CW 165: Building Relationships, Customers and the Bottom-Line with Dr. Tony Alessandra CEO of the Assessment Business Center

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Welcome to the Creating wealth show. This is episode number 165 and this is your host, Jason Hartman. Thanks for joining me today. Appreciate it. Good to have you listening. So we've got a great show for you today with Dr. Tony Alessandra. You may well be familiar with him. He's pretty darn famous and he is a professional speaker and author. He's written all sorts of stuff and what he's really into is something called the Platinum Rule. And this is all about relationship strategies, relationship building, leadership influence, sales skills and sales techniques. And it just really applies to every area of life. So I think you'll like this. Whether it's about real estate, if it's about working with your property manager and working with vendors or tenants, or it's about influencing your kids or your significant other, or if it's about influencing your boss or your employees, the Platinum Rule is really, really valuable. We'll also talk today about charisma. And a lot of people think that charisma is like this God given talent and some people have it and some don't. I think you're going to find out on today's show that that is not true and it can be developed. And we'll talk more in depth about this various personality assessment and testing. And I just really think you'll enjoy today's show from a general life development perspective. There's just a lot here. So before we get into the interview with Dr. Tony Alessandra, I want to remind you that we have the Creating wealth boot camp coming up on May 22nd. Again, these are getting very rare nowadays, folks. So that's coming up May 22nd. We have our new Best of Masters weekend, which is the merger of two masters weekends. And I was just listening to this product today and let me tell you something, it is awesome. Hey, by the way, folks, I rarely actually ask you to buy anything. But there are two things you really need to buy and here they are. You need to subscribe to our newsletter, the Financial Freedom Report. And you can do that@jason hartman.com it is awesome. I don't want you to miss this stuff. I was listening to the audio content because you get the PDF version and the audio version of that newsletter and I was listening to the audio version on my drive back from Phoenix, Arizona on Sunday. And I tell you, that is just good stuff. I mean, I am very proud of it and it is, it is really some of the best financial and business building information out there. When you really want to know the inside scoop on real estate investments and the economy and the stock market and all of this stuff, we've really got an interesting take on it. I must commend myself, first of all, pat myself on the back here. I know that's kind of corny, but I'm doing it and commend our, our team that puts all this together. Whether it's our editor Doug or our graphic designer or voiceover professionals that narrate it. It's just really good stuff. So you get the PDF version and the audio version. You must subscribe to the Financial Freedom Report. I'm not kidding you. You're not hearing this content on the show and it is super important. And then the other thing you must do is you must purchase a copy of the Masters Weekend product. It is so good. There is just a wealth of information there. This is not a big commercial. It's not like we make a fortune off this stuff. But it is valuable to, you know, because if you've heard me talk about it on prior shows, I'm not really in this for the money. I love doing what I do because I want to save the middle class. That's my mission and to make the middle class more wealthy and get their money away from Wall Street. So. Oh, by the way, speaking of Wall Street, I put an interesting post on my Facebook page the other day. That was the day that The Dow topped 11,000. And I said, is the Dow at 11,000 or is the dollar at 60 cents? You get it. I call this the illusion of rel. I think the stock market is in for some hard times coming up. Don't know exactly when. Frankly, I am totally shocked it's as high as it is. But whatever the case, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Masters Weekend we have the live Masters Weekend. Remember that's twice yearly event coming up in October. You can get an excellent early bird price on that if you register. We just finished up, by the way, our Creating Wealth Online course. That was six weeks and it was really fun to do that as an online course. It was our first time. We'll offer that again in the future and just a lot of good things going on here, so be sure to check out our products on jasonhartman.com in the store. We've got a whole bunch of new products and our new resources page. We're continually adding resources and then also if you are not a blog reader, please make sure you are reading our blog. There's some interesting content on the blog post daily. We have a few different bloggers posting stuff and just think you'll find some really good content there. Also, of course, other shows, the Holistic Survival show, the Creating wealth video podcast. Coming up we've got the Heroic Investing show, the Solomon Success show, the AIPIS show. Now I haven't talked about that one before and I'll just mention it now. This is a new show because we have launched a new certification course for people who are in the trade. So you may well be interested in this if you are a real estate, mortgage or financial professional. We now have a certification course called aipis. AIPIS stands for Accredited Income Property Investment Specialist and this is an education program for real estate, mortgage and financial professionals. The website is aipis.org and we are launching a newsletter and a podcast show around that certification as well as the first two workbooks we have out now, Course 100 and Course 200. Also the speaking of wealth show coming up site is not up yet, but anyway, got a lot of good stuff there. I just want to mention it from time to time to remind you of the other stuff we have going on. And I tell you there are some great deals as far as the real estate side of things, the income properties we are having. Clients have some very good experiences. You heard on the last show in Dallas, very good experiences in Atlanta right now. And Atlanta is really two completely different markets. We've got stuff going on in the northern side of Atlanta and in the southern side, completely different local market specialists, different products. And our clients are having good experiences in both of those, so keep that in mind. Again, we're in 43 markets around the United States and since I'm mentioning different markets, I might as well just remind everybody. I know there are a lot of people who are getting kind of tempted by Las Vegas. Our opinion is it's still a little too early for Las Vegas, but the time where that gets interesting is not too far off, we don't think. But we still think it's too early. Too many vacancies, too many foreclosures, too many problems. Still a declining market in our book. And California, still a little bit of a declining market in our book. Too early again. We'll let you know when we think these markets make sense. So stay tuned for more information on that. Now let's talk about personality assessment, the Platinum rule and a whole bunch of other great stuff for general relationship strategies, sales strategies, influence strategies, success strategies with Dr. Tony Alessandra. And before we get to that, we have a quick message about one of our products. Here we go.

