This episode features an engaging conversation between host RJ Parrish and guest Chris Drouin, a seasoned sales performance coach.

Chris shares his entrepreneurial journey, which began out of necessity during the economic downturn of 2008-2009. Faced with a sudden job loss at a Fortune 100 company, Chris was thrust into the world of entrepreneurship, navigating the distressed real estate market to support his family.

This experience laid the foundation for his belief in self-reliance and the importance of mindset, which he imparts to listeners as a critical component of business success.

Chris emphasizes the significance of maintaining a positive attitude and developing a mindset focused on resilience and adaptability.

He advocates for the practice of journaling to track attitudes, behaviors, and goals (a method he refers to as "bagels journaling"), which helps him stay on track and maintain focus.

The discussion also touches on the importance of separating one's identity from the roles they play in life to avoid burnout and maintain a healthy work-life balance. Chris's insights on the necessity of self-confidence, adaptability, and continuous learning provide valuable lessons for entrepreneurs looking to thrive in challenging times.

Takeaways:

• Entrepreneurship often starts with unexpected circumstances, requiring quick adaptation and problem-solving skills.
• Separating your roles from your identity helps maintain a positive mindset in business and life.
• Finding a unique market need and providing a solution is key to business success.
• Journaling about attitudes, behaviors, and goals can significantly boost personal and professional growth.
• Networking and seeking mentorship are crucial steps for entrepreneurs to gain insights and guidance.
• Sandler Sales Training emphasizes understanding customer pain points to create meaningful sales relationships.

Connect with Chris: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisdrouinsolutions/

If you're a solopreneur or small business owner who wants to achieve business success without sacrificing your relationships, well being, or happiness, you are in the right place.

This is the entrepreneur Breakthrough Lounge podcast where your host, certified business coach and media strategist RJ Parrish, and successful guest entrepreneurs share their experiences and insights to help you succeed without making the same mistakes they did.

Please enjoy the show.

All right, Chris, thank you for joining me today.

At what point in your life did you first become an entrepreneur, and what were the circumstances around that decision?

Well, first of all, thanks for having me and letting me rip the band aid off.

That old memory that I've stored away for so long.

It was bad.

I was doing very well in sales.

I was with a major, major Fortune 100 company everyone's heard of.

I had just never forgotten this.

It was a Thursday towards the end of February, and my boss came to me and said, chris, you've just hit quota for the quarter, and February is still going on.

Like, march break records.

March all you, man.

And Friday morning, I came in, and he came to me with tears in his eyes and said, please grab your badge and your laptop and come with me.

And I went, what?

Like, yeah, I celebrated the night before, but I'm thinking, bring your badge in.

Your laptop is not.

Here's your new corner office and our promotion.

It turns out the company based in San Francisco, I made a decision to cut a lot of people making too much money.

I was the first one of the day to be let go.

Everyone was cutting everything.

So I didn't really have a choice.

With a house, a mortgage, two car payments, a baby, a wife, and another baby on the way to just hop on the dole and take some unemployment and hope for the economy to turn around.

I had to go out and hustle, and I had to go out and find something to put some money in the bank.

At that point, I turned it into distressed real estate market because all those mortgages that were going into foreclosure, somebody had to do something with those properties.

And I found a way to work with the bankruptcy trustees and the realtors and the homeowners so that everyone can get a little piece of the pie as they were selling these at sheriff's sale and was able to carry through the next couple years not getting rich, but making ends meet and figuring out, okay, no one's gonna make me punch a clock.

No one's gonna ask me to fill out my reports, or how many calls did I make today or how many meetings.

There was no sales manager cracking the whip on me for my quota and my cookbook and my behaviors.

It was, feed your family, Chris, and figured it out.

Yeah.

You had a bit of a walk the plank back up against the wall, the house is on fire, and something must happen, sort of circumstances.

At that point, were you thinking that it was just going to kind of carry you through for a couple of years, you'd kind of figure things out, and then you'd go back to something more stable?

Yeah.

So, unfortunately, the housing market got better, which meant the opportunities that I was finding to make money on weren't there.

The housing market was coming back.

Good for the economy, good for families not losing their homes, bad for those of us that were trying to make a living moving those properties.

And so I eventually ended up taking a job in nonprofit and fundraising and did very well there and quickly realized that having a boss isn't exactly a very good thing for me.

I tend to be a little too opinionated, a little too brash.

