Hate Selling? THIS is for YOU | Robert Kiyosaki

Good morning, Believe Nation. It's Evan. My one word is believe, and I believe in people more than they believe in themselves. And my sincere hope is that if you see in yourself what I see in you, you'll be able to change the planet. So to help you on your journey, today's message is learn how to sell. Over to you, Robert Kiyosaki.

I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going.

I wake up every morning I am very shy, very, very shy. You know, I came back from Vietnam, and I could kill people, but I couldn't talk to people. And one day I said to my— when I decided to follow my rich dad's footsteps, I just said to him, "I want to be an entrepreneur." He says, "You got one problem." I said, "What's that?" He said, "You're shy." I said, "What's wrong with being shy?" He says, "You gotta sell." You gotta handle rejection. Number one skill, can you handle rejection? Answer is no, I couldn't handle it. So I said, "I still don't wanna learn how to sell." So this is in 1973, I was 25 years old, and my rich dad said, "How's your love life?" I said, "It sucks." He said, "You getting laid?" I said, "No." He says, "Because you can't sell." You guys got it? So when I talk about what skill do you need, when the shit hits the fan, you better start selling. So I went to work for Xerox in 1974 so I could learn how to sell. Took me 4 years, then I was number 1.

Right?

And today I'm a best-selling author. You know, most PhDs tell me I can't write. Yes, I said I can't write, but I can sell. If you can't sell, you don't make money, period. End of statement. You know, just because you have a product doesn't mean jack shit. But the important thing is you start. You know, I don't care what product you start with, but you start. You know, I started off with nylon wallets. Success wiped me out. You know, we couldn't sell, couldn't sell, all of a sudden it took off, then I couldn't finance, I couldn't finance, couldn't finance because the sales kept going through the roof. Now, trouble is I kept borrowing and I couldn't sustain the sales. Next lesson. But that's how we learn.

So I'm not as hardcore as Robert is about sales and hard selling as a skill that is the most important thing to learn because that is one way to stand. If you want to be great at sales, it is a fantastic way to build a business, but it's not the only way. There are a lot of shy entrepreneurs, myself included, who have had success, people who you've never heard of because they're shy, and they just found another way to stand. And so again, if sales is your thing, is your forte, or something that you want to focus on and be great at, then go for it because it's definitely a great way to do it. But again, it's not the only way. When I took over this business, Toronto Dance Salsa, I sat down with Alex, we looked at 10 different ways to grow the business, and I had him pick the 2 that he really wanted to focus on. I gave him one, which is be a thought leader, and then, okay, pick the one that you want to focus on. Is it going to be— one of them was sales, one of them was, okay, let's go and start selling people, let's start making partnerships with different businesses and say, hey, how do we have these alliance things work out where you can promote our classes to your customers and we find some kind of arrangement to make it work out. He focused on something else. He wanted to focus on providing a great customer experience. You know, that's one way to stand. If you provide a fantastic customer experience, they will come back and they will tell their friends. And Alex came from a sales background at a different job. So my initial thinking was, okay, we're going to have a salesman come in and go out and sell. And it switched to, okay, we're going to focus on having a great customer experience because they're going to tell their friends. And they're gonna come back and be repeat buyers. So that's another way to stand. It could be you provide great marketing. It can be you build a team and you allow the people underneath you to bring their skills in. It could be you're doing a thought leader. It could be going through PR. It could be going through influencers. It doesn't have to be the traditional hardcore sales approach. Now the one thing that all of these things have in common that if you wanna have success as an entrepreneur and be a leader, you're gonna have to figure out is how to connect with people. And if you want to see sales as connecting with people, I'm okay with that. It's just not the typical salesman approach of, you know, I see that person as my next suit, or as, you know, I got to hit my sales quota and I'm going to force them to buy this thing. A lot of times sales is seen through that lens. If you see it as just connecting with people and helping them along their path, the difference for me is really doing the thing that is best for them. Where a lot of times in sales you're just trying to hit your quota, you're just trying to reach your mark, you're trying to push the customer past their comfort zone so you can meet your sales quota, so it's a very selfish perspective, as opposed to this is actually what's best for them. But if you want to form alliances, if you want to talk to the media, if you want to be a great leader, if you want to be a thought leader, if you want to write great marketing copy, You want to stand out on social media, you have to be able to understand how to connect with people and move them to take action that is in their best interest. I just want to let people know that it's okay to be shy. If you are shy, you can have a lot of success as an entrepreneur. You can have a lot of success in a lot of different fields. You know, Ellen is an introvert, which surprised me, but has, you know, the biggest talk show on TV. There's lots of different ways to stand. It's not that this is the only way to have success as an entrepreneur. You know, it works for some people, but it's not going to work for you. And the worst thing you can do, the worst thing you can do is say, listen to somebody who doesn't look like you, who doesn't believe the same things as you, and listen to them saying this is the only way to do it, and then feel like you can't measure up, and you can't be like them, and so you'll never have success, and you'll try and try and try, but you will never beat through because you're just not enough like them. Where the best thing you can do is find someone who looks like you, find someone who's accomplished success, that believes the same thing as you, that has the same kind of personality as you, and be able to learn from them and say, like, they did it, they had success as a shy entrepreneur, they had success as an introverted entrepreneur, so I can have it too. And so wherever you draw the line between sales and being able to connect with people, because this is super, super, super important, and if you see them as the same thing That's great. But if she is a hardcore, you don't have to go down that path and you can have success if you are shy. So the question today is, I'm curious, how shy are you and how do you define sales? Do you see sales, the typical salesman who is just trying to meet their quota, or do you see sales as trying to connect with people to help move them to take some kind of action? Really curious to hear your thoughts. Leave it down in the comments below. And also, if you leave a comment within the first couple hours of this video going live, you have a chance of winning one of our two daily prizes. I also want to give a quick shout out to Wouter Van Hecke. Thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word. I really, really, really appreciate it, and I hope you're enjoying the read. Thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love, and I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso.

