#3 Beyond The Basics To A Big Business

Number three of the beyond the basics. 2. Building a business. Boom. Beyond the basics. Up and down, up and down, up and down. 2. Building a business. So, Joe, you had a question for me?

Yeah. The question is, so when you're in your meetings, are you always sharing the vision about opening your own office, expansion and stuff like that to the team? So that way they're buying into the vision, or you're at least challenging and trying to find people who want to buy into that vision.

So the question would be like, when do you put the idea of. I guess when you. When do you start talking about team building and getting your own business? Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, and expansion. And, you know, so that way you identify. So that way people on your team know that the whole focus of why they're here is own their own office, be their own boss, not to just be under you forever. You know what I'm saying?

Right. Well, okay, I'm gonna shift gears on that. And what I was thinking I would do, and I would say all I can do is tell you what I did. I think that you go to your team and you say these things. This is what I've done. Because you're gonna run into this at different stages of your career where you launch off, you get sidetracked, you get into a survival mode, and now it's time to go back into a rapid growth, rapid development state. You're going to do this over and over. So it's a great thing to have it, to know how to do it. And one thing you need to know before you go is not all will go. Not all will be interested. Yeah, because they have. A lot of them are, are going to be. Have their own ideas. You have people that, if you've been running a normal office and you've been patting them on the back for being great in sales and they've got the thing in sales. They'll be kind of set in their ways and they're kind of happy with how things are going. No one's totally, ever totally happy with things, but they're going to be, you know, they're going to have their own ideas. They're gonna already have been reached the teenager stage of life where they like you, Joe, but they think they're a little smarter than you anyway, you know, and they've heard some of your. Like, every teenager has their parents. Like, yeah, it's a nice theory, mom and dad, but yada, yada. But you're so old and worn out and ragged and, you know, I'M of the new generation, blah, blah, blah, blah. So when you go and say to your team, you want to launch a definite new explosive, you want to turn things around, not everybody can go. Not everybody's gonna be interested. And they're. When they're on commission, they can do what they want. They're on business for themselves. You can't boss them around. And you, you know, you don't want to be bossing people around anyway, you know, if they don't want to be with you. And so is that the problem? How to you like. Like how to launch a real new phase? I want to make sure I'm getting your question. How to launch this, what to say to them. Is that it? Okay, here's what. I'll just tell you what I did. I would say, you know, gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, here's where we are. Here's where we are. Here's what. Here's our track record. Here we stand. You know, we're good, we're successful, we're doing good. It's happening for us. But on the other hand, I think we can do better. I think we can do more. I don't think we're reaching our potential. And the other thing is, I want to get big. I want to pick up, you know, I want things. I think we're capable. You know, I. I want to get big, and I think we can. And things I think we can is this. I think we can. We can do. We can do more. We can do it faster. Say, I think we're running a great program, but I'd like to see you guys get up the ladder, get your incomes up, get your own businesses faster. I see other people around the country doing things, and I think we got a shot at number one. You know, I. I think we just might be good enough. We might be able to go to number one in this thing. And, you know, success breeds success, and in all of your life, I don't know what you've had a chance to do, but there's nothing like winning a championship. We might be able to win a championship. We might be able to go out and do things that nobody has ever done in this town, in this state, or even in this entire company. We could take what we're doing and turn it into an adventure. Because if we just kind of go through the motion, say, look, we're good. You know, we're good. We're, you know, we're doing well. We got a good track record. We'd be the envious of most people, but Most people don't know what our potential is. See, I think we just tap in our potential. I think we've just begun. I don't think this is the end. And frankly, I can't get excited about just doing the same old, same old. I'm ready for an adventure. And so I'm looking at there and saying, I want to know. Say I've made a decision. That's what I always, you know, you got to sit down and say because of that. So this would be the first step. You know, you go back here and you say to them, basically, here's how you introduce the subject. You know, say, this is. This is where we are. This is what we've done. And you kind of frame the issue because you got to start somewhere, and you've got to say to yourself, what you've got to do is make a sale, Joey. What you want to do is make a sale to your team. And just like when you make a sale to a client, you can't force it. You can offer them something. You can let them know what you stand for. And so anytime you're going in and making a sale, you start putting some facts and figures on the table. What you want to do is, like, in all sales, sales is your point A, you want