Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: Michael Dunne on sales for scale and social change

Episode Date: September 14, 2019

In my opinion, it is your sales ability and your organisation’s sales system that separates the 5 percent who are successful from the 95 percent who are not.   So today we return to this common theme of sales because I think it is so important to all of our success in everything we do – a subject that we started discussing back in Episode 62 with Petar Lackovic and continue today with pre-eminent sales system guru, Michael Dunne - the co-founder of EPIC Sales Group. Michael and the EPIC team build dream sales teams that free up business owners and entrepreneurs to scale and impact social change. For 20 years he ran sales teams in his own businesses, becoming the number one franchisee in Australia and New Zealand, before founding EPIC in 2016 - since then he’s built out over 30 sales systems and teams with incredible results. He’s personally seen how the mix of a structured sales environment and a great team can catapult a business to success and he knows the sales engine is the most mission-critical asset to a business. He believes that you need to be liberated from struggle so you can do something meaningful in the world. Enjoy this insightful chat that will change your thinking and approach when it comes to sales. Michael’s book recommendation: 12 Rules For Life by Jordan Peterson Get Invested is the podcast dedicated to time poor professionals who want to work less and live more. Join Bushy Martin, one of Australia’s top 10 property specialists, as he and his influential guests share know-how on the ways investing in property can unlock the life you always dreamed about and secure your financial future. Remember to subscribe on your favourite podcast player, and if you're enjoying the show please leave us a review. Find out more about Get Invested here https://bushymartin.com.au/get-invested-podcast/  Want to connect with Bushy? Get in touch here https://bushymartin.com.au/contact/  This show is produced by Apiro Media - http://apiropodcasts.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I see it as helping people, right, rather than going out and trying to push something on somebody, which I don't think you should do, by the way. I think if your product is as good as it should be and it solves a valuable problem in the marketplace, then there's no reason why, you know, it's your responsibility to go out there and help these people to, you know, to go to the next level. Welcome to the Get Invested Podcast, where we share great conversations with experts from all walks of life to uncover their secret know-how on where they invest their time, their skills, and their money, and the benefits that this has created. You see, the truth is that everyone invests. Every minute of every day, we're investing our time, our skills, our energy, and our money in something. some of us are investing consciously some unconsciously sometimes for good sometimes

for bad sometimes for no impact get invested will help you to start living by design not by default i'm going to help you to make it happen not let it happen you'll hear the top tips on how you can live with conscious intent so that you can live more work less and leave a living legacy by investing now. Listen to the show to discover the top tips on how to get started, make the most of your investment journey, and ultimately to be living your dream, not someone else's. More episodes can be found on iTunes or at bushymartin.com.au forward slash get invested. Thanks for listening, and now let's get invested. Hi, friend and fighters. Are you a salesperson? now some of you are going to react instantly with a cringing what do you mean along with

feelings of revulsion and feeling insulted but why is it perceived by so many as such a dirty word particularly to time poor professionals these days well in my humble opinion the cold hard truth is that your success in any aspect of your life will be reliant on how good a salesperson you are From your relationships with your partner, kids, family, friends, work colleagues, clients, customers and the community at large Your ability to communicate effectively and persuade others And to help solve others' problems with your solutions Will make or break your effectiveness and will dictate the course of your life Now it doesn't matter how good you are at something

If no one knows about it and no one is convinced that your solution is better than others then you'll starve, you'll suffer and you'll struggle. Just look at the lives of many famous artists throughout history from Rembrandt to Cezanne to Vincent van Gogh who all died poor and penniless. French modernist Cezanne died in poverty of pneumonia in 1906 and little did he know that his posthumous success would see his painting, The Car Players,

bought by the state of Qatar in 2011 for $259 million, the most expensive painting ever at that time. Now, similarly, Van Gogh, I think that's how you pronounce it, only sold one painting during his lifetime. It sold for the equivalent of approximately $109. Now, although he's famous for his work such as The Starry Night

he battled mental illness most of his life and fortunately, he finally lost his battle and cut his ear off in 1888 committing suicide not long after by shooting himself in the chest His last words were The sadness will last forever He died broke and destitute yet he now holds the distinction of creating the most expensive painting ever sold at auction on the 15th of May 1990 the portrait of Dr Gachet was sold within three minutes for 82.5 million

dollars US however on the flip side of this picture there are a select few artists who achieve fame and fortune during their lifetime, like Michelangelo, Salvador Dali, and Picasso. So let's look at Picasso's example. Pablo Picasso, whose full baptised name was Pablo, Diago, José, Francisco, de Paula, Juan, Naposino, Crispin, Crispiano, Maria, Marimidas, I'd love to see his birth certificate and his business card. So Picasso, for short, enjoyed fame and a fortune that goes with it from his early 30s right through to his death beyond at the ripe old age of 91.

He was wildly successful and financially free for most of his lifetime. When he passed away, he earned a great deal of valuable artwork, five properties, a large savings account, gold and bonds. In fact, a court-appointed auditor who was charged with evaluating the late artist's estate concluded that Pablo was worth between $100 and $250 million at the time. Now, that's equivalent to $530 million to $1.3 billion today. And while we're on the subject, I just love some of Picasso's quotes, and I've actually included a couple of them in my book, The Freedom Formula. like this one. Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked

why not. So what's the difference between Van Gogh and Picasso? I bet you can now guess. But before we do that, let's look at a more recent example. I want to ask you another question. Who's the better chef? Celebrity Jamie Oliver or Shane Horsley? Now, I'm sure you all know Jamie Oliver, but I bet very few of you, if any, know Shane Horsley. In my opinion, Shane's the best chef I've ever tasted. He's the master of French cuisine, having trained at a Mitchell Star restaurant, Le Manure or Quart Sasol, and I bet you I haven't pronounced that right, and then finding his way to Australia with his wife, I first experienced his excellence at the Alta Bistro in Wollonga, where he made the best breakfast

I've ever had, and I'm a connoisseur of breakfast as my favourite meal. Shane's a culinary magician whose magical dishes are inspired by the fresh local flavours to create authentic and pretentious French fare that complements local wines. He's now the head chef at La Bouchon on the Mornington Peninsula, another one of our favourite haunts in Victoria. Now, Shane's a true master chef, while for my money, Jamie Oliver's just a good cook with a big heart and a massive following. But who enjoys a better lifestyle?

I would bet that it's Jamie Oliver. Why? because it's not how much you know it's how much you're known for now let me say that again because in a world of constant noise in a world where there are a lot of us doing the same things even though we kid ourselves that we're different and unique and no one can do things as well as we do it's becoming increasingly important it's not how much you know but what you are known for So what are you known for? Not what you know or your skill or your expertise,

but what are you known for? Who knows it? How many know it? How do you move from what you know to what you are known for? You guessed it, sales. Now, some say the oldest profession in the world is prostitution. I say it's sales. From scratching picture stories on cave walls

to Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, It has always been about educating, guiding and helping others through persuasive communication. Famous cosmetician Estee Lauder was famous for saying that, I've never worked a day in my life without selling. If I believe in something, I sell it and I sell it hard. Or, as Bo Bennett so eloquently put it, I like to think of sales as the ability to gracefully persuade, not manipulate a person into a win-win situation.

