188 – The King of Sales: Tom interviews Jeffrey Gitomer

Episode 188 – Jeffrey Gitomer
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody it's Tom here with Episode 188 of Screw the Commute podcast. We're here with Jeffrey Gitomer. I've known this guy since Superman was a baby. And as he's been wowing sales organizations pretty much forever, so ever to introduce him to you in a moment. So please tell your friends about the podcast. The more successful it is, the more freebies I'll be able to give out to our faithful listeners, including our podcast app. It's in the Apple store. You can go to screwthecommute.com/app and we've got complete instructions to show you how to use all the fancy features so you can take us with you on the road. I also have a big freebie to thank you for listening to this podcast is my twenty seven dollar e-book, How to Automate Your Business. And just one of the tips in this e-book has saved me over seven and a half million keystrokes and allowed me to handle up to one hundred and fifty thousand subscribers and 40000 customers without pulling my hair out. So check that out at screwthecommute.com/automatefree and then the download page. If you scroll down, I've got an extra little gift there for you that some people are charging for five or six grand for. And I gave it to you just for listening. Now our sponsor, we just finished up Vetrepreneurs Month on the Screw the Commute podcast here. But I still want everybody to know about the Internet Marketing Training Center of Virginia and how we are approved by the Department of Defense to participate in the my CAA military spouse scholarship program. So, you know any military spouses I live in Virginia Beach, Norfolk area. They got to take crappy jobs because nobody will invest in them because they know they're going to leave. So our Internet training allows them to take a portable skill around the world anytime they're deployed. The DOD gives them four thousand dollars towards this scholarship. And with our 50 percent scholarship, they make thirteen thousand five hundred towards their training. And then they don't have to alienate all their friends with all the multi level marketing crap. So. So check that out at IMTCVA.org/military. And everything we talk about today, including all of Jeffrey's great stuff will be in the show notes this is episode 188. So anytime you want to go directly to an episode, it's screwthecommute.com slash and then the number 188.

[00:03:00] All right. Let's bring on the main event. Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of 15 bestselling books. He's a creative on the Edge writer speaker whose expertise on sales, customer loyalty and personal development is world renowned. And that's no hyperbole there. He's known for his presentations, seminars and keynote addresses that are funny, insightful. The next part is a lot of understatement in your face. A real world off the wall and on the money. He was given exclusive access to the archives of the Napoleon Hill Foundation. His most recent book is called Truthful Living. The First Writings of Napoleon Hill. It is the very foundation of Napoleon Hill's self-help legacy, his long lost original notes, letters and lectures. And it's now compiled, edited and annotated for the modern reader. Jeffrey gives his audience information they can take out in the street one minute after the seminar is over and turn it into money. And his podcast sell or die. Which I happened to note. I have not been invited on, which I have to talk that anyway with his co-host Jennifer, and she is going to be Jennifer Gitomer here shortly. So that's interesting. Gets over a hundred thousand downloads a month. Jeff was inducted into the National Speakers Association speaker, Hall of Fame. He is the king of sales. Jeff, are you ready to screw. The commute.

[00:04:43] Yes, I am ready to screw the commute.

[00:04:44] Great catching up with you man.

[00:04:49] Nice to catch up with you too. You are formally now invited on video, on tape, on audio to our Sell or Die podcast.

[00:04:57] Yeah. And I'll give them stuff that from the Internet perspective that guarantee you they probably haven't heard before.

[00:05:04] That's cool. We call our listeners diehards.

[00:05:09] Yeah. Ours are called screwballs for screw the commute.

[00:05:13] Yeah. And we have we have we even have the wristbands. You know, we're trying to be as trendy as we possibly can.

[00:05:20] Well that'll that'll do it. That's for sure. So tell everybody what you do nowadays and then I want to take you back because you've had a long history of success and bring you up through the ranks to see how you got where you are.

[00:05:33] We have converted and we'll convert this year virtually everything to online in house. I started I built a studio in 1998 when the Internet was broadcasting at 56k.

[00:05:48] Right. If you were lucky to get that.

[00:05:51] Exactly. And now we're completely digital. And I have about a thousand hours of video that we broadcast out. We get them a learning academy. We do seminars, we do webinars. And that's really the goal to be able to inform people all over the world rather than simply fly to Dallas and do an event. I do fly to Dallas. I do events. Still, I do public seminars and private seminars, private corporate seminars. But we're trying to reduce my time out and increase my time in. And that's our that's our goal. And I write every day.

[00:06:28] Yeah. And I haven't been on a plane in two years that I'm thrilled about it. They made the bathrooms smaller.

[00:06:35] I just finished my 16th book called Get Shit Done. And because shit is the new word in the title, you know. And I was I didn't offer it out. Wiley called me and offered it to me. And, you know, they knew I would. I would do a good thing that the book is finally, I think was completed literally. The editing was finished yesterday and it will be on the shelves in the first two weeks in November. Wow. Yeah. We're cranking it. And it's a book about productivity. It's a book about procrastination and it's a book about profitability and how those all intertwine and what it means to the end reader about how they can produce to market. Everybody. Me, you, everybody can produce more if you put your mind to it. If you don't, you won't.

