EntreLeadership - The EntreLeadership Podcast 2021: A Year In Review

Episode Date: December 27, 2021

Wow! Can you believe the year is almost over? Whether 2021 was your best year yet or one you’d rather forget, we hope you feel a sense of accomplishment. You didn’t give up. You didn’t back down. You kept growing, learning and listening. So, here’s to you! Thank you for letting The EntreLeadership Podcast be a part of your journey this year. Let’s reflect on 2021 and prepare for what’s ahead with highlights from this year’s top episodes.   Managing Your Time and Energy with Carey Nieuwhof The Rundown: Tune in as pastor, author and podcast host Carey Nieuwhof shares his wisdom about time management. He challenges us to be passionate and fully present in everything we do, instead of pretending we don’t have enough time in the day to do it all.   Avoid Failure by Following These Marketing Principles with Seth Godin The Rundown: Want to know the number one way to increase profitability in your business? Marketing expert Seth Godin has the answer. Spoiler: It’s all about keeping your promises and building trust and loyalty with your customers.   Take Control of Your Life and Business with Christy Wright The Rundown: Does your life feel out of balance in this season? Business coach and bestselling author Christy Wright shares tips from her latest book, Take Back Your Time, that will help you prioritize the right things at the right time, so you don’t feel pressured to do all the things all the time.    How to Lead and Scale Your Sales Team with Brian Buffini The Rundown: Ready to scale your business beyond just yourself? Real estate legend Brian Buffini has the tips you need to systematize your tasks and train up your team. He also shares his secrets to staying top of mind for customers so they’ll come back—and tell their friends!   The EntreLeadership Podcast Listen to the full episodes: Managing Your Time and Energy with Carey Nieuwhof Avoid Failure by Following These Marketing Principles with Seth Godin Take Control of Your Life and Business with Christy Wright How to Lead and Scale Your Sales Team with Brian Buffini Download The EntreLeadership Reading Guide Schedule a call with Tim, our producer.   Learn more about EntreLeadership Events: EntreLeadership Summit | EntreLeadership Master Series   Learn more about EntreLeadership Coaching: Elite | Advisory Groups | Executive Coaching | Workshops | Weekly Report Tool   Learn more about the offers from our EntreLeadership Partners: BELAY | Gravy | Hite Digital | NetSuite Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Well, as 2021 comes to a close, you might be reflecting on the year that was and looking ahead to the year to come. We've released over 50 episodes this year that have hopefully impacted your leadership and business for the better. And while I'm sure you've listened to every minute of every episode, I want to take this time to reflect on the inspirational and practical conversations we've had this year. From the Ramsey Network, this is the Entree Leadership podcast, where we help business leaders grow themselves, their teams, and their profits. I'm your host, George Camel, and we've got a special episode for you today. It's been our tradition to put together some of the best clips for the last episode of the year. I hope it's a refresher on what we've learned this year on the podcast and an encouragement as you head into 2022. If you hear a clip that you like and you want to listen to the full conversation, we've got links to the individual episodes in the show notes.

Our first clip is with Carrie Newhoff. He's a best-selling leadership author, speaker, and podcast host. In this clip, I asked Carrie about the happy. habits of successful people who are super effective with their time. Here's my conversation with Kerry Newhoff. The most productive people on earth, they get the same amount of time, right? Beyonce has 24 hours, I've got 24 hours. What am I not doing right? Why am I not Beyonce, Carrie? So what are the habits of those people who handle the time the best? Well, the first, and this is, this sounds small, but it was really big in my life, because I would always say things when I was

burning out in the stress spiral. It would be like, well, George, I just, don't have time for that. I don't have time. I don't have time to go to the gym. I don't have time to answer that person's question. I don't have time to start a new project. I don't have time to write a book. I don't have time to launch a podcast. I don't have time for any of that. And then I had that realization that, oh my goodness, Carrie, you've got the same amount of time as any other human being on planet Earth. And that was really sobering and initially really depressing because I'm like, I see these like hyper-effective people and they don't get any more time. Like if I got promoted to the CEO of a Fortune 50 company, nobody says, here's an eighth day.

Here's like 26 hours in a day, right? You got to figure it out. So I thought, I'm going to be a disaster. So I made this little switch that I would encourage everyone listening to try it. All right, just try this. This is super easy. Stop saying you don't have the time. Just banish that from your vocabulary because you do.