I don't have a very good filter if I disagree with things and quickly double the dollars, double the number of donors coming into the nonprofit, wasn't making the board members happy, wasn't making the president happy, and quickly saw my way out of there.

I was there for three and a half years, and we did phenomenal results.

I just started to realize that whether I'm getting good results and they just decided to cut costs, I'm out of here.

Or whether I'm getting good results and they're not happy with me personally, I'm out of here.

Why am I putting my life, my faith, my kids, their well being in the hands of somebody else that we don't like?

You get out, or you're making too much money, get out.

And just decided, at this point, it's on me.

I'm gonna go with what makes me happy and what makes me successful.

Yeah, at what point?

The first time that you had to go out on your own, it was.

There was no options.

You had to make something happen.

And then following that, it started to become the choice of you had agency in your life, what development within you or skills you learned, like, what made you feel like now the ball was in your core, like, I can do this the way that I choose.

Well, I think the number one thing wasn't necessarily a skill set.

It was the self confidence that I'll figure it out.

Like, my wife and I joke, if I'm a cat.

I've used up eight of those lives, man.

Like, if you get nine lives, I've used up all eight of them on risks and taking chances.

But faith and self confidence that I'm going to make it work, and the ability to have a little bit of, you know, as Dan Campbell in the Detroit Lions say, some grit to go out there and just, I'll figure it out.

If I had stayed in corporate, might I be more financially ahead of where I am now?

Yeah.

But I really like the fact that when it's on the line, it's on me.

I don't care if that sounds a little bit arrogant.

I'm an eat what I kill sales guy, and I like them giving me the ball saying, figure it out.

And in this case, it's my family that's giving me the ball and said, you got to provide for us.

You've got college to pay for, three kids.

You've got two weddings to pay for.

Your oldest daughter is going to start driving next year, and there's going to be a third card payment.

Giddy up, man.

It's like, let's go.

But I figured it out, and as you're dealing with distressed real estate and you're watching all these other people walk away from their homes and doing the short sale and declaring bankruptcy, we didn't do any of that.

We never missed a car payment.

We never missed a mortgage payment.

We never had to dip into savings, really.

We just made it work.

So it gave me the confidence that I can figure this out.

There's a will, there's a way.

I think that's a core behavior trait that once you.

I don't know if it's nature, nurture, learned behavior, but when you realize that if you're forced to jump into hot coals, once you can get through it, you learn that it doesn't kill you.

You can go out and you have options to make money, to get by, to pay the bills.

And once you realize that if you've done it once, the next time something happens or doesn't go your way, or the economy tanks or there's some crisis, the panic goes down, the stress might still go up, it's still not fun, but it creates this sort of.

You've handled it before, and the confidence in yourself is suddenly there where, like, I know how to handle this.

I'll get through it, and I think part of it, too.

What is that?

There was no train whistle.

It wasn't like I was looking over my shoulder going, uh oh, this is coming.

React.

And so in both cases, it was, okay, it happened, and now react.

And if you.

I'm a high, impulsive person, and I think if I would have tried to come up with a plan on how to be an entrepreneur, I would have failed miserably.

I would have had 45 uncompleted rough drafts of what I was going to do next.

And in this case, the starter's pistol went off, and I had to get in the blocks and go, I'd love.

For you to actually expand on what you just said of, like, if you had tried to make the plan to be an entrepreneur.

So I think there's an interesting phenomenon of there are those who want to get into business because they long for that.

The control, the, you know, I want to be my own boss.

There's a lot of that out there.

But then they step in and it's just crash and burn.

Nobody told them what to actually expect, what it was actually going to be like.

And then they have to usually backslide to taking another job or, you know, or they kind of, they're just successful enough to not have to close, but they never really, like, do well.

I think there's a lot of that where they just didn't know.

They tried to make a plan, and it didn't map to what they expected.

And now they're just kind of trapped.

They've bought themselves a job.

They can't escape.

So when you say, if you try to make a plan to transition to entrepreneurship, what do you think that is?

I've been seeing this a lot more with peers, not spring chickens anymore, been doing the corporate grind for the last 25, 30 years, and now are going into consulting or are going to get out of what they're doing and try to be more third party consultants, fractional kind of people.

A lot of it is, I think they have a knowledge, they have a skill, but they don't understand what they're going to solve for, for somebody.

They pitch all the reasons why you should hire me, but they don't really have an understanding of why a client might be struggling with somebody and need you.

