See it, Solve it, Sell it
1 Feb 2024 · 17 min
Brendon Burchard on recognizing opportunities, solving problems, and selling your value. He stresses personal accountability and persistence, arguing you shouldn't diminish what you offer just because others don't appreciate it yet.
What happens is we get in our routines of specific tasks without seeing the bigger problems. Solving it and then selling it. This is what entrepreneurs do. They see a possibility. Some of you have such an unbelievable offer. You worked so hard to build a program, and you launched it once. If you added value and somebody didn't appreciate it, don't then diminish your value. You do not stop loving because someone else doesn't love you. Right? That is defeatism. That is lowering yourself to the conduct of others. You got to see the possibility. You got to solve the problem, and you got to sell it. See it, solve it, sell it. See it, solve it, sell it. Now, I know not everyone in the room is entrepreneur, so let me just start with a regular job. I had a regular job out of school. My first job. It was hard because over 40,000 employees worked at this company that I joined. 40,000. I was just a cog, and I was a cog from Montana, so no one valued me. It was just like, what are we gonna do with this kid? He can do anything. He's like a Swiss army knife, but he doesn't do anything. I mean, what are we gonna do with him? He's. I mean, I was an expressive. I didn't know how to. I was just dumb. I was a kid out of school, and so I didn't find my place. And it was so hard for the first couple years until I realized, you know what? I need to do more than the task assigned to me. I need to go the extra mile. I need to come to work every day and not do things First. I need to come to work and think of what are the problems these teams are facing, what are the problems the partners have at this company? And what I need to do is solve that problem, not do the thing they told me to do, only I need to do the thing they told me to do. And then I need to go, what are the challenges they're facing? This partner, this manager, this person over here, and how can I help them solve that? Not do my tasks, solve problems beyond my tasks. Okay? This partner has this challenge with this client, all right? I don't know how to deal with that, but there's 40,000 people here. Somebody must know how to do this. So then I'd pick up the phone, I'd connect with somebody and be like, hey, how have you solved this problem before? Or I'd go to two team members. I'm like, hey, our manager's dealing with this. How can we solve this? And then I would go with that. Idea from the team or somebody else, and I'd sell that to the partner, the manager. I'd say, hey, I see that we're struggling with this. We got together and we were brainstorming about it. What do you think about this idea? Sell the idea. Does this make sense to everybody? How many times have you done that in the last five weeks? Now we can start talking about bank accounts. Because what happens is we get in our routines of specific tasks without seeing the bigger problems. Solving it and then selling it. This is what entrepreneurs do. They see a possibility. They see that no one's really doing it, they want to improve it, so they solve it, and then they go and sell it. It's that straightforward. The issue is, if that's the wealth equation, let's just go back and look at your last six weeks. Let's go back and look at your last eight weeks. Let's go back and look at the last five months. Let's go back and do our financial analysis of this year and just run this formula over and over and over. Don't be defeated by it. Don't be upset by it. Just be honest about it, because personal accountability is real. Either you saw lots of problems and opportunities, you tried to solve them and then you sold it actively, or you didn't, and that led to a material gain or it didn't. I know that's so simplistic, but how many recognize the power of it? Yeah, it's a form. You could run that formula all day long. Okay, tell me about the possibilities and problems you're seeing. Tell me about how you tried to solve it. Tell me about where you're selling it. That's business consulting. Tell me about the possibilities and problems. Tell me how you're solving it. Tell me how you're selling it. That's business consulting. Now, the magic comes in distinction of frequency. Some of you have such an unbelievable offer. Like, you work so hard to build a program, and you launched it once, and you're disappointed in your finances at the end of the year. It drives me crazy, Brendan. I'm not earning enough. I'm like, okay, well, tell me about the possibility and the problem. How have you solved it? Looks like a good solve. Okay, now tell me how you're selling it. Well, I offered it in April. I'm like, how'd it go? Well, I had some sales. Okay, that was in April? Yeah. What'd you do in May? Oh, well, you know, I started doing these 17 other things, and I'm like, wait, you have a solution? But you're not talking about it from