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Itunes – www.TonyJavier.com/itunes 

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Guest Bio: John Martinez s a serial entrepreneur and a highly sought-after sales expert. He is best known for his sales training in the real estate investment industry.

Having trained over 500 of the country’s top Real Estate Investors and their teams, his scripts and sales & negotiation strategies have transformed the real estate investment industry and are now widely accepted as the industry’s gold standard.

More about him – https://tonyjavier.com/johnmartinez

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Show Transcription:

Tony (00:04):
Record here. All right. Cool. All right. Welcome to today’s episode. We have John Martinez with us. He is a real estate investor, a trainer and has coached and trained over 500 real estate teams. He’s kinda like me. He likes to automate, he likes to scale without doing a lot of work with scaling. So I’m glad to have John Martinez on the line today. How are you doing today, John?

John (00:35):
I am good. I’m happy to be here.

Tony (00:37):
Yeah. Thanks for jumping on man. So we, we haven’t officially met to really just now we’d been in the same circles. We’ve been right in the same mastermind groups, but, you know, I think our, our personalities are pretty similar. Our messages are pretty, pretty similar, so I’m kind of excited, really excited to dive into some of the things that you’re doing and, and, and have, you know, really high level conversations on how people can scale their business, automate it and that kind of thing. So I’ll just turn it over to you, man. So tell us how you got into the business. Tell us how you got to where you are now and how you transitioned from being a real estate investor to a trainer and kind of the evolution of that.

John (01:13):
Yeah. So, um, you know, very similar story to a ton of people, right? Just normal job, corporate America, uh, worked my way up the corporate ladder, if you will, from, you know,, I’m a sales guy. So, um, my main business is sales training. So, um, took, you know, low level sales rolls up to building and leading pretty good sized sales teams for some pretty, uh, large companies and probably about six years ago or so, you know, you just hit that point where you start asking yourself questions like, is this it how much further can I go? Am I really happy doing what I’m doing? You know, where are those gaps in my life as far as time and control and money and opportunity at that point, I just said, you know, my favorite part of doing what I do is training salespeople. So I’m going to try to spin up a business doing that. So I did, I launched into sales training, uh, started training in a ton of different industries, about a year into it, or so I came across real estate investing and an investor down in Houston, Texas, maybe willed banker pulled me in and said, Hey, I’m having some, some issues on the acquisition side I want to do better. Can you help me? You know, I didn’t know anything about that business at the time. And I said, yeah, and it really took off. So, um, you say real estate investor. I actually never officially became a real estate investor. What happened was I trained Will’s team? And the word started to spread throughout his, his network and six months into it, maybe even three months into it. I was training 20 or 30 of these real estate investment acquisitions team. So as part of that, I realized, Hey, this is going to be a pretty big part of my business. There’s just, there’s a lot of need here. So I took a year and I traveled the country and I, uh, at that point, my training was just one on one. So I’d go into a market, I’d hop in the car with acquisition agents or investors. I’d buy a ton of houses on their behalf. They’d watch. That’s kind of what the training was like. And then we’d flip and, and that person would buy. And I just give tips along the way and debrief and that type of thing. And along the way, I spun up a market here in my hometown in Springfield, Missouri, I just partnered with a real investor, really, who did the marketing and drove the leads. I picked up the leads, we close the deals and we just handed them back off for them to do disposition. So I never, I wouldn’t ever say I was actually a real estate investor. I did a lot of heavy lifting in that industry. And now we’re a hundred percent focused in that industry, but that was really the evolution. So it was normal job spun up a business. And then the last five or six years, I’ve just really been, you know, kinda follow back on the automation part. We’ve been really fine tuning, marketing, fine tuning the automation and really just focusing on getting our business processes dialed in.

Tony (03:55):
So when you start working with a team, like, what do you feel like is their biggest struggle? What do you feel like that they need the most? And how do you solve that for them?

John (04:05):
The biggest struggle is real simple. There’s just, there’s no, um, no process when it comes to acquisitions most, and it’s not this isn’t relegated to just real estate investing. Most companies treat sales as kind of like this, this magic and they go, Hey, we’re just going to look for these amazing salespeople and we’re not going to give them a bunch of training. We’re just going to say your goal is to close these deals, go do it. And that’s, that’s kinda been the whole strategy for sales, for companies and industries across the board. So the biggest thing they’re missing is, is actually a process like a step by step, Hey, this is our strategy. This is our sales strategy. Here’s the step by step pieces to it and that’s what they’re missing. So, you know, what usually happens is they hire a ton of people. Most of them fail because there is no strategy, right? There is no cohesive plan. Occasionally they find this rock star. They do really good. They get excited, the rock star, doesn’t usually last cause someone else is going to pay, you know, they’ve got the same issue and they’re like, Hey, we’ll pay you more. And they go, or that person spends up their own business. So, um, the biggest thing we do is we take that reliance on rockstars, out of it and say, you know, here’s your plan, put any decent sales person in it. And you can start to replicate this and predict results. And that’s what they’re missing is, is just a system, right?