It's like the person that's trying to sell you all the features and benefits of why their computer is the best one or their technology or their software or their car, and they want to talk about experience and knowledge and degrees and awards and resumes and at the end of the day, what really problems can you solve for the clients?

Can you solve a problem that I have?

Because if there's not a pain that I have that you're a solution for, it doesn't matter the amount of experience and degrees you have, unless it's actually something that's going to help me run my business.

So I think too often people, especially in the entrepreneurial realm, get excited about their resume.

They get excited about what they think people want to hear rather than actually understanding what the market might really need from a solutions perspective.

I think you're dead on.

I think there's a big tendency, especially when someone is good at something, they've got a lot of experience at something to say, well, I'm just going to go sell that.

People will buy it because I'm good at what I do.

I mean, maybe, but unless you know how to position it for something that what they're going through, what the problem is, what the pain someone else is feeling, then there's just not really a reason for them to buy it from you.

You know, I saw this a lot with one of my ventures was we had a couple partners and we were doing websites, graphic design, SEO, just your typical digital marketing, shop locally and oh my God, the number of times where we would try to sell based on fancy buzzwords.

You know, this will be an HTML five and we'll be on WordPress six point.

You'll have Failo in all these buzzwords that we thought was a reasonable, convincing way of telling people that we were knowledgeable, we were experienced, we were technical, we were professional, and all the clients really wanted to know is, can we take orders online from my restaurant?

Because we can't do that right now.

Can you fix my Google business listing?

Because right now I don't know who's in charge of it.

Like sell them solutions, don't sell them buzzwords.

And I think that's one thing that we see with the entrepreneurs is they're so focused on why you should hire me rather than what I can actually do to help you.

And so no matter how good of a business plan you have, or a cv or a resume, unless you have a solution for a problem in the market, what are we doing here?

100%?

So when this is all, I mean, this is foundational sales knowledge and you're, well, you have a background in sales for the last 20 years, but today isn't really a time that we're taking to dig into sales tactics, sales techniques.

If you want that stuff, which I highly recommend you learn.

Get foundational knowledge in sales techniques to identify pain, to uncover problems, to position your product as a solution to that problem if and when they're able and willing to buy.

You can learn all of that stuff by going through the Sandler sales system, which is what Chris teaches to give you some context.

I went through some of Sandler's training to increase my own knowledge around sales and my own understanding.

And in that time, Chris was one of the trainers that was presenting that I was able to work with in one of the sessions.

One of the things that really stuck out to me was not necessarily the tactics or the techniques, but your thoughts around mindset and how it feeds into sales, because you can have all of the tactics, all of the tips and tricks, and all the latest and greatest, but if you don't have your thought process right, it doesn't really matter.

Yeah.

So, RJ, I guess I'll just say this is kind of disclaimer.

I'm a Sandler trainer.

You know, I'm.

Unless I sell training, I don't get paid.

And then I use Sandler to sell Sandler, and then I train Sandler.

And so the things that I'm going to talk about next, I am a big fan.

In the Sandler network, we talk about doing your R and D.

It stands for ripoff and duplicate, not research and development.

If somebody else in the network has found a really good coaching point, really good teaching point that resonates with you or your clients, share it.

Like, you know, we're not competing against each other.

We have this attitude of abundance.

I mention that because I don't have the footnotes to know specifically who came up with some of these concepts or theories.

At times.

I don't want to make it sound like this is my thesis or my dissertation, because these are not Chris Drew and original thoughts, but they're what we use in the Sandler network to talk about the fact that if you look at sales, in the traditional sales coaching, sales training that most people get, it's very heavily based on technique.

It's teaching you tactics, it's teaching you methods.

It's the old books of all the old greats that I read when I was coming from the business, whether it was Zig Ziglar or Jeffrey Gittamer or Tom Hopkins, there was a lot of technique in there.

The thing that really separated Sandler from all of that, for me, I took it as a client 13 years ago, before I started doing this as a trainer.

In the last five years, it was a life changing experience.

For me, because I was already an entrepreneur once, and the fact that it talked more about behaviors and attitudes than technique was what I really needed at the time.

Like, I'm very good at being an outgoing, gregarious, call anybody fearless salesperson.

My technique was very good, but I didn't always have the right attitude towards I was doing.

And the reason why attitude is such an important, important thought around this is because, you know, the old Henry Ford saying about, you know, whether you think you can or you can't, you're right.

You know, it was one of those things around attitude that really.

