Start With A Win - Interview With Jon Cheplak

Episode Date: July 3, 2019

On this episode of the Start with a Win podcast, our guest is Jon Cheplak. Jon helps people dive deep within themselves to find the humility, vulnerability, and transparency they need to be emotionally mature and then able to succeed in their business endeavors. Through a mutual discovery process, Jon asks clients and potential clients questions like “Where did you come from?”, “Why do you want to grow?”, and “What do you to do to experience you from a higher level?” He has found that clients who are willing to be the most transparent and go the deepest with Jon will most likely outperform those who don’t.Jon also talks about the connection between head and heart, encouraging clients to look at the areas that are under performing and be willing to tweak the process internally first, which will make positive changes in their professional lives in turn. Choice management issues are an area of focus for him, since the result of this head-heart connection is the biological desire to get a “hit” of oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin. If people are choosing the wrong things to give their attention to, they are likely doing so because of the positive feelings those decisions give them. Understanding these dynamics and desires about yourself will help you be able to lead yourself first and use that experience to influence your leadership of others as well.Connect with Jon:https://www.facebook.com/joncheplakhttps://www.cheplaklive.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/joncheplakhttps://twitter.com/joncheplak?lang=enhttps://www.instagram.com/cheplaklive/Connect with Adam:https://www.startwithawin.com/ https://www.facebook.com/REMAXAdamContoshttps://twitter.com/REMAXAdamContos https://www.instagram.com/REMAXadamcontos/ 

Hey listeners, before we get started with today's episode, I wanted to say that we love making this show for you and the community that is growing around Start With A Win. To say thank you, we want to give a few lucky listeners an opportunity to win free swag. If you have an Apple account, please go on to Apple Podcasts and leave me a five-star rating and a written review. Here's the catch. When you leave your written review, sign it with your Twitter or Instagram username. Once a week, Mark and I will pick our favorite review, contact you on social media, and send you some free swag. It takes less than two minutes, so please leave your review today. And remember, start with a win.

Atop of the 12th floor of the Remax World Headquarters, you're listening to Start With A Win with CEO Adam Kantos. I like that music. Oh, yeah. Atop of the 12th floor, Adam Kantos here, CEO of REMAX. Start with a Win, our amazing podcast with some amazing guests. And we have with us here in studio today, producer Mark. What's up, buddy?

Oh, you know, it's a beautiful day in Denver. I got no complaints. There you go. There you go. You're doing amazing as usual. So good. So good. I love it.

I love it. And we got a very, very special guest from out of town. He came in a couple of days ago. He spent all day yesterday with us. Hanging out with the Remax crew? With the Remax crew. I mean, there was some intensity. There was some talk of growth. I mean, there may have been some push-ups in the process here. So we've got with us John Cheplak. How are you doing, brother? I'm so good, man. It's a pleasure to be here with you. Right on. Well, we are honored to have you here. I mean, man, you are like the world traveler as

well. You're out growing businesses and you're a coach. You help people realize where they need to go both personally as well as professionally in the real estate industry and outside of it. Tell us, when somebody starts coaching with you, when you go, hey, I can help you grow your business, because they come to you and go, John, please, please. And I know there's a line at your door. You get people applying to your business constantly saying, John, can you coach me? Can you coach me? And what do you say to them when you have that first conversation? Well, it's beautiful because it happened in the garage before I came up. Oh, wow. A gentleman inquired and very productive team in the East Coast. And he said, you know, what's important to you? And, you know, we go through

that mutual discovery process. And I said, well, first of all, what I'll share with you are is number one, where did you come from? I'm certainly I'm open minded. But when you come from a sphere of influence or some of the already existing masterminds that some of my clients are currently in, that for me and looking at a value match and a vision match, that's the first piece. The second piece that's most critical is why do you want to grow? What's the reason? And if it's, you know, I want to live like a rapper, which is cool. I don't care if someone wants to live like a rapper and all, but if there's not something underneath it

that's foundational from a holistic space, I mean, becoming, whether it's a better friend, a better parent, but a better spouse, living a whole life. If there's not something that that money is tied to, in other words, when I say it's not tied to, I don't mean a big why, which overwhelms people. We talked about that. Oh, yeah. I mean, something that gets them to recognize real estate is not who you are. It's what you do to experience who you are at the highest level. And so if that can be bridged and it connects with them, that's a big one from a visioning standpoint, not just numbers. and and then the other big kicker like this gentleman certainly as you know we keep confidentiality with folks is the more transparent they come in the more that i know it's an absolute yes that we can work together but as you've observed in working real closely and hanging is that the ones that are willing to go vertical, deep within themselves instead of horizontal,

they will outperform everyone in their numbers. Because the numbers aren't normal that are happening. Oh, no, they're not. I mean, it's crazy. But you're just not scratching the surface. And that's what I'm hearing you get to here is a lot of people come in and they look at, okay, what surface changes to my business can I make in order to increase business? And really, they only see surface change then. years or so and are very familiar with each other's thought process and lifestyles and things like that, it always begins deep down inside. You don't look at people and go, all right, how many customers do you have coming in the door? That's not your first question. I mean, that's almost your last question because that happens when you get all the rest of this together. You think about family, you think about relationships, you think about, okay, who are you surrounding yourself with? You know, the whole, that old Jim

