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- [00:09]
A
What if imposter syndrome wasn't holding you back, but actually pushing you forward? Today's guest, Johnny Juan Ortiz, went from shy restaurant worker to top producing salesman, finance director, and now he's a Zigler Legacy certified coach. He. He's built businesses, rebuilt confidence, and learned how to make likability and faith into a strategy for success. In this episode, you'll hear how Johnny turns setbacks into stepping stones and why your biggest breakthrough might just be one courageous step away. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Locally Owned. Today, my guest is Johnny Juan Ortiz. This guy is full of life. He has spent decades in mortgage lending, real estate, coaching, community leadership. But what really sets him apart is he brings life. He's got this charisma, and it just brings life into almost everything that he touches. He's the founder of Fun Life Coaching, a Zigler Legacy certified coach, dynamic speaker. He's an emcee for events and community builder. He went from selling cars to launching coaching communities, Toastmasters, YouTube, you name it, Johnny has had his fingers in it. He is anything but boring. The secret weapon that is that, I think is him is that his faith that business should be fun is what really is the fuel to his success. So if you've ever wondered how to turn your personality into a brand, then lead in, because you're going to hear, hear it right from a guy who does that. Johnny, Juan, welcome to the show.
- [01:49]
B
Awesome. Dave, I'm excited to be on here with you. Yeah. There's so much in there. And it all just didn't happen overnight. It was. I call it childlike curiosity. Hey, I wonder what happens if I do this. And it just kept evolving, kept growing. My wife always tells me that curiosity kills the cat, but the cat died, knowing. Thankfully for cats, they have nine lives. And I think I'm up to, like, number six right now.
- [02:20]
A
Yeah. Well, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, I guess.
- [02:23]
B
Absolutely. Yeah. Ab. Spot on.
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A
Hopefully a little smarter, too.
- [02:28]
B
Yeah. You'll find out. Yeah.
- [02:30]
A
Yeah. So now you. You grew up in Tyler, Texas, right?
- [02:33]
B
Yep. The rose capital of the world, baby. Booming metropolis.
- [02:36]
A
Yeah. Yeah. And you've had a. You've sort of been this guy. From what I understand, from the time you were young, you had this brimming charisma about yourself. So tell me how you recognize that and how that's how that started for you.
- [02:52]
B
The interesting part to that, Dave, is starting early. I was. I was. I had that kind of fun charisma around people I was comfortable with. I was the Extrovert, hiding out in an introvert's body. I was only that way with people I knew, people I was familiar with. And having grown up in the restaurant world, I had made my way from cleaning tables. I was probably 12, 13 years old when my parents got me a job into the restaurant world. And when I got up to 14 and 15, I think I was 16. I had to be 16 to be on the payroll. Up until then, it was all just cash tips from the waiters and the managers and whatnot. I don't know that people would get away with that now. But as I got into the kitchen, I asked my manager, I said, dude, I need more money. I was getting into high school, and I was fixed to get into college. I graduated a little bit early, so I was graduated at 17. But when I got into college, I was like, dude, I need more money. And he says, if you want more money, you're gonna have to go out and be a server. And I like this sheer terror, panic came over me. Like, talk to strangers. Are you kidding me? No, I'll stay right here in the kitchen. And I finally got the courage to just try it out. I said, let me try it out for a couple of weeks, and if it doesn't work out, I'll come back to the kitchen. And, man, my first weekend, I made as much part. Part time on the weekend, I made as much as I had made, almost a week and a half of working in the kitchen. So I was like, okay, yeah, ever since.
- [04:22]
A
Yeah, that's good incentive. So, yeah, so. So you started out waiting tables, and you were still a teenager at that point, but you actually started out when you were about 12, working.
- [04:35]
B
Yeah, yeah. I had to be 18 to be able to serve the alcohol at the restaurant where I was working at. And it was interesting because what I found out was in serving people, the better service I gave, the better the tip, the better the experience, the better the return. People would come back and ask for you to sit in your section. And it got to the point that every server had four tables. They had two tables with two chairs, and then two tables with four chairs. So you had those four tables to your. That was your section, your area. And it quickly grew to where I would need to take over another server section so that people come in and sit because they were asking for me. And then it finally got to the point where I had 16 tables. I had one whole room to myself where I basically hired a busboy. And I said, look, you handle the drinks, you handle the chips. And the hot sauce, I'll take care of the entertainment and the food part of it. And we were like a team, attack team kind of thing. And man, I was at, I hadn't even turned 19 yet and we were back in 97, late 90s. We were. No, 96. Yeah, 95. 96. We were, we were making almost 1500 part time on the weekends.
- [05:49]
A
Wow. Wow, that's amazing. Now is this like a high end restaurant? Had to be.
- [05:54]
B
No, a little, little Mexican. Little Mexican restaurant. Enchiladas, tacos, fajitas, margaritas.
- [06:02]
A
Wow. Wow, that's amazing. 1500 bucks on the weekend.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Wow. Wow.
- [06:09]
B
So, yeah, that's when I decided to drop out of college. We're pretty smart, huh?
- [06:15]
A
You didn't need it, that's for sure.
- [06:17]
B
No, no, no. And it wasn't until somebody had came and said, hey, you need to come, you need to come and be in sales, man. I love your energy, I love your excitement. You make it fun. I mean ever since then. And that's it, it's, it's even funny that that's how it all kind of came about. And I got recruited into timeshare and I didn't know what timeshare was. A matter of fact, I didn't take the job at the initial thing because they said when they first explained commission, commission sales to me, they said, well, I asked them, well, okay, but you're telling me if I don't sell something I don't get paid, right? And they're like, yeah, exactly. And I was like, no, thank you. And when I finally did decide to do it, I mean I've been on straight commission sales since I was 19, so I didn't, I didn't, I wasn't in the service industry much longer because somebody discovered me, I got into timeshare and I got pretty good at it. And I know some people don't like timeshare presentations, but if done properly, they're actually pretty fun. And that's what allowed me to have success at 19. I stayed in it for about two and a half years until I decided to go into sales. Doing alarms, alarm sales, door to door, and got into telephone sales, car sales, and before you know it, I was in mortgages, banking industry and then ended up in coaching in 2020.
- [07:34]
A
Yeah, so you know, there's a lot of people that have a high likeability there. You just one of my, one of my technicians that worked for me. I mean he, he was one of the most high, easiest people to like within five minutes of being around this guy, almost everybody just liked him. And some people just have that. That's just a gift. And I feel like that is. It's a gift that does help you with sales, because it's probably some things that you're doing that you're not even consciously doing. They're just you just being you. But it's helping you be a more effective salesman, because people will let their guard down when they like you, which you can learn from that. And then people that don't have that high likeability can sort of study it and. And do the best they can to create that themselves.