Yeah, sometimes fake it till you make it, but sometimes if you're going to have people tell you no again and again and again, maybe now you start having that self doubt.

Maybe now you're doubting your technique.

And so the attitude portion of having the right mindset really comes down to a theory that we call your identity versus your role.

In shorthand, we call it the IR theory in class in the past.

But just to kind of do this as an exercise for people, if you think about the roles that you have in life or the hats that you wear, RJ, will you play along with me as I kind of put you on the hot seat?

Happy to.

So think about the roles you have.

Correct.

So you are a son.

That is one of your roles.

You didn't ask for the role.

It was given to you.

I do.

Do you have older siblings or younger siblings?

Older.

Okay, so now you're a little brother.

So whether or not you chose to be a son or a brother, now you're put into this box of the little brother.

And this happens to us throughout life, whether we want to or not.

And those.

Those roles can be family.

I'm an uncle, I'm a nephew, I'm a cousin.

They happen as you start to get into school, you're a student, you're a friend, you're a best friend, you're a good student, you're a class clown.

You start getting these roles.

So growing up, I was a lacrosse player, then I was a defenseman, and then I was a close defenseman, and then I was a captain.

So wearing those hats, I even start getting more and more specialized.

God forbid I now have to talk about all the hats that I wear as a father, because with my three kids in a given day, I am chauffeur, disciplinarian, playmate, chef, judge, jury, and executioner when it comes to them fighting with each, like, I have so many hats I have to wear.

Then once you're an entrepreneur, think about all the hats you have to wear.

You're the CEO.

You might also be HR, you might also be the COO and the CFO, and business development and operations, and the delivery guy, and accounts payable, and all the hats and rolls that we can wear as just RJ and Chris.

Before we even think about work, let alone as an entrepreneur, it can get pretty overwhelming.

And a lot of the times we have trouble taking off the one hat and going into the other hat or mode.

And so this identity versus the role theory really wants to focus on a couple of things, and that's making sure that we can separate our roles that we're doing and our value and our performance in those roles away from our identity.

And so the exercise is to look at your identity on a scale of one to ten, and that's really where your self esteem is.

That's really where your positive outlook of your life is.

Because I'll tell you this, there's days where I feel like an absolute, I'm not going to say failure, poor father, right?

I am not always the best at being a dad.

And it's okay, because some days, if I have a bad day as a dad, I still can't just forget about that and not do my job and go in the office and make sales calls and try to sell.

And likewise other days, say I make a big sale, crush it, huge commission, biggest deal of my life.

I remember that when that happened, because my kids had something at school that night.

And you know what I really wanted to do after winning that huge ginormous commission?

I wanted to go celebrate with the boys.

I wanted to take my wife out to dinner.

I wanted to go get drunk.

But I have to let one role have its place in my life, and my other role have another place in my life and not let it affect my identity in a good way or a bad way.

Just like the days when I have a bad day in sales and I get told no by everybody.

That doesn't mean that my role as a salesperson having a bad day means I get to come home and kick the dog, or yell at the kids, or be a jerk to my wife, or climb into a bottle of Jack Daniels and hide in the basement.

Like, your roles are your roles and we have to take each one of them seriously.

But your identity has to be more important than the individual roles.

Enhance your way and being able to compartmentalize them so that whether you have a good day or a bad day at work, you still have to go home and be a good husband and father.

Whether you have a good day or a bad day at home, you still have to go in the office and make your calls and do your work.

Now, I know sometimes we need time for mental health and to grieve or to celebrate everything else, but it's the people that really struggle separating their roles that we have found have the biggest challenges in maintaining a consistent, positive attitude on the phone, in front of the client, in the office, with their employees, with their wife, with their kids, with their husband, with their partner, with whatever.

No, that is super fair.

And I think there's if you haven't spent just enough time, like getting used to separating entrepreneurship, like when you are now the chief everything officer, when you are, you know, you, especially if you work from home and you work is now on your mind 24/7 because it is now up to you to create everything.

You will not get a paycheck if you don't go make something happen.

If you get idle or you get lazy or you just decide to procrastinate, you can put yourself in a really tough situation.

And it tends to create this sort of always on grindental pressure.

Most people experience that at some point when they step into being an owner.

But having this sort of separation of, yeah, I'm all of these different things, but realizing just that we are different people for different aspects of our lives.

And I think there are a lot of different ways that you can approach separating those.

I personally like, even if you work within your home, doing something to create your work environment to be different from where you do all your other stuff can be helpful.

