To Move Ahead You Need to Learn New Skills with Chris Achong

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind, where we get real world insights on winning from people who have accomplished amazing things. I'm your host, Larry Weidell, and let's get going. I'm back with Chris A. Chung, and we're talking about winning, and Chris knows winning. Anybody could run businesses in New York City. You gotta have respect for them, and especially Brooklyn. And so congratulations on. I don't even think I mentioned this before. One of your businesses is in the financial services agencies. You have 750 agents. You got seven hubs in 30, 40 states. And so had your biggest income month last month. And so things are booming. And so also glad to have you down here in South Florida when you can get down. How much time are you spending in Lauderdale?

I'm probably about. I would say I go for a month, then I disappear for a month. I'm living in, like, four different places now.

Where did your entrepreneurial energy come from and incitement? Where do you decide? And I want to, you know, I want to be in charge. I want my own business. I don't care what it is.

Gosh, it started as a kid. I was one of these kids, they would call it, you know, vagabond. You know, I was one of these kids that I just disappeared all day, showed up at night, you know, and I did this from, like, from time. I was 7, 8 years old. I grew up in the Caribbean. I was all over the place, you know, hanging out. And then we came to the United States.

Where in the Caribbean did you grow up?

Trinidad. Trinidad and Tobago.

Oh, okay.

Sweet, sweet, sweet. Soca. They call it Soca music.

Okay.

My father was a big time musician, you know, so he was. He was an entrepreneur. He ran his own show. But, you know, I came to the United States and I had a couple jobs. And these jobs is really weird. You have to show up at a certain time and leave at a certain time, and you have to listen to everything they told you to do. And I went, oh, hold on a minute. I want to, you know, I want to make my own schedule. And so when I started in sales and I started, you know, you know, I remember making my first sale, and I think I made three or four hundred bucks. I was like, if I got skilled at this and if I could learn how to do this anytime I want it. So, you know, you look at most people, they want to move ahead. To move ahead, you need new skills. And I had to learn, you know, pretty much every skill that there is to know. I have. I Think I have a list of like 30 or 40 different skills that you have to learn from people skills to, you know, sales skills, all these different things. And. But I love the idea of chunks of money. I didn't like the idea of salary money. I knew that was, you know, that was healthy and it wasn't that much anyway. But I like the concept of chunks of money, systems of cash flow, which. That's fun. You know, it's, it's, you know, it's how you get free to deal with cash flow. I think the first few years, most entrepreneurs, or what made us, I think, successful as an entrepreneur in the beginning was we focused on cash flow. We didn't focus on saving or investing money into other things. We focused on constant cash flow. Like, how can I get this business to create a constant cash flow? Not just cash flow, constant cash flow, where it continuously kept going up. And so we spent a lot of time working on a lot of systems, trainings and so forth, you know, to get that in place. But that's when I got the bug and I, you know, I've had it since, you know, business is not walking apart, but, you know, you try enough of them and you work really hard enough for them, you'll become successful, you know.

When you got. When did you come to the United States?

1987.

And you were how old?

12. 12 years old.

Well, okay, so what was your. What. What kind of businesses did you. You do growing up?

I actually started a cleaning company when I was 16. Really, that, that, you know, I was cleaning a church, believe it or not. And then I got a buddy to help me out and he stole some stuff, so I got fired. And so my first business collapsed. True story. And so that didn't work out really good. I was trying to spread out a little bit, and I got. And then we got into the financial business and that spilled over into restaurants, bars, fashion companies, galleries, real estate. Currently now Bread and Butter is in the financial industry and a little bit of real estate. We have quite a bit of cash flow coming from both of them. But that's. Real estate is, you know, just recently, you know, we kind of, you know, stayed away from it for a lot of years.

Your other businesses, they were. Were they an outgrowth of your gallery business? You know, the fashion, the restaurants, the entertainment type businesses?

