5 Practical Steps To Improving Your Sales Confidence with Fred Joyal

Hey. Hey. Welcome to the Bullpen Sessions podcast. A podcast for driven insurance professionals who are looking to reach their full potential in their insurance careers. This is the place where we help motivated insurance professionals build the right mindset and tools to create more credibility with their target prospects. I'm your host, Andy Neary, former professional athlete turned insurance advisor. Each week you will learn tips and strategies to help you execute a clear prospecting game plan every single week. Clarity creates action. When you're clear, you're confident. When you're confident, consistent. When you're consistent, you are unstoppable. All right, let's dive into today's episode. Hey. Hey. Welcome back to the Bullpen Sessions podcast. My name is Andy Neary and this is episode 278. This week I am joined by Fred Joyle. Fred is the author of Super Bold From Underconfident to charismatic in 90 days. He's also a very sought after keynote speaker. He's done over 450 keynote talks in his career. I wanted to have Fred on. I've met Fred in a mastermind that we are both members of and Fred has a skill set to talk about being bold. And for my audience, who is often finding themselves in uncomfortable sales situations, being bold is key. And in this episode, Fred shares a ton of nuggets about what it takes to be bold in your sales career. Now let me give you a little hint. You do not need to wake up or, excuse me, be born with the gift of being bold. It is a muscle you can develop, just like you develop your muscles in the gym. What Fred says bold people never stop themselves. They let other people try. In this episode, you are going to learn about his pride acronym and how you can use the acronym of preparation, relaxing, insight, dosage and everyday action to grow your boldness every single day. And he even includes some daily exercises you can implement to help you grow your bold muscle. So tune in. You're going to love this episode. And if you are an insurance producer who's looking to use keynote speaking to grow your business, you're going to love the insight Fred shares on how you can take your naturally born ways of being an introvert and apply them to keynote speaking to your advantage. Remember, boldness is not something you're born with, it's something you build over time. So let's tune in. You're going to love this interview with Fred. Here we go. Hey, hey. Welcome to the Bullpen Sessions podcast. Fred Joyle, I am excited to have you on. Welcome, man.

Thank you. Great to be here.

Andy Fred, this is. I'm excited to have this conversation. You and I met at.

Call it a mastermind or I don't know what we call it, but Brand Builders Group. We're both members of Brand Builders Group. And I love your story. And I was, you know, as I look to bring content to my viewers, who are primarily insurance producers, I want to make sure we're bringing content that is very relevant. And one area where you have expertise I think is very relevant to my audience. You are the author of the book Super Bold from Underconfident to charismatic in 90 days. This is what we're going to talk about. Because what I love about your story, Fred, people, if they met you today and I've met you in our BBG settings and I'm like, this is an outgoing dude. But you weren't born that way.

No.

Talk about that for a second because I think a lot of people are believe salespeople are just born extroverts. That's not the case.

No. I was painfully introverted to the point where the first time somebody gave me the opportunity to do sales, they handed me a desk and a list of people and said, just start calling these clients, see if they want to do business with. I couldn't. I couldn't make a single cold call. I couldn't do dial the phone. And so. And that was symbolic of many aspects of my life where I was hesitating, missing opportunities. I was painfully introverted and behaved in a shy way.

And I worked my way out of it by emulating bull people and then eventually figured out how I could teach people this. Because a lot of times if some people are really good at something, they don't know how they got there. I know how I got him this way. And somebody could do it much faster than I did it. And that's what I help people to do.

You know, I'm curious because if, you know, the audience heard the preview of your, of your background and a lot of it was in the dental industry.

Yeah.

What led you to writing the book Super Bold and really studying that, I guess call it that skill set of being bold when it matters most.

Well, people started referring to me as, as an extrovert and bold and even charismatic, which is why that's in the title. And, and being charismatic just means that you, your energy is so positive and outgoing that it draws people in that, you know, you're visibly comfortable in all sorts of situations and, and not worried about what people are thinking and that that attracts people.

It's.

It's and also you're able to really connect with people. And, and that. That's a, A powerful life skill. And, and so.

For me, it was. I wanted people to know this. And actually the, the seminal moment was I was coaching a group of high school students in a seminar a friend of mine was running, and I, I, so I, I listed 10 life skills that I thought they needed, and one of them is that boldness is a superpower. And I really believe that's true, that it, it can have an incredible impact on your life and, and, and on the impact you have on the world. And they said, yeah, that's great. How, how. How would we do that? And I thought, oh, I better figure out how I did it so I can teach them.

Yeah. No, I, you know, when I think about.

