Episode 27 : Special Guest Jeb Blount

Welcome to the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. This podcast will give you all the tools to grow your business and live life on your terms. Millionaire agents and entrepreneurs think and act differently than others. This podcast will give you a simple, proven three step blueprint to grow your business. Over the past 31 years of research in your industry, Mike Stromso has created a unique philosophy called the three People Process and Promotion. This outside the box thinking and guidance provides agency entrepreneurs just like you the knowledge and tools you can quickly implement to explode your agency business. He has been there, done that, and he's still doing it. Wherever you are today, if you're starting with nothing or are well on your way to the success you desire, with the right people, processes and promotions in place, you will be unstoppable. And now I'd like to introduce your host, Mike Stromso.

Welcome to episode 27 of the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. This is Mike Stromco coming to you live from the Living Agency Laboratory. And today we are honored to be joined by the incredible Mr. Jeb Blount. I want to get started this morning. Mr. Jeb Blunt, President and CEO of SalesGravy.com, sales acceleration expert, best selling authority, a speaker, a blogger, and so much more, has been so gracious to spend some time with us this morning. Let me tell you a little bit about Jeb and I'm going to try to go through quickly because the list is so long. Jeb Blunt is the best selling author of eight books and among the world's most respected thought leaders on sales leadership and customer experience. As a sales acceleration specialist, he helps sales organizations reach peak performance fast by optimizing talent, leveraging training to cultivate a high performance sales culture, developing leadership and coaching skills, and applying more effective organizational design. He's an in demand speaker and spends more than 250 days on the year crisscrossing the globe delivering keynote speeches just like the one he's going to deliver in San Diego. Workshops and training programs to high performance sales teams and leaders. Jeb, welcome.

I'm out of breath listening to you.

Well, good news. I got up this morning and I was riding my bicycle by 6am so I'm in shape and I am ready to take on more. Thank you for being with us.

Thank you for having me, Owen. That's fantastic.

Fantastic. Good. Let's get started in helping some more people. So I gave a brief introduction of all that you've accomplished so far. Tell us what you're working on now and tell us anything that I might not have mentioned about you.

It was a lot of stuff. Right now what we're working on is the Sells EQ Audiobook. It's my brand new book that just came out in print in March and because my travel schedule is so intense, couldn't get into the studio back in March and April. So I'm in one of Audible studios here in Atlanta and we just took a break from recording the solid EQ Audiobook. We're in day five of the recording, which sounds like a lot, but to do it right, you really have to really focus on the art of the book as well. I do all my books. I've done all my books except for one. So that's what we're doing right now is working on this particular project and this will be done this week. And then I'm on the road pretty much for the next month or so, bouncing from Hawaii all the way to Washington D.C. giving speeches.

Fantastic. So I hope you're already taking notes. Jeb dropped some nuggets right there. He's recording the book on Audible. He's got most of his work out there on multiple platforms. Remember, if you want to reach 100% of the marketplace, you got to use 100% of the ways. And I can't wait to start listening. I've read and listened to Fanatical Prospecting twice already, Jeb. Every time that I go through it, I continue to get gold nuggets and then sales eq. I just started, so I can't wait to get the audio as well. Thank you for doing that. Thank you for investing the time. Jeb, tell us, is there a secret or time saving technique that you can share with Unstoppable Nation that helps you focus and tackle your most vital sales priorities and other priorities every single day?

It's funny you ask me that question. I was doing a radio interview last week and the host asked me what my favorite app was. What's your favorite app for? Time management and productivity that basically helps you focus on your vital priorities every single day. So I'm going to give you the same answer that I gave her. I have a pencil and a Post it note and I write down every day the three most important things that I have to accomplish that day. There may be a dozen things I have to do. Those three things have to be done before I go to bed at night. I write those three things down and I put them on the window. Wherever I am in the mirror. Excuse me, wherever I am, the mirror in the bathroom. If I'm at Home or from a hotel. And those are the three things that I start my day with and I don't do anything else. And why is that important? Because if you think about yourself and, and all of us in our day, we have three choices. We can do things that are trivial, we can do things that are important, or we can do things that are impactful. And human beings, left to their own devices, typically start their day with the most trivial things, the things that don't matter. Most of us who are working in our own businesses, we're doing a lot of things that are really, really important. And the problem is we usually start our day with doing things that are important, like opening up our email and checking to see if we got anything from a customer or what have you. The thing is that if you really want to move and change your world, you want to begin your day with the things that have the most impact. For most business owners.

