how I've followed this process in my own life, and how it's taken me from being a brand new father who was terrified that he was going to get fired. I had my first ever corporate sales job and I was horrible at it. I was really, really bad.

(00:06:07): My boss pulled me into her office and said, "We like you, but you can't stay if you don't get your numbers up." I really felt the pressure. I had a brand new baby at home, I had no certainty that I would be capable of succeeding. And all these years later, to be able to look back and to know that I've started four multimillion dollar companies. I started seven companies in total, three of them were absolute dumpster fires. I've earned tens of millions of dollars in my career. And better, and more importantly, I've helped thousands and thousands of people achieve their own goals. So, what I'm teaching you today is my personal passion project. And what I'd like to do is start by sharing something that's been really important to this whole process.

(00:06:56): I have a bunch of these composition books that have been hanging around forever. I am a lifelong journaler. I'm going to reach over here on the bookshelf next to me, these are all Moleskins that I've completed. Every single page in here is filled with notes. Every single page in there has content in it, that's been written by me for the sole purpose of helping me break through the barriers that life has set for me. So, the place that life started to change for me was when the pressure got so much that I had to really make a change. So, I'm going to tell you a quick story. The year was 1997, I was employed at a company called GTE Directories. I sold Yellow Pages ads. Give me a yes in the chat if you can even remember the Yellow Pages. Who are the people with the gray hair?

(00:07:57): It's fun to ask kids what dial tone is, and they freak out. And here, I was selling these Yellow Pages ads. So, every day, my job was to talk to business owners and convince them that they needed to put their hard-earned dollars into advertising in the phone book. So, placing these ads wasn't always easy, it was a year-long commitment. If there was an error in the phone book, that error stayed there for a whole year. We had not just a responsibility to bring in new revenue, but we also had to save revenue from people who wanted to cancel. I started this job with great expectations, perhaps you can relate to that in your own career, only to find that the reality was something different. And I wasn't prepared for that reality. I wasn't prepared for the amount of rejection that I was receiving in that sales role.

(00:08:54): Even though at the time, the Yellow Pages were a fantastic advertising vehicle, I personally was not successful getting things sold, until I reached a point where my boss had to pull me aside and threatened my position. At that point, a switch went off in my brain and I realized that this wasn't about wanting to sell, it was about having to sell in order to prevent catastrophe from happening to me and to my family. So, two key things took place at this time. The first was that my boss said, "Tony Robbins is coming to town, Dan. If you don't go to Tony Robbins, you can't work here." And I said, "Well, how much is it?" She said, "$400 for a one-day program." And I couldn't afford it. I didn't have $400 I could scratch together to go to this.

(00:09:46): And so, I begged her to let me keep my job, and she said she would pay for me to go to Tony Robbins, and if I failed, I would owe her the $400. So, I went to that first event, and I did not have a great attitude. Can you guys give me a yes, by the way, if you've been to a Tony Robbins event? I want to see that in the chat as well. So, give me a yes, if you've been to Tony Robbins. Okay, I see a handful of yeses, here they come, a bunch more coming through. So, maybe like me, your impression of this man was not positive, the first time you were exposed to him. I knew him as the late night infomercial guy, selling like snake oil, you can be anything you want to be stuff.

(00:10:34): I just didn't buy it at all, I felt like I was getting $400 stolen from my pocket, to go and sit at this event. And when I got there, it got worse, because what's everyone doing? They're jumping up and down, all day long, people are jumping up and down. The guy in front of me is like, "Hi, I'm Mike, what do you do?" And, "I sell life insurance. And what are you?" And blah, blah. And, oh, it just felt like, "Ew, what are these people doing?" I had such a huge chip on my shoulder, that I just wasn't receptive. And so, like 9:00 A.M., 10:00 A.M., 11:00 A.M., it's starting to make sense. Parts of it are starting to make sense to me.

(00:11:14): I would say, "Oh, that sounds about right. Hmm. Okay, people move towards things they want, and away from things that are painful." These things added up, it started to make sense to me. And by the end of the day, I was one of these guys jumping up and down with everyone else. It really made an impact. And then I came home and I told my wife about the experience, and she had the same negative opinion I had had, but she didn't have the benefit of being there. So, sometimes in life, when we encounter an opportunity for personal growth, the people who are around us in our lives aren't ready for that. And this was my first experience with that. So, the Tony Robbins' training wore off pretty quickly. I came back with a really gung-ho attitude, and within a few weeks, my performance was dwindling again.

(00:12:09): And I'll never forget, one of my accounts that I had to go and sell was a Jeet Kune Do school, Jeet Kune Do. I had never heard of Jeet Kune Do, I had no idea what this was. And I walk in, and there's this super nice guy there who's really relaxed. He welcomes me, I explain I'm there about the Yellow Pages. She goes, "Oh, yes, I've been wanting to have a Yellow Pages ad. This is perfect that you're here." We have this great conversation, and I end up enrolling in Jeet Kune Do. Wow. So, all of a sudden, I'm now studying martial arts officially for the first time in my life. And for those of you who may not know, Jeet Kune Do was Bruce Lee's philosophy of martial arts. It means way of the intercepting fist. Now, Bruce Lee is perhaps the most famous martial artist of all time.

