Transcript
Speaker: The voice of growth, mastering the mind and market, timeless wisdom, proven strategies, and the deep work that creates lasting success. Like and subscribe to stay aligned with what truly drives results.
Speaker: Changing people's minds about what it means to be a great leader and lead a great company. teach people how to hire, attract, and build a high-performance team.
Speaker: The most dangerous belief a person can have is the one they don't actually think of as a belief, but because to them it's true. Are they the sort of human that can survive at the pace that AI is going to require of them?
Speaker: he He ended up selling a company for $100 million. dollars It's not money. It's one thing. It's identity. Like, let's create culture and culture is this and culture is that. i Get rid of all that.
Speaker: You're getting leftovers at work because they're not living at home. You are in the human business. You can't have a strategy until you have a shared knowledge and a shared understanding.
Speaker: Things are only good or bad by comparison. Humans are absolutely magical. How do you build a team that is so dedicated to your mission and your vision and what you're trying to accomplish that no amount of money, no other opportunity would cause them to leave and take another opportunity?
Speaker: Came out of the gate with that, yes. The Sales Boss. We are here today with Jonathan Wiseman, who is an accomplished sales trainer, author, lots of things. And so welcome to our podcast today, Jonathan.
Speaker: Thank you. Looking forward to it. Yeah. So we were talking earlier about, you know, what this podcast is all about. And I think that based on what we know about your background, it is going to be right in line with all things market, all things mindset.
Speaker: And I know a little bit about your background, but I want to start off with one of the, we'll say the big 800 pound gorilla in the room is that you grew up inside of a cult.
Speaker: Came right out of the gate with that. Yes. That's how I rolled, Jonathan. I just come out of the gate. And so that to me is so fascinating and i can kind of see how that might've launched your career in sales and marketing and all that, because You learned at a young age about identity, about persuasion, about groupthink.
Speaker: Yep. Let's start there. Yeah, you're're you're you're exactly right. And so ah just for your listeners, is just to put them at ease, I'm out of the cult. Nobody is going to be converted on this podcast. Okay. Yeah. The only conversion that I'm attempting to make on this podcast is changing people's minds about what it means to be a great leader and lead a great company. I fundamentally believe the environment of bringing humans into our business has changed.
Speaker: And I look at that through the lens of what I learned growing up in the cult. What causes people to join and change their life, change their identity, give themselves into service of something greater and outside of themselves. And the cult is really good at that. And because I grew up in that, I had this opportunity to really sit and and study and look at people. And, you know, when you mention... um the book, The Sales Boss, which is what I'm best best sort of known for. It really isn't a book about sales. There's a lot of sales trainers out there. I've done very little sales training. okay um
Speaker: But what I do in the book, The Sales Boss, is teach people how to hire, attract, and build a high-performance team. The truth is, like, it doesn't matter what you're trying to accomplish in the world. Like, if you can't get another group of human beings joining you and amplifying your message, you're just not going to have that great of an impact.
Speaker: That's brilliant. You know, I talk to my kids and I tell them, and I firmly believe this, that an idea realized is one of the most powerful things on this earth.
Speaker: You know, the idea that You said people are converted into whatever, whether that's a cult, whether that is a new mindset of being able to create um a team around them.
Speaker: Man, ideas are so powerful. Yeah, super powerful. And one of the things I say in my ah in in my first book, and it's just a truth about human beings, Right? That things are only good or bad by comparison.
Speaker: Meaning that when we decide how we feel about something, it's always in relation to something we've experienced in the past. And the danger for us, here's something every human has in common. Doesn't matter who you are. And that is that none of us really got to choose the stories we were told about what it meant to be human in the first place.
Speaker: but Like all of our identity about our community and whether we believed in God or whether we were Republican or Democrat or whatever it was came from the other humans around us. And it isn't usually until much later in life that we actually, if we're lucky, realize, hey, I get to have some say in this game called life and there's some unlearning to do. But alongside of that, the most dangerous belief a person can have is the one they don't actually think of as a belief, but because to them it's true.
Speaker: Right? Like if I asked you what color is the sky, what would you say? Probably blue. yeah Yeah. You'd leave out the probably, you'd say it's blue. Yeah. Right?
Speaker: It's not, I believe it's blue. Yeah. It's blue. I get blue. And that's exactly what growing up in a cult is like. Other people look it and they go, how could you believe something so crazy?
Speaker: And the reason is, is the entire environment that you've been surrounded with tells you the sky is blue and you don't even see it as a belief. And here's what I know, as crazy as that is in a cult, and I was able to see it clearly, I can't even i can't even get my mind back in the space I was there growing up. I'm so far removed from it.
Speaker: But what I see in businesses every single day in leadership is people have these huge blind spots about themselves. that they don't even attribute to a belief. It's just the way they see the world. To them, it's true.
Speaker: And so they'd never consider. So you can have really high-functioning leaders, high-functioning human beings who have a huge area that they're dysfunctional in that they're not even aware of. Because let's face it, if they were aware of it, they would have changed it. They're high-functioning.