And Brian Tracy suggests we approach each customer with the idea of helping him or her to solve a problem or achieve a goal, not of selling a product or service. So to me, sales is about helping others to solve problems. It's about building relationships based on trust and giving. It's about believing that what you do is worthwhile and helps others. It's about reframing people's perceptions. Everyone's a salesperson whether you recognize it or not.

If you don't and you see it as bad, it's going to severely limit your success. Because sales is like oxygen. Without it, you'll die in the vine. And as Henry Ford so well said, nothing happens until someone sells something. So in this context, there are actually only two roles across any and every business in every industry around the world. If you're not a salesperson, then you're sales support. That is, your role exists to support sales.

Now I can hear some of you bristling at this, but like it or not, every other business or organisational function is absolutely redundant if the sales team fails to sell and generate the all-important life-giving cash flows. So I want you to start substituting sale and sell with another four-letter word, help. Do you want to help people? Then you need to persuade others that you're the best person to do it. And it doesn't stop with you.

If you work in a business or a team, you are helping people inside and outside the organisation. This means you're all helpers, which is the new code for sellers. and the helping system, a la the entire sales system experience, must be consistent from first contact to last contact. Now, in recent times, I've been talking to you about the fact that true sustainable success lies at the intersection of your three L's, self, health and wealth.

And they run in that order. You need to get yourself sorted first in terms of mindset, belief, outlook, attitude, thinking and approach. a long-term abundance win-win-win outlook that starts with the premise that true success in anything takes 10 to 20 years and expect speed humps along the way it's about playing the long game it's about belief and it's about attracting and building the tribe that believe what you believe and you have the solution to solve their problem and their needs and it all starts and revolves around sales. But not just sales, but an integrated sales system that creates

an elegant, remarkable experience. An approach where you and everyone else you work with adopt a consistent approach to resolving your tribe's needs. In my opinion, it's your sales ability and your organisation's sales system that separates the 5% who are successful from the 95% who aren't. So today, we return to this common theme of sales because I think it's so important to all of our success in everything we do. And it's a subject that we started discussing back in episode 62 with Peter Lakavich and continue today with preeminent sales guru, Michael Dunn, the co-founder of the Epic Sales Group. Michael and the Epic team build dream sales teams that free you and business owners and entrepreneurs to scale and

impact social change. For 20 years, he ran sales teams in his own businesses, becoming the number one franchisee in Australia and New Zealand, before founding Epic in 2016. Since then, he's built out over 30 sales systems and teams with absolutely incredible results. He's personally seen how the mix of a structured sales environment together with a great team can catapult a business to success, and he knows the sales engine is a business's most mission-critical asset. He believes that you need to be liberated from struggle so you can do something meaningful in the world, and at Epic, he helps you achieve that freedom.

So please enjoy this great conversation with Michael Dunn. Hi Freedom Fighters. Now, many of you know that I'm a big fan of two things. Firstly, the Key Person of Influence Business Accelerator or the KPI program that's really transformed our business and introduced a collective community of like-minded and very positive go-getters of which today's guest is one of them. And secondly, I'm very much into the importance of sales to every aspect of your personal and professional life. So today's expert guest kills both of these birds with one stone. And as a fellow KPI alumni and a proven sales guru, I'd love to welcome you aboard and let's

get invested, Michael Dunn. Yeah, thank you for having me. Really looking forward to our chat. Me too, mate. It's a subject that I've got a real passion for and I know that you've kicked significant goals over the years, both individually, team-wise and business-wise in the sales arena. But without me getting in the way of things, mate, I'd love you just to sort of introduce yourself, what you do, and where you're heading currently, if you can, please, mate. Yeah, no problem at all.

So we set up Epic in 2016, and what we basically do is we help free founders by building a dream sales team and helping them to scale and impact social change. So our model is very bespoke. So we work one-on-one with founders and we unpack their IP and their genius into a duplicable, scalable process that a sales team can plug into. This has sort of become known as a sales suitcase, if you like. So everything a salesperson needs to go out and sell a value proposition, for example, the whole process, you know, first to contact, to sign up and then beyond. and how to arm that salesperson with stories and collateral to support that elegant process. And basically, we just want to take the buyer on a journey

where they feel comfortable going through each step and going to the next step becomes a no-brainer. And it's an objection-free process. You're addressing all the objections up front. So that's basically what we do in a nutshell now. Love it, love it. Yeah, a big need exercise really in that whole endeavour. Mate, just before we sort of drill into aspects of that at the sort of individual team and business level then, I'd love you for us to sort of take us through your journey today and I want to go right back as far as you're comfortable to talk us through what you did, why you did it, what the benefits, what the learnings were, What's some of the challenges and the failings that you've come across and what that meant to you to bring you back to where you are today, mate?

Yeah, interesting. I've just come full circle, actually. I was a Navy person in my early days. When I was 11 years old, I decided that I wanted to join the Navy and I couldn't understand why nobody else knew what they wanted to do because I knew at 11 years old I was going to join the Navy. Yeah, why, mate? I'm really interested in why was that such a burning passion

at a young age for you? I grew up in Western Australia in a little town called Geraldton and American ships used to come in there and I went on board one of those ships one day and I just thought those guys were like gods and that I wanted to become one of those people and I said to my mum and dad at the time that I was going to join the Navy

and everything I did between when I was 11 and 16 was about getting into the Navy as early as possible. I tried three times to get in and failed twice and it was because I was actually too young. But my mum just couldn't believe how determined I was to get into the Navy. Yeah, love it, love it. So you got on board. What did you do in the Navy, mate?

So I ended up joining as an apprentice and I was an electrician. So I did my trade when I was 16. I studied in Sydney for two years and then I graduated and went to sea and joined three different frontline ships over the next sort of six or seven years after that. And you're in sort of electrical arena, mate, high power? Is that what I picked up?

Yeah, high power, like a fit of mechanics. So, you know, power generation, distribution. We ended up becoming engineers. We worked on gas turbines and different auxiliary systems in the new ships as well. Yeah, okay, okay. So that's a marked difference from where you're currently at. Clearly there was a point on that Navy journey where you thought,

well, maybe this is not everything that's cracked up for me. I need to do something else. Take us through your thinking, your feelings at that stage, please. So I was promoted first in my class, and I was doing exceedingly well. I was going to go straight up and, you know, go through the ranks, and I could have become an officer. I could have done whatever I wanted. But there was a period of time back in 1993 when I was on the HMAS Melbourne

and we were going up to Southeast Asia. And I really had this, you know, I started reading books. One of the books was, I think, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. And just those type of books. And I started to really think maybe there was something else that I should be doing. and what kicked it right in was I went in to do a performance evaluation with the marine engineering officer

and this guy had sort of turned around to me in the meeting and said, Michael, I don't think you actually belong here. I see you as like a business owner or, you know, and the entrepreneur word wasn't really coined back then, that phrase. And he said to me that, you know, I see you as this business owner and that absolutely shocked me. But at the same time, I realized that that's actually really what I wanted to do. And from then, I just started to plan how I would educate myself over the last couple of years to get out and go down that path.

