How do you win in anything? The answer to that according to John Solleder is preparedness. You have to be prepared to go out and do business at all times because you never know when business is going to happen. John is a top earner, educator, and speaker in the network marketing industry. Growing up, John was not particularly talented at anything, but studying mentors and other people in the industry equipped him with what he needed to become the network marketing giant that he is today. In this episode, he spends some time with Dan McCormick to share how preparation and self-development catapulted him to success.
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Preparation For Your Success With John Solleder
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We will look forward to having a terrific show here. It has been an unbelievable journey for me. If you’re new to the Og Mandino culture, he’s the author of several books selling tens of millions of copies. The one that was first put in my hand, The Greatest Salesman in the World, Og demonstrated a philosophy for living. He had a unique way of writing. He had an unbelievable ability to communicate in a way that few people have ever been able to write in this sacred parable form that is relatable to you no matter where you’re at in your journey. It’s great to have Ron here. He’s the man who wrote the foreword to The Millionaire Training book. He gives us the history of the industry unlike anybody ever before. Before we get started here, what I love to do is welcome in John Solleder. How are you down in Texas?
I’m great. I’m honored to always be with you and with your great readers. I can’t wait to do this with you. I’ve been looking forward to this.
This is a chance for me to ask the opening question that I love for our readers from a value proposition. John, when you look at your life, you’re the greatest salesman in the world. What are three things that have shaped your life for each and every day?
The first thing would be preparation. I prepare for every day the day before. I don’t like to leave details until the next day. Something I learned from Tom Hopkins many years ago was to write down each and everything I need to do the next day the night before. Therefore that next day, whether it’s 5 or 6 things that are important, I prioritize those things. For example, in my business, talking to a prospect or somebody who can buy my product or join my business perhaps, that’s the top priority. If I have to move around my gym time because I have to meet somebody, the top priority is getting business. That’s number one in my business life.
The Seasons of Life
Number two is my self-development time. In my case, it’s early morning. I’m an early riser. If you call me at 5:00, 5:30 in the morning, you’re going to find me up ready to go and ready to attack the day. I do believe in carpe diem, seize the day. I’ve been like that my whole life. Sometimes I drive my wife nuts because she has to get up too or she has to hear me. Nonetheless, I get after the day bright and early. The third thing is to eliminate a lot of the unnecessary things in a day. I ask myself, “Is this necessary?” Whatever it might be that either somebody else can do for me. For example, many years ago, I’ve started to have somebody cut my lawn not because I couldn’t cut my lawn.
If I make $100 per hour in my business when I’m working, if that’s greater than what I can pay someone else to do something, perhaps cut the lawn, clean the pool, clean out the gutters, whatever it happens to be, whether it’s a domestic detail like that or a business detail. If I can pay somebody else less than I make per hour, I have to do the things that only I can do in my business in the hours that I’m given each day versus being able to pay somebody else to do something I either don’t want to do or that I shouldn’t be wasting my time doing. I have to do the things that only I can do in my business. That’s a tough priority for most business people, especially when you’re self-employed. It’s to prioritize only what you can do in a day. You do that and let those other things be done by people that you can pay to do them for less money than you make on an hourly or daily basis.
Since I started researching Laird Hamilton’s life and how he starts every morning. Charlie Rose asked that incredible question in that interview with him, “How do you get ready for the biggest waves?” He said, “Preparation.” He had to get 10, 15 days a year to ride the biggest waves ever and he’s dedicated. I write that down every Monday morning in my journal, being dedicated to preparation. I love that self-development and eliminating the unnecessary things. That was a great share. Every week, I get a chance to hear from the greatest salespeople in the world that give us those three things. I know that self-development is personal and deep, especially when you go through a journey like network marketers, direct sellers and salespeople. Do you remember the first time somebody put that book in your hand? Think back to when you read The Greatest Salesman in the World.