Whether you might not have a separate room, but do something where it is a different experience when you're at work versus when you're just playing with your kids.

But do what you can to separate out the different aspects of your life and realize that you have different responsibilities for each.

You know, there's a really good book of atomic habits by James Clear.

He made a point to say, have a place for certain activities.

So, like, I have a reading chair in the house.

I don't sit in that chair with my phone.

Like that chair.

If I'm going to sit down, I'm going to sit down and read.

I try not to use this home office desk as a place to get caught up in the nonsense of online news and politics and sports.

Like, this is my workplace.

And if I go out there, leave the laptop in here, and I'll try to do that with my kids, too.

How we have the additional computer in here and this is the office.

This is where we do our work.

And if daddy's in the office, daddy's working.

He's not hiding from you guys.

He's working.

Clear.

Had a really good point about trying to make specific locations for specific activities or specific times for specific activities so that you find some consistency in it.

And don't we have that mixture of work life balance that gets a little too askew?

Yeah, we're frozen.

No, all good.

Yeah, I've had it on my end, too.

Just so I don't catch you off guard, I'm actually going to throw on low data mode.

So it's going to turn our feed off so we won't be able to see each other, but it's still recording that.

Cool.

Okay.

All good to hear me.

Okay.

All right.

I can hear you.

Hello?

Yes, I think I froze.

Whenever I was explaining what I was about to do, I just threw on low data mode.

So there seems to be a little bit of a lag.

It's just going to have our feed off, but it's still recording in the background.

So then hopefully we'll be able to hear each other a little bit more clearly.

But, yeah.

So looking at these different aspects of identity, these different roles that we play, how does that feed in to behavior?

How does that tie into the grand scheme of when we're trying to accomplish something and we need to change our behavior or attitudes, how do all of these different pieces fit together?

Yeah.

So one thing that I'm a firm believer in, that I'm getting back to is AB journaling or bagels journaling.

Have you heard either concept of ab journaling or bagels journaling?

I'm loosely familiar, but break it down for me.

So Ab journaling is attitudes and behaviors.

And a good buddy of mine in the network came up with what he calls Bagels journaling, which is two G's, bagles.

And it's the concept of, on a daily basis, journaling about your behaviors.

Meaning, what are you going to accomplish today?

In some cases, it might be I'm going to make 20 calls, I'm going to eat right, going to get to sleep on time, I'm going to be sober, I'm going to work out.

I'm like, what behaviors are you setting as your goals?

The a stands for attitudes.

And the attitudes look, make fun of me for whatever you want.

But when I write down my attitudes, they're kind of like those self motivating, you know, slogans.

I'm a prospecting machine.

I know too many of the right.

People to fail.

I am well known in Oakland county, and people want to work with me.

Like, just those self mantra attitudes.

Are they corny?

Yep.

Are they a little bit embarrassing to say out loud?

Yep.

But when you write them down every morning, you start to believe in them.

You start to believe in that.

Your attitude is what you can control.

As he goes through bagels journaling, the first G stands for goals.

And I'm a big fan of this stat, RJ, and I don't remember if I shared this with you, but there was a study done at the University of California, Berkeley, in the seventies about people, people that set goals and who would accomplish them versus who wouldn't accomplish them.

It was so beautifully tiered in the fact that if they asked people to set goals, some people hit them about 30%.

The biggest jump they saw was that if they were written down, they accomplished them at a greater rate.

The next step up was not only did they write them down, but did they have the courage to share them with somebody.

And the people that accomplished the most goals of the ones that they set out, they wrote them down, they shared them with somebody, and then they had an accountability partner to hold them accountable to their goals.

As you do this kind of bagels journaling, that this g is writing down your goals, and this is long term goals, you know, short term goals, and even daily goals.

So, for example, I have a revenue goal.

I know how many calls I need to make per day to hit my revenue goal.

So as I do that, I've kind of started my day with writing down my behaviors, writing down my attitudes, writing down my goals, and then I start my day.

At the end of the day, I come back and I do a second journal entry.

And these can be five minutes.

These can be ten minutes.

You can be as much as you want.

It's free form.

It's for your eyes only.

But at the end of the day, before my head hits the pillow, I write down my second g, which is gratitude.

What am I thankful for?

And in some cases, it's for the Sandler network.

In some cases, it's my clients.

Most days, it starts with Annemarie, Harper, Gannon, and Delaney, who are my family.

But it just kind of gives you something before your head hits the fellow to be thankful for.