Yeah, I was trying to build businesses based on my lifestyle, which, you know, probably wasn't, you know, so I'd made. I'd made a bunch of money and I was living, you know, my story, what I'M known for is, you know, I travel a lot. We've, you know, we. We had a big challenge early on in our life that, you know, made us realize that, you know, you know, we're not promised tomorrow. We just got to live. And I started traveling. So I travel, you know, pretty much every month, you know, of my. Since. Since I was. Since 2008, I've traveled every month, you know, and yeah, it's just something that we, you know, is that we started doing.

Did that get in your blood, you think, down growing up in the Caribbean and your, your father was a musician bouncing around the islands playing and this, that and the other. That just kind of gets in your blood and so you're a traveler.

Yes, that's my, that's my, that's my way. I spend, if you want to call it my leisure money. I don't own any fancy stuff yet, but I got, I got a lot of under my belt when it comes to traveling. That's my hangout. I love to just land somewhere where I've never been before and a week later.

What happened to you early in your life that was just devastating. That gave you the wake up call and really challenged you?

Yeah, I spent a couple years building the business I have right now. I did two years of aggressive 15, 18 nowadays, and I built a pretty decent, substantial agency that, you know, was creating, you know, a pretty decent income. Actually went, you know, all the way from doing everything myself two years later to doing nothing, in a sense, just kind of managing it. You know, we had. Was doing probably 50, 70 sales a month. And I was a seller. One thing, you know, so from doing all the sales yourself to do nothing. And then we had a challenge. My wife passed away, this was in 2008. And, you know, it was devastating. How old were you? This is, you know, this is what, as I coach, you know, people through, you know, your ability to stay focused and make sure you have something in place when these challenges happen. And, you know, because things do happen in this world. We just had a crazy two years that, you know, that just went through in the world. And thank God we had that business in place that gave us the ability to just kind of get free and, you know, notice the world was still there and, you know, just, you know, get back. You know, we've, you know, we've recovered, okay, which, you know, pretty much everyone does, but we've recovered. And it just, it was, it was an incredible lesson, you know, terrible thing, but incredible lesson that, you know, made us tough.

How old Were you when your wife passed away?

I was 32.

Okay, so you were 32 and you're just not expecting these kind of things to happen. How did it, did it gradually dawn on you this is not going to end well?

No, it just, it was, it was. She just woke up one day, got a stroke and they said she's done. That's it.

Wow.

It wasn't a pre, you know, not. Nothing showed, you know, that she was going to get a stroke prior to that, you know, I, I did nursing early on when, when I was, you know, 19 years old, you know, I went into nursing. You know, you learn about these things. There's just no one, one, one proof, you know, sometimes things just happen, you.

Know, and so you're sitting there and it happened. It's almost an event, an advantage when they're, they're quick, by the way, you know, for the people that go. When the people are left behind. Because it's like, we're not going to debate this. It's done.

Yeah.

I don't have anybody, I don't have anybody to argue with over this. It's already. The decision was made, it's done. And so you're still. What did you. How long. Because we started off this thing talking about mastering distractions. That's pretty good distraction. At age 32 years old.

I was able to run my business, you know, because. Which I believe in. You know, it's a philosophy I believe in is, you know, you build a business. And you know, I've had a lot of conversations with people that work with me, but not because you built the business, means you're free, you still have to run it. And so we learned how to run it on fume, so to speak. I have a very direct personality, so I would be. I'm the loudest one in my organization. I'm not loud all day long. I'm loud from about 6 o' clock till around 9 o' clock in the morning. And most of the times after that you can't find me. So I'm usually done working by 9 o'. Clock. I read in a book that, you know, the times that different people wake up and it was like CEOs wake up. Billionaires wake up at 4:00am People that make million wake up at 5 or 6. And, you know, if you don't make six figures, you're supposed to wake up before 6:00am and so. And I would also learn that you could run your business, you know, if you set up everything, you have enough staff. So I believe in Overstaffed, not understaffed. So I've always had more staff. I don't like, you know, I like the concept of, you know, letting Uncle Sam help me fund my businesses. We've understand we don't run our business like an individual. We run our business like a, like a major corporation where they have a certain amount of money set aside for staff. And so because we have so much staff in place, we could stop at 9:00amSo I'm usually done working by 9:00am My guys will tell you I haven't done a meeting in the evening or at nighttime in years. Okay. It's usually if I do a leadership meeting or I'm running the show or whatever, it's early in the morning and then we're done by like 10 o', clock, 11 o' clock the latest. You know, I've been doing this for 12, 15 years.