Tony (05:24):
Yeah. It’s, it’s crazy that businesses survive without systems. And I was one of those very early in the beginning, you know, 20 years ago when I started my business, I thought I was creating systems when it came down to it. I really didn’t have that greatest systems. I had good systems for small parts of my business. And I think that’s kind of what you were getting to is that maybe some people have good systems for marketing and you know, this kind of thing, but when it comes to salespeople, they just throw them in and let them kind of feed for themselves. So tell us what kind of systems you recommend any organization to have in their sales department.

John (06:01):
Yeah. So, I mean, you really just need a step by step process for handling any lead. So, you know, for real estate investment specifically, there’s, there should be a, uh, a lead intake system, right. Um, for lead managers. Okay. How do we qualify this person? And if they’re, you know, uh, if they’re not qualified, what do we do with them? If they are qualified, how do we get them to that next step which is typically some type of interaction with an acquisition manager, salesperson, the investor themselves, whoever is actually buying the process. And then the second part of that process is where the acquisition manager picks up. Maybe it’s the same as the lead manager. It could be the same person in a smaller organization, but how do we systematically take this person, um, increase as much urgency to take action as we can really dive deep into their motivation, um, figure out all the reasons why they wouldn’t do business with us. And then based on those two things put together a killer presentation on, Hey, here’s why, you know, here’s what, here’s how, here’s what it would look like if we work together and all that really is just a very simple structure. Uh, that’s meant to close every closable deal and end up with either a yes or no, not this, you know, one of the big, other big issues I see with real estate investors is they don’t have a process that ends in a yes or no and what happens is 95% of their leads turn out in this kind of gray area. That’s maybe they will, maybe they won’t. We really have no idea. It could be a no, could be really close to a yes or somewhere in between. And then they end up with another problem, which is okay, we’ve been producing leads. We got really good at marketing. Now we’ve got a thousand leads. You’ve produced over six months. And my sales guy who’s supposed to be going out after, you know, 10 sales calls a week has literally a thousand people they need to follow up with on a monthly basis. And that gets out of control. So, you know, not having that right sales process just leads to more problems down the line anyways, beyond just not getting the closable deals when you could. Um, so, so that’s it, it’s it it’s really not complex. I look at as a checklist, right? Why would they, that’s diving into motivation actually having a real conversation about what their issues are, what they want to accomplish, um, seem simplistic, but so many people skip it. So many salespeople just want to go, Hey, here’s our offer. Let’s do it. Right. Um, and then figuring out what might hold this person back. Cause there’s a ton of people who need help. Um, but there’s one or two things that hold them back from being able to accept that help. So, you know, in the sales world, commonly known as objections, but also taking your time to proactively pull out all those little things, those speed bumps, or are sticking points and address those.

Tony (08:34):
What I have noticed with business owners is when they recruit people, they typically don’t have a process to it. But even if they don’t have a process, they still can find good people. But even if they find good people, there’s not a really good process to train them, to motivate them, to keep them going. Yeah. So tell us a bit about how you train people to take people, not only to find them, but also to go all the way through to where they actually perform. Cause you can hire a rock star, but if you don’t have good systems in place, if you don’t have motivators in place, if you don’t have metrics in place, obviously that person may not work out. So tell us a little bit about how you manage that part of it.

John (09:19):
Yeah. So, you know, as far as we put most of the, there you’re right there, there’s those two pieces. There’s finding the right person and putting them in the right process or giving them the right tools to, to thrive. We focus peace. And the reason we do that is because we have found that so many people struggle on hiring the right people. So we’ve actually put most of the focus on our, our training, our process. And over the last three years, we’ve developed a sales process. That’s really built to train people who don’t belong in sales. I mean, when you look at the, so here here’s, here’s the real world, the stats are about 7% of people who are out there selling anything today, belong in that position. So you’ve got 97% of the people who just aren’t built to do it. Now, a chunk of those are okay and they get by little, under 50% should not be doing what they’re doing in a sales role. Like they should not be doing it. They’ve got to get out of there. So knowing that since my main business is sales training and not recruiting, I look at that environment and I go, whatever team I work with, I know 7% are going to be built for this. And I know whoever else is on that team, the vast majority are not dealt for this. So how do we train people in such a way that are built for sales to sell effectively? So you put all of….

Tony (10:36):
I’m sorry, you said only 7% of people that are in the sales role belong in the sales role. Tell me why that is.

John (10:43):
Yeah. So there’s a number of, um, you know, uh, characteristics, uh, we call it sales DNA, uh, and, and those characteristics really tell you whether or not a sales person can do what can, can follow a good sales process effectively. So for example, one of the things you measure for is, um, going to be a supportive bicycle. So what supportive bicycle means is this, it means, okay, if I’m hiring a sales person and I want them to get a decision at the end of the sales call, yes or no, if I want them built that way. Um, and if I’m selling a high dollar product or it’s a big decision, like real estate or something like that, um, they’re going to be hard wired to sell or not sell based on how they buy themselves. So here’s an example. If you hire an acquisition agent or a sales person and anything over a 100, 250 bucks is a lot of money to them. And it takes them 30, 60 days to make that decision because they’re really going to look at all their options and really sleep on it and think about it. That person is not built to sell a high dollar product with a short sales cycle because, you know, whenever a prospect says, I want to think about it. They’re hard wired to just go, I get that. That makes sense. You’re just like me. And they’re going to say you do what you have to do, and they’re not going to dig a little deeper and find out what’s slowing this deal down. Right? So supportive bicycle is one of those things that make someone built or not built to sell. Um, the amount of responsibility they take is another one. So if somebody doesn’t take a lot of responsibility for their results, um, what that means is when they don’t get good results in the sales world, they blame other things. The market’s bad. My competition is unethical or there’s too much of it, or they’re too dang good. Um, it’s the company, the company doesn’t have is too new. They don’t have enough for reputation. They’re going to blame everyone else. And instead of saying my sales results, aren’t where they need to be. I need to look internally, take responsibility and figure those out. They’re going to blame everyone else.