Well, let's talk about that transition because that's often the one that really catches people. You've got a nice, safe, structured environment in the Navy. You're getting a regular income. you don't really need to think about money too much in that context and then the prospect of having your own business or getting into something else, you're pretty much jumping off the cliff. How did you position yourself and what did you then do when you left the Navy? So I actually, I knew the poster at the time

and he sort of said to me, where do you want to go? So I said, look, I'll go to, if you could get me something in Canberra and I ended up becoming a fitter, sorry, I was actually a rigger and I was climbing 600-foot towers at Belcon and Transmitting Station. But that really wasn't what I was doing. What I was doing was just going to night school and educating myself to become a real estate agent. Let's kick in there.

Why real estate? What was the attraction there? Well, I'd actually started investing in property and I'd bought my first property when I was 22 and then I bought another property when I think I was 24. so I was really I'd read all the Jan Summers books um you probably remember Jan Summers back in the early 90s I've got got her books on my shelf mate yeah she's yeah yeah so uh so I'd so I'd really really been down that path and I felt like it was a really good fit for me

and then spectacularly it did not work very well at all I got out in in 95 and it um I think within six months i'd run out of money and i was working in a in a in a service station from midnight till dawn trying to pay the bills yeah yeah so um and that was because what by the way that that was because the very thing that i do now which is preparing businesses to hire sales people the businesses that i went into just had no training no support no systems no nothing and and we were just following other agents around and there was no way of ramping up there was no structure and uh you very very quickly uh ran out of money because it was commission only back then as well yeah a lot of it still is yeah and and we and as i said to you i i loved it but

i just i just ran out of money and then and there i was working in this service station and i thought to myself what am i going to do i could have gone back to the navy because they were losing uh they were losing trades people hand over fist they brought in a new system and everyone was was leaving yeah and then i thought um and but i just thought no i'm not going to go back i i i've cut you know my feeling when i got out of the navy was just this feeling of freedom and and it was unbelievable not to be told where you're going with you know and be on a ship for six months at a time and all that comes with that and it just wasn't me it was it was destroying my soul that's what i felt like and um you know just mindless hours and hours and hours looking at the ocean

and being on a ship with certain people that you might not have wanted to be there with, but you had to be there with them. Yeah, you've got no choice in that hierarchy, very hierarchical. And I reckon you, again, I don't know, but you'd be almost micromanaged within an inch of your life in that environment, wouldn't you, Michael? Yeah, it's incredible. And see, that was the opposite to me. I was always that person that, you know, wanted to have initiative

and build things and create things and, you know, to drive my chiefs and petty officers nuts when we're trying to change all the systems because they're just so structured and so process-driven in the Navy. But mind you, though, on the flip side of that, the discipline and determination and the patience and the persistence that comes out of the environment would also be a bonus to you

when you're leaping into the very loose real estate sales environment too, I would have thought. yeah i couldn't believe i couldn't believe how um how slack everything was like in you know i'd come from an environment where um yeah you were measured on and and you and you were you you know i believe we're way tougher than we think uh that's that's my belief is that you know you you can you can put up with a way more than what what most people think and that's for anybody that's in a in a in a career where they don't want to be in that career um you've got to keep that in mind that we are just way tougher than we think.

If we go out and do things, we can be very resourceful and we can come up with – and we can suffer a lot more than we believe. Not that you need to suffer, but, you know, the upside of it is the freedom to do what you really want to do. Yeah, and if you can sort of work yourself through the tough times and particularly the cash-flowing side of the equation, if you're moving into that sort of commission-only environment. How long were you – when you jumped into the real estate game,

how long were we talking, Matt? How long were you doing that for before the cash ran dry? Probably 12 months was, you know, I propelled it by getting a part-time job. And then I just got to the point where I knew I had to get a job. And that's when I ended up seeing an advert in the paper for Godfrey's as a vacuum cleaner salesperson. So, you know, here I was coming out of, you know, all my dreams had sort of faded. But I thought, you know what, I'm going to do whatever it takes. I'm going to go.

If I need to go and stack shelves and, you know, and even one of the KPIs said that to me about a year ago when we were still building Epic, and he said, you know, a lot of people, they have to go and get part-time jobs and to build their dreams, you've got to do whatever it takes. Totally, totally. Yeah, and that's often the thing that a lot of people don't think through enough, I think, Mark.

on about your experience with this, but particularly in that sort of performance-based environment because I know my wife and I, for example, the way we've managed that, and I've always said to people, if you're jumping into real estate or finance or a similar sort of commission-based environment, if you don't have the cash reserve to last two years and assume that you're going to have to survive off that, you're probably not going to get there. And I know that my wife and I, that the way we've done it is to basically pass the baton. So she'll earn an income to pay the bills while I'll build a part of the business. And when that's up and operating, she'll go off and do something else and she'll get to that stage.

And we've sort of done this baton pass to get to a point now where we've been able to survive the long haul financially to then reap the rewards at the other end. So, yeah, interesting. Let's talk to us about the Godfrey exercise because, again, another massive mental jump while similar sales skills underpinning it. quite a different environment to go into because i think godfrey's initially was a pretty much a family-based business wasn't it can you talk to us a bit about how that went yeah it was it was an incredible it was an incredible model in that they were basically doing direct selling under under the roof of a retail store so so there was a um there was a i learned so much about selling in that in that because it was a lot of transactions um you know

we were sometimes we were selling 40 or 50 vacuum cleaners a week and but there was this whole system that they used back then to you know from everything from the meet and greet to how you you know what questions you ask how you built the profile of the customer and then then when you went through the recommendations and all these different things but that there was there was a lot of structure there that wasn't very good either and it was and it was a bit icky and and a lot of the salespeople didn't use that sales process because it was very uncomfortable um you were kind of pinning people in the corner and it was it was just icky i guess almost the used car salesman pressure routine sort of thing you mean or not yeah absolutely absolutely so i i wasn't a

big fan of it and then later on when i ended up getting into my franchises i i changed the the process and built my own process and it became so successful that they actually came up to North Queensland, I was in Cairns and Townsville and they ended up adopting that process into the whole group. Brilliant. Can you share with us some of the things that were different and you think contributed to your success in changing your approach to that whole sales place? well you've got to you've got to put the buyer at the center of the whole the whole uh journey

