EP 148: Mastering Sales and Mindset with Brian Will

You know, Brad, I like to tell people I'm one of the most unconventionally educated guys in business I've ever met. I'm the guy who failed out of high school at 16, managed to graduate, but with like a D plus average, got kicked out of the house, had to join the military. I know you were in the Marine Corps. I did four years Air Force, four years Army. Got off active duty, tried to hold a job, couldn't get one, kept getting fired, so decided to start my own business. And I went into the landscaping business because at the time I was 21 and figured anybody could mow grass and dig holes. and built that company up to about seven franchise locations over eight years. And as I like to say, it did really well until it didn't. And that one collapsed, fell apart on me. Lots of good lessons in that first big failure. And then went on after that, transitioned to the insurance industry, built a company I sold to a venture capital firm, started another company we sold to another venture capital firm, another one we sold to a private equity firm, went into consulting and sales and management, with fortune 500 companies. I wrote three books. I got into politics. I, uh, became a pilot dive master. I've pretty much done everything people say they're going to do and they never actually do. So it's kind of been my journey.

So I, I got started when I was 21. I was in the national army national guard at the time and, uh, no clue what I was doing. Like the title of my book is how to succeed with no money, no education and no clue. And that was exactly me. I didn't know what I was doing. Nobody was helping me. I didn't have any money, but I just went out and I figured it out and I did it and I struggled and, and, and. The first challenge I had, and I see this with a lot of young entrepreneurs, is as I started becoming more successful and my income started moving up, I moved my lifestyle up at about 110% of my income. So I was always 10% behind the eight ball. And the problem was when I got to, I think I was 28 or 29 at the time. And the two mistakes I made is that I had one client who represented about 80% of our business. It was a, it was a multifamily commercial installation company, building Bartma complexes all over the Southeast. And we were the landscape company and I was doing, you know, six or seven projects at a time. And, you know, I thought we were good. The problem was they ended up hiring a new VP of, of, uh, of contracting and he had a son who was a landscaper. And so he fired me. And he hired his son to be the landscape contractor for all these projects. Well, in the commercial space, I don't know how it is today, but back then when they fire you, they also hold your money because you have a six-month warranty guarantee on everything you've done. So in their mind, we're just not going to pay you for six months. Well, the problem was I had an infrastructure, resources, equipment, loans, cars, houses. I had all this infrastructure to support this multi-million dollar company. And when they stopped paying me, I didn't have any financial resources. I didn't have any savings. I didn't have any cash and I didn't even have any other customers. And when they withheld that money, I mean, I bounced 130 checks in one month. The bank shut my accounts down. My vendors all sued me because I couldn't pay them. I literally had to sell every single thing I owned in this world right down to my furniture to get enough cash to pay people off so that I could be broke and start over again. I like to tell the story. I sold all my furniture. Christmas comes. I've got a wife and a two or three-year-old daughter at the time. My mother comes to visit and she's like, there's no place to sit. Where's your furniture? And I'm like, mom, I had to sell it. I mean, I got a three-year-old. I got no business. I got no money. Everybody in the world's got their hand in my pocket right now. I'm broke. So she goes out and she says, well, for Christmas, I'm going to buy you furniture. So she bought us furniture for Christmas. They went home and guess what I did?

it. I sold the furniture because I had to have money. I didn't need a place to sit. I had to feed my kid. Right? So two things we learned. Never, ever, ever get so deep into one client that if they fire you, your entire world can fall apart. Because if that's what you've got, you don't have a business, you have a job. You have a job with an enormous liability that has the ability to take you out. And second, always, always, always have enough cash reserves set aside, some financial backing, so that if something happens to you, Again, you can't be taken out at the drop of a hat. And those, I carried those lessons with me for the rest of my life and everything I've ever done. So two big lessons that probably it needed to happen for me, for me to learn what I needed to learn.

