STOP Trying To Learn How To Be A Better Salesman Do THIS Instead | Jeff Wright

And a lot of people think they have to put on these facades. You know, facades are temporary. They're not going to last. A lot of people think that loud people are tough and quiet people are soft. But most of the time it's exactly the opposite.

Safety is the most critical part. So if you can get them to feel safe, and you know this, I'm sure you're training this all the time, is that when the agent can make them feel safe, dealing with them, it's more about that first they need to feel safe before they're going to buy anything. Allows them to feel like I can say no. Right. I'm not gonna be stopped if I have a different opinion or I have something I want to share.

That's why also, I train a lot of my salespeople to try to formulate their questions to get a no answer instead of a yes. And I know that defies every sales book ever written.

Welcome to my podcast. You must be out of your mind. I've got one special guest here today that I think is gonna be a. A great resource for everybody. Very successful entrepreneur, CEO and president of the agent sales group. Helping entrepreneurs become successful business people change their lives. And what I love about Jeff, Jeff Wright is his name. Jeff has a passion for helping people, which is what we share in common, is helping people. So I'm excited to introduce you to Jeff Wright. Welcome, Jeff.

Thank you for having me. Dr. Wood.

I love your program and I love everything that you do. My wife and I both, you introduced us to your program and wow, I could see how what you do would just benefit just thousands, if not millions of people because it is desperately needed.

It is. Especially after Covid, there's a lot of people totally stressed out. It changed our lives. And I believe that we're coming up to a tsunami of mental health issues. There's a lot of it already started, but I think it's going to continue to get worse.

Well.

From the capitalistic point of view, which is where I look at everything.

I think where your program can help people the most, particularly coming from a sales culture like I do, is the fact that most salespeople, most people in business hold themselves back because of limiting limited beliefs that they have about themselves. They hold themselves back because.

They have low self esteem. They have not the confidence that they really deserve to have. And a lot of this, and I know a lot of the lower self esteem, lower confidence, things can come from stuff that, that your parents may have barked at you when you're 7 years old or things that things that your teacher or your coach may have said. And the thing is, when they tell you that and you hear it enough times, it kind of gets locked in and, you know, you agree to believe it. And what you're teaching people is you don't have to agree to believe it. You can, you can lock it away forever.

Yep, absolutely. And that's what we're doing is basically what I talk about in my first book, you must be out of your mind. That's how we came up with the title for the podcast is we just need to reboot the system. Yes.

It's a great title.

Thanks.

That's.

So that's why I always say so. If you come on this podcast, you must be out of your mind.

Yeah, I think we all are.

Yeah. So I think it would be really great for you. I know you know a lot about what you do, but if you could maybe share with our audience sort of what, you know, your expertise is in and. And then we can connect it up to everything that we're doing as well.

Well, my company, we. Primarily, the primary function of my company is we sell life insurance to a plethora of niche markets. Military, first responder physicians, you know, hospital workers and whatnot. And we've got a network of agents all over the country. But when people ask me what do I do, I don't necessarily tell them that I go out and sell insurance because I really don't. I haven't written an insurance policy in probably 20 years. But what I do is I take people, I select people out of our groups and turn them into top performers.

I teach them skills in negotiation, skills in sales, skills in really honestly, just in believing in yourself. Things to do to help boost your self confidence and start racking up wins every day. Um, but it's. It's like everything else, Doc.

You can't. It's nothing that you can make them do.

Right.

You can only. You can only do it if they want to do it. And the only way they can want to do it is to have what I call that aha moment when they're saying, when they finally have that conversation with themselves is that this isn't working. Nothing's going to change until I do something. I have to do something different. But I think that's true of everything. You have to do something different to get a different result. And it's kind of like the definition of insanity. Too many. There's far too many people that practice it in this world.

Yep. Yeah. And that's great because a lot of times people don't know what it is, and you come along and you sort of give them that aha moment that they couldn't find on their own, you know, and that's why what we do is sort of the same kind of thing. We're both performance driven. So even though I work with a lot of people who have had trauma, what I say to them is, you know, the trauma isn't defining you. It's stuck in a loop. Right. And so we just need to get that reboot done. Right. Reset the mind. When we reset the mind. I'll give you a great example, sort of she wasn't in insurance sales. She was in real estate sales. Very, very successful real estate agent, top in her office. And the company brought us in to work with them. And so when I sat down with her, she said, you know, I feel like I'm in a room full of sharks in this business and even in my own company, right? And she says, and everybody's competitive, fighting for the same listings. And she says, so I put on this really tough exterior. And she goes, people think I'm hard. No, she goes, but that's not really who I am. I'm a really loving, caring person, But I'm a afraid to show that. That vulnerability because I think it would interfere with my success. And so I said, not necessarily. That's coming from some experiences in your life and maybe even in business. And so anyway, I worked with her and like I said, she was her top performing agent already. She tripled her sales within two years.