And I count myself as one of those folks and most sales professionals, the most impactful thing that you can do is put something new into your pipeline. But whatever that is, that's going to have the most impact on your day, you should write those three things down, focus on those three things, and then do everything else. And if you do that, I can guarantee you that you'll move the bar faster than anyone else around you.

That's fantastic. So you use a pencil and a post it note. I love the power of three. I practice that same principle myself because I don't want to bite off more than I can chew. I want to get all three done. So fantastic. I too use the bathroom mirror. But you said you can focus on what's trivial. You can focus on what's important, or you can focus on what's impactful. And isn't that what we want to do? We want to make the greatest impact that we can, right?

Absolutely. I think that's the choice. In fact, if I were giving the audience homework, I would say take a piece of paper and put three columns on it. Write impactful, write important and write trivial. And then take a week and just look at every minute that you spend during the day and label it. Is this impactful, Is this trivial, or is this important? You have to do the important things. If you don't do the important things, your business will fall apart. But most of us leave the impactful things. Another way of saying impactful is hard. Put the hard things, you leave the hard things for last, and those things get pushed the next day. And that's why some businesses wake up and our business has had this conversation a couple of times. We wake up and get really, really good at doing important things. We're not doing the impactful things and we're putting ourselves out of business a little bit every day. That's what you want to focus on.

That is awesome. Thank you so much. Les Brown, the motivational speaker, said, if you do what's easy, your life will be hard. But if you do what is hard, your life will be easy. I am going to get out there and I am going to make my three column list. That is a great tip. Thank you so much, Jeb.

Excellent.

Let's talk about overcoming obstacles. Tell us about a challenging time or situation that could have devastated you or anybody else that you've worked with. But there was persistence and perseverance. Tough decisions were made. And now once it that it's a painful memory, it serves as an invaluable learning experience.

You know, Mike, I like to live my life through rose colored lenses and forget all those bad things that happen. But I'll give you one great example. Now this was seven years ago. This was in 2010. And I was three years into building sales 3D. I'd invested every dime that I had. So you can imagine I spent most of my career in the corporate world. And I had a really nice nest egg and I took my entire nest egg and I built my business with that. That's a very tough conversation to be having with your wife, by the way. And I put everything into it. And this is the summer of 2010. I had customers. At this point, we were running the salesgravy job board, which is what we started the company as. I had customers, I had revenue coming in, I was finally making money. Things were looking really, really, really, really good. And my website broke. My website broke. I mean, it broke. It was like I had all this customers, all this money, everything. And it went down and we couldn't get it to come back up again. We couldn't revive it. It was, it was an awful situation. And I was dealing with my web guy, he was dealing with the web host. There were issues with the code. He had his coders. I was literally at the. You're going to have to put me in a straight jacket. Breaking point. I didn't sleep for a week. I was worried. I thought my entire world was over. And then five days later, somehow or another, I don't know if it was just through pure will, we got everything working again. And that was the last time that I was at the mercy of other people. Who could shut me down. And I put backups in place. I hired a new web team. I got rid of the coders who were making mistakes on my site, and I made sure that I had people around me that were super responsive. And I ended up moving all of my programming to a team outside of the United States. In fact, I moved offshore. And those folks have been with me ever since. And we've been through thick and thin, But I've got responsive people. And it was just a lesson I had to learn in my business, that when so much of it is resting on a digital platform, if you don't have the safeguards in place, you can sink your business really quickly. I've never had that happen again. But it was one of the most awful things that ever happened to me because I really believed that it was over. And I had spent the last three years of my life and all my money building something that was going to. I was never going to be able to revive.