- [08:28]
B
Yeah, no, you're spot on. When I got into automobile sales, I only sold cars for about two years. Whenever management was like, hey, we need you in the finance office. And I was like, no, I'm not wearing no suit and tie. I'm out. I want my polo, my khaki shorts, my tennis shoes. I want to be out there having fun. They're like, no, we think you can make more money. And I'm like, I doubt it. I was top one, top two for salespeople every month, until finally one day, I was like, man, it's hot out here. It was July. I said, you know what? Let's give this thing a shot. And we did. And so 12, 13 years later, I was finance, subprime, finance director, finance director, finance guy. Once the dealership closed on the deal, I would take them and I would handle the financing gap, credit, life, disability. But I found out really fast that I couldn't finance what my guys couldn't sell. And so I wanted to share with them how to do that. And I found out really fast that people do business with people they know like and trust. And so I had to reverse engineer that. And I showed them how it is that you get people to like you. And there. There's a whole training I do on how to be more likable. I can't remember the book. I have it here somewhere. It was. I think it's called likeability factor, or be more likable or something like that. And it was something as simple as smile. It's a little tricky thing because you got to get the corners of your mouth to try to touch the earlobes. And if you can do that, my mentor, Mr. Zigler, always says that you want to be able to smile so big you could eat a banana sideways. And when you do that, it's. My wife's a massage therapist, and she verified that. I heard this somewhere else, but it takes, I think, Seven or eight muscles to smile and almost three times as many to frown. And unfortunately, there's way too many people walking around with a really strong face.
- [10:22]
A
Yeah, well, you know what? I wasn't going to ask you this, but you got me curious. You do a training to help people with their likability. Give me that training in two minutes or less. Like, what's the.
- [10:35]
B
Sure.
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A
What does that look like?
- [10:37]
B
So I tell people, you got. The first thing I do is get people to like you. And how you get people to like you is you talk about them. You have to be interested and not interesting, because if they like you, they're gonna listen to you, right? The whole thing about two ears, one mouth, very, very, very simple. So if you get them to like you, they'll listen to you. If they listen to you, they'll believe you. The believability factor comes. Comes in really high because now they know, right? People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care about them, right? Where you make it specifically to them. Does he really care about me? Is he really looking out for my best interest? People don't want to be sold, they want to buy. And so you have to become a buyer's advocate instead of a salesperson. Or the realty. The realty world where I hang out at now and the entrepreneur training that I do, people want to buy. People. People want to be able to gain something more of value than the money that they've worked really hard for.
- [11:34]
A
You know, I think a lot of us have heard the saying that people don't like to be sold, but they love to buy, right? And that comes straight from Jeffrey Gitter's bestselling book, the Little Red Book of Sales. And Jeffrey is a. He's really an authority on customer psychology and how to create. Create a customer service program around the ideas of what makes people buy. But in that book, he makes the argument that all the slick selling techniques and scripted closings, they don't even compare to understanding why your customer is buying, what they're buying, why they want, what they want. So when Johnny's saying that people don't want to be sold, they want to buy, he's really kind of getting to the heart of that, right? So in other words, he shifts the focus from how can I be better at selling? To what does my customer need from me in order to buy? As business owners, it's not our job to take our product or service and go out and push it in the marketplace. It's really to understand why people want to buy our product or service and then craft our offering around that understanding.
- [12:55]
B
And so if they believe you, what they're going to do is you're going to ultimately get to that trust factor. And people have always heard people do business with people they know like and trust. Unfortunately, too many times they try to bypass all that other stuff to go straight to the trust or straight to the buy. And you haven't even earned the right. And so the training that I do, it shows you how that you can, you can invert that Pareto principle, the 8020 rule. Because what I learned in the car dealership world is that people were typically there for about the same amount of time from the time they came onto the dealership to the time they left. And you can take any sales presentation and put this into it, whether you're a brick and mortar concept, an idea, a product, whatever it is, it's going to take about the same amount of time. The difference is too many people try to spend 20% of the time selling, presenting, showing they're doing their dog and pony show, and then they end up spending 80% of the time trying to close the deal. They're trying to put a square peg in a round hole.
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A
Right.
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B
If you'll invert that and get them to like you, listen to you, believe, trust you, you spent 80% of the time you've asked, you've earned the right to ask those difficult questions. Before you know it, the close simply goes a little something like this. So, Dave, other than fiddling with the figures and making this fit comfortably within your budget, is there any other reason why you wouldn't take delivery or go ahead and take ownership of this product right here, right now? No, I'll take it. Great. Perfect. Here you go. I just need a copy of your driver's license, insurance, I need your credit card, whatever. Do you want to set this up as a one pay or you want to do this quarterly, my monthly, weekly? How do you want to do this right, and you're not having to close the deal. One of the, one of the owners in the dealership would send other finance directors to come and shadow me so that they wanted to know how I was selling. So many gaps and warranties and credit lives and disabilities, and they're like, dude, you're doing the same thing we are. And I'm like, yeah, it's a process. What they, what I didn't share with them was that before they came to my office, I was out on the dealership, walking the dealership, saying, Hi to them on the sales floor. Hey, can we get you any water? Hey, have you been helped out? Hey, is everything. Are you getting taken care of? Is there anything else we can get for you? And I would make it a point to talk one or twice, if not three times, to every client in the store in the event that they purchased. So when they came into my office. Oh, you're the finance guy. I wasn't a complete stranger. I'd already met them. I offered service to them, leaned in and helped them out, and was a friendly face, even though it was just brief. But by the time they came in, I did their paperwork. Oh, hey, you're the finance guy. Yeah. Come on in. Have a seat.
- [15:38]
A
Right, right. Yeah. In a lot of ways, what you're doing is you're. You're already answering some questions that they have in their mind so that when they get there, those questions are already answered, like you gave them a glass of water. So they're like, oh, this guy cares about me. He's. He. He. I can trust him. So by doing that, you're. You're answering those questions. They never, they don't have them. When they get to the point of signing, they've already been answered.
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B
So, yeah, in essence, you're. You're addressing a lot of the objections up front.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Because a lot of the objections are never even verbalized. They sound a lot like, we're gonna go home and think about it.
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A
Right, right.
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B
And then. And then you try to follow up. They don't answer, they don't come back, whatever it is. But yeah, if done, if done properly, you're able to bring those objections to the forefront, address them, isolate them, make sure there's no other objections, keeping them from moving forward, close on them, and take payment. Because a sell is made. When there's a transference of enthusiasm, of excitement, emotion. Too many people, whether you're a business owner, salesperson, or realtor, try to sell logically. And if you try to sell logically with the, with, with the analytical. I'm sorry, with the analytical part of the brain. I mispronounced that word. I'm sorry. When you try to think about it analytically, logically, you're going to go home and think about it. And the likelihood of them going forward after they've gone home and they've kind of cooled down.
- [17:08]
A
Right.