Rohn saying you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with, choose wisely. And even to the point of how's your diet? How's your, you know, how's your head today? Are you getting up opening your eyes to a smile or to a frown and things like that? So it's so cool to see you take and just peel that onion until you get to practically nothing within the human being. And then you start putting it back together. What got you to that point in coaching? Because you see a lot of coaches running and go, all right, how can I help your business? Because they're looking for a transactional relationship. You're deeper than that, man. Sure.

It goes back to one of my mentors and what they shared with me. And I had to go through my own discovery. I'd heard the words and kind of used the words too. I had to go through some experiential stuff. But it holds so true is there's nothing going on privately that won't show up publicly. Oh, that's deep. At some point in time. And then going even deeper into it is our sicknesses and our secrets. And just like as we were sharing with the great leadership team and the business development folks yesterday,

is that it's about the personal human experience. We're in the moment creation business. And if there are things that are missing for us in our relationships, personally, professionally, significant others, we're not going to perform at the highest level. And so I was taught that. And then I, as I moved through my life and came to understand that, yes, I, I had business success, but there was another piece that needed to mature, and that was emotional maturity. And when you take a look at having that emotional maturity, that ability to connect, then you can build community. But in that, you've got to be what you say you are. You can't live a

lie. And so through my own experiences, my places in life where I stumbled, fortunately, that was my classroom that I chose to use the contrast of that versus many folks. If you're listening and you're going through a struggle or you've got some history that's gotten in your way, don't let it be your story. Let it be your history. So let's unpack that real quick, because we have a lot of people, well, everybody has history, right? Everybody has that shadow that they kind of, you know, they try to avoid. What I got from you is just shine a light on the thing and get past it instead of hiding from it. Do you find that that is a good way of, you know, just, hey, just admit it and move on and go find something better.

Because that's, you know, we see people enter our business lives as partners, as customers, things like that. And you look at somebody, you go, they're unhappy. And if you're unhappy and they're unhappy, it's like, that's two bad things crashing into each other. You can't help them and they can't help you. And it just doesn't end up well anyway. And that seems to be the starting point of a lot of people who are trying to turn their business around. What quick pointers do you have for somebody when it comes to realizing and moving on from that? Well, the first thing is that it's a cliche, but it's cliche that we operate and function is the rejection you're afraid of outside

is about an nth degree of the rejection you hold inside yourself by not accepting that part of yourself. And so one of the things that I work with, and certainly many of the leaders I'm working with are on this Facebook Live, and they'll say it and then live it, and they take it out to their environments. Be a witness, not a judge. I like that. Be a witness, not a judge. And why we go so clearly, so many times people go to acquire knowledge and information from great coaches, great trainers, and what they do is just take, okay, there's the information, I'm going to pass it through my people. But what they haven't done is they have not internalized it.

So this be a witness, not a judge. Okay, now you need to be able to do that and not have resistance in your life, resistance in your leadership. Where are the areas of my life that I'm judging myself? Where are the areas that I need to visit and see that it doesn't make me bad. I'm not

embarrassed by it. And actually, it's a common ground that many leaders don't have when they get the three most critical pieces, humility, vulnerability, and transparency. When leaders do that, they create common ground and they humanize themselves. And I'm going to tell you something, the recruiting situation is game over because here's the principle is you can't lead another human being until you can lead yourself. And I'm talking about leading yourself to your health and fitness at whatever level that is. Leading yourself to when you wrong someone or don't handle something right, owning it. Leading yourself to the ultimate, I think, growth moment for a leader is taking the mirror that we all have that sits at waist level.

And when something isn't working out, moving the mirror up to eye level. Oh, nice. Look yourself in the face. Yeah. Oops, it's me. My agents are this. Awesome. Everyone's a mirror of you. I know, John. Why do I hire you? All right. So you touched on those three points. What are those again? Humility, vulnerability, and transparency. And it was the opposite of what i was taught i mean i was a young man in 1995 was my first leadership role and it was look good sound good play the part well we know how that turned out it was a bumpy ride so do you think i mean uh ego is a huge block of those three things right it's massive and i'd say i'd say from an internal perspective we talked about this yesterday as we because my whole thing is how do we interact with everyone?

