Ep35 - Jeffrey Gitomer

This episode is brought to you by KPMG Risk Services. KPMG believes that when you've earned the trust of all your stakeholders, that's when your business has a solid platform to grow. That's the trusted imperative. KPMG Risk Services develop and put in place dynamic risk strategies designed to help your business earn that all important trust. Go to reit, KPMG US Trust to learn more. And welcome to the Gap, the Get Attitude Podcast. The Gap. Bridging the gap from where you are to where you want to go and from who you are to who you want to become. Hello, my name is Glenn Bill, founder of the University of Attitude, keynote speaker and author of the ABCs of Attitude. And I've been able to help tens of thousands of people Get Attitude. Attitude, the secret formula to success in your business and in your life. And this podcast will help you get yours. So let's get some. I want to welcome everybody for this extraordinary guest. This is a guest that most everybody wants on their podcast, but you can't get him because he's in too much demand. But I can also tell you that this gentleman is not only a mentor to me and a good friend, he is also somebody that actually started the Get Attitude podcast with me. I went there and he said, hey Glenn, you need a podcast and I'm gonna show you how to do it. So even though we're on booster number seven, we're seven months into this. This was actually recorded in Jeffrey Gittermer's studio. So it may look a little different. I may not be as good, but you know what, the guest, there's just nobody better. I hope you sit back and and enjoy this legend, this sales icon, this nine time New York Times best selling author. I think he sold over 5 million books. Guys, gals, grab a cup of coffee, sit back and enjoy the great Jeffrey Gittamer. Today we're here with the self proclaimed king of sales, my personal mentor, author of 15 New York Times best selling books, including the number one best selling book on sales on the planet, the Little Red Book of Selling. If you don't know who I'm talking about, you must be dead. But let me tell you, this guy, his name is Jeffrey Gittamer. Jeffrey, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Glenn. If you're dead, you can turn off.

Your headphones because you won't know.

Right? Exactly.

You know this month is Global Attitude Awareness Month.

I didn't know that.

And we are kicking off our podcast that you helped me build actually. And I just want to thank you for the couple days we spent doing this pleasure. And what we're going to do on this podcast, at least for our first season, is focus on what we call the 10 attitude boosters. And you have chosen to make this month because you're my special guest and my mentor. You wanted to take the attitude booster called Grow or Die. Ooh, how about that?

I love that.

Heavy. Well, you know, your podcast is Sell or Die.

I'm aware of that.

And you and a million other downloaders.

Exactly right.

So what we wanted to do was bring you in today and talk about Sell or Die, of course. But we want to really talk to you about Grow or Die. And if it's okay, I'd like to proceed and interview and ask you a few questions.

You can ask away. I'm fine.

Very good. What I'd like to know is, can you recollect a time when you said, boy, I need to grow through this?

I can remember 25 times where I needed to grow through this. But you can get personal. Like when my mom died or my dad died, you have to grow through that. When you fail at business, you have to grow through that. When your car gets repossessed, you have to grow through that. There's all kinds of things that happen in your life that you need to grow through. Or maybe you have a personal illness of some kind, or a family close, loved one has a personal illness of some kind. Those are things to grow through. But there's also the positive side of that, that when your business starts to flourish and you only have five people, but you need 10, you need to grow through that. So don't look at growth through something as though it's like an obstacle or a brick wall. Rather, it's a cornfield or ivy.

Well, it's a big opportunity.

Oh, hell, yeah. Listen, it's an opportunity when anything happens. When my father died, rest his soul, I wrote an article about him. Like, I said goodbye to my dad today. No, no, not goodbye. It's like the final goodbye. And I'm writing it on the airplane. I'm crying my eyes out, and the flight attendant comes. You okay? I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. But I published it in the business journal, and I have hundreds, hundreds of letters from people that start out, you don't know me, but cool. Like, cards and letters and stuff. I have them all memorialized. I kept every single one of them because some of it was, my dad died, too, and I had to get through this, too. And people will talk about their situation. Or they want to thank me for all the articles that I've written. And they've been a fan, but a silent one, but they wanted to reach out and say I'm sorry, that kind of thing. So you never know what the opportunities are when you talk about what your obstacles are. Sure.

And so when we talk about growth, and I think it's evident, there's growth in business challenges, there's growth in personal life challenges. And as this being a personal development podcast, when we talk about the death of a family member, especially a father or a child, what sources did you use? Or what gave you the education or what tool did you use to grow through that?

My dad and my mom did the same thing. I went back in their life and the togetherness of it, theirs and mine. And I wrote down every cool thing I could think of, every funny thing, every story, everything. And then I talked about their personal. I guess you could call it their personal expertise or what they specialized in. Like, my dad was a salesman, my mom was a cook, but ended up being a business person. So I looked for all the good in that, and I wrote everything down. And you know, when a friend of mine has the same thing happen.

