We Had a Decent Month but What Can We Do Better with Eric Davis

Welcome to this edition of the Million Dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell.

I'm here with Eric Davis and Eric is a leader in financial services out in the Southern California area. He started off in the employment world working for the government and in the prison system out there and was on track for a lifetime of security, but a lifetime of mind numbing work, mediocrity, mediocrity. And fought his way up to where in his early 40s he went over a million dollars in income and he's only 12 years into his new business and the sky's the limit going forward. And he's a real inspirational figure for those that start off in the corporate world, the employee world, and they've been told the answer is in a job secure job, look for something stable and if you want more that becomes, you want some excitement in your life and you want the extras. That's awfully frustrating not to be able to make it happen. And it's not just in the prison system where you have to wait 10 years. In most of the corporate environments they have a fixed structure and the person above you, the unions are really bad about this, but the person above you, the last thing they want to see is you bright eyed, bushy tailed, fighting your way up the ladder because you could be costing them their job. And so it doesn't breed a culture of encouragement and reinforcement and recognition for doing a great job. But so you got in, you found a way, you found something that you got inspired about. How long did it take before you had your own business in your own office? You know, you had your training behind you.

Well, initially I got into the business, it took me 10 months to discover, hey, this is what I really want. Well, it took me about six months to discover this is what I really want to do. Yeah, but I was doing this as a part time opportunity at first because I didn't have to jump in as a career change at the beginning. So what I did was I realized that I was surviving when I was making ends meet off my stable income hours I already made. So the majority of the money I made in this new opportunity, I saved that money. So I was able to make about 40 grand that first year. I paid off my student loan because I owe 10,000 on that, probably saved another 20,000 just from what I did the first year. But I looked around and I seen people that were Putting their everything into this business, were making more money than the highest person in the whole parole department. I should say at the time, highest person was making maybe 250,000. The leader of the whole state of California parole division was making 250. At that time, there were average people in my business making 3, 4, $500,000 a year. And it made me make the decision, like, wait, why not me? Why can't I have that same opportunity with the mentorship we had? And, you know, it made me make the change or the conversion. But I put myself in a situation where I got good enough at the business, where I felt like I replaced the income I was making at my job. I had money saved so I wouldn't just be jumping in with nothing and then, you know, jumping into a situation where every situation where, I mean, I'll be word I'm looking for desperate at every opportunity to make money rather than just building the business correct way. Because I saved the money, I put myself in a situation where I wasn't desperate. I was just able to work and build.

Now, when did you. When you got running, were you married? You and Amber. When did you and Amber get married?

We got married 2006, so a few years before I discovered this business.

Yeah. And so you started as a newly young married couple, and when you got your own business and you're in charge now, there's not anybody looking over your shoulder. What was. Was it hard to be disciplined? You know, you're running your own prison system now.

Actually, it was not, because when you start a business at the beginning, you're not making a whole lot of money initially, and it's not stable. And I've been programmed for years to work, you know, nine to five or ten hours a day. So why would I treat my own business any different? Yeah, matter of fact, it made me want to do more because I knew I would get more out of it than working overtime at a job. So if I was committed to giving someone else all of my time, why can't I give my business the time? So I was excited. I was excited about waking up and going to work for myself rather than, oh, my God, it's Monday. I got to get in this traffic. It was like, oh, I can't wait to get started. And when it's a for, it's for you, and it's something you love, it's different. You have a different type of energy. You don't need as much sleep. You just. Just feel better. You're energized. You're you're dreaming again. And I just used that energy and worked my business like a job, like I would work a job, make sure I get my eight to 10 hours in. But I ended up doing more because it was something I wanted to do. And I seen a bigger prize at the end. Rather than working for 40 years and working and trying to live off a fixed income the remainder of my life. I was always told in business, if you work the business hard for about 10 years, you can retire maybe in 10 years or, or work very little after those 10 years. And rather than the 40, I was going to work anyway, I was going to work 10 hours a day for 40 years. Now I can work 10 to 12 hours a day for 10 because I'm working for myself. So it was easy to get up and go to work as I should. And I knew if I took a day off or got complacent, it will cost me years of my life later on. Still trying to build it.

Yeah.

And.

I think when we all start, we start apprenticing with somebody else and you're kind of an employee thing when you're an apprentice.

Yes.