(00:13:01): I think, societally, most of the world is fascinated with martial arts. Whether we practice it or we don't, it's certainly part of our culture. The Netflix hit just recently, it was Cobra Kai, right? We're seeing the Karate Kid cast from the '80s get recycled into this new show. And tons and tons of people are watching it and talking about it. So, martial arts has certainly been in the zeitgeists of the culture I live within, throughout my entire life. And I was thinking it was one thing, and then discovering it was something else. So, this is where I'm going to pull out the first of these notebooks and share it with you. These are notes that I started to take as I was taking this class for the first time. Actually not the right page, let me get the right page here.

(00:13:57): These are the notes from that first class in 1997. And the things that you see there at the top of the screen, the first tenet of Jeet Kune Do is no way as way. And that's where we're going to start today, right at the beginning, with the very first thing I wrote on the page, no way as way. And it sounds so simple. And what it really means is that we never want to become so rigid in our actions, or in our thinking, that we believe there's only one way to do something. So, if we think of Bruce Lee's personal story, he grew up studying a martial art called Wing Chun. And prior to Bruce Lee, martial arts were practiced almost as a religion. It wasn't shared. You wouldn't take a piece of Wing Chun and combine it with Taekwondo, or Savate, or Muay Thai. But Bruce Lee did that, and he set a trend.

(00:14:56): And part of why he became so successful as a martial artist, as a movie producer, as an actor, was because he had a talent for assimilation. Many times throughout history, we see examples of genius, where it's not so much the inventor of something, but the repurposing of something. Think of Jonas Salk with penicillin. He didn't set out to discover an antibiotic, but he happened to notice that it had antibiotic properties that could be used in medicine. Well, here's Bruce Lee studying Wing Chun, and he gets exposed to different martial arts, and he sees how those other motions could be effective for him in his practice. And so, he pulls them in, he assimilated them into Jeet Kune Do. So, that first tenant, no way as way, is the place that we have to start together today.

(00:15:53): We have to agree to have the playability of our thinking, the flexibility of our thinking, to be willing to try, and to add, and to subtract, and to take away and to test and experiment, and never get so married to the idea that there's just one way of doing something, that we can't remain open to a more efficient possibility. This is natural to all of us as children. It says, we grow and mature that we forget it. As a parent, I know, I've seen my kids go through different stages of growth. There's a point in time where they could care less about what they look like, they could care less what people think of them. They're completely pure and innocent from being influenced by that, they're just interested in achieving something.

(00:16:42): If we put the cookies on the top shelf, they don't care if they have to stack a stool on top of a couch, on top of an oven, they will do whatever they need to do to get up there to get the cookies. That's their goal, that's what they're going to achieve. It's later in life that we've become so concerned with what other people think about us, what our perceptions are among others, that we restrict our own behavior. We police ourselves. So, the first tenet of Jeet Kune Do, no way as way, is designed to encourage us to adopt different and new ways of thinking, so that we can achieve our goals more effectively. So, if that makes sense, give me a yes in the chat. I want to see it. Boom, I see some yeses rolling in. This is awesome. Okay.

(00:17:35): This is designed to be a very simple introduction to a very deep topic. There are people who study martial arts throughout their entire lives. And what I'm doing is taking some little pieces of it that you can apply immediately to your business, to your sales career, to your goals. And as you apply these, you're going to see them take root. Next place that we're going to go is into this other notebook, where you'll see that I've written down some goals. "Dan and Kenley Stewart, long-term goals, one to five years," there's three bullet points there, and then there're some short-term goals. Now, this is the portion of the page I want you to pay attention to, "Open business, JKD seminar, real estate investing." I wrote this down in 1997. I've accomplished everything on this list, except this one in the middle.

(00:18:33): You are the very first audience that I'm sharing this with, and I really feel privileged that you're here. So, there is no sales pitch today, there's no coaching, there's no enrollment, there's no coursework to buy, I'm simply asking you for your feedback. So, at the end of the session today, I'd very much appreciate if you'd take a few minutes and share with me what you think the value of what you learned today was, and how you see that it could impact your life. By the way, this session is being recorded. I'm mentioning this now because I'm seeing in the chat, we have a lot of people who are trying to attend that can't get in right now. Unfortunately, our Zoom account is already filled.