I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going. For like an entrepreneur, not if you got a salesperson, how about just an entrepreneur who's looking to start a business? Well, if you can't sell, if you can't influence, if you can't persuade, good luck trying to get your business off the ground. I'm not talking about just your customers, I'm talking about the bankers, the people of venture capitalists, your vendors, your credit card processor, the people who work for you. How do you get people to work for you if excited? How do you get them excited? How do you get them to want to buy into your vision? At the highest level, what sales really is, it's the transference of emotion. And the emotion you're transferring is this emotion of certainty, that someone feels certain. Yeah, it's a good thing, it's going to help me, it's going to fill my need. When you're an entrepreneur and you're trying to start a business and you're recruiting people, well, you're selling people on your vision for the future, your vision for this company. If you can't do that, good luck trying to get great people to work for you. It's very— it's almost— it's nearly impossible. Which is why you always see, you know, the people, if they say, oh, he's a visionary, Well, that's true, but typically not only are they visionaries, they also possess the ability to sell the vision to other people, to inspire them, to motivate them. So selling is not just like, you know, people think of selling, oh well, I'm not a salesman, I don't need to— well, yes you do. You need to learn how to influence. How about trying to get your kids to make their bed or do their homework or believe in the value of education? How about trying to get a landlord to give you a reduction on your rent or to extend the lease the way you want? How about trying to negotiate terms? You understand it cuts to everything. So I always look at this, say, you know, when I say I cracked the code on influence, what I really did essentially was I just, I was, you know, by working backwards almost, by saying I'm going to start at the end and go to the beginning, say what has to happen before someone says yes. I was able to take that and put it into this system that took the no-name talentless guys and turned them into millionaires.

Selling is something you'll always do the rest of your life. Most people don't like selling. Some people like to kind of make it nicer. I'm going to use a better word and say communication. It's sales. By the way, those that just turned off the video and don't want to watch about what selling has to do, hey, you want to marry that girl you love, you know which one I'm talking about, you need to sell her and her parents and her best friends. That's all selling. You want to get that promotion? Purely selling, baby. And those who get that promotion sell better than you do. That's why it is.

They don't sell a car.

Their job could be human resources or something, but they learn how to sell themselves as has that position more than you. Maybe you ought to learn how to do it. It'll benefit you and make you a lot of money.