#99: Selling To Help with Mario Martinez Jr.

I'll do some moves like this. I

don't have any music to play for you at the moment.

We need some music, but with the Miami background right here, you know.

But dude, just a second. Just saying that actually has me wanting to salsa in there.

Get your move on. Get your move on, baby.

Brother, brother. All right, well, let me ask you this right out of the gate. So first of all, that is a mouthful.

It is a mouthful. My

goodness. Of a bio. But it's all perfect. I mean, this is like great, great stuff. So here's the thing. What's not written? What's between the lines of that bio? Before we get into the pivot stories, and I know you've got a bunch, Just what's something that's not written in that introduction that you'd love for people to know about you right now? Resilience. It's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. In times of massive change and disruption, the kind of rapid change that we're all experiencing as leaders, as business owners, as entrepreneurs, we have to learn how to not only increase our own resilience but that of our teams. So right now we have a powerful opportunity for you to find out just how resilient you are. Some years ago, my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilience leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are.

Oh man, that I'd love people to know about me is I'm just raw, authentic individual, and what you see is what you get. It's like this visibility that I got that you just read off, which thank you by the way for having me on the show. I'm super excited to be here with you guys and all your listeners as well. That happened starting 3 years ago. So this is not like years and years and years and years. It's a very short window. It's a very short period of time that has happened. The good news is it's consistent. So that's what I would say. And then the other thing I'd probably say is, is most people don't know this, and I've talked about this on my show, but I actually came up from a very poor background and I was the first in my family to go to college. In fact, we were so poor that when I applied for colleges, it was $40 per application to submit your college application into each UC school, so University of California, that is, I only had $41 that I could use towards applying for colleges. And I got in. I applied to one, my dream college, which was UC Berkeley, University of California, Berkeley, and I got in. And I remember exactly where we were at in my old high school. And I remember all the letters came back in and there was an individual who really, really, really, really wanted to get into UC Berkeley. And he was making a big stink about it, and it was a big scene that he was so upset that he didn't get in and I got in. I don't even know why he was upset about it, and he just started taking it out on me in front of everybody. And I was a pretty cool cat. I was well-liked amongst everyone, fairly visible. And so he just said, the only reason why you got in was because of affirmative action. And now back then, of those people who know what affirmative action was, is that they were taking minorities in to be able to bring more minorities into the college systems even though they may not have met like the minimum criteria for, as an example, SAT scores for UC Berkeley at like 1300, right? And so I remember he said that and I looked at him and I was like, dang, bro. And I was like, that's pretty low, man. And I was like, but here's the thing, here's the thing. And then there was like 25 people standing around and he was just so hot. He was upset because he didn't get in. And I said, here's the thing, at the end of the day, I just got one thing to say to you, man. I got in, you didn't.

I'm just thinking to myself, what is he about to drop on this poor guy?

Yeah, I was just— I mean, I felt bad. I just, I just, I was like, drop the mic, walk away. And then, you know what that did for me, man? I'll be honest, what that did for me, that memory has been implanted. I know the guy's name, I know the face, I know the whole scene, I know exactly where we're standing at. And this was well over 20 years ago. when we were in high school. This was high school, by the way. And so it implanted in me that others thought that I didn't deserve to have the opportunity.

Yeah.

And which was cool. That's cool. Like sometimes I think that I shouldn't, that this person got an opportunity but I should have got it, or that's natural sometimes. Now I generally wouldn't vocalize it, especially I wouldn't vocalize it when it comes to minority or race, but as someone who's Mexican. But that having been said, it implanted in my brain what my father had always told me Which was, no matter what you do, I don't care if you want to be a truck driver, which is what he was, or if you want to be a scientist, right? No matter what you do, be the best at it. Getting into UC Berkeley with one college application, and that's all I could afford, that was my driver, which was, I'm going to prove to me and to everyone else that I deserve a seat at the table. Even though I had a C-minus average there at UC Berkeley. It was tough. It was rough. Now I guess I'd say, now look at me now.

Well, that was certainly a pivot, man. I mean, it was a pivot point. It was a catalyst. You know, it's interesting because you would never say that to somebody, but we say it to ourselves though. Absolutely. I kind of saw you going there and then I thought maybe you were going to go there. But isn't that true though? We speak to ourselves that way. I mean, that story is a great story. It's like one of those movie— you could see everybody gathers around, right? There's one dude, he's like, being like, these stories are

made

up. Oh, nasty. You know, I say throw down the affirmative action thing. I mean, that's kind of a cruel thing to say, but you get the last laugh in that. So it's got that Hollywood ending, right? Because you get the last laugh and then you go. And Berkeley's tough, man. That's a tough school to get into. In fact, I'm gonna say it right now because I gotta put this out to the universe, that our youngest— we have 4 kids— and the youngest of them, Eden, well, she's made all of her applications, just submitted her last one maybe right before Christmas, and Berkeley is at the top of her list. So her sister went to UCLA, another tough school to get into, Yeah, absolutely. Very tough. But she really, I think she's got this activist nature. This is a personality and she wants to change the world. I mean, and that's an activist, very far left-leaning as we know, but they really put you to task. So tough school to get into, tough to stay in there.