Wow. Wow.

And she says, how I knew it was different is she says, I had a client, an older gentleman who had. His wife had passed away three years earlier. He was remarrying, and the new wife wanted to change everything. So they were buying new houses and doing all this stuff. And she says, and I was at the title agency with him for the closing, and the agent said, well, I need the death certificate from your wife. And he says, well, I sent that to you. And she says, well, I got a copy of it. I need the original in order to close. So he got very upset and he said, this is ridiculous. And so she said, listen, why does everybody go to lunch? I'm going to go, we'll drive home and we'll go pick it up and we'll come back after lunch and continue. And so she got in the car with him and she was driving, and he was visibly upset, and he said something about it. He goes, I don't know why this is going on. All These things keep coming up reminding me about my wife.

And.

And she says, doc, I never would have done this before. She says, I reached over, I held his hand, and I said, maybe she's just letting you know she's okay.

Wow.

The tears started coming down his face, and he said, thank you. I needed that. And she goes, I would have been afraid to do that before. She says, and it was so natural, I didn't even think. I just did it.

Wow.

That's part of what we can do. And we can get them to their true, authentic self. They can perform at a higher level. And just like you were talking about before, when they got a lot of these beliefs that got stuck from earlier in their childhood, it's very difficult until we get those out of the way.

And a lot of people think they have to put on these facades. You know, facades are temporary. They're not going to last. A lot of people think that loud people are tough and quiet people are soft, but most of the time, it's exactly the opposite.

Exactly.

And one of the. One of the things that you were telling. One of. One of the words that you said in your story is a word that I trained my salespeople to eliminate out of their vocabulary. And that word is why.

Yeah.

I never. I never ask anyone why anything. Because there's so many. So many people when they were children, they. They. They spilled their milk or they did something and their parents are screaming at them, why did you do that? Why did you do that? And most people, if you ask them why of almost anything, it's going to feel accusatory. It's going to put them on the defensive. And instead of asking why, I try to formulate questions and to ask them how. And that tends to lower their temperature a bit and not be so reactive to asking them why, because I don't know. You know, I don't know why that happens. But when you ask why, they're. They're triggered almost immediately.

Yep. And it happens all the time. So language is so critical, especially when you're talking to your children. So I had a gentleman, even today, I was talking to him, and he said his son decided not to renew his driver's license. You know, he's. He's a little older, too. And it's like, this guy's a driven entrepreneur, and his son is just, like, laid back. Could care less. Right. Just living life. And so he said. I said to him, I said, do you think it's smart for you not to renew your license? And I said those and he says he got defensive immediately. And I says, because you basically interfered with his identity. What he just told him is, if you don't renew your license, you're not smart. I said, is that true? Well, no. He's really a very bright individual. I says, but the way he heard it, it's the words in the music, right? So the music was not trying to say that, but the words said it. And so he can't hear the music now. The love behind him wanting to help his son achieve more, be more successful. What he heard with the words, you're not very smart.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And that's why also, I train a lot of my salespeople to try to formulate their questions to get a no answer instead of a yes. And I know that defies every sales book ever written, but. But when you ask somebody to get a yes answer out of them, they're often going to feel triggered. They're going to feel pressured, and they're. That. That's why you have so many people that say, I want to think about it, I want to think about it. So if, if, if one of my guys was selling you a life insurance policy today, or. And, and I trained. I trained people way out of the scope of life insurance. You know, we deal with realtors, lawyers, you know, God knows, ever. Even. Even physicians. And Instead of saying, Dr. Wood, would you like to get this started today?

Or.

Yeah. Or, Dr. Wood, is it a bad idea to go ahead and start protecting your family now?

Right.

No, because Noah's going to have that more of that comfortable, safe feeling. Why is. I mean, yes. Is almost as reactionary as asking them.

Why safety is the most critical part. So if you can get them to feel safe, and you know, this. I'm sure you're training this all the time. Is that when the agent can make them feel safe dealing with them, it's more about that first they need to feel safe before they're going to buy anything.

Oh, absolutely.

And so if they can create that safety by doing just. That's great advice. Showing them how to get that, you know, no first. Right. Allows them to feel like I can say no. Right. I'm not going to be stopped if I have a different opinion or I have something I want to share.

Exactly. And I mean, it even works at home. I had a friend of mine one time, yeah. He was complaining to me that, you know, he liked to go out and eat dinner, you know, a couple of nights a week. And he would always ask his. Ask his wife, well, do you want to go out to eat? Well, I don't know. And then where, where would you like to go eat? You know, I can't make up my mind. I don't know what I want, whatnot. I said, why don't you try this? Instead of asking her if she wants to go out to eat dinner, just say, hey, would you be against going out to eat dinner tonight?