[00:07:31] Absolutely. I mean, I've always preached. I used my throwaway time. I mean, I wrote an e-book and for a four hour layover in McCarran Airport in Las Vegas one time where most people would just be frittered away watching the TV.

[00:07:47] Or playing a slot machine.

[00:07:48] Exactly. It has brought in three point six million dollars so far. And anywhere from seven to fifty thousand a month since for a four hour investment. So that's throw away time. And I've got you got a million more tips than that in that book.

[00:08:04] Yeah, I would tell you this. In 1908, the writer Orison Swett Marden, who was actually Napoleon Hill's inspiration, wrote a sentence that said, never underestimate the value of minutes. And it's never underestimate the value of small minutes, short minutes. I can't remember the exact words, but a few minutes. You take your little. Your couple of minutes and you you put them to use or you or you piss him away. Those are your options.

[00:08:42] Yeah. You don't get them back either. And you know, I was on the Internet back in those days.

[00:08:53] The minute the Internet came out, I registered gitomer.com my last name. My family still calls me up and asked me if they can share it.

[00:09:02] You know, I think, I'm not positive and I'm not claiming this, but I think I was one of one of the first thousand websites Antion.com. It was prior to the thing called the Wayback Machine. It started in 96. But I was on the right at the beginning in 94 when the commercial Internet started.

[00:09:24] Yeah. I think 95 was my year. I can't remember. But you know, you can go back on the Internet and they have all your old Web sites somewhere.

[00:09:32] Yeah. That's the Wayback Machine. That's what it's called.

[00:09:34] It's funnier than hell to look at that thing.

[00:09:37] Everybody have a spinning globe. That was the big fancy thing.

[00:09:41] Yeah. Or you just had a 500 page long single page Web site.

[00:09:46] Those days you had to download a video for like three hours to play it like one inch by one inch for three minutes or two minutes.

[00:09:55] Yeah. We shot all these videos and, you know, whatever the definition was. But there was. You had to play them so small. So we would invent things like put the video in the head of a watch and play the video from there. It was incredible what we had to do to be able to create training modules.

[00:10:17] Now you got a really serious studio now, right? We have a TV studio here, but I think you got the ultimate one, right?

[00:10:24] We have a great studio. And better than that, that we have the people. We have great a editor. We have a full time studio people and we do our podcast, but we also do other broadcasts and the seminar. I just did a two hour seminar yesterday literally to the world about how I sold in New York City and what what I did to create my own competitive advantage in every single sale that I made. It was pretty interesting.

[00:10:56] And that was live live broadcast, right?

[00:10:58] Oh, yeah.

[00:11:00] Did you repurpose them?

[00:11:02] Yeah. We're gonna make it into a course. But it's gonna be three parts to the first part was my million dollar sales formula. And then the next one is gonna be about how you deal with yourself, your beliefs, your enthusiasm, your attitude. And then the third one's gonna be about referrals and what do you have to do to earn them instead of ask for them.

[00:11:21] Right. Right. Well, let's take you back. Were you an entrepreneurial kid?

[00:11:26] Yeah. My dad was a businessman. My grandfather was a businessman. I didn't know the word entrepreneur till I read the magazine because, you know, everyone whoever came to our home was a business person of some kind, man or woman. They had a real estate company that had a dry cleaning business. They were doctors and lawyers. Everyone in our circle of friends and influence owned their own. Business and their own revenue source.

[00:11:56] Well, how lucky were you to be surrounded at a young age with that stuff.

[00:12:00] Yeah. Oh, yeah, I had a college education before I went to college. Yeah. I'd sneak down to listen to my father's Pinocchio game on Thursday nights. And it's never underestimate the value of spare minutes.

[00:12:14] That's that's right. So what was your first endeavor?

[00:12:19] Actually, my first business was selling firecrackers to my fellow seventh graders. My parents brought me back a lot of stuff from their trip to Florida. They stopped at a firecracker factory in Maryland. I owed my dad a hundred and fifty dollars for the fireworks and I turned it into about three thousand dollar in profitability. And in those days, this was in nineteen fifty nine. I could have bought a car.

[00:12:54] Yes, that's for sure. Yeah.

[00:12:55] So I and I was the coin collector, so I'd ride to the bank. With my saddlebags on my bike about a mile away in Haddonfield, New Jersey, put a thousand dollars on the counter and say, quarters, please. And I go to all the quarters to see if I had the dates, they were all silver. And the ladies were just blown away. Some little kid. But this is what this is what I hate to say this. I would go into school every day. Lunch was 22 cents. And I would pay for it with a 20 dollar bill. Every day just for the hell of it.