The Alan Bagel stands for lessons learned.

And in some cases, it might be something professional, it might be something emotional, it might be faith, it might be trivia, it might be whatever it might be about a client.

But just a recap of something you remember and then the.

The e stands for evaluate.

So, my.

My buddy David's a pilot, and I always ask him about how he keeps track of all those dials on his dashboard when he's flying, like big commercial, you know, passenger jets.

He goes, really?

There's only about four you need to keep track of.

And he ran through them, altimeter and airspeed and, you know, but the other ones are just there if something goes wrong.

So when I do my evaluate, I evaluate four things.

How did I do on revenue today?

Did I make enough phone calls that I have enough meetings?

Did I meet my sales goals?

Did I watch my diet?

Did I get some exercise?

Did I get enough sleep?

Did I watch the booze?

I look at my family, was I present?

Was I a father?

Was I a husband?

Was I good as Chris, the dad or daddy?

Not just Chris the sales guy.

And then I look at a couple other things that are for me, which, love you, RJ, but I'm not going to share everything in my journal with everybody.

But I just kind of sit down and evaluate, you know, how did I do today?

Maybe I need to be a better father tomorrow.

Maybe I need to focus more on revenue, and maybe I need to focus more on diet tomorrow.

It gives me a chance before I go to bed to really take, you know, stock of how the day went.

And then the last Aspen bagels is successes.

What's something good for the day?

Tonight, I'm taking my son to his Boy Scout meeting, and I'm going to sit in on a board of review for one of his buddies.

If this kid passes and he's another step closer to Eagle Scout, and I could be a part of his life, that's a success for me.

I finished a podcast with my buddy RJ.

Just going to sleep with some positives on your brain and some gratitude is definitely a better way to fall asleep than bringing all my thoughts and concerns and fears about revenue, taxes, clients, budgets, schedules, and everything else.

It's a much easier way to fall asleep at the end of the night, and it's a much easier way to start your day if you're gonna start it off, reminding yourself of your behaviors, your attitudes, and your goals, and what you're trying to accomplish at a time.

Just that ab journaling, attitude and behavior.

Journaling, I think, goes a really long way for successful people, and I'm not a successful person in my mind yet, but I'm getting there.

Yeah, 100%.

I think there's something really smart in that approach of when you're writing down your attitudes that you are choosing to have for the day.

And this isn't to say that things don't come up, that you can write that you are a success magnet, or that you make money easily, but you can prime yourself to look for positivity, journal it into reality sort of stuff.

But there is a psychological principle called priming, for if you choose what to look for, you are that much more likely to notice it.

This happens most often when you buy a new car.

You buy a Ford Explorer, and then suddenly you see Ford explorers everywhere in the same color you have.

You see them in parking lots, you see them on the highway, you see them in friends driveways, you see them everywhere.

The same happens when you choose what to look for in your day.

If you're choosing to look for opportunity and abundance and connection, then that's what you're more likely to find.

And it's not that it will happen that way all the time, but it gets you that much more ready for when something does come into your life and you're choosing to look for it, you can actually do something about it.

So there's an old ism from the Dan Gilbert Empire about what you focus on, you find.

So if you're focused on the worst and the doom and gloom, you're going to find the worst in the doom and gloom.

If you focus on the positive and you focus on the opportunity, you're going to notice the opportunity more.

Go back to what was it?

Probably 15 years ago, 20 years ago, the book, the Secret came out and it was on Oprah and it was on everywhere else.

Look, I don't think there's some mystical power in the universe that if I start thinking about a free Corvette, I'm going to get a free Corvette tomorrow.

But I do think there is something about if you have more positive thoughts and you focus on things that are more positive and the right attitudes behind things, you will be in the momentum of that as well.

Yes, somewhere around here I still have a copy of the book, the secret, I'm sure, because it was gifted to me.

I think I've got a copy of it somewhere, too.

So for someone who's in the we can talk manifestation and attitudes and behavior, let's talk something really tangible, maybe even take it to a point where you applied some of this stuff in your life.

So if you're open to sharing this, where like, what was the year?

Or what was the best year that you've had thus far, what did you make in the year?

And then let's contrast that with the worst year you had sharing those two ballpark.

It was rough back then, and, you know, I'm sure I could go through some stacks of files in the basement and find you a specific number for what my income was last year, but it was just one, you know, one payday ahead of, you know, stuff going bad.

And then last year was my best year ever.