Speaker: Yeah. So that's why I wrote ah the latest book just came out. I'm coming to Tucson to do an event called Unrecruitable. We do two days of just getting leaders in a room to teach them how do you become attractive in the marketplace so you can get the very best A-plus humans. And the book's called Unrecruitable.
Speaker: How to build a team your competitors can't beat or steal. And here's what I've had the privilege of doing, and I know how to teach other people, is how do you build a team that is so dedicated to your mission and your vision and what you're trying to accomplish that no amount of money, no other opportunity would cause them to leave and take another opportunity.
Speaker: I see that. That's what we build. And we do it every single day. Yeah, so I've had the distinct pleasure of actually experiencing something similar to that you're talking about before and after, you know, both sides.
Speaker: yeah I ran a company back in the, about 15 years ago, ah grew up very quickly and I had employees that were lock, stock and barrel at my side. I could have charged any mountain.
Speaker: And they were there with me side by side. Yeah. That same company, as we got bigger, we kind of lost control of the culture a bit. And then I got to the point where I was bringing in folks that didn't have that same mentality and some of them were recruited away.
Speaker: And that caused the whole system to kind of become wobbly and eventually fall over. Yeah. What was it in particular, Jonathan, that for you was the spark to to to draw you to this kind of mindset exploration?
Speaker: Well, you know, the spark, you mentioned it early on. ah You spend so much time converting people. I was really good at it. into Into a way of belief. And you really get up close to humans and you get this fascination with what causes people to tick.
Speaker: But here's the other thing I realized is there are so many what people would call broken humans. And I actually don't think that there are many broken humans or dysfunctional humans. I think there's only broken dysfunctional environments. When you change the environment for a human,
Speaker: The rest of it takes care of itself. Now, I'm not discounting that there's mental illness and there's other things that happen, but I would say 99% of the things that we that we call as dysfunction in human beings is really related to some sort of ah environmental thing. In fact, I would say probably even mental health. Like you go back far enough, it's you know an environment of not having nutrition. It's an environment of you know damage and physical, all of those things conspiring to To weaken the human being. And on the other side of that, I'm fascinated when you see the power of human potential. I'll give you an example. The other day, I'm i'm flying. I go to um to Nashville.
Speaker: So i I get in the plane. I fly there. I'm at 30,000 feet, and I'm coding vibe code. I'm big into AI right now. I'm vibe coding an app. From 30,000 feet.
Speaker: And then I land and I request an Uber and it comes, picks me up within like five feet of where I'm standing and I pay no attention. It takes me to my hotel.
Speaker: Like, why can I do any of those things? I live in the middle of a desert. I can go out into my yard and turn a faucet and for like fractions of a penny, I can have water in the middle of the desert.
Speaker: Yeah. Incredible. And all of those things are possible because some human being had an idea that I should be able to have water in the middle of the desert and I should be able to fly at 30,000 feet while vibe coding an app. And by the way, it would be really nice if I could have a car just show up and pick me up.
Speaker: Yeah. And that human got enough other humans conspiring to make great things in our world. And yet, we have many business owners that go...
Speaker: Humans are the worst part of the business. Like my grandfather used to say business would be easy if it wasn't for the people. yeah Right? And I think most business owners can ah can attribute to that. But that magic of humans, humans are absolutely magical.
Speaker: Put in the right, like, environment, crazy things happen. The people you have in your business are the exact same sort of people that put men on the moon, that allow us to have Wi-Fi at 30,000 feet,
Speaker: Same humans, different environment. So question though, for our business owners, do you have the ability one to attract those sort of people? And if you attract them, do you even know how to pick them out and know that they're a players?
Speaker: Right? So, and now we're entering into this whole world of AI. And a little known fact about me, I sold the first quantum computer on the planet. So I love technology. I'm very bullish on where technology goes. And I'm also in the human space. Like those are two things that usually, usually you're the geek or you're human, you know like you prefer one or the other. I i love them equally.
Speaker: But here's my philosophy of the world of AI. If you're a business owner, most business owners are getting AI wrong in this sense. They're thinking of it as automation, cost reduction, like faster, all of that sort of thing.
Speaker: I actually think we're living in a world where that traditional hierarchical structure of an organization is completely gone. And now it's the breadth of experience. So let's say I have a head of marketing and normally they have a whole team of people underneath them.
Speaker: Those people underneath are really becoming more and more irrelevant, right? Because I can have a thought as ah as ah as a creative and and have it instantly. I'm not having to to to have it translated down the line with other people.
Speaker: But what does this relate? How does this relate to strategy? I have two ways this reflects relates to strategy. One is I'm not thinking of it as cost red reduction. If I'm paying that creative head of marketing, whatever I am, let's say i'm paying him ah ah him or her 150K a year.
Speaker: Some of you would say I'm underpaying. Some of you would say I'm overpaying. Forget the rate. I'm just just, let's just pick a number, 150K. I'm now going to take that same position and I'm going to pay four hundred k And at 400K, I can get the world's best creative director.