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B
Very minimal.
- [17:09]
A
Yep, yep. Oh, I know, I know now. So you're crushing it in. In the world of automobiles and auto financing. And this is, you know, seen you very successful at it. You Figured a lot of things out with sales. A lot of it's come natural to you. How did you make the jump from that to real estate?
- [17:32]
B
So I had already developed a really good relationship with a lot of the local lenders in my community, and the decision was actually made for me. It was kind of a blessing in disguise. One day I come into the office, it's a Saturday. We're excited. We're handing out all these tips or cash? Cash tips. I trained my salespeople on how to do a proper introduction and how to drop little subtle hints and seeds that increase their production. So every time I would sell something, a product, they'd get $5, $10, whatever that was. And then at the end of the week on Saturday, I would give them a cash bonus. That's all. It was all documented, so it wasn't cash under the table. And so we walked in one day, we had our meeting, we were handing out cash, everything was going smooth, and. And the GM asked me to go over to his office and he says, hey, we've decided we're going to go a different route and we're no longer going to be needing. You're not part of that plan, man. I was like, what, are you kidding me?
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A
Wow.
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B
I mean, I've been fired. That was like my. Okay, that was my first time officially being fired without me knowing. The other time I got fired, I knew why. I was really young, but, man, everything was going good. You couldn't tell me anything different. And I still to this day don't know why that happened, but it was a blessing in disguise because I just simply decided to take a few days off. I still stayed in the. In the finance world, but I had built a really good relationship with one of the local credit unions, and they invited me to go become part of their indirect lending team. And that's where I got into the banking side of it and saw a lot of areas of improvement in their processes. And so we started making those improvements, tweaking this, tweaking that, teaching the loan officers how to make these little connections and upsells that they had an opportunity. And before you know it, we're two years, three years in, and we get audited for having grown the loan portfolio so fast. There's got to be some kind of violation of rules or something, right? And we did. We were. We grew so fast that a lot of the. We weren't doing all our checks and balances. We got hit with some pretty big fines, but the CEO was like, hey, we'll pay Those fines, we're just going to need, we're going to need to tweak some of the process and some of the trainings. We weren't getting certain disclosure signed or whatever, but man, we triggered an audit for a small credit union like that. It was huge. And that's when my finance, my real estate guy left to go open up his own brokerage and he invited me to come over with him and that's how I got into the mortgage side of it. And having gotten into the mortgage side of it quickly going and making these relationships and introductions at these real estate offices, I saw that there's a lot of real estate agents that weren't really selling. They've never been through a sales process, they've never been through a sales training. They're out there just willy nilly in the world of real estate and leaving a big profit on the table. Having not never been through an understatement, a training, not never been. That's my English teacher would flip out. They've never been through a training of how to build rapport, establish relationship, you know, build common ground to make sure, like what I was talking about earlier, you're earning the right to ask those difficult questions. And Carl Sewell wrote a great book on customers for life. Sewell, Lexus, Seoul Infiniti, Seoul Cadillac, all those big Seoul dealerships. He's earned the right to share that book. And so I took a lot of those principles from that book and applied it into what I did day in and day out. And that's, that's how we got here.
- [21:00]
A
Wow. Wow. So it's easy to, to meet you and to go, wow, this guy's really cool. He's got this great personality. It must just come natural to him to be able to sell. But you've put a lot of time and work and you've studied it and I think that that's something that a lot of people miss is you started out as a shy kid, as somebody who would only let himself be himself when he felt safe enough to do that. To being somebody who has learned that this is a skill, it's not just a gift, but it's a skill that I can work on and, and really anybody can learn that skill. There's people that are naturally athletic and most of us will never be an Aaron Judge or somebody like that, but we can certainly improve our ability to play the game just by working on it and practicing it.
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B
Absolutely.
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A
So a lot of what your success hinges on is you recognize, okay, I've got this Gift, but I've got to develop the skills here and learn how to use it.
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B
Yeah. And I tell people that it's. It's those soft skills that deliver the hard bottom line results. You're able to do this. And a lot of people don't believe me when I share this with them because I actually developed a training around this and a coaching program around it on how to take that introvert and convert them into a high producer. Not, not really taking them out of their, out of their strength zone. I leave them in their strength zone, but I do challenge them to grow outside of their comfort zone. A lot of coaches, a lot of trainers, a lot of supervisors, the mistake they make is they take the people out of their strength zone. Like trying to put a pitcher to be a outfielder or trying to make the catcher the pitcher. If you just simply realize their strengths. And that's one of the things that we do are some assessments. We do a disc assessment for all of our clients. We go through, we find out what their primary motivating factor is. We find out what their why is. We help them come up with the mission and a vision statement that helps them align their core beliefs with their core value. All that stuff together. And you mentioned earlier, I mean, my English teacher, I just said a double negative earlier. If she saw my library today, she would definitely roll over in her grade. Johnny, Juan has books. Johnny, Juan has a library.
- [23:22]
A
He's not reading them.
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B
I read most of them. And I always tell people, it's not how much a book costs, it's how much it costs you not to have whatever that one thing is in that book that's gonna help you take your next. Your business to that next level.
- [23:36]
A
Right?
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B
And a $20 book had a client that said, why don't I just go buy that $18 book instead of paying you thousands of dollars. I said, you have a library. She had a library in her background too. And I said, if you had, if you could do that, you would have already done it. That $18 book is not gonna hold you accountable. That $18 book is not gonna cheer you on when you're struggling. That $18 book is not going to. That's the beauty of what we do in helping people. And I had this conversation yesterday. Ideally, if I was to label myself as a certain coach, a mindset coach, a motivational coach, inspirational coach, spiritual coach, whatever, I think really what I do is I help people become professional problem solvers.
- [24:20]
A
You know, Johnny just hit on something. I've thought myself, why would I want to pay thousands of dollars for a coach when I could just get the book for 18 bucks, read it and put it into practice. But here's the difference, is that a book gives you the knowledge, but that's it. You really have to figure it out on your own how to implement it. And that's where the value of hiring a coach or a mentor really comes in. Because they help you, you strategize, they help you figure out the next steps, and they hold you accountable to take them. And so how much progress gets stalled as you're trying to figure out what you need to do next? And it's unfamiliar to you and there's no real, there's no real cost that you can see to not moving forward with it. So you just get busy doing what you've always done. And what ends up happening is you end up never implementing what you're learning as great as it is. And a coach helps you get it implemented so that what you've done, the knowledge that you have, starts helping you become more and more profitable. So if you invest say 10 grand in a coach and that coach helps you generate 50 grand, well then obviously it's well worth it. And imagine that 50 grand over the next 10, 10 years, that spending the money on a coach seems like a no brainer at that point. But the thing is, is that it comes down to lost opportunity. And lost opportunity is something that you can't put a number on it because you don't know what opportunities you're losing by not putting these things into practice. Right. It comes, it's that saying you don't know what you don't know. So here's a way of putting a number on it. Think of something that you do now that's very profitable in your business, but you didn't always do it. So imagine if you never implemented what you needed to do to get that part of it started. And that's the cost of lost opportunity.