[00:13:35] I'm just thinking of your product liability insurance with all the little kids blew their fingers off.

[00:13:41] There was no such thing as product liability. In those days, there wasn't even any OSHA.

[00:13:50] There wasn't even any seatbelts.

[00:13:53] Exactly. When seatbelts first came out, there were floppy things and it sat on the seat and everyone sat on top of them.

[00:13:58] Yeah. And the seatbelt was if you were in the front seat, your dad would smack his right hand into your chest.

[00:14:04] When he slammed on the brakes. That's right. My mom actually did it more than my dad because she was a brake slammer.

[00:14:12] OK. All right. Well we are at one of our cars with the Corvair that was ready to blow up or or gag you at any moment from the fumes. So. Did you ever actually have a job?

[00:14:29] Yes, I had a couple of jobs. I took a job at an employment agency when I was in college because I figured that all the good jobs would come through there. And if I wanted to find a good job, that's where I would go.

[00:14:42] That is really creative thinking there.

[00:14:44] Yeah. I worked for my dad and I didn't like it. I quit. He manufactured kitchen cabinets and countertops. I'm in college, I get a job at this employment agency and I see an ad in it that came through for the assistant to the president of I. Goldberg the Army Navy store. And I went and I talked to Charlie Goldberg and he gave me a job. And I realized and I was 19 and a half or something like that, I realized that I'm not cut out to be an employee. Yeah, even in a Jewish business where I you know, I was in charge of taking the cash to the bank. I had pretty good responsibilities. I put together an inventory program, a purchasing program. I was good at it. And I liked it and he liked me. I just wasn't a good employee. So I just I quit. And after that, just started my own businesses and grew from there.

[00:15:41] Now, did you plan for your quit or just say, you know, I'm out of here? Goodbye.

[00:15:46] Yeah. It wasn't really handling very well. I became friends with Charlie. And I said, look, you talk about Paris all the time. I think I'm going to take off and go to Europe for a while. Well, here's my friends. And just, you know, he didn't care. But I was like a son. And when your son wants to fly away, you let him fly away.

[00:16:06] There you go. All right, so. So compared to now, you're your first businesses. I'm sure are somewhat humble. But what what did you do? Would you start?

[00:16:17] Well, I came back. I spent a year in Europe. And I came back knowing German well, I studied in Berlin at the Goethe-Institut. I was going to study in Paris at the Alliance Française, but there was so frickin rude that I left. Yeah. French people. Yeah, a lot of people think French people don't like Americans. That is not true. French people don't like anybody. It's part of the cult. I came back and I started manufacturing, leisure, furniture, beanbag chairs. And I started manufacturing because I bought two at a furniture store just right off the truck. The big ones.

[00:17:00] And all the crap fell out of your living room floor.

[00:17:03] No, no, no. I called my friends over. It was, you know, during the inhaling years of the late sixties, the sixties. And I said, come over and sit this thing. You got to sit on this thing. And they come over and they're absolutely loving it. And I said, well, how many do you want? And because I figured I call the factory and get a hundred of them, they wouldn't sell them to me. They said, are you a furniture store? I said, no. They said, well, we can't sell to you, I said, dude, I want a hundred. This guy just bought two. And so I asked for the president of the company and I asked him if you put the phone very close to his ear. Are you allowed to swear on your show?

[00:17:46] Well, we'll mark it "E" for you.

[00:17:50] I said, are you listening? He goes, Yeah. I said, fuck you. I'll make them myself. And I took my beanbags. I cut him apart. I made the the patterns for it. I went to New York City. I bought all the equipment and I opened up my garage, had a four car garage, and I started making them. And I had people in their homes selling them. I put an ad in the paper for seamstresses to work at home. I got two hundred calls in the first hour. I picked the first five people and I hired them and they stay with me the entire time I had the business.

[00:18:24] Wow. Do you still have any of the beanbags left?

[00:18:28] Oh, yeah.

[00:18:28] Oh, you do.

[00:18:29] Of course.

[00:18:30] Oh, if you take pictures of them we'll out them in the show notes.

[00:18:33] No, no, no, I don't. But, I'll tell you this, it was I actually do have a lot of pictures. We did a photo shoot a couple of times, but I'd rather do something on the Internet about sales. But I was a sales guy. I would go to New York City and make sales. I go to Bloomingdale's Department Store and I'd drag this huge bean bag into the store with me, go to the furniture buyer, pluck it down in front of them and say, have you ever sat in one of these, you guys? No. I said, we'll sit in it. He goes, all right. He sits and he goes, was really cool. I said, here's the order form. Fill it out. And that was it. That's how I sold beanbags.

[00:19:16] Yeah. I guess it was hard for him to have any objections on something he'd never seen before.

[00:19:26] Right. First of all they didn't care what the price is. And I sold thousands of bean bags in New York City, thousands.

[00:19:33] So then what happened?

