Latest / The Relentless Pursuit of Winning Podcast / Reinventing Yourself: How to Build Success Beyond Credentials | Jay Sargeant

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Reinventing Yourself: How to Build Success Beyond Credentials | Jay Sargeant · The Relentless Pursuit of Winning Podcast

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Credentials are overrated. People get stopped by the idea that they're
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not good enough, that if they had another degree,
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if their folks had more money,
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if they had more status, if they were more prepared.
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There are no small moments.
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Maybe God has somebody in that cocktail party that I'm supposed to meet.
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Sometimes you have to do something that seems so insignificant
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to create a breakthrough, to move towards the light.
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Find your joy, you match it with value you can create,
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and you never work another day as long as you live.
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Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the Relentless Pursuit of Winning Podcast.
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My name is Rick Meekins. I am your host today,
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and in our studio we have Coach Jay Sargeant.
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How are you today, sir?
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I'm doing great, Rick. And I love the relentless.
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I love the word relentless pursuit because,
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you know, to be excellent, to have the big life,
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to have make a contribution, in every way,
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shape, and form, we need to be relentless.
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One step at a time, keep moving forward.
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So a lot and I've listened to a number of your podcasts.
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You're doing a great job. Thank you for having me on.
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You know what? Thank you so much.
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I really appreciate that. And yes,
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that that relentless pursuit is is the foundation.
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We're gonna talk more about that.
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I hope so.
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Excellent,
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excellent. Folks, you are in for an excellent show today.
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I'm excited to get into it. But if you haven't done it already,
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would you please like, subscribe,
1:46
and hit the bell so that you can get updates every time we drop a new episode?
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And without further ado, let's get to it.
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So Coach Jay.
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We would love it if you give our audience a little bit of a breakdown
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of who you are, what you do and why you do what you do.
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Well, I've been thinking about this because I know that that's your first question
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because I watch your
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Mm-hmm.
2:04
podcast. So I am first and foremost a coach.
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Way more of a coach than I am a businessman.
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I'm more of a teacher. I'm not I'm not a you know,
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I'm not worried about money or investment strategies.
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I just love to get in and teach and coach and help people see a a different
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way of pursuing their life. So that's why I'm happy to be with you.
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But the biggest accomplishment in my life is certainly beyond a shadow
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of a doubt being a daddy. I mean,
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I have three spectacular daughters who have given
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me three spectacular grandchildren.
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I'm rooting for more. I'm rooting for more.
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Ha ha ha.
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I don't know if I'll be around for the great grandchildren because the second
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set of children I started very late in life.
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But
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Uh-huh.
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that's that's what I'm really all about.
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And in in in something that maybe everyone will find interesting,
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I wasn't thinking.
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About being on your show or writing this book over here.
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About
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Uh-huh.
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a year ago, my kids kept pestering me.
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All three daughters in their own way kept saying,
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Dad, you've been telling us stories your whole life.
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You go on stages everywhere and tell those stories to inspire and instruct.
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But when you're gone, and dad,
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honest to God, we don't we want you around for a long,
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long time. But this is an expiration date on all of us.
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We're all
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Yeah.
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going home someday.
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When you go home to the Lord, those stories go with you unless you write them down
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or put them in a microphone or do something.
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So I started writing, sitting here at this office on a keyboard.
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Mm-hmm.
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I
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wrote an outline and then I put 26 chapters together.
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And then I started writing, writing,
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writing. And about six months ago,
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I completed this book called Shift:
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The ReGift of Reinvention
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Mm-hmm.
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And
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really, what it's about is my reinventions or transitions from one thing
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to the next and the lessons
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Mm.
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that I learned in those transitions.
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So listen
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Mm.
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to this, Rick. I started off as a community organizer that transitioned into
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a franchise developer. That transitioned into a tennis professional.
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Then I opened up a consulting company and shared training.
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with corporate America. And from there,
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in my backyard, my office was over the garage.
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The garage
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Mm-hmm.
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was the warehouse. I had one person in the company,
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me. I took it to 675,000 distributors in the United States and Canada.
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And we built
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Yeah.
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from scratch, from scratch with limited,
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certainly limited resources, we built a billion dollar business and I helped and
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greatest blessing of my life besides my children.
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I created more
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Ha ha ha.
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than 50 millionaires in our company.
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And then all of a sudden I made another shift and here I am with you.
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I'm
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Yeah.
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teaching the lessons of reinvention through an online course that I just it's
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not even done yet, but it's
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Uh-huh.
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pretty close. So the shifts from one thing to another,
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geez, it you know, even
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Writing it all down, I started to see certain patterns and
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Yeah.
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then I thought, well, you know,
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I'll just teach these patterns to anyone,
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whether they're a twenty five year old kid riding in a plumber's truck,
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sitting next to the boss, dreaming of owning his own truck or having five trucks
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of his own, or whether it's someone who's reached the middle of their life
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and they're going, Gosh, I think there's more for me.
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I think I can do more, I think I can be more.
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That's what I'm all about. So ask me anything you want,
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but there's three patterns that I picked up that either are stops
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or obstacles or ways through.
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And
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Okay.
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that's what really my course is all about.
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Okay. Okay. Let's let's let's do this.
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Let's let's jump into what you observed.
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so let's go let's go into the first the first stage.
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What is that what
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Okay.
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does that look like? And tell us a story about it.
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I w I wanna hear you know, what your experience,
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what what gave you the inspiration for this particular stuff?
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You know, the very first shift was I'm a tennis pro.
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And now I'm a pickleball coach,
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by the way, but we won't even go into that.
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Ha ha ha.
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But
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I'm a tennis pro and I'm at the top of my game.
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So I want to talk
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Mm-hmm.
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to the people who are doing very well right now,
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but still want to do more. They believe there's something else that remains.
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So I'm on court eight at the Charles River Indoor Tennis Club.
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I've got an academy, I'm booked solid.
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Clinics are booked. I got 30 pros working for me.
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I got a pro shop. I'm making money on stringing rackets.
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I mean, it's pretty great moment for a young man with a slim waist
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and a good hairline. So you
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Mm-hmm.
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would say from the outside looking in,
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my God, this dude is the happiest guy that ever was.
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He must be totally satisfied. But on court eight,
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while teaching 10 hours a day,
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I'm thinking to myself, there's got to be more than this.
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I'm making good bank, but I'm
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Wow. Mm-hmm.
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not happy. This is not what God put me on the planet to only do.
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So while
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Yeah.
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I'm thinking that, I'm saying,
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what do I do? I don't have any credentials.
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I don't have any degrees. I come from no family that I'm going
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to inherit any business or any money.
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So what
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Mm-hmm.
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do I do next? Now here's the blessing.
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As I thought about it for weeks on end,
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I came up with a strategy. I said,
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you know, I teach some of the wealthiest.
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Most powerful people in New England.
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Why don't I go to them and ask them for help,
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ask them for advice, let
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Mm-hmm.
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them be my mentor. So I created five individual meetings.
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Now, one of them, I'm gonna brag a little bit,
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Rick. One of them was
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Mm-hmm.
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with Bob Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots.
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I'm a Boston guy. So
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Okay.
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Bob didn't own the Patriots back then.
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On the day that I went to go meet with him,
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he was very wealthy, of course,
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but he owned
8:06
Uh-huh.
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a tennis club.