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It's my pleasure to welcome Tony Alessandra to the show. Dr. Alessandra is a streetwise but college smart business person. He has written several books. I've been following him for a long. He's just got a great perspective on something he calls, that I'd like to start with, called the Platinum Rule. We're all familiar with the Golden Rule. Tony, tell us about the Platinum Rule.

Well, Jason, you know, the golden rule is do unto others as you would have them do unto you, which basically is treat others the way you want to be treated. And in today's increasingly diverse world, the Platinum rule is do unto others as they would have you do unto them or treat people the way they want to be treated.

Okay, so give us an example of that. I mean, we want to do on others the right way, as the golden rule would tell us, but we really want to be. I guess this entails being more sensitive to the person and knowing what they want, right?

Absolutely. It's nothing more than being considerate. It's using your eyes and ears to pick up signals from the other person. Jason, are you married?

No looking.

But you know a lot of people that are, right?

Sure.

And anybody who's married knows, hey, if I'm going to ask my spouse something or to do something or whatever, and then you approach them, you can pick up signals. Yeah, I'm going to ask or no, it's not the right time. From a broader perspective, I use the word diversity. You know that old saying, when in.

Rome, do as the Romans, do as The Romans.

That's basically what the Platinum Rule is all about. It's being adaptable.

It's.

It's your ability and your willingness to change your approach depending on the situation or the person you're dealing with.

It sounds like, Tony, people really need to have some good level of empathy to practice the Platinum Rule then, right?

Well, empathy, relationship skills, and to me, most importantly, just some very good basic observation skills and listening skills. Because if you simply open your eyes and ears, people will show you or tell you how to treat them. Let me give you a quick example. When I moved, I was born and raised in New York City and New Jersey, first 18 years of my life. And when I eventually moved to San Diego, which is a very different regional culture than the greater New York, New Jersey area, would you agree?

Absolutely. People are a lot more mellow in San Diego, right?

Exactly. More mellow, slower paced, you know, more of a manana, you know, attitude. But when I moved here, at first, I practiced the Golden Rule. I treated people in San Diego the way I wanted to be treated. In other words, I treated the people in San Diego as if they were New Yorkers. Do you see a potential problem?

Yeah, I see a potential problem, yes.