(00:19:17): Let's move on guys. My personal story is one where I had this immense period of stress, I found some thinking patterns that I could assimilate from different areas of my life that I credit with allowing me to go on and achieve the things that I've achieved. Now, I believe that if I've been able to achieve this, everyone can achieve it. There's absolutely nothing that I've accomplished that's beyond your own capabilities. I'm convinced of that. All you have to do is adopt these tenets, and then consider it carefully over time. So, what you really need to apply this effectively is a framework. So, I want to go ahead and provide a framework for you that's going to be useful. And the first part of that framework has to do with understanding the tenets here.

(00:20:09): There are some practices that you must adopt and consistently adhere to over time for this to work for you. The first one, I don't think is going to be a surprise to you, I'm going to ask you to journal. I don't care if you journal in a composition notebook, if you buy some Moleskins, or if you pick up my favorite purchase of 2019, a reMarkable. I have thousands of pages of notes here in my reMarkable, including the notes for this session today. So, every single day, you should adopt the habit of journaling. And the reason that I'm recommending you do this is very much grounded in the martial arts. There's a certain amount of truth that gets revealed in the practice of martial arts. For example, if I were to step into a combat situation with someone, the truth is, I will either win, or I will lose. Right?

(00:21:08): It's such a simple concept, and yet, so much of our lives, we struggle to know what we can believe in, and what we can't. We're told one thing, and then later, we find out that truth is something different. So, I've always appreciated the beauty and the simplicity of that statement. In combat, you either win, or you lose. If you were prepared and you're victorious, the truth of that preparation is evident. It shows up. And the way that we prepare is through journaling. So, this practice of journaling is very deliberate. It's not just moving the pen along the page for the purpose of saying you journaled that day, it's asking and answering very specific questions. So, I want you to start this practice with me today, and I want you to begin literally right now. So, I'll give you a moment to grab something to take notes with, if you don't already have it. I'll give you a moment to do that.

(00:22:15): I love it. Some people are ready. "I'm ready, bring it." Thank you, Cher. And, Eddie, you're absolutely right, consistency is the key to everything. Okay. So, in this journal, things that you're going to write will be entries like this one, look at that on my GTE letterhead, back from, I think that says July 28th, 1997. I'll read this to you. "This is being written as a midyear checkup to assure progress towards goals is being maintained. My goal of purchasing a home has been met, albeit requires a significant amount of work. I've also made significant strides towards my income goal of $67,000, to date, having earned $33,000. I need to get back on my targeted item compensation, and also need to maintain my quantum leap results.

(00:23:15): "An area that I've not succeeded in is my commitment to writing. It seems that I consistently find a way to do something else. First, the home shopping, then the move, now, the rehabilitation. I must force myself to do this. I think about it a great deal, and I truly feel that I'm meant to write. There's nothing to it but to do it. Kenley is pregnant and we're expecting a baby in February. Our lives are progressing wonderfully. Home, health, and work, are all doing just fine." Okay. I mean, this is so much fun for me, guys. This is a treasure to me, to see these things that the younger me wrote. I'm 50 years old now, I wrote this when I was 27. My son, Ben, the baby that we mention here at the end of the section, well, he's 22 years old and he works with me here at Happy Grasshopper.

(00:24:07): It's such a gift, it's such a reward to look back and see what I was thinking at these different stages along the journey. Eddie, I see your question here. He's asking, "When you journal, is it always regarding the process towards your goals?" No, absolutely not. This is just a good example. Like just here in these sheets, there are so many. Like here's a quantum leap update, here's another update. I talk about how I'm writing this day, and it feels really great to do it. I do update what my sales goals were there. 250% to budget for the pay period. We see all sorts of different things that are covered here. And where journaling has really served me, has been in... This is a martial art's concept, so, I want to make sure to slow down enough to teach this because it's really, really important.

(00:25:03): If I were to kick, it's either a kick or it's not a kick. There's no such thing as a half a kick. There's no such thing as a half a punch. It's either a complete thought, or it's an incomplete thought. And one of the big problems with anyone reaching to achieve something important is that we have trouble completing our thoughts. If there's an area in your life where you're suffering right now, maybe your heart is broken, maybe you're uncertain about the security or safety of your family, maybe you're so incredibly stressed out about what the rest of the year might hold, whatever it is, the reason you're suffering from it is because you haven't completed your thinking on the topic.

(00:25:52): So, your journal is a place where you get to complete your thoughts. You get to examine exactly what the truth is of why you're feeling the way that you feel. And the result is that you grow over time as a human being, when you invest in that regular practice. Now, I can't say this without confessing something to you, I do not do this every single day. So, don't beat yourself up if you don't write something down tomorrow. Just engage in the practice of it consistently over time, and it will pay dividends for you. Some of the first things that I wrote, we'll go back to this journal here, were goals. Because I was at a place in my life where I couldn't imagine, I mean, my goal was to earn $67,000 that year, and that was more money than I ever thought I'd earn in my life.