Yeah. Well, a funny story. So this is like another pivot point. I was there for 5 years and I actually never graduated from there. In my second year, I got an internship for a sales and marketing company which landed me a opportunity to work for a software company and that software company, I started out as a telemarketer and I had to pay for my own way, unfortunately. I had to pay for school on my own. So the first year I actually applied over like 200 scholarships and I got enough money to pay for my first year. So I worked my first year to be able to pay for my second year. That's kind of what was happening. So I ended up at 19 years old getting into software sales and by the time I was 21, I was making over a 6-figure income. And in B2B software sales, bought my own house, bought my own like bought all the things that you would define as success for a 21-year-old. And then I realized like what do I need college for? Like I'm making more money than any other college graduate, period. End of discussion. And so I was like I'm gonna start pivoting my direction to work in corporate. So long story short, I ended up getting into focusing on corporate and about five to seven years I got this. sales leader. When he first started managing me, he said, you really need to go back. The company will pay for it. You should finish off your degree. That was year 1. I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Year number 2, he was like, you really need to go back, and I would like for you to be focusing on this particular element. I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Year number 3, we sat down for my opening elements of my review, and he says to me, here, listen. Obviously, what I said in the last 2 years, you didn't listen to. I'm going to help you. I'm going to do something for you that probably you're going to be angry about. But you will not regret it. And he said, "I am going to require you now to go back to get your degree. The company is going to pay for it 100%. You have to get your degree because here's the thing: all things being equal, if you're the greatest sales guy in the world, which I was a top President's Club earner—I mean, 15 out of my 18 years in corporate I spent in President's Club or 100% Club, right? So he was like, "All things being equal, you're an amazing salesperson. You know how to work the customer. You know how to do relationships. You know how to close big deals." Blah blah blah blah blah blah. You got it all, but all things being equal between you and another candidate for any job in the future, they've got the degree, you don't, they're going to win. So I'm going to require you now to get your degree. And that was pretty hot, I gotta admit. Like, I was angry at the fact that he was making me go back because I didn't see the value in it. And so nonetheless, the company paid for it, and I ended up transferring over to St. Mary's College, which is a very well-known reputable school here in California, and finished my degree in business management and Economics, where I got a C- in at Berkeley, I got an A+ in at St. Mary's. So, it shows you the different caliber.

Oh, whoa, whoa, hold on a second. I'm going to interject here for a second, brother. Now, I think you probably were at a different stage and phase of your— Very true. Very true.

I had been previously married then as well to my ex-wife. So, absolutely. I mean, I was at a different stage, different phase in life, but I mean, St. Mary's is, don't get me wrong, it's an excellent school, well-known. But Berkeley was much harder in terms of its academic rigorous program. But nonetheless, it was another pivot point for me where as an individual, it's like, was there value? Now, if someone asked me today, was there any value in my college degree? The answer is I still feel no. Like there is no value that it brought me from a real-world experience. However, if someone said to me, oh, well, if there's no value, then why would I do it? The answer is, is because it's necessary. It's one of those boxes that you have to check. You just have to check the box if you want to get into a professional career from a career standpoint. Or in the cases of entrepreneurship, sometimes people, especially when you're looking for funding, they're looking to see not only do you have a great product, but do you actually have the business acumen to be able to grow a company? And so sometimes depending on the school, that might help to get you started and get the credibility that you need.

Yeah. You know what? Let's do this. Let's leg into— I know a little bit about some of the pivots in your career and personal life. So I want to start us on that path. But before I do, just quick, want to say this too. This is why sales— I think sales is the most highly rewarded aspect of any business. Would you agree with that? I mean, you're the sales—

100%.

Okay. And that's because I think people are shy about it. And on one end of the spectrum, they're shy about it. On another end of the spectrum, they're in total abject fear of it. It brings up all the demons of their own self-worth or the lack, the questions that they have about their own worthiness and their own deservedness, etc., which is why when you can deal with those fears, those demons, you are rewarded at a higher level. I mean, it's not unusual that guys and women who drop out of college or don't go to college or go to college but don't know what to do next, they're not on the path to become a dentist or a lawyer or whatever, end up making 6 figures pretty quickly and then upper 6 figures. Right. In sales. So, what is it? Do you have a philosophy about sales? Do you have a— like if somebody was 18, 19 years old and you told them, you said, listen, you've got to go to college. You've got to check off that box. But when you get out of college or even while you're in college, forget when you get out, you want to work on developing sales muscles. That skill will serve you regardless of any area of either the career, traditional career trajectory into a company, moving up in a company, or you start your own thing at some point. Sales is— you're going to crisscross with that. And on one side of that is going to be a lot more opportunity and money. And on the other side of that, it's going to be more slower build and a different path entirely. What are your thoughts about that, Mario?

That's a great question. So here's the thing. First off, I think people need to think about in terms of sales, we're always selling something, whether you're selling yourself for a date or whether you are selling yourself for the proposal or whether you're selling yourself for on your AT&T or Verizon bill and something's wrong with it. You're always selling something. We just don't realize it. But one of the things I think about in terms of this pivot between a career in sales versus not is 2 things. Do you recognize that salespeople do what most other people will never want to do? And what is that? My entire family life, my home, my car, my insurance, feeding my family, my benefits, everything in my entire life rests on one thing, that I'm willing to carry a quota and I'm willing to work hard to be able to have rich rewards at the end. So, if you're not willing to have that type of risk, now like my wife as an example, she is not the type of individual. She needs stability. She needs to know that she's working from A to B or X to Z at a certain time and she wants to know that every single month, every single week, she's gonna have X number of dollars and that's her personality. needs that type of environment. So if you're that type of person, then guess what? Sales is probably not for you. But if you're willing to put the weight of the world and carry your entire family, your livelihood, your travel, your insurance, your everything, health benefits, all onto am I gonna hit a number so I can succeed, then it's for you, and I love the risk behind that. The other thing I think about is I have a saying. It is sales is the art of helping.