Stop saying things. Listen to your language, do an audit. Do you ever find yourself saying, I didn't get a chance? to do it. Well, you did get a chance to do it. You just didn't do it. Other things like, oh, yeah, I couldn't get to it. Actually, you could have gotten to it. And when I made myself be honest with myself, I stopped saying, I don't have the time to do it. And I started admitting I didn't make it. So think about your mom, who's been waiting for that phone call for so long, George. And you're like, I'm too busy today. It's a personal attack, personal attack, George. Right. Your mom's waiting for a phone call.

and you're like, oh, I don't have time to call her today. I don't have time. Well, when a month goes by and you still haven't called your mom, and we've all been guilty of that in seasons, it's like, oh, yeah, I didn't make the time to call my mom. What does that mean? And so I find getting honest about your vocabulary is really, really important.

And the other thing that's really challenging, I do have a very balanced life. And Christy Wright has a great new book on that, which is so helpful. But I like to also think of my time in terms of passion. So there are only so many things that you can decide to do, right? Like I can decide to go out for dinner with these people. I can decide to take on a new client.

I can decide to write a book. But wherever you are, be there fully. And so what I've tried to do is think about my life in terms of passion. If I'm going to go to work, I want to throw myself into my work for those eight hours, 10 hours, six hours, whatever that day looks like. But if I'm going to go out on the boat, I don't want to be checking my phone. and doing work and being half present with my family. So I want to, whatever I allow into my life, whatever I allow into my calendar, I want to do it with passion. And I found that to be so helpful.

So don't lie to yourself. Stop, you know, pretending you don't have the time because you do. You have the time to work out. And as I've trained leaders, it's amazing. In the first chapter of the book, I have some success stories. And I think about this guy named John who said, you know what, I stopped making excuses and I went to the gym and I started eating clean. it takes a little bit longer than just popping up candy bar every time you're hungry, but he lost 70 pounds. And there was a mom of a newborn who said, I wanted to launch a podcast and I did.

Now, she's got a newborn. I don't know how she did that, but she did it because they stopped making excuses. They implemented these strategies we're talking about, and they started to realize their dreams. Wow, that's powerful. To get to the point where you admit, I didn't make the time. And it puts the responsibility back on you, which guess what, is leadership, right, where you have to take personal responsibility and go, well, if everything's just

happening to me and I don't have the time, well, that's out of my control. But to own that is such a powerful place to be where you're in the driver's seat again. So let's talk about balance first passion here. What is the difference between someone who's balanced and someone who is passionate? Well, balance can be a really good thing again and appreciate what Christy has to say about that. But often if you hear it, you've got to be a student of how people talk about balance. often balance seems like a retreat. It seems like, okay, I'm going to do less work. I'm going to do less of everything.

And I'm like, well, I kind of want my life to be about an advance. I don't want to be in retreat. So when I think about John Wesley is reported to have said, you know the internet with quotes, but he's reported to have said, light yourself on fire with passion and people will come from miles to watch you burn. And I think there's something really true. Passion changes the world. balance people rarely do.

And so what I want to see is when I'm at work, when I'm in this, I'm not distracted. I'm not checking my phone. I'm not thinking about what I have to do this afternoon. I want to be locked in on this conversation. Do you know how many times, you know, the real difference between what I see is a high-capacity leader and an average leader is with a truly high-performing leader, they have all the time in the world for you. They are totally focused in on you.

They're not checking their phone. I've been with other leaders who literally have interviewed me, and they're like answering texts while I'm answering a question. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. So I want to be fully present. And of course, the quality of your work increases when you do that. So if you're going to write, focus on writing. If you're really going to nurture this relationship with a customer,

go there, listen to the customer, all distractions aside, be fully engaged, give them your full attention. and honestly, if you're going to take a nap, enjoy it, man. Don't feel guilty. Like, go lie on the couch and sleep for 25 minutes. Have a nap. Get up feeling refreshed. If you're having a day off with your family at the beach, be at the beach. And if you want to get eight hours of sleep at night, enjoy it, man. Like, go and be passionate. And what I found I used to do was I was skimming over everything. Now, on the things I allow on my calendar, I want to do a deep dive. And maybe you've got too many clients. Wouldn't it be better instead of having 100 clients if you had 50 great ones that didn't

complain as much, that, you know, you could service a little bit better? And maybe, you know, there's a landscaper that I work with. And he's been helping us at our house for a few years. And I remember he had a problem a couple years ago. And he was saying, yeah, these clients, you know, they never want to pay me and everything. And then they're always complaining because I didn't do it quite right. And I said, why don't you just fire some of your clients? So now he has a handful of clients. And they tend to pay a little bit better and they don't complain. And like, things have gotten better. And now he can throw himself into the work a lot better.