(00:26:47): I mean, it was absolutely more money than I thought I'd ever earn. And one of the things that I picked up from Tony Robbins was to write down goals that are so big, that they're scary. Like, "Become multi-millionaires. Create an abundance of health. Be the world's best parents." Some of these things were really difficult for me to imagine. Becoming a multimillionaire, I had no idea how to make that happen. Absolutely no clue. My college degree is in theater, all right? It's not like I have an MBA from Harvard or wherever you go to get one of those. I didn't come from a background where I expected to be wealthy. I wasn't raised around wealthy people, I didn't know how to create it. I was afraid I might not be able to keep it if I did create it. There were all sorts of fear tied up in the achievement of those goals, and I had to defeat this inner combatant, before I could really make progress towards the external goal.

(00:27:53): And journaling is the place that you get to do that. That's where you get to enter the ring with your own thinking, and you get to get things in alignment so you can take your daily actions and make them in alignment with the achievement of your longterm goals. The way that we do that is to ask better questions of ourselves. This is something that Tony Robbins teaches very effectively. Instead of waking up and saying, "Oh, what do I have to do today?" You can change that perspective immediately. You can wake up and say, "Hey, what do I get to do today?" It's a small language change, but it makes a big difference in our internal experience of the things that we do each and every day.

(00:28:33): Some of my favorite ways to even plus those types of questions, would be to say, "How can I have so much fun making a huge impact, while achieving my goal today?" This leads me to something I also believe in very strongly, which is to know your outcome. Now, those of you who were here 20 minutes before 3:00, when I first turned on the session, we had a lot of people who were already here. I asked you, very purposefully, what you were here for. Because if you don't know, the chances of you getting it are greatly diminished. Back to martial arts. We avoid combat whenever possible. It's a last resort to actually have to use the skills that have been acquired. And yet, when those skills are required, the goal is to finish the fight as quickly as possible. It's about an economy of motion. It's about a straight effectiveness to the achievement of the goal in the smallest timeframe possible.

(00:29:36): And that comes from a discipline of thinking about things, of practicing things over and over and over over time. So, today, the prescription that I'm writing for you includes journaling as the very first part. That's absolutely important. And as you're in that practice of journaling, I want you to set consistent goals for yourself. A daily goal is just fine. "Today, my goal is to meet three new people and make them smile. Today, my goal is to tell five people in my life that I sincerely appreciate them." That's a such a simple goal, you can write that down in just a moment. And it's so important to practice it because, let's use that last one as an example. If your goal is to tell five people who are in your life that you appreciate them, you are going to build such a reserve of power in the experience of doing that. Because each of those people is going to respond to you so positively. And then you'll have the confidence where you can apply that to a stranger.

(00:30:41): I love that environment where you walk into a place where someone is stuck in their pattern, maybe they're the host at a restaurant, maybe they're the customer service person you're speaking with on the phone, if you can break through that pattern and have a real interaction with them, you're making their day, you're giving them something as so much value, and in response, you're giving to yourself because you're teaching yourself that you have the power to do those things. That's what gives you the strength and the certainty that no matter what happens, that you'll be able to overcome it. It's those tiny daily deposits that I'm going to ask you to make. The third part of these daily activities that I'm going to ask you to engage in, would be to practice every single day.

(00:31:34): And by practice, I'm assuming that everyone on this call is in sales. Probably every single one of us is a business owner or works in some kind of a sales capacity, so, there are some things that we need to practice every single day without fail. We have got to become masters of our own energy. That requires that we move our bodies every single day. We need to have some level of exercise that we're committed to every single day. If it's walking around the neighborhood, great. If it's running a marathon, great. Whatever level of fitness you happen to be at, it's important to make sure that you're moving your body and using your big muscles every single day. In your sales career, it's really important that you start every day by warming up your voice and your face. You want to make sure that you're able to communicate effectively without slurring your words, without having to wake up your tongue in your face.

(00:32:31): You want to be able to fluently express yourself without having to have those squeaks and those cracks in your voice. So, a few minutes of warming those things up go a long way. And again, trying to practice what we preach here. Every morning at 8:30 A.M., myself and our sales team at Happy Grasshopper, we get together, we warm up, and we do some role-plays. Those first role-plays in a day are absolutely critical, because it lets us warm up on each other, instead of having a warmup on that potential client who could be our largest revenue earner for the year. I mean, how do we know that the very first person we're going to talk to you that day won't be the best opportunity we've ever had? We don't want to show up to that opportunity at less than our best, that's why we practice every single day. So important to do that.

(00:33:24): So, daily warmup should include moving our bodies, warming up our face, getting our vocal chords warmed up, working on our breathing, and then we need to turn internally. So, we've got our body warmed up, now we need to make sure that our minds are warmed up as well. One of the things that you would see on these sheets and several different areas, is something I've had in front of me since 1997. I'll find a page here that has it. Here we go. This is where it started, focus, relax, calming, confidence. As a new sales rep, I don't mind confessing to you that I was terrified. The idea of picking up the phone and calling someone made me tremble. It was a horrendous experience for me. Them rejecting me and telling me no, was terrifying.

