Crafting Success Beyond the Mindset Hype with Justin Wenzel
01:14:33 Share

And now, Escaping the Drift, the show designed to get you from where you are to where you want to be. I'm Jon Gafford, and I have a knack for getting extraordinary achievers to drop their secrets to help you on a path to greatness. So stop drifting along, escape the drift, and it's time to start.

Right now, back again, back again for another episode. The show that gets you from where you're at, man, to where you want to be. And today, I got a monster show. And when I mean monster, I mean this dude's a monster. He came walking in here and I was like, holy shit, this dude's ginormous. And I'm like 6'5", 227 pounds.

and this dude made me feel a little helpless. I'm not going to lie, but it's not just the physical attributes that the guy brings to the table today. It's a wealth of knowledge in the personal training, coaching, business acumen podcast space. He is the host of the Wolves Only Podcast. He is the CEO of JWX. Guys, we're

We're lucky to have him in the studio today. This is Justin Wetzel. Justin. I don't know about all that, but thank you. No, man, dude. Thank you. Listen, man, I pride myself on one thing, which is I have the best intros in the business. Oh, that was fantastic. Can we run it again? Yeah, no, that's my best thing. That is what I pride myself in. So, dude, you're a guy that's found great success in that coaching space, sales space. And one of the things that I saw doing a little bit of research on you

And we're going to get into this deep later, but I just want to gloss this, which is what I said. What, what thumb do you said on an Instagram post, which was I'm sick of being called a mindset coach. Cause I'm not a mindset coach. I'm a tell you what to do coach. I think. And I love that.

I thought that was so unique. It was, uh, it was simply sad. Cause that's not what I meant. I meant to say application coach, but I just tripped over my words and I was like, fuck it. This is what I'm going to do. Am I allowed to swear? Yeah, do what you want. Okay. All right. Do what you want. Yeah. So, uh, um, yeah, anyways, it's true. Um, I'm a little over the concept of just mindset coaching. Of course, mindset's necessary. Right. But, uh,

If that's what you need, you'll get that from me. But when's the last... Okay, so seriously, when's the last time? Because you go to a lot of events, you go to a lot of stuff just like me, a lot of different places. When's the last time you saw a mindset coach get on stage and say something that you were like...

oh my god it's brand new i've never heard that it's so profound it's very rare and and i think it you know it could be delivered from several different people several different ways but it's the same thing and you may resonate with somebody so it is important to have a vast array of people who are saying discipline over motivation or whatever get up and do the work and you know oh actually you know perform whatever that's great but here's what happens

Today, actually, Brian Marks said 50% of you guys are going to take what you heard and actually do it in 50% of you all. 50? That's a generous number. Correct, correct. The answer is probably 5%. Yeah. Right? So you have all these mindset coaches that are preaching mindset, mindset, mindset, and it's great. You need it. But how do you apply it? And what are the actual tools and resources that you need to...

Track KPIs. Yeah. I think one of the key things you just said, though, is frequency. And I think finding somebody that you tune into and everybody resonates on a frequency. And it's funny, man, because when people are coming in here, like, you know,

to be, if you're, I'm never going to do a show with somebody cold where I'm like, Oh, hi, how are you? What do you do? I don't tell me, tell me about your life. You know, I, I kind of have a working knowledge of you when you walk in the door. I appreciate that. And, uh, and you know, everybody has that frequency and you, my mother and look, I don't pigeonhole anybody, right? I don't put anybody. I try not to label anybody. There's a section of my book about labels are bad, but, um,

You are like the perfect, like if I could snap together what my wife would call the entrepreneur bro, which is a compliment. Please don't take that negatively, right? That is that mold. I felt like just watching some of your stuff. I'm like, okay, dude.

Like I got, if I could snap off this part of like Cody Sperber, I'm a snap in this part of like what Brad does. I'm a snap this to get like, you're kind of that, that ultimate entrepreneur bro. And I dig that about you. All right. I will. Thank you. Yeah. That's like a compliment. So let's go from where we started out is, is we're going to go the ultimate entrepreneur bro. That's what we're going with today. Cause I love it. Yeah. I think that's it. Right. Great title for the show. It is. It is. So how do we start out from where we are? Like, like tell me about growing up. You grew up in Michigan, correct? Yep. Grand Rapids, Michigan. Grand Rapids. Yep.

The Van Andel Arena. Actually, it's funny. I grew up in Ada. How old were you? I'm 37 now. Okay, I'll tell you a funny story. In another life for me, in another life, I was an operations director for Hooters of America. Oh, wow. So at one point in my life, I was over the Hooters in Muskegon.

and the Hooters and Grand Rapids. Right on 28th Street right there. And I'm going to tell you. Next to the tire shop, right? And I'm going to tell you, but I also had stores in Detroit. So I was driving back and forth. So here I am, a Florida guy, never lived in snow, driving back and forth from Muskegon to Detroit in the middle of winter.