Speaker: I can get the A++ player, a plus plus player human, and I can strap a nuclear-powered supercomputer to their back, and I can just get the F out of the way.
Speaker: And let them do things we never could have imagined. That's the future that we're building. And I'm super excited about it. run a technology technology platform that helps people hire and identify A players. And we do all of that. And we've built in there a model now for helping identify when somebody's coming into your hiring hiring funnel. Are they the sort of human that can survive at the pace that AI is going to require of them?
Speaker: And do they have the capability to be the A++ plus plus player? It's a powerful shift that we're going through. And I did, that's the thing I find fascinating. Jonathan, I think we're going to get along because I love everything you just said.
Speaker: i think the power of the human perception is massive. I mean, where you stand, you see the world as it is blue sky,
Speaker: woe is me, whatever. But the beauty of it is you also have, because of that, you also have the ability to change your perception, to change your position. So all I'm very excited to to learn about what is the part inside the business leader that you want them to understand about themselves.
Speaker: Wow, that's a loaded question, but I'm to start, I'm going to take it from an operator standpoint of somebody trying to build an unrecruitable team. Okay. And I'm going to, maybe we take two clicks. One is for the lead the leader, the owner and the leadership team. And then the second is the the team they're building. okay Okay. For the first layer, the owner and the leaders,
Speaker: You ever have somebody say, people don't want to work anymore. Yeah. People are lazy. People are. And if you're a owner or a leader that says that, you're just, I want you to imagine next time you hear you or your leadership team saying that to instead say, you know what? People don't want to have sex anymore these days.
Speaker: Like if you were a single guy and you were on the apps and nobody was going on a date with you, would you ever say that? No. You would say, just nobody wants to have sex with you. And that's the same issue in hiring. If you have people on your team that are that you're labeling as lazy, they don't want to work, the truth is they don't want to work for you.
Speaker: You're not that attractive. And they need to get over that and realize that human beings have options. And when you ask somebody to work for you, you're saying to them, will you give me your 20s or your 30s or your 40s? Will you give me a decade of your life?
Speaker: That's the bargain that we're making with people. So you can either have a casual attitude about that or you can make yourself attractive. Now, what's attractive? You're the billboard for your organization. So I always tell a business owner, I want you just to imagine you first has to be you.
Speaker: But then so especially your leadership team. Young people these days are being sold this belief, right? They can make two hundred and fifty k a year just sitting on a beach in Bali trading day stocks. Right. may not May or may not be true, but that's the story people are being told. And now with the vibe coding and everything else that's happening, there's probably actually some truth to it.
Speaker: You better have a huge vision and you better be attractive. So imagine you're having a group interview, right? And you got 10 young people there wanting to come work for you. And I want you to just get up in front of the group and I want you to just take all your clothes off and turn around, you and your leadership team. I promise you this isn't something weird.
Speaker: and hand out your blood results, all your doctor's visits, and you say to those young people, look, give me your 20s, give me your 30s, and you too can look exactly like I do.
Speaker: You can feel like I do. You can have the aches and pains I do. You can have the all of that. Are they going to give you their twenty s or thirty s likely not And then you say, hey, guess what? You come home and you hang out with me. You sit on my sofa and you see the way my wife talks to me and the way I interact with her.
Speaker: You see the level of intimacy we have. You see how our kids act, how our kids behave. Give me your 20s and 30s and you too can have a family just like this. Are they gonna sign up?
Speaker: Right, exactly. And then pull out your finances and really show not the flashy what's happening, but what's actually happening in the finances of your of your personal life and your business and say, give me your 20s and 30s and you too can have this.
Speaker: And if you don't feel really comfortable being the billboard for your business, and you certainly don't want your employees, your your leadership team to be that, then you have work to do. Doesn't mean you can't build a great company. Doesn't mean you can't grow your company. It just means you'll never have an unrecruitable team. You'll never have A-plus players.
Speaker: So, Jonathan, is what you're saying basically that the whole idea has to start with that leader, correct? Yeah, and it yes, and that expression is used over and over and over again, and you can find leaders that are grumpy and out of shape and have a horrible relationship with their wife and their kids never see them, and they'll get up and they'll say, it starts with the leader, and boy, I wish Joe was here to hear this.
Speaker: I'm asking your listeners to get really honest with themselves and stand in front of a mirror and be nakedly exposed to themselves. Yeah. And say, would I trade my 20s and 30s for where I'm at today? Right.
Speaker: And we've been sold this lie, especially as men, that we can only have one or the other. We can only have financial success or we can just be a family guy or we can be this. That's all a lie. We live in a world where we can have it all.
Speaker: We do. We can't have it all alone.
Speaker: If we want it all, we have to have a team and we have to have a team of A players. That's the table stakes. So I think this is the, like, this is why i put on these two-a-day events.