[00:19:35] Then I moved to Florida. And in the gentile part in the middle of the state near Orlando, my dad and I were going to open up a mobile home park. And we did. And I hated it. And one day, these two guys who were doing promotion for me said, hey, we start we're starting this T-shirt factory. You want to be in? Yeah, I love T-shirts. And this was in seventy four at the beginning of the T-shirt revolution. And I put money in to be a third of, you know, to be one third of the company, and we sold I sold millions of dollars worth of garments in New York City.

[00:20:12] Wow. You guys just think up things to put on it.

[00:20:16] I mean, yeah, I we we had stuff we I had a strategy first for selling it. All these people would ask me for samples. And we premade the sample when I fly to New York City. And I'd say, yeah, we can make your sample if you'll like it, how many will you buy? And I'd wait for an answer and then I'd say, well, if you love it. How many will you buy? And I wait for an answer. And I take my shirt off and show him the shirt. I said, you like it or you love it. And literally, Tom, my closing ratio was 100 percent. Never made a sample that we didn't sell.

[00:20:57] That's the like it or love it close, right?

[00:20:59] Yeah, isn't that cool. I sold coppertone the little dog pulling down the girl bathing suit. I sold Revlon the Charlie t shirt. I mean, we made up. I sold Alfred Newman. Did the shirt to Mad magazine.

[00:21:17] Wow. So would you call yourself pretty much self-taught in the sales arena?

[00:21:24] I'm going to say I was self-taught in the beginning. I joined an MLM and when I was first learning how to do this, dare to be great with Glenn Turner in this in the early 70s, I was flat friggin broke. I mean, it was bad. And I they I learned how to sell, I learned how to close. And then I took by my sales ability to New York and it was like golden. Obviously, the techniques and strategies have changed since then. But I can tell you that in New York City. Up yours is a greeting and everybody wants a bribe, especially especially in garments. Because we manufactured the garment and the print. I could drop one profit point from the pricing. And allow the buyer to mark it up one hundred and twenty five percent instead of 100 percent. It would sell out and he would be the best, most profitable buyer on the planet. And I made literally millions of dollars using that sales strategy.

[00:22:28] Amazing. Yeah. So tell people about your company now.

[00:22:33] He was writing about sales since ninety two. I've written. You know, I wrote the sales Bible. I wrote the Little Red Book of Selling, which I was just offered the the domain name by the great Tom Antion, whose only had it for 12 years. And we will buy it.

[00:22:53] No, you don't need to buy it. I bought it. Give it to you as a gift to cover your butt.

[00:23:01] But the little red book of selling has gone on to become the best selling sales book of all time. Literally.

[00:23:08] You see it everywhere still you will go to any bookstore that still exists. There it is.

[00:23:13] Exactly. Every time. Every time. And people will tell me, you know, I I still buy this book every time you give it to all my new salespeople. It still sells more in one year than most books will sell in a lifetime. Ever. It's called that Evergreen Book and it's what every publisher hopes you would have. company ever hope to never have been. But I mean, I I'm I've been very blessed with that book. I'll just say this. And I did it in a way I published with Bard Press and their. They have a profit thing rather than a royalty thing. And but you have to invest in the book. And I was literally Tom, I was a million dollars into the book before I received the first dollar back.

[00:24:06] Well, that's that's quite a risk most people wouldn't take.

[00:24:11] But I was on The Wall Street Journal best seller list. One hundred and three straight weeks with the Little Red Book. People do everything. They pull out every stop to get on once.

[00:24:23] I know. Could you or have you or have you ever planned on doing like a relaunch of it?

[00:24:32] I have never changed a word. It's in its 31st printing. And the only thing I changed is the number of print and the date. That's it.

[00:24:46] Yeah, I had I had a book in its seventh printing only because the first six were blurry when I had it. So what kind of stuff would my my crew want to check your website out for? What kind of stuff would you have?

[00:25:06] From an entrepreneurial standpoint, keep in mind, I grew up as a business man. And I was responsible for every aspect of my business and everything that I write about has to do with business in one form or another, whether it's sales business or service business or Internet business or whatever it is, it affects your business, top line and bottom line. Because anything that's administrative is not going to bring you revenue. Your H.R. department is a drain on your money. You know, most people in small business. They're their own H.R. department anyway, right? And we we have, I think, 12 employees, it fluctuates between 10 and 15 depending on what what's going on at the moment. We're politically incorrect. And we intend to stay that way. We have. I don't have a team, I have a family. My daughters work for me, but some of the employees have been here for eleven years.

[00:26:14] Right. Yeah. They. They love you. When I did see them at events and stuff in the past. Yeah, I just. It's a.. It is a family. I mean, they're just excited about what they're doing.