So sometimes less is more. Seth Godin is up next. Seth is an entrepreneur, best-selling author of 20 books, and has been inducted into the Marketing Hall of Fame. I got to talk with Seth about the difference between direct marketing and brand marketing. In this clip, Seth lays out the number one rule when it comes to marketing. The first rule of branding here, keep your promise. That's a big one for small business owners out there.

Why is it important to make promises and keep them as a brand? Okay, so there's trust and there's attention. And a lot of business people who think they have a marketing problem think they have an attention problem. How do I interrupt more people? How do I call people at home? How do I buy an email list? How do I spam the world?

How do I put up a billboard? Most things are all about attention. Here's the deal. There's seven billion people on Earth. if you end up with 7,000 customers, which by my math is one out of every million people, you are doing great. I'm doing fine and I maybe have 100 paying customers a year. 7,000 would be a lot, a lot.

So what we need to focus on instead of attention is trust. The people who know you exist, do they trust you? Do they trust you to keep your promise? Do they trust you to solve their problem? So if you wake up in the middle of the night and the sink is overflowing, you only get one call to one plumber. It's like getting arrested, right? You get one phone call.

Who are you going to call? You're going to call the person with the biggest ad in the yellow pages, or you're going to call the people who have SEO, or you're going to call the plumber who every time you call them shows up and treats you fairly? Well, it's pretty obvious who you're going to call. So the hard work is to earn trust. Yeah. And that's something that we've been doing for 30 years now with Dave.

he's so big on being a trust brand and Entree leadership being a trust brand. And so when Dave says, go reach out to this person, people actually do it. I mean, you know, three hours a day, he's offering advice on the show and people take it. And that's because they trust him. And a lot of companies struggle with this. You know, they don't have a Dave Ramsey talking to customers three hours a day. So how can companies make those promises and keep that trust and not break it? Well, the first thing is they could have someone talking to customers three hours a day,

except the customers don't want to hear from them. So that's the first problem. Make something customers want to hear about. Do something that is a service, not a hassle. You get to pick. You're the boss. And then the second thing is to be really specific about the promises. So let's say you make wedding cakes for a living.

If your promise is, if you order a cake, we will make a cake. That's not much of a promise. That's not what the bride is thinking about when they are going out to spend $1,000 on a cake, right? What they are thinking about is, how will this make me feel? What they're thinking about is how will this make my partner feel? How will this make my family feel? If you make a promise around those things and you keep that promise, then they're going to tell the others. Yeah.

Right? that's how you make magic going forward is you have a very specific promise and you over-deliver on it, but it's not about the features. It's about the story. And doing that consistently for a long period of time is how you win in business. That's fascinating. Talk to the idea of word of mouth, because when I think of brand marketing, usually I didn't fall for an ad. I listened to a friend who said, hey, you've got to check out this new canned water. It's fantastic. So what is the power of word of mouth

and how can business owners use that when it's not really quantifiable? Well, business owners do all sorts of things that aren't quantifiable. They just pretend they don't. You know, who decided that the place of your retail location is the maximum return on investment?

Who decided that of all the people you could hire, this person is quantifiably better than that person? Go down the list, right? So you're only quantifying the stuff that Facebook makes it easy for you to quantify. That's a trap. Don't fall into that trap.

It's pretty easy to demonstrate that loyalty is the number one way to increase profitability and word of mouth is the number two way. And way down the list is a clever advertisement. And the real challenge you've got is nobody wants to talk about canned water. I don't, right? So no one's talking about you because you want them to. This whole idea of life insurance salespeople being trained to ask for referrals, no one's referring life insurance salespeople to anybody, ever,

because it lowers your status to say to your friend, my cousin sells insurance, will you meet with them? Of course you're not going to say that. But there's all sorts of things that could raise your status. So I don't know if you've ever reported on these tiger groups that started in New York and spread where wealthy people get together and talk about their finances. And I don't know any of the details about it. All I know is it's been growing for years and years. Well, yeah, because what a great humble brag. Oh, yeah, I was in my elite group

where rich people get together and talk about our finances and we were talking about so-and-so. Well, yeah, because it makes you feel better to talk about it to other people. And, but the same thing's true when you give a merit badge to a Boy Scout. That is bragging rights, which then the kid can talk about to the others. I'll give you one more example. which is years and years ago, I hang out a lot with people of totally different ages than me. That's how you learn things. A bunch of kids were into skateboarding.