Hmm.

Sales is the art of helping. That's it. If I were to say what is sales, That's it. One sentence. Sales is the art of helping. If you are a natural helper, meaning that you are inspired to help other people, you hear of a problem, you hear of a situation, you immediately want to go and help. A great example. My family and I, we were down in Newport Beach and I was sitting on the top of the beach. My kids were playing with my wife football and I was just sitting there. I happened to be looking off over here about 100 yards to the left. I just happened to be looking in that direction. And there were 3 guys that were playing in the water and the waves were pretty strong, right? I mean, this is Newport Beach, there's good riptide over there and the waves are pretty strong. And I just happened to be watching and then boom, a wave hit a guy and 2 of them popped up, one of them didn't. And I looked at it and I was like, hmm, where's the other guy? The next wave hit, the guy didn't pop back up. So I stood up out of my chair and then all of a sudden, boom, a floating body popped up. And so I immediately just darted, ran right to it. And my son was there and I gave him whatever it is I was holding and I just beelined right to exactly where it was, jumped into the water to see if I could help. Now by that point, the 2 sons that were there, which were older in nature, middle-aged sons, it was their father who was probably 60+ years old that was the one that was floating on top of the water. And they were screaming out and then the whole family all of a sudden saw what happened and here I was, just some random person, just immediately boom. And it's just like, that's my natural instinct is to help.

Yes.

I think that's part of like, if you think about selling, selling is helping and that's exactly, if you've got that inside you, if you're the type of person that if you saw danger, you run to it. If you saw an accident, you run to it. If someone's getting hurt, you run to it. And I was that guy in high school, right? You were making fun of somebody, I ran to help, right? So that's just me, that's just the art of helping and ever since then, I've really tried to think about what is sales and that's truly for my customers. We wanna help and help solve a specific problem.

I love that. I'm just looking on my, I don't know if you can see this here, but This is my lifeguard whistle. This is actually the lifeguard whistle from when I was 19 years old. I started working at the beach. This was on the East Coast, so it was a beach called Jones Big Beach. 100,000 patrons there on a Saturday or Sunday in the summertime. We make a lot of rescues, so I know exactly what you're talking about. And there are people who literally— and this is not just so we're clear here, it's not a judgment. I mean, it's just that we're all different. We're all the same in so many ways, and we're all different in so many ways. Yeah. There are people who will watch someone going down and watch it, also going, oh, I can't help because I don't have the skills to help. I go in there, it'll be a double drowning, and that's even twice as bad as it was. So, I think a personal assessment is required. I think for folks that are listening to this now and watching too, you've got to take an assessment of yourself because there's a chance that the reason that you're not selling could be the fact that you're just uncomfortable with it, or that you've heard things. Because we're so programmed. Everything we feel, everything we do on some level is the basis of some programming we received when we were very young and impressionable. I mean, before we were even thinking. So birth to 7, 8 years old, our cognitive abilities have not developed at all. It's just all emotional developments. We learn about what love means. We learn about so many things. It's like, so for me, I'll never forget the time when my dad let a guy into our house. We grew up in this tiny little apartment, maybe about the same level of income as what you were growing up with. And the next thing I know, this stranger sitting at our dining room table, this little round table, there's 4 seats, just me, my brother, my mom, my dad that's abutting the living room. It's a tiny apartment, right? And he's sitting at the table, this stranger, and he's got these big fat books that are on the table. And I'm listening like, what's going on? He's talking about this stuff and How knowledge is power, your kids have got to have knowledge. My dad's an educated guy, went to NYU, he's a writer, but he's working as a civil servant. This was his path. He wanted to be a recreation director and teach, and he is writing at night. Creative writing is his real passion. So never a lot of money. He's listening to this guy, listening to this guy. All of a sudden, my dad starts to take out like a check and there's paperwork with like 5 copies. He's like, you know, remember the mimeograph or the— Yeah. You know, the thing with like 18 copies, right? Get all that stuff all over your fingers. And he starts filling out paperwork and writing a check. Next thing you know, I hear this number like $1,600. What? $1,600? My dad didn't— I don't know if my dad earned $1,600 in half a year at that point. It's like $20 grand a year. It's like, so they bought the Encyclopedia Britannica from a guy who knocked on the door.

I remember. I knew that's where you were going on that one.

I couldn't believe it, but well, I could believe it at the time because I didn't know any better, but Looking back, I just remember that there were real strong influences in my life early on about money and about sales. So that's a long wind-up into you've got to do a self-assessment to see whether or not are you the kind of person that's just not equipped for this. What you said, and so beautiful, sales is the art of helping. So if you're not the kind of person that just sort of gravitates naturally or by desire to go and help someone, well then maybe sales is not for you.

Yeah.

But I'm gonna call it out. Like if you're the kind of person who would want to help somebody, wouldn't watch somebody that they could help just struggle or drown, I mean figuratively, then maybe sales is the way you can not only add a zero to your income but add tremendous freedom and opportunities in your life.

100%. In fact, recently I was talking to a friend of mine, an old friend of mine who is a CIO of a fairly large size organization and they had rounds of layoffs and they decided to collapse the organization and he got laid off. And as soon as I found out, my next response was, how can I help? That's it. That is my opening line in a sales call. How can I help? What can I do to help? Right? And let them tell you their problem and then you'll know whether or not there's something you can do. So that's kind of the natural thing in terms of sales and that's probably my best advice, especially for entrepreneurs who are trying to get their idea off the ground, their vision off the ground, the company off the ground. Don't think of the product. Think about how you're helping. Don't think of how am I gonna sell this, think about how you're gonna help somebody when you sell it. Don't think about is this sale gonna work? No, this sale will work because you already know how you're gonna help and you're gonna stick to the problem of how you're gonna solve what it is they said they need help with, right? So I wanna write a book on help, right? But I don't want it to be put into the wrong category of psychological problems.

