I'm Marilyn and you have a background in sales,
I mean, on leadership and I'm curious, you know,
what are some of your favorite,
let's start with sales principles,
virtues regarding sales.
Okay, so the most important thing,
there's many important things.
At the top of the list is always integrity.
All right, so don't make up stuff that try and fit in.
If you don't have a solution or you're not sure about it,
be honest about it.
And you may not have a customer or a client at that moment,
but I bet you when you do,
they're gonna remember that you were there
and that you treated them with respect,
you didn't lie or anything else like that,
or maybe they'll know somebody who does know what you have.
So that's the single most important thing.
If nothing else comes through in our interview today,
that's the one thing I would like to be remembered.
I'm very grateful for that.
Thank you, I have been there,
speaking of your brand name as well.
When I launched JCal Digital,
I didn't have any clients and I had a half built website
and I was selling websites, I was terrified.
How do you sell a website when you don't have one
for your agency that's finished?
I had the above the fold.
My first three website companies hired me
based on projects I had done in the past for others.
And I wanted to figure out if they had looked at my website,
like done their research, you know?
And I asked them, have you seen my website?
They said, yes.
And I said, do me a favor, scroll down.
All right, they scroll down and said,
header one, header two, header three.
And they were like, oh my gosh, you caught me.
I didn't really do my research.
It's like, it's okay, I totally get it.
And you were basing your evaluation of me
off of videopower.com and other companies I'd worked with.
But it was an eye-opening reality that,
you know, like you said,
I had an opportunity to be completely authentic
with these individuals and to not create,
not point out a past history or an existing reality
that or existing perspective that I wanted to be real.
I wanted to share with them what was true in the present
and what was coming in the future, right?
Vision style.
And that's why I'm so excited to talk to you
because visionaries, I think a lot of us,
we have this negative feeling towards sales
because there's a lot of hype in the market
and there's a lot of misinformation and half truths.
And so visionaries who are listening in right now,
Phil and I are gonna be talking about the extreme power
that comes with selling your vision.
And there's incredible value and importance
to learning how to do that.
And there's extreme dangers that exist
with some of the mainstream tactics that are talked about.
And this would be one of the greatest weaknesses
that I see in most visionaries is they do not know how
to talk about and present their vision
in a way that truly intrigues, attracts,
and inspires others.
And they're usually hiding it for themselves or worse,
they're inviting and offering and pushing on people
prior to establishing those first principles.
So Phil, I really appreciate you talking about integrity.
Before we move on to the break
and dive fully into your vision,
what are three resources that have helped you
as a visionary leader get to where you are today?
Well, it's gotta start with Dale Carnegie and his books.
Yep, there you go.
So in fact, in my own book, Shameless Promotion,
but in my own book for, I thank Dale Carnegie.
And, but I'm upset that we never had a chance to meet,
but as I said, he died before I was born.
So I'm giving him a break.
But he's certainly one of them.
Jeffrey Gitomer is another one.
If you listen to his writings, he's very straightforward.
He's like Hugh Jackson in a lot of ways that he's very direct.
He's very straightforward.
And I really appreciate that.
And he's successful.
So what's Jeffrey's last name?
Gitomer.
He's the author of the Little Red Book of Selling.
And there's, oh boy, I have to almost open up
my Audible books, but there's,
the Go Givers, another great book.
And it's all about giving, right?
And you will get when you're giving.
And I practice that.
I believe in it, that the more you go out of your way
to help others, that they will naturally want to help you.
And if you start that way, it comes back.
I know this sounds like 2D fluffy stuff
to many people who might be listening in,
but I have to tell you,
we've been doing this for 40 years.
You're on a visionary show.
Hold on, Phil.
You're on a show for visionaries.
We are a 2D fruity, fluffy environment.
Thank you very much for that.
I could tell you I've made the mistakes.
I've been doing this in the selling field
for over 40 years.
And I've made the mistakes and everything else,
except for the mistake of integrity.
You just learn and everything else,
and you learn that it is certainly true
that when you go out of your way to help others,
they remember and they will be happy to see you,
even if you don't have anything to offer them
that they need at the moment.
Yeah, absolutely.
The Go Giver, phenomenal book.
Great resources.
Thank you for that.
Those of you who are brand new to those resources,
an entire world has just been open to you.
Those are phenomenal opportunities.
The Little Red Book of Selling,
that will be fun to check out as well.