Tony (12:42):
So it’s more of a mental game than anything. When you said only 7% of people are built for sales. My thought was, it was behavioral profile. It was outgoing. Are they, you know, XYZ? So you’re saying it’s more the mentality of that person and how they react to certain situations.

John (13:01):
Are they built to follow a sales process effectively? Right? So just like you said, finding the right person you’ve got to, after you find someone who can follow a sales process effectively, you have to give them an effective sales process or effective process to follow. So only 7% kind of check all those boxes that are okay, this person is built for sales. Cause naturally they they’re just built to follow a sales process and, and to, you know, have some tougher conversations when need be let up when need be. And they’re just, they’re just built to do it. Um, that’s not the reality of the world of salespeople though. So we have put all of our focus on knowing the people that are going to be selling. How do we build a process in such a way that makes it super comfortable for everybody, regardless of if they’re built to sell or not, uh, to go through, um, you know, how do we overcome those weaknesses with the process we put in place? Right? Um, so that’s where our focus on is really modifying our process. That any person, even people not built for sales can just follow the process and do it effectively. So we address those that’s those sales DNA problems. We address those sales weaknesses, the, with the way we built the sales process. Now, the good thing is, is when you do find a rockstar, it makes them super, super effective, right? But we’ve got to deal with the reality we have. And the reality we have is most people aren’t built to sell.

Tony (14:24):
So if I’m hearing right, And rather than finding some on that. So do you find people that are not good at say or not? I’m not saying not good at sales, but don’t have any sales experience and turn them into salespeople. So you’re saying you’d find, you’d rather find someone that follows a system that has the mental mindset that’s willing to put in the work that’s willing to not blame people and blame other, other things, that position, rather than someone that can talk to a wall and sell them on paint. You know what I’m saying? It’s like, yeah.

John (14:58):
The truth also is when we look at a lot of the data around sales, which is I’m, I’m a sales guy. So that’s, my job is to follow the data. Um, salespeople who’ve been extremely successful in one industry or one type of sale that does not translate. It does not mean they’re going to be successful in any type of sales. And every business owner knows that cause they, they hire people. Who’ve been extremely successful, put them in a new role when they fail. Um, so it, it, it doesn’t, it doesn’t transfer. You can’t just find someone and especially outgoing. Um, again, if we look at the data, uh, less than 10% of top salespeople, I believe when I say top salespeople, I’m talking about the top three, 4% of salespeople, uh, again, any industry across the nation, just lumping them together. If you look at top salespeople, less than 10% of those top salespeople are those extroverted, I can talk to anybody people. They’re usually more introverted, uh, because those people do more. You know, if you talk about what, you know, a sales process, where a lot of the sales process, good salespeople, aren’t doing a lot of talking, they’re asking questions, they’re probing and they’re letting their prospects sell themselves and kind of make these realizations on their own and push themselves to the finish line. So that’s why people who are typically really outgoing, extroverted, aren’t that good at sales. Now they make a lot of friends, uh, along the process along the way. Um, but they’re not really built to sell. It doesn’t mean that extroverted people can’t sell. I’m just saying the stats show that not a lot of them are in that top tier of salespeople.

Tony (16:29):
That’s interesting because you know, we use behavioral profiles for our hiring. So typically you’re familiar with the DICC, right? Yeah. It was profile. So, um, you know, high I’s are those that are outgoing, like to talk to people. They’re usually good salespeople. So you’re saying that that profile doesn’t always sell better. It’s basically them being able to ask questions, probably solve problems. I imagine that’s probably a big part of it is solving the plus. Cause you know, like I, I’m not so, or you’re an introvert by nature, right? Which is interesting. Cause I am too, but I feel like if I’m putting the right situation with the right product and I believe that I can sell it. Um, but I’m not at high eye. I’m not someone that’s just going to talk, you’re off walk into a room, talk toeverybody. So that’s interesting.

John (17:18):
Yeah, when you look at behavioral profiles, um, the funny thing is, is they do work. I mean, you will find, and that is it’s true about disc. However, if you hired 20 salespeople and you saw who’ve succeeded and who failed miserably, guess what a good portion of those who failed miserably would have the same DISC profile.

Tony (17:37):
What do you think that is? What do you think that DISC profile is?