Well, since this is perfect, 'cause I'm gonna say this now, I was gonna say it at the end 'cause I wrote this note, but I can say it now just knowing this structure we've got here. So, Mario, you've got to go buy this URL. So now you're going to have plenty of time to do it. All right? But you've got to go buy this URL. You've got to start incubating the book. And it's The Art of Helping. This is your book, brother. This is like The Go-Giver, like Bob Burg's amazing book, The Go-Giver, which if you haven't read that book, freak, go get that book. Okay? Go read that book, everybody. Reread it. It's amazing. It's like Og Mandino's The Greatest Salesman in the World. If you haven't read that book, you've got to go get that book. You've got to go read that book immediately. And in the future, I'm predicting, in the future you're gonna have to go get Mario Martinez's The Art of Helping. Do you hear that? No, I'm not kidding in the least. So if you don't get it, I will. You gotta go get it.

All right, after this I'm gonna go get it.

Good man. theartofhelping.com. Oh man. Hey, so I've got a great opportunity coming up. I'm gonna be keynoting a big conference for an MLM company. I'm going to go to Singapore and do this thing over a couple of days. And one of the influences when I was researching this particular MLM company, this multi-level marketing network marketing company, a big influence for them were the teachings of Jim Rohn. Do you know Jim Rohn? Is there anything about Jim Rohn that's influenced you, or is there anyone else that in that space of sort of personal and business development that's been a big influence for you?

That's a great question. Yes, I absolutely know who Jim Rohn is. I absolutely know who all the greats are, the Dale Carnegies. Anyways, is there any one individual that has influenced me? No, I would probably say there's not been any one individual that's influenced me except for probably my dad. And this sounds very cliché. I think some people would be like, okay, you know, your dad, your mom. But my dad was a truck driver and he was abused as a child. severely abused. And at one point, someone had to come and hold a gun to his father's head to get them out of the house, right? So I said this earlier, the thing that always instilled just in my brain was whatever you're gonna do, just be the best at it. And that's probably the thing that is just in the back. Am I the best? Am I the best? Am I the best? Right? And it's not at the expense of if I'm not the best, well, then I've got to be the best. It's like, am I at least in the best class? I'm okay with that, right? Am I in the top of my class? I'm certainly okay with that because I certainly wasn't the smartest guy at school, that's for darn sure, but I always wanted to try to be at the top of my game. So I probably would say that in terms of influence. And then I'm an avid reader. I wrote an article which you were part of, the top 33 best sales books for 2019, actually.

Brother, thank you for that, by the way.

Oh, you're very welcome.

No, it was so, so well received. I should— we shared it all over the place, but it was just an honor to be included on that list.

100%. And if you all listen or listening haven't got Pivot yet, then you need to get Pivot. That was one of the books that was included inside there. And so I actually started out that article saying I hate reading books. I really do. I hate reading books. That's not my thing. However, when I'm given a book, like such as yourself or others, then I'm gonna take the time to go through those particular details. But I'm an avid blog reader. I like to also learn through watching video. I'm a huge video consumer. And so every day I'm reading blogs, every day I'm watching videos to understand different techniques or those types of things, and I learn how to apply them. That's my thing and I'm a consumer of many multiple facets of information from different sources. So I can't say there's one thing and there's one thing that inspired me other than my dad and other than I consume information like crazy and short snippets. My brain can only work in short snippets. So that's how I work.

Yeah, it's so interesting because I think at some point sociologists or scientists, whoever, brain researchers perhaps will be looking back at this time in the development, the human development The history of that and think, yeah, our attention spans have diminished. I'm saying it and it might sound like it's a negative thing, but it doesn't have to be and might not necessarily be. I mean, look, we adapt. That's the human species. We're constantly involved in evolution and adaptation, etc. Snippets. I'm not suggesting you shouldn't read books. I love reading books and I'm a slow reader. To me, if you ask me to read a book, it's going to take me months to do it. Yeah. Because that's the way I consume it. So, if what you need is to get that information sooner, if I needed to get that information sooner, that wouldn't be the way to get it. A blog might be, or like you say, watching video clips, which I do all the time as well. So, I just think that's where we're going anyhow. You're probably more in the majority, Mario, anyway than a lot of folks. So, here's what I want to do. I want to spend a little bit of time tracking. You've already set the stage for this. You get out of college and then you end up in the corporate space and then going back to college to get finished the degree, etc., but you didn't stay in the corporate space. So I think our community really combines a number of different people, folks that are already out of the corporate arena, so out of sort of traditional, I've got a job thing, and they're doing their own thing. They're an entrepreneur, they've got a business or something like that. And then there are folks that have been considering what that might be like as a side hustle, etc. So take us through, if you would, a little span of time where you're working the job and you're doing that more traditional path. To the place where you find yourself wanting to leave, obviously in a marriage, in a relationship, what happens there? Does that impact that in some way? And then ultimately you become a business owner and that takes us to today. So if you could track that for us, that would be great. Wow. The pace of change over the last couple of years has been rapid. And if you're a leader, a business owner, an entrepreneur, you know exactly Exactly what I'm talking about. Every day it's something different and something new, but the one thing that I've learned in performing at the height of all of those roles has been that we must be resilient. In fact, it's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about, and it's the reason why my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free Resilient Leader Assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are.