All right, we're gonna dive in to Phil Whitebloom's vision
from Bender Consulting Services,
and again, talk about selling and the power of selling,
the pros, the important things that you need to know
as a visionary in terms of how to maximize your vision
and growth and influence,
and how to also protect yourself
from the dangers out there.
We'll be right back.
All right, welcome in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm the Jackson Callum, I'm your show host.
We'll be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs
and guest leaders who are building
fantastic visions out there.
Hey, what's up?
And welcome in to another episode of Vision Pros Live,
everybody.
I'm your show host, Jackson Callum,
founder and CEO of First Class Business,
and I am super excited to have Phil Whitebloom on stage
so we can talk about one of the subjects
that so many visionary leaders,
one, don't know how to leverage or avoid to their own peril.
This is a strength that's super important.
The word of sales, so scary, right?
It kind of can be in today's world,
and sales, what I would rather call it is leadership.
And so I don't know Phil very well,
but I do like that he started with integrity.
And when it comes to evaluating and honing in on
who are we gonna work with for sales,
my hope is that you do extreme due diligence in this
department, reference check,
understand how KPI metrics work,
look up on YouTube how they work.
You can find two and five minute videos on there
that can teach you so much about what to look out for.
Understand the difference between one time, you know,
closers and the peril that that can cause longterm
for your brand and creating longterm holistic relationships.
Visionaries, we need to understand all of those dynamics.
There's a time and a place like a trade show to be quick
and get people intrigued,
but you better have some seriously great marketing
and nurturing materials,
or you better be selling a piece of gum
that nobody's gonna care about 30 minutes later,
because the relationship longterm,
that's where I hope you focus in regards to your visions.
So I'll bring them on, we'll debate about it,
we'll talk about it,
we'll exchange healthy blows related to sales.
And I have no intention whatsoever to beat up Phil,
and he knows that.
My goal is to make sure that you guys are protected
with a well-rounded perspective,
because as visionaries,
you're gonna have lots of opportunities
to engage with people on different levels.
So as we get ready to talk about that,
I also wanna give you another couple of resources.
The first one being,
Oportunidades de Trabajo para Latinos.
These sponsors, you're not paid for sponsors.
These are entities that we're integrated with,
that we absolutely love,
and one of them is home owned, and that is opportunities.
This program exists in Spanish and Pakistan,
it's growing right now.
In India, we're well established,
and in the Philippines as well.
And we're looking to open the market in Europe.
What is this?
What we want in this case,
if you're a Latino leader,
we'd love to have you on our Spanish show.
We're actually teaching Latinos
who've never heard of LinkedIn,
who've never heard of Upwork,
who've never heard of digital marketing,
podcasting, et cetera,
that there are jobs out there for them.
You guys might call that VA relationships,
we call that virtual abuse.
We don't believe in it,
we believe it's super important to take care of your people.
So we create this program to train them
on how to become excellent digital ambassadors.
And again, I would love to see you guys get involved.
If you're in the space of trying to hire
one or two team members,
you might go check this out and see what we're up to.
I'll leave that there for now
and move on to Zach Ullman of learnandgrowrich.net.
Zach has a program almost identical to ours.
However, we basically approach business growth
from a completely different angle.
So you would think we would bite, no way.
I hired him as our chief financial officer,
knowing that he could help us scale hundreds of companies
with the intricacies of the infrastructure that he has.
Now him and I both know,
business is as simple as a human body.
My four-year-old can draw the human body,
but a doctor can study it for 30 years
and still not have the slightest idea
of the depths and intricacies that exist within.
The same is true of business.
It's so important to have a great team.
If you're not interested in working with us,
that's totally fine.
I'd be happy to see you work directly with Zach.
He's a phenomenal strategic partner in business
and his systems are there.
There's like 800 people in his group as well.
He's become a dear friend of mine.
So I highly recommend checking out learnandgrowrich.net.
If you're looking to uplevel your lifestyle
and perhaps create a stronger infrastructure
for your financial responsibilities for business.
Then there's the Water Project.
We do not have an affiliation with the Water Project,
but we do contribute monthly to it.
And it's one of those realities where I had never,
I've never been thirsty in my life.
I've never been without water.
And these, as I studied this, the families, the kids,
they have to leave work, they have to leave school
to go find a source of water.
And they might be walking three to five miles.
I can't imagine having my own kids do that.
I can't imagine trying to provide for my family
as a single father of four.