and i think a lot of businesses they they ignore that fact so you've got to create a system that makes the buyer feel very comfortable from going from one step to the next step and if if there if there's a point where that doesn't feel comfortable then you need to recraft it and and i did that over a period of time where where it was it was just a simple system i could train my sales people very quickly i could train them within you know they would ramp up within a month usually and and it didn't feel uncomfortable so it had to tick all those different boxes and um and and it was it was just and i was very i was very disciplined about making sure that they didn't skip any step in that process as well yes yes yeah okay and which is always the temptation of a salesperson is just to

jump to the end because they see the see there was a waste of time but you miss those things and which are i guess in a subtle way getting rid of objections or concerns that a potential buyer might have and then wonder why the wheels fall off at the end well the classic was bushy was when when someone walked in and said i want to buy a really good vacuum cleaner and and always look over at the salesperson and i'd i'd think to myself are they going to go back and and still ask all the questions and take them through the whole process or are they just going to go straight to the top of the range vacuum and just start talking about it and and and there was and they and in the car industry they call it the road to the sale yeah and they always say the road to the

sale is the road to the sale so you don't you don't you don't vary from that from that um from that sequence of events and if you do then uh then things are going to go wrong yeah yeah it's absolutely spot on because it's all and i'll find this in in our business as well the it's not only are you uh eliminating objections in the in the mind of uh of clients and customers but the time that you spend in building rapport and relationship is is a big part of that uh is that is that how you see it as well mate or um yeah i think i think that if you looked at my sales ability uh i was probably not the you know most refined salesperson in in the way that you know i could i could put out dialogue but i was very good at at getting uh

you know rapport and building commonality now i lived in townsville and and a lot of the people there were defense people and i could just say to them look i was i was in the navy you know i spent time i did active service in the first gulf war and i could relate to them quite well and and that very quickly you know and we'd be we'd be talking about all sorts of things about children you know our children or schools or whatever else and then all of a sudden they'd say oh okay well i suppose we better buy this vacuum cleaner you know so so and i used to love it i used to really enjoy that connection and you know and taking the product out to the car for them you know even if they said no no we'll take no no and that would be the last bit you know thank thanking for thanking them

for their business when I got to the car. Nobody does that. So, you know, it wasn't that hard to stand out. Yeah, interesting. I find that across industries too, Mike. You know, my wife and I have been involved in real estate and property management and finance and the sort of spectrum of areas around the property environment.

And every time we've gone into those areas, it's just amazing how those simple things seem to be forgotten, but it's those simple things that make a massive difference to the, one, the client experience, but also the ongoing opportunity that flows from that given that people talk to others and say, you've got to go and see these guys. Yeah.

Yeah, it's the simple things that people forget and often for free that seem to make the biggest difference. Has that been your experience? It is, and that's why you have a system that makes people do these things. because it's not up to them as to whether they want to do it or not. It's the system, and then you end up managing a system and not your salespeople.

Yes, there's a key. That's an absolute piece of gold there. Yeah, okay, that's good. Well, we'll come back to the system side shortly. So you're with Godfrey's for quite some time and, again, achieved some amazing results, which I'll share in the introduction to the episode. But talk to us a bit about the journey there

and then where that led you to, if you can, please, mate. So the first decade, I was pretty casual. I had one store. You know, I even bought a yacht. I used to sail around Magnetic Island, and, you know, I was pretty chilled. And that then changed at the end of about 2009. I ended up having a divorce, and financially I took a lot of debt on because I had to build a superstore.

and we had to fit all that out and this was just after the GFC as well. So everything had been booming sort of, you know, as you remember back in sort of seven and eight and then all of a sudden everything fell off a cliff. So fortunately I was left with a lot of debt and my wife actually moved out of Townsville and went back to Canberra with the boys and I had three children under six.

Wow. And it was an incredibly tough time because I had to actually buy another business uh in Cairns the franchisee up there went bust and Godfrey's turned around to me and said uh you know do you want to buy the franchise and I said no I don't really want to I've got enough on my plate at the moment and and then they came back and they they put this deal to me and said look we really need you to buy this franchise and they anyway it saved me because it gave me this extra income that I needed to to get out of the hole and at the same time I fell into depression

And it was one of those real moments of, you know, the hero's journey where you really had to stand up and kind of face the dragon, I suppose. And I managed to get through it. But what it forced me to do, and this is, you know, there's always a silver lining, I believe. But what it forced me to do was to change that sales process. And it forced me also to stop hiring poor salespeople and plug them into a very good sales process. So there were three different things. There was changing the sales process, they were hiring A players, and then the third thing was actually building a culture of excellence with that sales team. And by doing those three things, we went from nowhere to number one, you know, very quickly within about 18 months.

I was winning every award, you know, being flown all these different conferences that they put up for competitions. But it just surprised me how quickly we went from nowhere to number one in that short space of time. And it's by implementing that integrated, the trio there that you mentioned that you feel made all the difference. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And as I said, the franchisees today still use that sales process. uh as as and and to me it was you know it was it was a necessity and but it also made more sense just to use that sales process because you all you could always fall back on it all the time um no matter who was who was working on the floor so yeah awesome so you're kicking gold you

obviously come through a very dark period of of self-reflection as well and financially very tight but come out of the other side of that given the the work that you did around improving the the sales system most people would then bask in the glory of that ad nauseum mate you haven't why make the change from godfrey's and and what do you do and why from there well it was interesting actually when in 2012 a navy ship came into cans and it was the hmas Darwin which I served on in the Gulf War and and one of the guys that I joined up with was it was one of the chief petty officers on there and and I went through this whole sort of emotion of wow did I do the right thing maybe I should have stayed in maybe I should have been like him and

you know be getting a be getting a pension in in five years time and all this stuff so I went right back to scarcity and questioned my whole you know my whole thing but then I realized that if I'd have gone back into the Navy which they would have taken me by the way they would have they'd take me now if i wanted to go back in yeah but um but the whole thing was that it's not who i am so that the bottom line is i would have jumped on a ship gone out of sydney heads and then thought holy crap i've got to sit in here for the next three months and and and hate hate what i'm doing um and life's too short to do that so so that's just a small side note but when i when i grew the businesses i i saw an opportunity to exit because the the company was floating and they

had money to buy the buy the franchises back and i'd been in the businesses for 20 years and i'd sold over 150 000 vacuum cleaners so i felt like i felt like i'd done my time and that that's a lot of vacuum cleaners and there's a lot of transactions it's a lot of selling and i thought i want to do something different and i ended up coaching some of those franchisees and the one number one thing that they wanted other than my sales process you know me to help them to to to really bed that down but the number one thing they wanted was was good sales people and and and they all said you know they can't find them they can't hire them and they can't keep them sort of thing so yeah my coach at the time sort of said what do you want to do and i

I said, look, I think there's a big gap in the market here for hiring salespeople. I feel like recruiters are missing the mark. I tried recruiters myself, and they basically send you anybody. It's all CV-driven, which is anyone can lie on a CV. Well, they're kind of having a bit of a shot in the dark. I actually call it human trafficking at the worst. is basically what they... I'm not saying that all recruiters do this, by the way,

but in the early days of recruiting, probably the last 20 or 30 years, a lot of them were just getting these databases of people and just shifting them around. Yeah, it's almost a word search on a CV and then let's spear them out and see what it takes. Yeah. So we identified that gap.