Speaker: I have leaders come in after they send their team. They're like, I don't know what happened. You totally rewired my team. You know why? Because we're going to spend two days, one, really tactically understanding what does it take to build a great company.
Speaker: And I'm going to take the lens of a cult leader looking at that. Talk to me about an instance where you saw... maybe earlier in your career, maybe now, it doesn't matter, where you saw a company completely transform themselves.
Speaker: I see it every day. i see it every day. do we We have a it two two companies we're working with right now. ah one one one of one of the One of the owners, massively unhealthy, overweight, came in started running our blueprint. I did this book with Andy Elliott. He's one of the guys up here, in ah you know one of the fastest growing sales and leadership development guys.
Speaker: um And we partnered on this book. And we both had this u client in common. he He ended up selling a company for $100 million, dollars but he transformed everything about his life. Now, but what the difference is, is he moved here to Phoenix.
Speaker: And in one year, he started a company that he'd never been in, a plumbing company. he went from $0 to $10 million dollars first year. Because he knows the playbook now. He knows exactly how to be the billboard. I have another client.
Speaker: He's been in this market for 10 years and he's at $2.5 million. dollars And if you spend any time with either of them, you're going to be like, this guy is the billboard. He's living proof versus this guy.
Speaker: Do you think it's more of don't, you know, you, you, you hear the, it's the carrot or it's the stick. Is it the fact that that the $10 million dollars guy you just mentioned, is it the fact that he was so interested in becoming this other person, quote unquote, the carrot?
Speaker: Or was it the stick of like, oh shit, I'm going to die if I don't get my life straight. Like I'm overweight. um he had Yeah, he had young kids. He couldn't play with his young kids. He realized he had a business and he was starting to have money, but he was miserable.
Speaker: And you hear that story over and over again. ah yeah I've faced it in my own life. Like I've been on a health journey the last couple of years. Everything's changing. Now, I'm not saying you have to be the pinnacle of health.
Speaker: Like some people have, you know, inherent health problems. But for sure, how you show up in those facets of your life matter. Here's here's here's the difference though. when you Let's take it out of the leadership realm and let's talk about our people that work with us. Okay.
Speaker: What causes somebody... to do great work where you don't have to manage them. You don't have to pull them. You don't have to push them. You don't have to reward them. You don't have to do any of that.
Speaker: When I was in the cult, I got people to totally change their life, come to work a thousand hours a month, leave their family, never paid them a dime. Right. It's not money. It's one thing.
Speaker: It's identity. who Identity. yeah If you have the identity of an athlete, do you have to be motivated to and incentivized to go to the gym and eat healthy? You don't. You're an athlete. no if you're If you're a Christian, do you have to be reminded to go to church and incentivize to tithe? No, that's just your identity. It's what you do.
Speaker: So what you have to understand and what we teach in our blueprint and unrecruitable event is how do you change people's identity? And there's a formula for it. It works every single time. I'll break it down.
Speaker: It's a math problem. Identity. How do you get identity?
Speaker: Identity actually comes from very simply an action repeated over and over again, gives evidence, and that evidence becomes your identity. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: So if I go to the gym every day and I eat healthy every day, i don't start out as an athlete, but over time I start getting evidence. I look better. I feel better. I'm healthier. All of a sudden I see myself, my identity shifts. I am an athlete.
Speaker: If I start going to church and I've subscribed to doing that sort of thing, and eventually I get some evidence, right? And then that that's how the human spirit works. So what is your number one job?
Speaker: As a leader, if you want to build an unrecruitable organization, your own specialized cult, and I don't mind cult because I think cults are good for people. Like most people, they're influenced anyway.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly. You listen to CNN, you're going to be influenced one way. You listen to Fox news, you're going to be influenced the other way. Like it don't matter. We're all influenced. If I have humans in my company, I'm going to influence them to be great human beings. I'm going to influence them to be healthy. I'm going to be influencing them to be great husbands and wives and children and good members of our community.
Speaker: So I need to be able to control how somebody acts. And how do I control how somebody acts? Super simple. I need to control their thinking. Because that's how actions happen.
Speaker: Somebody has a thought. which creates a feeling and that feeling creates an action. That action produces results, which creates another thought, feeling, action.
Speaker: This is as old as time. yeah Nobody's gonna argue with this. All psychology is rooted in this. This what's this is what masters of cults and militaries and governments understand.
Speaker: Thought control. So here's the problem most businesses have. And I teach in my book, how do you do a think, feel, act audit? That's what I call it. Think, feel, act audit. Number one, I got to decide what do I want people who come to work for my company to think about working for me?
Speaker: One thought, not a big something on the wall, not like mission, vision, values, like thought. So first get your leadership team together and say, if we had to distill it down, what's the one thing we want people to think every time they come into contact with us, what would it be?
Speaker: And then you're going to audit your entire environment to say, if they had to judge me by this one thing, my building, my my emails, my literature, my the quality of my sales meetings, my CRM um system, whatever it is, if they only had this one tiny speck to judge the entirety of my company, would they have that thought?