And you'd have to go find a source of water
not knowing what that water is gonna do to my kids.
It just kind of breaks my heart to think about it,
but it would break my heart more
if I didn't do anything about it.
So you actually get to pick the communities
that you get to support on this.
You get to see whether they're building something
called a sand dam or a borehole well,
a long-term water solution.
And if you'd provide even five to $10,
it will let you know when that project's complete.
You get to see your impact take place.
And these kids right here, they celebrate water
more than my kids celebrate Christmas Day, right?
That's incredible.
So if you don't have the financial wherewithal
to be able to help directly on this,
my hope is that you will either rock a microphone yourself
and talk about this project or something similar
that's near and dear to your heart,
or share it with a friend or family member
that came to mind while we talked about this.
You never know how far the ripple effect will go
for the word that you spread
and the good that you potentially do.
And we got 8 billion people to help in this world.
So please jump in and help out.
Thank you so much for your time on that.
Without further ado,
let's serve you and get right back to Vision.
Phil Whitebloom, thanks for joining me on Vision Pros Live.
Thanks, Jackson.
I'm so happy to be here.
Yeah, man, me too.
And I'm glad I can see it in your eyes and your smile,
the way you talked about earlier,
what you're hoping people get out of this,
that integrity aspect.
I mean, that means a lot to me, man.
I hope I get to catch up with you in person
at some point in the future.
That would be great.
Phil, you've got decades of wisdom.
You got decades of wisdom on me too.
That's something that I really, really love and appreciate.
So you have the capacity probably to serve most people
in any way, shape or form,
but what are you best at helping people?
And what do people need most
from your background and skillset?
Okay, so first I'd like to identify something clearly.
I wanna tell everybody all the parts of selling
that I have personally created and invented.
Are you ready?
Get a pencil.
Nothing.
I have invented none of this.
I have just learned through experience.
I have learned from studying and researching.
I still listen to multiple audio books a month,
all in the topic area
because there's so much great information,
but it really comes from just being there.
So I didn't invent anything.
So if you're here for that,
you probably wanna catch up with Jackson on a different show.
But nevertheless,
I'm a retirement failure.
So that means I was in the corporate world for 40 years
plus and always in the field of sales and sales leadership.
Ironically enough, many people think of me as the sales guy,
but really I was in sales leadership,
running other groups and stuff,
companies, departments for them,
the best known was Sony,
where I was started as a salesperson
as vice president of sales later on.
And the reason I bring all this up
is when I retired from the corporate world during COVID,
which was just timing more than anything else,
I decided I needed to find something to do
after sitting around in three months,
looking at the computer screen.
And so I started this as a hobby to help other people
in how to sell better than other businesses and individuals.
And it literally started out just like that.
I figured I'd be doing it a few hours a week.
I'd help people, they'd be doing much better.
I feel really good about helping people.
And that was it.
I had no idea it was gonna turn into a business.
And then I didn't have a website, I didn't have anything.
And all of a sudden people were hiring me
and I had to start and then here we go from here.
So that's Jackson, a long answer to a short question.
But it's a good, it's a great answer.
And you can shoot this down, Phil, you ready for it?
I'm ready.
Okay, I'm happy to turn this into a sales leadership
interview because I love that you're talking about that.
The visionaries who are at the beginning,
they've got so much to learn as it is.
They've got to move things forward a little bit slower pace
and they might want the sales tips and stuff.
But if we wanna talk about sales leadership,
then I would say that my brand and brands similar
in terms of like, hey, we're getting ready to scale.
That one of the greatest challenges I have is I'm gun shy
with hiring salespeople, right?
Because while I've got the job descriptions already,
while I've hired a sales team of five that imploded,
while I've worked on different, I learned as much as I could
about that as did my team and we looked and saw,
okay, wait, there's just more that needs to be done here.
We've got an infrastructure for the training aspects.
It's still such a difficult process to consider.
Okay, let's pretend I do hire, I find five great
salespeople today.
Well, if I don't have that VP of sales in place,
guess who's stuck?
All right, doing the management aspect of that
while also trying to be an entrepreneur.
So I would love to go that route and say,
all right, let's talk sales leadership in that case.
Let's do that.
And I have to say, this is actually happening live
as we're talking and it wasn't planned to anybody.
It was really, this is the fourth time
this has come up to me in two weeks.
And I've got three new clients coming on board
for this topic because they said virtually the same thing
that you did and one I'm already underway with.