Because if we can make that emotional connection, ego is our protector. Right. And like you're talking about is ego has its duality. It has its place where it serves us. Okay. And it gets us to walk through those doorways of fear. But then ego is our projector. And so from a

standpoint of use, just like fear, use it in your power, use ego in your power, use ego at times to take a magic pause and say, wait a minute, I'm full of myself right now. I need to back that down, but use it as, as an, as an observant, a witness of someone else. When you see someone that's anger or someone that's, you know, puffery smoke blower and just like, like annoying or even rude to, you know, wow, egomaniac go to a place of empathy. Well, I like that because, because you know, tone and facial expressions and body language can push us away and we can go into defend mode. When we go into defend mode, we're in conflict and we don't get resolution. But someone in that relationship, whether it's two business owners, whether it's a branch manager and an agent, or it's a

team leader and an agent, when one of those two people has gone through the personal work, the commitment to emotional maturity, they can look past and say, oh, they're not angry. Anger is a secondary emotion. The foundation is fear, because there's only two emotions humans have. Humans have love and fear. Two emotions, love and fear. That right there is super powerful. Super powerful because with love we're giving, with fear we get fear response, fight, flight, or freeze. None of those three things are productive. No. Anger shows up when someone's mad at you. They're afraid. And you can, depending on the relationship, depending on the intimacy level, or if sometimes you want to

shock the relationship to serve them, and when someone's getting really upset with you, you take your time and say, can I ask you something? What are you afraid of? Ouch. That's a vulnerable question. It is. That's a very vulnerable question. We've dug deep into our souls here. We've become vulnerable, transparent, exhibiting that humility. Let's transfer that into business growth. 100%. What comes to mind when I say, John, I got my heart right. I connected it to my head. Because you're always talking about connecting the head and the heart. How do I turn that into business growth to gather the people in my potential business community, the agents? I'm a broker owner of a real estate

office, the agents that I want to join my office. Or if I'm a business owner, say an agent, to gather the consumer so that I can bring them in and help them. How does that translate? So now how do we bridge that over into the business in a space where we can get results? Right, right. Because we want that, too. Yeah, exactly. I mean, ultimately, we're trying to make a profit.

We're running a business here, but we have to do all these things, and the profit is the result. Yes. So sometimes it's baptism by fire because someone will come in and they'll tell me what's going on. I says, well, we've got a couple things. I got to get you out of your head and into your heart. And we go through those three critical principles, really, humility, vulnerability, transparency. So the next action step or the question and the action steps behind it. Where are the areas? Because when you've gotten ego out of the way and you're open and willing, you'll listen, you'll try some things, and you're aware, you will revisit where you revert back to form. You're willing to be held

accountable there. Now I can go into the business and I can say, all right, so here's what we need to do. Where are the areas that you know you're not performing, you're not delivering, and your agents or your staff know you're not? Write them down. Awesome. Now what we're going to do is we're going to go through a process. In the sales meeting, we're going to stand up in front of them and talk about these items. First of all, thank you so much for your continued commitment to me. The single most important thing that I need to do is be a better leader. I've watched my leaders stand up in front of their people and say, hey, when they have me come out and speak or train, first thing I want to talk to you about is our training. And certainly we have John come out quarterly, but that's separate.

Our training is failing. I'm responsible for it. I'm not delivering at a high level. I want to let you know that I'm recommitting to it and I'm open to all of your input and supporting me. You will watch a room change. You've just taken any complaint that anybody might have and turned it into an empathetic response. It's amazing. So there's a principle in that we talked about yesterday

is move towards conflict. And I don't mean where it's something really bad, because we'll talk about what is the, I guess, bad piece, is for leaders to remember this principle. Anything where there's conflict or an open loop in the relationship, close the loop, move towards it, move towards resolution. Because if you don't, and I know there's listeners out there that have some open loops, that have some conflict that's floating around, vapor, if you will, in the environment. If you don't, it will turn into drama. So let's talk about that term open loop for a second. Sure.

Because I love this term. It's used in marketing. It's used in self-discovery. My perspective, and tell me if I'm right or wrong on this. My perspective of an open loop is an open loop is I don't have the answer to this, this question. And as a result, because of a fear based response, I fill it with the worst case scenario. And when I have the worst case scenario, I'm functioning defensively as opposed to offensively, offensive the love manner instead of the fear manner. So for all our listeners out there, we're trying to provide some clarity into these situations because that answers that question. It files it away in the back of our head. There's no more open loop. There is some surety in their life. There is some confidence, and that leads to happiness and people moving forward with a

relationship. Is that safe to say? Yeah, 100%. And what it is is what is the disease, if you will. You've got symptoms, and you've got disease.pletions right are in that too okay is avoidance avoidance not moving towards a completion you know it's kind of like we talk about everyone's an innovator and i say oh you're an innovator so tell me about your consistent this is 2019 right tell me about your consistent video initiative tell me about your email open rates and subjects lines you've studied we're getting the highest r you know in the marketing environment gets the highest roi Tell me about your email open rates and subjects lines you've studied. We're getting the highest R, you know, in the marketing environment, gets the highest ROI.