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Called or a tennis team called the Boston Lobster.
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So I went to him and others and I said,
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Who am I? Describe me.
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What should I do next? If I make a transition from what I'm doing now to something
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Mm-hmm.
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else, what would that something else be from your
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Mm-hmm.
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very informed point of view? And they all came up with the same answer,
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Rick. They say, You got to go sell something.
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You are a
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Mm.
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born salesperson, but with your ego.
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You need to sell something big and grand.
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Okay.
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You can't sell pencils. So
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Okay.
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I said, wow, that's pretty cool.
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How do I do that? And one of them,
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God bless him, Mark Roberts, very dear friend of mine.
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I was teaching him tennis. He was an extraordinary tennis player.
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He said, you know, Jay, I'm gonna hook you up with a guy named George Naddaff.
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And George Naddaff is the king of franchising in the United States
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and maybe the world.
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Wow.
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And I
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think the two of you are gonna like one another.
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And I think maybe there's a fit.
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So I said, Well, what does he sell?
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He sells $250,000 franchises.
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But the way he does it is he puts men and women in fancy hotel rooms,
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fills up those hotel rooms, and he sells the franchises through a speech.
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And Jay, you give speeches. So I said,
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Hmm. Mm-hmm.
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thank you. On the day I'm going
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to see George, and I want to paint this picture very,
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very vividly.
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Mm-hmm.
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I decide first and foremost that I'm going to buy my first blue suit.
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So I go to Simon Sons in Copley Square,
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downtown Boston, and I buy the uniform,
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the blue suit. But then I didn't
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Mm-hmm.
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think that was enough. So I went to Finleen's basement downtown and I bought
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a Mark Cross briefcase. This briefcase costs more than the suit,
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and I never opened the briefcase ever in my life.
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But I wanted to walk into George's office looking the part,
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Mm-hmm, mm-hmm,
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feeling
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the part.
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mm-hmm.
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So
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on that fateful day, I walk into the office and it was an intimidating office.
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I mean, it was huge. His desk was massive.
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He looked like either the Pope or a warlord.
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I mean, I whoa,
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Yeah.
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it was stunning. What I picked up when I saw that desk is I said,
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wow, this office and this desk is owned by a bold man.
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He's going to respect boldness.
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And I remember thinking that. Now I sit down in front of him and he asks
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the typical question. He says,
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Jay, I hear good things about you,
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really great things about you from Mark Roberts.
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Tells me there may be a fit. You know,
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we sell franchises here. I'm nodding my head.
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He said, I would like to review your resume first.
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And I said, Well, George, I don't have a resume.
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he says, You mean you left it in the car or you forgot to bring?
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I said, No, no, I don't have a resume.
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He said, well, maybe you could talk me through your background in franchising
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and in business.
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I said, well, I have no background in franchising,
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no background in business. In fact,
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Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
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I
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don't even like business. In fact,
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if I'm at Logan Airport and I'm buying a magazine before a flight,
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I'm not going to buy Entrepreneur or Success,
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Fortune magazine. I'm going to go over to the sports section because that's what
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No. Uh-huh.
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I love. So
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now George is perplexed and he says,
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Well, Jay, why did you come here today?
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And I said something very simple.
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I said, I hear.
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You put men and women on the road in front of big audiences,
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50 to 100 people that you've qualified to buy a very expensive $250,000
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franchise. And the way you do it is they give a 45 to 60 minute speech.
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Did I get that right? And he goes,
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Yeah. I said, well then get me on the team.
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Because if
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Mm-hmm.
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you want someone to stand up in front of an audience and get them
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to say whatever yes you want them to say,
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I'm your man.
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Now I it stunned him a little bit.
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And I could tell in that
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I bet.
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moment of confusion I needed
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Mm-hmm.
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to enter. And I said, George, don't even think about it.
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I can prove it. He said, How so?
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I said, see that brochure over there?
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Is that your company brochure?
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That little three-page. Okay. I'm going to take that brochure,
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go sit back out in your lobby,
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and I'm going to read it, study it,
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and in 15 minutes, I'm going to come back in and give a speech.
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I'm going to give a presentation.
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Now you bring in all of your animals,
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all of your sales competitive force,
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bring in partners, managers, whoever,
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put them
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Mm-hmm.
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in this huge office, and I will in 15 minutes give a presentation.
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If I'm grand, put me on the team.
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If I'm terrible, throw me out.
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He says, fair enough. Now, obviously,
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Well.
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Rick, I'm not telling this story because I came in and I puked on my shoes.
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I came in and
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Ha ha ha.
12:58
And I get now that I want everyone,
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I'm a teacher, always coaching,
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always coaching. If you're listening to this,
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write this down. When I walked in the room,
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you always assess your audience.
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When I
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Mm-hmm.
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walked in the room, I realized that everybody but George was rooting against me.
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They were competitive.
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Nice.
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Who's this nincompoop rookie?
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Yeah.
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You know, I could feel the bad.
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So what I did is I don't know if you've ever seen the movie.
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This is spinal tap where the drummer keeps getting blown up.
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I blew them all up. I eliminated them.
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I deleted them from my. That was it.
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I had an audience of one, George Nat.
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One. Yeah. Yeah.
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And I gave, God knows what I said that day.
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I gave a
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Ha ha ha.
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10-minute speech, moving my hands and getting dramatic,
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leaning in, leaning back, telling stories.
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When it was over, George threw everyone out of the room.
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And he said, kid, sit down right in front of me.
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He said, You didn't say one thing that was correct.
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There wasn't one detail right.
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The whole thing was whack, but that was a great presentation.
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Ha ha ha ha.
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We can smooth the edges, and I'm confident you can learn the content,
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but I want you in front of my audiences.
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If I'm investing in putting people in the room,
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I want you to be out on the road for me.
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Now.
14:19
Nice.
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This is my way of teaching that Credentials are overrated.
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Can everyone please write that down?
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People get stopped by the idea that they're not good enough,
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that if they had another degree,
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if their folks had more money,
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if they had more status, if they were more prepared.
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People prepare.
14:39
Mm.
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I say, listen, if you and I were
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Got caught up in an automobile accident,
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and we we were being driven to a hospital for an operation.
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I'm not an idiot. Credentials in that environment.
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We're hoping the doctor went to medical school,
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had a really good intern in residency,
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and they know what they're doing.
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But I'm talking
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Mm-hmm.
15:00
to the entrepreneurs of the world.
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I'm talking about soft skills.
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People get
15:05
Mm-hmm.
15:06
stuck because they just are overrating credentials.
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On that day,
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I had no credentials, but I knew my value and I knew what I could do and I knew I
15:16
Mm.
15:17
could learn it on the go. And
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Mm.
15:20
I convinced George of that. Now,
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here comes the irony. Here comes the irony.
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One year into this experience,
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I'm killing it. I'm
15:28
Mm-hmm.
15:28
gonna be honest, I'm having the time of my life and I'm beating everybody
15:32
in the building. I'm very competitive.
15:33
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
15:34
I would
15:34
throw you an elbow for an offensive rebound like you can't possibly
15:37
Ha ha ha.
15:38
believe. But
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I'm killing it. But Mark Roberts comes to me and he says,
15:43
Jay, let's develop our own franchise development company.
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I thought that was the coolest idea.
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So here the only thing that bothered me,
15:53
Rick, was
15:54
Mm-hmm.