Yeah, so I spent, this is 21 years now in sales and 18 of them were spent inside of corporate. And my last stop was as a VP of sales for a software collaboration company. My philosophy is anytime an organization asks me to do something, I'm going to do it if I can, number one, and I'm also gonna look for how can I use this to catapult me to where I want to go. And so I'm generally a very goal-oriented individual. Every year. Every year I write down all the things that I want to accomplish, right? And I have a document in a PowerPoint. It's about a 15-page PowerPoint. And if people don't have this, this has got to be your why. You've got to document your why. And for the longest time, I can't even remember when I started this, but for the longest time I've had 2 paths that I would take on my goal. Path number one would be a chief sales officer of an organization, or path number 2 would be a speaker and be on stage. So people have always asked me, well, which one do you want? Which one's your passion? I didn't care. Either one I was okay with, whichever direction my life took me, right? And so I always, anytime I was asked to do something in corporate, how can I use this to get the visibility I want to be able to get to the Chief Sales Officer position or to get to this other speaker's position, right? So when I came onto this company, they were a very traditional-based sales culture, cold calling and emailing, knocking on doors. And this was 5 years ago. And I came in and I'm like, first off, that's so old and archaic. Like, I don't even know if you can knock on business parks anymore without being thrown out, right? Like, usually there's security there. So, I told the organization, you guys are doing it all wrong, right? Let's get to the modern times with how the modern buyer is engaging. And the modern buyer is engaging through video, through social, through email, through text, through phone calling, through potentially networking events. You've got to have a diversified omnichannel strategy. So it took me about 9 months to get this whole program approved, but I ended up launching a digital sales strategy. And I remember I got an IM from our Executive Vice President of Worldwide Sales administrative assistant. I was on a call and she IM'd me and she said, Mario, are you available? Scott would like to talk. And I said, am I available now? She said, yes. I said, no, I'm on a call. She said, can you get off of it? I said, I'm on a call for another 15 more minutes. Can he wait? She said, no, he can't wait. He wants to speak to you now. And I'm like, Is there an agenda?

Like, what? Qué pasa?

Help me out here. And she said, he'll explain when he talks to you. How long will it take? I said, all right, give me 2 minutes if it's that pressing. So I get on the phone with him and I'm thinking, what is he gonna say? Like, shoot, did I do something? And so he says, Mario, I've got this $125,000 PO in front of me that you've put forward to get approved for this technology. And I'm like, oh God, that's what we're talking about. Okay, all right. I feel safe now, right? So he goes through, he says, in 2 minutes or less, tell me why I need to do this. So I give him my 2-minute spiel, it turns into a 20-minute spiel, and he says, all right, I'm gonna approve the funding of this program only if you sign up to be the executive sponsor. And I said, so you want me to take on basically a second full-time job and prove out the ROI on this program? And he's like, yes. And I said, so just to clarify, you want me to take on a second full-time job? He said, yes. All right, deal. So I thought about this and I thought, how can I use this as a platform to be able to gain visibility? And so we were teaching our sales teams how to create video, how to be able to use it for social, how to be able to create leads through social. And I'm like, I've got to be the teacher to 350 salespeople, right? I've got to be the leader. So I did that and I'm like, I'm going to use this to amplify the heck out of my brand. And the company, by the way, was 100% behind me. So as I publish content, the company was also tagging on, and I have 350 sales reps that could tag on, and I'm going to show by example, and I'm going to use this whole plan to be able to help bring my brand to life. So that was a 6-month-long period, and what I set out to do was to make this program ultra successful, and that's exactly what happened. We launched LinkedIn Sales Navigator, which was a platform that helps you to do better prospecting, and as far as I know, as of right now, Under my leadership, we were the first and only company to date to ever accomplish two things: 100% rep participation, which means 100% of our reps were using the platform and the tool and technology, and 100% of our reps had attributed one sales opportunity to the open pipeline— closed lost, closed won, or open pipeline. And that had never been done before. Never. So LinkedIn saw our progress and how successful we were doing it, and they invited me to speak At their annual users conference. And that was a 48-minute solo session speaking to other sales leaders about how we launched a program and how we need to move forward in taking this mindset of what old sales leadership thought process, the 40 and older, of how to do selling— gone. It's fundamentally changed. We need to be thinking differently to use this omnichannel approach. And if you're not, you're missing 90% of your buyer market because guess what? Only 10% are responding to phone calls. So I said, I need to nail, I need to freaking nail this presentation. And I came out and I did. I practiced and practiced and practiced, and I had all my talking points. I worked with marketing to go through it. I just brought the high energy. I was ready to go. 1 hour after I spoke, maybe it was 2 hours, but then 2 hours after I spoke, a CEO of a Fortune 100 company Sent me an email and asked if I would be willing to come fly in to speak to his head of marketing and his head of sales and himself for a half day to talk about how to launch a program. And I honestly thought it was a hoax, to be honest with you, because you usually don't get an email from a Fortune 100 CEO, right? So I got an email, I responded, 3 weeks later I was in his office and I spent half a day with him and 4 other people. the president of sales, the CMO, and the head of branding and social media. I remember in that room, they would ask me questions. Now, these individuals were definitely 55 and older. By the way, I'm 42, so I'm presenting these ideas. The CMO and the president of sales, ah, that won't work because, and whatever the reason was. Here I'm standing in front of these guys. They asked me to come in.

Right.