And I'm saying, maybe this is a calling that says,
Phil, focus here because there's a real need for it.
Well, you just manifested it.
Yeah, and you just, I mean, it was incredible.
And it's really very interesting that
when so many people go into business,
they go into business for a couple of reasons.
One is they have this area of genius
or a passion for something that they love.
And it's usually around the product or the service
or services that they're offering, whatever that may be.
And they get everything they need to do
to go into business and they don't give any thought to,
oh, we have to sell something.
Because one of my lines is that,
Field of Dreams is a movie, it's not real life.
If you build it, it doesn't mean they will come.
And even Apple, when they come out with a new product,
a new iPhone or whatever it is,
and people line up around the block
the night before it goes on sale,
that didn't happen overnight for them either.
They earned that.
That wasn't magic.
And so selling is something
that should be thought of right up front.
It's like, I've got this stuff.
And before I do anything else, how am I gonna sell it?
In the real world, that's not what happens.
Yeah, and so-
I'd counter too on that.
And I'm with you on the importance
of getting that done up front.
And part of that path, visionaries,
is you gotta have your vision clear.
You gotta have your culture.
You don't have to.
But if you build a clear vision,
you build a great culture,
you attract amazing leadership,
that puts you in a position to be able to create
what we call an irresistible offer.
And having that irresistible offer on the marketing front
empowers a sales team, right?
A team of representatives for your brand,
a team of leadership to be able to talk about something
that the market is already actually interested in.
And so I would put those dynamics prior to the,
oh, I think this is good, so let's just go sell it.
And I don't think you said that, Phil.
I know that a visionary is often hear that though.
And so visionaries, slow down,
get the marketing aspects right.
Attempt to sell chat GPT for heaven's sake.
And say, chat GPT, here's what I'm trying to sell.
Here's my script.
Why would you not buy this?
Or what could make this better?
If you don't wanna work with me,
start playing with AI and getting some great feedback
on that, so continue, Phil, go ahead.
Yeah, I know, I love that Alex Hormozi reference
about making those offers.
And you know what?
I did a podcast this past year that was entitled,
how your successful marketing campaign
could put you out of business.
Very good.
That's what people's attention, right?
So what that means is that,
let's say you get involved with you, Jackson.
Let's say again, we've got with you
and you put together this great marketing campaign
and you're all excited and it works.
And you're used to getting maybe five leads a week
and maybe at that point.
And then all of a sudden you have 50 or 500.
It's not a good problem to have.
No, don't ever say that.
Not if you don't have the infrastructure.
You don't have, well, what happens is
when you have these leads come in and Jackson feels,
please feel free to stop me anywhere.
I love this, I love this, hit it, you're right.
So what happens here then is
if it's not and if supply chain's not there,
I've got a real live story to tell you in a second
about not communicating with supply chain.
And so, but in this particular case,
if when people have, when you have a lead,
you have a day maybe two to follow up on that lead
before it goes cold.
Because if it's something that they really wanted
and you did not respond,
they went someplace else to get it.
Maybe it's the same exact product or service,
or maybe it's something a little different,
but you had your opportunity and you missed it.
So that's one thing.
The other thing is that you get a reputation
and you get referrals for all the wrong reasons.
You say, oh, I don't wanna deal with that company
because I sent them something, they never responded.
And I actually liked that,
I was interested in what they wanted.
So maybe you guys, you're talking to your buddy,
your friend, your family member,
and you say, or your colleague,
and you say, go someplace else
because these guys don't follow up.
So you don't even know the opportunities you're losing.
So now you got that.
I'll disagree with that one though, 100%.
Because of Tony Robbins and Taylor Swift.
They cannot possibly handle all the messages
and opportunities that they have.
Neither can Google, neither can Amazon.
So the reality of supply and demand
and abundance in your favor
should not be something that should be constrained
because of the ability to talk to people.
Taylor Swift, if she gets a Twitter message right now
and she responds to it 10 years later,
that fan's gonna be so excited
that they ever even got a response.
And so I don't agree from that standpoint,
but I do agree from the infrastructure
and fulfillment standpoint.
Because if you're a visionary,
and let's say you come up with the idea
that I'm gonna do this music festival called FireFest,
and you promote it to the world
and you don't fulfill on it,
next thing you know, you find yourself in prison
and in a Netflix documentary stating why
and how this whole snafu of fake events
was gonna come together.
No, it can destroy your life.
You have to be able to fulfill
on what it is that you're promising to the market.