And one kid said, 12-year-old was old, one kid says, you know, I'm sponsored. And it turns out this skateboard company that made skatewear and jackets and shirts and stuff, made a deal to 12-year-olds. They said, send us a video of you skateboarding. If you're good enough, we'll sponsor you. And if you're sponsored, you get anything we make.

for 50% off, but you have to promise in writing with your parents agreeing that you won't wear anybody else's brand. And these 12-year-olds are like so proud of themselves. Well, 50% off, the company's still making a profit, right? And what they were actually doing was activating 12-year-olds by giving them bragging rights, which gave them something to talk about. Next up is Christy Wright. She's a certified business coach, Ramsey personality, and best-selling author. I sat down with Christy to talk about work-life balance and the importance of prioritizing the right things at the right time. Here's our conversation.

What are the things that lead someone there? How do you kind of do a checkup on yourself and go, is that me? Am I out of balance? What are those things that cause that? Yeah, well, because balance is one of those things that's kind of elusive and haunts people, I wanted to define it with it is doing the right things at the right time. So then if that's the solution, then how do we get out of balance? So I've really got four main causes.

I actually walked through this at my talk at Entry Leadership Summit. Doing too many things, not doing enough things, doing the wrong things, not doing the right things. So let's look at those really quickly. Doing too many things, this is when you are just overcommitted. Like you're rushing, you're exhausted, you have tried to cram too many things in your calendar. It's unrealistic. Of course, you're out of balance because you're just, you're trying to stretch your 24 hours

more than it can be stretched. Yes to everything. Too many things. Yeah, that's a very obvious common one. The second one, not doing enough things. I would be willing to bet that is exactly no one listening right now. But just in case there is, this might be someone, let's just look at last year during the pandemic. You know, people's calendars were cleared. At first, it was kind of fun. And then we got bored pretty quick. If you

don't have outlets to pour into, you feel out of balance. Maybe someone in a new season of life as an empty nester. They find themselves with all this time and they're kind of bored. They're like, what does this new season look like? So doing too many things or not enough things. Doing the wrong things, it doesn't matter if you perfectly control your calendar. If you spend your time on things that are not important to you, that don't bring you joy, that are not life-giving or a priority, you're going to feel out of balance. Let's say, for example, someone works in a job that they hate. I hope you're not listening right now and you hate your business, because it is your business. So you should love this thing that you spend so much time on, but let's just say

someone doesn't love their business or love their job. You work way too hard and spend too much your life doing something that you hate. So of course you're going to feel out of balance, even if you only work a perfect schedule because a lot of those hours are going to something you don't enjoy. The same would be true for commitments, responsibilities, relationships that drain you. When you spend time on things that are not right for you, you feel out of balance.

That one's got a hit a nerve because a lot of leaders are listening going, yeah, I probably should delegate that. And yes, the maintenance mode and the scheduling or whatever it is, it drains my day, it drains my energy. And, you know, we partner with Belay with all the virtual assistants out there to go, hey, you can actually offload that and get back to doing the things that matter. So I love how that connects to that kind of leadership and delegation to go,

this isn't fun for me. And I can move this to someone who actually enjoys doing it and is great at it. So you make up a really good point here because one of the things I unpack in the book is seasons. And so I used an example in the book of when I had my first child, Carter, I was talking to a friend. And she said, how is it? And I was like, it's so hard. And she said, well, it's hard because you're trying to do everything you did before. And what's interesting is I realized in that moment I had not adapted to my new season of trying to cut.

of forcing myself to cut things out because I now have a child to take care of. I think business leaders don't adapt to their new season. So they experience growth, for example, and they're still in the weeds trying to do the things they did when it was just them. They're still micromanaging, and they want to check every single web copy that's going out. They want to see every single sales call. They want to see every single number.