I got a job. What do I got to lose? So I would say, I respectfully disagree, and here's why. And I would challenge them. And then they would look at me in the face and be like, uh, like they didn't have anything to say. So those you can't see on the video, the CEO was sitting in the room with me and them, and I was standing up in front of the room, 3 of them sitting around the table, and his head would go right, left, right, left. And he'd just be— because we'd be going back and forth on various different topics. It was a ping pong. And like 7 times he would look at his CMO or his president of sales and said, you're wrong. And he said, continue. By the 3rd time this happened, I was now very uncomfortable in the room.

I bet.

So I thought, this is awkward.

You feel those little red dots that are like on your— moving around on your body and your face.

I'm like, I'm trying to win these guys over because I may be working with them. And that's essentially what it ended up being offered was a role to come on board and head up all of social media and to head up a digital sales program. Now mind you, I had zero marketing experience. Zero. But they wanted to give me all of social media for a Fortune 100, the whole entire department, the whole department for this Fortune 100, take over all of social media and digital selling for the sales organization. Now I respectfully declined because they wanted me to move somewhere into the middle of the country and I was not about to move out of beautiful California. That was kind of a shock to them. Nonetheless, I said, no, thank you, but no thank you. 4 days after I declined, the company I was with was bought by a private equity firm and they announced within 4 days after the acquisition that they were doing a 20% workforce reduction. I had made a decision a few years back before that that I was with a company that had 80,000 employees. When I left, there were 40,000 employees. I no longer wanted to work for a shrinking company. That was just my personal thing. So they gave me a package, and on January 3rd, I had a conversation with my son. It was a really funny conversation. It was called Dad, You Said LinkedIn Would Make You Money. And I wrote a blog article on January 5th. I published that on January 5th. And 4 days after I published that article, it had a video of me speaking inside there because it was about my son asking me, who was then 5 years old, about LinkedIn and how come I'm not working for LinkedIn and how you can use LinkedIn to be able to be found more. And he had actually watched my 48-minute presentation of speaking at LinkedIn twice on YouTube. I didn't know he knew anything about this, but apparently he did, right? So I published this article, and 4 days after I published the article, I received an InMail. For those of you who don't know what an InMail is, it's a message that you can send to somebody you're not connected to on LinkedIn from the Vice President of Worldwide Sales Operations from Fortune 100 number 2. And he says, I'm the 14th person to have received your article and your video. I watched your video, your 48-minute video, twice. I'd like to be able to invite you in to come help us launch a program. 5 days after that InMail, I receive a phone call from the head of America's marketing at Fortune 100 number 3. He said, you may not know this, but I was in your presentation. Well, I read your article and seeing that you're out of a job, loved your conversation with your son. I saw your presentation. I'd like to know if you'd like to help us since you're looking for a job. Literally 3 weeks later, January 27th, I have 2 signed statements of works. I'm thinking, I'll do this until I find my next gig because I'm looking for my next VP of sales role. I walk out of this office here. I go to my wife, her name is Shawna, and I tell her I got good news and I got bad news. And she's like, what's the bad news? And the bad news is we have to start a company. And she's like, what? And I'm like, we have to start a company. She's like, what's the good news? The good news is we're fully funded.

You have the next year's worth of work already lined up.

Yeah, yeah. So it was a huge pivot point. My wife today, I tell you, because as an entrepreneur there's a lot of unsettledness, like I've invested a lot of time and money and hours into starting and launching my own company. We've gone through several now acquisitions and mergers and bringing people into Vengreso, and it's been all-consuming. And so—

You guys started, you had 7 co-founders involved in Vengreso, right?

There were 7.

And I'd love to take this tack if we can. So first of all, this is rich because first of all, yes, the great upside to being your own boss and to having your own business. And there's also, as you said, daily understanding what those challenges are. So just so we're clear that it's never The grass is never greener, just so we're clear about that for everybody. It doesn't matter if you're in corporate now and you're thinking, oh, that's what I want to do. I want to do what Mario's doing. Okay, the grass is greener there, or you're out on your own, an entrepreneur, you'd like to get back into corporate and have that be the stability in your life. The grass is never greener. You're going to make your bed or mow your lawn wherever you are, and it can be a beautiful lawn in either place because clearly, you're in demand. At that point, you had skill set, you had something special going on, you could have stayed in corporate, but you decided to take that leap, not to get back inside and take a paycheck or a sales commission, you started a company. So, what was that like? And what were some of the growing pains you had with 7 heads of this, whatever, multi-hydra monster? Yeah.