The first time that I read it, I was on a journey that started when I was seventeen. The very first book I ever read was by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking. I was in a hospital bed at the time recovering from double back surgery. A short time after that, I heard about As a Man Thinketh. All of a sudden, after I read those two books, it started to get my mind open to the fact that there were things that I could learn from other people. The third book I ever read on self-development was The Greatest Salesman in the World. There’s a moral basis to this book that emphasizes on the profession of selling, that we’re doing a great thing for people. We’re not taking people’s money and not returning value for the money that they give us. That was one point of the book. Another point of the book was when you work, work, and when you play, play. That’s hard when you’re self-employed, especially now because we’re all home. In my business, I can be on the phone and the computer twenty hours a day and not get anything else done in my life. You’ve got to prioritize work is work and play is play. That’s another thing that it brings up.
The greatest story is where the robe ended up. You never know where your thing’s going to go. It gives me a parallel to why we’re in business for ourselves but not by ourselves. The business that I’m in, the product that I sell, many hands touch it before it ever gets on my doorstep for me to consume as both a user and a seller of the product. There are farmers involved in the process for my particular product. There are truckers involved. There are expediters for those trucking companies and farms. There are people in the manufacturing facility that take the product and turn it into the finished good. There’s the corrugated box guy who that we would never even think of. Somebody makes those boxes that our stuff comes in.
One of the great values in my career is that the better I am at what I do, the more jobs I create along the food chain distribution. Somebody says, “Somebody wants to be in business because you want to get rich.” No. You want to be in business because you want to help other people, and the best way you can help other people is to succeed. It’s a high level. If you do that, think about the countless other lives that you create. The tax base that you create, for example, in the communities where people work that build your product, sustain and support your product for you, not to mention the home and office staff and everything else. I don’t care whether you’re in independent business that I’m in or you’re in real estate, you’re in insurance, you sell automobiles or whatever it is. The better you are at it, the more people you’re going to bless by your talent. To me, the greatest give back that I could have is to get good at what I did to help a lot of other people along the way to build that little community hospital or whatever near the community. The better I am, the more jobs I can create, and the more people I can help.
I told you when I was on your book launch, Zoom broadcast across the globe, that I love the title because you and Foster talk about the fifteen principles for success. We talked about the word principles. I want to encourage everybody, don’t just buy a copy of Foster and John’s book. Buy all of their books. You’ve done 3 or 4 books. It’s fantastic what you’ve done, and the principles that you share. You can go to Amazon and pick up John and Foster’s book, Leave Nothing to Chance. That’s life. We don’t want to leave anything to chance. When you’re in the marketplace, you focus on being in the marketplace. When you’re in your home, you focus on being in your home. That was a challenge for me. I always ask people to reread The Greatest Salesman in the World. What scroll struck you?
The better you are at what you do, the more jobs you create along the food chain distribution. Click To TweetThere’s any of them that guys like you and I, and a lot of your readers could get on here and talk about for hours. It’s funny because it’s even right on the cover of the book. It’s scroll three. I want to quote it directly, “I will persist until I succeed.” Those words to me are Churchillian in nature. Those are the kinds of words that Winston Churchill used during the darkest time in his nation’s history and the world’s history to galvanize his people. You go back to Leave Nothing to Chance. Conceptually, it’s in life to leave nothing to chance. Don’t take any chances, prepare and prepare.
Churchill would love the statement, “I will persist until I succeed.” I could see him saying that. Taking that brilliant concept that Og wrote and applying it to words like, “We’re going to take the English language, galvanize it and send it into battle.” When people are hiding out in locomotive stations at night because they’re being bombed by their enemy. When people have a glass of water per day to do all their bodily functions on, you better come up with the right word. You better leave nothing to chance and the preparation of those words. Churchill is persistent to the point where every speech he poured over every word for an hour, at least per word, that’s leaving nothing to chance.
The results are what they are and he’s certainly in the world’s history. He’s one of many examples. We could use a lot of other ones. When I go back to scroll three, my little life, salesman, dad and husband, I will persist until I succeed. That would summarize my life. I was not talented at anything growing up. I was not talented at business when I started, but I studied. Not only my mentors but other people in my industry and other industries. I’ll make a plug for reading here, “Readers are leaders. Leaders are readers.” I read until I am blind. I got these thick glasses because of how much I still read every single day. I was reading seven different books at a time.