My childhood, you know, I mentioned that you and I, I feel like, had a similar childhood. You said in the book you were a nerdy kid with glasses. I was not only nerdy, not only did I have glasses, very overweight.

So I had beautiful, nice combination there.

It is a great combination. Right? And I, I actually hate. I feared attention as a kid because all of it usually was negative. And instead of trying to stand out, be extroverted, all I wanted to do is fit in. And you said something in the book. I, I made a note of a comment. You said, if you could give your child one thing, what would it be? And you said, boldness. Talk about that. Why is it important that we encourage our youth today to be more bold and give them that positive feedback that it's okay to be bold? What can that do for a child's life?

I think it's very hard to know at that young age how short life actually is. And that what happens is, if you don't think about that, somebody else decides your life for you. They let you know, and it's, you know, it's. Life's too short to let other people decide what you're capable of. It's. It's too short to, to blame anybody else for your happiness. And so.

We learned, especially as teenagers, that we worry about what everybody thinks. And except for a few bold people who figure out that there's very few people's opinions that should actually matter to them, because people are not thinking about you anywhere near as much as you think they are. They're thinking about themselves, and they're having judgments about you that are wrong. Just like I have it, I do this all the time. I see people, I go, oh, that guy should never have a beard. He Looks ridiculous. You know, he shouldn't wear that hat. She shouldn't dress like that. He needs to lose weight. He's going to have a heart attack. I, we do all this stuff naturally, and I've. I, when I get to know these people, because I deliberately do it more and more now, I find out I'm wrong about 97 of the time. So I just transferred that and said that's what people are doing with me. They're judging me by my haircut, my glasses, my shirt, by what kind of phone I use, like, everything, the car I drive, none of it defines who I am. And so when you can let that go, that's incredibly liberating. And then you can chase your dreams, because that's what. If you don't chase your dreams, they will decay. Just like I like to use the teeth analogy. It's like, you know.

You don't reach your dreams because they were too hard. You don't reach them because you didn't get to them. You hesitated and you talked to you, you said, I'm not worthy of this. I'm going to fail at that. I don't want to be embarrassed. I don't want people to laugh at me. Both people don't worry about that stuff. Both people.

Know that being embarrassed is actually a choice that you can make. You can actually laugh it off and whatever happened that other people would be embarrassed about or would be embarrassed for you, you don't have to be embarrassed about. And that's a, that's just a mental shift. It's, it's, it's just a decision that you make to, to choose to react differently. And when you can do that, you stop hesitating, and you stop hesitating when it matters most. And the result is you don't get a regret. You get an experience. And a lot of times it's an amazing experience that's unexpected. And that's what bold people have learned is sometimes they just go in. And here's the other thing is people say, well, I have to be confident to be bold. If I were more confident, I would be bolder. Bold people do all sorts of stuff that they're not confident how it's going to come out. What they've learned is that the bold action is what builds your confidence. That's the formula is I learned to be bold by being uncomfortable, by doing things that I was not in situations I was not confident in. Walk up to that woman and talk to her. Go into my boss and explain to him why I want to make more money, dial that phone and make that sales pitch, all of those things. Uncomfortable the whole time I'm doing it. But eventually it didn't show because I, they were like, I kept going in and I kept getting rewarded for making the bold action. So what happened is my comfort zone got bigger and bigger and that's, and it's, and it's something that happens gradually, but you can make it happen. That's the most important thing to realize you are in control of that.

Well, and I feel like if I'm hearing you right, it's almost like you take on this identity of a character. Right. Even if you're not bold by nature, which most people aren't, putting yourself in those difficult situations, those uncomfortable situations, whether that be picking up the phone to call that big prospect or find yourself in a conference room with a huge opportunity. It's almost like you're getting in character a little bit. Am I hearing that right?

I mean, yeah, you're different. Behaving on for size. A lot of people fall into this trap. It's like, I'm just not that way. It's like, you don't have to be you. You know, you don't, you're not shy at the Thanksgiving dinner with your family. You behave in a shy way in certain situations and you don't have to. You can feel uncomfortable and be pretending like you are comfortable. One of the things the mantras I try to teach people is just tell yourself I belong everywhere. And when you behave that way, amazingly people act like you belong there too. I mean, I recently was at a meeting and it was all of These high end CEOs owned huge businesses and stuff like that. I didn't belong in that room at all. And I wasn't dressed, I didn't have a blazer even to walk into the room. But I thought, well, I'm going to go in there and you know, there's a couple of guys I know and I'm going to chat with them and I, and I just start wandering around the room. It's the cocktail party portion of the dinner. And at one point this woman comes up who's clearly running the meeting and she says, can I get you a badge? And I said, well, I'm actually, I haven't been invited to the meeting.