You're not adapting to the new season that your business is in, and it's not going to be able to grow as long as you keep holding on to this old season and doing these things you used to do that served you at that time, but they're not serving you anymore. In fact, they're holding you back. So you make a great point because when you're doing the wrong things, you're taking away time from being able to do the right things, like vision, strategy, the things that only you can do. So doing the wrong things will make you feel out of balance. And then lastly, not doing the right things. If you have things that are important to you and you don't spend time on them, whatever that is, it doesn't matter. If you don't spend time on them, you will feel

out of balance because there's a disconnect between what you care about and what you spend your time on. this gap that makes you feel anxious and frustrated and exhausted because you're like, this is my one life. I want to spend it on things that are important. That doesn't mean that you need to close your business and go golf the rest of your life. But if you're not integrating intentionally into your life, things that bring you joy, that make you come alive, that you care about, you're going to be stressed and you're going to feel out of balance. So maybe for someone that's getting back in church when they haven't been in church in three years, maybe that's taking their wife on a date when they haven't been on a date in three years. Maybe that's hanging out with their kids in the evening

instead of catching up on email because they haven't done that in a long time. I don't know what it is, but integrating it, even in small, little tiny ways will make a huge difference in your ability to feel balance because the right things you care about are now actually on your calendar and in your life. So those are kind of the four causes of why we feel out of balance, and it's different for different people. Well, I'm so pumped about your new book, Take Back Your Time, Comes out September 14th. Yep, it's available for pre-sale now, but it'll be, in people's hands September 14th. I can't wait for it.

And in the book, you walk readers through this five-step path to balance. If you're feeling out of balance, this is for you. And the first step you talk about is figure out what matters. So what do you mean by this? And how does someone listening figure out what's the most important to them? Sure. Well, if life balance is doing the right things at the right time, which I believe it is, then you need to know what the right things are.

What are the right things in this season? And I talk about priorities in this chapter of the book. But I think people tend to think of priorities as this. set it and forget it thing. Like, my priorities are God other self in that order. Amen. It's a great impression. Okay, that's a nice Sunday school answer. It's completely impractical for real life time management. If you want to ask me, my priorities right now, George, it is getting this book out there. That's my number one priority. That's the season I'm in. I'm in the middle of book presale and book launch. Of course, that's my priority.

Second priority, being with my family when I'm not on the road. From there, things that I normally care about are kind of falling off. I'm not keeping up with my house as much. I'm not spending time with friends. I'm not, you know, taking part in any of my hobbies because right now I am in a season of focusing on the book. This past summer, I went to the lake. I played with my friends. I played with my family. It's going to look different depending on your season. But in any given season, you need to say, what matters? What matters most to me right now? What matters most to me in this season? What are my priorities? Because if you want to spend time on them, you need to know what those things are.

Our last clip of this year in review episode is with Brian Bafini. He's the founder and chairman of Bafini and company, the largest training and coaching company in North America. I got to talk to Brian about the key to scaling a business beyond yourself. Enjoy this last clip with our friend, Brian Bafini. So we're talking about sales today, which you are a master of. And at one point, you were one of the top producing real estate agents in the nation. And at some point, you said, I'm going to.

to help other people get better at this thing. So how do you take that step from being the best in the game at sales and go, I'm going to lead a sales team? Yeah. So the key, and it's going to be your boring answer, is systemization. If it's no one can sell like you, Brian, no one can negotiate like you, Brian. This is what people should say. No one communicates like you do, Brian. Well, it's very flattering, but that means there's no scale. There's no scale available. Oh, it's just me. Tell me how else it's great I am. And people buy into that. Also, as leaders, sometimes, nobody can do it like me.

And I used to say that about even administrative work. And then I found out not only could somebody do it like me, someone could do it better. You know, certainly in a lot of roles. That's all your pride there. Yeah. But I really think it gets down to breaking it down. You know, I'll give you a really odd example. And it's, do you know who the Blue Man group is?

Oh, yeah. Great. So you've seen them. So you've seen them. Do you know which ones you saw? No. Do you know how many Blue Man groups there are? I imagine thousands.

Maybe not thousands, but there's dozens and dozens and dozens of them. They're well over a hundred million dollar business. Wow. And what happened was, you had three original guys wearing blue masks. They're very entertaining. They're very engaging. They're very skilled. And they do their routine.

Then what happened is they took the time to write everything they do down. An SOP, standard operating procedure. Here's how we put our makeup on. Here's how we address the audience. Here's how we interact. Here's how we create humor. Here's how we do this routine. Here's how we do this juggling event.