- [26:27]
B
The bigger the problem you solve, the greater your compensation.
- [26:31]
A
Right? Sometimes the problem is actually in a lot of ways the solution. If it's, well, I can't do this because I don't have that education. Okay, well there's your solution. Get the education and you can start doing this.
- [26:47]
B
That's actually the secret to closing every sale. I say every cell. A lot of the sales that I closed was the very objection they gave me. Well, I can't buy this because. And I would just simply use the old field felt found. I don't know if you remember that one or heard It. But hey, Dave, I understand exactly how you feel. Some of my previous clients have actually felt the exact same way. What we found out was that because we did this and this and that the other, they could actually replace one of their evening meals or go out to eat dinners with their family to make this, make this payment. Right. We do the reduction to the ridiculous. And a lot of times in people's lives, whatever disadvantage, whatever reason or excuse we should say, they keep telling themselves of why they can't be successful is actually the reason it's actually going to be their advantage in the marketplace. A book that I love to read actually says, if you will seek, you will find. John Maxwell says every problem has within itself the seed of its own solution.
- [27:50]
A
Yeah.
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B
And once you start to get in there and dig around and start looking for it, you'll be amazed at what pops up. And you're like, ah, there it is.
- [27:58]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that, that, that kind of holds us back. Now, one of the things that I've noticed just by looking, observing, being observant, and paying attention to life, a lot of times people do have gifts, and because they had something that came very easy to them, they didn't work. They didn't learn how to work hard because it came easy to them. But then when they got to a certain point where people could catch up, people were surpassing them. They didn't have the drive, or they just didn't decided not to put the time and effort into using that gift and going further.
- [28:38]
B
So happened to me.
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A
It happened to you. But you changed. So did you. What brought about that change? Was it a mentor or was it just some crushing life situation?
- [28:49]
B
I finally got a coach. I finally got a coach because I thought that I could go get books and coach myself.
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A
Yeah.
- [28:58]
B
But just like I told my client, none of those books woke me up in the morning. None of those books held me accountable. I didn't have to report my, my, my do's or don'ts to my coach the next Monday. And so that weekend, now I have my coach coach, my speakers coach, my business coach, my social media coach, my physical coach. I've got, I've got a few coaches in my life that each hold me accountable to a different area of my life and whenever. It wasn't until I got those coaches for that specific area that I, that I wanted to grow in, that I grew. And each one, each one, I value each of them like you wouldn't believe. And I have had to cut loose on some of the, some of the coaching that I have. But, man, if I could. And they're not long. 15, 20 minutes here, 30 minutes there. Yet we have. They have an hour reserved on their calendar for. But it's not about the hour. It's about the value that we can get if we can get on a phone call. And he can help me get one insight that's going to help me unlock whatever I'm struggling with. Boom. Let's go. 10, 15 minutes. I'll pay you the same amount. Let's go.
- [30:03]
A
Yeah. Now, tell me you're reading books, which is helping you a lot, and you're figuring some things out. You decide to get a coach, right? So at what point in coaching did the light come on where you said, wow? Because you can go into it skeptical and almost miss the help because you don't have the right attitude. So at what point did you go, okay, I wish I did this sooner or. How did that look for you?
- [30:33]
B
Yeah, Dave, I'm a little slow. Matter of fact, my favorite book of all the books that I have in my library is this one right here. The Tortoise and the Hare. I'm the turtle. And the reason I say that is because I had a coach for two years and I didn't do anything with it. Man. I was even. I was even ashamed to show up to the coaching calls because I didn't do what I said I was gonna do when I said I was gonna do it.
- [31:03]
A
Hung in there for two years.
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B
For two years. And then they finally asked me, what's holding you back? And I shared with him that I didn't believe I could do it. It was believability. Right. It was the self image thing. Who am I? Who? Imposter syndrome out the wazoo. It was just all over.
- [31:25]
A
I don't know if you just caught what Johnny just admitted, but he had a coach for two years and didn't do anything because he just didn't believe in himself. And, you know, we call it imposter syndrome, but, you know, it doesn't just affect entrepreneurs. It affects all of us, and it. It affects us so much more than what we think. And there have been some really famous, powerful people, people in the Bible like Moses and Gideon and you know, who question whether they really should be the one called by God, as well as famous people that we know that admit struggling with it, like Oprah Winfrey and Tom Hanks. You know, it shows up everywhere in a lot of everyday things. You know, when we want to try out for a team or when we want to ask Someone out or maybe speak up at a meeting. You know, whatever. Whatever it is, we're all affected by it. And the real question is, do you believe you're worthy of stepping into this role that you've already been called to?
- [32:29]
B
And he finally challenged me to, even though I didn't feel confident enough to go out and do it, to just try it, because it wasn't going to be perfect, but just do it. And so I did. I went and did my presentation in front of a group of realtors, and there was probably 30, 40 people in the room. And I wasn't afraid of public speaking. I love public speaking. I've been working on that for a while. I was just afraid of making that
- [32:52]
A
offer and charging some and them taking it.
- [32:57]
B
Yeah.
- [32:57]
A
Then what do you do?
- [32:59]
B
And so one person raised her hand and said, I'll do it. And I was like, what? I didn't even have a way to collect payment yet. I was like, I didn't think anybody's gonna do it. So we had to hurry up and figure out how to collect payment. Luckily, she wrote me a check for the whole thing. She paid it all up front. And I was like, oh. And then I was like, okay, let's do that again.
- [33:18]
A
Yeah.
- [33:19]
B
And we did it again, and we did it again. And then it finally got to the point to where instead of. Instead of a $3,000 offer, we had three people, four people take us up on it, three people bought. And so that same speech, after I had perfected on it, worked it up, we were able to get three paid clients into the program from a 45 minute keynote. And I was just like, wow. And so now I just go on social media, I go to events, I go to places and I just introduce myself. And when people ask me what I do, I'm like, I help people solve their problems, to live their childhood dreams in this playground we call life. And they're like, what?
- [33:57]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [33:59]
B
What would it be like? I know I told this one lady yesterday, I said, how would it feel to know that you never have to worry about where your next sale is coming from? And she's like, oh, that'd be amazing. I was like, that's what I do. Wow. I said, well, here's my phone number. Let's set up a conversation. I'd love to share it with you.
- [34:16]
A
Yeah. Yeah. That's incredible. And you're not just saying that and hoping that it's true? It's true.
- [34:23]
B
Oh, you can't.
- [34:23]
A
It's amazingly true.