Well, to do that, that's an offshoot of being able to learn new skills. Because one skill you have to learn is delegate. You know, train and then delegate and then also delegate and hold people accountable, you know, you know, you're not delegating and just turn, you know, you don't turn the dog loose to go walk himself. You know what I'm saying? You keep him on a leash. And so you don't any kind of thing you want done. If you want to get big at it, you're going to have to train other people to do it. So you can free yourself up to do other things, but you have to know they're actually doing it. You have to have systems in place that allows you to.

It'S exactly what.

It is, keep up with. And so how did you learn the delegation skill?

Well, we couldn't do it. I've heard people say that you have to delegate. You know, you can't get everything done yourself. But we just started putting a lot of systems at first it was an incredible, I think, role model. So, so the master copy, which was me, I taught our leaders and different people that worked with me how it's supposed to be done, how you're supposed to work and what kind of systems we need to have in place. If you have the right systems, the systems kind of run the accountability.

And.

Accountability for those systems and it just kind of just falls into that. So if we did this at this time, we did this at this time, this is the time we do this for this part of the business. You'll have a constant, you know, consistent flow of, you know, of success. And so, you know, years, years, years ago, we did that and we learned that from different mentors that just kind of, you know, told us that, you know, this, you should do this at this time, you should do that at that time. But, but it takes, it takes, it still takes work, you know, So I do, I a lot of messaging, I do a lot of texting on a day to day basis. I'll send out voicemails, I'll send. But recognition is a big form of how to keep accountability and systems in place because you always have to recognize it, especially if it's going good, you want to give it extra recognition. So people kind of move towards that direction. So you got to become a master of recognition basically in business.

And where did, did you grow up in that kind of work for those kind of companies? Or did you learn that from your own experience?

So, own experience, human behavior. I like to be recognized. I like to be told I did a good job. And I found out you could, you could. It doesn't really matter what you pay people just because you're telling them so. The money's just not enough. I'm saying, you know, you have to be able to be there to give them a hug, let them know, hey, great job. Especially if they're doing something out of the norm or if they're practicing great leadership or they're managing something really good. So we got really great at that. I still do it all day long. I love doing it. There's nothing, especially the people that are coming up. It's one of my favorite things to do is to see entrepreneurs start growing because we mentor a lot of people now. A lot of people just call us and say, hey, can you help me with this? What do you think about this? Right?

You know, and so to kind of wrap this part up, you know, we were talking to start off with is to move ahead. You've got to learn new skills and you got to be, you know, you got to improve and you find out what to improve on is where your business is stalling out at and where you're having problems as a leader. And so the idea of developing skills, you know, you said you started in sales, you had the sales skills, you had the leadership skills, responsibility, learning how to delegate, develop systems, create, build accountability into your system, learning how to communicate, developing the recognition skill. What are other, what are some other key skills that you would alert people that are on the way up to pay attention to and start to develop?

I mean, the most obvious one that always stands out, it's you. You know, you have to outwork so there's working smart, working hard. There's a whole fight against that, especially in this era right now, you know, But I believe you got to work hard and eventually you get to work smart if you work hard enough so that things that, you know, that we really just kind of stretch. You have to be open minded, you have to have patience. All these skills that you have to deal with to build the business. We went through everything. It's not that serious. This is probably the best one. Childhood disorders, how to, you know, not necessarily just about seven or eight childhood disorders I have that, you know, that people jealousy and, you know, always having to be right and all these different things. So you have to learn the skill, how to control, you know, you can't be around people where you constantly do things that, you know, that throw them off or make them not want to be around you. So your goal is to get people to feel like they're always, you know, it's amazing person in the room.