They broke everything they did. it took it was laborious this is painful i've done this stuff many times in bill and training programs it's gruesome but what comes out the other side they had a manual of how the blue man group works then here's what they did each one of them formed a team so you take your three best guys and they each form a team so now we have three teams you bring in two guys and you see who has it and who has it you train them you train them you're training sometimes people make it sometimes people don't and within six months they had three blue man groups that went out for six months then what What do you think they did?

Grew it again. They took each person off the, now they had nine teams, and then they had, you know, 18 teams. And they grew, and they grew, and they grew, and now they're all over the world. And something that was a performance act, and as you well know, I was in Nashville here, there's a lot of performers who were great.

You know, they're in their 60s still trying to make a living because it's just them. And then there's people who systemized and scaled. And that's the key component. And I think for anybody who's in a business, you have to look at what's systemizable and what's scalable. And if it's not, it's not. You know, you can't make something happen that's not there.

But most businesses I found can be systemized, can be scaled. If the Blue Man Group can do it, any of us can do it. Yeah. So what were some of those systems that you started to put in place to teach other salespeople how to do this well? So I kind of break down everything I did. So I break down, here's how I – first of all, here's what I do in a day as a successful salesperson.

Then I break down, you know, for me, I broke it into three categories. the lead generation stuff and which I don't care. You know, it's Entre leadership and people love the idea leadership, leadership, leadership. Let me say this. Dave Ramsey thinks this way.

I think this way. It doesn't matter how big the organization is. Dave Ramsey, he's the lead salesman of this organization. I'm the lead salesman of my organization. Still, I don't do much of the salon anymore, but I'm still responsible for the mantle of it. How do you generate a lead?

How do you generate a customer? What's the optimal way to serve that customer? What's the experience that customer has? The customer experience from the time they first interact with you. I don't care if it's online, at a store, reaching out to you by a referral, whatever source. How do you handle that lead? How do you bring it through the chain? How do you interact with them?

How do you set expectations? Who handles the leads? Where does that go? So you go from lead generation into the sales process, from sales into service and service into the keep them connected and stay in touch. You know, in my business, in the real estate space, they did a survey, the National Association of Realtors, but 1.5 million member trade organization. And they surveyed everyone who bought a home in a calendar year, giant, you know, five million transactions. And what they found is that people who were thoroughly satisfied with their agent within 12 months couldn't remember their name. Wow.

Only thoroughly satisfied clients. Like, they thought their agent was great. Only 28%. So part of what I do is, you know, the lead generation is to keep in touch with my customers, keep in touch with my past customers, right? So someone sells a house. They might not be selling for five years. They may never sell.

That doesn't mean they're not a great source of referrals. My best ever client actually never bought a house with me. But she was an advocate of mine and I stayed in touch with her. So for me, what we develop is what we call items of value. So let's say, George, I sell you a home. every month for eternity, you're going to hear from me. And I'm going to send you information, cool stuff. Like, hey, here's how to save money on taxes.

Here's how to protect you and your family from identity theft. On top of that, I'd write personal notes. And so at least every 90 days, you just get a personal handwritten note. And you open up your mail. It's sometimes just nice to say, hey, hey, George, how you doing? I would do a thing called Popeyes, where I would, my very best clients, I would go and see them, bring them a little gift. Okay, here it is. It's Halloween.

here's a little something for the kids, right? And I would do this. It's funny. Now, here's a great example. I remember I was delivering flowers for Mother's Day. And I'm talking about, I had hundreds of clients. So I'm going down to farmer's market, loading up an SUV with flowers. I come to the office. Now, this is a classic. And I won't mention this guy's name, but she walks up to him, she goes, Brian, I know you're an immigrant and whatever else, but you know, in America, we have services that will do this for you. They'll deliver the flowers for you. Now, this gal was selling about six homes a year. I was selling about 120. 20 homes here. Okay. And she's given me advice as the little immigrant, you know, we have services here that can deliver for you because she didn't understand I wanted to go see the people. Now, I was too busy to do it. But as the primary lead generator from my real estate business,

even though I had a big team, I needed to go see the people, shake hands. I'm delivering flowers. And I did it. I'd go from eight in the morning until 12, four or five days the week of Mother's Day. I'd see all these gals in my database I'd go into offices Now imagine walking in here to the company I walk in the office open bullpen And next thing I might have two or three gals in there They're clients of mine

Next thing you know I'm delivering flowers Delivering flowers Now these heads start popping up like moles Who is that guy? And all the ladies start coming out of the people Who is this guy? Who is this guy? And oh he's our realtor

He's Brian Oh he does stuff like this all the time And then they'd all look to the door because they're waiting for their realtor to come. And their realtor ain't showing up. And their realtor they might have been very happy with. But they're not going back to them. And here's the thing.