I call it building blocks, building blocks of lifestyle, right? You get a building block of lifestyle, you get a business that will support it, and then you secure that building block so that it can't be taken away by putting cash and investments aside. Then you go to the next level. And if you will follow that pattern of building blocks over time, then you can never get hurt. I got to tell you, one of the things that scares me the most today is losing everything again. I mean, if you say what wakes you up in the middle of the night, That wakes me up in the middle of the night. I never want to be put back in a position like that again. It was horrible.

Well, throw in the fact that I found out at the same time, my daughter needed open heart surgery. And because I had gone, I had lost all my money. I skipped making my health insurance payments for three months. And then we find out she needs open heart surgery. And now I have no insurance. So just, you know, to pile on, you know, I mean, my entire world was falling apart at the time. I will tell you this though, Brad, as I look back at my life and we call this connecting the dots backwards, every bad thing that's ever happened to me turned into something good. And I can take those experiences and show you how they made me a better person. My business is better. My family, everything has turned into something better because I learned from the negative and I learned from the failure, which by the way, A lot of people don't do. One of my classic statements is failure is not the key to success. Learning from failure is the key to success. And if you will learn from that failure and take that to the next business or the next opportunity, that's how you build and grow and become better and more successful.

I cringe when I hear that.

Because failure leads to failure. Let me ask you something. Do you know anybody, Brad, in your life that it seems like everything they touch turns to gold? Like they do something like, holy crap, that guy just... Do you also know people that everything they touch seems to fall apart and they can't win to save their life? That's because the people that can't win never learned from the last failure. That failure didn't make them successful. It led to the next failure because they didn't damn learn. Success is about learning from failures, not about the failure itself. You don't fail fast. Failure leads to failure leads to failure. Learning from the failure so you don't make that mistake again. Then you learn from the next failure so you don't make that mistake again. And eventually you will learn enough lessons that you'll be successful in whatever it is you do. But it's the learning that people miss out on. They think, oh, I'm just going to fail and it's going to be awesome.

saying post failure. Yeah.

That's why failure doesn't lead to success. Failure leads to failure. Learning from failure leads to success.

I look, if there's a hundred lessons from where you are to where you want to be, if there's a hundred, maybe there's 50 for you because you're super smart and you have money and you have backing and you have the right parents. And, but there's a set of lessons you're going to have to learn. You're either going to learn them personally, which means fail, learn, fail, learn, fail, learn, fail, learn, or you're going to hire a coach or a mentor who has already made those mistakes who can say, Brad, don't do that. That's not going to work. Okay. I did that. This is what's going to happen. Then I did this and that worked. If you will do what I tell you, you will avoid and skip all those mistakes, avoid and skip all those learning lessons and significantly accelerate your time to success. But people say, oh, I had a guy say, well, I can't afford it. I'm like, oh, but you can afford to fail for the next two years, right? I mean, that doesn't even make any sense if you think about it.

Here's the key though. The people that buy the book and take the course and get the mentor are going to succeed. The ones that don't will not. 100% of the time.

I mean, just this year. What's that? In everything I've done, I paid in just this year and everything that I have done in my past. Done a lot. I paid one guy five grand for a day, another guy four grand for a day, another guy 1,500 for a day. I joined another course for 35,000. I joined another course for 4,000. Even coaches have coaches. Absolutely. You know, Tim Cook runs Apple. I have an Apple phone. He has a coach. Nobody knows that. In fact, if you ever run into a guy named Dave Meltzer, Dave is a CEO coach to three of the Fortune 50 CEOs in this country. So the guys running billion dollar companies have coaches. And here we are as young entrepreneurs thinking, I'm going to do it all myself when the smartest people out there have a coach.