- [34:26]
B
In my coaching program now I have a full money back guarantee. I've done enough of these where if you go through this whole thing and you do and you turn in your assignments and you show up for yourself and you do what we've asked you to do when you supposed to do it, if you get to the end and you did not at least double your. Double your investment, I'll give it all back to you. You can have it back.
- [34:46]
A
Wow.
- [34:47]
B
No questions asked. And no one's, no one's cashed in on it.
- [34:51]
A
Wow.
- [34:51]
B
Everyone that's gone through it has gotten some really good impact. And so one of my clients, we added it up, it was a little bit over a 10x return on what they paid me.
- [35:02]
A
Really.
- [35:04]
B
So, yeah. So about a year ago, we ended up raising our prices considerably. And I was thinking, well, we still, we added value. We did some other things, but I felt like I wasn't charging enough. And so we add. And people are still signing up.
- [35:19]
A
I'm just like, ah, yeah, yeah.
- [35:21]
B
And my coach is saying, hey, you need to go up again. I'm like, no,
- [35:27]
A
yeah, no, that's, that's. I think that happens to everybody. It's a slow process of charging what you're really worth. I mean, I. The business that I had for years and came out of, that's a conversation that happens at almost every conference at almost any time I'm talking to anybody in that business. Matter of fact, I just had lunch with a guy the other day, and this guy is, he's outstanding. He does outstanding work and he's the owner of the company. And when he told me what he was charging, I thought that was per room, that was for three rooms. And I was like, oh, my goodness, you need to be. And I told him, I said, you need to raise your prices. You were. Gave him all these solid points of why he needs to charge more. But it's just, it's a barrier for people to get past because it has to do so much with their self image. And we know every mistake we've made. And so it's hard for us to get past that and think that we're really worth something.
- [36:26]
B
Yeah. I went to a real estate office in Chicago at the last event we were at, and I walked in with my T shirt, with my Live Laugh Loan T shirt and my jeans and my little light blue hey dudes and everything. And this real estate office was nothing but high producers and multimillion dollar closers and all this stuff. And they looked at me and like, who's this guy? I Walked in, I was like, hey, I know you're a high producer, but what would an extra closing do to your business? If, if I could guarantee you one additional closing per month or. Okay, let, let, let's, let's not go. So every other month and they were closing probably 700 to $1 million loans or homes. I said, if we could add one more closing to your book of business every other month, what would that be worth to you? Would you, would you want to sit down and visit with me? And they're like, yeah. So these guys were shooting tie. And you could tell these were the really good suit and ties. And here I was jeans and T shirt. But I was not intimidated because I knew that whether you're a million dollar producer or just getting started, the principles are universal. It's just a matter of will you do it or won't you?
- [37:33]
A
Right, Right. Hey, everyone. I just want to take a minute to share something personal. When I was building my business, there were times when I felt completely out of my depth. I was struggling with employee issues, sales issues. I had ideas, but I could, couldn't seem to get them implemented. I felt like my company vision was always just out of my reach and I didn't know what to do. But I was fortunate. There were other business owners, people a little further down the road than I was that stepped in and helped me. They saw potential in me that I couldn't see in myself yet. And out of compassion and probably a little bit of remembering their own early days, they offered their time, their wisdom, their experience, and their perspective. And those conversations had such a huge impact on me. And now I want to pay that forward. If you own a business and you're feeling the same things I was, I want to help you. And heck, if you don't own a business, but you just feel like you can't seem to get your life to go in the direction you want it to. I absolutely want to help you too, and I think I can. Here's what I want to do. Look in the show notes and there's a private link to my calendar. Click on it. It's called the Listening Coach. And when you get there, you're going to see it's listed as a $297 fee, but I want you to ignore that. Just book it and write locally owned fan in the notes and I'll waive the fee. Why am I going to do that? Because I'm not trying to sell anything. I'm just trying to help. I'm just trying to pay back and pay forward what was given to me. If you're stuck spinning your wheels, overwhelmed, trying to figure out what to do, I'd really love to listen and draw on my 28 years of business experience and see if I can help. That's all. All right, let's get back to the. Now. Now, you've been doing this a long time, but you've put together teams of people. And so speak to me a little bit about your philosophy of leadership and, and how you go about that for yourself and then how you, you know, go about that for the people that, that you're raising up to be leaders.
- [40:09]
B
You know, the funny thing is, when I set out, people are like, hey, you need to be a leadership coach. I'm like, no, I don't want to be leadership coach. I want to help. I want to help the frontline people. I want to really, you know, help, help the salespeople, help the people in the trenches out there doing the work. Those are my people, the blue collar workers, the blue collar salespeople out there closing the deals. Those are the ones I want to help. And it turned out that through all of the learning and doing and the disciplines that we had to learn, they were all leadership principles. And in order for me to be able to lead somebody else, I had to first lead myself. In order for me to be able to lead my family, I had to first be the example. And once I started to do these things, it was amazing how the consistency. I'll talk about the turtle story, my consistency over the last two, three years worth of journey is what has led to my credibility. And it's in the doing, not in the thinking, even the public speaking realm. We're starting to put together some speak, some public speaking leadership programs for high producers. Matter of fact, one of my clients that I'm fixing to present is one of the top CEOs for one of the largest real estate companies in the United States. And I'm working with, I want to work with him. I'm going to present this program to him about how to deliver his story more effectively. And I'm doing it, I'm doing it at a level of just no fear whatsoever, right? Knowing that God put me in this room with him for a reason and whatever that looks like. But leadership is really just being able to do the things that other people aren't willing to do, right? Being willing to take the step, being able to as Stephen Covey, I use a lot of Stephen Covey in my coaching is being able to see the end and begin with the end in mind.
- [41:56]
A
You know, Right.
- [41:57]
B
What do you want to see? What life do you. Where do you want to get to? And then reverse engineer that process. I had. I originally had Jim Cathcart on my podcast, and he basically shared with viewers that, how would the person I want to become do the thing I'm about to do? And if you ask yourself that question, you might do things a little bit differently.
- [42:21]
A
So the question is, how would the person I want to become do what I'm about to do? Yeah. Because you're looking at it from not who you are now, but who you want to become. Because who you are now is filled with some doubt and some fear and an understanding of yourself that's incomplete.
- [42:47]
B
Yeah. One of our good friends, Tom Zeigler, he has this quote that says, your calling isn't meant to fit who you are today, but rather who you were created to become.
- [43:00]
A
So here's the thing. Your present self is actually not who you really are. It's just sort of a stepping stone to who you. You really want to become. Who you really are is this future self. And one of my favorite authors, Ben Hardy, talks about this in his book Personality Isn't Permanent. And he talks about how every choice that we make today is either serving who we're trying to become, or it's getting in the way of who we're trying to become. And most of us keep living out of an identity of who we've been and instead of who we're becoming. So connecting with our future self, who we see ourselves as five or ten years down the road, and letting that person make the decisions in the decisions in the present really is a game changer. Because then having the discipline to live our life for our goals, it doesn't feel hard. It just feels more like alignment. And it gives you that energy to do what you need to do, because you see that this version of who you're trying to become is counting on you to make decisions a certain way. So the question isn't really like, what do I really feel like doing right now? The question is, what does my future self need me to do right now so that I can become who I want to become? And when you live that way, that's essentially transformation. And you're getting to watch that gap between who you are and who you want to become close every day, and you're in control of it.