You know, so I came on too strong, too fast, too aggressive. Even when I asked people to do things that under any other circumstance they would have willingly done, they dug in their heels. They decided not to do it. And the irony, it wasn't because of what I was asking them to do that caused them to dig in their heels and not do it. It was simply because of how I asked. I just rubbed people the wrong way. And once I learned that concept that went in Rome or when in San Diego, I started, at least in San Diego, I slowed down. I was more mellow, and I got a lot more accomplished and made a lot more friends, created a lot more allies. But when I go back to New York, I can't act as if I'm in San Diego. I'll get walked over. So the way when I'm in New York, all of those New York behaviors come back. And the same is true. I'm talking about it from a geographic point of view, but even from a behavioral point of view, even in San Diego, there are people who are faster paced, there are people who are slower pace. I've got to pick up those signals and either speed up or slow down. There are people who want to schmooze a little with me and socialize a bit before we get down to business. And there are others that are all business. I've got to pick up those signals and react accordingly. That's what the Platinum Rule is about.

Yeah, it really involves having a real sort of sensory acuity and opening your eyes and ears and seeing what the other person wants, you know. Tony, did the Platinum Rule come out of your background in the assessment tools world? You really talk a lot and I know you give keynote speeches and so forth where you teach people how to assess the other person and sort of understand their behavioral analysis. Now there's a lot of stuff on this. There's of course, Myers Briggs, which is potentially the most famous tell us about assessing a person and maybe the different styles of people just generally.

Okay. Well, actually the Platinum rule came out of my doctoral dissertation in the early to mid-70s, where my dissertation was built around buyer, seller similarity and whether that determined the success of the salesperson in making a sale. So that's where it initiated. I started doing assessments, actual paper based assessments where people would fill out the answers to 18 questions and it would tell them what their style was, where they would either come out as a director, thinker, a relator or a socializer. And then in 1996, when I actually had a book come out called the Platinum Rule, that's when I actually went online with the assessment and that online assessment, which was called platinum rule. So platinumrule.com that online assessment led to other people coming to me, other people and companies like Ken Blanchard, the author of the One Minute Manager, and Mark Sanborn, the author of the Fred Factor, and Don Hudson, you know, the author of the One Minute Entrepreneur. And it goes on and on, you know, companies, corporations, where I have created assessments for them at my assessment site, which is assessment businesscenter.com and so that I built the assessment online to try to sell the book and believe it or not, it became its own business. So as you mentioned, not only do I have the Platinum rule assessment, which I mentioned the four styles, director, thinker, relator and socializer, but I have so many variations. I have social styles, I have disc, which is a very worldwide popular disc, and then our Myers Briggs version, which is called the PTI assessment, the psychological types indicator, where it breaks people into 16 patterns of behavior. But I mean, it goes way beyond that, where you can take assessments to determine how, what your emotional intelligence quotient is and your leadership style and your selling skills, effectiveness, and it just goes on and on. The assessment business now has become my number one revenue generator. That's how I am building my wealth, is by building businesses.

That actually have value that I can sell. And for me as an entrepreneur, building businesses that generate passive recurring revenue.

Sure, yeah. And that's the key. That's what we all want. And maybe we'll kind of come back to that a little bit. But tell us about the types, if you would. And maybe let me tell you something that just kind of frustrates me, Tony. When I'm working, when I'm doing business, I'm busy and I've got a lot going on, I've got a lot on my mind. I always want to kind of get to the next project and check things off my to do list, if you will. And when someone comes in to see me to sell me a product or a service for my company, it's frustrating for me, I guess maybe I'm a director, maybe you can assess me if you like. But you know, it's frustrating that when they want to kind of chit chat and I want to get to the bottom line, man, I want to get it done and do the next thing. And it's very frustrating when the person selling to you doesn't sense your style and sense what you need.

Right. I think a lot of salespeople today are simply living, breathing, walking, talking ads. Just like an ad on television, it's the same ad no matter who you are. And too many salespeople, they go out and they pitch the same thing to everybody. Rather than using the power of face to face communication and adapting your solution and your approach based on the person's style, let me give you a quick CNN summary of each of the four styles. And I think your listeners will really appreciate this because they can identify hopefully with one of them. But the director, which sounds like is your style, their key desire is results. Bottom line. Their motto, I want it done right, I want it done now, or better yet, I want it done yesterday. They tend to juggle a lot of things at the same time and do them well. They're great administrators, delegators. They work best under pressure, under dead, and they play to win. One of the problems with directors though is they're not very good listeners simply because they don't have the time and they believe they already know the answer.

What'd you say? Just kidding.