John (17:41):
Behavioral profiles really won’t predict anything you can say? Well, typically these people with these traits, um, I’m getting closer, right? You can start to narrow down the field, but it doesn’t predict how they’re going to behave in certain situations. Um, you need a psychometric assessment, a psychometric assessment is an assessment that doesn’t really look for behavioral traits, but looks for what will they do? How do they behave in certain situations? And you kind of get…

Tony (18:10):
What you recommended, do you give people. So we give them the DISC and we do a lot of other things

John (18:15):
There’s a couple of them. Um, and now I’m on the spot. So I forget one of them. Uh, I know, um, you probably have a, let me see here.

Tony (18:26):
Are they other behavior profiles? Like the, Kolbe desk

John (18:29):
It’s not Kolbe. Uh, I can’t believe the name’s escaping me. I just took it to see what I was myself. Uh, but you’re looking for, what’s called a psychometric assessment. And there’s one that’s super popular. I forget the name, predictive index. I believe it’s called.

Tony (18:44):
what is it again?

John (18:45):
Predictive index. Switch in the name predictive, right? It predicts what people will actually do. Um, that’s a good one. And there’s a company that has, uh, uh, predictive, psychometric is just built for salespeople called the company’s name is management group and they use that same type of just for sales. So they’ve been

Tony (19:09):
Sorry, John, your audio is cutting in and out just a little bit. What was, that was the name of that last company?

John (19:13):
Management group. OMG. They’ve got a psychometric assessment that is a hundred per sales people. But again, what it measures is behaviors. So will people do if put in a situation. So it’s going to tell you, well, this person is close the way it is. If this person will close it, um, there are too many relationship builders. Like those extroverts will when it’s time to close a deal. Um, and the negotiation part sometimes gets a little uncomfortable going through that part of the process. bail out because they’d rather keep the friend then get through the pricing conversation or in right. Do you have to buy at a discount? They’re going to be extremely uncomfortable, throwing out a discounted offer because they want that relationship. So relationship building is good too much of it buying with some other factors takes their closing a building way down. So it measures I think some of these areas and just tells you, this person came in for you or they won’t. And then it takes in environment. How much management is there to B to B, B to C what are the price points? Is it a one call close, uh, how much supervision is there if they take all those types of things? And if you get pretty dang close at telling you if someone will actually sell in your environment or not, and then you have to, your job is to figure out, okay, I know they can do the job. Do they mess with my culture? Right? Do they mess with my company and our values and those types of things?

Tony (20:41):
Yeah. I think sales, I mean, you’re in the sales industry, so you’re probably gonna agree with me, but I imagine sales is probably one of the most Important parts of a business, obviously marketing and bringing clients. But once you get them in selling them, is, is an art, right? It’s interesting because I’ll go into like, even a coffee shop and I’ll go in, or I say a coffee shop. Uh, I went in the end the other day to a, um, it was kind of a coffee shop, but basically we were at a meal and I was asking, it was the owner I was talking to, I found out, but I was looking at the menu and I was like, do you have a Kombucha or something or something like that? And he just said, no, and that’s all he said. And then, so we ordered our food and I sat down and I looked at the menu and I’m like, There’s like three drinks here that look really freaking good. That are similar to kombucha. If he would have just said, that is an amazing drink right there. I would have spent five bucks on that drink. I mean, it’s so simple. It’s, it’s solving a problem. Right. And I think, I think if you go into an… Have you ever, have you ever done anything like that? We’ve gone into like a, like a restaurant or something like that and just taught them just to ask like one or two extra questions to get people, to buy more products or to feel more comfortable with you. I mean, I feel like that’s such an underserved thing when I, when….

John (21:57):
It is. I mean, yeah. Cause I mean, I’ve done a lot of work with very, um, short, short sales cycle talking five or 10 minutes sales cycle, low dollar products. I can tell marketing companies and stuff like that. So we meet in those situations. We just, we really, it’s gotta be quick, easy. How do I get one layer, two layer down real quick to find out what they really want. So then I can match them, you know, with what we do. Uh, so yeah, I see that all the time. And it was funny. You said it’s an art form. It is an art form. However, the way I look at it is you can get really close to art with process, like, um, uh, paint by numbers, right? Uh, you can get some amazing paint by numbers, types of, of artwork out there, right? Uh, my kids, uh, on their tablets, they have this thing where it’s kind of like paint by numbers, but it’s on their tablets. You know that each, each block has a number. They put the right color in there. You zoom out at the end and it’s this amazing picture. It is art. But with sales you can paint by number and it’s that painting by number, following that process, that makes it feel like an art, even though you can, that’s what I was saying. You can put people without the DNA, you can put non-artists in that role and still get very close to that same result if you give them the right process. Does all that make sense?

Tony (23:14):
Yeah. So it’s kind of like, McDonald’s like, you know, high school kids are not, salespeople are taught to ask the question, would you like to supersize that? And I imagine, and I imagine just that one extra question, I’m sure. I’m sure there’s stats on. It probably adds another dollar or $2 to every single sale by asking that question.

John (23:32):
Worldwide. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a hundred million dollars a year or more right. That one tiny tweak. So it is an art, but it’s also paint by numbers. So you don’t have to be an artist to look like.