I said, but I know a few of the people here. And instead of kicking me out, which is, you know, what could have happened, she said, oh, well.

When we go to dinner there won't be any seat. So you'll at that point you'll probably have to leave. I said, oh, I'm fine with that. I just wanted to chat with a few of these people during the cocktail hour. That's totally fine. She gives me a badge with my name on it, and then she comes up to me when it's dinner time, and she says, several people had to live leave. Feel. Feel free to sit down and have dinner with us. And this is like 100 people that I could have easily said I don't belong here, but because I didn't go that way. I mean, I had great conversations, but I just got to be there.

And nobody decided I didn't belong there, including the person whose decision that should be.

Well, and there's something you said there that I don't want to get overlooked, which was. Not only did you put yourself in that position. I'm not. I'm not naive for a second to believe it worked out the way it did for a reason. Not only did you say, it's okay, I don't have to be here for dinner, I just want to network. And you leaned into that discomfort of being in a place you technically shouldn't have been. It also worked out in your favor that people left and there were spots open and you got to have dinner anyways. I feel like the people. The fortune is in the bold, right? The fortune favors the bold. And the people who take those actions that are uncomfortable things tend to have a way of working themselves out foreign.

It's amazing, the doors that open.

And I. And I think the other thing I tell people is that.

I ask them this. I say, who stops you the most in your life? And the. And the correct answer is you. I mean, you. You will stop yourself way before anybody else in all sorts of situations with the stories you tell yourself about how you're going to be rejected or embarrassed or I don't belong here. All of those things. Bold people are never the ones who stop themselves. They let somebody else try, and they know that most of the time somebody else won't stop them. You know, in my book, I have a whole bunch of exercises that, that people can do to build their boldness, muscle. And one of them is if you. If you see a sign on a door that says employees only, this is just an exercise. Go in. If it's unlocked, go in. Just to figure out and realize that nothing bad will happen. Nobody's going to beat you to death. Nobody's going to arrest you. I've done it several times. Nobody says anything because they assume you belong there, because you Walked in. The most I've had is somebody saying, can I help you? And one and I. And people.

Maybe. I think one person actually said, I'm sorry, this is for employees only. And I said, oh, I'm an employee, just not here. And they. And they actually had to laugh. And then I left. But it's like, you know, yeah, it's. Nothing bad happened. People say, oh, that was so. That should have been so embarrassing.

Why?

Because they told me to leave. I was in their employee lounge.

No, I mean, what you're saying, Fred, just hits home for me because I look at the first, probably first 10 years of my insurance career and just like I just like my childhood, I spent too much of that time living in fear. Fear of judgment, fear of comparison, fear of failure. And therefore I never tried to stand out. I just wanted to fit in. And it is the reason I never came close to hitting my sales goals because I wasn't willing to be bold enough to put myself out there, to try to put myself in the right room, because I had all those fears. And what I love about your book, you know, you've got a very easy to understand acronym that we're going to talk about here. And I want to go through it letter by letter because I think it's got some very important tips for insurance producers. The audience listening to this podcast that they can use to be more comfortable to put them put themselves in sales positions or in front of prospects they never thought they could get in front of because of that discomfort.

Going back to what you and I talked about at the beginning, most people are not designed to be bold and extroverted. You can prepare yourself to be bold given the circumstances in the situation. Which preparation is actually the first letter of your acronym? Pride? P, R, I D E. Preparation. If I've got a producer listening in, Fred going, okay, I know I could be putting myself out there more, being a little more bold. How does one prepare themselves to be bold?

One of the. There's two parts to it. Okay, so preparation, preparation for that situation. Let's say if, if you're selling something, you want to know your product backwards and forwards. So you need that preparation for. But you also need the phrases that pay. You need to know those, those simple things that are, you know, selling is emotional. People make emotional decisions and then you give them a rational reason to make that decision, but they're buying on emotion. Like, do you really want your wife to have to figure out how to pay the mortgage if something suddenly happens to you? Because that could happen to you at 39 years old. It happens all the time. That's. You got to be prepared to say those things that are emotional triggers. The, and, and, and that's just. And, and if you're going to walk up to a stranger and just talk to them, prepare what you're going to say. Nobody trains us for these social skills. They train us for everything else. But just prepare. Like I'm going to have a compliment that I'm going to offer that person.