Yes.

I tell them that I send them the articles that I wrote about my dad and mom, and I say, do this. It'll help you heal.

And I think that transfers immediately over to business. Like the people that are listening to this, that are trying to get attitude right, that are trying to change their perspective, alter their focus. Why not just write down everything that's great, you got a business that's failing, your sales are off. I didn't meet the quota. My sales manager's a dick.

Raise your hand if you're a sales manager. That could be you. Right.

And so maybe instead of focusing on why you hate your sales manager and how he demotivates you, find the good in him, educate him, lift him up, and create the attitude that you want in him.

And meanwhile, you might want to put your resume on monster.com under an assumed name, just in case.

There is no question about that.

Some people just need to be successful someplace else.

Let me ask you this. When you. When you think about growth, what does growth mean to you?

Well, the first thing that I think about is when I was a sophomore in high school, I was 5 foot 2 inches tall, and literally a year later, I was 6ft tall.

Wow.

My bones hurt.

I bet.

So that's the first growth that you think about, you know, just in terms of that. But let's go back to my dad for just a second. When I started to receive all these letters from people, I recognized that my responsibility as a writer was significant. And so I challenged myself to get to become a better writer and grew that day as well. Or grew that month actually, as long as I received things. So you have to look at it from the perspective of what are you looking to grow? If you're listening to this podcast, ask yourself, what are you willing to grow to and how much of a risk are you willing to take in order to make that happen? Because some people are risk averse and they won't change their job because they're safe or whatever. And some people are risk averse because they won't ask for the sale because they don't want to get rejected. It's all in your mind. I was going to say your balls, but I don't know.

We can do it. We're ready to E. But I think, Jeffrey, what you just said is the whole reason that somebody needs to listen to this podcast. It's, I need to create an awareness of where I am. I need to be aware of my surroundings. And then I need to create a vision and I need to understand where I want to grow and who I want to become.

Right.

Which is what you experience. So when we talk about this thing called growth, do you believe growth is an attitude or is it a skill?

I believe that it starts as an attitude and ends up as a skill. Because if you don't have, if you're looking to become better at sales, you're looking to become a manager or CEO. The first thing you have to do is study it. Because if you don't study it, you're not going to do very well at it. I would like to have a quarter for every good sales guy that they made a manager and he failed. There's tons of them because they don't give you a management course or a leadership course. So I'm looking at it from the perspective of if I want to grow someplace, the first thing I'm going to do is, is study everything about it. Sure. And then I'm going to take the risk.

Right. Knowledge is power. And you know the seven skills of sales? Number one, product knowledge. And listen, baby, if you want to sell yourself, you better get to know yourself personally. Right.

So it's personal product knowledge.

Personal product knowledge, or what we call personal development. Right?

Yeah.

So it's funny, when I, when I talk to our audiences and I say, attitude booster, Grow or die. A guy raised his hand, he said, are those the only two options?

Well, no, there's mediocrity.

Sure.

So if you choose not to grow, then you pretty much stick where you are and you have the same amount of income on pretty much an annual basis, and maybe you make a few commission dollars, but the bottom line is you're not going to ever get to where you really want to grow.

Well. And when we look at your podcast, which is ungodly successful and can't even tell you how many people are signing in to listen to you die, is in your podcast, Sell or Die. And you talk a lot about selling. And nobody wants to talk about dying or death. But because we have an attitude of openness, we're going to talk about death. And I'd love to know what's your definition of death? Or what is your context? Or death. I'm guessing nobody's ever really asked you this before.

That is correct. But I'll be more than happy to tell you I didn't really have a firm belief, a belief about death until I. Like what happens afterwards. Do you turn into a pumpkin? Do you come back as a cow? What happens? Maybe a gnat, you know, a dung.

Beetle, if you're a Hindu.

But here's the deal. I read a book called Many Lives, Many Masters by a psychiatrist named Bernard Weiss. And he talks about he had this woman that he couldn't figure out what her problem was. So he tried. He was against it, but he tried hypnosis. And this woman talked about all of her past lives and how interconnected some of the people were. And I'll tell you, I bought 50 copies of the book, sent them to people that I knew, and told them. I don't know if it's true or not, but I sure hope it is right. And I'm coming back as something else connected somehow with the people that I knew.

Yeah. And I think I always imagine when new life comes into our family, I wonder, you know, is that Great Grandpa.

You're right.

Coming back or Great Grandma?

I can also tell you this. On the day that my dad died, we're all going to come to the funeral, but my daughter Stacy, in her eighth month of pregnancy, went into labor.

Oh, my.