15:54
I had to go tell George, who had been such a supporter,
15:58
who had taken a
15:58
Mm-hmm.
15:59
gamble on me, who I had a genuine affection for.
16:03
I had
16:03
Mm-hmm.
16:03
to go tell him I was leaving them.
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And I felt
16:05
Yeah.
16:06
terrible about that. And I rehearsed it all night long.
16:08
George,
16:09
Yeah.
16:09
yeah, I looked in the mirror, all that stuff we all do.
16:11
But I didn't have to do anything because the moment I opened up the door
16:15
to his huge office, he looked up.
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I'll never forget the look, and he said,
16:19
I know what you're gonna say. I said,
16:22
What am I gonna say? You're leaving me,
16:24
you're going with Mark Roberts,
16:26
and you're gonna create a competitive company.
16:29
Come here, kids, sit down. Is that right?
16:31
I said, Gosh, that is right. He said,
16:34
Listen.
16:34
I want you to understand something.
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From the day I met you, I knew I was leasing or renting you,
16:41
not owning you. And
16:41
Yeah. Yeah.
16:43
I have watched you do everything you promised me you would do.
16:47
And I knew there'd come a day where you'd go out on your own.
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So listen very carefully. If you find it more difficult than you think right now,
16:56
and you fall down and bruise your knee,
16:59
the light is always on here.
17:02
You can always come home
17:03
Mm.
17:05
to George. I hope you never make that phone call.
17:08
But if that does happen, you've proven yourself and God bless you.
17:12
I hope you're amazing. There's room for all of us.
17:14
So it's a great,
17:15
Mm, mm.
17:16
great, great real. So it's the first thing,
17:18
credentials are overrated. People got to overcome that idea.
17:23
That's bold. That's bold. I I like the other thing that you you said though.
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You know, it's it's like sometimes,
17:27
you know, we're we're too big for the fishbowl.
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You know, and and we have to we have to be able to recognize that because
17:33
the fishbowl is gonna be containing and you had just so much more,
17:37
you know, and you recognize that and someone else recognized that in you as well,
17:42
which you know just just kind of adds fuel to the fire.
17:45
So congratulations for that. But yeah,
17:47
Thank you.
17:47
totally,
17:48
you know, I I think from you know sales perspective
17:51
The other side of that I was thinking was like even from a hiring perspective,
17:54
I think for you know, sometimes with startups,
17:56
you know, we look at people and we go,
17:57
well, they're too they're gonna be too expensive or you know,
18:00
whatever it is, but it's that same mentality.
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You know what I'm saying? Credentials don't necessarily matter.
18:06
It's like, you know what, let me sell you a vision.
18:08
This is what we wanna do. You know,
18:08
Yeah. Perfect.
18:10
come
18:10
on join the team. I I love that.
18:12
I love that. I love that. Cool,
18:13
thank you for that. What's what's number two?
18:16
Number two is There are no small moments.
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And I could pick from 10 different illustrations,
18:24
but I just got to share with you that people may think watching me,
18:29
Rick, there's a social butterfly,
18:32
there's a gregarious guy, there's a guy that loves to party or go out.
18:36
My wife can barely get me to do three double dates a year.
18:41
I am a very private person.
18:44
I am selectively gregarious. You turn me on when there's a purpose for me to engage.
18:50
Other than that, I'd rather be reading a poem or re studying my Italian
18:55
or watching my beloved Boston sports teams.
18:58
So I'm
18:58
Mm-hmm.
18:59
not naturally a social person.
19:02
But I'll never
19:02
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
19:03
forget, we were in a bit of a lull with our new franchise development company.
19:10
I gotta be honest, we were sucking wind.
19:12
I mean, it was we were suffering.
19:12
Yeah, please.
19:14
We were losing money, not making money.
19:16
I didn't have much money. My partner had a lot,
19:19
but you know, he wasn't going to continue to put money in unless
19:22
it started to realize something.
19:25
Mm-hmm.
19:26
I get a phone call and someone says there's this fancy dinner party in this part
19:32
of town in Boston that I could never afford.
19:35
And you're invited. Now I gotta tell you.
19:39
The moment I get that invitation,
19:41
what am I thinking, Rick? I'm thinking,
19:42
I don't want to go.
19:43
Exactly.
19:44
I gotta shower, I gotta shave,
19:46
I gotta put on an outfit, I gotta be
19:48
Yeah.
19:49
smiling, I've got to be engaging,
19:51
I gotta be eating hors d'oeuvres,
19:53
having a glass of wine. None of that's interesting to me at all.
19:56
But
19:56
Mm-hmm.
19:57
I go to myself, and this is really important.
20:00
Maybe there's a real reason to go to this.
20:02
I'm
20:03
Mm.
20:03
stuck.
20:05
How do I get unstuck? My l young little franchise development company is suffering.
20:10
Maybe God has somebody in that cocktail party that I'm supposed to meet.
20:16
So this is my
20:16
Mm.
20:17
part. I think in my book, I call this there are no small moments.
20:20
Sometimes you have to do something that seems so insignificant
20:25
to create a breakthrough, to move towards the light.
20:29
So I get dressed up and I smell good and I look good and I'm doing the best I can.
20:33
And I sit down at this massive Italian marble dinner table.
20:38
So totally not me, by the way.
20:40
Yeah.
20:41
And by random, I would say divine intervention.
20:45
That's what I would
20:45
Okay.
20:45
say. I'm sitting next to a guy I don't know,
20:48
and I turn to him and I say, Hi,
20:51
my name's Jay Sargent. What's your name?
20:53
And what do you do? Now, please,
20:56
everyone, write this down. What I did in that moment is what I teach.
21:01
I didn't talk about me. I talked about him.
21:04
I find
21:05
Uh-huh.
21:05
out that the guy next to me is Mitch K.
21:07
Poor. Nobody who's watching today knows who Mitch K.
21:11
Poor is. I guarantee it. Well,
21:13
give him a free course if somebody writes in the right what he did.
21:17
Mitch Kapoor was one of the three developers of microcomputer software
21:23
in 1981. There was the beginning of Word as a word processor.
21:28
There
21:28
Mm-hmm.
21:29
was
21:30
Ashton-Tate’s database management program called D Base 2.
21:34
And there was a spreadsheet program called Lotus 123.
21:38
The guy
21:39
Remember those?
21:40
next to me is the developer of Lotus 123.
21:44
Wow.
21:46
So it's not 1991. I don't know anything about what he's talking about.
21:49
He says I've done, he tells me VisiCalc to VisiPlot to 1-2-3.
21:53
I don't know what a spreadsheet I don't but I'm fascinated.
21:56
And I said, wow
21:58
I own eventually, I let him go.
22:01
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
22:01
I kept asking
22:02
him questions, and I realized as he was speaking that he was talking about
22:07
a wave of business development right at the beginning that was going to be huge.
22:13
I got excited. I and all I wanted to do is get on the top of that wave.
22:18
Well, how could I
22:18
Mm-hmm.
22:19
get on the top of that wave? So I asked him that.
22:21
I said, listen, I own an incredibly successful franchise development company.
22:27
And we are always looking for new properties to develop.
22:30
We're working for the next giant in an emerging industry.
22:34
If you were me, Mitch, what would you be looking for?
22:38
And he said, gee, that's simple.