(00:34:21): I hated the idea that they might not want me to call. If they would be rude or hang up, it'd hurt. Like, "Ah," that was the thing. And as a consequence, I tended to talk very quickly. I brought way too much energy to the call. So, the first thing that I had to focus on was calming myself internally. So, today, the mantra has been refined, it's been in front of me on every sales call I've been on since 1997, and it goes like this, it's calm, confident, grounded, strong, happy. And I'll walk you through. So, as I start to go through this process of calming my mind, it's a focusing exercise, calm is the first word, very purposefully.

(00:35:10): I need to calm myself, I need to show up in a calm way, because when I'm calm, it expresses confidence. It allows the people who are hearing me to feel confident in me because I'm calm. So, calm leads right into confidence, confidence leads right into being grounded. So, it's easy sometimes to get put off guard or put on the defensive in a sales call, you're uncertain about something, ah. All those things can happen. And I like to feel the weight of my body pressing into the ground. I like to feel grounded. So, I'm calm, I'm confident, I'm grounded. And when I have that feeling of being grounded, I'm reconnected to my own strength. I push me, "Go ahead. I can take a hit. I've got this." Because I'm calm, I'm confident, I'm grounded, and I'm strong.

(00:36:09): And then the last word is happy. Because when I do all of those things, I've done what's necessary to expect to be happy. I can deliver happiness to other people. I can experience happiness personally because I'm not suffering, because I've taken the time to get my mind right for every single sales call that I'm on. So, if you take nothing else from this, if a week from now, you're thinking, "Am I calm? Am I confident? And am I grounded? I'm strong and I'm happy," I promise you that you'll enjoy your life more, you'll have better outcomes with every client that you serve. Let's go a little deeper, guys. We've talked about the framework of your daily habits. I'm going to review that with you.

(00:36:55): First, it's daily journaling. Second, it's setting your goals. Third, it's practicing every day. And part of that daily practices, moving your body, getting your blood pumping, warming up your face, warming up your vocal cords, getting your breath pumping. That's all important. And then we're going to focus our minds, so that daily discipline will pay massive dividends for you. I promise. And now it's time to move into the rest of the tenets that were taught by Bruce Lee. The first one is, no way as way. No way as way. We've talked about this one already. Second is, no limitation as limitation. So, first, we're saying, "You know what? I'm not going to pigeonhole myself in only one way of doing something." And second, "Why would I apply limitation? The world has enough limitations. I'm not going to accept any limitation as my limitation."

(00:37:56): I'll go back and tell you a little GTE story. At the beginning of my story, I was an inside sales rep, I worked on the telephone, and I was about to be fired. And over time, my numbers came up and up and up. And now, the people who ran the outside sales division, they took an interest in me, and I got promoted to premise sales. So, now, I was selling more expensive advertising to a different level of clientele. And my first pay period, when I went from inside sales to outside sales, I'll never forget because I was over 600% above quota. And that really caught a lot of people's attention. So, over the next two and a half years, while I enjoyed that job, I won vacations. I got to go to Rome, I got to go to Banff, Canada. I had all this wonderful experience while I worked there.

(00:38:49): The very best part was getting to work with so many entrepreneurs every single day. It was really infectious for me. So, like Bruce Lee was looking at these different things that could be effective, I looked into each of the businesses of the clients that I served, and I thought, "Hmm, which of these is a good fit for me? Should I go to college? Should I get a law degree? Should I become an accountant? Hmm." There were things about those careers I liked, and there were things that were drawbacks. Ultimately, I went into the contracting business. I built multiple construction companies. Then we built the technology that was needed to power those companies. That became my first CRM company. Love technology, have been involved with computers since the 1980s, and that's essentially where Happy Grasshopper comes from, it's that entire arc, that entire journey. So, no limitation as limitation is the second.

(00:39:48): The third and the fourth are, absorb what is useful, and discard what is not. Absorb what is useful, discard what is not. Third and fourth. Fifth is, add what is specifically your own. And then the last one that I'll talk about today is to discover the cause of your ignorance. I want you to consider something. You can study something for a long time and not understand it. The moment of understanding though, is rapid. It's incredibly rapid. You go from not knowing, in one moment, to knowing, the very next moment. So, the way that you can increase your ability to serve other people most efficiently is by studying the cause of your ignorance. If you simply ask yourself, "What is it specifically that I don't understand about something?" You'll get to the heart of it. You'll get there much more quickly.

(00:40:45): So, those are the things that are really critical for me to share with you from Bruce Lee's teaching. Again, let's review. We're going to journal, we're going to move our bodies, we're going to warm up our face, our breath, our voice, and our minds, then we're going to continue to learn. We're going to continue to invest some time thinking about how these philosophies can be applied in different ways. So, those tenets that I've reviewed are very important. And now, we're going to transition into some direct martial arts conversation. So, again, raise your hand for me if you practice martial arts today. If you're currently practicing martial arts, go ahead and let me know.