And so we were very careful at videopower.com.
We ran some of the most viral video ad campaigns of all time
to make sure that the clients that we worked with
were in a position to fulfill on what it was they promised.
But the thresholds that Alex Hermosy talks about
are incredibly important to know
for the sake of making sure that you have quality assurance
in place, that you are actually helping these people.
So Jackson, I guess what I should have done,
so by the way, folks, this is what happens in sales too,
because people will have a different viewpoint
or they'll be thinking of it differently than that.
So what I should have done,
what I should have done is I should have qualified myself
upfront on this because what Jackson said is correct.
It's not incorrect.
So what I should have done differently is I should have said,
if we're talking to people
who don't have this infrastructure
and you don't have this fame of,
everybody knows who you are, that will become your fame.
So what you need to do is you need to be ready that say,
you're not gonna invest in a marketing program to fail.
But that's one you could guarantee you'll be right
if you do that.
But you invest in it to win.
You invest in it to win, right?
And then when you invest to win, you say,
okay, what do I have to do to fulfill?
When this is successful.
That's where I'm going.
It's actually complimentary.
There's no argument on it.
It's a matter of as a visionary,
if you've never worked in a marketing department before,
if you've never been a chief marketing officer,
then perhaps you shouldn't be making marketing decisions.
And that's up to you.
It's not a matter of shoulds or what you have to do
as much as these are perspectives that you can explore
as you're preparing to put your vision out there.
And having these types of dialogues even like right now,
Phil is selling me on his ideas and that's a good thing.
It's an important process because he's opening perspectives
for me to see new things.
And I'm doing the same thing by talking to Phil
about my new perspectives.
That concept of being able to share
and experience conflict without a sense of attack, right?
Without a sense of like feeling self-deprecation
or insecurity and a full appreciation for man,
this gives me a greater depth of knowledge
related to the whole market and how my concepts come across.
This is an incubation that's so important
and so many visionaries out there
don't even have somebody by their side to do this, right?
To talk about the different perspectives that exist.
So what is, let's dive into,
what is your vision, Phil, for the people that you serve?
So great question.
So that's a really good question.
So the, and I say that because,
what, I haven't got asked that before, just like that.
And the, but the vision is clear for me.
It's when you're asking powerful questions,
that means that they're not just open-ended questions,
they're questions to find out what people,
what's really motivating them, what they,
why they are really doing something.
And when I learned that,
then my vision is to find a way to get them there.
And if I can't find the way to get them there,
I'm gonna find the who's to help them get there.
Maybe Jackson, maybe you're the who.
If you haven't read Who, Not How, you should do that.
It's another great, it's another great book
because there's so many great who's out there.
And if you get something from me on this point only,
then I was your who at this moment, right?
Oh my gosh.
Jackson was your who.
So, so this is what it's all about.
And if I'll give you a quick story,
I was interviewing somebody about possibly bringing me on
as a coach, you work for somebody else,
so that their boss would have to hire me.
But when I was talking to this person,
single mom and all this other stuff,
I won't drag out the long story,
you know, gotta raise your child, everything else like that,
needs to make more sales, having a difficult time.
I say, yeah, but what is it that you really want?
And she told me that she wants to own
a therapeutic horse farm.
And I said, well, then why don't you have it?
She said, because, well, I don't have enough money
and everybody tells me that it's a bad idea,
you'll never achieve it and everything else.
And I explained to her right then and there,
so if you were to hire me as your sales coach,
what I would consider my job to be
is to help you get that therapeutic horse farm,
not to feed your child and everything else,
because if you get the horse farm,
you've done all that already on the way.
So that will continue on.
And then you ask her the open-ended question,
how does that sound to you?
You know, what do you like about this and everything else?
And then you explain that all these people
that are telling you all the reasons that won't work
and you can't do it, I said, they're not your friends,
they are your family.
Tell them you love them and they're in the way.
And then go find the people that will help you.
Go find those who's and-
Huge.
And then maybe if I can't help you myself,
I could help you find the who's.
So that's, so the vision is about helping people
reach that ultimate goal of where they wanna go
and it's not a milestone, it's the end
and the milestones will be achieved
through the tactical part.
Well, absolutely.
And so I was excited to dive in that concept of the who,
because my friends, the fastest way for me to disqualify
a potential client, a prospect,
and somebody who wants to work on my team
is when somebody is obsessed with trying to break down
and understand the how and the what.