22:40
There are now computer hardware stores called Computerland emerging
22:45
all over the country. But they don't want to sell
22:47
Never mind.
22:48
software. They just want to sell the box.
22:50
You should
22:52
Develop software retailing and put a software retail store as close to you
22:58
as as to a computer land as you can,
23:01
and people will walk right into your business.
23:05
I said, Wow. I said, does anyone have one of these?
23:09
And he said, Well, since I sell software,
23:11
I know there are only four locations I'm selling to.
23:14
One here in Boston, one in Washington,
23:17
DC, one in Chicago, and one in Los Angeles.
23:21
So the next day, I don't even ask my partner,
23:25
because I think he would have been a no.
23:26
Do you understand? I think he he was to the point where he wasn't gonna throw good
23:30
money at bad. You know that thought form.
23:32
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
23:32
So
23:33
I say, I take the limited amount of money I have and I buy tickets.
23:37
I go to the Boston store, it sucks.
23:40
I go take an airplane ride to Washington,
23:43
DC. That store is worse than the Boston store.
23:46
Mm-hmm.
23:46
I got
23:46
a ticket to the Chicago location,
23:48
a little bit better, but nothing impressive.
23:51
Till eventually I get to Los Angeles.
23:53
When I get to Los Angeles, I walk into a little 1,500 square foot retail store
23:59
on Pico Boulevard in West Los Angeles,
24:02
and I was in heaven. There were customers,
24:04
Mm.
24:05
we called them back
24:06
in the day, you probably know this,
24:08
copter heads from Caltech, fooling around with Ataris and Commodores
24:13
and Trash 80s
24:13
Yeah.
24:15
and Apple IIEs. There wasn't
24:17
Yes.
24:17
a Mac, and there wasn't a big blue IBM
24:20
Computer back in the day. But they're all standing there.
24:23
There were like 50 people in the store.
24:25
It
24:25
Mm-hmm.
24:26
wasn't blooming deals. It wasn't perfectly merchandised.
24:30
It didn't have a
24:30
Mm-hmm.
24:30
gorgeous sign, but there was action and energy.
24:34
So I go, my God, this is it. This is the one.
24:37
Thank God. I go over to this blonde kid.
24:41
He seemed like a kid to me behind the counter.
24:44
He looked like a surfer or a skateboarder.
24:46
And I say, Hey, I'm Jay Sargent.
24:49
I am a master developer of franchises.
24:52
I am looking for the single software retail store to make the market leader.
24:58
And I have found you. Who owns this and how can I get to them?
25:03
And the kid said to me, his name,
25:04
his name, he's a great guy. His name is Glenn.
25:07
He said, Jay, I'm an owner. I said,
25:10
wow. Are you a decision maker?
25:12
He said, no. I only own a little bit.
25:14
I said, Well,
25:14
Mm-hmm.
25:15
who is that decision maker? Now I want to drum roll,
25:18
Rick.
25:18
Because I want to see if you can remember the name.
25:20
Thank you. He says to me, George Tate owns this retail store.
25:26
And I said, George Tate
25:28
Really?
25:29
of Ashton Tate owns this software retail store.
25:33
He was one of the only three developers of software in the world on that day.
25:39
He already owned
25:40
Mm-hmm.
25:40
a
25:41
wholesale distribution company.
25:43
And this was the first retail store owned by George Tate.
25:47
So I say immediately to the kid,
25:49
Glenn, it's wonderful meeting you.
25:51
I need the address. Where is George right now?
25:54
He said, he's at his he's in Venice.
25:56
I give me the address. And I get in a cab.
25:59
Now I think that I am going to Bel Air.
26:03
Mm.
26:03
Come on, because I'm not I don't know anything about Los Angeles,
26:06
but I think I'm going to a gated community,
26:08
maybe next to Magic Johnson's place or something.
26:10
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
26:11
Did you understand? The cab
26:12
driver is driving through what seems like a grungy neighborhood.
26:17
And I keep asking the cab driver,
26:18
are you sure you got this right?
26:20
Because I'm looking for the president of Ashkin Tate,
26:23
you know, and he goes, kid, this is the way this is the address.
26:28
When we get there, it's a crappy apartment house.
26:32
Yeah.
26:33
In
26:33
a down low neighborhood. It was before Venice became gentrified and grand.
26:40
And I get out, give the cab driver his money,
26:42
and I walk up this flight of stairs and I knock on a screen door.
26:46
And out comes a guy with no shirt,
26:51
a big belly, little running shorts,
26:55
the kind we used to wear, with
26:57
Uh-huh.
26:58
a cigarette hanging out of the side of his mouth.
27:02
And I was perplexed. I said, I'm Jay Sargent,
27:05
franchise developer. I'm looking for George Tate of Ashton Tate,
27:09
who owns a software retail store on West Los Angeles on Pico Boulevard.
27:14
He said, That's me. I said, Well,
27:16
it's a pleasure to meet you. He said,
27:17
Come on in, tell me what you could what you can do for me.
27:20
I then tell my story about being a king maker,
27:23
and then I've
27:23
Yeah.
27:24
identified his retail location as the single most competitive retail,
27:29
and I'm going to anoint it.
27:31
And make it the largest in the land.
27:33
In an hour, on a yellow pad of paper,
27:37
we sign a contract.
27:39
Nice.
27:40
Two things about the contract.
27:42
I got good money for selling each of those franchises.
27:45
Enough
27:45
Mm-hmm.
27:46
for me to develop a team so I could commission other people.
27:50
So I didn't have to be alone.
27:51
Mm-hmm.
27:53
If people are taking notes, this was maybe the most important part of the meeting,
27:57
other than winning them over and finding
27:58
Mm-hmm.
27:59
them, of course.
28:00
Mm-hmm.
28:00
Taking
28:01
the risk and spending all the money I had in the world to make this trip.
28:04
Everything I I was all in, baby,
28:06
like a poker game.
28:07
Yeah.
28:07
Pushed all the chips in. I said,
28:10
George, I'm gonna need about a seventy-five thousand dollar budget to launch this.
28:15
Now remember that's nineteen eighty one,
28:18
so seventy five thousand dollars was a half a million back then.
28:22
And
28:22
Mm-hmm.
28:23
he signs that contract, gives me the budget,
28:25
gives me the commissions and the whole nine yards.
28:28
I'm not
28:28
Wow.
28:29
gonna
28:29
I'm not going to belabor this.
28:30
We sold in 18 months from the day I
28:34
met him 154 franchises from scratch.
28:40
Wow.
28:41
Now, what we want to talk about here,
28:44
and what we want to recognize,
28:46
is something I've seen over and over again.
28:48
If you're stuck, you got to move.
28:51
Sometimes
28:51
Mm-hmm.
28:52
you got to take a bad meeting to find a good meeting.
28:55
Sometimes
28:55
Mm-hmm.
28:55
you have to take a bad gig to get a good gig.
28:59
But you can't
28:59
Mm-hmm.
29:00
make money and change and shift and reinvent while sitting in
29:05
the barker lounge you're watching ESPN.
29:07
God knows
29:08
Yeah.
29:08
I've tried. God knows I love ESPN more than any other.
29:12
You know, I can watch sports all day long.
29:14
But you got to recognize there are no small moments.
29:18
You don't know where the gold is buried till you chip away in the mine.
29:23
You just got to go do the work.