[00:26:27] I'll tell you, we did a retreat this year. I took 12 people to Lake Lure North Carolina. I live in Charlotte. It was about a two hour drive. And it's a house where Dirty Dancing was filmed. It's a big house, it sleeps a bunch of people, we all slept in the house, we all cook meals. I took we took our two dogs and we took our my 10 year old daughter, even though I shouldn't have one. Ten years old, I did. My older daughters went and my 10 year old daughter went. And we divided up into three categories, three separate groups, and had to create a brochure for a resort. That was our creativity thing. The Internet goes out. Two of the groups did nothing. My daughter's group created a brochure for a kid's resort. And my daughter did the video. And she's talking about all the cool things that they're going to have an. They are going to have the only Chick-fil-A in America that's open on Sundays. She obviously told the story like she knew a guy and they knew the owner of Chick-fil-A and they got special dispensation. I mean, it was we gave her a standing ovation.

[00:27:54] So how do you how do you feel that you created this family atmosphere? You know, because it's been this way a long, long time. Yeah. Doesn't occur since your 10 year old daughter hit the scene.

[00:28:07] I'm going to give you a couple of secrets. First of all, everybody gets to be themselves. Second of all, we feed people. We lunch together. There's coffee, anything you want you can have. There's no we don't nickel and dime somebody for a dollar for the coffee bullshit. You know what I mean?

[00:28:25] They get to be themselves. In what way? How do you mean that?

[00:28:28] You dress however you want. We have hours, you know, the hours are pretty much 9:00 to 5:00. But you come in when you want and you leave when you want. And everybody comes in early and stays late. Everybody. Because they have a job to do. Just do your job. Now we have one very special program. If you screw up. I give you one hundred dollars cash. And the reason I do that is because you didn't screw up on purpose. You feel bad about it. I'm probably going to call you out on it, maybe publicly, maybe privately, but I'm just giving you 100 bucks. How can you bitch about that? And the answer is you cannot. And I learned it on accident more than 20 years ago, one of my employees lost a bunch of emails, lost a bunch of email addresses, and I was so pissed off and I thought, you know what? I'm just gonna give her a hundred bucks. She's a good kid. And I'm gonna have it out with her and so she won't do it again. Her father called me that night to thank me. And I said, you know what? This is a program we're gonna continue.

[00:29:43] Yeah. I mean, you don't hear that every day.

[00:29:46] No, it's a badge of honor. Yeah, it's a different kind of environment. I tell people, you leave here, you're gonna have to go get a real job. And you ain't gonna like it. Your boss is going to be an asshole. So I don't have an office in my office because I swear and I'm loud. And Jen is my wife, she is the she, you know, she runs a business and she doesn't have an office. She just we both office in our home, which is just down the hall. That's our commute. Our commute is literally. About 30 yards. About.

[00:30:25] I don't know. I may have to cancel this interview for 30 yards.

[00:30:30] It's too short?

[00:30:31] That's pretty far for me.

[00:30:37] So but I race my 10 year old down the hall and I mean, we've raced down the hall since she was three.

[00:30:47] And you keep in mind, we're technologically we're right up to date. We do the best thing we possibly can. Everybody's on Mac. Everybody's, you know, everybody's high speed. Everything's digital. Everything's virtual. We're we're doing the best we can to stay on top of the market. And because I'm a writer, I'm also a thinker. And my job is to create ideas, and I get all our all of our people together and say, OK, what do you think about this? Let's have some feedback on this. Let's have some feedback. And everyone feels part of the process. And every Monday morning, we have a, you know, a meeting for about an hour to talk about what everybody's going to do and how everybody's doing and what need you have. And then we create a couple of ideas and we go. And then we have a stand up meeting every every day for about 10 or 15 minutes.

[00:31:36] All right. Now, last time has probably been at least maybe 15 or 20 years since I actually saw you speak and. It amazes me that you say, okay, we're still we're going to stay politically incorrect because, you know, the atmosphere in the world has changed crazy. So how you're telling me that hasn't affected you at all?

[00:31:58] Well, I'll tell you what I do when I'm in a corporate environment. I ask my customer where my boundaries are. And I stay within those boundaries.

[00:32:10] Right. The boundaries have changed over the years, haven't they?

[00:32:14] Yeah, yeah, yeah. They've totally changed. Some are not. Some are not. Some don't care. But I'm going to say at least half of them are more sensitive now than they ever were. And I believe that's going to change anyway. I believe in the next few years that's going to change and we'll go back to the way it was.

[00:32:31] Oh, OK. Good. Yeah. I'd love to see that.

[00:32:34] Exactly. So what everybody. But the problem is there's like five people screaming help. And, you know, you can make a remark anymore that doesn't piss somebody off.

[00:32:44] My goodness. I made a joke about water and somebody from some third world country. Bitched at the meeting planner water is not funny where I come from.

[00:32:55] Well it's funny here dude. Drink up. Hit the fucking water fountain. So here's the deal. I am going to stay true to myself. And by doing that. My co-workers, my family of people will always know that I'm not faking it. I don't even have a language barrier to my kid. We don't have a filter. Because I don't want her growing up going, oh, my dad, I never know. My dad always swears. I just I don't want her to say it, but I don't want her to reject the fact that I do. And as a result, I have a daughter and a friend. And that's what you got do if you're a parent and you're not friends with your kids, you got a problem.