the rooftops. Every day, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Many of you, I'm here. You have such extraordinary wealth. I'm like the guy who'd come into your life and I go, let's do a garage sale. You ever do garage sales? I love garage sales. I grew up, we lived by doing garage sales. And a lot of our garage sales were funny. My dad would drive down a lot of the alleyways on the way home to work, and people would throw stuff out by the dump because where we grew up in the alley was where the garbage was. So he'd take them from the garbage, and then on Sunday we'd throw. Does it sound weird? Oh, okay. I'm just like, is this. Am I ahead or. It's not weird? Yeah, yeah. We do a garage sale, and that thing my dad got from the dumpster, he sold for 20 bucks. We was like, yeah. Oh, my God. And I would come into your life and go, hey, there's a lot of stuff in your house or in your garage or things that are valuable. But the thing is, they're there collecting dust. You're not selling them. That's a metaphor for a lot of the value you actually have already in your business or in your life. Some of you have offers and programs, books. Some of you have solutions you solved at work a long time ago. It worked. But then you had one manager who sucked. And you stop talking about it. You stop selling the idea. Some of you have an amazing idea. You never sell it. You know that kid I told you about who came to me and said, hey, Brendan, I'll open up the offer for you to invest a million dollars. And I said, no. Don't forget what I said previous to that. He's now raised seven and a half million dollars. You know why I said no? He kept selling it. I said, no. He kept selling it. I said, no, he kept selling it. That's what I mean by this. So it's not just an equation. It's a frequency formula. A lot of you, I'm here to tell you, sell what you have more often, sell your ideas more often. When I came into the online marketing world, this is kind of where I gained my fame. Because I was the first one selling and doing personal development courses that were selling millions of dollars online, digitally, not CDs and DVDs. That was before my time. But digital online courses in personal development. First one to do multiple seven figure launches in personal development, well before anybody else. And as I figured out that model, the Thing that kind of shocked everybody about it was at the time, the model was, you do one launch a year, maybe two launches a year, you shut it down, you go skiing, you hang out, you live the lifestyle. And I came in with the garage sale mentality, because if you have a garage sale and it's good on Sunday and people show up, guess what you're doing next Sunday? You're opening up the garage again. So they were saying, do a launch once a year. I'm like, what do you do with the rest of the year? They're like, oh, well, you just wait till next year you make a new one. I'm like, so you just made a million dollar with this course, and then you don't sell it the rest of the year, and then next year you gotta make a new one. They go, yeah. I go, well, you don't like money. No one could explain it to me. I actually think it just was those particular guys at the time in online marketing, they loved their lifestyle so much. And it wasn't so much about the service or the brand building. It was like, make some money, you're done. Ski, surf, have a good time, come back. And by the way, that was their definition of wealth. It was great, but I'm a garage sale guy. I'm like, if I sell a course for a million dollars, that thing is going to be on 24 7. And that's how those guys were always millionaires. And I was earning 10 and 20 and 30. Who knows what I'm talking about, ladies and gentlemen? He was like, different. I was like, you got something that's working, double down, talk about it more, sell it more, more traffic, more. Why would you hide your value? But that's what we do. We hide our value. We solved it, but we don't sell it no more. Some of you, you have so much value at work, but you gave and you tried. No one valued you, so you stopped adding value, and now you're stuck. You've had promotion after promotion, pass and pass and pass. You got stuck. Someone didn't appreciate your value. Listen to this closely, Please listen. We're just a little performance mindset coaching for you. If you added value and somebody didn't appreciate it, don't then diminish your value. You all follow. This happens all the time. Well, Brendan, my partner, Brendan, I took her on a date night. I tried. I got flowers, I put on the shiny shoes, put a belt on. We went out. I tried. Guess what? She didn't appreciate it. She just complained that the salmon was Cold. I said, okay, what'd you do next? That's it. I said, what do you mean screw her? So you tried to add value. It didn't go the way that you want. So now you're shutting down your ability to add value. That's defeatism, that's killing your wealth, that's killing your health, that's killing your happiness and where you want. It's probably