No, I love it.

And then, great. And then if you want to eat Mexican food and say, would you, would you be against having Mexican? No. And, and, and, you know, he gets what he wants every time. He's not frustrated. And she's probably relieved because she doesn't have to make all these choices thinking that she's going to upset him by making the wrong choice.

Yep, yep, exactly.

So I guess, you know, what I've learned from you is that that provides that level of safety for her in giving that answer.

The number one fear for the human mind is uncertainty. Number one. So if you provide an environment of uncertainty, they're going to be constantly looping through how to protect themselves. But when you provide, provide the safety, the ability to feel safe and, and certain about, you know, they're not going to get pushed into something they don't want to do. Then all the guards come down.

Well, I'm glad you said that, because one of the things that I've, that I tell my people all the time, I said, what you're selling, you're selling one of the rarest commodities on earth. You're selling certainty in an uncertain world.

That's it. Because that's the number one fear.

It is the number one fear. It's just how you, how you prevent, I mean, or how you present. Getting that certainty is what makes all the difference.

Yep, yep. And just the question you asked. I talked to parents about this all the time. I'll say, so you want your child to do their homework. So what do we typically do as parents? Well, you can't go out and play until you finish your homework. Right. And instantly they put up a defensive front. Right. Because now you're taking choice out of their, out of their hands. I says, but if you went to them and said, listen, would you like to do your homework now? And then you can play all the way up until it's time to go to bed. Or do you want to go out and play for an hour now and then come in and finish your homework before bed? Now what are you doing? You're going to get the homework done. You've taken the question about whether they want to do homework or not to whether they want to play first or play later, longer, and then it changes the whole question.

That's like what I tell people.

Instead of. And this goes with almost anything, but instead of presenting the pros and the cons, Right, we flip that and we do the cons and the pros.

That's beautiful because.

Because when you.

Hey, I want you to finish your homework, but when you're done, you're going to get to play. You're going to get to do this, you're going to get to do that. And that is the last impression that they have, is what the result of that is going to be. What that is what they have to look forward to. Not what they have to look forward to, but they have to jump over this hurdle to get it. You tell them what the hurdle is, and then what the reward is. Basically, you put the cons in front of the pros and saying the word but really amplifies whatever the pros are. It amplifies whatever the benefits are. And that's so important because I'm a big believer that the last impression is always the lasting impression.

Yep.

Yeah.

It's a dot I call the dominant thought.

Exactly.

So when you work with. I work with professional golfers, and they'll say, if you. If you're looking at your target, but you see the water, and you say, oh, I don't want to hit the ball in the water, the water becomes the dominant thought, and then the mind moves towards the dominant thought. It moves towards whatever it's focused on. Now, if you focus on water, it's going to try to get you to the water.

You know, it's almost like if you're driving your car down the freeway and you start watching the lines, you guide your. Your eyes toward the lines, and the car just somehow tends to go that way.

Yep.

Or. Or the other way.

I remember when I was learning how to drive, my dad taught me that. He says, don't focus on the lights coming towards you, because if you focus on the lights coming towards you, it will draw your attention to the lights.

Yeah. Yeah. Then you'll get up close and personal with them. If you really don't want to, you.

Don'T want to do that. Not a good idea. Yeah. Well, the thing that I like, too, is I. As I saw how you have the saying blame to fame. So tell me. I love that. How did you develop that? How did you come up with that idea?

Well, yeah, I live in Tampa, but I used to. I grew up in Georgia. And I grew up in a really small town. Really small minded people. Most of us people, you know, they were born there, they lived there, they died there.

And I.

A lot of them were really stuck in their situation because they allowed it to happen. A lot of these people. There were really only a couple of industries where I lived. It was either cutting timber or working in a cotton mill. That was it.

Right.

And people would literally work seven day shifts. I knew people that, I can think right now of women that used to come in my dad's store that were in their 40s and they literally look like they were in their 70s.

Yeah.

And.

They, they, they blamed everything and everybody on their lot in life.

Yeah.

And the only person that you can really blame for where you are in life, if you're an adult, if you're a child, you can't really do it because those are things you have no control over. But if you're an adult.

I'm a firm believer that 99% of the time the person that you need to blame is whoever it is you look at in the mirror every morning.

Right.

And, and you can take that, you can take the blame that, that you have. You know, you, you can take all the.

It's like I had, I had a guy getting started in a business one time and he was telling me how his family was really rooting for him not to succeed. I said, well, if they're holding their breath, waiting for you to. Not waiting for you to fail, make sure they suffocate.

My son just said that to me yesterday.

Really?

He just, he told me that quote. He said he was looking at something. He repeated that quote to me.

It's a quote, really.

Or it was something he saw.

Oh, wow.

So maybe you got this quota that you didn't even know you did, but, but it's true. Right?