(00:41:34): Oh, and Stephanie, I see that you're also a fellow theater grad. "I haven't been in a play in a long time, but I do a lot of public speaking." I love that. Okay. And Pat, you're asking for me to repeat the fifth tenent. So, let me just run through them all again real quickly. First one is, no way as way. Second is, no limitation as limitation. Third is, absorb what is useful. Fourth is, discard what is not. Fifth is, add what is specifically your own. And then six is, discover the cause of your ignorance. Hope that helps.

(00:42:16): All right. I don't see people raising their hand saying that they're practicing martial arts. So, let me go ahead and teach something. There's a concept called range of combat. Let's consider that all of you are observing me currently through Zoom. So, even if I really wanted to, there's no punch, there's no kick, there's no gouge or grapple, there's nothing I could do to physically cause you any harm through Zoom. All I have is the ability to use my words, my mind, my body language, to influence you. That's it. I don't have a magic button here where I can launch a missile at you.

(00:42:58): If we're in combat, those things would be handy, but we're not in combat today, we're just talking about this concept of range of combat, and we're going to transform it now into the range of effectiveness. So, let's consider your goal and all the things that you have to achieve your goal. We'll assume that goal in this case is to win the sale. We'll set that simple. So, we've got a person, and we have another person. One person is selling something, the other is potentially buying something. So, at the outer rings, we have marketing. Marketing's job is to pull those people closer together. We want to pull the prospect closer to us.

(00:43:44): At some point, the prospect jumps in a funnel. They register for something, they become a lead. Now we're moving a little closer. There's email that's being exchanged, there's phone calls that are being exchanged, there's text messaging that's being exchanged. We're pulling them closer and closer and closer, until finally we have a phone call, we have a one-to-one direct conversation. That's where we're most effective. So, range of effectiveness, the closer we can pull people to us, the greater influence we have over them, the greater opportunity that we'll have to achieve our goals.

(00:44:20): Now, I cannot stress this enough, this is really critical. I opened this session by saying, this is not about beating people up. So much of the language in sales today is about dominance. "We're out there killing it. We're hunting, we're killing, we're eating." It's the language of dominance and violence in sales. And I understand that there's a certain cohort that really thinks that's the way to go. I'm going to plant my flag somewhere else and say that, if we say our goal is to win through service, we're really in a much better perspective. Because I might lose the sale, but if I build a relationship, have I really lost?

(00:45:07): So, I would encourage each of you to set a different goal for your sales opportunities. Make your first goal, to build a great quality relationship with them, and you'll have a much better opportunity to sell to them multiple times in the future. Earlier today, I did a What To Say Now episode, and we talked about some of the different techniques that you can use as you're pulling people from these outer rings closer, so that you can be more effective with them in the selling environment. So, the very first thing that we're going to talk about is a ABC. We're going to start with the basics. ABC stands for attack by combination.

(00:45:46): So, we don't want to just send marketing messages, we want to send marketing and personal messages. We don't want to send simply email, we need to send email, texts, make phone calls, make voicemail drops, send handwritten cards. There's lots of ways that we can impact and influence people. So, again, we don't want to embrace one way as the only way, and we want to have some set moves that we can just deploy on a moment's notice. A few years ago, Gary V. wrote a book called Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. Did I get that right? I think I did. It's very important to understand that that is a classic martial arts attack by combination.

(00:46:29): You want to have a pattern of movement so regimented, so automatic that you don't have to think about it when you have an opportunity. So, I'm going to teach you one right now. Let's imagine we're meeting someone new for the first time. We want to establish rapport and conversation. We want to ask them if it'd be okay to keep in touch with them, we want to enter their information into a system, whether it's ours or someone else's, and then we want to communicate with them over time, right? That is a good definition of attack by combination. So, the different pieces of that breakdown, very simply, we're building rapport, we're asking permission, we're entering them in a system, and then we're sending communications.

(00:47:13): That is a marketing rhythm that should just be trained, it should be innate in every sales organization. When we meet people, we have to have a plan to continue to communicate with those people over time. If you're at a trade show, you've spent thousands and thousands of dollars to be at that trade show, all those people that you meet, there's no value there if you're not building an ongoing relationship and having ongoing communications with them. So, today, for example, many of the people that I invited to this event are people that I met on the road initially, out speaking and teaching and running different events.

(00:47:52): So, the attack by combination is something that's going to be very, very useful for you, once you figure out a few of those set patterns. Another one would be lead response. Let's imagine that you're generating a lead somewhere out either, maybe it's your website, maybe it's a third party's website, that lead can be automatically captured, and it should trigger a series of communication that goes out automatically. That's another example of attack by combination. It's a simple pattern of behavior that's expected, that's trained, that's easy to deploy, and essentially, it should be automatic.