Speaker: And I'm going to drive everything towards that. is that give the art Is that a brand thing or is it an internal brand thing? No, nothing to do with brand. Okay. It becomes your brand. It's a thought, clear and simple, not complicated. Let me give you a real example. This will help your listeners really crystallize this.
Speaker: I had a company that out in California, an HVAC company. I'm not gonna name them, but they were churning through technicians like nonstop, hire them, fire them, couldn't keep them. They called me, said, your platform's not working, your prediction models aren't working. I said, nope, it's a you problem. Promise you, it's a you problem.
Speaker: Got hundreds of companies killing it. There's something wrong. So we flew out there and we met with the owners. I could see immediately what the issue was, but you know, you yeah you can't hit somebody over the head all at once.
Speaker: But I just asked them, what, what, do what do you want people to think when they come to work for you? One, the none of the leadership team agreed who and we're at lunch. So it's, you know, it's nice and social.
Speaker: Finally, they agree on, they want people to have this one thought, this company knows how to create champions. Why did they want people to have that thought? Because if somebody thinks this company knows how to create champions, then they feel safe to trust them with the future of their family and their career.
Speaker: And that feeling is going to create an action of giving them their discretionary effort and working harder and mastering their craft, which is going to create loyalty. That sounds good. What was the disconnect? So that's the thing. Here's the disconnect. Yeah, should all be good, right?
Speaker: So we pull outside their building. And i say, wait, let's just stop. We're going to audit just this one thing. You pulled up outside your building, new person coming to work for you. All they see is your building. Now, I'm not saying you have to have the nicest building, so don't mistake me for what I'm about to say.
Speaker: Their building, dirty, had this right on the highway, this massive vinyl side held up with bungees. You've probably seen this on a warehouse. Looks sun-battered, beaten, dry, brittle letters on it that says, now hiring, competitive salary, apply within.
Speaker: It's probably been up there for 15 years. You walk up to their front door. There's ah a ramp up. It's pockmarked. The handrail's all dirty. You go up, you yeah pull the door, and it's locked. It's dusty, and there's a sign there that's been curled from the weather that says, please ring the bell. We'll be with you shortly.
Speaker: Now, if you had to measure that company, we create champions by that one thing, what would you say? Can they create champions? No, it's shoddy, man. Not a chance. Yeah.
Speaker: And they walked through that for 15 years. Now, we walked through their whole building. They wanted to cry by the time they got done. We sat in their bathroom, their lunchroom, their break room, their training room, their trucks.
Speaker: And every time we said, oh you're just going to judge yes or no, one to 10. Is this company a champion? Can they create champions based on this one thing? We get halfway through. They're literally ready to cry. they're like, we're done. We got the point. I'm like, nope.
Speaker: We flew out here on our dime. We're going to do the whole audit. Yeah, I that. Because I wanted it to sit so deeply with them that they would never unsee it.
Speaker: Now you go to that same building, pull up outside. It's all been pressure washed, looks nice and thing. That vinyl sides down. It's actually was a little faded. They had to repaint it, been up there so long.
Speaker: Now there's three big images of humans. Joe, Bob, Tina, I don't remember who what the names are there, but smiling, nice humans, and it says Joe, whatever, ah was ah the year, waiter, $26,000 a year, 156,000 head of operations.
Speaker: Something personal, he's got a dog, two kids. so Next human, same thing, where they came from, where they're at now, where they came from, where they're at now. Big heading that says only champions. apply here.
Speaker: Yeah, I see that. I see that clear as day. Yeah, I mean, walk up the concrete. Now it's painted red, smooth like glass, shiny. And it's got footprints coming up at every footprint has a little thing that says a champion steps here.
Speaker: The door is completely wrapped. It's still locked. But it has a sign of ring the bell. to experience the magic of joining a champion team.
Speaker: It doesn't take any sort of like genius to go, which company is going to have turnover problems? Which problem, which company is going to go, the employee is going to go home and say, you'll never guess I made it onto that team.
Speaker: Which of those is going to feel like they can trust you? Which of those, because they feel like they can trust you, are going to act in a way that earns trust? They're going to give you their distractionary effort. And when they act that way and they act that way completely, then they get the identity of a champion, and champions do hard things. You don't have to motivate them. You don't have to encourage them. Just like you don't have to encourage a Christian to tithe. You don't have to encourage ah an athlete to show up at the gym. They do it because it's in their DNA.
Speaker: They were churning through so many people they were spending $20,000 a month on Indeed.
Speaker: Now, here's the thing. They didn't spend $20,000 to redo the whole front of their building. Now, successful businesses have started in a garage. The the point isn't to to to have a beautiful location. The point is your presentation all the way through has to ring true, not ah not hypocrisy. If I'm starting out in a basement, then my identity is I want people that are rebels and theyre they love being the underdog and they're willing to fight. And when they show up, they're like, fuck, these guys are the underdogs.