So.

Yeah, I love that. Yeah.

And so a lot of the, so a lot of, a lot of the hurt that, that I had as a child and, and trust me, I had a lot of it.

A lot of that, A lot of that actually is what propelled me to do well. But, but, and, and my main driver was to not go back to where I was, where, where I came from, to not go back in that environment.

Because I did. I had a really, my parents were abusive or anything like that, but I had a really rough childhood and.

I used to hear people all the time, oh, it's so hard being out in the real world. It's so tough out there when you leave home and whatnot. I'M sitting there thinking to myself, how the hell could it be tougher than this? It can't be, and it never was. I really don't think life is that hard. I think it's all the choices that you make. You are the product of the choices that you make. If you're successful, you show me someone that's successful, I'll show you someone that made a lot of really good choices. And you show me someone that's in jail or someone that's broke or someone that. That is super unhealthy, then I'll show you someone that made a lot of bad choices. And we are a product of the choices that we make.

The second book I wrote I called Emotional Concussions, because not everybody is always a big T trauma. Sometimes it's those emotional concussions. The coach, the teacher, the parent that made a comment to you that still stuck with you. But when I wrote the book, I said, here are 10 things that successful people don't do, as opposed to saying, here's what they do. And one of the things I put in there, successful people don't blame other people when things go wrong because they take responsibility for those kinds of things. And if they're not taking responsibility, then it's probably because they had an experience where maybe they were overly criticized, so they tried to deflect blame. But successful people don't do that. So, you know, I had the person say to me, well, you know, the person I hired, they ended up, you know, doing a terrible job, and it cost me a lot of money. You know, like, I'm not supposed to blame them. I said, you hired them.

You hired them, or you didn't train them right, or you didn't.

Yep.

You know, the thing is, is that when. When someone is going to hire somebody, I have people tell me, I want to hire an assistant, but I don't really know what I want. I said, well, you need to get really clear on what it is that you want. And once you can visualize what it is that you want, then finding that person is a whole lot easier. It. You know, it's like if I were gonna. If I were gonna hop on a plane in Tampa and fly to New York, I would get on a flight going to New York. I wouldn't just hop on a plane and just hoping that's where the guy was gonna go. Yep. And then. And then be all pissed off when, you know, if it landed in D.C. or if it landed in Chicago or whatever. If I did that, I can't blame the Blame the plane. I can only blame me for not getting on the right one.

You didn't look at the board to figure out where that plane was going.

Exactly. Exactly.

Well, it's part of, like, one of the things I talk to people about, too, is the reticular activating system, which is a part of your brain that actually finds what you're looking for. Have you ever bought a car and then you see the car everywhere? I was like, oh, that's because of that part of your brain. When you tell your brain that something's important, I like this car. It'll keep showing it to you. Those cars were on the road before. Right. But you hadn't put any importance to it, so it doesn't point it out. But when you put out, like, this is what I like. So just say you're talking about, I want to hire an assistant, if that would. It's great advice, because if you don't know what that assistant is supposed to look like, you won't know it when you see it.

Well, yeah, it's. It's kind of like I've heard people, as I'm sure you have, say, I was thinking about something, and then I got on my computer and it's like, boom. Google already knew what I was thinking. But Google doesn't know that, you know, doesn't have listening instincts and that in that they can go into your head, but they can sit there and look at all the other stuff that you Google up and whatnot. And. And that's why those things get populated out so, so rapidly. Because that's what you've been looking for.

Yep. And it's a perfect example of what the reticular activating system does. At the same time, you tell your mind that something's important, it will find it for you. It's designed to do that. It's trying to keep you safe and bring that certainty to you. So if you're not certain about what you want, then you'll create uncertainty, which will create all the doubts and fears.

So is this kind of the same thing as my. My yoga hippie friends that I see all the time when they talk about manifesting something? Is if they constantly think about it, they get it.

They do. And it looked like it just showed up or miraculously appeared. It's just they didn't see it before because they hadn't thought about it before. So manifesting is really telling your mind, find it for me. It's out there. I just don't know where it is. And then all of A sudden you're just driving your car and all of a sudden a sign that you drove by a hundred times pops up because it has a message on it that you needed to see or hear that'll look like, oh, and then you go to the place and you go, I manifested this. Well, no, your mind showed you how to get there.

Exactly, exactly, exactly how it works. Because, you know, when I was a kid, I visualized a life that I wanted. I visualized all kinds of things and thought about it constantly. And then really I got very clear on what it was that I wanted. And then all my mind had to do is just reverse engineer of how to get it.

That's exactly what it does. And that's why, you know, when people listen to you, the success that you're bringing from what you were able to do yourself. Right. They just need to listen to it. Right? Yeah. It's not magic. It's basically just the way our minds work. And, and if they follow that kind.