to get them, you want to move them to point B, and then you want to convince them that, C, you're the best one to get them, or you got the best program to get them from point A to point B. So what you're trying to do in your presentation now is to go in and say, you know, you're introducing, you're putting the facts on the table. You know, you're complimenting them from all of that. But then you start to disturb, okay, they've got to get disturbed. They got to be creator Rock. Say, look, if we keep doing. Say we're doing well, we're successful. But you could say it's kind of like this. You know, here's the graph of what, you know, what we've been able to do. You know, we've come in and we've done this, that, and the other, and we're operating up at this level. And then most people are down here at this level. We might be up in the. In terms of the industry and our company, we might be in the 90% level. And, you know, we look fantastic. Unbelievable. So proud of everybody. But on the other hand, people get tired of doing the same thing. People get bored with doing the same thing. This might be our peak. We might be we might wind up losing some people because they want to go faster. Because as they look around this same company, they see people skyrocketing. They see people and you say, I've been in this thing 17 years. Well, they see people come in in the last three years and like, bam, cleaning our clock. They've got much more excitement. And our guys looking around, they're saying we're a bunch of has beens. It's like, what are we, second class citizens? And people are going up there rewriting the record book. All the excitement, all the sizzle. And sure, we're beating most people. We can keep doing that. But let me tell you what I think. I think we can kick these people's butt. I think we don't have to take a back seat to nobody. That's what I think. And I think the more I hear about these, you know, other things around the country, I think that we're selling ourselves short. And I think it's time for a change. I think it's time to unleash. I think I may be holding you guys back. I think I may have cluttered you up with too much thinking, too much training, too early, too many things and not focusing on the things that allow us to explode. And say, what I want to do is get. Take charge of where we are and get on an attack. And I don't want to kind of drift around and do the same things where, you know, we've been doing. But I think we are capable of another massive surgeon. I think we could go out and be the ones to blow all of these guys away. And see, what you're doing is say, I look and I hear this and I see things happening to people inside these organizations faster than some of y'. All. And I say, look, I got better people. We got more potential. I think I could run a better training center. I think I could be more focused on. I think we could have bigger goals. And so, ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you. And so what you're doing is you're getting them disturbed about, know, as good as it is here, Joe, how much. How much more exciting it would be, you know, to be over here. Wow, this is. We're capable of this stuff. And I'm going to run a program to get us from there to there. And so it's a sale. And you get in there and you say, look, I'm looking in there and I'm hearing. And I don't think it would take much. I think we could go in here and we could clean up this and we could get some goals there and we, you know, make some adjustments there and I think we could double what we're doing. I look around the office here, I'm not so sure we couldn't get 10 more, 10 times more production right out of this office right here. I think we could have, you know, we could ramp up here. I think by January we could be here. I think we got a shot at, by March being here. I think, you know, and in our business, of course we have, coming down the road, we have a convention coming in in June. And you could say by the convention, you know, we're, we're at this level here by the convention we might even be able to triple know, we might be able to do all this and not working. See, we're already working as hard as anybody works in the company. It's just a matter of streamlining, focusing and getting more bang for our buck in the growth arena and mushroom our size. So it's like, so you pay that thing out there and you tell them a couple of adjustments that you're going to make and then you put a challenge. You're going to say, who's with me? Say, because the thing is you can tell them, say look, I look at this thing and say, my decision's made, I'm going and I'm going with or without you. Because I don't think we're second class citizens. I don't think you guys are, you know, need to take a back seat to anybody. I think we can compete with the best and I think we can put them in our rear view mirror. And so who, you know, who wants an adventure, who wants to take a, you know, a run for the top and you, you put it out there and say, look, if you don't want to go with me, that's fine, but stay out of my way. Do not fight me because I will trample you. You know, because I got, I got to deliver for the ones who want to do this thing right here. And if you want to keep going your own way, that's great. And if you think we're, you think we're, we're full of crap, we don't have any chance to do it, that's great. Unbelievable. You're entitled your opinion, but you darn well better keep it to yourself because we think we can do it and we're going to be bringing an army of rookies in here and if you're not going to be with us, you just got to stand aside and let us run because we want to do something great and that's the way you know, I laid it out there. Is that helpful? Does that help at all?