(00:48:30): Back to the martial artist in the alley getting approached from behind, they don't have to think about what their action is, they've trained on that action, such that it just happens. And that brings me to the final concept I'm going to share today from the martial arts. This is a Chinese word, wu-hsin, it translates as no-mindedness. Randy Lemus mentioned this earlier, he talked about Tampa Bay, because we have Tom Brady now. Well, any quarterback in the NFL, any professional athlete performing at a high level, enters these states of no-mindedness repeatedly throughout the course of the game.

(00:49:16): Tom Brady knows the play that he wants to run, but he doesn't know what the other team is going to do. Right? So, the ball snapped into his hands, he steps back and he's observing, and he's reacting. He's not thinking about left foot, right foot, left foot throw. He doesn't need to have that thought, he can just act physically because he's practiced to a point where he can rely on his biology, instead of on his thinking. So, anyone who's ever had an experience where you're driving down the road and something jumps out and you just react, if you've ever had that experience where you narrowly avoided a car accident that seemed for sure it was going to come for you, you've experienced no-mindedness.

(00:50:03): And the reason I want to close with no-mindedness is because it's proof positive once you've experienced it, that you're capable of things that are beyond your own understanding. They are. Like, somebody will throw you something and you'll just catch it. I remember an experience where my son, Ben, was in his high chair. He put his feet against the table and he kicked backwards, and somehow, I got around the table quick enough to catch his head just inches above the floor. I wasn't thinking about how to do that, I was just reacting. There are moments in our life that proved to us that we're capable of achieving things far beyond our own expectation.

(00:50:45): The problem we have is that our thinking gets in the way. That's why it's so critical to absorb that practice of daily journaling, because it will help you get your mind right to where you not only are surprised by those moments, but you come to expect them. You walk with the confidence of knowing that you can create them when you need to. So, I really hope that I've made some impact for you today. If you've enjoyed this session, I would love for you to go ahead and give me a yes in the chat. If you would like more of this, tell me, "Yes, I want more." I'd be happy to hold other sessions where we can go deeper on sections here.

(00:51:27): Roger Holloway, thank you. Love it. Betty Jean, thank you. Cher, awesome. Love it. Eddie Comps. Thank you so much, guys. This means so much to me that you're reacting this way. This is fantastic. Thank you so much. I will do what you're asking, I will put together more. I will find a way to help you more with this. And it is 3:52 right now. This session is scheduled for an hour. I wanted to preserve some time here at the end to make sure we can answer questions. I really do want to have some engagement here. I love some of the comments here. Roger Shields, he says, "Great job. 'Be like water.'" That's a famous quote about the martial arts.

(00:52:12): And I love it too. It's something along the lines of, when it's time for reflection, be a deep pool. When it's time for action, be a torrent. When it's time for reflection, be a deep pool. I love it. Thank you, Steve. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. All right, all right. I will keep working on this, guys. I'll be happy to deliver more to fit any form, Roger, you're absolutely right. Let's see. Tracy Dale, yes, this has been recorded, there will be a replay. We will send that out for you. I see a question about, do I offer coaching? No, I do not. I have a whole staff of amazing people that work at Happy Grasshopper, but we're not sales coaches, we're not real estate coaches.

(00:52:57): If we're coaches at all, the thing we'd coach you on is about how to communicate better with your database. Roger Holloway, I love the question. He says, "Curious how you made tens of millions." I'll be happy to tell you, Roger. I've started seven companies in my career. Four of them have gone on to provide multiple millions of dollars in revenue per year. Two of them were geo-technical contracting companies. You see the Inc. 500 awards on the wall behind me, that was my company, Geological. We spent four consecutive years on the Inc. 500. I've been very fortunate. I've made investments that have paid off, I've invested in people, that has paid off. I think, more than anything, if there's one thing that's been responsible for generating tens of millions of dollars is by providing hundreds of millions dollars of value.

(00:53:53): So, if you want to get rich, the pathway is pretty easy. This goes for everybody, not just Roger, provide more value than you ask for in compensation, and it's pretty easy to get rich. Took me a long time to learn that. I was so focused on the monetary outcome, instead of providing the value. Greg Perkins, I love it, "Tell me about the reMarkable tablet." They're now on gen two, I have a gen one. It's really simple, it feels like you're writing on paper on the surface here. It doesn't feel like it's a tablet or a regular screen. It's not that glossy surface like you've got an iPad. It digitizes whatever I write and saves it to the cloud, which is awesome. I can sync it with my CRM.

(00:54:43): There's all sorts of great ways to use reMarkable. I love it. Michelle, you're asking to review the four items in the pattern of attack by combination, excuse me. There were two actual examples that I used there. The first one will be as you're just meeting someone. So, first thing you're doing whenever you're meeting a new person, I hope, is building rapport. Now, I've recorded a whole previous webinar on just the concept of building rapport, there's lots of strategies there, but the idea when we're building rapport is we're giving people a reason to like us. That's essentially it.