Now, the thinker. The thinker, their key desire is for order, accuracy, precision, perfection. You know, their motto is everything in its place and a place for everything. These are the people who are great planners, problem solvers, organizers. They're great at creating systems, highly inventive, and of all four styles, arguably the most intellectual. So if you want something done right, give it to a thinker. But if you want it done on time, think again because they tend to procrastinate, getting finished until it's perfect.

Okay, so the thinker is the one who might suffer from the paralysis of analysis.

Exactly, exactly. Perfect example. Now, the relators are third style. Well, their key desire is for harmony. They're the peacekeepers. They want everything to go smoothly, everybody to get along. They're great listeners, they're team players, they're just easygoing people. But a problem area for them is because they try so hard to keep things on an even keel. They tend to go along with things even when they don't want to. They tend to hold feelings or disagreements in because they don't want to rock the boat.

And eventually those things become a problem. They come out, eventually it becomes a problem for them.

In order to keep the tension low between people, they take on the tension themselves. Some people even describe them as martyrs. And a lot of people take advantage of them, and not necessarily knowingly. It's just that sometimes the relators just open themselves up to being taken advantage of. So that's the relators, the last style. So we did director, thinker, relator, socializer is the more expressive, influencing style. Their key desire is for fun, excitement, applause, visibility, recognition. And they talk a lot about their favorite subject themselves. I sometimes joke and say generally speaking, socializers are generally speaking because they have the gift of gab, the power of persuasion. They're very. They think quickly on their feet. They're great brainstormers. Again, incredibly persuasive people, very likable, very sociable. But sometimes they start too much and don't get a finish. They get bored quickly. I guess a way to summarize that is one of her sayings. When all is said and done, more is frequently said. So those are the four styles. And you can quickly see that if you're a salesperson or a manager or a teacher, I can go on and on. What you want to do is you cannot present or lead or manage or motivate or educate each of these four styles the same way because they do things differently.

Let me take a brief pause. We'll be back in just a minute.

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So now that you've gone over the four Basic styles. And you know what's interesting when I'm listening to you, Tony, is I. I see a little bit of myself in all four of those styles. So no one can really be classified as one type or the other completely, can they?

Well, I wouldn't say completely, but every one of us has a dominant pattern. Your dominant pattern may be director, right? Actually, my dominant pattern is director. However, let me tell you, the name of this concept is behavioral style, not personality styles. Oh, I know a lot of people cringe when they hear you're asking me to change my personality. No, we're simply asking you to change your behavior. And if that's the case, and we're talking about behavioral styles, what we need to understand is that depending on the situation, depending on the pressures, whatever, you can come across, maybe most of the time, Jason, you come across as a director, but in any given situation, you can be in your socializer style or thinker style or relator style. Now, you may not be in that style that often, but I've got to be prepared to pick up the signals that you send and then treat you based on the style that you're in or the behavior that you're in at that moment in time. And again, if I may, just one example.

One of my partners, my partner in the Cyrano group, Scott Zimmerman, when he calls me up every so often because I have caller id, I know it's him, and I'm in my director mode. Here's how I'll answer the phone. What do you want? What's up? What do you need? And he knows right away I'm in that director style. And here's how he typically responds. Tony, I have one quick thing. Now, how would you like people when they call you to say, jason, I have one quick thing.

I would love that. I would totally appreciate.

Jason, I have one quick thing that's going to make you money. All right.

Yeah.

So that's what he does. But every so often, I may be in one of my other modes, and I may answer the phone again knowing it's him. I may answer the phone saying, tony's pizzeria. What kind of toppings do you want?

A little with me before telling me why he called.

Right. Very good. I think maybe I've got a real split personality problem because I see myself as very much in the director style while at work, but pretty different, Much more of a socializer when I'm not working. Do we really change at home and work? Are we that different?

Yeah, you absolutely can. You literally, because of training, habit, past experiences, because you can actually be a different or project a different behavioral pattern to different people regardless of what the situation is.

Okay, so when you project a different behavioral pattern to different people, are you invoking the Platinum Rule? Are you practicing it?

Well, it depends. Are you doing it on purpose or without thinking? Many people project different patterns without even thinking about it. And you know. You know as well as I do that this is not something this concept is not taught in school. Unfortunately.

No, I wish it was.

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