Speaker: Right? But that's who they identify with. Here's the thing. People talk about like like, let's create culture and culture is this and culture is that. i Get rid of all that. Just simplify it for your leadership team. Just say, what's the one thought we want people to have? And I'm going to work relentlessly on controlling that one thought every time I interact with that human in my business. And eventually i will have a cult.
Speaker: People that are willing to die for me, people that are not going to leave for me, people that see us as family, see us as marching for the same thing. It really is that simple. Now, is there a lot of nuance ah at it? Yeah, but like we confuse all of that.
Speaker: And now we end up in a, people have gotten so bad at it that now we have a bunch of HR laws about what you can talk to an employee about and what you shouldn't. And we put up this artificial barrier. You know what? If you're a real human and you're hiring a players whose identity you've helped shape, people don't sue a mentor. People don't sue a friend.
Speaker: People don't sue somebody who's helped them see a bigger vision of themselves. They sue miserable companies who use them and abuse them and just saw them as a path to wealth. That's why you get sued.
Speaker: I'm on my soapbox. Sorry about that. You get me started. I do have a, I do have a downshift mode. Shall I just like.
Speaker: So, Jonathan, I really love the that mindset, that way of thinking about things. And I think it rings so true. i also agree with you that, you know, if you're not at that pinnacle, that it's it's okay. That the idea that you're working towards something is the value.
Speaker: You know what mean? that Yeah, we understand here's where we're at with our business. There's some struggle. there's the The paint has faded, so to speak. But we've now identified that and now we're going to fix it.
Speaker: And, you know, this this podcast is is a lot about, is primarily about the mindset, you know, without the proper mindset, you're not gonna have what it takes to to build that. The way I see my company is, and and you can kind of do an assessment on me if you want.
Speaker: My main three goals in my company, and number one is to set and execute the vision of the company. Okay, which translating potentially to what you do is is a lot of controlling the thinking and and the mindset and the direction, right? Number two, to block and tackle.
Speaker: If there's things that come up, I make room. If there's issues, I go in there, I solve problems. And number three is I develop my employees. I give them the tools that they need to grow.
Speaker: So go at it, tell me how I did. I love it. We're in alignment there. I would just say whatever business you're in and your leadership team's in, like insert the name of the business, right?
Speaker: doesn't matter what the business is. You have to get you and your leadership team to believe that you are not in the HVAC business, the coaching business. You are in the human business.
Speaker: Attracting humans, finding humans, collecting humans. And having a dream big enough that all of their dreams can fit inside of your dream. That's your role. Number one, your humans can be in the business you're in. They can be in the HVAC business, the coaching business, the consulting business, the...
Speaker: insurance business, but if you are a leader, you can never be in the business you're in. in the business of humans. That's it. And I, so you spend every day thinking about the humans that are on your team. Your humans will take amazing care of you. You will have a place you actually enjoy working. You'll have a business where you can walk away for a month and your business actually grows. I'm inside Andy Elliott's place. First time I walked in, here's how we wrote this book together. I walked into, we both had a shared consulting a client that we helped consult with a handful of them. So we came across each other. and When I walked into his office, it was like walking into a real life version of my book.
Speaker: Like he intuitively knew how to build this high performance culture. He's got a hundred sales guys working with him. They're all tent ah commission only salespeople.
Speaker: handful of them making over a million dollars a year under the age of 30. Every single one of them fit. Every single one of them, great relationships. In fact, if if you're if you if you're out on town out out on the town and you're drinking or you cheat on your wife, you're fired. It doesn't matter if you're a $30 million dollars a year producer.
Speaker: They have super high standards. Mm-hmm. And you may or may not, you know, it's up to you if you want to run your company that way. But what I can tell you is he went from zero to 100 million in three years.
Speaker: Then he doubled that the next year. And he's going to do a half a billion dollars here pretty quick. That's that's fascinating. Yeah. So, and I have no doubt that he'll build a billion dollar consulting company doing sales and leadership development. That's hard to do.
Speaker: Right? And there's zero chance you're ever going to pull away one of his team members. Just not going to happen. Because their identity is there in Elliot.
Speaker: That word identity, I use a lot, by the way. I believe in that so much. It kind of started with, I read Atomic Habits by James Clear years ago. i love that book. And got me thinking about identity, got me thinking about how to reframe goals and what it really means to the, you know, these goals is really just a change of identity.
Speaker: And then the goals kind of happen automatically. huge. So yeah, definitely understand that, that framework. Yeah. And here's the thing, like, you know, so I get business owners are like, well, I'm not there yet.
Speaker: I always get people come to my second day training, by the way. And they're like, i was, I fired everybody. So when people come down to my event, I'm like, let's enter into a pack that you're not going to fire anyone. No, these are human beings you made a promise to. Like,
Speaker: You got the humans you deserve today. Let's like, let's, let's figure out that thing first. And by the way, we teach you a path to how do I upgrade the humans that I already have collected? Cause you know, let's face it, you collected them.