the most in depth psychological trigger you can learn to unlock. When you feel unappreciated, you quit. We know that in America. If you did not know that the number one reason for someone to quit a job in North America, this is not true by the way, in every country around the world it is in North America. The number one reason people report leaving a job is number one, dislike and distrust of their first line manager. Why they ask them. They feel unappreciated at work. So number one people leave a job. The number one reason people leave a job and by the way, a job is the way most people earn income. So the number one reason people break from an income opportunity is they don't feel appreciated by a person. I want you to let that settle in aloud. This is why our culture struggles so much. They've made appreciation more important than income. Now in my life I think about that quite a bit. There's a lot of my life I don't feel appreciated a lot. When you run this many businesses with this many employees at this scale and this responsibility that I've got and I'm coaching these billionaires and sometimes I have this breakthrough moment with them or I have this team and it exceeded this goal over here, or I turned around a company and it's Christmas. I don't get a lot of notes of appreciation or I have 3 million students 10 right in and say something nice. That's all I've been in my whole career. I can focus on that and be like, wow, most people aren't appreciative and what stop my career. I love you too, baby. Is this resonating for anybody? Listen, you don't stop your value because they don't get you. You don't stop your value because they don't show appreciation the way that you need your love language to be spoken. I don't give a crap. Did they give you your love language? I don't care. You don't diminish yourself because they don't give you your language. You do you babe. You do not stop loving because someone else doesn't love you. Right? That is defeatism. That is lowering yourself to the conduct of others. You don't lower. You cannot maintain a wealthy, extraordinary life. If every time someone does something and it doesn't feel like it's appreciated or you don't feel seen, then you lower yourself and your value. But that's what people do. They're in a bad relationship. He's a jerk. He treats you bad. He speaks to you bad. And what do you do? You go, well, I guess I'm bad. And now you lower yourself. You speak poorly to yourself. You treat yourself poorly because of someone else's conduct. No, someone else's conduct is not your character. Your character is independent from other people's appreciation. Your value is independent from other people's recognition. Your value is independent from what other people say to you and how they treat you. You get to choose your value. You get to show up. You get to care for yourself. You get to love yourself. And when you have value, you sell it. You express it to the world. That's wealth. You know what? When I wrote. When I wrote. Listen. When I wrote Motivation Manifesto, that book took me three years because I was trying to understand the philosophy of personal freedom. And what I understood about the philosophy of personal freedom is you feel most free when you are free to be yourself, unencumbered by what you do internally or others do externally to push you down. And when you can do the things that bring you authentic joy, it means you get to be who you truly are and pursue things that are authentically motivating for you. Intrinsically motivating, intrinsically fulfilling. You feel great when that happens. But if every single person's judgment of you knocks down your value, you will be 6 inches tall by the end of the year. I want you to get that. Most of you have way more value than you are expressing to the world. So let me tell you something. If you don't like the word, sell it. Because we have a culture that hates money, so they hate the word selling. Remember all those rich people? What do rich people do? They sell stuff. They sell a lot of it very frequently. That's why they became rich. Can we all acknowledge that? So I got no judge. Like, if you don't like the word sell it, then let me share a new word. Express it. Express your value at work. Express your value online. Express who you truly are. It's the more that you shut down who you truly are. You shut down your value. You shut down your good ideas. Don't be shocked when they shut down your water. Don't be shocked when they shut down your business. Don't be shocked, because this is the formula. Am I seeing the possibilities and the problems? Am I solving them? Am I selling it, expressing it over and over? Because, remember, wealth isn't just about the money. It's about how you feel. And if you're not expressing yourself consistently at high frequency, it's why you don't feel rich. A life of richness. Is this resonating here? All right, say it with me. See it, solve it, sell it. One more time. See it, solve it, sell it. Turn that person right, shake them and say it to them.