Look, sales makes the world go round. I don't care how good your product is or what you're selling. If somebody doesn't sell it, you don't have a business, right? I spent some time in Silicon Valley when I did a couple of sales, a couple of companies we sold. And I'd go meet these engineers out there. And these are the smartest guys you've ever met in your life. And they're like, oh, engineers, they're the future. They're the smartest people out there. And I'm like, yeah, well, if nobody sells your damn software, you're just a guy sitting in the basement, right? Sales is everything. And if you're going to start any business of any kind, either you better be able to sell or you better bring somebody in who can sell. because otherwise nothing gets sold and you're not in business. And I love this example I use all the time. It's my Joe the plumber example. It goes throughout all my books. Joe's a plumber, works for XYZ company. They bail him out at $150 an hour. Joe's making 50.10 years in, Joe's like, what am I doing working, making 50 when they're making 150? I'm going to start my own business. So he starts Joe's plumbing. If Joe's plumbing fails, it will not be because Joe doesn't know how to be a plumber. Yeah, well, because Joe doesn't know how to run a business or sell. Because I don't care how good you are. If somebody's not selling it, you're not doing any work and you're not making any money. So when I wrote my second book, it was about the mentality of running your business or starting your business. And the third book is all about sales, right? Because you need to either know how to sell or bring somebody in who can. And sales is super, super duper important.

I bullshit. Can I say that on your podcast?

Look, I own a chain of restaurants today. You know, restaurants fail at twice the rate of normal businesses. And do you know why? Most restaurants are started by chefs. They know how to cook, but they don't know how to run a business. I have people that work for me that know how to run restaurants, but if I put them in charge of my overall company, we would fail. Running a business and knowing how to cook have nothing to do with each other. And the quality of your work has nothing to do with whether people are going to buy it or not. I'm sorry to tell you this, but if you are a landscaper or a welder or you are in a commodity type of business, meaning there are at least 50 other people out there that are doing the exact same thing you are. The difference between you and them. is not how good your work is. It's how good your marketing and sales is so that you can get in front of a customer to show them how good your quality of work is. Until you get in front of them, you're just like anybody else. And me telling you on the phone, oh, I do better quality than the next guy. That's what everybody says. Nobody believes you when you say that. You've got to have some kind of marketing to get you out there. Then you've got to have some sales ability to show them and convince them that the quality of your work is better. But if you're just pushing a commodity, so is everybody else. You're never going to scale a business if you are just a commodity person. Because there's 50 other people that are either going to come in behind you with the same product or they're going to do what we call chase to the bottom and they're going to undercut you in price. And they will be out of business in three years, but the problem is you might want to try to chase them down that price rabbit hole and you'll end up putting yourself out of business. Why are you competing with people who are going to go out of business in two years, right? Don't do that. So your quality is better, but the flip side of that is you've got to get in front of somebody, which is marketing and sales. Without the marketing and sales, the quality means nothing.

That's correct. And then, by the way, once it goes past that, you better have priced everything out properly. You better have the right percentages of labor and COGS costs. You better understand your overhead. You ever seen a five-star restaurant go out of business? All the time. Just because they were really, really good at what they did does not mean they're going to stay in business. They did not know how to run a business properly. So quality is one thing. Sales and marketing is another. And the final piece is you better understand how to run the business end of your business if you're going to succeed long term. There are three parts to that equation. If you only have one of them, let's say I'm great at running a business, but I suck at sales and marketing. My product sucks. You're not going to make it. You have great product, but you're terrible at sales and marketing and you're going to bankrupt your company. You're not going to make it, right? You got to have all three pieces of that puzzle in order for you to succeed long-term at a high enough level for this to be worth your time. So it's definitely the whole picture.