I believe that my life, whenever success that I’ve had, I’ve been blessed to have some good success is a result of the books that I read. Charlie Tremendous Jones whose daughter, Dr. Tracy Jones, my good friend. She’s our publisher, Tremendous Leadership. We talk about her dad all the time. Some of the statements that Charlie used to make, “The next few years, you’re going to figure out your life based on the books that you read.” What if you’re not reading any? Start somewhere. Start with my book, Moving Up, if you want. Start with our friend, Larry Thompson’s book. Start with all of Og’s books. Get and read them. Read the classics. All the knowledge you’re ever going to need is there. Anything that Jim Rohn ever wrote. The Seasons of Life changed my life. It made me understand that everything was a season. That’s biblical in nature, but at the end of the day, it’s practical in life. When you get to 59, you realize, “I’ve been through some seasons and I haven’t all been good.” If you persist and if you stay the course, the winter will become spring at some point. Spring will become summer at some point. You better prepare and leave nothing to chance for the fall and winter.
“At the end of every dry desert, green grass grows.” That is Og’s words. We’re in scroll number three. As John said, we could talk about any of those scrolls. It’s always interesting to see at this stage of life for John, the greatest salesman in the world, selling millions of dollars of product specifically for the immune system. You’ve changed people’s lives from a paradigm of here. I go back to look at your three things from the opening question, preparation and self-development. You went on a little bit there and quoted from many different authors. I always say, “You don’t read a book, you study it.” You read a magazine, you throw it away. You read the newspaper, you throw it. You study the great wisdom literature like Leave Nothing to Chance, The Greatest Salesman in the World, and The Greatest Secret in the World. You’re going to study the great lives in The Millionaire Training that you and I were featured in, that Ron Henley is featured in. When did you find that until was most difficult? What was a real rough patch? How did you get through it?
On a personal level, the most difficult time in my life was many years ago. I had an adopted daughter, my wife’s daughter. I adopted when she was seven and we decided to create a family and get married. We conceived a beautiful little girl named Alice Diane. Unfortunately, eight months into the pregnancy on New Year’s Eve that she passed away. If you want to question your faith and you want to question your self-development, I don’t wish anybody or any human being for this matter to lose a child. You can’t summarize it. They’re supposed to bury us not the other way around. I went through that and it leaves nothing to chance to even talk about it a little bit.
The first time in many years that I’ve been able to talk about it publicly is with you right now. How did that affect me? It made me question everything from my faith in God, all the self-development, all the old books, all the Jim Rohn books, all the other guys’ books that I’d read, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, a pastor himself. I start questioning. I start saying, “I’ve done everything right. I’ve paid my taxes on time. I’ve always worked hard. I’ve always shown up for work. I’ve always given a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay.” That’s when the words about persistency set in. Now it’s not about desire when you’re going through something like that. It’s about persistency. I thought of Book of Ecclesiastes applied to the seasons of life. It was Jim who told me when I met him. The only time I ever spent time with Jim, he shared the story of how it was conceived in a church service that he took notes at. If you know Jim Rohn, he was always taking notes.
Preparation For Success: Take what you learn to value, pass it on to the next generation, and eliminate all the junk.
Those things started to hit me. One year later to the day, my son arrived three weeks early. God had a sense of humor. At the same time, I went through some dark times. I went through some questioning periods, but I never lost my faith. Number 1 and 2, I never lost self-development. If anything, I poured myself more into my self-development program, reading from all of the masters. I’ve been told this by a number of people that are very successful like yourself. This stuff is easier to talk about than it is to live. When we’re talking about other people’s lives, it’s easy to give in. When we talk about Winston Churchill, you and I never knew the guy. We can read the history books certainly or Abraham Lincoln, or whoever you want to talk about. When it’s your life, your family and your circumstance, do you believe this stuff?
I can tell you that I do. The seasons do pass. If you read this book and you metabolize this book, there is so much in this little book and the two hours it takes to read it that you do need to read it over and over again because there’s so much in here in the scrolls. There’s nothing that’s missed in the scrolls. One other point that I do want to make about this book and the greatest salesman concept is mentorship. If you think about that relationship, the old successful salesman and the young successful salesman wanting to be successful. The road that the young salesman travels on. Figuratively and otherwise, we did travel on the road. It’s what our lives are supposed to be about. It’s taking what we learn to value and eliminate all the junk.