But the other thing about preparation is you want to build your boldness muscle on an ongoing basis so that you're bold when it matters most, when it, when it, when it is going to have a payoff. When it is important to step up, speak up, stand up, ask for the order, shut up. You know, like, as we know, one of the great things in sales is you. You. When you, when you present a close, you have to be. It takes boldness to shut up. Because the reason you're. You talk through the clothes and, and don't wait for the answer is because you're afraid that, that you didn't. Of that silence. Bold people just, they'll, they'll wait you out for five minutes.

Yeah. And then you, you give, You've given me so many. There's so many examples in my head that have come up in my career or others that I've been a part of where you just completely nailed it on the head. I've seen producers, a mentor of mine, talk themselves out of a sale because they just don't know how to sit in that silence and shut up.

Yeah.

And what I loved about what you said there, Fred, is being bold sometimes means shutting up.

Yeah. Yeah.

In the other side of it, though, that I. You made me think about was the fact that again, people aren't born with the gift of boldness. It is a muscle you can develop over time.

Yes. And some people, they didn't have it programmed out of them at an early age. So they behave in a bold way because they have found the positive feedback loop. They have found that very. Nobody's going to stop them. They have found that unexpectedly great things happen. So their default mode is boldness because it never got wiped out. Other people had it programmed out either as a child. Speak when you're spoken to. Don't be a show off. How many people have been told that why not show off? Why not draw attention to yourself? Why not be somebody who can light up a room? Why not have be the one somebody calls charismatic? What's wrong? You know, you Know who has a problem with that? People who are jealous of bold people. Oh, look at him. He's a show off. He's an attention whore. He needs that to feel good about himself. It's like, nope, he's just, he likes people and he's chasing his dreams. You know, that's, you're. I, I go back to your dreams decay because you stopped yourself from getting to them. And they, they could be, they don't have to be big dreams. They could be just, I, I really want a great Nate. I really want to be a great parent. Some people are afraid to be a bold parent and say to their kid, you know, you're not going out, you know, or you, you're going to get a phone when you're 16 and not before. I don't care if all your friends have one because it's not good for you, in my opinion. And I'm in charge of your growth until you walk out this door for good. And that, that takes boldness. Doesn't take boldness to micromanage and helicopter your parents. That's all fear based.

Hi, it's Andy Neary, and thank you for listening to the Bullpen Sessions podcast. Did you know the ideas shared on this show are things we actually specialize in helping you implement? If you're an insurance professional and you want to turn your credibility into consistent client acquisition, visit completegameconsulting.com and schedule a free strategy call. Again, that's completegameconsulting.com to request your free strategy call. All right, let's jump back into today. Today's podcast episode. Yeah, I, I, you make me. I think you gave me a little epiphany because everybody has somebody in their life that they were, you know, as a great salesman and they say that he or she could sell a ketchup popsicle to a woman in white gloves. Right? But what we're really saying is that person probably just doesn't have that filter of don't be bold. They're just naturally, they're able to just go out and be bold, talk to anybody, say anything. And again, good things tend to happen when you be bold. Where most of us, I could probably say, myself included, had the boldness kicked out of us as kids. And I don't think it was ever done by design. It's just the way things happen when you're a kid. You're told to shut up or you're told to be quiet. You're told to don't speak up, be seen, not heard. Right. All these Things. And eventually the school system, I'll say, in many ways, kicks it out of you.

And then, by the way, well, think about just this. What stops a lot of people is a fear of failure.

Yes.

Because we. We are graded the F. The, the. The brutal F. You know, except for bold people. Bold people go like, failure is just information. Just. Just step up. That just means I'm closer to my goal. And, and so they don't process rejection as something personal. They just. They regard it as, oh, this isn't the right situation. I don't have to take any rejection personally because I can remain whole. That person doesn't really know me. The number of people that really know me, I never have to worry about being rejected by them because I know their love is real and true, and they know I'm fallible and. And human. And so. But other people rejecting me just like, you know, I got a cold call this morning, this guy. And I actually stupidly answered it. And, and. And the guy was trying to sell me some vacation stuff. And. And I just said, yeah, I gotta go.

He's not gonna take that personally. He's gonna. He's gonna do the next call because he knows he's got to do a hundred of them to get somebody who's going to talk to him. But, you know, who talks to him. The person he can actually close. I saved him time. He was never going to close me. So that's the story he tells himself, which is actually true, that this guy doesn't hate me. I'm not a bad person. He just is not the right client right now.