So the first thing you understand is that your client is interested in falling in love. They're not interested in your product. That's a weird thing to say, isn't it? And I love using car lot examples when I talk about sales, because it's such an extreme example that everybody understands it, right? When you go to a car lot, What are you looking for? You're looking for a brand name. You're looking for a color. You're looking for leather or cloth, standard or automatic. That's what you're looking for. When you go into the car lot, does a salesperson hand you a sales manual and say, hey, I need you to read the owner's manual on this car before we take it out for a drive? No, he doesn't. That'd be dumb. And yet a lot of people that want to go and sell their product want to drown people in information that these people aren't really interested in just yet. They want to tell them all kinds of things that mean nothing. The second thing is too many people go in there and this gets right back to the sales manual. They just want to talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. When what they need to be doing is asking questions, finding out what the person's looking for, why they're looking for it. That's the biggest thing. When they're looking for it, if they have shopped with somebody else and if they have who, why didn't they buy from that person? All my entire sales process is about asking you questions. Because if I can ask you the right questions and get the right answers, you will sell yourself. I don't even have to do it. If you're selling me landscaping and I say, look, I need landscaping. Why? Well, because I don't like the way the front of my yard looks. What's wrong with it? Well, I don't like this and I don't like that and I don't like that. So you need to get all that changed. Yes. When are you looking to do this? Well, I'm looking to do it right now or I'm looking to do it in a week. Well, have you shopped with anybody else? Yes, I've gotten two other quotes. Why didn't you go with them? One of them was expensive. How much was expensive? It's $5,000. Okay, well, I'm going to quote under $5,000. I just did a reel on this yesterday, interestingly enough. What is it about the plan that you liked and what didn't you like? Well, I liked this and this and I didn't like that and that. Gosh, now I know what I should sell them because I know what they like. Do you have anything in mind that you're thinking about from a plant perspective or a tree perspective? Well, I was thinking I like this, this, and this. Now I'm going to put a plan together based on what they want. Selling is about asking questions and building in your mind what you're about to sell them. Or what they're about to buy because you're going to resell them everything they just told you they wanted. And that's a really deep subject and it's tough to get into in two minutes. But the key to selling is asking questions. What, when, why? Who have they shopped with? Why didn't they buy? Answer those questions and you can sell them almost anything.

So we do that. We call anger, we just called angering, right? So I actually did a real last night. I was buying an equipment package, by the way. This is a true story. I went to a vendor. I said, I need to buy this equipment package. And it's $180,000 package. I've already priced it out. They came back with $450,000.

And you just, you look at it and you're like, well, I'm sorry, are you smoking crack? I don't understand why you just sent me this. I told you $180,000. So they sent it back to me the next day at $250,000. Well, first of all. First of all, you're still 70,000 high. And second of all, you just knocked 200 grand off your price. I know or don't believe anything you're going to tell me. So they're out, right? So I go to the second vendor. I tell them 180. They came in at 200. It was close. The third vendor came in at 180. So what I'll typically do, if you're talking the exact same thing, if I say, have you shopped with anybody else? And they say, yeah, I did. It was XYZ. It was $5,000. And I can't do it. Then I would tell them right then and there. Well, I got to be very honest with you. The range of price on the products that you're looking for are going to run anywhere between $7,000 and $15,000 from low end to high end. Now, is that something you'd be interested in talking about or do you want to go ahead and stick with your $5,000 price? That's, by the way, how you figure out if they lied to you. Again, we're getting into some deep sales techniques here. But I will give them a range of price and then allow them to tell me if that's within their budget. If they say, yeah, it is, then I know they lied about the first thing. And I say, okay, great. Well, between $7,000 and $15,000, where do you think you want to fall? The low end, the median, or the high. They'll always say medium. That's just the way it's going to work. And then you have a range to work with when you're doing your landscaping or your bidding process. So, again, real tough to get into a lot of these technicalities because there's so much to talk about there. But it was a good point.

I don't. Let me go back to my car example. Um, did you ever been on a car lot and bought a car?

Okay. Almost everybody has. And when the salesman comes out, when the salesman comes out and says, what's your budget? Do you tell him the truth? No. And do you tell him a high number? No.

So I already know you're going to lie to me and I already know you're going to lie low. Yep. So why would I ask you a question if I know you're going to lie? This gets back to what I said before, right? I would come in right out of the gate and say, hey, it looks good. You've told me everything you want. You've told me why you want it. You've told me when you want it. Let me just throw out here that our solar panels run between $8,000 and $15,000. I'm not asking you what your budget is. I'm telling you what my range is. Does that fit in your budget? Yes or no? They say, well, yes, perfect. You want me to start at the 7,000 mark, the 10,000 mark or the 15,000 mark? Cause I don't want to have to explain 50 different things to you. Where do you want me to go? And they'll probably, Oh, I could probably do the eight or 9,000 range. Okay, great. Now we have something to work with. You ask them their budget. They're going to lie. So you give them the budget range.