Wow. So Stacy and her sister Erica, twin sister Erica, went to the hospital to have the baby, and Rebecca stayed with me, and I gave the eulogy for my dad. And then you drive to the cemetery, and with Jews, they have a ceremony at the grave site, and you take a handful of dirt and throw it in my pager just to let you know how Long ago it was, I take my handful of dirt and I throw it in, and the second that I threw it in, my pager goes off and says it's a girl.

Oh, my mercy. Cool.

And this, by the way, was April 15th. So it's birth, death, taxes.

Unbelievable.

On the same day. And it just. It gave me faith that. Yep. Julia's dad. There's no doubt about it.

So I'm a big karma guy. I'm a big Things are crazy. And when you just said it, you left out one very important day on April 15. It is Global Attitude Awareness Month. But April 15, isn't that weird that it would come up? April 15 is Global Attitude Awareness Day. It's the day that we celebrate attitude throughout the world. So your father must be blessing us or something. That's wild that you would just say that. That is just crazy. So it's a girl. And what was her name?

Julia.

And then how many grandkids do you have?

4.

And how are their attitudes?

They're wonderful. They are pretty wonderful, actually.

Why do you think people fear death? Fear talking about death. And do you think that death and fear are the same thing?

Nah. Fear could be walking into a closet, losing a sale, going broke, not being able to make your payments. But death is sort of final.

Yeah.

And we don't know. Really. We don't. We have faith, but we don't know what's going to happen afterwards. I know you're not going to. I envision something cool like you die. You have the funeral and then people walk out and you're there thanking them. Thanks for coming to my funeral. I really appreciate it. Thanks. Thanks. You can't do that.

Right? Right.

So you want it to be something memorable. You want it to be something that they go home and feel good about themselves. That's why they have wakes instead of funerals in some places of the world.

And with death comes this thing called legacy. And I didn't want to get morbid in here, but for God's sakes, it was grow or die. And I think we have to understand and think about if you're going to sell, you're going to die, or if you're going to grow, you're going to die. But the real question for the people sitting in their cars or listening to us is, what do I want my legacy to be? So there's a vision in the earthly life, but your legacy is what really hits you when you leave this earth.

It's what do you want your kids to say about you at your funeral?

Yeah.

My dad walked a hell of a lot of tv and he drank a.

Six pack every night. He was an all American drinker.

Right. So you can't think about what you're doing and think about the legacy that you're passing on. In my leadership book, I talk about leaving a leadership legacy. And I talk about Glenn Warner, a tough guard at Cornell in 1912. And he was invited with a bunch of other coaches to a meeting in Philadelphia to form a kids league for football players. Little kids. Glenn had already been. He'd won a national championship at Pittsburgh. He coached Jim Thorpe, among other athletes.

Pretty good athlete.

Yeah. Yeah. And they invited seven coaches, and only one of them showed up.

Wow.

Pop Warner. And that's how that football league started. And think about the legacy of that. Cause he would have gone down as one of the greatest coaches of all time. But now about 400,000 kids a year play Pop Warner football.

Yeah.

And that is something that you.

That's a legacy that is exponential.

Oh, yeah. And so you look at it from that perspective. You can look at the legacy of other coaches, Knute Rockne or Bobby Knight or, you know, people that have made a mark in the. In the world. Doug Peterson, for example.

Absolutely.

But that's Phillips Eagles. For those of you not paying attention, the challenge that you have in your life is what do you want your kids to say at your funeral or your spouse? And that's the legacy. And to me, that's what you work for. You work for money, but it's only money.

Well, one way to create a legacy is this awesome podcast you do called the Sell or Die podcast.

Yes.

And the other legacy that you are creating is the Sell or Die podcast network.

Correct.

Where you help guys like me, start our podcast, develop our legacies under your legacy.

Once you record it, it's pretty much there now forever.

Yeah, it is.

It might not have been in the 40s or 50s. It started to be in the 60s and 70s, but now with the Internet, everything is so out there that you can Google just about anything and come up with a dozen resources or 50,000 resources in one second.

So tell me, I'd like to know how you named your podcast the Sell or Die podcast. What was the. Like, what did you think about? Or what was the switch where you said, ah, that's it?

Yeah, I don't think that there is a. There's no second place in sales. You don't get a ribbon or a little trophy for participating.

First runner up.

You either sell or you have fucking nothing.

Right.

And So I look at it from the perspective of how do you convey that to somebody? You know, there's a second place prize in the Olympics. There's a second place prize in many things. Second or third place prize in horse racing or whatever, they get paid for it. But in the end, ask the person who came in second, would they have rather come in first? And they'll always say, yeah, right. Okay. So I draw the analogy in my seminars that Michael Phelps, in the Australian Olympics, he won eight gold medals, where he won the seventh gold medal by 1/100 of a second. Who'd he beat?