Speaker: But secondly, if you're not all the way there, and what's the path to to changing? You know, there's this thing in ah marketing. We see it in the movies all the time. We talk about the hero's journey. Right. Somebody's down on their luck. They get beaten up. They get back up. They finally have victory. Right.
Speaker: That's the story you want to follow. Like if you went to a movie and you're like this beautiful man and beautiful woman grew up in idyllic paradise and they got married and they never had any problem and they had bunches of kids and guess what? Their kids all did well. And then they died and they left wealth to their kids and their kids all like you wouldn't want to watch that movie. there's no movie there. There's no story. No movie.
Speaker: You'd much rather like everything was going good. And then there was a tragic accident and they crashed bottom and they came back up. So if you're not like the billboard today and when you go, man, I'd never be naked in front of my company. And man, I wouldn't want to show show my finances and my struggles. And man, I like i have relationship troubles and I've, great.
Speaker: Start telling that story of transformation. Decide with yourself that you're never going to be that human being. And you're going to live your best life. And you tell that story publicly. Every employee that comes in, you say, here's where I'm at. Here's how I got here. I haven't been the kind of leader that I aspire to be. That's a me problem. And I'm fixing it. I'm working on it. And I'm inviting you on the journey. And guess what? There's a whole host of really great humans that are on that same journey that's going to join you.
Speaker: But the humans that are going to join somebody that's stuck and not growing and allowing themselves to fester are humans that want to stay stuck and they want to fester because that's where they're at. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker: ah love all that. I think that as leaders, we have the ah duty to succeed and to become aligned with ourselves in order to to cause that to happen. I mean, I've got 15 employees that are that are just amazing human beings. And it's conversations like this that get me to think differently to then add additional things to me to help them. It's like this recurring cycle.
Speaker: Yeah, I always ask yeah leaders, I just like, I want you to take the Netflix beer and wine survey. Just like back in napkin, how many people of your of yours go home, sit themselves on the couch, watch Netflix, drink beer or wine all night?
Speaker: Yeah. And I'm not opposed to Netflix, beer or wine. But if the majority of your employees are doing that, they're checked out of life. Yeah. They're not living.
Speaker: And so you're getting leftovers at work because they're not living at home. They'd rather watch other people live and numb their pain than actually lived themselves. And you did that as a business owner. boy I had a book my previous company that grew very quickly. It was an amazing culture and it's a long story, but there was one time when I'd get to work pretty early. There was one time I got to work a little after six in the morning, okay? Living in Arizona, you know, that it gets hot and all that. So I got there early thinking that I'd be the first there and I could have my cup of coffee and be able to work by myself.
Speaker: There was already two cars in the parking lot. And I go to the back and the i had two of my technicians back to work in. and And I'm like, Charlie, Dan, what are you guys doing here? And they're like, we couldn't get we couldn't wait to get to work.
Speaker: They had the music blaring. they had the The coffee pot was almost done. And I'm like, how long you been here? They're like, we got here at about five in the morning. I'm like, what do you mean? And then these guys go home and they've got a machine shop at home and they do the work at home as well. So I totally get it. I mean, I yeah i see the power of it.
Speaker: I enjoyed this conversation with you. If you're open to it, I'd like to give your audience a code. They can come in Tucson this month to my two-day event.
Speaker: Guests of you not pay me anything. All right. What is it? I'm going to give you a code. Manny100. one hundred Okay. I love it. Manny100. I'll be sure to share the share the news.
Speaker: And I'm going to give him a copy of my book, Unrecruitable. My guarantee to them is this is the best two days they will ever have taken to think about their business and they will grow more in the 120 days after coming than they've grown in the last two years.
Speaker: the The audience that we have, Jonathan, are are people that are hungry, hungry for change, hungry for growth, and they don't They don't shy away from the work.
Speaker: You know what i mean? Yeah. I have a plumbing company in Vegas. She texted me this weekend. It's on my Facebook page now. Probably like i going have to end up on my webpage. She literally just texted me.
Speaker: She says, we now have a waiting list for employees to work for our company. Nice. You never hear that of a plumbing company. No. He's like, but we've become so attractive...
Speaker: And we've so honed in who we are and the identity of the human that we're trying to get to come to us like we're just a magnet for it and they're willing to wait in line. That's the truth.
Speaker: That's fantastic. my my My team's really growing fast. It amazes me. I have really high-end executives that come for a 40% pay cut.
Speaker: It's not because I'm trying to underpay people. I got a tech company I'm trying to grow, right? Like this is the tech's light. Their payoff is going to be when we exit this thing. But they want to do that because they can see in themselves a greater future.
Speaker: see that. like Like people are underselling what happens in the business. But more importantly than in the business, business is hard.
Speaker: Yeah, it is. This is the best time to be alive, first of all. The best time to be in business, even if we have all these things kind of stacked against us. So I'm doing two things that seem countered each other, but they're really not. I'm doing these Unrecruitable, teaching people how to get the best humans.