And it's because I'm in an opportunity in a business where I help people change their lives and I help people sell more and make more money, and we have a tremendous system that we use, and I'm just a cog in the wheel, but I'm an entrepreneur as I do it, so I get to use some pretty cool stuff to do it.

Is that the question you were asking, or were you asking me to actually pull out my tax returns and show you what I made?

If you know what, your adjusted gross for those two separate time periods?

The reason I ask this is to kind of contrast of what changed between those two areas, those two versions of yourself, in terms of attitudes, behaviors, and things we've been talking about.

Even without getting into the specifics of what those numbers were.

I'll say five x paint a range.

Five X was, was easy where it went from barely making ends meet to now actually having some success in a lot less stress when it comes to finances for my family.

And the biggest change was, I think, finding a product and a service that I know is very needed in the market.

It's a very unique solution.

Most people don't have a line item in the budget that says, here's what we're gonna pay for sales, coaching, but those that do see a return on it, and we get a lot of referrals for it.

So it's definitely something.

I think that in the long run, is going to continue to have success.

No matter what's coming with AI, no matter what's coming with changes in the market, people still need coaching and they still need to sell something.

They still need to have a conversation and build a relationship.

The interpersonal skills, the soft skills.

I think selling what I'm selling today versus what I was selling distressed real estate back then, hey, the real estate bubble might pop again sometime soon.

But I'm not rushing back to that business if it happens.

So when looking at those kind of two versions of Chris economic crisis notwithstanding, what do you think changed for you personally, within your own thought process, your own beliefs?

Yeah.

What?

How have things changed for you and the way that you perceive your ability?

I think back then, it was a lot more reactionary.

I didn't have a plan.

I had to come up with one, and I reacted, and we reacted well enough to stay afloat.

But now, goal setting daily goals that help me accomplish short term goals, that are helping me accomplish long term goals, and having the right attitudes and behaviors to hit those goals.

Look, I don't care if it's something as basic as making ten phone calls, go to one networking event, call an old client, like, whatever it might be, just to have the organized behaviors that I hold myself accountable to.

And it's stupid stuff, RJ.

It's make the bed every morning when I get out of it, and little things like that.

Just kind of that habit stacking, which has definitely taught me a lot, that if I'm doing my behaviors, I should have predictable results.

But if I'm not doing my behaviors, I also have predictable results, and it's failure.

So for someone who is in that more reactionary state, whether they're brand new to business or they've been at it for a long time, they're in that state of, I've kept the lights on, I've paid my people, but they're still kind of in that everything is constantly on fire.

How do they start to leave that state and get to a point where now they have identified the behaviors and the actions to take to support those daily goals, that support the short term, that support the long term?

Like, how do you get to that state?

You mentioned that I had this conversation with somebody recently about when I was in college, we had a single computer lab on campus, and there was 50 computers in it, and you had to go log into the email server, and you might get an email from a professor or from a friend at a different university.

There was no YouTube, there was no social, there was no Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn.

And if you were going to be an entrepreneur, you kind of had to figure it out or go to business school.

Nowadays, the fact that everyone has one of these in their pocket.

If you are looking for guidance on prospecting, it's out there.

If you're looking for guidance on account management, it's out there.

Whether it's Sandler or a competitor of ours or a thought leader, or an influencer.

I think people really need to figure out a way to find what works for them.

And this is a crude analogy, RJ, but I'm going to use it anyway.

I used to be 300 pounds like I was a big boy, and I tried every single diet in the world until I found one that worked for me.

Right?

I tried, you know, doing more cardio, I tried doing more weights.

I tried the zone diet, I tried Atkins, I tried weight watchers.

I tried all this other stuff until I found the one that worked for me.

And I dropped 60 pounds, and then I dropped 70, and it kept working for me.

So I stuck with it.

Nowhere near 300 pounds anymore, thank God.

I'm not as down as much as I used to be, but I'm still down.

And I think sometimes entrepreneurs are always looking for answers, and they bail on concepts too quick, but find one that works for you.

So if it's marketing, if it's cold calling, if it's sales, if it's networking, keep trying until you find the one that works for you.

Sandler worked for me, and now I'm a sandler trainer.

We're not right for everybody.

I know that there's too much help out there, too much knowledge, LinkedIn learning, and all this other stuff, that if you're an entrepreneur and you're struggling with behavior, attitude, prospecting, management, finance, there's too much knowledge out there for entrepreneurs, if they are not looking to get better, it's for their own lack of trying, because the resources are out there.