Like your ballpark. But I do a range as opposed. Yes, that's exactly not

But let me ask you something, Brad. And I teach this too, right? If the person comes back and I say, my range is 7,000 to 15,000, and they go, well, I've only got 5,000 to spend. Are you going to continue working with them?

Okay. So here's how you get around that issue, right? So my first reaction is, and I... Almost any situation, people have a close rate that they're supposed to target in whatever it is they're selling, right? Whatever I'm selling, my target close rate is 30% or 40%. Let's call it 40%. That means 60% of the people you talk to aren't going to buy. So you need to understand that right out of the gate, not waste your time on the no's so you have more time to spend on the yeses. But if you do that and you say, my range is 8 to 15, and they go, well, I'm really looking for 5. And I said this a minute ago, I'd say, well, I got to be very honest with you. I can't do it for 5. My low end is seven. So if we can work with a seven or seven to eight, we've got something we can work with. I can help you. But if not, there's nothing I can help you with. And then they're going to go, no, I really can't do that. Or, okay, yeah, I can probably get up to seven or eight. And then we proceed from that point forward. But I will try to knock them out if they've, you're trying to super low ball me.

And I tell sales managers, how much time do you want your salespeople to spend on clients who aren't going to buy? Well, they don't want them to spend any time. All right. Well, let's identify what a no is and let's get that right out of the gate. I don't want to go through a 25 minute sales process to get to the end of the line after I spent all this time with you that to then tell you it's going to be $8,000 and you go, well, I can only afford five. I've just wasted 25 minutes. Or an hour or a day. Yeah. Right? So that's one of the first things we knock out.

I mean, in today's day and age, again, I own a chain of restaurants. I can't get my electrician, my plumber, my AC guy, my refrigerator. Nobody comes in my door without $150 prepay. Nobody. Unless I have a long-term contract with them. But pretty much they all do it.

as a person who's spending it, I think it's a terrible idea, but as a contractor, I think it's a great idea.

Nothing really. Every sale is a negotiation. Every negotiation is a sale. Sales is look, you're selling, you sold your wife on marrying you. You sell your kids on going to bed early. You sell everything you do in life is about sales or negotiation. So that's why I say in the book, every sale is a negotiation. They're one in the same, quite frankly.

But I'm trying to sell you on my price.

for you to sell me on yours?