We exited the businesses. We moved from North Queensland down to New South Wales. We live in Kangaroo Valley now in a little rural town, 800 people, one pub. Beautiful. It's only one of six enclosed valleys in the world. It's just an incredible place to live. And we run all of our business from our house and do all of our business virtually. So it's an incredible transformation in that area for us.

Well, we're exactly the same, mate. what you've just described is very similar to our lifestyle at Homestead HQ and that's a choice and what I'm this is probably a great time to drill into that actually good great segue thanks mate is to get me to talk through what your absolute ideal lifestyle does look like and it sounds like you're probably already living it and then I'll then I'll dig into how you're going to maintain it so you uh is is what you're doing now pretty much the ideal lifestyle Mike oh look I think I think we've got a little bit to go yet like we we've I think um you know I always I always laugh about this because people think that you're an overnight success but the fact is it's

taken 25 years of of of some brutal um you know storms and um ups and downs to get to where I am right now but but you know what i have got is i've got a and my partner as well talila who who's who's uh you know a big part of what we do but what we do have is incredible experience and incredible and we're sitting on a mountain of of knowledge that that we can now um transform into this what we believe is what we call the epic future vision so so we want to we want to help businesses businesses for good so businesses that want to give back and and um and i know you're pretty big on this as well yeah and and we want to activate businesses to become you know socially aware and and and socially responsible so that not only are they making profit but they're

also um you know they're also helping to solve the world's problems at the same time which i feel is is our responsibility so that's our grand vision but in terms of the ideal lifestyle um you know the first priority is just to to reduce you know further reduce and and and get rid of all the debt and then uh and then to um to build an asset base um that that obviously i i don't need to work so that that would be the next step and then i think much i've got you know i've got four boys now and and they're 15, 13, 11, and 6. So my goal is to be able to spend time with them and be able to teach them a lot of different things

and travel with them and with Talila and us as a family and be able to do all those things. So that's the lifestyle that I want to lead. Yeah, and you sort of mentioned about investing in assets that are going to replace your income long-term. What's in your mind? What are you investing in or what will you invest in that's going to help make that happen?

Well, for us, we're probably a little bit behind the run rate as far as, you know, I'm a 49-year-old, but I probably don't have anywhere near the super and all those different things that a lot of people have. So I've got to kind of catch up, I suppose, over the next decade. But, you know, as David Dugan was talking to me, you know i don't think you know david as well well yeah and he was and he was saying to me that you know you you'll you'll be able to catch up a lot quicker than you think um particularly once

you've once you've got a business so the business uh strategy for me is going to be the the main strategy is that we want to build a business and possibly float that business because we believe we've created a new category in in this whole sales process and sales suitcase uh idea and and we believe that this category is is not a gap in the market it's a gaping hole in the market that nobody's really talking about and so there's there's a lot of different opportunities to to um to grow and to expand that ip and i think there's not just one business there there's actually several businesses there that we could probably uh you know to to bring on to help other people and that's what that's what we want to do so we want to be able to scale that up and and if

we can do that i feel like we'll be able to um that'll be the asset that we'll we'll build first it'll be quite a big asset over say five five years and then um and then we'll need to we'll need to off the off the back of that i think we'll need to to to get more assets in property in different areas uh from the from the side of that as well yeah you sort of touched on property earlier and obviously it's a big big interest area for myself given uh it's been very good to us Can you talk a little bit more about why property for you and what you did early on and how good, bad or ugly that was and is? Yeah, look, I've been through the whole ups and downs of property. I started very early in a strategy of buying property.

You know, as I said, I was going to Jan Summers seminars back in the 90s and it was frustrating because when I got to 1999, I actually sold one of the properties to go into business and it probably didn't really need to sell it, to be honest. I probably would have got away with not selling it. And it was frustrating because obviously, you know, there was a boom in the early 2000s and then another boom in the 2010s as well. And I kind of missed out on that in terms of investment properties. But one thing I always had was my primary residence. I always bought my primary residence. And that enabled me to borrow and leverage my businesses and do what I've been able to do. And without that, there would be no way in the world that I'd be where I am right now.

Yeah, you've raised a really interesting point there. And I think a lot of people subconsciously or otherwise have been able to lean on their home or other property to then fund and fuel their business or other initiatives. So as a sort of a building block, it can be a very good one, mate. No, that's – yeah, no, that's great, mate. But, all right, well, look, what I'm fairly keen to drill into now, given your expertise around the whole sales piece, is to perhaps break it down a little bit if we can, Mike, and perhaps starting at the individual and then looking at the team

and then the business level. Start at having a look at people's fears around this word sales because I constantly see it myself. For a lot of people, particularly in whether it be service-based businesses, as soon as you mention the word sales, there's sort of this look of fear and distaste comes across their mouth. How do you define sales and how do you sort of get people within a team process to start embracing that as something that's going to be important to them both personally and professionally? well i think i think the first thing you've got to understand is that you know that it is the most mission critical aspect of your business and and unfortunately for for most businesses and that that's not just small businesses but even medium businesses it seems to be the one that what that

gets the lesser focus and the lesser investment of time and and and funding so um and that's that's what ends up being the the biggest problem that they have because they when they don't have the sales coming in they don't have the the ability to fund and scale other parts of their business so it's it's um to me it's it it's it's a massive problem in the marketplace um and the other side of it is that marketing has generally taken off if you look at what digital marketing's taken off in the last five or ten years it's just exploded you know businesses you know you can build a a million dollar consultancy fairly quickly if you pick the right nation you do all the right things through the marketing you can bring all these leads in but what's missing is what do

you do when those leads come in if you don't have a system and you don't have a way of of converting those leads over and that's and that's where most businesses and i feel as i said i feel like there's a gaping hole in the marketplace where marketing's taken off but sales has not kept up with it at all In fact, a lot of sales process is still stuck in the 90s and 2000s. If there's a process at all, apart from... If there's a process, but a lot of people are still talking to the buyers like it's 1999 or 2009. But the problem is a lot of the buyers are very well educated and they're already 50% or 60% down the buyer's journey when they reach out to you in the first place.

True. That's very true. So tell me, at the individual level, because I sort of want to build it up from there if we can, because there will be a lot of listeners who are currently employed and probably don't see sales as even part of their role, even though I think it's part of everyone's role in the business. At that level, how would you define sales, mate? So, I mean, I guess the big part of it is psychologically. I see it as helping people, right, rather than going out and trying to push something on somebody, which I don't think you should do, by the way.