And I'm going to tell you how I know you're hard some bitch. I'm going to tell you I know. Because normally when I, I bounced all over the country with that company. When I would leave a place, I'd say, you know, to the girls, the staff, I'd be like, guys, I'm going to come back and see you. When I left Detroit, I looked at them and I said, you will never see me again. I think that's how most people in Detroit feel if they have an opportunity to leave. No, but based strictly on the weather, just strictly the weather. When you get that wet, see the lake effect snow thing that's over there and you're at Ada, so you're kind of in the sticks a little bit. Right.

So you grew up there, obviously hard because literally the sun goes away in August and doesn't show back up until June, maybe. I don't know. It's wild. Grew up there. Yeah. So I was born in Grand Rapids, moved to Maine. Dad was a car guy young. My parents had me super young in their teens. Wow. Yeah. And he was a car salesman, a shitty car salesman.

And, but the dealer loved him, gave him an opportunity in finance. Well, okay, stop. What made dad a shitty car salesman? I,

I don't know. Honestly, like, you know, looking at it now, I kind of, I can kind of see why he wasn't a great car salesman, but he was really good in finance. So put them in the box. Put them in the box. The box. And that's where the money's made it. And you said pigeonholed earlier. Typically that's where a lot of people do get pigeonholed in the auto industry is they get pigeonholed in the finance box and then they get fat, complacent and, you know, stuck. And that's very common. But there was a situation where the dealer at the time, this is a massive Chevy store on 28th street, just up the street from that Hooters you were talking about.

where he wanted him to go on a 20-group meeting. So General Motors used to take like, you know, 20 dealers, so to speak, from a similar market share. They would go on like a vacation. Wives would go do some stuff, and then they would be in meetings, pitching marketing ideas, advertising campaigns, things like that. He met a dealer named Phil Gemmer who owned a massive Chevy store, the first Chevy store in New England in Portland, Maine.

And, uh, he, uh, the guy fell in love with him. I was like, I want you to come and be my GM. And eventually I'd like you to buy me out. And he's having fucking money. Like, how am I going to buy out a huge Chevy store? But he took a risk and piled my, my mom, my brother was a newborn baby and, uh, piled us in, uh, their old Cadillac and Beverly hillbillies came out to Portland, Maine, um, culture shock city. How were you when this happened? I was like five.

Okay, cool. Five or six, yeah. That's good, though, because at five, you're still just walking up to kids on the first day of school. Do you want to be my friend? Sure. Yeah, yeah. As a matter of fact, it's funny. My dad always tells this story. I made sure my bike was packed on the truck last, so it came off first. Yeah. And then I went door to door. Okay.

That's it. You got any five-year-old kids that I can hang out with? You know, I say it now, I sound like a pervert, but they can't do that anymore. But, uh, but yeah, I, uh, it's funny. I was just starting networking really young, but anyways, eventually he bought his first Chevy story. He's like 22 years old.

- Wow. - Yep, youngest, youngest self-made. - He owned a Chevy dealer at 22. - Yeah, youngest self-made dealer in the history of General Motors. - Wow, what a great role model though. - Yep, yep. - What a great role model. - Obviously worked a lot, so you know, but he always took me into the stores and things like that. Bought out a ton of stores from Connecticut all the way up to Maine, sold out of them at like 34, 35 years old, retired. - Wow, that's awesome. Good for dad, good job. - Good, great guy. And we were moving back to, or we were moving to Florida

and gm threw a couple deals at him like we don't want you retired yet you're a hungry dealer you're really good at what you do and a bunch of deals fell through and then out of nowhere they were like how about a pontiac gmc store on 28th street in grand rapids right next door to the chevy store you started so moving back yep took over that store that was uh we signed on that store 9-11 2001 oh jeez yep uh planes hit the towers and uh and

Everything went to shit. Remember oil prices went up, everything. He said, we're going to go nine 95 oil change retail for your trade back then. Nowadays retail for your trade is very common, but back then that was unheard of nine 95 oil changes right as we're about to go into a war. Todd Wenzel is going to bankrupt the dealership in his first year. Everyone's laughing at him. All we were doing was collecting emails. Yeah. Build the database. Yep.

So where did you start? So how old were you? Obviously, dad's got a place you can work when you're... Yeah, yeah. But I had to start washing cars, you know? Parts driver. Started in the detail shop. Yep. Runner. Yep. Got way up when I was a parts runner, counterman, service rider, sales for a little bit. Then I went to college for automotive marketing. So you learned the entire business, though. You got to see the whole thing. Yep. So...