29:25
Yeah, yeah. I mean real talk on that.
29:27
I mean it's you know, I mean there's there's,
29:29
you know, lots of folks out here that are listening that you know,
29:33
have knocked on the doors and you know,
29:34
it's it's you know, and look for the opportunities and and things just don't
29:38
necessarily pan out. How do how do they how do we stay in the game?
29:41
You know, how do we not get discouraged and say,
29:43
Hey, you know what? Or at what point,
29:46
you know, do we say, Hey, you know what,
29:47
this this just isn't working. I need to I need to shift again.
29:50
Because I mean you're talking about so one c so there's an argument that could
29:54
be made that you were just lucky to be in the right room at the right time talking
30:00
to the right person out of everybody in that room at that single networking event.
30:04
It's buried in the word that you've coined that you stand for,
30:08
relentless. Do you think I'm here
30:10
Mm-hmm.
30:10
telling you about the ones that didn't work?
30:12
Do you think
30:13
Mm-hmm.
30:14
I got lucky immediately from success to success to success?
30:18
Not at all. I could put a whole show together.
30:22
We could do next week how I failed ten times.
30:24
Ha.
30:26
So you gotta have, as we used to say in my old neighborhood,
30:29
gulliones. You gotta have courage.
30:32
Got to do it again and again, keep knocking on the door,
30:34
Yeah. Yeah.
30:36
and do it again and again. I
30:38
Yeah.
30:39
I'm gonna share with you a very interesting twist in this story.
30:44
If you and I are watching a TV show,
30:46
a series, here comes the twist.
30:47
Yeah.
30:48
As good
30:50
as that campaign was, guess what happened?
30:52
I never tell
30:53
Whatever.
30:53
it this way, but for some reason I'm gonna tell it that George Tate died.
31:00
One and a half years into the experience.
31:03
Wow.
31:05
I'm not going to get into why he died and how he died.
31:07
Just suffice it to say, he passed away.
31:11
He was a heavy smoker, had a massive heart attack.
31:16
He never took care of himself.
31:17
And one
31:17
Mm-hmm.
31:18
day I went to the office to say hello to him and he was gone.
31:22
my goodness.
31:23
His widow sold the business.
31:26
To someone else.
31:28
To someone else who loved Ashton Tate,
31:31
but disbanded the distribution company,
31:34
and at the height of our most glorious franchise development success closed
31:40
my division completely down. Completely out of my hands.
31:44
I'm called into lawyers at Century City here in Los Angeles,
31:48
and they said, get your effects together,
31:50
it's over. Over. Now, in that moment,
31:55
I had some money, thank God I had made money and I had enough to sustain myself,
32:00
but I needed to find the next gig.
32:03
And that was incredibly, I can't begin to tell you.
32:06
We were on the verge of taking it public with Alex Brown.
32:09
I had shares, I had stock, I had options.
32:13
I mean, I was predicting at that moment in time before George went home to the Lord.
32:20
I was predicting that I was going to become a massive multi,
32:24
multi-millionaire from what I had created.
32:27
And I had
32:27
Mm-hmm.
32:28
hundreds of stores lined up for the next year because the stores were doing well.
32:31
wow, wow. Yeah.
32:34
They shut
32:35
it down. In that moment, I could tell the story in a thousand ways because
32:39
I met a woman, I fell in love,
32:40
all kinds of neat things happened.
32:42
But I was in between trapezas.
32:44
Everyone has been there.
32:45
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
32:46
That existential moment.
32:48
Well, what do I do? What whither thou goest?
32:50
What do I do next? And in transition,
32:53
guess what I did? I called up George Nataff.
32:56
What you do? Okay.
32:59
I called up George and I said,
33:01
George, this is what's just happened.
33:04
And he said, Kid, I hoped you never called me.
33:06
But this
33:07
Mm-hmm.
33:07
is so fortuitous. You are truly blessed.
33:12
Because right now I am beginning to develop.
33:15
A franchise, I'm gonna call it Boston Chicken.
33:18
It's gonna be huge. I'm looking for someone to be the president and lead the charge.
33:24
I'm gonna have it based in New York City.
33:26
I'm gonna put somebody up in downtown,
33:29
midtown Manhattan. And he gave me a compensation package that was stunning.
33:35
It had everything. It had base,
33:36
it had commissions, group commissions,
33:39
bonuses, and shares.
33:42
So I go to my young bride, she was only 21 years old at the time,
33:46
22 by this point, and I say, Sweetie,
33:49
we're leaving Los Angeles, and Uncle George is bringing us back to New York with
33:55
a stunning program. Now, Boston Chicken went on to become very successful,
34:00
just so everyone knows. And as happy as I should have been,
34:05
Rick, I wasn't. Now I'm going to talk about it,
34:08
it's a
34:09
It's a small sub theme here, and it's may not
34:11
Mm-hmm.
34:12
be for everybody, but I have no tolerance for emotional pain.
34:16
I can
34:17
Mm-hmm.
34:17
take a fist, but I don't like to be unhappy.
34:20
I've got to feel like I'm doing the right thing,
34:23
like being with you here and doing this podcast.
34:25
This feels right to me. So even though I've got this massive,
34:30
stable, strong, foundational offer,
34:33
it's got
34:34
Uh-huh.
34:34
a lot of exciting elements to it.
34:36
Back into franchising, which I know.
34:39
Hey, great. New York City, opera,
34:41
theater, sports, Madison Square Garden.
34:44
You know, everything kind of sexy.
34:45
Everything. Yeah.
34:45
I'm taking my
34:46
young wife to a place she's never seen.
34:49
I should be ecstatic. But for two days I didn't tell her,
34:53
I didn't want to disturb her. I'm thinking,
34:55
I don't want to do this. I don't want to go back
34:57
Mm-hmm.
34:58
east. And I don't want to be a chicken empire builder.
35:02
I don't want to talk about
35:02
Mm-hmm.
35:03
chicken. That's all there is to it.
35:05
One night,
35:06
Three nights into this crisis of my self-imposed crisis of mine,
35:11
I'm sitting by a swimming pool,
35:13
massive swimming pool, 250 Shage lounges around the swimming pool.
35:18
My wife, Lee, is asleep upstairs.
35:21
I'm sitting alone on a Shaise lounge and I'm thinking,
35:26
deep in thought, and a bald-headed guy with a baseball cap and Bermuda shorts.
35:33
sits down next to me on the chaise lounge.
35:36
Out of all the places he could have been or could have sat,
35:38
Mm-hmm.
35:39
he sits down next to me. And he says,
35:42
A penny for your thoughts. I said,
35:44
are you in trouble? Because next to the word loquacious in the dictionary is me.
35:51
I don't have a minute. I everything takes me a half hour to he says,
35:55
kid, I don't care. I want to hear what you're thinking about.
35:59
And I tell him my story.
36:01
Mm-hmm.
36:01
Gets
36:01
up, runs to his car. I don't know where he goes,
36:04
comes back with a book. I want everyone to know the book:
36:09
Frogs into Princes. Frogs into Princes.
36:13
Hands me the book. Now the book has been beaten to death.
36:16
The spine
36:16
Mm-hmm.
36:17
is busted. It's got notes, excuse me,
36:19
all over it. Clearly, it was an important book to him.
36:24
Mm-hmm.
36:24
He says, This, after listening to you for 30 minutes.