(00:55:23): And one of the most efficient ways to do that is to show them that we like them. Again, not rocket science, it's relatively simple. So, we start by building rapport, then we move into asking permission. That's the second step. And you just say something like, "I've really enjoyed this chat. Would it be all right if I kept in touch with you?" Really hard to say no to that. So, you take down their information, third step, you enter them in the system, fourth step, the system keeps in contact for you with that contact. So, those are your four steps.

(00:55:59): Roger Holloway asking what my next big project is. Well, that's a good question. I feel like Happy Grasshopper, we're 10 years old now, we've just barely scratched the surface of what's possible. The first several years that Happy Grasshopper was in existence, I either owned outright or was involved in three other companies. And so, I confess to you that Happy Grasshopper did not get the level of attention that I can provide it today in those first few years. And I really do have some big ambitions about what we can do. So, more to come on that for sure. The Chinese term I used is wu-hsin. I believe it's spelled W-U hyphen H-S-I-N.

(00:56:48): And I don't speak Chinese, so, please, if someone knows the correct pronunciation, feel free to correct me. And the translation means no-mindedness. It's that state of mind where our bodies act without our conscious thought. And oftentimes, they perform in ways that are beyond what our own expectations are for our capacity to do things. Happy to continue to answer questions. Let's see here, I'm going to scroll back, as there were quite a few that came in at once. Michelle, that is so kind. Wow. I hesitate to read it. It's so kind. "Best webinar I've attended all year." Thank you so much. Wow. That makes me feel great.

(00:57:33): I will definitely keep my commitment to you to provide more content here. I think first thought for me would be that we need to have some kind of accountability structure. So, if you guys are open to it, if you think it'd be helpful, we could do something like a daily Zoom, where we just all have our calendars on, we can journal together for a little while. We could do that. One idea that comes to mind. I'm certainly willing to teach some of these concepts in more detail. I see a few people like that idea. I have a friend/client in Charleston, South Carolina, named Jan Kuha.

(00:58:16): And I was just chatting with Jan the other day, and we're all feeling a little more isolated than we used to. I've had an office for 20 years. I'm used to having people all around, and I don't, and it's lonely. I miss you, guys. I miss being elbow to elbow. So, one practice that I've started would be Zoom Office Hours. That's another thing we can do, we can open Zoom Office Hours and just have a conversation about these things. All right, guys. I love that there's still 75 of you here. We're coming down to the last minute of time that we scheduled. You're welcome, Emma. Again, it's my privilege to share this with you. It really is.

(00:59:00): I believe that all of us have the ability to achieve beyond our expectations, and I know that my life would not be what it is if people didn't pour into me. So, you've noticed there's no price tag attached to anything we've done today. It's only solely about serving you. So, I hope you appreciate that. James McLeod, do I have a recommended reading list? Oh, I wish I could take this computer and walk you around. I have two completely full bookshelves here in front of me. I'm going to pull out a couple of my staple favorites here. First is Raving Fans. I have about 50 copies of this, and I love to send it out to people.

(00:59:41): If you've not read Raving Fans, you absolutely should. Second is Guy Kawasaki's book, Enchantment. I think that it's one thing to sell people, it's one thing to create funnels and have calls to action that are really compelling. It's another thing all together to provide service at such a level people find it enchanting. And that's the topic of the book here, which I won't tell you that I live up to it every single day, I hope that we get better and better continually. My personal expectation would be that if I can provide a company, that the people who engage with that company find it enchanting, everything else is easier.

(01:00:29): Like, Roger Holloway, you've been our client for a long time. Several of you, your names I recognize here. Owen Pavida, another member, and so on and so forth. There's a lot here. Oh, Karen, I'll do that. Here are these two books again, Enchantment by Guy Kawasaki, and Raving Fans by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles. These are two great books I absolutely love. And yet, there are literally, I'm just going to grab a few more here off the shelf. I'm an avid reader, I have hundreds and hundreds of books. One of my friends and clients, a broker named Chance Brown in Houston, Texas, has a book club that I absolutely love.

(01:01:15): I think, if we're not feeding our minds, we're not fertilizing the soil, we're not nurturing the earth that's going to allow us to grow into our potential. Let's see. All right, guys, it's 4:01. I should probably wrap this up. Thank you for all your feedback, I really appreciate it. I will go ahead and schedule another session, and if you're here today, I'll invite you. If you're one of the folks that's arrived later in the session, no sweat, we've recorded this and we will distribute that recording. So, you're welcome, Mary. You're welcome, Cher. You're welcome, Greg. You're welcome, Betty Jean. You're welcome, Richard. You guys are great. I really appreciate you. Thank you for being here. Have a great day.