So I have a couple of rules in negotiation. And one of them is that I don't get emotionally involved or attached in whatever it is I'm buying or selling. And if I am, I have somebody else do the negotiation because emotion will sink you almost every time. Second is I'm willing to walk away from any deal because I know there's another deal right around the corner. Deals are a dime a dozen. I'm not, if I walk on this one, I'm, it's fine. Third is you'd be surprised how many of those deals come back to you. And let me give you an example. So let's say that you're selling me something for $100, Brad, and I've offered you 80. And we spend 10 minutes together and we're down to 85 bucks. And I said, no, I'm sticking with 80. And you're like, no, I want 85. I'm going to walk away. I'm going to do that for two reasons. Number one, I'm going to see if I can instill the fear of loss in you because you've already come down to 85. You've probably already spent the money. Right. You're already figuring out where it's going to go. And I'm about to walk away and you're thinking, well, shit, for $5, this is crazy for me not to take his deal. But I, as a buyer, am going to walk away because I know my very worst case scenario is I'm going to call you back in 30 minutes and I'm going to give you 85 bucks because I know I can get it for that. Now, here's my funny, my funny store example on this. My buddy worked for a big law firm and they had. an owner suite at one of the football teams. I can't tell you. And when the Superbowl came to town, he got two Superbowl tickets to the suite out in Arizona. So we got these two tickets to go to the Superbowl. I have a couple of million frequent flyer miles. So we flew out to Arizona for free on me and he provided the two tickets. We get there. Neither one of our teams were in it. And I was supposed to go to China the next day to visit my daughter. So I was stressed about the China trip and he wasn't feeling good. And we get to our hotel room, we walk in and there's a slip under the door that says, we'll buy your tickets for any amount of money. Bill says, let's sell the tickets. I'm like, let's do it. So I call the guy up and he says, he goes, how much do you want? My buddy Bill's over there. He's on the computer going, they're going for $12,000 on StubHub. I said, $12,000. The guy goes, I'll give you $10,000. I said, nope, we're already here. We'll just go to the game. Thanks. Hung up. My buddy Bill's like, you just turned down $10,000 for two free tickets? I said, he's going to call us back. He's like, he better call back. So he calls back in 10 minutes. I was like, hey, call him back. I'll give you $11,000. I said, no, $12,000. He says, all right, I'll give you $12,000. I said, great, meet us outside the hotel. I go out there to meet him. I swear to God, that's a true story. Guy shows up. He goes, I only have $11,000. He was trying to get me on the fear of loss. Because he's got 11,000 cash in his hand. I said, yeah, I'm not interested. I'll just go to the game tomorrow. I walked back in the hotel. My buddy Bill's like, are you out of your freaking mind? I'm like, Bill, he's going to call back. He goes, he better call back. Are you owe me $5,500 for that ticket? 10 minutes later, a guy calls back. He goes, I got $12,000. I said, if you don't have it, you're not going to take it. He goes, I got $12,000. Guy shows up 10 minutes later, gives us our $12,000. He walks away with our tickets. I got a flight back home. We went home and watched it on TV. He was trying to get me on the fear of loss, but I was willing to walk away from his deal knowing he would come back. So we played a game. You know, he was a good negotiator, but so was I. But that's just a game. I was willing to walk away. He was trying to play the fear of loss. At the end of the day, I won that one. Could have gone either way. I might have watched the game the next day, but most of the time that was.

I had the tickets.

Yeah, they must have had a deal with the hotel because there was a slip under every door in the hotel.

Then you need to have somebody else do the negotiation. Yeah. So either somebody else needs to do it or, you know, I have this saying that people can only think, uh, emotionally or intellectually at the same time. You can't think both emotionally and intellectually at the same time. You can't. Whatever decision you're making is either an emotional decision or it's an intellectual decision. And the problem is most people operate in an emotional state. And that's why they make bad decisions. The best negotiators, if you see them, they're like cool hand Luke, man. Nothing bothers them. It's just like, whatever, this is the deal. That's because they're operating intellectually. So if you desperately need that business and you're in that negotiation, hey, if you need it, take it. But at some point you need to stop yourself and go, listen, I got to self-analyze here. Is this an emotional decision or an intellectual decision? And as hard as it may be, you need to go to the intellectual side. before you pull the trigger on things. Again, if you need the money.

Yep. And again, I am not the Dave Ramsey, you need to suffer and don't buy coffee and don't ever go to Starbucks because I go to Starbucks five or six times a week, right? I'm not that guy. You need to have some fun and enjoy life and do things. And if you need the money, take the job. But if you're in a position where you have the ability to negotiate and, you know, really play the negotiation game, then learn how to do it and play it. At the end of the day, you'll ultimately be better off.