You know, even doctors, accountants, attorneys, you know, they go to work and they're junior partners or something like that. And usually they're not the most industrious because they get all the grunt work. They get the bad patients, the bad cases and everything, you know, they, they're not. The light inside that world doesn't shine on you, you know. And I like if you're in sales and commissions, the idea of having your own office really doesn't come to you. You're like you're in sales. And that's kind of a tedium. You know, it's great you can make, control your income, but it becomes like never going to get ahead. And when I got, when I got started, I was in that situation. And a lot of people are in that apprentice mode. But the thing is, you got to look at that apprentice stage. If you're in sales, you're professional or you're starting, you know, you're learning any kind of business, you know, a restaurant, a retail store, whatever you're learning a computer store, get in there. And the reason to give it everything you've got beyond what you're making on your salary or your commission level is for what you're building for the future. And you're compressing the time frames absolutely. So that you can launch out of there on your own thing much quicker. And then it's easy to say yourself, I'm working for myself because I know that when I was stuck in that mode that I really didn't see the company I was with at that time was not in an expansion mode. They were pretty much staying with what they had. At that time there was no talk about if you worked at McDonald's and you move up into management. There was no talk about getting your own McDonald's. It was just like you're going to be working at McDonald's forever. And so that was a hard switch for me to make once I got my own office like now, boom. And I think I worked harder out of sheer terror making money rather than the excitement of man, this is going to pay off big. But it probably took me two years to make that transition to where I said if I really crush it, I can get up to a seven figure income in record breaking time. Because I looked around and I saw other people in the industry who were doing those kind of things. And that's one of the advantages people tell me of going to these trade shows and things like that. In every industry they got their trade shows and their meetings and whatever their get togethers and you get around and you see what the other people are doing, you pick up ideas, but you can also see what they potential is. And that really fires you up. You know, you really got to move your business if you're going to move your body, if you're going to move your business and get those exposures or priceless where you, it helps you get your mind right about why you're doing it, how fast you can do it, what's the best way to do it and how did you transition into reaching a super productivity level because you got your act together in record time. As I watched you from another coast, you know, I was on the east coast, you were in the west coast.

Like I mentioned before, what got me was I discovered like I got my first promotion or my first two promotions within the first 30 days. And remember I came from an industry where I couldn't apply for a promotion for 10 no matter how good I was, no matter how much work I did, I was not eligible for 10 years unless I went back to school to get a master's degree, which I went to go get for that very reason. But when I came to the industry I'm in now, I realized if I do more, I can get more done quickly. There's no time limit. So actually I was always told in this business, you know, when you're in business for yourself, you could turn 10 years of work into 40. I mean, you could turn 40 years of work into 10. Because I would have been working at my job for 40 years, but I could get more done in 10. In my mind, I always did stuff quickly. Well, how can I do it in five? That was my whole thing, how can I do it at 5? And you mentioned something earlier. Like I was excited about what the possibilities could be, but I also was scared to death of about the roller coaster that can happen in business. Like, okay, I'm doing well right now, but what tomorrow, what is tomorrow going to bring if things don't line up right? So I used to work my tail off to make sure I did not fall back, I did not go backwards. I did not have a month where, you know, I had an up and down roller coaster that could come in business. So part of it was me being scared to fail. Because if you fail in business, you're not going to get a salary, you're not getting a check, you just ain't getting paid, you ain't gonna be able to pay your bills. And that was my fear. But it drove me. You know, I played scared for lack of better terms. I was scared of failing or scared not to be able to take care of my family, but at the same time worked my butt off on the other end because the possibilities were limitless on how, you know, what we could accomplish by looking around at other people who had done things in a certain time frame. I always looked at how can I get it done faster by doing more work, doing it better, learning from others mistakes. Like I always. Like I said before, I learned my upbringing was formed by watching the difference or the contrasting lives of my brother and my sister. I'm not going to do this over here. I'm going to do this over here because her life is successful. Same thing. When I got into this business, I looked at the people that were doing very well, what they did, what they did, what mistakes they possibly made, avoided those mistakes and did a lot of the right things quickly. And that's what made me collapse timeframes and actually went over a million at exactly 10 years.

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And the thing is that you don't have to. Were you amazed? I mean, you don't have to be perfect. You know, on your way up to the million, you think, well, that, you know, you got to be perfect to do that. Everything's got to fall into place. But once you get over the million and you get up to that level, you realize how many things can be improved. Which is really exciting for you in terms of thinking about your own future.