I think if your product is as good as it should be and it solves a valuable problem in the marketplace, then there's no reason why, you know, it's your responsibility to go out there and help these people to, you know, to go to the next level if they're stuck or they become a bottleneck or whatever. so I think if you've got to get into the psyche of of and I think Glenn Carlson talks about this about about helping people versus you know trying to trying to sell to people yeah so true if you're identifying something that you you need they need even if they don't know it and and therefore the passion and belief in what you're doing comes up it's not selling at all you're just solving someone's problem making their life better well I'll give you an example of a vacuum cleaner so if someone comes in to buy a $99 vacuum cleaner and you know this is back 20 years ago and and they were all bagged vacuums back then mostly and you know and you know a $99 vacuum you turn the

vacuum on and the dust just pours straight out the back and you know and if somebody had a a child that was asthmatic or dust sensitive or whatever you're not doing them any favors by selling them that 99 vacuum cleaner um it's your responsibility to sit them down and say you know guys we need to you need to have a look at this you need to you know you need to look at how much dirt's coming out of the carpet you know we need to get rid of the dust right so you need to become a professional and you need to know all the all the different uh all the different checkpoints that that that person needs to tick off in their brain and that's what that's what a system does you take them through a process where you educate them and you bring them to a point

where you say, okay, do you want to go to the next step? And then that becomes an elegant way of taking them through that process and they should never feel, you know, pressured or anything during that time. So that's a good example of how selling should be. Yeah, love it. Love it. You talk a little bit in some of the research for today's discussion, and you talk about the importance of identifying the right psychological traits

and the sort of right subconscious profile for those that are involved in this process. Are you able to just sort of break some of those down for us? So when we went to research the sales evaluations, we looked at how do we choose salespeople that can sell, basically, because every salesperson that goes into an interview will talk themselves up and they're good at that. But the problem is, I think the statistic that's jumping around is 80% of sales hires fail within two years, right?

So that's a pretty damning statistic. But when you break that down, it's actually not all the salespeople's fault. There's two factors there. There's actually salespeople that shouldn't be in sales And we all know somebody that lost their job and just put their hand up and said, all right, I'll go and sell because at least I know I can earn $80,000 or $100,000. But they may not have the proper DNA and the right fit for that particular role. So that's one factor. But the other factor is they may be going into a business that just hasn't had any systems.

And it doesn't matter how good a salesperson you are. If you don't have all the support and collateral and case studies and stories and an elegant system of taking them through that, then unless you're, you know, unless you're working 24 hours a day or something, you're probably going to fail anyway. Yeah, and that's a very good call. Talking about the team aspect then, and you've managed and trained teams very successfully over the last few decades. within the context of that system that you're talking about how do you sort of consistently deliver the result while allowing the individual personality of the people involved to come through well well i think i think it comes back to is is making sure you've got a very good set of kpis

and dashboards and and a system that that keeps people in in a in a um you know in a performance environment so that so that they they know what success looks like and they know um they know how to grow and how to um how to how to input into the into the team environment and the towards the the mission and the vision as well so that's probably the one there's two areas there you want to you want them to be able to um you know make sure that they stay on track and then the The other one is how do we then get them to assist us as leaders and entrepreneurs to get us to help us to get to the vision and the mission? And that's when we actually interview people, Bushy, that's one of the things we say is, you know, this is our mission and this is our vision. How are you going to help us to get to this?

And that's something, another thing I learned from KPI as well, by the way. Yeah, no, absolutely fundamental. If we're all aiming for the same goals and we're all on board with that, then that becomes both a magnet and a compass in its own right, doesn't it? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, okay. Well, it's sort of evolving that then into the KPI you were talking about, 100% on board with you.

What sort of things do you generally – let's say it's a service-based business. what sort of um dashboard uh do you help them create in terms of the things that that you do measure so that everyone can see how things are tracking so i i guess the biggest thing is it's no good measuring like everybody looks at how many sales per month you need um so they're they're what they call lagging kpis what you really need to look at is the what they call leading kpis which is what are the actions that you need to get to that to that number at the end of the month because by the time you get to the end of the month if you haven't landed that number it's too late so so you need you need to have um you know

how many how many phone calls or how many leads are coming in how many um discovery calls are need to be made out of those discovery calls what's the conversion to making a presentation and then out of that presentation what's the conversion to uh going into a um into a product for prospect, if you like, so a simple taste tester of your business so they don't have to commit to anything too much. It's low cost, high value. So how do we measure from point to point

so that we know whether a salesperson's doing the actions or not? And that's the simplest way. You don't want to give them any wriggle room. They're either doing the actions or they're not doing the actions. It becomes binary. Yes, yeah, love it.

It's very easy, bro. out to follow on a very easy thing to gauge for both the salesperson and and the the rest of the team yeah and the and the and the funny thing is the salesperson wants that too like they don't want to be in an environment where they don't know whether they're being successful or not so so it's a it's the responsibility of the business owners and the leaders to make sure that that system is in place and unfortunately most businesses lack that system um if they have any at all yeah well let's let's talk about the system if you can and perhaps use an example of a business that you've worked with or other way you've come in and built the system can you tell

us what the system looks like what what the steps you've been through and then how that sort of flows through at the end of the day sure so so it's um a good example would be say a company uh finance company that reached out to us in january and they uh they were uh selling invoice finance where they where they take uh they buy invoices off uh small to medium businesses um so it increases their cash flow now they had uh five the model that they had was five bdms they were paying those five bdms 140 000 a year so there was a lot of money going out in that in that environment but because the because the founders hadn't duplicated their ip they weren't getting they weren't getting very very good return on their investment at all in fact they were they

were barely getting any business in at all so we went in there and we audited their their sales environment we call it a sales environment assessment where we go in and we spend it's a half-day workshop we ask a bunch of questions and at the end of it we give them a percentage of their sales hire ready capacity. And that business scored, I think, 25% or something like that. And this is a six-figure business, Bushy. Sorry, not six-figure. This was an eight-figure business.