36:28
This is what you should do with the rest of your life.
36:31
Read the book. I said, Well,
36:34
God bless you. Can I get? I don't have any money on me.
36:36
I'm in short pants here. He said,
36:38
I don't want, it's a gift. But read the book.
36:41
I said, okay, great. I will. He said,
36:43
no, no. Read it now. So I start reading.
36:47
I get to page 11. I look over.
36:48
He's gone. Never saw that guy again.
36:51
Never
36:51
Mm-hmm.
36:51
saw that guy again. On page 11,
36:54
by page 11, I was out of my mind.
36:59
I run up, wake up Lee, and I say,
37:01
we're not going to New York. We're sending back the $10,000 he advanced us.
37:05
We're not going. I have found what I want to do,
37:09
need to do, and ordain to do. I'm going to
37:13
Wow.
37:13
teach this book. Now, what I found in that book,
37:16
I can't get into it in this short little podcast,
37:20
but what I found was a breakthrough for me.
37:23
I was resistant to selling, Rick.
37:26
My father sold life insurance to get out of being a truck driver and a teamster.
37:31
And every night he'd finish work and he'd sit on the side of his bed
37:35
in our little apartment house in Brighton,
37:37
Massachusetts, through the thin wall.
37:39
I'd hear my father sailing and selling.
37:42
Mrs. Kennedy, Mrs. Sullivan, Mrs.
37:44
Ionello, if your husband dies tonight,
37:47
what do you do tomorrow morning to take care of your family?
37:50
I heard
37:50
Mm-hmm.
37:51
that line over and over. I was disgusted by
37:54
Mm-hmm.
37:54
By his
37:55
sales techniques. And as a little boy,
37:57
I said to myself, I'm never going into sales,
38:00
but I ended up
38:00
Anyway.
38:00
in sales. And I did as I've already shared with everybody,
38:04
I did well, but I always struggled.
38:06
When I read those 11 pages, I saw that there was a way to be,
38:11
teach, and coach sales and sales communication in
38:16
an elegant people first way. And I knew that if I taught those 11 pages.
38:23
I would bless people, set them free,
38:26
and make them infinitely more happy and successful.
38:29
Mm.
38:30
So when I told Lee we were sending the money back and that I was gonna teach
38:34
the she loved me dearly and she was a kid.
38:37
I was 16 years older than her.
38:39
She said, Well, honey, I was kind of looking forward to the to the money
38:43
and going to New York. But if you think this is what you want to do,
38:47
I'm behind you 100%.
38:49
I'm not going to tell the whole story,
38:51
Rick, but I developed an $11.2 million consulting business
38:57
selling those 11 pages over
39:00
Wow.
39:00
a seven to eight year period of time and had the greatest time of my life doing it.
39:06
So here's the deal: credentials are overrated.
39:11
You got to respect every moment.
39:14
There are no small moments, and it's never too late to change.
39:18
Because I'm telling you this story.
39:20
I'm already in the middle of my life and I go from something I know that's stable,
39:27
that's lucrative, to something that's completely unknown
39:31
Mm-hmm.
39:31
because it's what I felt I was ordained to do.
39:36
Mm. Mm. That is that is really powerful.
39:38
That is really powerful. I think I I I th this is when I hear you talk about this,
39:44
this is a major shift, you know,
39:47
in your life. And you have a wife and you already have a life and that sort
39:50
of thing. And and you trusted
39:54
That you were going to be able to turn this into something.
39:57
You and you literally took nothing and turned it into,
40:00
you know, multi-million dollar business.
40:02
The the challenge that we have sometimes is taking that leap.
40:07
You know, that's that's a leap of faith.
40:09
That is it, that is that's beyond a lot of people's ability to to change.
40:15
This is like like I had my company for 20 years,
40:18
and then it's like, hey, shift,
40:19
we're gonna do something completely different.
40:21
What gave you what gave you the guts to do that?
40:24
I come from a very modest background,
40:27
but the gift that my parents and my grandparents gave me
40:32
was an entrepreneurial spirit.
40:34
When I was a young man, I went to Boston College.
40:37
I didn't graduate, by the way,
40:39
but I went to Boston College, and the first year in my freshman year,
40:44
I went home with Mike Belford to his phenomenally wealthy home
40:50
on Long Island.
40:52
Mm.
40:52
Come
40:52
from a very modest, working class,
40:54
blue-collar Jewish family. I'm now at Christmas dinner
41:00
at the Belford Mansion. And around that table,
41:04
I'm having an experience that was disorienting.
41:07
Because around my family, there'd be cacophony and screaming and yelling.
41:11
We were a joyous group, but we'd be
41:13
Yeah.
41:14
in a little dinky space. I'm in this huge space,
41:17
big table, very discreet.
41:20
elegant conversation. And you know what they're talking about?
41:22
I will never forget.
41:23
Right.
41:24
They're talking about equity and profit sharing and stock and leverage.
41:29
Yeah.
41:29
And I'm sitting there, I'm only 18 years old and I'm thinking,
41:33
I'm screwed. Look what these people are talking about.
41:37
My family hasn't done known anything,
41:39
certainly doesn't have any strategy.
41:42
I'm
41:42
huh.
41:43
dead. But what I then realized as life proceeded is I got a greater gift.
41:49
I got a greater gift. My mom and dad wanted to be rich.
41:53
They were never rich, but they were
41:56
Mm-hmm.
41:56
always trying to be rich. So they
41:59
Mm-hmm.
41:59
sold shoes in the living room of our little apartment house.
42:04
My mother would buy black pumps and put rhinestones on the toes to customize them.
42:09
And they had a little inventory and they sold shoes on Tuesdays and Thursday nights.
42:13
My mom and
42:13
Uh-huh.
42:14
dad.
42:14
Taught Mambo and Cha Cha lessons in that exact same living room.
42:20
My Jewish mother taught Chinese cooking classes in a dinky little kitchen
42:26
in that apartment. Although none of these things were spectacular successes,
42:31
they were all something that fed them,
42:34
that energized them, that gave them hope.
42:35
Yeah. Yeah.
42:37
They made a little bit of money
42:39
and they kept going and going,
42:40
never disappointed. My mom and dad.
42:43
Found, you know, the tragedy and comedy symbols,
42:46
the Greek tragedy and comedy. My father
42:48
Mm-hmm.
42:49
found a version of tragedy and comedy with clowns.
42:54
He spent every penny he had in his bank account on reproducing
43:00
two or three hundred of those sets of clowns.
43:03
They then took
43:03
Mm-hmm.
43:04
whatever money was left over and they bought an ad,
43:07
catch this, in the New Yorker magazine.
43:10
It was a deeper
43:10
Uh-huh.
43:11
little ad.
43:12
Uh-huh.
43:12
That
43:13
it was all they could afford. And we thought we were on the road to riches,
43:18
to wealth.
43:18
Yes.
43:19
We all came home on the first day the New Yorker came out.
43:22
We thought the mailbox slot would be filled with envelopes.
43:26
Three. And that was our biggest
43:26
Yes.
43:29
day. But I'm gonna I want people to zero in on this.
43:32
The day after the day after, my folks were ready to do it again.
43:37
Do you understand?
43:38
Mm-hmm.
43:38
They were ready to they were not even wounded.
43:42
They just wiped themselves up,
43:43
stood up, and moved on. Now I'm gonna give my mom credit and my dad.