Wow. Congratulations on overcoming that and having the fortitude and the will, like you said, over five days of just going through, excuse the term, pure hell, probably to work through that. The other thing that you just said, which I think is critical, and that's why I can't wait to dive in next to the things that you teach, specifically the sales industry out there no longer be at the mercy of other people. You see, I wrote down in my own journal over the weekend, and this is not intended to be a selfish statement in any way, but nobody knows what I know. And that's what we want to become. Right? We want to become more so that we can get to that point and have those safeguards in place. Fantastic. Jeff, let's talk about personal mastery, which I guess I kind of lined it up there for you. What do you think in the sales game today is the most critical skill that people in the sales game need to master in order to thrive in today's sales environment? And I know that's a loaded question.

It is loaded.

It's probably more complex than a single thing or a critical skill. It's the combination of multiple skills that make you good at what you do. But if there was one thing that you have to master and that exists, your job as an owner of an agency is to get and keep customers. That's it. There's nothing else. You can be great at reports, you can be great at social media, you can be great at marketing, you can be great at all kinds of things, but you have to get and keep customers. Getting customers requires first that you prospect, you have to focus on filling up your pipeline every day. Every day, every day. So from a personal masteries, that is your ability to manage your own destructive emotions, the emotions of fear, of rejection, of uncomfortableness and interrupting people. You have to get past that and you've got to fill up the pipeline and you have to be absolutely relentless in that. Every day, every day, every day. At the same time, once you get people into the pipeline, you have to be good and you have to be able to leverage interpersonal skills and that pull them in, allow you to influence their behavior and get them to buy from you. And the same thing happens on the back end, making sure those folks continue to be customers long term. That's what you have to do. But if we think about that, you go back to what's your why? Understanding your why. For me, it's the same thing. Why are you doing this? You have to understand what is it that you want? What is the end role? Because those things, getting and keeping customers, those are really hard. Business would be awesome, and it would be awesome if we didn't have to retain customers. I mean, we could show up every day and play on Facebook all day long. So you have to understand what it is that you want in your heart. Because desire that, desire that, why, that is the mother of accomplishment. That is the mother of you getting your dreams. That is the mother of prospecting. That has to happen first. But if you want to understand what the skill is, what you have to know how to do, I promise you, you have to go get customers and you have to keep customers. And if you do that every day, consistently, you will have a thriving business and you will reach every dream that you ever wanted.

That's fantastic. Thank you. I couldn't agree more. And I meant to say this earlier because I wrote it down. You've got to fill the pipe. And that is the greatest inspiration that you've taught me through your book, Fanatical prospecting. Not only filling the pipe, but the multiple ways and why it's so important to fill the pipe. And every single day, getting key customers, prospecting all of the time, around the clock, every day, in every way. Jeb, explain to us what you mean at a deeper level by managing your own disruptive emotion.

Well, I mean, look, let's go back. The pipe is life, right? The pipe is life.

Yes.

Pipe is everything. Every day, Every day. Every day, every day. We're relentlessly focused on the pipe. But if we look at sales and we just think about sales as a bubble, you Have a buyer, you have a seller. It's extremely emotional. Whether you're interrupting someone's day or whether you're engaging in a sales conversation or you're trying to move them to close. You feel emotions, they feel emotions. Each of you are trying to protect your own emotions. The number one reason I need to go back even deeper than that. The Achilles heel for salespeople is their inability to manage their own disruptive emotions. The disruptive emotions of fear, insecurity, desperation, attachment, the need to feel important, your ego, all of those things. And there's many more. But you have to understand this. Whether it's prospecting, negotiating in customer service, or in the sales process itself, in every conversation with a potential buyer or a current customer, the person who has the most control over their emotion has the greatest probability of achieving the outcome they desire.

I'm still here. I'm writing. The person who has the most control over their emotion has the greatest probability.

Of getting the outcome that they desire.

And ultimately, at the end of the day, isn't that what our ultimate goal is? The outcome?

Right. That's right. I mean, we are influencing people. That's what salespeople do. We are influencing people to comply with our request. One of the requests we make people to buy from us or sign a contract or to set up a meeting or have a conversation or to move to the next step in the sales process. Mostly what sells is we're asking people to make a lot of small commitments that lead to a bigger commitment and in our ability to influence people to accept and commit to those micro commitments. That is the essence of selling. Think about it. We're asking people to make a commitment of time, action, and emotion. And if we can get people to engage at that level, we win. But we have to be able to manage our emotions so that we can influence the emotions and behaviors of other people.