Of advice, you know, it's, it's amazing. It's amazing to me though, like the whole, you know, you gotta, you can bring a horse to water, but you can't make them drink sort of thing. And that is, people would rather, it seems like they would rather suffer for the rest of their lives or even die. They would rather do that than to change anything or admit that they were wrong. Yeah, it's mind boggling to me how people allow themselves to do that.

And it's really coming from those old experiences, some of those emotional concussions or traumas that would make it impossible for them to do it. And that's what I talk about in our whole program is we need to update that system because if we don't reset it, that program is going to be running. If that program runs, it's going to produce thoughts.

I mean, I think like every politician in D.C. should be using your program.

Yeah. Oh, they've got lots of trauma.

They got lots of trauma up there. But, but really just, just imagine, just, just, just imagine how the world would work if people would just take responsibility and admit that they were wrong. And, and, and you know, we got to make a change.

But, but people, people just don't do that. Politicians are, I don't like talking about politics, but politicians are mad of just, you know, staying down that one lane and, you know, damn the consequences of what they are.

And it's because what happens is the mind doesn't like change because the way it looks at it is I'm alive. What I've been. So I always say if you walk two miles to get food every day, and on that two mile trip there were snipers and landmines, but every day you got there and you got back. Right. And you were safe. And then somebody goes, you know, Jeff, there's a Publix a hundred yards down the road that way. Right. It's well lit, there's police all over the place. It's super safe. Right. Your mind would go, I don't know if that's true. I know I can do the two mile trip every day. I'm going to keep doing the two miles. So the only way to get the person to change that is to say today, let's walk five yards down that road. We're not going to go all the way yet. We're just going to walk a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit closer.

And then finally they see it and.

Go, oh, oh, you're right.

Yeah.

Then the mind's willing to make the change. So repetition is like research for the brain. So you're proving that it's actually a better route. But it doesn't like to do that quickly because quick changes could be dangerous. Right. If I all of a sudden run down that route and you're wrong. Right. And I don't have any evidence, I'm probably going to get hurt. So that's what we do in our program is we have them work on audios for 30 days, building new neural pathways that become the override pathway on something that you used to do. It's coding. Your brain's a giant computer and it's constantly coding. How do you change the code? You have to rewrite a new code.

You have to rewrite a new code. And I can tell you, because I'm. My wife and I both, as you know, go through your program and wow, what a, what a difference it's made. Yeah, it really has. There, there are lots of, lots of things in my past that I had guilt about, regret about or whatever. As much as I try to, to just let it go, it just occasionally it still comes up, but, but now, no, it almost never comes up.

It's a running program. And that's what my wife had experienced. And until I developed this program, I couldn't help her, I couldn't fix it. I thought, well, if I, if I choose my words more carefully, I'm a little more cautious. I pace it, I use the tone of my voice. Right. I could still activate her nervous system. Right. With just a look, with just a shrug. Of my shoulders.

But what's beautiful about it though, what, what a labor of love that you, that you have in this because to help your, your wife and your daughter. You were telling me.

Yeah.

To help them both.

Just, just. And again, just making the choice to, you know, not, not trust pharmaceuticals, not trust all this stuff and actually get into the weeds of, of what it really is. That's amazing that you did that and you, and you did it out of, out of love.

And we would lose our daughter if we didn't do it.

Yeah.

She basically had a diagnosis that could have been a death sentence. You know, the hemocytosis. Right. Basically they said she needs to live near a hospital because she could, lungs could fill up in 15 minutes. So it was like that's what my wife said to me, we need to figure this out. But then what I discovered through my research was that it was the trauma she'd experienced that was creating it. And it is for most people. So when we have unresolved trauma, it compromises the immune system, so people get sicker. And then it also compromises the neurotransmitters. So people feel bad. Right. Because serotonin, for example, is mostly produced in the gut. And so if your gut is out of balance, Right. Because you're stressed, it's not going to produce serotonin. So that's going to affect your ability to feel good. Right. It's your excitatory hormone. So that's what's affecting so many people and they don't know it.

Yeah. Well, you know, one thing that I see affecting a lot of people, of course I'm not the scientist that you are, but.

Well, you are doing what you're doing is very scientific.

One of the, one of the smartest things I think I ever did that helped me. I totally stopped watching the news.

Because it's all negative. Every. Everything's negative. And I was thinking one day, to me watching the news and it doesn't matter which news it is, but watching the news in my mind would be as toxic. Is eating McDonald's three meals a day.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Just. And people, you know, I have an 82 year old mother who sits glued to Fox News all day long. She walks out the door hating the world. I got a next door neighbor, she's glued to CNN all the time. She walks out the door hating the world. And you feel bad about it because you're supposed to.

Yeah.