[00:33:48] Yeah, that's for sure. And I know I know boundaries, too. I mean, I get away with you know, I've been doing mostly public seminars since last 20 years. But when I was doing corporate, you know, there's certain things I could say in that. You've got to play the game.

[00:34:05] And you don't want to offend anybody needlessly. To miss my message just because I said a bad word.

[00:34:14] So we've got to take a brief sponsor break and then we come back. We're going to ask Jeffrey, what's a typical day look like for him and how he stays motivated.

[00:34:23] So, folks, again, we're just finishing up with Vetrepreneurs Month and I just really am thrilled that I'm able to help military families. So many people are ragging on this country nowadays. And I kind of wish they would just go to another country and try that. And they'd either get executed or thrown in jail. And you know what? I wouldn't even miss them. But I am thrilled that I just spoke at the Military Influencers Conference in D.C. and I was able to help lots of military people get on the right track after they leave the service. So that's what our schools are all about. We give a 50 percent or a ninety five hundred dollar discount to veterans, active duty military spouses, law enforcement and first responders, because guess what? We couldn't be doing what we're doing if it wasn't for all those people putting their butts on the line on our behalf. So so we give that right off the bat. And then the Department of Defense gives military spouses that are eligible an additional 4000 dollars so they can get thirteen thousand five hundred dollars towards a skill that's portable. So if they get PCSed, they're deployed to South Korea. In fact, I mentioned South Korea because they had an intern, military spouse. She moved to South Korea. And guess what? I don't care. You know, she still could do work from there. And that's what this school is all about. So check it out if you know anybody that's in that position where they might need something like this. It's perfect because not only can they study remotely, they can legitimately work remotely because companies don't want to pay a hundred dollars a square foot to have you sit in there writing a blog post or an email when you could be doing it at home. So it's perfect for military families, disabled and and anybody that wants to be totally portable in their business activities. So check it out at IMTCVA.org/military or if you're not any of those things, just check out the main site and give us a call and we'll be glad to talk you. Talk to you about your future online.

[00:36:38] All right. Let's get back to the main event. Jeffrey Gitomer is here. He's really known around the world. He's his own man. I'm thrilled to hear about is his new daughter that I didn't know about and the way he's got going maybe he did know about either.

[00:36:54] I did. I know. I totally knew. It was planned. And it was it was amazing. I mean, she's just my spouse, my former spouse and I have separated. We were never married, but we intended to stay together. Unfortunately, things don't always work out. But now with my wife and she now has Gabrielle as the stepdaughter, we have an amazing family. And it's it's week on, week off. So she gets to be with her mom. She gets to be with me a week at a time. That took some legal wrangling. But but my daughter is better off as a result of it. Or our daughter.

[00:37:34] Yeah. And you're a sneaky devil, I'm telling you. Because now with her only being 10 years old, I saw a cartoon once where there's this little kid was talking to his dad and he says, hey, if you give me a raise in my allowance, I'll give you unlimited in-house tech support. These kids came out of the womb, swiping a tablet.

[00:37:59] Oh, yeah. My my kid has everything. And I take her to Paris every year. So it's not like she's not worldly. But I can remember my father when I was on and I maybe. Twelve years old at summer camp. We go away for a weeks and have the visiting day in the middle of the summer, and my dad would say, son, when we get home from camp, I'll have a talk about sex. And I said, Sure, Dad, what do you want to know that?

[00:38:31] Oh, you know, I said, this is gonna be an explicit episode anyway. I might as well tell you what my dad said. But my dad came in Ellis Island around 1907 or so he actually talked about entrepreneur. He put the first electric light bulb in Carnegie, Pennsylvania. He had his own electrical contracting firm at 13 years old.

[00:38:53] That's what that's what our parents and grandparents did. My grandparents came to Ellis Island in 1904.

[00:39:00] Oh, there you go. Yeah. Their name on the wall up there?

[00:39:05] Yep.

[00:39:05] Yep. Mine is too. That's for sure. So. So anyway, I'm 10 years old. My dad was 50 at the time, I think when he had me. But anyway, he's he's acting all kind of nervous and he's not nervous at all. And I say, what's up? He says, Tom, come here I want to talk to you. Okay, dad, what's up? And he's like, totally nervous. And this is my whole sex education right here. He says. When your dick gets hard, your brain gets soft. That's all I'm saying about it. OK, Dad. All right.

[00:39:44] Thanks for the update.