Wow. I couldn't write fast enough. The good news is we'll have the replay on this so we can get it all down. That was gold nugget after gold nugget after gold nugget. I hope you got it. But small commitments that lead to bigger commitments. Sometimes it's not just a one or two step game, right, Jeb?

Well, yeah. I mean, that's the problem for a lot of salespeople is they throw up and show up.

Their insecurity or their desperation or their eagerness. They get a meeting with the prospect, and instead of understanding that prospect and learning that prospect's language and building a deeper emotional connection, you just go Right. For the killer. And in those situations, sometimes it's just disruptive emotions of insecurity or I just want to be in control. Those things happen. Sometimes it's because we want to get the fastest outcome with the least amount of emotional involvement as possible. But today's buyer knows that. And what the ultra high performers themselves understand is that it's the emotional experience of working with you that has the greatest.

Let's put it a different way, the emotional experience of working with you, the agency owner, is the greatest predictor of your ultimate outcome in the sales process, period. So you can tell me all the things that you sell, you can tell me all the policies you offer, you can tell me everything that you do. But I can tell you that the emotional experience that that person has working with you, if I understand that, if I know they're having a great experience, I can tell you with higher probability that you're going to get the deal than whether or not you're great at pitching your product.

Wow. Thank you for saying that, because I've got something in my own world. It's a huge deal, and I just made a commitment this morning to create that emotional experience. So I think just by studying you, I learned how to do that. Thanks for the tip.

Budget, for example, the blankets on your grandchildren, that's part of the emotional experience. Somebody built those. They were thoughtful about it. It created something in you that made you like them more. It tapped into the law of reciprocity, which created a feeling of obligation. And so if I were that person who had done that for you, and I was asking you to make a micro commitment, then my probability that you would agree to the micro commitment goes up. And that's really what. What the top salespeople are looking at. That's how they play the game themselves. They play it by win probability. Every single thing that they do is calculated by what's the probability. This will bend my win probability, my outcome curve, in my favor.

Absolutely. That's awesome. And you're right. I think about that person all of the time because I look at that blanket every single day. And the good news is, I mean, the reason is. I believe. Let me rephrase that. The reason is she is a superstar, but she never stops improving. She never stops giving back. And wow, there's no. We now know why that person is such a success. So that's fantastic. Wow. Nugget after nugget. Yeah. Go ahead.

No, I was going to say, when we give someone a gift, we tap into that. We make them feel Good. And I'll tell you, you don't have to always give a blanket or give a compliment. The easiest, fastest way to make someone feel important, which, by the way, is the greatest gift you can give another human being. Because the need to feel important or appreciated is our most insatiable human need. It's the only need on Maslow's hierarchy that cannot be sated. And the easiest, fastest way to make someone feel important is just listen to them. And that's where salespeople fail, because they want to feel important too. So instead of disrupting that disruptive emotion getting in the way of that, they allow that to get ahead of them. And so instead of giving their prospect their full attention and time, they end up talking over their prospect, they end up pontificating, they end up being self important. And that doesn't make the person like you. So every one of us has the capability of doing that. And it is very difficult to do. There's no doubt about it. I'm not going to sit here and say, oh, I love the cliches. You have two ears and one mouth. Use them appropriately. That's easy to say on a webinar. It's a whole lot harder to do when you're standing in front of another person. What I find to be more effective is understanding the influence I have over that person's behavior when I'm listening to them. Oh, by the way, your ability to influence.

Happens because of what you hear, not what you say. So when you're listening to someone, they start speaking with their language and what's important to them. Then you can bridge to the next step, the micro commitment, the solution that you're offering using their language and what's important to them. And when you do that, it's just gold.

Ability to influence is based on what you hear.

Not looks, fault. That's gold right there. Thank you, my friend. I've got a lot of things that I want to dive into here, so I'm going to keep moving if that's okay with you. Absolutely. I'm just getting off track.