What we learn to value that we pass on to the next generation. Our role on this planet is to create a next-generation better than the generation that we had. The tools including everything Og ever wrote should be part of that toolbox to prepare yourself or your life, and to give that to your kids, your distributors, your salespeople, and the other people that you touch in your life. I do a little bit of sports coaching. I’ve shared our books, but this book with a number of young athletes. I said, “Read the book, come back to me, and tell me what you learned.” The number one thing they come back with is mentorship. Seventeen, eighteen years old kids come back, “I got the mentorship thing here.” They pointed it out to me, one of the young guys I work with. Every concept in there is a concept that you can build a business on and more importantly, build a life on.
There’s a lot to unpack in those. If you’re new to the Og Mandino culture, one of the things that I can leave with you is an amazing gift on behalf of the Og Mandino Company. The ability to take what you’re reading and what you’re learning and go to our HabitFinder.com/podcast and you’ll be able to take the assessment. It’s a science of mathematics that measures your thoughts, not what you’re thinking, but how you’re thinking. You’ll see your results instantaneously. The value is over $100. You’re going to get it for free. If you truly are aligned with these things, preparation, self-development, and what can I eliminate that is not the highest productive use of my time right now?
There’s a lot to unpack in what you said and what comes to mind is I will be the master of my emotions. You talked about, “I will persist until I succeed.” Og goes on in a future scroll to say, “I will be the master of my emotions.” When you’re going down that road, the young salesman that doors are closing. You don’t feel like you’re quite there and you have to become the master of your emotions, John. I’ve spoken to you on some days that probably weren’t your best days, but every time I’ve ever spoken to you over the years, you’ve been an optimist. Somehow, you’ve mastered your emotions. Is it the self-development, the Jim Rohn, the stories, the parables?
It’s not only the self-development but I study history a great deal. By nature, sports have been a very important part of my life. I’m not only doing it, I’m coaching it, being around and following it to some degree. I follow it less now than I did in prior years because it’s a distraction. I look at the great coaches and Tom Landry comes to mind. He could be winning the Super Bowl by four touchdowns or he could be winning or losing. He did not know which it was because he never went past like, “I’m excited or this is terrible.” He was like, “What do I do to improve my team, my product?” Whether it was Landry or others out there, but you get the idea.
Joe Tory, when he was managing the Yankees, for example. The same thing, he’d sit there with his legs crossed, winning a world series and very casual. He could be losing it, either way, the wheels were turning. Why would coach Landry or Joe Tory be any different than Dan or John in our business? I never get overly excited about anything. I also let myself get depressed about anything. I keep everything in the middle. What I’m always asking myself is, how do I improve everything from what I say and do? How do I conduct myself with people? How the people that I work with every single day can improve themselves? How can our company improve itself? How could our branding improve itself? On one hand, you might say that I’m never satisfied.
You want to be in business because you want to help other people, and the best way to do that is to succeed. Click To TweetOn the other hand, you have to look for improvement. You go back to Leave Nothing to Chance again. One of the other guys who’s a master preparer is Tom Brady. He’s been to 9 Super Bowls but he won 6. When I look at Brady, I imagine Michael Jordan and LeBron James, they’re similar. Let’s look at Brady because I’ve read an article about his preparedness the night before. From his socks to his eye black. Every single thing that he needs to personally put on. The equipment manager takes care of it a lot but at the end of the day, he’s not going to get there and all of a sudden, he doesn’t have eye black if the stadium lights are too bright. He makes sure.
How do you win in anything? You prepare. You can’t do it by the seat of your pants. You can’t go to a presentation as a salesperson, whether you’re in network marketing or traditional type of selling. You can’t go without all the right information because you don’t know what your potential customer is going to ask you that day. Be prepared. When you were a kid, you were told to be prepared. Preparedness is very important to present the proper message to the proper person at the proper time. You need to be prepared. When I think over my career, which is many years, even one specific industry, and I’ve been at the top of four companies and almost a fifth one over the course of time.