[00:39:45] Yeah. Exactly. And he actually I got a picture here. I did a big tribute to him one time where, you know, Johnny Cash he had a song name a boy named Sue. Yeah. And the whole idea was he named the kid Sue because he's an old drunk cowboy. They were going to be around the raise the kid. Right. So my dad's 50 when he has me. And he tells me that when I was just crawling as the baby, he would put pillows in front of me and put my toys on the other side to teach me how to overcome obstacles. And he only went to second grade himself. You know, so one of the most brilliant guys I know and to this day, I'm totally unstoppable and I won't cheat anybody or step on anybody. But if you told me I can't do something. Get out of the way. Just like you go blow by him doing it, you know. So. So tell us what the typical day looks like for you.

[00:40:43] I'm up sometime between five and six every day. I do five things in the morning. I read. I write. I prepare. And that causes me to think and create. That's been my morning routine for twenty five years. Never varies.

[00:41:00] I know you're a book freak because before we got on the audio part here. So you're where you're at. You're just surrounded by books. And I got three, three libraries here at the retreat center. Books are your friends.

[00:41:13] They're totally your friends and they're your educators. And, you know, if you want to if you want a brand new idea, just go to a book that's a hundred years old. They're easy to find. So that starts my day.

[00:41:26] So say that again?

[00:41:31] I write. I read. I prepare. Those are the three main things in the morning, write, read, prepare, and that causes me to think and create. So, you know, I I own books on creativity. I don't know how much you know about creativity, but the Michael Michalko book ThinkerToys is like my benchmark book. And I actually spent a day with Edward de Bono. Well, who's the grandfather of creativity. Maybe in the world, but at least in America. And I think creativity is a very important science to learn. So I continue to educate myself about it. And I just in the seminar that I did yesterday there, there's a whole segment on an acronym called SCAMPER, which is the way you look at things in a different perspective or a different light can change the way your outcome or your ideas are formulated. So that's that's how I start my day. I had a bit of a health scare at my age. I had a prostate scare. And so I went to a clinic in Mexico to heal myself. And in doing that, my diet changed. So I don't eat red meat anymore. I don't eat pork anymore, which is. I don't need sugar. I don't need flour, I don't drink carbonated beverages and I never drank alcohol anyway. But I don't anymore. If I go to Paris, though, I have wine. I don't care what my diet says. And that's caused me to shed some weight. So I eat a real good breakfast and then I start my day usually by talking to customers or doing somebody's podcast like the great Tom Antion or, you know, doing something that's productive. And I do something new and different every day. And that way, I'm. I have a good time. I have fun, I talk to my clients in the morning. Now I'll go to the staff meeting for 15 minutes. Sometimes not all the time. And then I hang out in my creative space.

[00:43:31] Now, a client might be a consulting client or speaking upcoming speaking engagement or what.

[00:43:36] Might be an upcoming speaking engagement to talk about. What kind of talk I'm gonna give it might be somebody just looking to take my online training program. I just did a welcome today for a large lumber company who is putting all their sales team on it. And we're going to launch it on Monday. And they want me to do a short video zoom thing on what to do, how to do it. And so I will and, you know, challenge them and tell them that the company has bought things for them and all they have to do is take advantage of it.

[00:44:10] All right. So in that, do you license any of your stuff to others or do you just have them all come to you at a at a price per head or what?

[00:44:19] Yeah. Price per head. Yeah. That's the easiest way to do it, because I found over time that by licensing things the message gets a little muddy. I am trying to partner with a CRM firm, unnamed, and I believe that's going to happen. But that would mark the first time that training actually gets into CRM, which would make sales possible.

[00:44:45] What platform to use now to deliver the training.

[00:44:49] We use two platforms we use could Kajabi and we use a company in New York City called Knowledge Link and we can deliver. You know, the reason we don't use Kajabi for everything is Kajabi has no reporting. And so we use Knowledge Link so the sales manager can see which guys took the course for how long they were all what they did. That kind of thing.

[00:45:11] And how many simultaneous people could be on it.

[00:45:16] Anybody. A lot.

[00:45:18] Awesome. So how do you stay motivated?

[00:45:22] Pretty easy. I got a 35 year old wife and a 10 year old daughter. If that doesn't motivate you, I don't know what the hell does. But I love living. It's I'm self inspired, not just motivated.

[00:45:35] That's the way I am too. Do you home school?

[00:45:40] No. Gabrielle's private schooled, just down the street about a mile and a half away. The school that Gabrielle is going to right now is the best school I've ever been involved with. It's religious. So it's a little bit iffy. You know, in the New Testament thing. But I get over that with the quality of the teachers. Because I have become you know, this is her sixth year there. And I become friends with the teachers just at Trinity Episcopal School. It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable.

[00:46:13] Yeah. Because, I mean, I get scared to death. I don't have kids, but I see stuff on TV is the stuff they're putting in front of kindergartners.

[00:46:20] Oh, my God. I know. I monitor what she learns and I become friends with all the administrators. So I kind of get a feel for what's happening. I don't get deeply involved in it. I don't you know, I'm not a room mother or anything. But I read the kids. They're gonna call come over and do a podcast this year. It's fun. Having a studio is a huge, huge advantage. I've had one now, you know, since 1998.