I'm grateful, man. This is awesome.

So let's talk about lessons for just a minute. We affectionately say, in the unstoppable nation environment wins and lessons. There's no failures, they're only lessons. So you've got mentors. I've got mentors. I now consider you one of my mentors. I'm going to be adding you to my own internal mentor list very soon because of the influence that you've had on me. But what was the most influential lesson, or maybe a couple lessons you've learned from your mentors along the way that's helped you become the business sales leader that you are today.

I'm going to give you two. One relates to what's happening in San Diego. And in 2006, I was a corporate vice president of sales. I worked for a big company called Aramark, and I ran a big sales organization. And we were having a sales meeting. And my dream, like my why had always wanted to be an author, and I always wanted to be a speaker. And I wanted to be an author and speaker since I saw Tom Hopkins and Anthony Robbins In 1992, when I was just starting out in my career. So it's always been a dream for me. And I hired Rudy to come speak to my sales organization. A thousand salespeople showing up. Rudy shows up. And I'm giving the speech before Rudy goes out. I'm the guy that's getting everybody going. Rudy, Rudy. They love Rudy. You guys are going to love Rudy. He's awesome. So Rudy shows up, I give my speech, introduce Rudy. He gets off stage. People love him. And I walk up to him and shake his hand. And instead of shaking my hand, he gives me a hug and says, you need to do something with that. And that was the day that I made a decision to change my life and to change the trajectory. And so in 2007, I published my first book. And I've been working really, really hard for the last, going on 10 years, going on 11 years. But it all started in that moment. And it was just that little bit of inspiration for someone to say to me, your dream is something that you can achieve. It's something that's real. You need to do something about it. And I knew that at that moment, I had to do something. So I left a big corporate job and went out on my own and spent all my money. And it paid off in incredible ways. The second lesson is a lesson I learned from my dad. He's a judge and one of the top college attorneys in the country. And I learned from him how to speak other people's language. I learned. I watched him with theories, and I watched him engage people on their level rather than his. And I watched how he won and won and won and won doing that. And I took that lesson into my career in sales. I use it today so that no matter where I am, I can step into other people's shoes and I can become part of them and I can talk the way they do and speak their language. And listen. And my dad did it so brilliantly. And that's one of the reasons why he was so successful. And I learned it from him. And it's been one of the greatest tools that I took away from my relationship with him. And he's a master at it.

That's fantastic. Well, hey, good job for paying attention for so long.

Fantastic. Great story. And I got a chance to hang out with Rudy last December, and you're right, he is an inspiring, special kind of guy. And I was sitting there listening to him tell a couple stories, and he started diving into his trek that he went through to get the movie made. And he came to a point in that story that is deeply close to my own personal story. I fell off my chair. Tapatio was sitting. Andrea Wyatt, her nickname's Tapatillo, was sitting next to me, and I'm elbowing her and this kind of stuff. And I said, you're not going to believe that. So, you know, I believe everything happens for a reason, but I believe people. It happens in some situations because people, through what they do, put themselves in the position to receive that.