I mean, so, well, first off, I started on my own. And on my own, which was that January timeframe I mentioned to you, within 9 months, I started hitting all the sales influencer stats and lists and all that stuff. And then, I came up with this idea and I said, There's got to be a bigger, faster, better way because all I'm doing is selling myself and I just don't have enough time in the day to sell myself. How do I scale this? How do I build this to scale? That's my mindset, was always built to scale. So that's when I said, ah, what if I were to bring together some of the top influencers in the world underneath one corporate umbrella and form the largest digital sales training company in the world? Nobody else is doing that right now. All right, let's see if I can do it. So I came up with this idea. I went out and I was on the advisory board for another startup company and asked them, who do you use for your management consultant to put all this structure together? They gave me who they used and I called him up and said, this is what I'm looking to do. He was like, oh, that's a brilliant idea. Service-based companies do it all the time. In fact, if you look at 2080, which is a private equity firm, they have done this in terms of roll-ups. They buy a bunch of service-based companies, they roll them up under one portfolio and everybody works together and helps each other out, blah, blah, blah. So it's like, it's a standard protocol. He's like, but your stuff is new and it's sexy. It's not sales training. There's 200 sales training companies that are out there. Yours is all about the pre-hello, whereas everybody else is primarily focused from hello onward, right? So he says, we'll just format this into a roll-up. Accounting firms use this, law firms use this, service-based professional service companies use this, management consulting companies, you're good to go. So put the whole entire program together, did all the contract work, all the pitch decks, brought everybody together, and we started out with 7 founders in the firm, and now at present, we have the final 4. So, we've lost 3 individuals in the organization. Now, we lost them for many different reasons. Timing wasn't right. Maybe it wasn't a good fit, culture, whatever the case might be. Every one of these items has been a setback for the organization. From the outside, no setback. It's been phenomenal growth on top of that because we remain laser-focused on what the mission is. When we all came together, the mission was, still is today, how to help salespeople create more conversations through digital selling. Period. End of discussion. For everybody else who didn't want to be part of the club, no problem. What I learned very quickly early on was, in order to build to scale a company, the first thing you have to figure out is the who. Who are the right players on the team? Who are the individuals that are going to get you to where you need to go? Who are the individuals that support the mission? Who are the individuals that are going to be part of a team. And if you don't have the right who, they gotta go. That's it. They either self-select or you gotta move them out of the business. And it's business, it's not personal. I love every one of the people that were part of the program. I'm thankful for their being part of the journey. And guess what? It wasn't right for them. And guess what? Vengreso is growing leaps and bounds and we are still the largest digital sales training company. So when you have those pivot points where you lose a co-founder, you lose somebody, Think of it as a great thing. It's a good thing actually, right? I mean, maybe a temporary setback. You may have lost a skill. You may have lost something that you really needed, but you can always get it somewhere else. And you got to think through these setbacks as opportunities to be able to ask the question, was that the who that I needed on the team to begin with?

Yeah. I mean, you've got to be resilient. I mean, this is something that is so near and dear to our work and our hearts as well is the requirement. And I think it is a business and a life requirement these days that you develop resilience. There are people who are just sort of naturally resilient or more resilient, they seem to be, but that is a skill that if I was going to embed the DNA in everyone across the board, it would be this DNA strand of resilience. And so what you're talking about, and in essence, the pivot, what creates successful pivots is your ability to become resilient in the face of any of those seeming changes. So I'm a big believer in rituals. In rituals for resilience, creating rituals to help us to learn resilience, because the research on this is clear. Whether it's your genetics, as some people think people are born more resilient or they've just got that genetically going for them, or the epigenetic theory that this is a learned, this is an acquired, something that is a skill or a way of being that can be learned and acquired and programmed even. So to me, rituals are a way that we are able to reprogram or program ourselves to become able to bounce back quicker, able to learn from setbacks. One of the most powerful questions that I've learned, and actually learned this from my wife, Randy, about resilience is to ask that question, what is the creative opportunity? What is the creative opportunity when one of your business partners, whether they were a co-founder or someone else in your business, decides to say, I got to go, or, this isn't right, this isn't working? What's the creative opportunity? So Let me circle back to rituals. What are some of the things that you do on a consistent basis that help you to either see the creative opportunities or get your head straight, get your mindset straight, get your body right, whatever it is that helps you to be able to be resilient in the face of disruption, adversity, or whatever you want to call it, change even?

So I'm going to be totally raw and authentic here, and that is I wish I had really good rituals that I could depend on. Part of this is natural. Like, there's a natural piece of me that always thinks, is the glass half full or half empty? For me, I'm always trying to think, how is the glass half full? So that's about your personal mindset. And I think if you don't have that mindset, you gotta go and find the tools that are gonna help you get that type of mindset. Because to your point, whether you lose a founder, whether you lose a person, hey, we're losing an individual in our organization that plays a critical role. They're not a founder, they're not a partner, but they play a critical role. It sucks. As a small business, when you lose an individual, it's a huge empty void. Right? So you gotta be thinking through what's the opportunity. Yeah, it sucks, and after 20 minutes you gotta be like, all right, what's the solution? So you really gotta be focused in on if you don't have that natural the glass is half full thinking, the optimistic viewpoint as opposed to the pessimistic viewpoint, the resiliency which obviously comes naturally with most salespeople anyways, especially if you have a quota, then you need to find something that's gonna help you get that. The other thing too is I used to weigh 200 and I think it was 50 pounds, almost 250 pounds. I had a 42-inch waist and I'm only 5'9, so I was way overweight. I lost 60 pounds, got down to 180 pounds, and then I gained back up to 220. Now, I like to call myself an Oompa Loompa. That's what I call myself. And so, now that I've actually shed off 12 pounds to get back down to my 180 weight is where I'm going, my wife asked me, how do you feel? And I'm like, physically, I don't feel any different. Everything still feels the same. But mentally, I'm like, I look better. I feel better. Right? So, you got to think about the things, and I think this is more realization for me. Is you got to think of the things that are going to help make you feel better and make you look better so that you actually perform better. And I think those are super important that you be in tune with those things and then act upon it. So fortunate for me, I don't have any per se rituals, no yoga, no meditation, no working out every single day like many other people do. And I'm not saying it's wrong. I'm just saying I have a natural knack to thinking that way. The glass is half full and anybody with a half empty mindset, it just That is a problem. It's a sore spot for me because I can't think that way. I just don't allow myself to think that way. And so I generally try to purge those individuals out so that I don't become weighed down. And so that's just for me what I do if you think about a ritual. And now I'm realizing that especially as you get into your 40s that you really start thinking about health in a different way.