I’ve always been on the top rank, whatever the top rank is calling these different companies. Some of them are crazy names, but I’ve always been at that rank. Somebody said, “How did you do that?” I said, “I was always prepared because I don’t know the day or time I’m going to talk to a Dan McCormick or the next Dan McCormick, Jeff Weisbergs, Ron Henley or Foster Owusu.” I don’t know the day of your time. What if I meet them by accident at the gym and I don’t even have a product brochure in my car? It’s to be prepared to go out and do business at all times because you never know when business is going to happen. Whether you’re in our industry of direct selling, you sell something else for a living, maybe you’re not even in sales for a living, maybe you’re in management. That preparedness meets opportunity, but you’ve got to be prepared when that opportunity presents itself.
I’m interested in how you got onto this. Our readers are loving this. Tom Hopkins is where you referenced that. How to Sell Anything to Anyone, I remember buying the book when I was nineteen years old. That is an amazing thing that he got you prepared the night before. I wake up at 5:20 in the morning and I prepare for the day. You’re starting the night before, which is a terrific principle.
There’s a reason for that too. That’s the way that the mind locks in on information. I know my steps the next day, what matters most and what matters least. Normally, I try to keep it to six. I don’t know whether Tom told me that or not because it’s so long ago, but if you had 47 things, you’re not getting them done. Six is manageable for me at this stage of my life where I know I can knock out six things in a day effectively. If I can do that at 42 times in a week that I knock out those things, that’s 160-plus times a month. That’s several thousand times a year. If I get that much done in a year, I’ve had a successful year business-wise.
I still have little cards that I make out sometimes. I’ll write it down. Sometimes I’ll put it on my phone. I get a little bit more technologically savvy in my old age. For the most part, I still write stuff down because I never trust my memory. You can’t, whatever business you’re in. What if this was the day you were going to call with McCormick and you forgot? The guy said, “I have a lunch out from 12:00 to 1:00. Call me anytime between 12:00 and 1:00,” and you forgot to call. What kind of impression do you think that the other guy has of you? Number one, he’s not that important because you didn’t call him on time when he asked you to call him. Number two, you must be a space cadet because you can’t even remember to make one phone call. How’s he going to do business with you?
Thirdly, what if I get into a business like a network marketing where that guy is going to be working with other people. He needs to trust you that if he asks you to do something to help him build his enterprise, you’re going to do it. I’m not going to take that risk. I’m going to write it down in big block letters on yellow sticky notes. I’m not going to take the chance of messing up something that I don’t know what the outcome could be. I’m going to count on a positive one always, but I’m going to leave nothing to chance once again. It was amazing how many times that title comes up.
Preparation For Success: Preparedness is very important to present the proper message to the proper person at the proper time.
I understand a little bit more about your thoughts where you don’t get overly excited. You gave the Joe Tory, Tom Landry, etc. Og says, “If I become overconfident, I’ll recall my failures. If I overindulge, I’ll think of past hunger. If I feel complacency, I’ll remember my competition,” and he goes on.” I liked that stroll for our readers based on what you say, “I will be the master of my emotions.” Think about that word, that was Tom Landry. Those guys mastered those emotions. That’s what we need to do in the world of sales. We think about how low those emotions got for Hafid at the beginning of the book when he’s coming back and he thinks he’s a failure. He didn’t sell the robe.
If you’re not familiar with the story, I encourage you to get a copy of The Greatest Salesman in The World. Don’t read it, study it and make the scrolls a lifetime study. If you’re new with us, you can go to the incredible site, HabitFinder.com/podcast. Take the free assessment. You will be able to measure those thoughts and see if they’re aligned with the teachings of the principles of Leave Nothing to Chance by John and Foster Owusu. It’s a thrill to have you, John. I know that your journey is filled with a lot of successes. I wonder how your maintenance and/or your thought processes might be different now knowing that you’re not going to have to worry about the meal next week, next month or next year, or the house payment, the car payment or the college education. How do you approach each and every day with that same intensity?
Number one, I feel like I have a responsibility to people that I work with.
I hope somebody writes that in the column. That is good. I feel like I have a responsibility as well. I love those words.
They are the reason I have. All the things you mentioned is my salesforce. I’m committed to their success. Once that I work with, they’ll tell you whether it’s three-way calls, whatever it is that they need, I will make myself available. Nobody succeeds alone. Because nobody succeeds alone, I get that they’re the reason why I get to be on a great show like this. I get to write great books and do all these wonderful things I get to do because of them. All I’m there to do is to aid them. That’s number one.