Tony (23:43):
Yeah, yeah, no, I totally it’s. It is All about processes. In fact, it’s interesting you say that because, or we talk about this cause my, I put my sister in the acquisitions role, so she’s amazing. She’s been with me 10 years now. She is, uh, she, she came to me as kind of like a property manager, office manager, kind of person. She’s really good with the backend details. But now that I think about a lot of things you’ve talked about are true. And the fact that she’s not a natural born salesperson, she’s an introvert by nature, a hundred percent. She actually hates getting on zoom. That’s how introverted she is. But she is great with getting she’s the best I’ve had at getting properties under contract, because she knows how to get the deal done. She knows how to problem solve. And I’ve given her processes in questions to ask to dive deep into why people are selling.

Tony (24:33):
And then you’ve probably heard this question before, and maybe you train it. When, when I used to meet with sellers a long time ago, it’s been gosh, five or six years since I met with a seller. It was one question that, that allowed me to negotiate the best. And it was if we, if, Oh gosh, what’s the question. Now, now I’m on, I put myself cell phone. If I were to be able to get you cash in seven days or the day of your choice by your property as is without having you do repairs, yada yada, yada, what is the least you’d be willing to take for your property. And then you basically answer like you’ve already, already solved the problems in their head. They want cash on the day of their choice. They want to sell their property as is. They want you to just hit the pain points. I remember the first time I ever asked this question, when I heard it like 10 years ago, I was going to offer them like $50,000 for this house. And it was still going to be a heck of a deal. And I asked that question and instead of me giving that number, I asked that question and they said, give me $30,000 and closed next week. And the house is yours. And I’m like, yeah, we, I mean, it was just, it was just a process. It was one question that I had to ask. So this is good stuff. This is good stuff. So what other, what other stuff do you do when you dive into, um, you know, dive into businesses? What are some other things that you work on to help them to, uh, whether it’s sales or automation, whatever. Just, I don’t know, just give us some good nuggets on.

John (25:59):
Yeah, so I mean, um, my business, we have, uh, focused on processes and that type of thing for the last year or so. And we actually have, um, kind of like a franchise models, not technically a franchise model, but we help others start businesses just like mine, which basically means we supply them with processes. And so we’ve been fine tuning our processes for a long time. So, um, automation is a massive piece of it, um, which was, you know, way we learned to automate our business is just because I am introverted. Um, because I, I believe in leverage, right? What, what small amount of work will get me the most return, um, in order to scale, you know, revenue without scaling work, um, automation is a massive piece of things. What I have learned myself is that tons that I don’t know what percentage, if I were to guess, I’d say 90% of what I used to think could not be automated, can easily and effectively be automated. And it’s not difficult. I’m not a tech wizard or anything like that. So I’m a huge, huge, huge believer in automation and in building systems that kind of run without you. So go ahead.

Tony (27:10):
I was going to say, I totally agree with you. In fact, when I, when I started the automation process, like true automation process, it happened about 10 years ago. I tell this story a lot for people who follow me, but you know, 10 years ago, I like, I hit, I hit like a low point where it was like, I tried so many things. I had to fire my staff. like clear out my whole staff so many times, yeah, my business I thought was, was going in the right direction, being automated. But then it would just took like a few things for all of a sudden, it just kind of crumbling. And so I hired a coach that had an automated real estate investing business, similar to mine. And when I, once I got that vision, that’s when it like, stuck of like what I wanted. So I feel like vision is a big part of it. But then within, you know, the reason I thought of this is that you said you didn’t think some things could be automated. I didn’t think that I could meet with sellers or couldn’t man. You know, I didn’t think I could get out of the project management process. I didn’t think there was so many things that I didn’t think that I could get out of. And once I got the vision and some of the systems within a few years, I was out of all of it for the most part. So is that what you find with entrepreneurs as well? When you go into an organization, do they have that same mindset of this is not going to be automated? There’s no way I can automate this process.

John (28:24):
A lot of people and I’m guilty of it. I think he’s just natural. Think that their secret sauce is their personal involvement. They think that, well, you know, or their team’s personal involvement and they think, and they believe that is our secret sauce. And in some cases it is right. If you’re in an industry where everything’s automated, there’s no personalization, people are yearning for it. Then sometimes that is your, your competitive advantage. Uh, but what we found is that that’s not why people went, for example, um, for, for my ego, I thought, you know, what, what makes our sales training great is me delivering it, right? That was my own ego trip. No one else can do it, blah, blah, blah. But along the way I brought others on who could deliver it just as effectively. Um, we are, like I said, rolling our sales training out to a ton of industries where people are just picking up our processes because we built great processes and systems and training sales people effectively. So, um, you know, even in my own business, I had to say the magic isn’t me or any specific person, it is following the freaking system. Right. So my whole, all I do nowadays is I build systems and press play. Um, never do I get into to any of the weeds because I mean, just so my business, when I started, I worked about 60 hours a week to make 20 to 30,000 a month, which was amazing for me today. I work 60 to 90 minutes a week. Um, and we make anywhere between a hundred and 150,000 a month. So I remember even reading the four hour workweek thinking that was impossible. And then my wife one day was like, John, do you realize you work a one hour work week? And I was like, Oh yeah, yeah, not bad. Right. Um, but that’s all because anytime I find that I’m doing too much work, I’m getting dragged into something too often. The first place my mind goes is what’s wrong with that system? What is happening? How do we redesign and automate? So that does not continue to happen. And we address the root cause we might try a few systems. We find one of them bang, that problem is taken care of. So that’s the way we operate a hundred percent automation.