As soon as I notice that somebody keeps reverting back
to how and what, I try to move away from that relationship
because that's not what's important to me.
What's important to me is who, like what type of person,
are they loving, patient, persistent, consistent,
and reliable?
Those are my big five.
If they have those five values and virtues
as kind of their centerpiece for how they live life,
then I wanna know their why, what's their purpose.
But Simon Sinek, love your book, start with why, why second.
Right, then comes the why.
If that's aligned, then the cool thing is
the how and the what is not only like just as easy to do,
it's actually a little bit easier and it's fun
because the person that I'm with is somebody that I want
to tackle the how and the what with
or they can tackle it without me having to get involved
because I know they have the integrity to move forward
and get it done.
So I love that you said that and I'm glad you referenced
the book again.
I'm gonna be referencing that book more often
now that you mentioned it.
Phil, let's dive into a dark subject.
What's the worst leadership experience that you've ever had?
Oh, well, that's an easy one.
So, well, there's a couple.
And from two totally different perspectives.
And I had one manager, a senior manager above me
who actually gave me my first sales management job,
ironically enough, in a major corporation.
So he liked me, we got along, but he was horrendous.
He was vicious.
He was mean to people and everything else.
And I mean, whether you were sick or well,
there was one guy, the doctor told him he had to stay home
for more than a month because he didn't have a problem.
This person drove to his house, picked him up every day
and brought him into the office.
This was long before there was Zoom
or anything else going on.
And he almost put another guy in a hospital
because he had him so stressed out
because he was just constantly yelling at him all the time.
That is not a leadership role.
That is, and people will not get up
and take a bullet for you in business
and support you with whatever you need
when all you've done is ridicule them
and talk down to them.
And ironically enough, the person that stood up to him
was his direct secretary, his assistant.
And she looked at him and said,
you will never talk to me like that again, ever.
Boom, and with her, he was fine.
But that's not the model.
The other one is somebody who just can't make a decision.
Oh my God.
And it's like, you know, you're-
Most of the world.
I've never been in the military.
I've been around the military
and there's a lot of respect I have for chain of command
and everything else.
And you expect the people in the chain of command
and in business, there's a chain of command.
You need people to make decisions.
You don't have to like the decision,
but you need the decision.
And when they can't make a decision, nothing happens.
And that's a terrible place to be.
I appreciate you saying that.
Because, and as entrepreneurs, as visionaries, as leaders,
we need to, instead of pointing the finger at others,
Phil's basically teaching us to take a self-inventory
of are we willing to make the decisions, right?
And if we put people in positions to get things done,
but we don't give them a title to take ownership
of whatever that is, then no, they're not in a position
to be able to make the decision and be responsible for it.
So great books for that.
The E-Myth is the best one,
followed by Rocket Fuel in my opinion.
I'd like to add one more thing
before you move on to the next question,
if I may, on this topic.
Yes, yeah.
The other one is, there's lots of Philisms out there.
One day I'll write that book
because Philisms are things I've either made up the phrases
or I've adopted or stolen from somebody else, right?
But I give them credit if I remember who it was.
Thank you.
So, but this one is that I always,
when I'm in, whether it doesn't matter whether we're
in business or in a community service function
in charge of a group or a committee or whatever it is,
I let them know that decision-making is not a democracy,
right?
We don't hold up our hands and vote and say,
when you're a leader, you're the leader.
People want leadership to make a decision.
That does not mean you don't get information.
You go, you ask all the questions,
you get the input and everything else.
And the best thing you could get is conflicting input
because that's gonna help you to make the best decision.
Because if it was straightforward like that,
no decision would ever had to been made.
A decision by definition means there's somebody
on one side and somebody on the other side or choices.
If there's no choice, why wouldn't it have just happened?
Right?
So, but you've got to get that information
and then you make the decision and people fall in line
or they go away because-
I love that you say that.
Make that decision.
So that's the part that I wanna lead into this also
that for decision makers who decide by committee,
it is not helpful.
Yeah.
That's a really good point.
There's an evaluation process, right?
But at the end of the day, that decision has to be made.
And in some circumstances, I do believe in the power
of that vote within the executive team, for instance,
or within a mastermind group of great clients.
But to further your point, two years ago,
it was probably two to three years ago,
I began to realize my own trend.
I was being a bad leader.
I was, and it wasn't, I wasn't being a bad leader.
I wasn't being a good leader in this case.