So again, in my second book, which is the Dropout Multi-Millionaire, I talk about your personal filter. And I go back and ask that question I asked a little bit ago. Do you know somebody who's always succeeded at everything they do and somebody who fails at everything they do? And then the question I usually ask is, Brad, do you know the difference between me and you and let's say Elon Musk and Bill Gates? You know what the difference is between us? We're all four men. The only difference is the way they think versus the way we think. That's it. They think at a completely different level than we do. And it's not that they're super geniuses. If you've ever read Malcolm Gladwell. in his book called The Outliers. It's just that they think differently. They've learned to think differently. They've exposed themselves to different things. And it's caused them to think in a way that allows them to achieve at the level they achieve. By the way, back to coaching and mentors. And I also like to say that the only difference between you today and you five years from now, so I say, tell me what you want. Tell me where you want to be. Tell me what your life looks like in five years. Not your wife, your life. What does your life look like in five years? And I will tell you the difference between you today and you five years from now is the books you read, the people you associate with, the podcasts you listen to, and the information you put in your head. That's the difference. If you're hanging out with drug dealers, you'll be a drug dealer. If you're hanging out with multimillionaires, chances are you're going to find a way to get into a deal to make a million dollars. That's just, that's the reality of it. So that personal filter, by the way, is a product of every bit of information that's ever gone in your head. From the time you were born, your parents told you things that came from their parents and their education. And then you went to school and your teacher started telling you things that came from their education, their parents and their friends. The kids you played with that started peer pressuring you, telling you the way you should think that came from their parents, their teachers and their friends. All the way through high school and college, your professors, you get a job, the people you work for, you get married, your wife tells you what to do. Everybody in your life, and that creates billions and billions of contact points, has pushed information into your head. And it's created this filter that's in your subconscious. And that filter accepts and rejects information as it comes at you in real time without you ever thinking about it. Another book by Malcolm Gladwell is called Blink. So your brain is accepting and rejecting information. And some people are listening to this right now and they're going, this guy's full of crap. And some people are going, holy crap, I've never thought of that. But that filter is helping you make decisions on what you're going to do next based on all the information that's been coming at you for every minute of your life. And if we get back to fail, fail, fail, if all you've ever done is fail, then all your brain knows how to do is fail. It doesn't know how to be successful and it's not making successful decisions. If you've had success after success after success, it's taking that information and measuring against the successes you've already had and helping you make decisions that will make you successful on the next thing you do. If you've never succeeded, then you don't know how to succeed. I'm sorry, but you don't. You can guess all day long, but all you're doing is guessing. So if you've never had success, you don't know how. And if you don't know how, then you need to find somebody who does. and have them help you make those decisions based on their success filter. And if you want to overcome all that negative or loss or whatever it is in your head, you've got to overwhelm your personal filter with information. Overwhelm it with books, podcasts, association, hanging out with the right people, and you will become the information that you put in there. Too many people don't get that. I don't feel like reading. Okay, well, don't expect anything to ever change. Like, I don't know what to tell you. We go to college for four years to read books to be a better person. You didn't go to college? Fine. I didn't either. I failed out of high school. I got probably 300 books on my bookshelf. My daughter's like, Daddy, you have a lot of books. I said, Honey, those aren't books. That's my brain. Literally everything I think has come out of those books. If you read my books, they're a combination of Robert Kiyosaki and the E-Myth and Malcolm Gladwell and Napoleon Hill. It's everything I think is a product of everything I've stuck in there. And that's why I seem to think that I'm successful.

It's like music. There's only seven chords. Yeah. Every song ever written is one of seven chords put together in a different way, you know, but

Because your brain is rejecting the information based on everything else that's been in there. What's more funny is when you reject a book and pick it up five years later and go, holy crap, this is really good. Because your brain wasn't ready. I did that the first time I read, I think it was Master Key to Riches by Napoleon Hill. I like was X-ing out chapters like this guy's full. He's like, he's a terrible person. And then 10 years later, I'm like, oh my God, this thing's right on the money. because I wasn't ready for it.

I can tell you Napoleon, I think it's Napoleon Hill's book. Um, where he talks about the mastermind. First time I'd ever heard a mastermind was in a book and I was probably 20. So we're talking 38 years ago. And I, the entire mastermind chapter, I took a black marker and just marked it out. Cause he's talking about dead people and talking to Abraham Lincoln. And I was like, this guy is so far out in left field. The rest of the book was awesome. But that one chapter I couldn't deal with. And today I understand the concept of the mastermind when I didn't understand it then. Back then I just thought he was sitting in his room talking to dead people.