Well, now. And I think you're. You're doing such a good job of describing again. I think when people hear the word bold, they immediately think of somebody who's gregarious, loud, lights up the room, right? The guy that everybody's looking over there, he's telling the jokes and so forth. But bold doesn't always have to be what's coming out of your mouth. When I think of bold, the way you're describing it now, I think about experiences in my life. Here's a great example. When I started this business, I remember that moment, Fred, where I used to be deathly afraid of failing, but I remember the moment. I had a horrible day. Everything went wrong. I lost a couple clients, and it was a day full of failure. But I remember going to bed that night, excited to wake up and do it all over again. And it was that moment that I realized I can accept failure. It's just a sign. I need to change or get better. And I think people wouldn't view that as a vision of boldness, but it is.

Yeah, it's, it's that willingness to fail, knowing that that's the only way to growth is failure. You learn to walk by trying and falling like a thousand times.

Yep.

And you know, you learn to talk by talking funny. You learn, you know, you know, and whatever it is, you weren't good at it. If you wanted to play an instrument, you sucked at it at the beginning. Or, or, and, and if, if you didn't, if you weren't magically, instantly gift gifted and skilled, you stopped. You stopped. You.

Yep.

Because you, you. Oh, I wanted to be good at this way before. You're good at it.

Yeah.

And you know, some people are more naturally talented than others, but most people I know who are successful just worked harder and, and learned from their failures. There's a lot of people who are naturally gifted who don't learn a lot. You know, I know people with really high cues, high IQs, that school came really easy to them. So they never learned how to study, they never learned how to gather information because they could breeze through school and all of a sudden they get out there and had to face the challenges of how to learn other skills and they didn't have any learning abilities. So it's, you know, it's, it's. And it's. Again, you're, you're so true about. It's not being loud and show offy and drawing attention to yourself. That's more of a narcissistic thing. Bold people, they're not hesitating to chase their dreams or to achieve what they're trying to do. And in that moment, they're not letting somebody else's fantasized opinion of them stop them. And it, so it takes boldness to just accept rejection. Not now. It could be.

I like to really bring this home because this exemplifies what you're talking about. It takes boldness to be kind. How many times do people stop themselves because they say, oh, that person. They're not, they're not going to want me to do that. Or, or what, what if, what if they react negatively to me? I was, I was in the airport and I was watching this woman, she's got a winter coat on and she's trying to pull her backpack on and I'm behind her and I see it and I just reach over and I pull the strap of her backpack up on her shoulder as an act of kindness. Now she could have said, get Away from me, please.

But.

But what she said was, oh, thank you. I was trapped, and I was willing to have her, you know, I don't know what headspace she's in to be, you know, terrified of men or terrified of blonde people or whatever. And she would have said, just, yeah, just leave me alone. I wouldn't have taken that on. I would have said I offered her an act of kindness. I was not assaulting or molesting her. I was just helping her put her backpack on. And 99 times out of 100, if your intentions are good in your kindness, they react that way.

Yeah. And I think that's actually a big deal nowadays with what you're seeing as societal norms. When you're out in public and you see something good or bad, not acknowledging or not supporting, not helping. Right. How many videos have we seen now of somebody getting beaten up or robbed literally in the day, in, you know, in the middle of the day in public, and people don't do anything about it because I've got to mind my own business. Being bold is step stepping up and helping that person or saying something to somebody, acknowledging somebody who needs to be acknowledged. Those are all forms of boldness. And, you know, going back to your pride acronym, we talked about P being preparation. This is the one I really like, because I'd love your insight on this. R is relaxing.

Yes.

And you talk about reducing anxiety before putting yourself in a social encounter, which in our industry could be that big sales meeting. How can a producer. What can they do to relax themselves before putting themselves in this situation where they could be talking to the largest prospect they've ever had?

Well, this is. At first, I'll tell you what doesn't work is somebody telling you, just relax.

That's. That never worked for me as a child when my mom would say that. But the fact of the matter is, you can control your state, first of all, by checking your physiology and seeing where you're tensing up. Because when we're nervous, we tense up. We'll even stop breathing and. Okay. And I think this is very primal. I think when we were out on the African plain and we were in danger, we stopped breathing so that the animal that was chasing us wouldn't hear us breathe. But I think. And this is the thing, we have the same physical reaction to psychological danger as we do to real danger. The body doesn't differentiate it when the brain is. Does this. So relax your physiology and then control your breathe. Before I go on a big stage, you know, 5,000 people, I'm going to. I'm backstage. Doing what? A breathing exercise where I vibrate the vagus nerve by taking a deep breath in and then just going ha.

In a long, slow note. You do that three times. All of a sudden you've calmed yourself. And when you realize you're in control of your state.

Mentally, that calms you as well. And all of a sudden your anxiety turns into energy. And that's powerful. When you realize, I don't want to feel dull and droopy, I want to feel energized. And I can turn all of my anxiety into energy just by controlling.