You're in New York and it's, you know, there's so many corporations there. It's amazing how many major corporations have CEOs who have never learned that lesson. And, you know, they go out there and they create all kind of nightmares for themselves and they wind up getting thrown out. You know, it happens at all levels, you know, and eventually they get thrown out and they. Where they wish they could have hung around a little longer because they probably were just getting to the point where they were really learning the job, learning the role, just getting good at it. But they reached the point where people just couldn't take all their grief anymore.

You know, it's happened to me too.

Talk about that.

Yeah, I mean, I got to a point where, because sometimes you're overzealous, like you really want to win, but the strategy is just the wrong way. You know, I've always wanted to win. I've always wanted people to be successful and do well. But sometimes you just, you know, you rub people the wrong way and you get under their skin a little too much wear. They don't want to be in the same room with you. We've been there and, you know, we had to work on getting people to trust us more. Years ago I learned, you know, if people don't like you, they're not going to let you coach them.

Right.

And so, you know, they know that I love them, you know, and, you know, and so we have that, you know, which, which is hard to do in business, you know, but there's trust in place where you know, I have, you know, if we're going to make more money, we're going to do together, we're going to grow together as a business. And once people see that, you know, they're, you know, obviously there's going to be fights, there's going to be arguments. But.

And it's a fine line, Chris, from being tough to not being a bully. And it has to do with. They know that you've done it. You know, you're working hard, you're paying the price. You know that they have. You have their interests at heart. You're not doing it to drive your income up. You're trying to get them to be accountable to themselves. And it's a fine line because a lot of times people don't. It doesn't come across the way we intended is because they thought they were being bullied or bossed or whatever. And we all develop our own style. You know, some people can get away with more than others. And I think you and I have figured out a way to get away with probably more than most people. Because it's like, you know, when you've been dumb yourself, stupid yourself, you can say to people, don't be stupid, right? Because you're knowing what, like this is stupid, what you're doing, you know, why would you say something like that? That's dumb? Because, you know, you could. They'll. They can tell or you can tell them. Like I used to think like that. And look where it got me. I had to change. Now you're going to have to change. You know, we're all in the same boat together. We can't do dumb things. We can't say dumb things. We can't alienate people. We. But they could take it from you when they know you've lived that and you've been down and you were willing to be humble enough to admit it and do the change. Because life, if you're going to be the spearhead for growth for your company, you're going to take the friction, you're going to be the battering ram there, you know, you're going to be the edge of the ax, and you're going to where the bulk of the grief will come on you. And so you've got to be willing. If you're going to stay sharp, you've got to be willing to shed the dullness, you know, and allow yourself to get sharper. To get sharper. And it's. Unfortunately, I can say that after decades in this thing, there always seems to be sharpening that needs to occur. Absolutely. You rub it people wrong, you say the wrong thing, you think of the wrong thing. It's like, okay, my bad. And so it's a constant. If we're willing to be constantly growing ourselves, it's easier for us to run our organization and challenge them to be doing the same thing. Would you agree with that?

Absolutely. We grew in a lot of areas. I think one of the areas that, you know, I always try to get people to work on, especially when you're in a leadership position, is you got to know when to use honey and when to use vinegar. You know, it's, it's, you know, and I found out most people, I have a list of people in my business and some of them make really good money, but they're honey people like you can't be tough with them. You know, you give them a hug and they'll go do 10 times more than you know. And when you, when you grow up the way I grew up, you know, you know how to be tough with people, to be direct with people. But sometimes, you know, it's just maybe tell them how great they are and tell them, you know, what you expect. Having high expectations for them and just inspiring them more than, you know, you know, stepping on them or, you know, being too tough with them, you know, years later. In business, we probably would have been 10 times more successful if we had a little bit more honey. You know, the vinegar man, I knew how to dish it out, you know, and. But we found that honey works better than vinegar. Most of the time you could still be direct, but you got to do it in a honey format, if you want to call it.

It's not just. Yeah, sooner or later, the sooner you can learn. It's not just what you do, but how you do it that is equally important. And so thanks so much, Chris. That wraps up this episode. Consider leaving a rating and review if you like what you heard. In addition, I have a free video for you and it contains my best insights from 20 years of running my own business and also coaching million dollar earners. You'll find it@whitelownwinning.com webinar. Thanks for listening and do it big.