Tony (30:27):
Yeah. So, so many people think that they have to be in all of the details. I just told you my story of how I felt like I had to be in all the details. But the fact is is that people are better you than most, at most things, you can find someone that is good at you good. As, or better than you are. And a lot of the things in your business, you know, I used to think that I had to be in project management because I had control of that. I knew what repairs needed to be done, but I don’t know if it’s ego for most business owners, but there’s something that it’s hard for business owners to get their hands off the details. I used to write the same thing. I don’t know if it’s control, if it’s anxiety.

John (31:09):
I think some of it is fear. Like they’re going to goof it up. And if they goof up, that could be revenue, reputation, all kinds of things. And you live in that fear and it’s okay to have that fear. But if you put someone in place and they goof it up, that’s okay, that’s a sign that I don’t have the right system built for. If I have the right system, I should put anyone who’s halfway qualified into that system and they’ll crush it. So what happened is people just try to fix the wrong problem. They go, well, I just don’t have the right person. Maybe someday I’ll come across the right person. Who’s as good as me. But until then, I’ll do it. That’s not the problem to fix. It’s not a people problem. It’s a per it’s a, it’s a process problem. So I think that’s the mind shift that people need to make is, Hey, if I am in a situation I’m saying to myself, someone else will do goof it up. That means I better get to work on the system. I place that person in that mitigates all of those risks.

Tony (32:00):
Right. And you know, there’s a saying that says that if you’re able to get someone to do it about 75% as effective as you do, then you should probably give it to them. I think that number could be a little high. It could be if someone does it 50% as good as you do, as long as you’re able to take that time and do two, three, four, five times as much with it, with, you know, putting to another marketing and system in place that could double your sales, it could be hiring that next person freeing up that time to hire that next person that comes in and doubles the sales of your business. Right? So there’s so many little details that business owners work on that keeps them from doing the things that are most important.

John (32:43):
Yeah. I think, um, we’ve got, we’ve had a culture this last five, six, seven years of, um, really talking about grinding and more and more and more work. And I think that’s hurt a lot of businesses because what that mentality says is when you want better results, when you want more, the answer is just doing the exact same stuff, but doing a lot more of it. And there’s obvious drawbacks to that. There’s ceilings, there’s burnout. There’s things. You, you, you should be automating that. You’re not because your answer is not automate or find better systems. The answer is go harder, go more work, wake up at four, go to 10 at night, sacrifice everything. It sets you up for failure. Now hard work is necessary for anything, but if your answer to everything is more work, more work, more work. Then that means the answer is never optimize my systems and automate. And that is, is I think it’s a, it does people a tremendous disservice. I mean, yes, hard work is necessary. It’s part of it. But if that’s your only answer, you’re going to hit a ceiling fast and you’re not going to like whatever you’ve been.

Tony (33:51):
Yup. I totally, I totally agree. So, you know, success is typically measured by money and things. And you know, I used to measure success by the amount of employees I had and all those like numbers. That just be metrics now that, yeah. Now that I think about it, just do not matter to me. It’s yes. I want to make a lot of money, but at the same time, if you don’t have time to enjoy it, why does it matter? In fact, this afternoon, it’s recording this on a Friday. I’m going to take off this afternoon and go spend the day, you know, with the family. And a lot of people do that. In fact, I was playing you play pickle ball by chance.

John (34:25):
I don’t But I want to get into it. I Oh, it looks like something

Tony (34:28):
It’s so Fun, dude. It’s addicting, especially you have the time to do it. So I play, I took off actually yesterday morning, I took off and I wouldn’t have been able to do that normally. And I was playing pickleball and, and the first time I’ve ever had this happen, guy picks up his phone and stops the game and starts like texting somebody. And I’m like, and I do, I was like, I was kind of pissed off a little bit. I’m like, I come to play and you’re over your texting. So I was nice to him. I said, you know, honestly, like it doesn’t really bother me that much. It kind of did, but a lot of people don’t like it when you pick up your phone, like that is kind of a note, a thing you just don’t do here. He goes, well, you know, I just, I was just hard for me to get away from my business. Well then why are you here? Go work then. Right. You know?

John (35:09):
Yeah.

Tony (35:10):
Now, so it’s just interesting that there’s so many, like you said, there’s so many people that have this mentality that they can’t step away from their business. They can’t. And I, you know, I used to be one of those people too. And every once in a while I get back into that where, you know, my wife wants to do something. I’m like, no, I’ve got to do this. But at the same time, I know that I do it because I love it not necessarily because I have to. Right. Yeah. So, go ahead.