Yes. Well, a couple of things I think that are important. One is that you said earlier, and this I think is a ritual, it's a different kind of a ritual, but you said document your why. And that's something you do. You document your why. It starts every year and it's a yearly ritual. It's not a daily ritual in a sense that way, but we talked a little earlier about Jim Rohn. So, the shout out to Jim Rohn here is, the bigger the why, the easier the how. That's his quote, I believe.

Absolutely. Yep.

And the bigger the why. So, being able to document your why and understand and really be able to express your why. When we work with people, we're more or less, or more often than not, we're working with people on how they express themselves. You want to be a better salesperson, you've got to be able to express yourself clearly. Not just clearly, but powerfully, passionately, authentically, all these kinds of things. So the art of public speaking, the art of being able to speak clearly and effectively is a key. And one of those things that we work with people on is just getting clear or getting access to your why. Because when you can access your why, when you can access this, the part of you that is at the depth of your heart space, people feel you differently. Even if you're still quiet, it doesn't mean you have to become something that you're not. All of a sudden you're loud and boisterous and all that kind of thing. I'm an introvert. People are shocked sometimes, maybe not so much when I say that, but a lot of people who are in Hollywood, a lot of speakers, a lot of people who are in the public eye are actually introverts. And it's an interesting thing because when you've got a powerful why, when you know at a deep core, in your core, why you do something, why you want to do something. As you said, the art of helping. When your insides tell you, every part of you tells you that you want to help other people or help the world in some way, you can get over things like the fact that you're naturally shy or that you'd prefer to be alone. I mean, that's what introvert really is about. It's about where you regain your energy. I regain my energy and my strength by going internally and by even sometimes just being myself or in small groups. Whereas someone who's more outgoing, an extrovert, they gain their energy by going and getting to a club or being in a big room with a lot of people. 100%. Exactly. So, to me, that's a ritual that from what you said, I see you do, that you document your why. And obviously, what you said about seeing the world differently, the mindset of half empty or half full as a way of looking at things. Hey, listen, if you're one of those people just naturally sort of gravitates toward the what's missing and what's wrong and We can call it negative, but it's just where your mind goes. There are certain people who can look at a situation and go, I see what's missing. I see what's wrong. And we need that kind of critical thinking. If you go, oh, this is what's right, everything is always what's right, well, maybe you missed the parts that actually are in need of some assistance. So I'd say Jim Rohn or Zig Ziglar or any of the other people that have really proven themselves over time. My mentor would be Emmet Fox. And it's more of a spiritual Leadership, I'd say. But, find someone. There's so much content on the internet, as you well know, right? There are so many things that you can find that can help you to see things a bit differently. Hopefully, this show and our conversation has helped people to see things a little differently, certainly in the arena of sales and not just the mindset of sales, but also the future of sales, which in many ways feels like it's gravitating toward the digital side. Your company's committed to that. We'll have full show notes about not only our conversation but also Vengreso and the work that you guys are doing to help meet people in that place. And I love what you said earlier about the pre-hello and the fact that there's a whole series of things that you could be doing, that all of us can be doing, to tee up the hello, to get ready for what a hello looks like. And not just a superficial hello, like as in, today I'm going to cold call 100 people I'm prepared to hear no 99 times just to hear that one yes.

One yes. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm not sure that paradigm is wrong, but it's certainly an older paradigm. What if instead of that, you spent your time actually in pre-hello mode?

Teaming up 10 hellos.

Hello, team up 10 authentic hellos. Like, it's not so that there's a meaningful conversation and an opportunity to open a relationship.

Yeah.

That's the result of that. So I've so enjoyed our talk today. Bro,

I'm so glad that you had me. Thank you, Adam. And thank you for anybody else. Thanks for listening into the stories.

Way cool. And The Art of Helping is going to be Mario Martinez's new book. It's on its way. It's in pre-development right now.

There you go. I'm going out to GoDaddy right now.

I love it. Here's what I want to do as we conclude this episode, just to remind everybody what a blessing— as we started the episode, what a blessing it is that we woke today. We got to wake up and Have another day. I wish that more than anything in the world. I wish that for everyone, that for all of us, that we get to wake up again tomorrow. And as we do that, the challenge that I'll put out there is that you take 10 seconds, just literally 10 seconds at the start of your day. As you put your feet on the floor, you can recognize and realize in truth that not everybody gets to do that. Not everybody gets to start their day at all. As you take that first breath of the day, And you're aware of it, be also aware of the fact that other people will be taking their last breath in that very same moment. That's no joke. That's no BS. That's the truth of it. I really hope you're enjoying this episode of the Change Proof Podcast. If you've not yet gone out and gotten your own copy of Change Proof, it's not too late. You can get your copy right now by going to changeproof.com and not only getting the book and all the bonuses there, but getting access to our proprietary resilience assessment tool. It'll just take you 3 minutes to do, and it's something that will really help you to utilize the book even more effectively to create practices and rituals and habits that will increase your mental Again, go to changeproof.com to get your copy today. To be grateful even for that in that moment is special. Take 10 seconds to put your feet on the floor and feel gratitude and appreciation for yourself. And if you're so inclined to say the words, thank you, I love you, I'm grateful, I'm grateful. I love my life. I love my life. I love my life. I wish that for all of you, Mario. Again, thank you so much for being on the show today, brother.

Hey, man, thanks for having me. I appreciate it so much.

Way cool. Ciao, everybody. We'll see you soon.

Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have the tools and greater insights to navigate your own pivot. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode. And leaving your comments over at adammarkel.com/podcasts. For more tips, strategies, and support as you consciously pivot into a new business and lifestyle you love, join our Pivot Community on Facebook at pivotfb.com.