I was top of mind. So when I'm letting them out just so you know, and I didn't high pressure, I'd say, George, just so you know, I'm never too busy for your referrals. And I got referral after referral, after referral, after referral, 35 to 40 referrals a month as a sales agent. So I systemized what I said, what I did, how I did it.

And I taught it to my team. that team became so successful that then I would be asked to speak at conferences because I had very low advertising expenses and very high margins. I had a very high average sales price. And so, you know, you're 26 years of age and you're making a million dollars a year in real estate in the early 90s. They're like, well, how are you doing this? So then I would start sharing and I found out I could share the systems from stage. And then people say, okay, no, but I want the systems.

So then the very systems I trained my own team on, I then packaged and trained for people. at the events. And that then led to what's now Bafinian company, which, you know, one out of every eight homes in America sold through our training and coaching. One out of every seven in Canada. You get your license in South Africa. You're going to go through the Bifini training program. It's all over the Czechoslovakia, you name it. We're in 41 countries. So it started by me systemizing what I did for my team. And then because I systemized it in such detail, the team did well. and then I was able to teach other people. So there's the, you know, it led to double opportunity for me.

Yeah, and it takes a level of humility to go, hey, I may be the best salesperson here, but I've got to kind of unpack my secrets so that other people can do this and so that our company can grow. Yeah, and here's what I found. Most secrets are just skills, and all skills can be learned. There's gifts. Some people are more gifted than others, right? But all skills can be learned.

and so what I found was a lot of the stuff I did kind of naturally was actually a skill and then when I layered it out for people you realize that people can be trained skills people can be improved in skills and people can be measured in their skill development and so that's hopeful for everybody you know like for example there are people and we've had them you guys have had them I have clients that are not very good with money naturally who can become extremely skilled with money all right you learn how to budget you learn how to create the surplus. You learn how to invest. You set the structures in place. And the next thing, someone who naturally was bad with money as a person becomes good because they've developed the

skills and the structures to keep them in track. And that's hope for everybody. That's hope for all the people who are listening, all the people who go to your conferences, all the people involved in your programs, you can get better, you can develop, you can be better. I think as an entrepreneur, it's the lifeblood of entrepreneurship is to grow. As we've reflected over the past year in some of our best episodes of 2021, you may be thinking of areas you want to learn about and grow in for 2022. You've heard the quote, leaders are readers, and you might be trying to figure out what books will be worth your time as you start 2022.

So to help you out with that, we created the Entree Leadership Reading Guide, a curated list of the top books from leaders and authors that we trust to help you get to the next level in your business. To make it easy for you to navigate, we've broken them out into topics so you can find the best book for what you're wanting to learn. To get the Entre Leadership Reading Guide, just click the link in the show notes. Hope you enjoyed today's episode of the show. If you did, leave us a review and subscribe so you don't miss the next one.

And we want to hear what you think of the show. What you like, what you don't like, and what we could do better. Give us your feedback by clicking the link in the show notes to schedule a call with Tim, our producer. If you want to keep up with us on social media, you can follow us at Entree Leadership. This episode was produced by Tim Hull, edited by Jacob Herr, and Bob Borquez and mixed and mastered by Will Rudder. I'm your host, George Camel, and on behalf of the entire Entree leadership team, thanks for listening and happy new year.

Until next time, keep learning and keep leading. If you enjoy this podcast, you should check out other great podcasts from the Ramsey Network, like the Rachel Cruz Show. Hey, guys, it's Rachel Cruz, and I'm so excited to tell you about my podcast. A lot of people are living paycheck to paycheck. They're in debt. They don't even know where to begin, but they have this need this want to get in control, of their money. And if that's you, you have come to the right spot. So in each episode, you're going

get a ton of inspiration and practical advice. If you're not subscribed to the Rachel Cruz Show podcast, make sure you do it today. To hear full episodes, just search Rachel Cruz, wherever you listen to podcasts, or go to ramsysolutions.com slash shows.