That's true. I agree with you. I think that. In fact, I think that's really profound. I'm writing that down. I think you have to put yourself in the position to receive it. You have to. You have to open those doors. And sometimes we don't realize that all the little things that we do every day that don't always seem like they're paying off is the one thing that leads to something else. Some of the things that I'm doing today that I just. Sometimes I just pinch myself. I mean, I'm walking through an airport and I pinch myself that I'm getting to do these cool things. I'll give you an example. On Tuesday of last week, I got to jump out of an airplane with the Golden Knights. It was literally the coolest thing I've ever done. I mean, the elite parachuters of the US army invited me to get on a plane with them and jump out of the plane with them. That happened because I was paying attention. The military started buying copies of Fanatical Prospecting. When I realized the military was buying copies of Fanatical Prospecting, I started signing them and sending them to them. Then I started listening to what was going on, and I learned. And then one day I had a captain call me up and said, we bought your book for everybody. Would you mind coming and giving us a speech? And normally you would say, why would I go do that? I've got Other things to do. I was in the middle. I'd been on eight airplanes. And it's because it's my country and it's something I believe in. I stopped and I went. I gave a speech, made a lot of friends and got nominated to get on this airplane. And that opened the door to one of the coolest things literally I have ever done in my life. I mean, I'm still on fire for it. And that happened because I was open and because I was doing little things. I was paying attention to the signals and I was saying yes instead of saying no. I was looking at the world from the lens of abundance versus scarcity. And what I find is that when I do that, when I'm constantly looking at abundance, when I'm always open to receiving, then the most amazing things happen. And yeah, you know, bad things happen too. And you know, it's a choice. Am I going to be sensible about bad things that happen or am I going to put my rose colored lenses on and I'm going to say, you know what, this happened for a reason. And by the way, that's one of the things that I find to be true with ultra high performers. And you talked about one of your superstars that essentially the blanket. They have two core beliefs that they carry with them everywhere they go. One is that they believe that they are supposed to have success. They believe that. So when they walk through life, they're looking at the world from a standpoint of I'm supposed to win. This is supposed to be what I'm supposed to be doing. The second thing that they look at and they say everything that happens to me happens for a reason. So instead of the rest of the world who's looking for all the bad things that are going to happen, they're looking for all the good things that are going to happen because they think they're supposed to have them. And, and then B, when something bad happens, instead of going, oh wow, why is everything against me? They go, guess what? This was supposed to happen for a reason. I'm supposed to learn from this so that I don't make the same mistake again. And they start looking for the lesson in it. And to me, that's the essence of really getting everything you want out of life. And I just find that it happens to me over and over and over again. That's where.

The DJ Khalid song, I think I got his name right. You know, all I do is win.

Even when I'm losing, I feel like I'm winning.

That's right, that's right. Well, it's perspective. What people believe is what they perceive. And if you perceive it to be the lesson, it's going to be a lesson. If you perceive it to be a loss, it's going to be a loss. Got to figure it. You said it earlier on. You have to understand what you want in your heart, right?

Absolutely. Desire is the mother of all accomplishments. You have to know what you want.

What you want, by the way, is yours, it's not mine. You have to decide on your terms. Because what you desire, right, what you want has to be congruent with the price that you're willing to pay to get there. Because the success in your business, life, wherever else, those things have to be congruent. Because the work, the tough things you have to do, the pain you have to go through, that's the price you have to pay in advance for what you get. That's why you have to know the why. That's why it has to be in your heart. That's why you have to have a clear understanding and a clear picture of what you desire. Because that's the only thing that's going to trump procrastination and perfectionism and paralysis by analysis, the things that are holding you back right now. If you desire something, you're willing to do anything to get it, but you have to sit down and be honest with yourself. Is this congruent? What I want with what I'm willing to do to get what I want?

It's all right there, my friends. I'm holding up the mirror of truth, Jeb, and I'll enlighten you on that later. But I have to repeat what Jeb just said. Those are two of the biggest nuggets so far. Desire is the mother of all accomplishments, but it has to be congruent with the price you're willing to pay to get there. So we got to figure out what is the price that we're willing to pay. Wow, that's awesome. Let's break down. Those are part of the recipe for success. But my question is in follow up to that. We all know that sales and business is hard work. Duh, right? But when we have the right strategy, the right recipe to follow, then the action steps become more like ingredients that can be added systematically into creating more business, one ingredient at a time. The end result is a business and a sales system that is systematic, predictable, and most importantly, repeatable. Because it goes on all day long, every day. If you're constantly working on filling your pipe, the agency business can produce the Same result time and time again. So I'd like you to break down a little bit of your recipe for success. We're kind of coming up on the end of time, but what are a couple of the ingredients in your recipe for success, Jeb, that helped you along your path that you could recommend that people in the sales game should be paying attention to all the time?