Speaker: On the other side, i'm running events to teach people how to get the best out of AI. So lot people look at that and they're like, this is sort like Jekyll and Hyde. I'm like, not really, because what you need is you need that A plus plus human being. And you're going to strap nuclear powered supercomputer to their back and you're going to get out of the way.
Speaker: But I actually think the problem businesses have, and maybe your, you know, your, uh, your executives will understand this. The problem with AI strategy, you take any company, the executive team doesn't have a shared understanding, a shared fear, a shared respect, a shared know-how of what AI is.
Speaker: There's one guy that's sort of geeking out, thinks he's the expert. There's somebody else that thinks that's like from the devil. There's somebody else that's sort of lost in the grind. Yeah. you can't have a strategy until you have a shared knowledge and a shared understanding so i'm trying to teach executives like bring them together to understand the vocabulary and the framework and you can narrow that down to i think of it it like lego blocks there's really 11 Lego blocks when it comes to AI. And if you can master that, you can ignore all the other noise and hype that's out there and you can actually build a strategy that's going to win. But it's also going to reap require the kinds of humans that are A-plus players. Like if you're struggling and you could like have a team of 10 and eight of them are B players and two are a you are going to struggle in the world of AI. Because what you actually need is you need an entire team of A-plus players. Can you imagine...
Speaker: Strapping a nuclear-powered supercomputer to Joey's back that shows up late and does shoddy work. Yeah, it's going to go down crazy. Watches Netflix and sits at home and drinks beer. Like, this is not going to be good for you.
Speaker: Yeah. I like that. Well, Jonathan, this has been ah a good conversation, a good eye-opening um sort conversation.
Speaker: experience in understanding the way that a business can really approach their, their people. There's so much power in the people. What is one last message you want to leave our audience regarding what they can do to really become relevant for the longterm and have employees that are unrecruitable?
Speaker: See people as humans.
Speaker: See people as humans. That's that. Like in my first book, and this is a power of the cult, is this ability to say and really mean it, I believe you believe that.
Speaker: And that could sound really sarcastic, right? You say, I believe you believe that. I don't mean it that way. I mean, I believe that you believe that. There's no ill intent behind it. There's no malice. There's no misunderstanding. You're not crazy. You really believe that. Yeah.
Speaker: And even further, Manny, if I grew up where you grew up, experienced the things as you grew up, I'd probably think the same exact way and be acting the same way because we're human. yeah And when you can do that with another human being, everything changes.
Speaker: had an employee that just came to work for me and you know, he's in a hard spot in his life, just recently went through a divorce. He's, you know, hiss but I can see the human. And he gets his first day of work and I'm like, hey, do you want to jump into the deep end of the pool or you want to have casual conversation? He's like, no, I want to want to jump into the deep end of the pool. I said, good, because you got a timeline, right? You're behind.
Speaker: I can tell you're behind where you want to be in life. He's like, yeah, I'm behind. I'm like, well, what do you want What's really important? he's like, well, I want to be fit. I need to get my health back. I said, great. do you know what it's going to take to do that? He knew everything. So I said, great. So here's the thing.
Speaker: The first day you don't text me that you did your 10,000 feet steps and a picture from the gym and that you ate the macros that you knew were going to meet, I'm going to fire you. He's like, what do you mean?
Speaker: I'm like, well, you just told me that was important to you. And he says, yeah, well, it doesn't have anything. think but And then he stops. And I'm like, see, the point is you're either lying to yourself or you're lying to me.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. And I actually take it more personal if you lie to yourself, because if you lie to yourself, why would I trust you?
Speaker: Secondly, second question, because he said he needed to be financially secure. I said, what's the most money you've ever had in your bank account? And did you feel secure then? You can't have that conversation with an employee unless you see them as human and they know you have zero judgment with the answer. Right.
Speaker: And he told me, And I said, by the time you get through six months working for me, you'll have more money than you've had ever in your bank account in your life. He's four months in. I'm going to write him a check this week that's equal to the total amount of money that he had in his bank account ever in his life.
Speaker: I didn't do that. He did it. Why? Because I controlled right from moment one how he thought. which controlled how he felt, which controlled the action. He showed up in the gym every day.
Speaker: He worked harder to learn his script. That repeated over time created evidence that he is a champion. It reminded him that he's always been a warrior.
Speaker: And now I don't have to motivate him. So it comes down to, I believe you believe that. Let's meet you there. Nice. This has been great, Jonathan. Thank you for your time and this opportunity.
Speaker: Unfortunately, we can't meet this month in and the event. I'll be down in South America, but... You have a standing invite, Manny, to any of my events. It would be a pleasure to have you. Yes, would love to see it. Manny 100 is the code for your event. It is. Is it May 27th and 28th? Are those the dates? I think those are the dates. You can put them in your show notes. Here's the thing.
Speaker: That short notice, I'm going to leave that code live for any event that I do in the next four months. It doesn't matter what event it is. that If it's in on Unrecruitable.com, your audience will come.
Speaker: Fantastic. Thanks so much, Jonathan. Take care. Awesome. Thank you. Cheers.