Number two, my dad was a union electrician. I went to work every day with his toolbelt. Some of my family on my father’s side were in the labor movement. We had organized labor unions both electrical and painters’ unions back in New Jersey where I’m originally from. I’ve always had a commitment to what I consider to be working people. My distributors and myself, I see us as working people. Charlie Ragus used to call me a lunch pail distributor. He was like, “Did you take your lunch pail to work early in the morning? Do you eat your lunch on the job?” I worked with them and for them. That was my mentality. It is no different than if I was going and working in construction and I was building something.
It’s going to be a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay. In return, the people that I work with, I owe them something of myself. I am invested in their business in terms of my time and what I’ve learned over many years from many sources, especially the school of hard knocks. I feel that I owed them in that respect. The other part of that is going back to my roots, job creation. When I talked about from the farm to the finished product, to the end consumer using my product. We create jobs and we’re creating jobs in ten countries. I’m proud of that. Every time another box of my product gets sold, somebody else gets fed.
Our role on this planet is to create a generation better than the generation that we had. Click To TweetIt might be an invisible person along the food chain that I’m never going to know and they’re never going to know me, but I feel like somehow I aided them to a little bit better life. It’s a serious responsibility. It’s funny, Dan because like yourself, I meet many successful people in some cases. They all have that same attitude, “How can I help you?” I’ve worked with two billionaires in my life. Both of them used to get up at 5:00 in the morning, started texting me, calling me and working. I’m like, “You guys are billionaire. You can go to the beach.” I work with one in what I do for a living. One of our original investors who works with the company on some things in terms of research comes from one of the incredible and successful families in Canada. This guy is up at 4:30, 5:00 in the morning. If I texted him, he texted me back.
You can use his name if you want.
His name is John Molson. He works incredibly hard because he’s passionate about what he’s doing. It’s not necessarily the end result of, “I get an amount of money for this.” It’s creating value. It’s something Ron used to talk about, “Creating value in the marketplace.” Let’s talk about Jim for one second because there’s a piece of information on that. I met Jim several times. One time here in Dallas, the guy who used to work from Ron Reynolds and I worked together with a gentleman named Charlie Ragus. Ron said, “Jim is in town.” He was coming down to do a seminar. I don’t remember if it was for Herbalife or for his regular speaking business. He says, “Would you like to have lunch with him?” We went to a restaurant here down on Spring Valley in Richardson. We had a great lunch. During that lunch was interesting because Jim looked at all three of us. He said, “Gentlemen, I see a problem. I’m talking and we’re having a great conversation. There’s nobody taking notes.”
He looked at the two other guys who were quite a bit older than me. He said, “These guys they know better, but they’re not doing it. You could still be saved.” I was about 35 at the time. I ran out to my car to get a blank book. I came back to make my notes. I’m thinking to myself, “I’ve sat with Jim Rohn and I’m not taking notes. People pay thousands of dollars to listen to Jim. I’m sitting there having lunch with the guy and I’m not taking notes, what is wrong with me?” He was right. That lesson stuck with me. Since then, I have been voracious when it comes to note-taking.
I showed our friend Larry Thompson a couple of years ago one of my notebooks of the thing that he did on his El Paso story for my company. I invited him to one of our conventions and he shared his story. I showed him my notes. I kept Jim’s notes. I kept notes from when I met Bobby Depew. I got notes from Dan McCormick, from when you and I spoke together here in Dallas a few years ago. I still take Dan McCormick notes when I listen to your call sometimes on Saturdays. There are many great people that have been successful that are willing to share a little bit of not only their story, but how they got where they want it to be, which is where most of us want to be, which is a better place than we are in now. Because of that, take notes and read books. It’s your life. It’s your future. It’s your family’s future. Not only economically, but more importantly with where are you’re going to go down the road in terms of what you know and how you think.
You mentioned the word passion. We’ve got the word responsible, feeling this responsibility. It’s like a life commitment you make to try to help other people to be better. I loved the angle you come from, but not only did we get challenged by Jim to take notes, but when the doors opened to the auditorium, there was a race to the front row. You did not want to not be there without your notes, but you want him to be in the front row taking notes. There have been many phenomenal nuggets that you’ve left with people here. I generally ask often people in closing. You got some readers that maybe haven’t got to the greatest salesman status yet. What encouragement do you give them in closing as they’re wanting some of those things?