You know, it's, it's designed that way. And so what I had to do one time because I had a lot of anxiety because I was worried about a lot of things. And so one day I took a legal pad and I wrote down everything that I was worried about. Literally went through the act of writing it down, slept on it. Day or two later, I go back through it, I take a pen, and I start striking through the things that either I had no control over whatsoever or things that didn't impact me, my family, my health, anything like that. That list shrunk by nearly 90%. Sure, maybe more than 90%. Then I focused on the things that I could control and the things that did have something to do with me. And wow. Just. Just doing that, I became such a much happier person, more productive.

And that's how you've been able to be successful. So you are able to do a great job of doing that. A lot of people don't know how to do that. Can't do that. I'm sure you see a lot of these people coming to these, you know, trainings that you're doing. Right. Saying, you know, I don't know what to do. I'm stuck. I can't get out of this. Right. And if they listen to what you're telling them, they could benefit dramatically.

See, this is why I think that, you know, this. This would be controversial for some people to hear, but this is why I refuse to believe that. That the majority of the workforce operates as efficiently. Working from home.

I agree.

I've always been able to do it. And I can tell you I've only been distracted one time in the near 30 years that I've. That I've worked from home. I have an office. I just choose not to go to it because I'd rather work at home. But out of the nearly 30 years that I've worked from home, the day that they delivered a satellite dish, we got a satellite dish for my kids.

Many, many, many years ago. I was useless for two days because I sat there with a remote, just flipping around like, wow, I can't believe we could get all this. After two days, I got it out of my system, went back to work.

Yep, yep. Yeah. Working from home. We're social creatures, and there's also a big part of what our brain does, is it wants to be part of a tribe.

Yes.

And it's actually instinctual because tribes create safety and they eliminate uncertainty. So if you're in a tribe, you're pretty much now, a thousand years ago, if the tribe excommunicated you, that was certain death.

Yeah.

And the mind still uses those primitive instincts. Even though you're not conscious of them fitting in is a big thing. And that's why for children, you know, when children get bullied or get picked on, how impactful that is on their lives because they're not feeling safe and.

They don't fit in, you would have to wonder, I don't know this, I only hear about it because again, I don't watch the news. But you would really have to wonder how high the percentage are of these kids who take guns to school or kids that were bullied. I would say almost all of them were.

Yeah, yeah, it pretty much is. They, they got kicked out of the tribe. They don't feel like they fit into a tribe and they're hurt so they want to hurt somebody else because they got.

I, I can remember many years ago in Atlanta, there was this guy who was a trader at one of these day trading centers in north Atlanta and he walked in there with, with a gun and I don't know how many people he killed, seven or eight. But I found out that he had made a lot of bad trades and had lost pretty much everything he had. And every time he came in there, the other people were ragging on him saying, hey, how much you're going to lose the day? You're a loser, you're this, you're that. And finally he just snapped. They bullied him. This was a grown 40 year old man, they bullied him and then all of a sudden he just snapped and decided he was going to get his, get his vengeance before he finally put the gun on himself.

Yep. And our prisons are full of those people that have been badly injured in their life and we're trying to punish it out of them.

Exactly.

Can't punish it out of them. Right. You're actually making it worse now. You know, people say, well, what are you going to do? Coddle them and. No, but you have to do something different than just locking them up in a prison and not do. And locking away for whatever term they've been incarcerated for and then letting them out and go. You're better now, right?

Of course. The belt, the belt was my, my father's favorite child development tool.

Yeah. And that happens a lot.

And it worked. It worked, it worked for me because again, it was like it was a consequence that I didn't want to have to face again. Yeah, he didn't do it very often. He didn't have to because it was, it was so bad when he did it. I'm like, I don't want anything to do with that. Anymore. And that's kind of the same thing with getting out of the situation I was, where I lived and whatnot, and moving on to bigger and better and greater things. It's because I don't want to go back.

And that's another thing, too, is that a lot of people won't change, but they never consider what the consequences are if they don't. If they. What the consequences are if they do nothing.

Yeah. And, you know, and it's interesting because, you know, a lot of people have experienced that kind of a childhood with that.

Right.

I experienced the opposite. My dad never raised his voice, never yelled, never hit us. And you know what his belt was? Disappointment.

Disappointment. Wow.

Oh, if he looked at me with that look of disappointment, that was like. Oh, it would be like. That was like getting hit. Right. He didn't have to say a word. He would just look at me like, that's not you. That's not your best moment. Right. That kept me in line. I didn't want it. So there's other ways to do it as well. And I think if we can teach parents that on another way, I believe it's much better way.

But, you know, it's like my. My dad, he.

I found out after he passed away from. From talking to people that really knew his family well, and. And then it made all the sense in the world to me, which made it much easier for me to forgive him.

Yes.

Is that. Is that what he endured was way worse.

Yep.