Yeah, no, that's perfect. Perfect. I took my notes on what I need to do there. Perfect.

It takes the guesswork out of it. You know, it's a simple thing but you wind up doing that over and over and over in your career when it comes time because you know like you're always gonna have time where for one reason or another you lose momentum. You know like you guys, you know, you go through these Sandy periods, you know you went through. I mean you guys are right there with Sandy obliterated. How long were you without power?

Eight days.

Eight days. I mean the office, I mean you're in the dark. You're everything, everything. And then you were in there. I mean Your career encompasses 9, 11. How far are you from the. Where the World Trade Tower buildings were.

We were probably about, we were right across, we saw it right from our office.

You could look out your office inside the World Trade, the planes hitting and the things crumble out your office and you had an incredible month. I mean you guys had like a record setting month that month. You know you guys have. So why should y' all take a back seat to anybody? I mean, why should you be intimidated by anybody? I mean you had the worst political, I mean the worst kind of military attack in the country right out your window. You've taken the worst storm of the century. Right hit you dead straight on. And you guys are, see, you know, you got a great story to tell, don't you think?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

So, so are you getting an idea of how you might be able to present this to guys? You know, I gotcha. I gotcha. See like I didn't put up with a God blessed World Trade center going down and indoor and Sandy to be a second class citizen in this company and I don't think you guys should either, so. But I mean you can find a version of that story. Everybody can find a version of that story. Say, you know, we've done things in the past, this, that and the other. We not, you know, we, we not a bunch of, you know, like chopped liver here. We're not, we didn't show up lately. I mean we've done some stuff but now it's a matter of what's our future going to be. No one cares about last year's champion. It's all about what's it going to be this year. You know, it's like the New York Giants you know, they won some Super Bowls, but they're going to jump down their throat. You know, when they were on their little losing streak here the last month, you know, everybody's jumping down Eli and Coughlin's throat and. Because everybody's wondering what we could do this year. And so that's the way it is in business. You know, you, you know, people in your training center don't want to hear about all the great things that happened to guys who were in your training center three years ago or five years ago. They want great things to happen to them. It's great that John Louie came through and, you know, he's a superstar now, but they want to be superstars. So you tell them it's my obligation to give you that chance. And that's the result of us doing all of these things, because it's not me doing it, it's us doing it. So, Joe, that's what I would say. That's enough for this one. And you got a comment you want to add on this one?

I think that is perfect that you all pointed out, because sometimes what we think is right to say is not the same thing you just said. But I like it. It's challenging. It's putting it out there. It's sending a vision, also showing how serious you are, and you're looking for those people who want to step up. And I wrote it all down. I'm on it now.

There's some other things. What I think we ought to do is leave this alone at this point. Okay? Okay, Joe, thank you very much. I mean, we had a great series. And I will say this. I've got a. I've got a lot more things I'd like to tell you about now, once you introduce it and once you launch the program, but this is enough for now. And you and I are going to get back together here after the holidays, and we're going to. Or maybe even during the holidays, and we're going to get in and do, like, some of the step two, three fours of creating independent guys. And like how for the first time, once they get into management, how you start to train them to be independent, responsible leaders, keeping up with their numbers, being responsible, setting goals, keeping up with their people. And you give them. Start them on those baby steps of being an independent business person right from the beginning, rather than hit them with a hammer of all those responsibilities after they are in business for, you know, two, three, four years. And so we'll talk about that on our next series, but thanks so much.