John (35:35):
Yeah, no, I’m the same way. I think, I think when you put that hard work in and we all have them, I have those times where I’ve gone 12 hours, but it’s building the system, right. It’s not just doing these repetitive tasks over and over. It it’s listen. I’ve got a new system I need to build. So I’m diving into it because once it’s done, I step away and it’s going to relieve my, relieve me from having to do these things or others for years to come. So I, yeah.

Tony (36:00):
So let me ask you this. So you, so you, you don’t work a lot. Right. But you’ve got a lot, you’ve got a lot going on. I mean, you’ve got training courses, you’ve got programs, you’ve got clients, you’ve got all these things. So what is the key to making sure that when you’re, cause I think this is a lot of people’s disconnect and this can be mine sometimes too. And when I’m not working, I don’t know what’s going on in my business. Right. And it used to, like, I used to obsess over it now I just, every once in a while think about it. So when I take off this afternoon, I may go, Oh, I wonder what happened with this. And it just kind of goes by, But I used to just obsess over it. I couldn’t even take vacations cause I’d be thinking about it. So what are the things that you do to help you ensure that things are being done and that you have a good grasp on it, even though you’re not there that often.

John (36:51):
Yeah. You just have to look at your, your, uh, you know, your, the common term is key performance indicators. And those will tell you if there’s a problem or not, or if they’re headed in the right direction. And if they’re not, again, I just looked back at the systems. Um, you know, at the end of the week, if I, you know, if I look at, uh, for example, okay, these many people put in an application to work with one of our companies, but only this many people actually talk to someone from our company. To me, that’s a trigger of, okay, there’s something wrong with the system from between when they put in an application and when they talk to somebody, so then I look, well, what’s the messaging going out? Where are we losing them? How do we fix that system? And then I’ll, we’ll try something. There’s no magic to it. I don’t, I can’t predict, but we’ll try to think of what, well, maybe this is too harsh language. We’ll try something. And next week I’ll look at it and see they’re going up or down and we’ll adjust accordingly. And that’s just it, I mean that, that’s it. We just focus on the systems a hundred percent, make that tweak, see what the data tells us and then go with it. Um, so I mean, that’s really it. I think if you get too much into the details and micromanage everything, you lose yourself. And the funny thing is the lazier you are at. I don’t really like using that term, but I’m going to use it. The lazier, you are the faster your business scales. I can’t remember if it was jobs or if it was bill Gates or some something, someone. But I remember a quote I heard a long time ago and it was, Hey, I’m going to look to hire a really lazy person because they’re going to find the best ways to do things with the least amount of effort possible. And if you translate that, it means they’re going to put systems in place that are highly effective instead of grinding away. And I can’t remember who it was, but that’s the way I live. And the longer it was hard to adjust to because I was used to grinding, but the longer I adjust to it, I just get a gut feeling now where it’s, Hey, I’m getting pulled too much into this. This is silly. I don’t like this feeling. That’s my sign that throw a system in place, redo a system. Something is not right with the business. If I’m having to get in this much, we have to fix it, right. Sometimes that is putting a person in place. not, I mean our company, um, we now have myself, my wife, my wife works very little. Um, and then I’ve got, uh, an assistant and a partner who is helping me launch one other business. And that that’s it. We all work very little, but we work on the right things. And I think it is a mindset thing. People are not working on the right things. If you do laziness. Well, the ironic thing is the laziness is a thing that will help your business grow because you’re focused on the things that will help the business grow. And that’s it.

Tony (39:23):
Right? It’s Parkinson’s all right. It’s going to fit into the time that you, right. So if you work, if you know, you’re going to work 10 hours a week, you’re going to figure out how to get 40 to 50 to 60 hours worth of productivity in that time. Right? Yeah. So it’s kind of like going on vacation, right? When you go on vacation the day before you go on vacation, you get two, three, four, sometimes even five days of work done because you figure out how to delegate better, automate, better, get rid of the tap. You don’t have to do and get the most important stuff done before you leave.

John (39:53):
Yeah. I mean, I remember when I started all this, I made myself do some, a couple of exercises to put myself in that position. For one was, I told myself, okay, John, if you’ve got an hour, a day to work, how the heck are you going to do it and feed your family and do everything. So I would only let myself, and it was really difficult, but I only let myself work an hour a day. Guess what? We figured out, the things I, how am I going to work an hour today, but solve these 14 problems and figure it out. Cause I forced myself to, and then last year I ran another exercise with myself and I said, okay, John, if for some reason you were in an accident, you passed away, you were gone. How is this business or these businesses going to continue to run and provide for your family? So then I thought, okay, shoot. We got to take this next level. How does everything run without me? So that’s been this year’s focus is how do I completely remove myself from the business? Um, if I were to die, how does my business provide for my family for the next 20, 30, 40 years? And I think you have to force yourself into that mindset and shut that amount of time you can work and it forces you to look at things differently and make different decisions.

Tony:
I liked that. The one what’d you call that a one hour exercise. If you had one hour to..