Yep. A lot of times people will ask me this question, if you could change anything you did early on, what would it be? And oftentimes I say nothing. Because a lot of times the stuff you go through taught you how to get better at it. Like you have to make certain mistakes in order to avoid them or teach other people how to get through it. But you realize how you can get better. I'm not the type of person like, oh my God, we did this, we did this, we did this great. We did that great, we did that great. We're doing everything great. I always will point out, yeah, we had a decent month, but we can do this better, we can do that better. So there's always room for improvement on business. But with business, you improve upon something, you see immediate difference. Whereas where it's arbitrary in a job, they could just be picking on you for nepotism reasons or whatever. This, the numbers in business, numbers will show what your actual your work ethic and your consistency really proves.

Now, you said you were a numbers person. If you're in business, you got to be a numbers person or you better be a numbers person. And how did you make that transition where you're keeping up the numbers on yourself in your own business? And that accountability?

Well, the mentorship I have or apprenticeship I had, the people that kind of showed me the way were big on accountability. So this is what you did last week. How can we do more this week? What do you have scheduled for tomorrow? What do you have scheduled for the day after that? What did you do this month? What did you do this month last year? So you're always figuring out ways to get better at different things in different categories, and that comes from accountability. So now I do the same thing with my team every Monday. Everybody on my team who is a producer has to give me their goals. What they did what they're going to do. And that's just part of accountability, because you always want to improve upon what you did before. So if somebody gives me the exact same goal they did last month or last week, I always tell them, no, we need to grow. You got to go do a little bit more than you did last time. And the best way to do that is to add more competent people to your team in order to get it done, get more work done. But the leader may not have to do as much because you got more people that are competent that know what they're doing.

Well, you know, part of it's learning people to think like they're in business.

Yes.

Like, especially if they're on commissions, you know, where rather than an employee, you know, what's the minimum I can do? But the idea of the more you do, the more you get paid when you're in commissions is a big concept. But in terms of goal setting, it's not that you're punished.

Yeah.

You're not to raise those goals. It's like you're a month better at it. Why couldn't you do at least one more? You know what I'm saying?

Exactly.

You know, it's not like asking you to do the moon. That's why I always looked at. There was really. I always looked at recruiting being a key economic indicator for the business we were in. And because if we had new blood, that was our best defense against any kind of disaster that would happen, you know, and that either would happen from the outside or the inside or some dumb thing I might do. You know, if I had more fresh new people to train than I had the month before, that's my best defense. You know, you win with. You win championships with defense, you know, and so I always took the approach that we can always grow by one.

Exactly.

You know, we took all that we recruited last month, and we took our existing team and then all the new people that came in. Let's just say we recruited 38 people. Why couldn't we recruit? Why is it not reasonable for us to be able to recruit 39 people the next month? And the only reason we wouldn't, the way I looked at it, was if I got off track, but if I kept everybody on track and I had my minds right, we would continue to grow month after month after month. And you get streaks going in your business where that happens. And magical things can happen in terms of turnaround, you know, because you start breeding momentum and people start. All they see is success. When you're growing and that's, you know, that's hard to get out of their mind. They start, you know, it's like a feeding frenzy is like adrenaline, you know, it's like, like being in the ocean where the, you know, the, the waves crashing towards the shore. You get caught up in that draft, you know. And so how did you get to the point where was it exciting for you to run the new business? Here you are an employee or, you know, you're, you know, you gotten ahead and all of a sudden things are working for you now. What was it like for you as a young business person? You had a family. What was that like?

It was super exciting. It was a new journey for me. But at the same time, like you mentioned earlier, I played with a sense of a little bit of fear. A little bit of fear. Like this could change at any moment. I'm not, I'm not big enough yet. One of my key guys can have a bad month. And now my whole business is sideways. And like you mentioned earlier, my whole goal was to get more people that knew how to do what I did, more people that knew how to do what I did. If one or two people had a bad month and I added five or six new people that knew how to do what I did at the business, then I'll be fine. So I was always playing scared in that way that somebody could fall off, somebody can get sick, somebody could pass away or whatever. Am I continuing to grow and thinking about things that could possibly happen that could turn my business sideways? So it was exciting, but I always played with a little sense of fear, like what if this, like without having super duper anxiety or just being paranoid. It was more about let me keep my, let me stay balanced, let me stay grounded, that this is a new endeavor and at any moment it could just be beginner's luck. I'm not a huge business entrepreneur yet and we still have growth to do. So that's what kept me going.