- [44:43]
B
And so what does that look like? How would the person I want to become do the thing I want to do? So if what you're about to do is they're going to get you closer to your goal or is it going to take you further away from it? If it's going to take you further away from it, then the answer is no. Hard pass. Do not, do not collect $200, Ghost. No. It's a no. And so you have to change some thinking. The legacy I'm changing right now is my physical. I've dropped a little bit over 36 pounds trying to get to that 40 pound level. Because at the current rate that I was going, I did the death calculator. I don't know if anybody has that morbid curiosity, but I did. I went to death calculator.com put in my height, my weight and it told me when I was going to die and I was like, even if it was halfway, right. And then I went back in and I said what I wanted to change and everything. And because of the things that I've changed, I added 10 years to my life.
- [45:35]
A
Wow. Wow, that's amazing. Yeah. So. So some. So I'm picturing somebody listening to this and going, okay, well this guy obviously has a lot of some things he's learned. He's good at sales, he's, he's good at speaking. And if they find that they've got some of the same things going on and have thought about, yeah, I'd like to branch out and coach people or I'd like to get some public speaking gigs. Where would you tell them to start?
- [46:07]
B
I would start with connecting. For a while there I had a coaching call. The first coaching call, it was only I still, I used to charge for it and people would still pay for it. It was $150 for the first call. But you got a lot of material. I would give you a book, I would give you a journal, I would give you all. And so the 150 was basically to cover all the, all the material. And then I think I profited like 25 bucks for my time. I found out that a lot of people were taking all that material and doing nothing with it.
- [46:38]
A
Right.
- [46:38]
B
And so I scratched that and I took the payment link off and now I let's have a one on one call. Let's, let's see if you really want that dream big and bad enough, that vision, whatever that promise or that blessing that you've been said that was going to happen to you. How bad do you want it? And johnnywan.com you can go on there and go to book call and set up a call with me. It's It's, I think, like 20 minutes. And if we. If we decide it needs to be further than that, we'll book it out further than that. But it's a thing to help you get going in the. In the right direction. My guarantee for that call is that, number one, I'll tell you up front, if I can sell you something, I will. But if I find out that you don't need me, I'm perfectly okay with that. I'm not tied to the. To the result. I'm tied to your vision. What is it that you really want to do? One thing that I do guarantee, and I can promise, is that before we get off of that phone call, you will absolutely have a actionable, specific plan that you can implement that same day to start putting you on the trajectory to hit your goal faster than you thought. Because my goal in those two years that I waited to launch, really get the courage up, to stand up and say, hey, this is what I do. This is why I do it, is my goal. I'm on a mission now. Speaker, entrepreneur, business owner, coach, whatever you want to do. My goal is to not only accelerate your results, but I want to collapse your learning curve. I don't want you to sit on the sidelines for two years. Do you know I'm full of quotes today. The guy that said, you just simply can't kill time without injuring eternity. There's no telling how long those two years of me doubting and worrying, put off the blessings and the promises and the things that I could have had, but I'm still working towards them. And no, you can't do anything about those past two years, but I can do something about it going forward today. And I believe there's a lot of people that have that same story, that they're waiting for permission, they're waiting for the right opportunity, they're waiting for the perfect time. Dave.
- [48:51]
A
Yeah.
- [48:52]
B
And it's just. It's just not going to come. You just have to. You just have to move.
- [48:55]
A
Well, you know, maybe the two years is. Maybe you've been waiting at least. I think this exists. Maybe not in you, but in. In a lot of us. But if I was in your shoes, that two years would have just been two years revealing to me that I'm waiting, that my whole life has been waiting and holding back and not doing what I really believe I could do. And the two years of having somebody making a plan and me not following through, then it's coming face to face with that reality about yourself.
- [49:27]
B
Yeah. And I now Use that same story, because had I launched off immediately, I wouldn't be able to relate to those people that are in the waiting. That what I found out is that the main deliverer of blessings and promises and miracles only delivers to Faith Street. And so you've got to activate that childlike faith. You've got to believe in you. Because if you don't believe in you, who else is going to believe it? I know God believes in us, but. But you got to believe that you were put on this earth for a specific reason. And you know, that gift, that talent, that skill that you have, nobody else has it. You only. Only Dave can do the things that Dave does the way Dave does them. And so you get in there, you activate your faith, you activate your. That courage, and you take action. Because where faith and courage meet, I believe that's where miracles happen. Yeah, that's where the miraculous takes place. Whatever it is for you, whatever it is for the listeners that are watching this live or on the replay or however that works, I believe that you're just one conversation. You're one decision away from a totally different life. And the longer you wait to take that decision and to make that. That first step, oh, you. You will never be the same, ever. It's a scary ride, but it's kind of being on that roller coaster. You scared the mess out of you. But you know, at the end, you. Your. If your heart's. Not. If your heart's not beating a little heavy, you're not. You're not trying hard enough.
- [50:56]
A
I was going to ask you about your faith, and we'll get to that, but just sort of to wrap up my question there. So if somebody's thinking about that and says, boy, I've got this dream of doing this, and I really feel like I've had this potential. I see it show up here and here, and I've been able to do these things, and they really know that something's holding them back. Your answer to that is to get with you or. Or any. Anybody who can help them figure out what's holding them back, because they're probably not going to figure it out on their own. It'll. It'll just be time spent spinning their wheels and. And just in. Because from what if I heard you right, in one conversation with you, you. They can walk away with a solid plan of what they need to do next in order to move towards their dreams.
- [51:49]
B
Yeah. Yeah, get a coach. Hire a coach. It doesn't have to be me. It could just be somebody. Somebody that can help you take that next step. Sometimes we just need somebody to believe in us, that we can borrow their belief.
- [52:02]
A
Right, right. Which, speaking of belief and faith, you've got this idea that comes from your faith of helping others first. How does that play a role in everything you do?
- [52:14]
B
I have this one show that I do every week. It was Tacos Tuesday's tip of the week or something like that. And it was about the mindset. And I would make the analogy of failure and success to a taco and all these crazy things. That's why I got my Taco Boulevard signed there. But then we started this faith your fears Friday. And Friday was all about the believability of activating faith. And then it wasn't until later that we developed a childlike faith methodology. But when you start to go and read and understand that God is love and perfect love casts out all fear, what would we do? What would we really be capable of if we knew or had no fear of failure? If we knew it was impossible for us to fail because of what we want to do and whatever we were put on this earth to accomplish? Right. I think the goal of this thing we call life is to do what all we can with what we've been given and to be. To exhaust all of our resources to be able to give back to the community. But God said, love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, mind, soul, body and strength. And the second deal, he said, was to love your neighbor as yourself. And I think the difficult part there for so many people is that some people just don't love themselves. So how can you love others if you can't love yourself?