43:48
My mom found an art glass on Cape Cod that she fell in love with,
43:53
Seidenstricker glass. She went
43:54
Mm-hmm.
43:55
to the owner after two or three times going to the store,
43:59
and she said, Bill Seidenstricker,
44:01
I can represent you in Boston.
44:03
You're here on the Cape, you're doing phenomenally well.
44:06
I love your glass.
44:08
If you will consign boxes of the glass to Bernie and I,
44:12
my dad was Bernie, my mom was Gladdy,
44:14
Bernie and Gladdy, consign the product,
44:17
we'll take it to Boston, and we will sell it in any place we can.
44:22
And that glass money put my brother through Harvard
44:28
for four years debt-free. So
44:31
Wow.
44:31
it isn't as if they didn't become millionaires,
44:33
but they did periodically land on something they loved.
44:38
They shared it and they made imported money.
44:42
Now,
44:42
Yeah.
44:43
in my family, and this is a direct answer,
44:47
this is what I want people to know.
44:48
The matriarch of the family was my mother's mother,
44:52
Lillian, Nana Lil.
44:54
Mm.
44:54
Nana Lil wanted to live every minute of her life in her own apartment in Brighton,
45:00
Massachusetts, the one we all went to at every holiday.
45:04
Mm-hmm.
45:05
But when she got to around 94 years of age,
45:07
she started falling, slipping.
45:09
Mm.
45:10
We'd go find her with a wound,
45:12
we'd see bruises on her body, and it was terrifying.
45:15
She raised me for five
45:15
Mm.
45:16
years. So my I whole life I loved her like crazy,
45:21
like a second mom.
45:23
Yeah.
45:24
And my mother and I, God, this was a difficult day.
45:27
We went to Lil, Nana Lil, and we said,
45:30
we gotta have you leave here. You gotta go into this Hebrew rehab center
45:35
in Roslindale, Massachusetts. And she fought,
45:39
my God, she was so mad at us. One week later,
45:41
I had a trip, business trip. One week later,
45:44
the first thing I did when I got to Logan Airport is drive right
45:47
to Roslindale to the Hebrew rehab to go see her.
45:50
I thought I was gonna get a
45:52
Beaten man. I thought she was gonna just tear into me.
45:53
huh. ~
45:55
The
45:56
minute I saw her, she beamed. She said,
45:58
Jay, you're an idiot. Why didn't you get me in here sooner?
46:02
The food is great,
46:02
Ha ha ha ha.
46:04
three squares a day. We got treats in the afternoon,
46:08
bingo movies, card games, mahjong at night.
46:11
I got new
46:11
Uh-huh.
46:11
friends I never had. And Jay, come here.
46:15
And I lean in and she says, You know.
46:18
When I was a little girl in the second grade in Dorchester,
46:21
Massachusetts, I fell in love with a little boy named Louie.
46:25
And when we moved from Dorchester to Brighton as a family,
46:30
I lost Louie Guess what? I said,
46:33
What, Nana? I found Louis. He's here.
46:36
What?
46:36
And we're
46:37
and we're in love. We're in love.
46:40
We're in love. I said, You're in love with Louis.
46:42
She said, Jay, this is my Romeo and Juliet moment.
46:46
I loved your grandfather.
46:47
But this is my Romeo. And he brings me a muffin in a little napkin,
46:53
like it's the Hope Diamond. And every
46:56
Wow.
46:56
night we sit together before they bring us back to our respective rooms.
47:01
We hold hands and we tell stories and we give one another a kiss.
47:05
I said, my God. On the last day I ever saw Louie and Lil,
47:11
Lillian and Louie.
47:13
I went to go visit her on an autumn autumn afternoon,
47:15
yeah, not spring, autumn. And they
47:17
Mm-hmm.
47:17
were sitting in a courtyard all alone with their walkers in front of them.
47:21
huh.
47:22
And I go and I spent about an hour and a half loving them,
47:26
them loving me, me loving them.
47:27
And
47:28
Well.
47:28
then I had to go, the sun was setting.
47:30
And I said, I gave them a hugs and kisses,
47:32
goodbye. And as I left, I went up a level and across a little corridor where there
47:37
was a glass window looking down at
47:41
Them in the courtyard. And it was getting
47:41
Mm. Mm-hmm.
47:43
chilly, so they got a little cold.
47:45
And I just stood there because I I suspected it might be the one of the last times
47:49
I would ever see her because I was relocating.
47:51
Yeah.
47:52
And I
47:52
stood there and they got cold.
47:55
So they stood up, they got their walkers,
47:57
and they waddled, waddled, so impassioned that they'd waddle,
48:02
waddle, kiss. Waddle, waddle,
48:06
kiss.
48:06
Ha ha.
48:07
Couldn't keep their hands off of one another,
48:10
Rick. So
48:10
Amazing.
48:11
I was taught by my family to be resilient,
48:15
to begin again, to never give up.
48:17
Yeah. Yeah.
48:18
There's
48:19
possibility you push and you push,
48:21
and finally some door opens, some light emerges.
48:25
So that's that's what I wrote about.
48:27
That's what I teach. I got a course that people could take.
48:29
They can't take it quite yet, but they can go to my website and
48:32
get in the pre-enroll or whatever they want to do.
48:35
But honest to God, I'm not doing this to create more money in this lifetime.
48:39
I'm I'm a coach. And I want
48:41
Yeah.
48:42
if any you know, this morning I said the same prayer I always say.
48:45
Before I do any of any presentation,
48:48
any prayer, any any any podcast,
48:51
I just pray. I say,
48:53
Mm-hmm.
48:54
God put one person in my audience whose mind and soul I can touch
49:00
to create some form.
49:02
of joy, improvement, transcendence.
49:05
And so thank you for having this podcast and allowing me to do this work.
49:11
Absolutely. I I I guess I I guess I'm the recipient because
49:14
I feel extraordinarily blessed,
49:16
you know, by our conversation.
49:18
Thank you so much. I I love to talk about,
49:20
you know, resilience and and pushing forward.
49:22
I mean, obviously, you know, we have that we talk about the the relentless pursuit.
49:26
And, you know, it requires resilience.
49:28
It requires, you know, continuing to to to push forward regardless
49:32
of of the failures, you know, that that we that we alluded to.
49:35
So since you're in the cat bird seat,
49:37
the question
49:39
comes to you. And you probably you probably know the question already,
49:41
but I'm going ask it anyway. So the name of the podcast,
49:45
of course, is The Relentless Pursuit of Winning.
49:47
Everybody defines winning in whatever way they need to.
49:50
The challenge that we run into is maintaining that relentless pursuit.
49:54
So what would you recommend to our audience in order to guide them or
49:59
or or enable them to maintain that relentless pursuit?
50:05
It's an equation and I was terrible in math.
50:08
When
50:08
Mm-hmm.
50:09
I say equation, God bless my math teachers who knew I never did any homework
50:14
and was terrible, but it is an equation.
50:16
You Find your joy, you match it with value you can create,
50:22
and you never work another day as long as you live.
50:25
Is this work? Is the what you're doing now work?
50:28
Is what I'm doing now work? So what people need to do is they need
50:32
to find what they're good at.
50:33
where they can create value. And it
50:34
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
50:36
doesn't have to be like me, public speaking,
50:38
yada yada, metaphor design, storytelling.