Well, let's just take a quick review of what you did when you ran your business. What things you did, you know, you set up a schedule, you did the meetings, what things you did, you had reports, you had, you know, presentations, you had. How did you set up your administration? How, how did you do it?

Initially when I first started, it was just me and my wife. We just joined, me and my wife. And in my, in our business is the more people you have doing what you do in a commission based business, you have more people on your team doing that, the better. So what I did was Became attractive. First by learning the business myself, doing as much as I could personally myself, making money personally myself, and then teaching others how to do the same thing. As my business got bigger, me and my wife discovered different roles. I was going to be the salesperson, the person who generated the income. She was going to be the back office person that made sure we kept all our income. And after a while, we got bigger and bigger. We hired an assistant to take care of the back office while I continue to recruit people and hire people into our business and teaching them and doing exactly what I could do. Because eventually I didn't want to be in sales forever. I didn't want to be a salesperson. I did not like sales at all prior to this business. So my whole thing was if I could teach as many people as possible to do what I'm doing, eventually I don't have to do it no more. That was my whole goal. I don't want to do this forever. I need to teach as many people as possible how to do this right here and do it well so I don't have to do it. Basically got my own office, hired to another assistant. So I had two assistants in our business. So I didn't have to do the grunt work, the paperwork, all the behind the scenes stuff that can slow an entrepreneur down. My whole goal was to generate as much productivity and new business as possible. And I didn't have time to do to do the. One of my mentors would call it the $15 an hour work. I need to be doing $1,000 an hour work by being productive. So I just put a system or infrastructure in place where allowed me to maximize my time to build a business rather than focusing on little things. So I got my own office, had two assistants, Me and my wife had identified our roles in the business and it allowed me to do what I was good at. Even though I did not like sales. I did not. I did not like sales, but I like teaching sales. I was very good at teaching how to do the business. I didn't technically like having to go out every single day and do the sales, But I knew once I got good at it and taught the masses how to do it, I wouldn't have to do as much of it. So that's how we structured our business in a way where I can maximize what I was good at. My wife could maximize what she was good at. And that's what gave us that quick start in the business.

And how did you compound it? I mean, you had to compound up over several years. For 10 years, you were on a compounding track. What did you learn? What were things you did during that that allowed you to keep moving?

What allowed me to keep moving, to be honest with you, was recruiting the right people into my business. Like, I specialize in recruiting those that were kind of similar to me, like, that had accomplished things prior to the business but wanted a little more. Like, I very rarely sought out the person that was, like, struggling, didn't keep a job. You know, I didn't want those person people because it would be too much work to get them to the level at, to be successful in the business. If people are successful in one area, if you teach them how to be good in this particular business, they'll be good at this particular business. So I would seek out those that were. I would seek out those that were already successful in whatever position they were in, but weren't satisfied with what they're doing. So once I found those people and taught them how to do what we do, they were successful in this business. And if they're half as successful as I was, it was just going to. It was going to multiply the speed in which we got it done. As an organization.

What would you do or say to find those kind of people?

Just when I meet somebody, ask probing questions without feeling like you're interrogating them. Have a normal conversation. What are the likes and dislikes? What did you accomplish? What do you do now? Do you own a home? How many kids do you have? You know, did you go to college? Things of that nature? How long you been at your job? Are you a supervisor? You go to church? Things of that nature that give me an idea of who I'm dealing with. And they're saying stuff, oh, yeah, we own a home, we have two kids, we married a certain amount of years or graduated from college, or I'm a supervisor now. I'm thinking, okay, this is a successful, credible person. And in any type of business, if you have somebody who's credible, that could be the key ingredient to attracting other people like them. Like, people attract, like people. Like we spoke of earlier, people are going to attract people that are similar to themselves, whether it be ethnicity, whether it be. Whether it be wealth, whether it be social class, whether it be whatever it is. People are going to be attracted to those that are similar to them, who they can relate to. So people that are married, that have kids, that are successful, are typically going to have friends that are similar to them. And if you get one or two of them, they can point you in the right direction to some other ones. And that's pretty much what we perfected.

Yeah, but not an interrogation. It's funny that law.

Exactly.

That law background is coming, coming through.

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