Another guy who I’ve got great respect for, you’re certainly aware of him too, is Dr. Jim Collins. Jim wrote a lot of books. When I think of Built to Last, if we started with that book as a philosophy of our career, and then we applied the ten scrolls. If you took scroll three, which is saying, “I’m going to figure it out.” Whatever it is that I need to figure out in my career and more importantly in my life because our careers are part of our life. We’ve got our life and we’ve got our career, we got macro and micro. I’m going to figure it out no matter what the circumstances, no matter what life throws at me. It’s to figure it out to persist.
Preparation For Success: You got to be prepared when that opportunity presents itself.
Take the magical words, “I will persist until I succeed.” I will persist until I climbed a mountain. I will persist until I sponsored a new distributor. I will persist until I’m this rank in my company. I’ll persist until I’m on the top salesman this month in my car dealership, my insurance agency. I will persist until I write the sermon that moves the mountain, that helps the people the most. I will not give up. That’s a philosophy that if you embrace it early on, you will have a built to last business, whatever it happens to be. You will have a life that if circumstances do not go right, the economy goes the wrong way, your life goes the wrong way, your child dies in infancy, you go bankrupt or a million different things that happened to people, you’ll have the tools to rebuild. You’ll have the tools to come back stronger than ever. Those are the tools that you can only get by reading and then applying.
Here’s the one caution of reading. If you read so much and you never apply the information, one of my hobbies, I do bench press competitions. I did one and I’m still benching over 400 at 59 years old. Some of you think I’m insane. I probably am, but I can watch the greatest bench pressers in the world. It doesn’t make me a great bench presser. If you golf and you watch Tiger Woods address that ball, which he’s been doing since he’s three when he was on the Mike Douglas Show, Tiger is good at hitting that ball.
It’s going to go far and close to the hole 9 out of 10 times. You can watch that but until you go into that golf range and you do that, or you get under that weight or whatever that weight happens to be metaphorically in your life, whether it’s I’m afraid to talk to enough people. Whatever it happens to be, whatever scares you to death, you can only achieve it by doing it. I go back to a sports metaphor. Sometimes you got to get your nose bloody. Sometimes you got to face the reality that you got to get hit and get knocked down so you can get up again. All those tools and everything we’re talking about from the Og Mandino works, Leave Nothing to Chance, Build to Last, Jim Rohn, to Larry’s The Millionaire Training book. A composite is great because it’s all great. Read it all and lived it all.
By doing that and by filling your mind like Ben Franklin said, “If you fill your mind, your mind will fill your purse. It’s not the other way around.” You have to invest in reading and then applying some of the information that you get from all of these great authors and writers of what they did. You say, “Let me apply that to my little business whatever it happens to be.” Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t. Maybe you have to tweak it. You have to change it a little bit here and there because it doesn’t work exactly the way that you read it or interpreted it. For your business, maybe it’s a little bit different. That’s the figuring out part as an entrepreneur. You’ll figure that out, but you can only figure it out by doing it.
Have we been well-fed? He’s John Solleder, the greatest salesman in the world. I’m going to leave us with this. Scroll number nine says, “I will act now.” I hope our readers will act now. Go out and buy a copy or many copies and study, Leave Nothing to Chance: 15 Principles for Success by Foster Owusu and John Solleder, who’s my guest here. If you’re joining us and you’re new to the show, you can follow, you can go to our website, TheGreatestSalesman.com. I hope you’ll take the assessment at HabitFinder.com/podcast. John, thank you. It’s been rich. It’s been full. I look forward to sharing more time with you in the future. Your wisdom and pearls have been rich.
Thank you as well. Thank you for what you’re doing for people to help them to grow, especially at this crazy time in civilization’s history. You got to fill the mind with the right thoughts and the right information. I know the Mandino people do that and all the people that you work with. You’re a blessing to thousands of people. Keep doing what you’re doing. I appreciate it.
As Og Mandino would say, “Have the greatest day of your life.” Bye for now.