I would say things like,
I think we should do this to the website, right?
Or I think we should do this on this campaign.
I left everybody going, so are we doing this or not?
Right?
And I had been practicing this for a long time
and it wasn't at SIRS way.
Oh my gosh.
No wonder why nobody's taking solid action.
I'm not just owning the fact that this is how I want it done.
I wasn't forcing them to do anything by changing the words
to, I'd like to see us implement this, right?
This is how I like it to be built, right?
That gave them the certainty to move forward
by moving away from the soft words of, you know,
I think, but I'm not sure.
It's like, what do you do when somebody doesn't
have their decision-making delegated
in a way where the other person knows
that's exactly what you,
they don't wanna take responsibility for that
because they're like, you didn't decide.
So I didn't know if I was supposed to do it or not.
So it eliminated a whole lot of problems
when I shifted to making the statements more direct.
So Phil, I love that you said that.
On the flip side, what's the best leadership experience
that you've ever had?
Okay.
So I've had some really good examples.
And one of them was a guy named Jim Brinker
who's now retired.
I'm gonna call him out by name
because it's a positive experience.
And he was-
Go Jim Brinker.
He was only, yeah, go Jim, sorry.
But he was a year older than me
but he had a lot more experience.
When he recognized talent,
somebody who's really going out to get there,
he would do anything to support you.
And I adopted that.
And, you know, I would tell my team, I said,
inside the family, if you've done something wrong
or improper or could have been done better,
I will let you know.
I mean, and it may not be a pleasant experience
for either one of us, probably less for you.
But if somebody from outside should ever kind of attack us,
even if it was up the road, I will stand and defend you
as long as your intent was right when you made that mistake.
And if your intent was wrong or unethical or immoral
or God forbid, illegal, then you're on your own.
But, you know, you learn these values
from really good people and they trusted
and they made decisions and they made changes
where they needed to be made,
but they were willing to do things themselves
that they were asking you to do.
That doesn't mean if you're head of a hospital,
and I'm not a physician, I don't play one on TV
or even on your show,
and you don't have to be the brain surgeon
to be head of a hospital.
You could be the pharmacist
and you could be the best administrator
and leader in the entire facility
and that's why you have that role.
But if somebody needs to go in to do brain surgery,
you can't step in.
But what I'm saying is you know that you would do
everything you can to make sure
that if that brain surgeon was out with COVID,
that there'd be another brain surgeon
of at least close to this or higher quality
than the one that was going in there in the first place.
You would step, you would fall all over yourself
to help that doctor out and that patient.
And that's what you do as a sales leader also
and probably any business leader,
is you are willing to step in,
you're willing to take a hit for your team,
you're willing to support them
and when they're not helping themselves,
you try to help them to help themselves
and if they don't, at least you made the effort.
Absolutely, that's absolutely huge.
Appreciate you sharing that.
We're going to, I'm gonna share a resource
with everybody related to how to recognize
the types of leaders who can help you do this
for your vision.
That is one of the hardest challenges
is knowing all right, well now that I've adopted
a mentality to bring somebody in who can help me with this,
what do I need to look for, right?
How do I need to go about that?
I'm sure Phil as well has plenty of resources
that he can provide on the subject.
But a quick little intermission for this,
we're gonna provide this for free.
This is our Hiring 101,
Finding the Right Job Candidates
to Drive Success Worksheet
and it teaches you what questions to ask
and why we ask those questions
and the emotional intelligence to look for.
In addition to that, you need to know how to ask it
and again, the good signs and the bad signs.
So we'll make sure to drop this.
I'll drop this in the comments
that you all have access to this
and I hope you use it as you consider working with Phil
and working with others.
I won't be at the end of the show going,
oh my gosh, Phil's the best thing since sliced bread.
I better hire him right now.
That's not a healthy process, visionaries.
We need team members to also provide their thoughts
in the evaluation.
We need due diligence processes to make sure
that the consistency and the reliability is there.
So again, being able to sell your vision,
it's also not just about you being the only voice
of your vision.
It's recognizing that if you create a team,
you have multiple voices who are able to do multiple things
with you at the same time.
Just like I had two co-hosts, a client,
all with me at PodFest just this last weekend
and in addition to that,
a whole team of online individuals
who are helping me connect with people virtually.
Over 1800 people on that we're gonna have connected
with every single one of them.
Thanks to the team's depth,
all of that really comes back to sales
and the principles that Phil's talking about.