- [53:42]
A
All right, so let's kind of break this down to where you and I live every day. Right. So, like the idea of living fearless, not letting fear hold us back. It doesn't look like us charging recklessly into our dreams, you know, with all this gumption but no plan. It looks more like not waiting until somebody gives us permission or not waiting until we can do it perfectly or refusing to wait for someone's approval or until our feelings of fear disappear. Because. Because truth is, fear rarely goes away right before you. Because the truth is, fear doesn't go away before you act. It takes acting with courage to get rid of fear. And even then, it might not go anywhere. But what would it look like if we. If you pressed ahead with that idea that. That you believe in even while you're still afraid? Right. Isn't that where real breakthrough happens? Isn't that the only way you're ever really going to feel exhilarated is when you feel the fear and you, you step past it into the unknown, knowing that this might not work out, but then it does.
- [55:05]
B
But I think at the end of it, my whole game plan is just to keep it simple. Because when you get, when you start making it complex complexity is the enemy of execution. When you start to overcomplicate things, you get stuck in that waiting room, in that two year waiting room, you get stuck in the how am I going to do this? How is this going to take place, how am I going to get the money? But if you just simply take the step you can where you're at with what you got with, even if it's a little bit of faith, right. You only need a mustard seed of faith to be able to say so that's why he said that. But when you start to look at the scripture that you base this off on and then you start to recite this and you start to make these affirmations of I can do all things through Christ and greater is he that is in me, that is in this world. You know, you start to look at the account of David and Goliath and you start to look at Daniel and the lions and you start to look at Egypt, the Jews or people coming out of Egypt. You start to look at all these stories and you start to see yourself in these stories and you start to understand and know that even with the three Hebrew boys that, hey, you're about to get thrown into the fire, you're facing something that's going to take you, right? But they were adamant, they were not bowing and God shows up. I would love for God to show up early, but I know he's never going to show up late. He's always going to be right on time. And Mark Batterson said it perfectly right. Have a God sized gold so big that it's destined to fail without divine intervention. And so when I went to the CEO and I talked to him, I walked in like I'm supposed to be in that room. Like God sent me in that room with no fear I might get kicked out. But I wouldn't get kicked out if I wasn't in the room in the first place.
- [56:45]
A
Yeah, no, that's a great way to look at it.
- [56:47]
B
And you know what? I didn't get kicked out.
- [56:49]
A
Right? Yeah, yeah. They hired you. So being it seems like 20 years ago, nobody really ever heard of being a coach. I mean it was around, but it was not around very much. That was not.
- [57:05]
B
Yeah, Consultants.
- [57:07]
A
Yeah. Now it seems like almost everybody wants to be a coach. And so people can get this sense, and I understand it, that if there's, if everybody's trying to do it, then there must not be much to it. If everybody can, everybody and anybody can just be a coach, then what is this to it? But you're just from knowing you small amount I do, I can tell you've got a lot of experience with a lot of things. You've had a lot of success that other people would want, so you can guide them. But you're also a Zigler Legacy Certified Coach. So how does that. I feel like that separates that, that sets you apart, that that says something. That someone who doesn't have any certification just has some experience doing things and wants to help people in that area. But being a Zigler Legacy certified coach, how does that set you apart?
- [58:08]
B
A lot of times when I first got my certification, I went out and I was like, I'm a Ziggler coach. I'm, I'm Zig Ziglar certified. I almost tried to say it in that Yazoo City accent. And a lot of people were familiar with Zig Ziglar. Also found out there was a lot of people that weren't familiar with Zig Ziglar. But at the end of the day, the certification just kind of got me in the room. The rest of it was up to me. The rest of it was what, what do you bring to the table? I love the fact that Mr. Zigler and Tom, they have given us the, I call it the foundational programs to be able to help people get started in the right direction. Choose to win. See you at the top building the best you. Building winning relationships. Top performance, goal setting performance. For me, there's all these great. We can, we can coach a person for probably five, six, seven years and never repeat the same same, the same lesson again. And so that's given me a confidence that I normally wouldn't have. It took two years to really lean into it, but now I can with the resources they give us. I've popped into a deal and they're like, hey, can you do. One of the speakers didn't show up one time at a meeting and they're like, yes, we'll, we'll dismiss the meeting unless anybody has anything they'd like to share. I got something jumped into the Ziglar page. The back office downloaded the presentation and we did a full blown PowerPoint on a keynote on choose to Win and the people that were in the room were, wow, you pull that out of literally, yeah. I wasn't prepared. I didn't go there, planning on doing it. But the resources behind Zigler and all the people that he influenced, I mean, it was. It's been noted that before he passed away in 2012, he had impacted over a quarter of a billion lives. And many of those people are still impacting other people's lives. And so when I got the Zigler master certification, the master Coach certification in 24, it basically gave me permission to tell them, you know, and for the first six months, I was like, I'm Zigler master coach now. I don't. I mean, I'll bring it up if I need to, but now I'm confident in the materials that I've learned through Zigler and the experiences that I've had. And I'm. I'm actually, I just finished coaching a physicist. She's extremely smart, really, really brilliant. She's one of the last known people alive to have been in the same room with Albert Einstein. Part of the genius network. I didn't even know that existed. I guess you have to be one to know about it. But we were coaching her through a program and it was interesting because as smart and as intelligent as they are intellectual, they were missing a few little key components on the people side of it. And so we were able to connect that practice, pragmatic, human element side of it to it. And we were able to help her close a business in the seven figure range. And she's like, wow, I would have never been able to do that. And that was because we knew her type of personality versus her silent partner's dominant personality. We put the two together and got them speaking the same language. Right. Another one of those covey things of seek first to understand, then to be understood. And all of that came from the Zigler coaching certification that we went through. And literally giving us the framework on how to coach anybody now, because of the framework that Ziglar has given us, Dave, I can take any book, even the tortoise and the hair book. I can take that book and come up with the 12 week coaching program that can systematically walk everybody through how to live their best, most fun, blessed life ever. It's crazy. It's crazy because it's having. It's having the recipe to your favorite meal. Once you have the recipe.
- [61:52]
A
Yeah, yeah. You know the ingredients? Yeah.
- [61:55]
B
You know the ingredients?
- [61:56]
A
Yeah. Oh, that's great. That's great. Well. Well then what would you. Because everybody, I think everybody Has a sense that they're not quite living their best life. Even though I love my life, you know, I've got so many great things and so much to be grateful for, I still feel like the best is yet to come, and I'm the bottleneck on that. So what advice would you give that you feel like anybody could benefit from?