Eight-figure business. Eight-figure business that scored 25% on the SEA. So then we turned around and said, okay, what we need to do is we need to then build this system out for you based on the environment assessment actually tells you where the areas are that they need to work on in priority. And then we went through

and actually then unpacked that over the three or four months. They let go of all the BDMs, by the way. A few of them had already gone, but there was only one that was making any money. And then as soon as he saw that, you know, there was change on the horizon, he sort of flew the coop.

and then we ended up hiring internal sales people we changed we changed the model we brought leads in and uh they've got two sales people now and they're making more sales out of those two sales people than they were making out of the of the five bdms at 140k each and those sales people only have a base of about 70k interesting so what what was the massive change that you think has turned that around uh i'd love you to share that if you don't mind so that well it it was going across all we have a um a methodology that goes across seven different areas so uh so those seven different areas are areas like you know planning recording equipping what the process is um you know what the what the what the ratios are what the engagement are so there's all

these different areas that we go across and one of the biggest areas is a lot of people don't know who their client avatar is and and you know the saying goes that you can't see the label when you're inside the bottle yeah and a lot of a lot of businesses are like that so when someone independent comes in and and asks a few questions and and says but hang on you you guys are focusing on all these different areas this one particular area could bring you more profit than all those areas combined why wouldn't you just focus on that one area so we went in and did planning and we and we ended up uh you know crafting this this different way um we also worked on just simple things like discovery call you know we listened to the discovery call of the actual founder and

found that he all he was doing was talking about himself and the and the business he wasn't asking any questions so he wasn't gathering any information he wasn't he wasn't able to make any recommendations so you know crafting a really good discovery call and then this and then the next part of that is how do you then present to these people and and the only way to do that i believe in 2019 is to have a really really slick slide deck where where you can show online because the way you build a slide deck there's a whole psychology of how you do that you know you tell you start with the problems you start with the opportunities and then you take them through and you've got case studies and all these different things but they weren't using that

either so um so their conversion rate basically went up from about you know less than 10 percent to like 100 percent wow wow massive well i just by just putting these simple things in state you know that that you and i would have thought would have been um no no brainers but but a lot of the businesses don't have them in place yeah yeah really interesting mate love it love it but like you're saying that's a great expression you can't see the label while you're inside the bottle having someone independent that's can poke you in the ribs and can probably see that they're so close to the the forest they can't see the the trees and the funny the funny thing was that in about march april the the leaders were saying to talila we want a high sales people we want a

high sales people and she pushed back and she said no you're not ready you're not ready we've got to build the system if we don't build the system they'll come in and there's nothing to plug into this is what this is the whole problem you had before and and all of a sudden as i said and now we've got this you know we spoke to them two weeks ago and and they're they're like the whole business has changed the whole thing is transformed from from going basically you know south to heading north very quickly. So for those that are listening that are either in a business and not necessarily know of a business, but if they're in a business

and they can see that the business could be doing a lot better by implementing sort of an integrated process around that, because let's face it, no sales means no cash means no oxygen for a business means no growth for a business means you might lose your job. that's pretty much how the bouncing ball works in any business if if the listeners either as a an employee or as a sales team leader or as an owner of a business can really see some merits in getting you involved to have a good look at them and start to put together an ecosystem that's

really going to improve life for everyone in the business and more importantly the clients that their and the customers that they're helping how do they do that mate what's the best way for them to engage with you in that regard oh look probably the easiest way is just reach out to me on on linkedin or um or email me just just michael at epicsalesgroup.com.au um and we have a we have a very easy system where we obviously have a chat with them we we we make sure that that you know that they're going to be that we're going to be able to help them first and foremost and then also uh you know the sales environment assessment is is is a really good system because as i said it's low cost it the the value and the insights that you get out of that alone is um is is just

gold like the the the things that a lot of people a lot of the businesses have got out of those first session is uh is amazing because as i said you can't see these things um you know you don't know what you don't know so yeah you're absolutely spot on there mate 100 agree yeah okay um well i reckon we might dive into the old ambush session now michael which is uh the five questions i get you to tap dance to uh pretty quickly but of of interest to all the listeners over time so uh jumping straight in there mate uh what's your favorite quote and why i've got a lot of quotes that i've because i write a um a um diary out every day and uh a journal i should say but the one that really resonates with me at the moment is that the number

one failure is patience i'll just get to repeat that one mate we had a little bit of a drop out there so i just hit that one again so my favorite quote is the number one failing in business is patience love it and and i believe that is also for investment as well by the way but that comes that comes from gary v yeah yeah and why is that one uh it's such a key do you think to yourself well i believe it's it's it's almost like my own situation where it's taken me 25 years to get to where i am um and you know and then other people can come in and say you're an overnight success but you've got to be patient you've got to you've got to stand you've got to stay true to the to the um to the mission and the vision and um and there are times where nothing seems to be going right

you know like everything seems to be going the wrong way so it's it's about having that belief and that um and going through and pushing through when you when you need to having the resilience and that's that's what i feel like and every time i've been patient something's really incredible has happened yeah your music to my ears mike it's a massive believer i've been a student of success for nearly 35 years now and the one resounding thing that comes through every single thing whether it be

business, investment, in nature it doesn't matter what it is it's the long game that produces the fruit so patience and persistence that goes along with that to go through the tough times knowing that if you stick at it then it's

you'll get the result is a key but it's it's also a a quality that we don't see a lot of these days mate we live in such a fast-paced instantaneous everything world that patience is um certainly something that's dying on the vine and and i would have thought that patience is a key characteristic of the sales environment too it's not you're not trying to get an instant result if you're building a relationship with some with someone then it looks after itself if you've got enough patience to allow that to happen would that be would that be a fair thing to say yeah absolutely the the having the having the um having a system where you where you go from one step to the next you've got to

build patience into the system so um because sales people are naturally going to want to want to rush rush through and um and that's why it's the responsibility for for the for the leader or business owner to make sure that there's patience built in yeah and that's spot on love it okay our next one sort of goes into the book field uh what would be the top book that you would recommend people read and why i at the moment i'm actually i'm reading a book by uh jordan peterson uh the professor over in um uh toronto and he's got the book 12 rules for life the an antidote to chaos and I just love everything he does and I've been watching him online

so he's a big... I love the way he talks about us all being responsible for having a meaningful life and how a lot of... You might get your own house in order before you start pointing your finger at other people so it's very refreshing what he's doing. Isn't it?

It's really interesting, I find, And I'm a bit of a disciple of Jordan Peterson myself because he just talks common sense. He sort of gets back to the basics and sort of carves through all of the political correctness agenda that gets pushed around the place back to, as you say, the individual taking responsibility for themselves rather than continuously pointing fingers and arms at others. So, yeah, great read, mate.

That's a brilliant book. Okay, now this one's a little bit left field, but it is a subject that everyone in Australia at least feels pretty strongly about and that is minimising the tax they pay. So what's the top thing that you've legally done to minimise the tax that you pay, Mike? Look, I'd say probably over the past decade is probably just having a family trust and having a bucket company on the other side is probably fairly simple but it's changed a lot for me and being able to reduce tax in that way quite legally as well, which is good.

Yeah, absolutely. Spot on. Good suggestion, that one. Okay, back on the investment topic then. What's both the worst and the best piece of investment advice that you've ever received? i think i think um you know having a real estate agent in in melbourne ringing me up and telling me to sell my property in 1999 and actually listening to him was was wasn't a good move um and uh you know cashing in on a property when when i should have just kept it was you know we're all geniuses in hindsight but but that was that was frustrating and probably the best has been in investing in myself I've spent uh you know probably over a

couple of hundred thousand dollars on on seminars and and personal investment and coaches I've had five different coaches over the last decade as well who have all given me different um uh you know different pathways and different insights and incredible wisdom over that time yeah so the And it's really interesting, the five different coaches. Is that something that you went with one coach and then you felt that you reached a point where you needed something else so you then sought someone else? I'd be interested in your thinking around that, mate, if you don't mind.