I have no idea.

Exactly. No one will ever care who he beat. But the guy. It was a 11 0th of a second.

Yes. And that makes all the difference between being remembered or not.

And it's all in the preparation.

I always like to say to our salespeople, hey, you eat what you kill. And the commission salesperson. Undervalued, underappreciated. But some of my favorite people in America, and those are the people that I think are listening to this podcast.

And you should interview.

Yeah. And we're going to. So if you guys know somebody that would fit in well with the Get Attitude podcast, somebody that squeezes the juice out of life, somebody that can help people get from where they are to who they want to become, that's willing.

To eat that possum.

Willing to eat that possum. Right. To make it happen, we're going to go ahead and wrap up this podcast. We have a fun thing that we like to do with our guests called the Decade Advice Challenge. And so what I want you to do, Jeffrey, is go back in your mind to when you were these certain ages and if you can, in a word or a sentence, tell us the best advice you would give the world from when you were 10. And what it really means is you're going to remanufacture. Maybe the greatest lesson.

Yeah.

So what I want you to do, which you have no recollection of, is as a baby, give me your best advice as a baby coming right out of the womb.

Well, the best advice I can have is have hair.

Have hair.

That's good.

How about when you were 10 years old?

Best advice, have everybody go to summer camp for eight weeks.

Awesome.

Be away from your parents. Learn how to fight for yourself, and learn how to play on a team.

Excellent. That's good. How about 20 years old?

20 years old. Don't do drugs unless they're really good quality. Think about who you want to become, rather than what you want to do this weekend.

Yeah, love it.

Big difference.

That's great.

30 and drop out of college.

There you go. 30 years. 30 year advice.

You have to measure where you are at this moment in time. At 30, I was selling cold calling in New York City and I had my own companies and it was a struggle because my marriage was not the greatest. And that was probably my fault as much as anything else. But you get caught up in life and you try to struggle through the moment rather than taking a longer view. And had I taken a longer view, it might have been a different outcome.

Awesome. And look at Jeffrey. Has some years on him. God love him. So we're gonna keep playing this game. 40. 40. Give me your best advice. At 40.

Be very careful who you establish long term relationships with. Cause they could crumble.

Awesome.

And when they do, they cost a lot of money. And it's not just a matter of the money that it costs you. It's the momentum and the circumstances that happens as a result of it.

I believe in something called emotional expense. When I'm in the sale, I talk to people. It costs too much. Whatever. I said, yeah, but here's the thing. What is the emotional expense you're going through making this.

It's harder to go through the emotional expense than the dollar expense.

No question.

Times 10, right?

I think we're up to 50.

Okay. At 50, I would say you collect your life's experiences and then you write about them.

Awesome.

You wake up in the morning, you read, you write, you prepare, you think, you create emphasis on writing. Because writing leads to wealth, not money, wealth. You capture all of your good things and then from 50 to 60 to 70, you keep on writing. You write every day. It's not like, well, I'm 50 now, I should write. No, you write every frigging day. Every day. And you know, like, I have 15 books so far, only because I write every day. I don't sit down and write a book. I just sit down and write. And that turns into a book after a period of time.

Great advice for our 50 year old listeners.

60, don't fuck it up. I had the experience in that period of time where the economy was tanking, but my attitude got in the way of the reality of it. And I stayed in it longer than I should have. And because my optimism was, oh, next month it's got to be better. And it was not. But I saved myself literally by doing economic planning for what I wanted to do for the next 10 years. And I cut my staff from 36 to seven.

Wow.

So I could stay where I was. And luckily, people wanted content and they kept hiring me to do things, and that kept the business thriving.

All right, and then we're to your big seven zero.

Yeah.

What advice do you have?

Find the best person on the planet to be with every day. And I have found her. Make certain that your kids know that you love them and that you're going to take care of them no matter what. And have a fucking blast every day because you never know when the bus is coming down the road and you're going down the other road.

Jeffrey, that's fantastic. Decades of advice. And I can tell you this, your ass better be here for 80. I will, because I want to hear it. And thank you for that. And congratulations to finding that unbelievable person. We're going to be interviewing Jen in a New York minute on our next podcast on Grow or Die and your lessons. Your mentorship to me has been great and I love you as a friend and a brother. This if this episode boosted your attitude, please share with a friend. Join us on social.

Both your friends. Share with both your friends. Sure. Yeah.

You got at least two. Join us on social media. Go hit us on our Facebook page at the attitude movement, where we're trying to get a million people. And then also hit us on our Facebook page at the University of Attitude. For Jeffrey Gittamer, the king of sales, the king of attitude, this is Glenn Bill signing off on the Get Attitude podcast. This podcast is a part of the C Suite Radio Network. For more top business podcasts, visit c-suiteradio.com.