- [62:28]
B
Man, I'll tell you what my coach told me. She said, get out of your head and into your heart. Get out of your head into your heart. And at first I'm like, why do you do that? Yeah. And they were telling us of a story about a gentleman that broke the high jump record. And they asked him how he did it, and his answer was, oh, easy. I just threw my head through my heart over the bar, and my body. My body followed. And that heart, that's that. That's that thing that got that. The word of God says, keep it pure. Because out of the heart comes all the issues of life, all the things. And so if you take care of this, right, forgive yourself, repent, do all these things that you need to do, because a lot of times, it's the things that weigh us down that keep us from being able to move forward. Forgive yourself for past failures, Right? Failure is an event, not a person. Forgive yourself for not being the best parent, the best spouse. Forgive yourself for whatever you've been holding yourself captive over or whatever you have haven't forgiven yourself over. And give yourself permission to mess up. Give yourself permission to be vulnerable. Give yourself permission to start over again. Because what's good about starting over is that now you're not starting from zero. Now you're starting from experience. Now you're starting with a little bit of knowing what not to do, right? And so if. If you really lean into that desire, that gift, that vision that God put inside of you, go back and ask yourself and have that childlike faith, knowing that God's word never returns void. It's gonna accomplish, and it's gonna do what it set out to do. And he's no respecter of person. If he did it for somebody else, he'll do it for me.
- [64:15]
A
Yeah.
- [64:16]
B
And you start to really lean into that, because a lot of times we're like, oh, well, he'll do it for Dave. Dave's podcast is successful, but that could never happen for me. No, I mean, why couldn't Dave's podcast be up there with Joe Rogan's? Why couldn't. Why not? It's. It's a simple. It's a simple process. You Just have to get out there and do it. That there are some things that you have to implement to be able to get there. Right. But you already have all the, all the basic information that, that, that Joe Rogan does. Why not?
- [64:47]
A
Right. I love that. I love that. So that's the. It takes the faith and, and it really does take faith to give yourself permission. Because when you were telling me about that woman who you, you helped, and she's super bright, but you helped her do a deal and her. And she was. I couldn't have done this without you. You know, she's smart enough to have done it without you. It's that she. A lot of times we. We need someone to say, hey, I think you're on the right track. I think you should do that, to just either affirm what we're about to do or like you said, give us permission or tell us to give ourselves permission. Like a lot of it isn't that we don't. That, to use your example, I got a decent enough microphone. I can compete with Joe Rogan on that alone. I mean, I don't. You don't see much of my studio. You don't see much. It's. It's not all the things that we think we need. It's. It's that internal. You've. You've got what you need already. You just got to believe it.
- [65:51]
B
So, yeah, yeah, Tom. Tom shares this with us all the time, that we already have all the characteristics of success that we need. We just simply have to recognize them, claim them, and develop them. And so once you start to take that step in the right direction, before you know it, you're like, wow, okay. It's kind of like we go back to the beginning of what it is to be likeable. I mean, pick up a book. Pick up a book. Or call me, find out. Mr. Zigler. One of his favorite quotes, he's always said that if you see some without someone, without a smile, give them one of yours. It's the one thing you can. It's one of the things you can give away and still retain a hundred percent of the benefits.
- [66:28]
A
Yeah, I love that. Well, hey, we're going to wrap up here, Johnny. I cannot wait to get this episode out there. People are going to love it. They're going to learn so much. They're going to love you. If anybody wants to get ahold of you and learn more from you, get some help from you. How do they do that?
- [66:45]
B
Yeah, just go to johnnywan.com. if you go there, j o h n y j u a n dot com. It's going to pull up all my social media platforms, it'll pull up my website, it'll pull up my links, it'll pull up my email, it'll pull up my phone. Everything that you know to get in contact with me is right there.
- [67:01]
A
So you were able to get johnnywan.com as a domain name. That's amazing. Wow. Fantastic.
- [67:11]
B
It was $1.99. I was like, what?
- [67:13]
A
Nobody had it? Wow, that's amazing.
- [67:16]
B
Nobody had it.
- [67:17]
A
That's amazing. Well, great. Well, Johnny, it was meant to be. Can't wait to get this episode out there. Like I said, thanks for being on the show. I hope you have a great day.
- [67:29]
B
Absolutely, man. Appreciate you, Dave.
- [67:33]
A
All right, before we close out, let me share something real with you. Every day I work with small business owners who've built great businesses that provide for their families, support their lifestyle, give them a lot of pride. But here's the thing. When it comes time to retire, most of those businesses aren't really sellable. They, they just, they just don't transfer well to a buyer. They don't have what buyers are looking for in a business. And so instead of them having this great asset that they can cash out on, too many owners are just going out of business. They shut the doors, maybe sell the, liquidate the assets and walk away. And so that's why I shifted from being purely a goal setting coach to being an exit coach, which I still get to use this incredible goal setting system that I've discovered and put together. But what I realized is that the bigger need isn't just hitting goals. It's making sure that the business itself is a really valuable asset. Because when you get this right, you don't just close the doors when you're done. You walk away with a really nice check. The kind of check that allows you to keep living the lifestyle that you've gotten used to. You've worked, worked really hard to build this thing. So here's what I hear from every single owner after, after we do this work, they say, I wish I had started earlier. Why? Because if they had, the business wouldn't just be sellable. It would be a whole lot more profitable, a lot more fun to run. And then in the end, it's worth two, three, four times as much to the buyer. So instead of walking away with nothing, maybe they walk away with $500 check or $500,000 check, you know, but you know, if you get started early, that 500,000 could turn into 2 million. So here's good news. I've got an assessment that usually runs for about $500. Now, this is not a quick three minute little quiz that you do online. It's a real assessment. It gives you an overall sellability score. It identifies the three biggest gaps from where your company is at right now to where it needs to be to be valuable to a buyer. And it even lays out a 12 month plan to get you started, closing those gaps immediately. So I'm giving it away to podcast listeners for free, but only for a limited time. And why am I doing that? It's a good question, right? Because I want you to start thinking about this now. Not five years from now. Not when it's too late. Not when you get sick and you have to sell your business. I want you to take it seriously. You'll thank yourself later for doing this because you're going to walk away with a life changing check instead of walking away empty handed. So the link is in the show notes. So go ahead and find it. Give yourself some time. Because like I said, this is a real assessment. This is not a little three minute quiz that just gives you a score and that's it. It's a real assessment. It's going to take you about 30 minutes. But don't wait. Because you know every year you delay, you're leaving money on the table. In the end, you're leaving your freedom. You're going to end up with less freedom and less peace of mind. So go into the show notes, find that link and take that assessment. And I look forward to hearing from you. Sam.