So I'm gonna ask you the most important question
on the show, Phil.
It's my absolute favorite one.
If this was your last chance to speak in life,
what powerful lesson can other visionaries learn
from your experience?
My last chance.
So I would say this.
If your focus and your talk
is in asking others questions
about what you could do to help them
and you never say a word about yourself,
you're going to be a special person
because good things will always come
to those who do good for others.
There's no question.
And I practice what I preach here.
I really try to, not far from perfect.
Sure.
But really I would say if you have a skill
and you have a talent that will help others
with whatever that is,
whether it's from your ability to sell.
So selling, I'm gonna give you one quick example.
I have a client who owns a small chain of massage studios
and she's a great business person.
She's just fantastic.
And she had me talk to her therapist on a Saturday,
her 20s therapist,
and none of them thought they were salespeople.
In fact, they'd appalled them in the worst way.
And so when I started out, I knew this coming in
and I said, why do you do what you do?
And they all basically had their own answer,
but it all summed down to the same thing.
I do this to help others.
Great.
And I said, and what do you think I do
as a sales coach and in sales?
All salespeople do is help others.
That's the reason they exist.
All good salespeople do is help others.
All good salespeople, yeah, so right, true.
All good salespeople.
That's why we do what we do to help others.
We help them to find the best solutions
to help them with their problem
because it's always about problem solving.
If you're selling, there's a problem.
And it doesn't mean it's a bad problem,
it's just a problem.
I can't get tickets to Taylor Swift.
Oh, okay, that's a problem.
Or I wanna take my family out
or I don't know what to get my wife
for a holidays this year or whoever.
Or it could be something totally extreme
where I was approached by the Marine Corps one time
during one of the wars that we were in
over the last few decades.
And they said, we are very concerned
about our combat camera people being killed
as they're exposed there.
What could you do to help put together viewfinders
to do that?
And myself and my team at Sony and everybody,
we worked really hard to try and come up with a solution
to give them some better peripheral vision
while they're going through the camera.
That's an extreme case of that one
where you're not gonna be able to do anything
but you're gonna be able to do something
that's gonna help people truly save lives.
And so you're always helping people.
So that's my answer to your question, Jackson,
is if you're asking questions about how you can help somebody
what their challenges are, what they're doing, great.
If you wanna build on what they're doing better.
That's all, you know, just motivate from the positive,
never motivate from this negative.
It just isn't, never is never.
Absolutely, and the visionaries,
as visionaries, and what do I mean by that?
The sales reps are often,
like if you've had sleazy sales experiences
or you're experiencing that in your brand,
it often, most most of them has to do with you and I
and how we set up the compensation structure.
If you set up a compensation structure
or rewards program based solely or mostly on the idea
that you can make a ton of money on this, right?
That's the focal point.
Then what the heck do you think is gonna happen?
Are they gonna be worried about helping others?
Are they gonna be worried about their own commission,
their page, I shouldn't say worried.
Are they gonna be so excited about making so much money
that that's what they're focused on?
On the flip side, if we do 100% commission based interactions
and we put people in a sense of desperation
who represent our brand, then they're going to sell
just to get what they need to be able to survive.
And so these are really, really important
golden nuggets of wisdom that trust me,
I've done it the wrong way many, many times.
And I'm trying to help you move away from those models
and say, you know what, well, how do I figure that out?
If you're going to figure that out on your own,
once again, please ask something like ChatGVT.
It does a better job than most consultants I see
of getting to that answer or actually hire somebody
who is really good at this, who's been in this for decades
so that you are protected and you're not putting yourself
in a position to where you're trying to learn a skillset
that's going to take you 10,000 hours
when you don't even have one hour to dedicate
to the clients that you're supposed to be helping.
So this is super helpful, Phil.
I'm really grateful to have you on the show
and to talk about all things, sales and leadership
and just the experience of representing brands.
We're going to have down below in the show notes,
the action steps for how to get involved
with Phil's program and talk to him.
We'll have down below that, the resources that we mentioned
on this show and in the top right-hand corner of the screen,
you're going to see a button, this is be our guest,
whether you have decades of wisdom and experience
like Phil does or you're brand new to saying,
you know what, I got a vision that I want to share
and I want to talk about this, come and join us.
We want to have you on the show
and talk about what you're up to.
And we look forward to seeing you
on the next episode of Vision Pros Live.
Take care, everybody.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show
and thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a vision pro yourself.