I would agree.

I think really, in the last two decades, we've seen the flip of everything that you could possibly want to know is out there now.

The challenge is finding a way to filter it and create contextual answers for what you need, for where you are now.

But even that, it just takes, if you tell yourself the story that it's too hard, or I don't have time, I'm too busy.

If you change your belief around that statement and flip it of why can't it work for me, or something will work, even just that, switch your approach to dieting.

You just get determined that something will work, something's going to happen.

You're gonna try things until you get a little traction, then you're gonna run with it until you get what you want.

Yeah, I mean, I'm a big fan of mentors and mentoring.

Find a mentor, and don't be afraid to reach out to somebody that you're impressed by and ask them for advice.

Whether this is going to something like an event at the Detroit Economic Club for $50.

They'll let you in.

Any other lunches, join a professional organization, a bar association, a chamber of commerce, a fraternal organization, the Rotary, the lodge, the Masons, the Knights Club is what.

Find somebody that resonates with that.

You want to mimic their success and ask them.

In some cases, just ask them three best business books they read, best advice they can give for something else.

Find a mentor.

Like, I can rip off my favorite three books quickly, if anyone ever asked me, and I can probably name another five to ten more after that, might be relevant for what they're struggling with.

But going at it alone, or going at it arrogantly, or going at it without asking for help, looking for help, there's.

There's too much help out there to just try to do it solo and be stubborn because you know better.

Yeah, definitely.

So, to bring things to a close, the last question I want to ask you, Chris, is if you were to consider if there was something that you could have done sooner in your journey to be further along now than where you are, what would you wish you had done sooner?

I swear this isn't a commercial, but I would have.

I'm not saying I would have skipped college because I have so many friends and relationships based on the people I met in college, but I do absolutely zero with my degree and the interpersonal relationship knowledge I got when I took Sandler 13 years ago, I would have taken it a lot sooner.

I use it how I deal with family members.

I use it with the youth kids that I coach in sports.

I use it in my community.

Just the interpersonal skills of the psychology of understanding what motivates people and how to treat them is one of the most valuable things I could have ever done.

So I swear, RJ, I did not know that question is coming.

And I'm not trying to be the guy that is selling the timeshare.

And I'll tell you this, my 13 year old son is asking when he can take this training, and he wants to take it this summer.

He's not going to get all the concepts, but just the interpersonal skills.

They go so far.

And just treating people with respect, you know, the old golden rule, treat others the way you want to be treated.

No platinum rule.

Treat others the way that they want to be treated.

It goes so far, and I think in our fast, low attention span society, the interpersonal skills goes so far.

I could not agree more.

For those who are stuck, they're struggling.

Maybe you've tried courses, you've tried materials.

You've done the YouTube binge.

There's a lot of wonderful free stuff out there.

And I think if you are in a place where you're flat broke, start there.

You can make money with what you can learn for free, 100%, no question.

But if you're at a point where there's some foundational knowledge that you're missing, you don't have structure.

You don't know how to set the goals and the actions necessary to reach them.

You don't know how to understand what a prospect is going through, how to identify pain and transition that into a fruitful sales conversation without it feeling sleazy, unethical, slimy.

Sandler does all that stuff in a way that I haven't seen anywhere else.

And I have invested heavily in other programs, other options out there have consumed an abundance of material.

The way that they approach things, it speaks more to human connection than it does to making a sale.

And you're absolutely right, Chris.

It is not just about going out and making money.

You can use a lot of the tactics just in your day to day life to navigate interactions and relationships with people.

I think you should at least do yourself the service of having conversation with a Sandler trainer.

Chris is fantastic.

I would recommend you reach out to him and if it's the right fit for you, I'm sure he'll tell you.

Thank you, RJ.

Chris, if it's not the right fit, I'll tell him to.

I don't do this just to take people's money.

We do it if it's the right fit and we have free webinars on our website.

Just add me on LinkedIn.

I post all the free webinars.

I do.

I post a lot of free white papers.

Get your public library card and go get one of our books out of the library.

There's lots of Sandler content out there.

But like you said, we ain't right for everybody, but we're pretty good at what we do if we are right for you.

Yeah.

So if you want to connect with Chris, his details will be in the show, notes in the description.

Reach out to him and take that first step.

Learn, get some free resources, start there and see where things go.

Chris, thanks for joining me.

RJ, thanks for having me.

All right, take care.

Bye.

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