Was way worse. And, you know, the. The unfortunate thing is, you know, about being a parent, they. You don't have to have a license to be a parent. You know, there's really. No. Most people don't pick up a guidebook to be a parent. They just. A lot of them model it off of what their parents did. And a lot of people are stagnated also, too, by the opinions of their parents. You know, I'll have people wanting to start a business. And they said, well, my parents don't think it's a good idea. I said, well, what's your dad do? Well, he's mailman. What's your. What does your mom do? She works at Publix. Well, have they ever run a business? No. I said, then why are you valuing their opinion? Their only thing is to keep you safe, to keep you from loss.

That.

That. That is what. That is what they're primarily. And. And. And I guess talking your mind's really the same way.

It's exactly.

A good.

Good example is I had a guy who'd come in. This is a few years ago. And he wanted to be an entrepreneur. His real goal was to be an entrepreneur, but he was doing things where he was trying to partner with doctors and say, you know, you need to buy this equipment. If you put up the money to buy the equipment, I'll put it in the office with you and I'll work with you to generate revenue. So he was doing all these things and what it came down to, he, he wasn't getting any sales. And what we looked at his life and his mom and dad with the best of intentions. Just like you're talking about, we're loving parents. Right. But they said to him, if you want to be successful, you go to college, you get a degree, you buy a home, you get a 401k and then you retire. That was success because that's what they did. But he had that entrepreneurial flair. But his avoidance of risk is what was interfering. And they didn't deliberately set out to do that. They weren't trying to hurt him. Right. But that was what he modeled from his childhood. And so as soon as we got him through the program, he was able to do about a million dollars worth of business that next year. He's doing about $4 million a year now. And it was just, he had to be able to get past that risk aversion. So he was trying to pass the risk on everybody else. That's pretty tough.

You have to, I mean, you have to take a risk to accomplish anything, really.

For sure.

You know, if you, if you want to fall in love, you have to risk being rejected.

Yep, yep.

If you want to drive the public, you have to risk being in a car crash. There's all kinds. And the thing is, is what. And I actually googled this one day, so this, this is a real number. According to Google.

It'S a 1 in 400 trillion chance that you were even born.

Yeah, that's true.

A 1 in 400 and then like 1 in what, 8, 10 billion to win the lottery. But if you've defined a 1 in 400 trillion chance of even born to me, you've already won the lottery. Yes, you've already won. But with, with a 1 in 8 billion, you know, whatever it is to win the lottery, people still buy tickets. 1 in 8 million chances of being in a plane crash, people still jump on airplanes. One in like 5,000 of being in a car crash. They get in cars every day. They're willing to do all that without, you know, with much bigger odds of something happening to them yet just to believe in themselves and be grateful and be thankful for the life that they have and not really realizing what odds that they've defined to be here and not take risk and chances is beyond me. Does that make sense?

Makes total sense. And that's what it takes somebody to help lead them out of it. So I know what you're doing is tremendous to be able to. Somebody just needs that guidance to come through. It's scary to go on their own, and then they hear somebody like you getting up there and saying, look what I've accomplished because I developed this mindset, so my life wasn't necessarily any easier than yours. Right. But at the same time, I was able to accomplish this because I was able to deal with the risks, deal with the insecurities, deal with all those kinds of things. Right. And it's like one of the things I know you wrote about is stop using safety nets.

Right, Exactly.

They want to use a safety net because that's the way our minds work.

Well, what people need to realize, Doc, is.

Nobody, if they look at somebody, nobody is better than you.

Right.

They just may be ahead of you.

Yep.

And this is where the tribe thing is so important because, you know, now we're lucky enough we can choose our tribe. You know, thousands of years ago, you couldn't. You were either in or you were out.

Yep.

Now you can choose your tribe. And, like, I have friends here that I fish with occasionally. They fish every day. They're always out on the boat, smoking weed, drinking beer, fishing every day. And. And, yeah, they're a lot of fun to hang out with, but I can't be a permanent member of that tribe because my life would fall apart.

Yes.

If I was in it. So. So if you're trying to accomplish anything, anything, you have to. You have to get rid of all the negativity. You have to get rid of all the, you know, all the losers, as I call them, in your life. And you. You have to. You have to be in a tribe of people who are either at or above the level that you want to be in.

And that is such great advice because it's the same thing with I. When I was growing up, I had my school friends that I hung out at school with, but they weren't my friends that I did other things with. And I had my hockey friends, but I didn't go out drinking with them, you know, on weekends and party with them. Right. I had my tennis friends. So that is really good advice. You don't have to be totally immersed In a tribe to have something in common that you enjoy with the tribe. But apart from that. Right. I don't have to be around you, I don't even have to like you.

Right.

But I can have fun in this activity with you. So my teammates are my teammates. Right. And we would, you know, do whatever it took to help each other as teammates. But once I got out of that hockey gear, I'm out, right?