Let's start with system. You have to have a system. I think that when people are successful, they have a systematic process of doing the things that work every day. Every day? Every day. I find that people who live in mediocrity or who are not reaching their potential, they look at the world through a random lens. So they wake up every day, and every day is different. And you just. You must be methodical. I mean, it's almost robotic. I wake up every day. I do the exact same thing every day, Every day, every day. That's why prospecting and filling the pipe in a lot of ways is the full context for the sale, whereas the nuance of the relationships, that is a little bit more random and is a little bit more art. However, in the sales conversation, systematic says I'm bending one probability in my favor by asking for a series of small commitments that lead to a bigger commitment. And I'm doing that in a very systematic process. So, number one is systematic. Number two is adaptable. We are in the core, coolest time ever in history. I know that we're running headlong into the singularity, and robots may take over the world in 50 or 60 years. I'll be dead by then, so I'm good right now. But right now.

In this crazy place where anything is possible, and if we look back on America, right where we are, anything's always been possible. But today, it's just. It's just incredible what you can do and accomplish. This morning, we're walking down the street. I brought my son with me to the studio so he could experience what it's like to lay down an audio book. And he's on my phone recording me. And then we posted it on YouTube, on Facebook, on Snapchat, on Instagram, and on Twitter to promote the book. You couldn't do that 20 years ago. I'm in complete control of my marketing. So we have these amazing tools, and you have to be adaptable. And what we have to learn how to do as human beings, especially from an adaptivity standpoint, is not only we have to adapt to our marketplace, we have to adapt to our customers, but we also adapt to the digital world that Is making things easier for us and better for us. But in the future, there's going to be two types of people. There are going to be people who tell robots and computers what to do, and there are going to be people who are told what to do by robots and computers. Computers. You want to be in the first group. Trust me on that. So when select learns technology so that you can spend more time in human to human race relationships, so adaptable, and then you have to be relentless. And to me, that's like that. If you want my winning ingredient, I'm not the smartest human being in the entire world. I just am not. I make a lot of mistakes. If you ever listen to me on the interview, I have to go back and edit myself. I sound like a moron most of the time, but I'm relentless. Nobody will ever out hustle me. Nobody. I will outwork you any day of the week. I will outwork you so you can be smarter, faster, more talented, have more opportunities, have more money.

Even have a head start. You can get ahead of me, but I will beat you. Because every day I will grind and grind and grind and grind until I overtake you. And to me, that's my number one formula. That's the one thing that I can look at. If you look back at the last 10 years of my life where I changed everything.

Just thinking about the amount of income that we make, we have 16 employees. We look at that. From literally quitting my job in the middle of a recession to today, it's not because I'm smart. I'm a really bad business guy. I'm not even a good author half the time. I have to work so hard at writing books to get good at it. But I never quit. Ever, ever, ever, ever. I will out hustle you. When you look at ingredient, you put that together, I've got a system. I'm adaptable to my environment. I'm always changing, always open, always looking. And I will grind you to the ground. I will beat you that way. And I feel like that's one thing, that my corporate career was the same thing. I will outwork you. And when everybody else goes home, I'm still working. I know that sounds like almost, you know, like ABC and we should get our crayons out and pray on it. But that's what I do every day.

Well, here's another marketing tip. Way off subject. Jeb, thank you. I'm going to repeat what you just said in just a second, but I was in a situation yesterday and I don't remember where I was, but somebody was describing their business being a box of crayons. So if you're in the insurance world, you're an independent agent, maybe, maybe you could use a box of crayons and you can use that as a marketing opportunity to send out to. People say our insurance programs are like a box of crayons. You can actually take each crayon. You can put a type of insurance around the crayon, send it out to people in a shock and awe package or something similar to that. That's your opportunity for follow up. How do you learn how to follow up? Well, just get Jeb's book, Fanatical Prospecting. He lays that out for you in over 251 pages. Exactly how to do so. Thank you so much for the recipes for success. I'm going to repeat the two recipes he said, a systematic process being adaptable in today's world. By the way, good job, dad. You're teaching your son on the fly. That's fabulous. But most importantly, be relentless. Or like we like to say, be unstoppable. I think it's kind of the same thing. It's definitely the same mentality. I was driving to Vegas recently, Jeb, and I was listening to your book. Again, Fanatical Prospecting. Because sales EQ is not on tape yet, but I look forward to that. And I heard you say, write down your goals and plan and it makes you unstoppable. And I about drove off the road. After I got back on track, I called Tapatio and said, tapatio, find that page in the book. And the people that are watching the webinars have it right there in front of them. Writing down your goals and a plan makes you unstoppable. Tell us about you and your goals and how you keep dialed into your goals, Jeb, and we'll wrap it up with that before we get some questions.