John:
I had no name for it, but I just, I forced myself into it and anyone can do it. Right? There’s all kinds of people who say, I don’t have time to do this or have time to start a business or, but Hey, I don’t care who you are. If I were to ask you, especially people with families or hobbies or things that they’re really passionate about. And I were to say, listen, if something happened to this world, maybe an extension of this Coronavirus thing, if you could, if you could only get internet access or work an hour a day, would you find a way to feed your family? There’s not a soul on earth who would go, no. If I had an hour, a day, we would throw up our hands, all starts death and I’d watch my family die. They’ll go, well, you bet your ass. I would find a way to make this work. I don’t care what I have to do. There are solutions. I’d find a way to feed my family. Nobody thinks like that though. They have these, they don’t put those restrictions on themselves. So like you said, they just kind of fill up their time, their days with things they don’t need to do. But I guarantee you, even if it was just an hour a week, and I said to somebody, you have one hour a week to support your family, to feed your kids and to get the goods and services you need to survive. Everybody would find a way to make that hour work. Problem is no one’s ever put themselves in that situation. So they just never go through the mental gymnastics to figure it out.

Tony:
I love it. I love it, man. We could probably talk the rest of the day about this stuff. I think we’re both very passionate about automation and work growing businesses by working less and all that, but I’m going to wrap it up, but I got probably one or two more questions for you. Question of everybody. So if you had $10,000 or if someone else and $10,000 in their hand and you had to either spend it yourself or advise someone on where to spend that $10,000, what would you advise them to spend it on? Or what would you spend it on yourself to get the most, to get the most out of that money?

John:
Yeah. I would spend it on whatever would get me in front of people. So I think, uh, marketing, I guess, is what you’d say. Um, cause that’s going to drive everything to start a business or to start something. Um, if I’ve got just a random idea and now I have $10,000, I just want to get that idea out to as many people as possible. Let’s say I don’t even mean we actually do this all the time. This is the way we spin up new products and services and businesses. We don’t have any products or services, but we have an idea. So what we do is we get that idea out to as many people as possible and say, here’s what we’re doing. Here’s why we think it’s important. And guess what? If we have a huge audience, then a few people say, no, it’s not built yet, but I want to be a part of this. How much is it? And guess what? Then more money comes into the system. And then we develop and deliver the product at the same time. So it all comes from that attention from having people to talk to. So we just did this, we just launched a new business. We went, ah, no product is developed yet, but we went from zero to $30,000 in revenue in 48 hours. And now we have all the money. Uh, we got 30,000 to expand that message and to complete the build out of the business. So all very top of funnel type stuff, marketing stuff is where I would focus. Because if you get your message out to enough people, some will raise their hand and say, I am in. And then you’re forced to develop and finish out the rest of your business plan.

Tony:
Good stuff, good stuff. Any, uh, any last words you have for those that are listening, any kind of words of wisdom or pieces, other pieces of advice that you want to get that we haven’t already talked about.

John:
Yeah. Uh, Richard Branson’s advice that has guided me for the last six or seven years. Um, he’s got a book that’s called screw it. Let’s do it. And basically it talks about whenever you’re 50, 60% of the way towards an idea. There’s always this time where you’re not sure, but there comes a time to make a decision and his decision is always Screw it. Let’s do it. And I think that is the decision. That’s the philosophy of anyone who does, and I’m not just talking about business, but anyone who accomplishes anything, uh, anyone who is satisfied with their life in general are people who can get to a certain point you go, I know there’s no guarantees, which screw it. Let’s do it. This is important. Uh, so I encourage everyone to read that book. That’s kind of been my guiding philosophy because it gets hard to take that leap over and over and over again when there is no certainty, but I think that is kind of the one philosophy people have, who end up just happy with the life that they’ve lived.

Tony:
So let me expand on that a little bit. So is it kind of like the ready fire aim, where it’s like, you, you have a good gut feel, you know, that you need to do something and rather than figuring out all the details on how to do it and get analysis paralysis, you just jump in and do it.

John:
You do it, you just do it and you’ll figure it out. It forces you to figure it out. Um, because I’ve seen the opposite. I’ve seen people who planned for years, like an insane business model and everything is dialed in and then they launch it and it doesn’t go anywhere. And all of that was wasted. But if they went halfway launched it, they would have figured it out or quickly identified the problems in their business plan and addressed them. No business plan is perfect. Every business continues to pivot and change. And if it doesn’t, it dies. So do it like the action is, and I think we’re both in masterminds, right? But the one common denominator I have found with quote unquote, successful people, um, you know, now being around hundreds and hundreds of people who are, you know, in the eyes of many very successful, that’s the only thing that unites them. Some people are smarter. Some people are honestly not that smart, but they take action. Um, some people have more resources. Some people have less, there is no common denominator that unites these groups of successful people. Except the one thing is that they’re all action takers and that’s all you need to make it anywhere is to take action.

Tony:
Yup. Yup. Well, good stuff, man. Like I said, we could talk for days about this, but I appreciate your time. I know what you do. I’m glad that we could finally connect. That’s what I love about, you know, doing this. I get to connect with people that I normally wouldn’t have for. I mean, we probably would have connected sometime down the road, but it was good to catch up and get some good nuggets and uh, you know, get some, get some good stuff to our audience. So appreciate your time. I look forward to catching up with you again and uh, wish you the best and uh, good luck on that new business.

John:
Thank you. See ya.

Tony:
All right. Talk soon. Bye.

 

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