So I believe that they always say that when the student is ready, the teacher shows up, I think was the saying. That's it. But, you know, a lot of them, if I look at the first coach, it was a lady up in Cairns, and, you know, she introduced me to Simon Reynolds, who then introduced me to the next coach, which was Andrew Roberts, and then I ended up getting the KPI book. And then, obviously, Ben Carlson's been a big influence over the last couple of years,

and now David Dugan. But I believe that every one of those coached had taught me what I needed to, to then move on to the next step. So it was, it sort of flowed on from each one to the next. And you've obviously, both in the context of what you're doing and how you help others, you're a big believer in mentors as a helpful road to success. You couldn't do it without them. You couldn't because there's so many variables in business, and you can make one poor decision that could send you backwards a long, long way, and you'd be a big advocate of critical thinking, which is what David Dugan talks about, and how most businesses just don't have enough time to do critical thinking, and that's why they end up being in a hot spot all the time. Yeah, absolutely dead right. 100% agree. Brilliant, mate. Now, just back on the personal front then, what's a personal habit that you adopt that you believe contributes most to your success so far? this is a funny one i i actually went to a uh a meeting in sydney and and met uh you probably

know john hollenberg yes yes so john's a website designer on the gold coast we're actually working with him at the moment uh to build him his sales team and uh he he mentioned that he used to have a cold shower every morning and the benefits of it um so back in january i started having cold showers and uh it was obviously everything was going swimmingly back then when it was 40 degrees in in summer and everything um but then as you get towards winter it gets colder and colder and colder so i've had over 200 cold showers since january um and it's but it's a metaphor it's like everyone says are you crazy you're having a cold shower but it's a metaphor for um getting yourself to do something you don't want to do and um and telling you and you know tony robbins talks

about this about telling your mind that you're in control of the of the mind and that the mind's not in control of you you're not subconsciously walking around in a daze all day so when you get in a cold shower and um and it's it's actually it's health benefits for the for the change of temperature and all that as well but what it does is it actually um starts the day off with a win and um and then obviously from there uh it just gets uh it's it's easy to do things you don't want to do love it love it mate yeah that's that's brilliant and it is such a simple thing to do and and i'm with you i mean you get that cold blast of water on the scalp yes it just i don't know what it does to the neurons but uh it certainly gets the the thinking very clear

very quickly mate so um and just on a just just on a side note my my four boys did it the last time they were here for the weekend and uh it actually blew me away that they they all jumped in in the middle of winter um because it's you know it gets down to uh we get a little bit of frost here every now and again but it probably gets down to five degrees at night here in kangaroo valley in july and they all jumped in the shower and um just off the momentum and um and you know me leading the charge i was just blown away they all jumped in and had a cold shower I did offer them a little bit of bribery and corruption. There was $10 in it.

I love it, mate. I love it. That's really leading the way, mate. Another perfect segue, thanks, Mike, into the question I like to wrap up our discussions with, and that is if, I normally say if you spoke to a school leaver, but if you had a chat to your boys about where you think they should best invest their time, money,

and skills to create their version of freedom long-term, what would you say? I think the most important thing is to learn to save a portion of your money straight away. I think, like, the value of compounding is just, you know, if I think back to, you know, I first got one of those IOOF growth with 10-year savings plans that they were selling probably 25, 30 years ago.

And just the ability to take it out of your pay and not see it was the first thing that sort of set me up to be able to get the deposit for the investment property. So just being able to save money is so important. So that's probably the first thing. And then the second one would be to invest in personal development

and look at that investment in yourself as the greatest investment you can possibly make um and then and then the thirdly is probably just just being patient for young people like a lot of them are 25 years old and expecting to you know to be mega successful but you've got you know you basically when i was 25 i thought i was dying of old age but you've got you've basically got you've got you've got tons of time like you've got decades from when you're 25 to to go out and and experiment and you know have a few failures and and you can still bounce back so time you just got so much time to to do what you need to do when even if you're you know even if you're running a bit behind the run rate you can still

you've only got to get one one good idea or one executed business uh that that really flies together and and um and you'll be you'll be fine yeah it's spot on mate and i did just talking about that you sort of mentioned earlier in our chat that uh you felt like you're a bit behind the run rate at nearly 50 it's you've still got plenty of time on your hands mate and if you look at the some of the greats like colonel sanders and warren buffett they didn't really even get into gear until they're in their late 50s so um i think time is is something that uh if we embrace it as a friend rather than treat it as an enemy and then play the long game then time can work wonders for for most people if they they stick it out and and follow that patience and persistence

that you were talking about earlier mate so yeah love that mate uh in bringing to a close is there anything else that we haven't talked about that you'd like to share with the listeners that you think um uh will be advantage to them particularly around the benefits and the importance of adopting a sales mentality to all aspects of their life look i think i think if you if you're in a business or you or you're working for a business i think the just the importance of a sales process or a sales suitcase just cannot be understated like i feel like it's the whole elephant in the room that nobody is addressing in a lot of these businesses and um and the majority of businesses not investing in this is just costing them um a lot so i would um i would suggest that that's

probably just the one thing that that if if you you know and whether you whether you talk to me or whether you talk to you know there's plenty of information online about sales playbooks and and different providers on those things so i would just spend that time um because that you can't get a better investment um because it's if it if it's what you know is the catalyst that gets you to the next level and and makes your business fly then you know everything else is going to look after itself after that absolutely agree once the cash comes into the business then you can scale a business you can do lots of things with business but without without that front end uh actually doing the business then there is no business that's right and time you get you get time back

which is the most important thing so that is the piece of gold mate look uh been awesome having a chat uh i know that uh the listeners at whatever level they're in whether as individuals working for someone they're managing teams or they're starting their own business or running their own business this is a absolutely foundational skill and a foundational system that needs to be adopted to achieve success at any level so i really encourage the listeners to reach out to you mike and i know you'll continue to do great things and and help a lot of people and a lot of business do some some big things to help the world as well on the journey mate so i appreciate your time today yeah thank you and appreciate uh the invite and um being able to share my journey and

uh hopefully um if you know people can get something out of it that would be fantastic too i'm sure they will mate appreciate your time mate we'll keep in touch all right no worries cheers well freedom fighters how good was that to get a summary of all this investment gold on the show notes, just email me on hello at khgroup.com.au. That's H-E-L-L-O at khgroup.com.au. Or check us out at www.bushymartin.com.au forward slash Get Invested. I look forward to joining you next week for another episode of the Get Invested podcast. So thanks for listening. And as always, dream as if you live forever and live as if you die tomorrow. Thanks for watching!