Yeah. So I talk about this a lot when we talk about hiring coaches and mentors, right? So there are so many people out there that are social media influencers that pretend to be coaches. Please God, don't listen to them. Uh, if you've never, you can only teach what you've done. And if you're looking for somebody to put information in your head, you better be damn sure that they've done something. along the lines of what you're trying to do successfully so that they can help you make successful decisions, right? So you got to vet people. You got to vet books. And yes, sometimes part of it will be good and part of it will be bad, and that's okay. But that gets back to your own filter, right? If your filter isn't right, then it's going to accept or reject the wrong information. It also gets back to the coaching and mentoring. I hate to say this, but again and again and again. Find somebody who's been successful at doing what you want to do. And by the way, for your audience, there are three types of coaches. You ever heard this? There is a technical coach. In other words, if you're running a solar panel installation company and you're trying to figure out how to put solar panels on the roof of a high rise, I cannot help you. That is a technical person. That's a technical coach that can come in and go, you need to do this, this, this, this, this, pull these permits, do this. That's a technical coach. There is a relational coach. This is someone who is going to help you with your mindset. You can do it. You know, you got to get over your personal issues, yourself. Mindset coaches are important. And then there is a tactical coach. And a tactical coach is somebody who comes into your business that, and I'm a tactical coach, by the way, it doesn't matter what you do because I'm probably never going to walk on a job site. I don't have to, I don't have to walk into your restaurant. I don't have. I can look at your P &Ls and do P &L analysis with you and show you how to run the business end of what you do. From historical P &L analysis to reverse engineering goal setting to creating better sales and sales processes and sales tracking systems, that's tactical. Most coaches can do one or two. Very few can do all three. So pick the right coach for what it is you're trying to accomplish and then let them come in and show you how to do what you want to do. But make sure you vet them first. Anybody, somebody tells me that they're a certified coach, I laugh. What'd you take a 20 hour course online?

I had one on my LinkedIn page hit me yesterday. We help. entrepreneurs scale and profit and get ready to sell their company. And I can help you blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm going to do all these amazing things for you. And I looked up her background. She was a real estate agent 60 days ago. And now she owns a franchise of a coaching company. I'm sorry, but you're not qualified.

I can be a life coach for $49. I can get my certificate online. Help you with your life.

No, I haven't heard it.

So because I was having so many problems with my life, I figured I would help you.

Too many entrepreneurs, business owners, think that they have to have all the answers. They think they have to be the smartest person in the room. They think that they shouldn't take people's advice because it will make them look weak in the eyes of their employees or their customers. And that is why they fail. You need to be smart enough to understand that if you've never done it successfully, you don't know what you're doing, that you need to hire people that are better at doing it than you are, and you need to be willing to take advice from anybody that can give you a quality piece of advice. Right. I have an assistant that worked for me and it was maybe six months ago. And she came to me and she said, uh, listen, I'm just going to, and this is my assistant, right? I've built a half a billion dollars worth of companies. And she said, you are too short in your emails. You're scaring people and people don't even want to respond to you because of the, and I'm like, that's just cause I'm ADHD. Like, I don't, I don't like get into your feelings. I'm just like, do this, this, this, like, I don't even say hi, Bill. It's just boom, boom, boom. She said, you need to quit doing that or people aren't going to want to work for you. And I was like, damn it, she's right. And so I have to literally physically think about what I'm doing when I'm responding to people in email so that I don't sound like a jerk. And it's not intentional. I'm just, you know, I'm at 30,000 feet moving a hundred miles an hour. Like, but other people can't deal with that. So, uh, understand you don't know what you're doing. You don't need to have all the answers. You can take advice from other people. You will be much better off and much smarter and you'll go much farther.

Easy. So my website is brianwillmedia. com brianwillmedia. com and my books, my podcasts, my blogs, my newsletters, my. coaching program, everything is on there. Brian will media. com.

Uh, I actually just picked up Dan Martell's book, buy back your time. Um, so I haven't cracked it yet, but it's sitting on my dining room table as we speak. So it's next up.