Yeah, exactly.

And that's okay. Right where I think, people think, well, once I got into this tribe, I better do everything to keep into this tribe or I'm unsafe.

Yeah.

But have multi, you know, tribes.

And a lot of people, a lot of people are afraid to ask for help. They're afraid. It's like if my trainer at the gym was walking someone through one day and it was, it was an older lady, she, you know, she's probably in her 60s. And he says, I'm going to tell you, just like I tell everyone.

Don'T think when you come in here that everybody here is going to be staring at you. Don't think that they're going to be judging you. They're not. Because they're too worried about if someone is doing the same thing to them. Yeah, yeah. They're more worried. They're more worried about them. And the other thing too is like if you go to the gym and you know, if you, if you want to, if you want to get the six pack abs, which I don't have, but if you wanted to get them, go talk to the guy that has this working out that has the six pack abs. There's a guy, there's a guy at my gym that has them. He has tattoos all over him. You know, he has a mohawk when if you were to look a lot of people, if they were, look at him, he looked like he looks like he just killed 12 people. Yeah. But he's the most, he's the nicest, most approachable person that I've ever met. And my point to that story is that when you go to these people who are at or above the level that you want, believe it or not, more than you think, more of them are going to help you than you could possibly imagine. And the reason why most of them are going to help you is and provide some mentorship to you, it's because they were all at the level that you're at now and they understand.

Yeah. And that's again, the same kind of thing. Be around people that have answers. So when they come to your kind of trainings, you know Then the other thing is, listen, right? I had a guy that worked for me and great salesperson, right. I thought, I mean, he had all his mba, looked the part, talked apart, he knew the products really well and yet wasn't selling. And so every week he'd come in and sit down and say, let me go over, you know, what happened this week. And he'd show and I talked to him about this. And then finally I said to him one day he'd come in again, he starts talking to me and I went, oh, I just figured it out. I know why you're not selling. He goes, why? And I says, because you don't listen. I've been telling you the same thing constantly and you're obviously not following it. So if you're not following what I'm telling you, you're not listening to your customer and they're probably telling you what they want, but you're just continuing to sell them what you think they need.

Well, that's the problem.

A lot of people in sale any kind of sales, they're going to, they're going to throw out their solution without even asking you what your problem is. You don't, you don't. No one spends money on nearly anything unless there's a problem to be solved. If you go in a restauran, not you have a problem, you're hungry, you know, you know, any, anything and everything. It might be a physical thing, a mental thing. And if somebody goes and buys a, someone can go down the street and buy a new Ferrari for a plethora of reasons, but whatever those reasons are for them, it's problem.

Yes.

But the only way that you can find out what those problems are is to ask and listen.

Ask and listen. Ask questions. It's the same thing in a relationship, right? You're in a relationship, right? The best way to learn is to ask questions, right?

Exactly.

And you're gonna find they're gonna tell you, right? They'll, they'll open up and tell you as long as they feel like you care and you're actually listening, right. So you know, all those kinds of communication skills that I'm sure they're learning in the courses there that you're providing as well.

Everybody wants to be listened to and understood.

Yes.

And, and everyone does. And you give them that, you're going to help them get more of what they want. And if you're selling, you're going to get more of what you want. It's a win. Win for both of you.

Yep. Great advice. Well, this has Been such a pleasure, you know, having you on.

Oh, likewise. I really enjoyed it. And I think I, I think you're, you're, I think your program. Anybody listening on a. Buy it.

And at the same time, I'd love to. I'd love to be able to figure out how we can work together because I think that what you're doing to help people, we can bring in another dimension to that.

Absolutely.

Maybe accelerate. So I know, you know, I know we talked a little bit about that, but I'm looking forward to figuring out how we can collaborate because I think what you're doing is fabulous. You're helping so many people and that passion is what's obvious in you. I can hear it. So definitely, if people want to get a hold of you and what you're doing, how do they do that?

I'm on Instagram and it's @therealjeff wright. I'm on LinkedIn. Same thing. TikTok. Same thing.

My website is agentsalesgroup.com I'm. You can call me, email me, message me, what I'm the easiest person in the world to get to get in touch with and, and, and I respond to everything.

Great.

Yeah.

So definitely. So hopefully they'll see us working together at some point as well. But if you want to get a hold of Jeff, that's how to do it. And if you want to check out our site, you know, people know how to get a hold of us. So, again, Jeff, thank you so much for your time. I look forward to continuing.

Thank you.

That trauma loop that you were just describing, it's creating a glitch. It's an error message. Post traumatic stress, all those kinds of things are glitches and error messages.

There are ways for you to be free whether your life is being impacted with anxiety or with some physical elements that are results of what has happened in your life negatively, like the, the trauma being kind of stored and coming out through auto. Autoimmune disease.