Well, you know, my goals change from year to year. I take time to write them down each year. Right now, I'm on a mission with the military. My next book will be called Fanatical Military Recruiting. And I've fallen in love with military recruiters and the good job and the good work they do keeping our military strong. And this is how I feel personally. When I decided to start my business 10 years ago, I just started it. I didn't have to go through what a lot of folks have to go through in third world countries or in other places in the world during conflict. I did it because I was safe, because I was Taken care of because I didn't have to worry. Because we have this amazing military structure in our country that puts a wall around us and keeps all the bad guys out. And I realized in this process of writing financial processing, how military recruiters have to do a lot of similar things that agent owners have to do. They have to go out and process and fill their pipeline with the top recruits. They're looking for the best of the best of the best. So I fell in love with them. And this year I'm dedicating my life to writing fanatical military recruiting. And we've created training around that. And we are loaded up for the next six months on military bases and at recruiting schools, teaching military recruiters some of the same skills that we teach people. But we're doing it from their perspective rather than our perspective. And we're doing it from a place of service because it's the right thing to do.

Absolutely. I could not agree with you more. Thank you for saying that. Our daughter was an army medic, so. And the stories that she's got are just life changing. By the way, this page 251 of your book, Fanatical Prospecting, the title of that chapter is Developing Mental Toughness. And I believe that that's part of being relentless.

Right.

That means.

I mean, that's the thing. You have to have resilience and mental toughness and attention control. We lay it out in that chapter and you've got to manage your disruptive emotions. And I get deeper into that when you get into SELD Q. We really get into this process of managing disruptive emotions. So I would encourage the audience to jump into that because once you get control of your emotions and part of that is mental toughness, which is what, by the way, you are the athletes of the insurance industry, straight up. So you have to start treating yourself like that elite athlete in order to perform at your highest level.

Yep. That's daily training at a minimum and writing the three things down like you said. So we could go on for hours, I'm sure. I know you've got to get back to recording your book Sales eq. Correct? That's what you're recording right now, correct?

Yes, sir, that's exactly right. They're all looking at me right now.

Fantastic. I've got a picture of the front cover of your new book, Sales eq, up here on the screen, Jeb. So where can people find this book?

You can go to Amazon. You can buy it there. You can walk into any Barnes and Noble store anywhere in the country, you can pick up both sales EQ and fanatical prospecting there. They're on the shelf of Barnes and Noble. Anywhere else that books are sold online, if you want an autographed copy, if you go to selltrivia.com and click on the shop icon in the top bar, you can go there and you can order an autographed copy. That usually comes with a little swag, too. So any of those places that you want to grab the book, please do. I mean, Amazon will have it to you in two days. Barnes and Noble, you can have it instantly.

Right? Fantastic. Well, depends on how fast what you want and what you're willing to do to get it. Thank you so much again for being here. We've got our sales statistics slide up for everybody. I want to point to the bottom of this. And Jeb, this is something that I grabbed from the National Sales Executive Association a few years ago, but it says at the very bottom, it says 80% of sales are made on the 5th to the 12th contact.

I'd like to hear your response to this, but my premise nowadays is how many times should you follow up? As many as it takes. Right. Do you have anything to add to that?

Yeah, no, you got it. I mean, people say, when should I stop calling? I go, never. I mean, like, never says, are they a prospect? Yes, it's not a prospect. If they're not qualified, if they are off the radar, you should stop. I mean, there's no reason to call people that aren't going to buy from you ever. But other than that, you never stop following us. And it's one of the biggest problems that we find in sales across the board is salespeople just don't follow up.

No, no. They think, well, they don't care enough or they're not responding. Why should I keep trying, Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That's a great segue to finish it up here. So, Jeb, thank you for your time today, sir. We'll let you get back to finishing up the recording of sales eq. I can't wait to listen to it.

Thank you, sir. Hey, you're welcome. Hey, you're welcome.

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