[00:46:50] You've had it for a long time.

[00:46:52] Long time. Long time. So when you have it when you're out a studio for 20 years, it evolves and you learn how to read. You learn how to record. You learn how to look at the camera. And now it's instinctive for me. And I still have friends of mine come over. Don't know what to do.

[00:47:10] You know, we've had ours 17 years and stuff. The biggest trouble we have is that we don't have actual TV studio air conditioning. So we freeze the place down and turn them off so it doesn't get on the audio. That's the only thing.

[00:47:25] Yeah. Yeah, we're about the same. Yeah. You know, we have we have air conditioner sometimes a pain we had just not but we have we have, you know, a soundproof recording studios. You know, everything's digital now. We have such a good time with it. And our guy, we have a new guy in charge of the studio because our the guy had been there for four or five years, moved with his family to Nashville. And we we took in another guy who's whose expertise is live broadcasting. So we're gonna go nuts with it.

[00:48:00] Absolutely. So awesome. So tell everybody where to go to find all your stuff in the. Check out your books and all that stuff.

[00:48:09] I think you go to the X rated department. Go to gitomer.com and you'll find the wealth of information. You can email me personally. Jeffrey@gitomer.com. I get all my own emails, I answer them myself or I know my wife would do something to my daughters that are here. They'll do something. But we'll get back to you straight away.

[00:48:36] If they happened to be in a in a big company and want to bring it to you, do you have anybody handling that.

[00:48:41] Yeah. Jennifer handles that. Just Jennifer@gitomer.com.

[00:48:44] In case you want to get Jeffrey to come in or do something for your company.

[00:48:49] Yep. And we'll take you literally, Tom. My answering service that I've used now for about twenty five years. They're in in Oregon. They answer the phone in the second ring live. Hello. Jeffrey's office. I will get texted. During that call, I can call back a prospect in under two minutes. And the first thing the first word out of their mouth is, wow. Even if it's midnight. If I'm asleep, I feel like I'm awake. And I've made deals, I books, speeches at midnight. And you know what I tell the guy. So, listen, imagine how cool this story is gonna be in front of your team. Who thinks eight o'clock in the morning is when work starts. No, 8:00 in the morning when people are busy.

[00:49:45] I even hear people's voicemail, I'm thinking, why would you put that on your voicemail? I'll get back to it at my earliest convenience. Screw you get back to me at my earliest convenience like right now, asshole.

[00:49:58] I just filled out a form for somebody that I wanted more information online. And they said, we'll get back to you within 24 to 48 hours.

[00:50:08] Nobody even. I tell people, don't even bother putting those forms on anymore because that kind of crap, you know. Yeah. They don't want to fill that out they know nobody is gonna get back to them. So why bother taking your time to fill all that out?

[00:50:23] It's unbelievable. Yeah, it's literally unbelievable.

[00:50:25] You could jump so far. I mean, that's ahead of your competitors just by getting back to somebody in a hurry. So I'm. I love that.

[00:50:35] Do you know you still have that kind of Pittsburgh accent? You aware of that?

[00:50:39] I got a little. Yeah. No, I don't say yuns or anything. But now I got a cross between outside of Pittsburgh and a two horse town. And then I spent 13 years at WVU, which is West by God, Virginia. So I say y'all or all y'all and that.

[00:50:58] That's a plural, y'all.

[00:50:59] Plural. Yeah. I never got to the bless your heart stuff.

[00:51:04] Oh yeah. We use. Bless your heart all the time.

[00:51:06] I don't want to be that if you gave him one hundred bucks. Yeah. Right, exactly. Oh hey man. It's been really great catching up with you. It's an inspiration everybody out there.

[00:51:17] All of you Screwballs will be invited to the Sell or Die podcast when Tom comes on and talks about himself. Today I talked about myself. But Tom has an amazing background that most people don't have any clue about, because how he got to where he is right now is not only by being first, but by succeeding and failing at a lot of the things we're going to talk about what they are. And Tom will give you the ideas about how to overcome them.

[00:51:53] That's yeah. If you if you don't fail, you probably didn't do crap. So.

[00:51:58] Exactly. Thank you, Tom. This is total pleasure.

[00:52:03] Yes. So. So, everybody, check out. This is episode 188. So screwthecommute.com/188. Grab yourself a copy of Jeff's books, especially the little red book of selling. And the newest one Truthful living.

[00:52:22] The one I'm doing now is called get shit done.

[00:52:26] Yeah. Get shit done. But the truthful living was based on the Napoleon Hill stuff. That's a great story. How you got that. So. So check everything out folks. This guy is the real deal. And quite, quite an inspiration to all. So thanks, Jeff, for coming on.

[00:52:44] It's a pleasure.

[00:52:45] All right, catch everybody on the next episode. See ya later.

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