50:41
Find what you're good at. And literally
50:43
Mm-hmm.
50:43
I started this podcast off referring to a young man in a truck in Akron,
50:49
Ohio. He's a plumber. He's an incredibly gifted plumber,
50:54
but he's young and he's working for someone.
50:56
And the
50:56
Mm.
50:57
emblem on the side, the graphic on the side isn't his name.
51:01
It's that guy's name.
51:02
Mm-hmm.
51:02
But the
51:03
kid wants to own a beautiful home in Akron,
51:06
Ohio with a swimming pool, 3,500 square feet,
51:10
four bedrooms, and a playroom.
51:12
Do you understand? But as long as he's alongside of the guy who owns
51:18
the truck and his name isn't on the truck,
51:22
he's not going to get that. So what someone needs to do is say,
51:25
I can do this as well or better than anyone alive.
51:29
Mm-hmm.
51:29
Doing it brings me satisfaction,
51:32
happiness, and joy. And I
51:34
Mm-hmm.
51:34
am just going to be patient enough to move towards that vision.
51:39
And if you do that relentlessly,
51:41
value proposition plus passion/slash joy,
51:46
you will
51:47
Mm-hmm.
51:47
find your way. Give yourself the time.
51:49
Give yourself the time.
51:50
Mm-hmm.
51:51
Mm. Give yourself the time. That's that's a great that's a great equation.
51:55
I I've heard that said differently.
51:59
you know, find something that you enjoy and you work never never work another
52:03
day in your life. It's like a but you you you added a you added a vision,
52:08
you know, component to that. You know,
52:09
there was something that he wanted to he wanted to accomplish.
52:13
You know, and so this it becomes in my mind at least,
52:16
you know, part of part of that equation.
52:18
It's like I I love doing this thing,
52:20
you know, I love to create value for people,
52:23
but there's an end to it. Do you would you would
52:25
Yeah.
52:25
you agree with that?
52:26
I agree. I mean, I've studied successful people my whole life.
52:30
I owned a
52:31
Mm-hmm.
52:31
company called Paradigms for Excellence,
52:33
my training company, which was based on the concept of expert modeling,
52:37
studying
52:37
Yeah.
52:38
sales forces. Before I taught any sales force,
52:42
any sales technique, I would ride with the worst,
52:46
the middle, and the best. And
52:48
Yeah.
52:49
then I would take the best. And I had big clients like Toshiba and Epson and
52:53
Northwestern life insurance, home federal savings and loan.
52:57
I was big in banking. And I would study what made the best people best,
53:01
and I can tell you that you have identified something critically important.
53:05
The third variable was being outcome-based,
53:09
knowing the direction you're moving in.
53:12
Now you may want to get to Z, but we all start at A,
53:16
and you may pause forever what feels like at C.
53:20
But if you always know in every interaction and in in all the progress of your life,
53:26
my outcome, my Z is right over here.
53:30
You just keep
53:30
Mm-hmm.
53:30
that vision. So you have identified an incredibly important component
53:35
of excellence in general.
53:37
Mm. Mm-hmm. Thank you. Thank you.
53:39
Yeah. I I I think about that a lot.
53:41
We've we've had this this conversation and it's like I I think I look at,
53:45
you know, some of the work that,
53:47
you know, we do with this podcast,
53:48
even it's it's like, you know,
53:49
what is what is that end zone?
53:50
You know, and it is to reach, you know,
53:53
entrepreneurs and help them educate or help to educate equipment,
53:56
inspire them to build, you know,
53:57
not just companies, but extraordinary companies.
53:59
And that's this is the importance of this conversation.
54:02
It's just like, how do we, how do we create excellence?
54:05
You know, and it's maintain that relentless pursuit.
54:07
So thank you so much for for that.
54:09
Is there anything you wanna leave our audience with?
54:11
I'm totally complete. I feel like I've shared my important stories.
54:16
We've identified the processes.
54:18
We've talked about the lessons.
54:20
We've you've encouraged me to at least I I like your encouragement because what
54:26
you said, Jay, if someone listens to you and they think it's just a bed
54:29
of roses and that you're the miracle worker and that everything you touch turns
54:34
to gold, you said, what is that true?
54:36
And I said, No, it's not true.
54:37
I'm only telling you the s
54:40
Victories, the stories that have the loaded information in it that can
54:45
be helpful to others. But I also have to freely admit you need to be patient,
54:51
you need to be relentless and persistent,
54:53
you need to be able to absorb a blow.
54:55
My great paternal grandfather was a boxer.
54:58
And just before he passed, and a bookmaker,
55:02
he's really made his money gambling,
55:04
but my
55:04
Mm-hmm.
55:05
Papa Boney.
55:07
He was called Boney because he was an extremely light.
55:09
I'm 6'2, he was 6'2. He was 6'2 when there weren't very many Jewish
55:14
men who were 6'2. But he
55:15
Uh-huh.
55:15
only weighed 135 pounds. So he fought at flyweight.
55:19
I mean, I don't even know what the you know.
55:21
So they call so they his his nickname was Boney and it lasted his whole life.
55:24
So my Papa Boney, on the last time I ever saw him,
55:27
literally the last time I ever saw him,
55:29
he lived to about 98, maybe 99.
55:32
I saw him, he's wearing a little bow tie and his little felt hat.
55:36
Sitting with a short sleeve, a dress shirt in a chair,
55:39
and I said, Papa Boney, what do you have to say?
55:43
And he says, Kids, there's gonna be a lot of battles,
55:45
but here's what I need you to know.
55:47
Keep your hands up and always fight out of a corner.
55:52
Punch your way out of a corner.
55:55
And I gotta tell you, it's a signature piece in my mind all the time.
55:59
When I get hit, when I fall down,
56:02
I think of Papa Boney and I punch my way out of a corner.
56:05
You gotta be rugged in this lifetime.
56:07
That's gold. That's gold right there.
56:09
That's gold. If someone wants to get in touch with you,
56:12
someone wants to work with you,
56:13
what's the best way to do that?
56:14
Best way is, and I gotta look at it because it's brand new.
56:17
The Shift
56:17
Ha ha ha.
56:18
Project.academy. I'm at the Shift Project.academy.
56:23
I'm developing and I'm excited about it.
56:25
It's not ready yet, but I'm developing my own YouTube channel where I'm gonna tell
56:30
a series of stories. I'm gonna I'm gonna try to be.
56:33
Everyone can give me a prayer.
56:35
I'm gonna try to replicate what we all love on Amazon Prime and Netflix series.
56:42
You know where you
56:42
Mm.
56:43
go.
56:43
Well, I'm exhausted, but one more episode,
56:45
one more, because they keep they keep you moving forward
56:46
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uhhuh.
56:47
with cliffhangers. I'm creating my own YouTube channel with stories
56:52
in topics with cliffhangers. And I've done one.
56:56
One, I need to do 30, but that's another story.
56:59
So go to the shiftproject.academy and and and somehow you'll find me
57:05
and see what I'm developing over.
57:07
Awesome, awesome. Coach Jace, thank you so much for being on the show.
57:11
I really enjoyed our conversation.
57:13
God bless.
57:14
God bless my friend. And
57:15
folks, thank you so much for watching or listening to another episode
57:19
of the Relentless Pursuit of Winning podcast.
57:21
We'll catch you next time.