Tell me about the click-throughs. Oh, those don't work. Oh, I'm going to get around to those. Oh, okay, so you're an avoider or you're an innovator. Right. So it's even, it's all of those things. It's the avoidance of it's it's uh as i talked i was talking about my buddy played uh for belichick right you know it's

the it's i want the sexy outcome but i'm not willing to do the unsexy stuff moving towards uh resolution in a relationship moving towards a project that you know you need to get done, but you don't. Yeah. And I'm going to mask it. And then what happens is you stack all these things on top of it and you are now context switching because now you're, you're proud that you're a multitasker, but if you've got just alone, if you've got two things going on, now you're operating at 40% effectiveness on one, 40% effectiveness on others. You've lost 20% effectiveness. And that keeps diminishing every time you switch back. Yes. Add another one, add another one. And guess what? Well, I don't have a, I have time management issues. Oh, so you fell into that lie too. No, you don't. You have choice management issues.

Choice management. I love that. All right, let's dig deep into that one real quick. We keep mining gold here. I mean, it's another scoop of the shovel, and there's some more gold in that. So choice management. Everybody complains about, I don't have time for that.

I mean, Warren Buffett has the same 24 hours that that we have and he seems to make some money in the process uh you know dave linegar our co-founder of remax that guy has 24 hours in the day you know the president of the u.s has 24 hours the mvp of the super bowl has 24 hours a day what's the difference between their choices and our choices? Why do we struggle in some of those when it comes to, you know, we always blame it on, I don't have time. Sure. Well, it's what people, and it's where I go deep, but, you know, if people want to know how come, and these people, they do the work by all means.

As you know, they were all very, very productive people before I got the opportunity to work with them. So by no means, I kind of ride along with him. But what they were already wired to do and have done to get there is to just go deeper. And I walk alongside with him deeper. It's a chemical thing that's going on. Oxytocin, serotonin, dopamine. It's how those things hit us. So we're going for the fix. It's an unconscious thing that takes us over. So that's part of the choice management right there. It's the chemical reaction inside our bodies. Just like we talked about the head and the heart. I asked everyone yesterday, when you get nervous, what happens? My palms get sweaty. So when you get nervous,

well, I stutter or I forget what I'm going to say or I faint or I pass out. Awesome. But is that happening in your head or is it happening in your heart? Because what happened before that? Oh, my heart started racing. Oh, that's right. So the heart's number one job is to bring it back to rhythm so it doesn't release the right hormones for the brain to act. Interesting. So this is your body's siren going off that something's not right here. 100%, just like the social media piece. It's a drug. It's an addiction. So it's that wanting Maslow's hierarchy and needs, which we talked about too. And this is what's great is, and as I shared with the group yesterday, well, we'll go a little bit of kumbaya, but we're going to go a lot of kumbaya. Well, we're going to go a whole bunch of it, but this is what works. It's everyone out here,

and you know this, y'all know how to make money. But have you mastered yourself, the human? Because if you, and our life is mastery and understanding what happens physically and psychologically, because I know from the standpoint of where I did well in business as a branch manager, as an agent, as an executive. And then when I had to really take a look at myself and where I was missing in life

and when I had to really take a look at myself and where I was missing in life and when I had to go deep within myself, everything in my personal and business experience and those that I work with went to a whole other level because guess what? It comes back to I can lead people, but we're in the excellence business. Y'all know how to make money, but can you lead yourself here? And once you can lead yourself here and understanding what's going on inside, because everything going on outside in your life, outside in your business, outside, meaning your agents, you lead the, the, the, the business part you have starts right in here. I love this. So I'm going to, I'm going to wrap this whole thing up. Awesome. And put a bow on it. Cool. I mean, I took a ton from this. This was truly, and I think everybody out there in social media land and on the podcast can admit,

you're going to have to listen to this one again. Because there is more gold in this podcast than you can possibly imagine. You've got to get yourself right. You get yourself right, You know how to make money in your business. You've done it. I mean, it's happened. But if you get yourself right, your business gets better and better and better. And then you scale yourself. You scale your business. Life is happy. It's good. It's all good. Awesome. John Cheplak, thanks for being on the show. Start with a win today. I know you start with a win every day.

I see you on social media. I'm at the gym. You're at the gym. My best to you and your family and your business and all those that you serve. So thank you very much. And we'll catch you next time on Start with a Win. Honored, brother. Thank you.

Thank you so much for listening to Start with a Win. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. Don't forget to go onto iTunes and subscribe, write a review, and rate the show. It helps us get the word out and reach more people. You can follow Adam on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. And remember, start with a win. Thank you.