I'm going to ask you this because, and I swear by this and I have a personal story with this. Do you think that there's any better sales training than there is in a car lot? No, there's just not, right? No, you're definitely going to learn how to handle rejection. That's for sure. And that's what, I mean, really, honestly, the best salespeople are the ones who can handle rejection, right? And they don't get deflated. What's your favorite story from selling cars?

um so i've had a number of things but i'll tell you this one it involves um actually a story about my dad um and and my and like my family um i i was a general sales manager or something like that at the time and one of the sales one of my sales guys was terrified of me but he was like hey i got these folks that are buying two yukon denali's from us he's like will you come out and they want they have a story or something they want to tell you i'm like

okay, I'm like, yeah, I'll go out there and meet them. You know, I was back then I was heavy in my drug use. So like I was probably hung over, probably, you know, you know, just fucked up for, you know, just, so I was like, whatever. Yeah, I'll come out. So I come out, I sit down there like, Hey, we just bought a bar in Northern Michigan called the Fremont Inn.

And we're curious, does your father have anything to do with the Fremont Inn? I go, I've never heard of it before. I have no idea. Well, it's interesting because we were tearing it down, like, you know, putting, you know, repainting the walls. We were tearing some wallpaper out of the bathroom. And in the bathroom stall, there was a graffiti. And it said, Todd Wenzel, bad dude, 19, whatever. Todd Wenzel, bad dude. So I'm like, is my dad bad dude?

So, I mean, sorry about that. No, you're good. And, uh, we're like, I mean, not, we don't have the ratings for it. We're going to ask, but we're free form, baby. We're like, I'm editing that out. It's phone, right? Yeah. Yeah. Baby. That's like, uh, we were going to do the same thing. And so I'm like, you know what? I'm like, I need to, I need to know. Cause like I was looking at the handwriting and like my dad's got really eclectic handwriting, but,

some of it's you know uppercase lowercase things like that i'm like it's kind of like his five year old six year old seven year old i don't you know i think he would have been about seven years old per the date that was on the graffiti so i called him i'm like hey what do you know about the fremont and he's like i don't fucking know what you're talking about justin go back to work and he hangs up on me i'm like fair enough that's probably a normal answer yeah but it still didn't sit with me so i uh i decided to call my mom my parents are divorced you know but i i call my mom and i'm like

no, mom, does dad have anything to do with the Fremont? And she goes, absolutely. Your grandpa owned it. And I was like, I was like, so my dad's bad dude, you know? And so as I started to like resonate with me and I'm like, why would he just tell me no? And my mom starts to explain. She's like, you know, your grandpa was a severe alcoholic and he used to take your dad up there and make him sit while he drank with his buddies. And then he would make your dad drive him home.

seven, eight years old, you know? And I was like, wow, this is incredible. And it really started to make me think about like, and really value my childhood. And like, cause I remember everything. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like I had a great childhood. So, so it's strange that I ended up the way that I did earlier on. Um, but, uh, but for like some people, man, like they, they go through so much shit in life and then all of a sudden it's like, they don't remember anything about their childhood. They block things out. And like, that's a big, that's a big deal.

Oh, it's still that, that trauma is still there somewhere. They're just probably sell. Yeah. Down deep affecting every relationship. When you have, when you're in the auto industry at the, at the capacity that we are and we're, we're massive five, massive, massive stores. Our name's everywhere. So it's like always like in Michigan, it's like constant, like, you know,

you know, you know, the local car dealer like hires, like everybody's like, everybody's somewhat related to somebody who works there and things like that. So when your name's on a sign, it's like, you know, this kind of stuff happens a lot, but that was one interesting one that I, that I just really appreciate from the auto industry. Um, it's,

Vegas is smallest town in the world. People think Vegas is such a huge place. It is tiny. Right. You know, last night I was, I was telling you before we went on that I took my daughter, I drove our sprinter van, which is one of my favorite things to do is our jet sprinter to be the chauffeur for my kids when they have a dance. My son has aged out of that. He's like, yeah, you ain't going to see more. But my, you know, my daughter is, you know, in eighth grade. So we piled 10 of her little girlfriends in there and their little dresses and took them. But

you know, last night we went over and one of her girlfriends, I met his dad, her dad last night, I'm standing there and I was like, Hey, we're talking about, you know, nothing we're talking about. He said he's going to watch doom too. And I was like, Oh, I heard that was good. And I was like, Oh dude, you just watched fallout yet. You know, he's like, yeah, it was great. We're talking about that. I'm like this. And it was like, got back in the car, told my wife, my God, God was pretty cool. You know, he was a super nice guy and whatever else. And this morning I'm, you know, you know, sitting there getting, waking up and I'm going through Instagram, checking stuff. And,

I see a picture of him and his daughter from last night come up on my feed. I'm like, huh?

And I look at it and this dude owns a home inspection company. And he like, Oh really? And he hit me up like two years ago wanting to be a preferred vendor here. And like, I didn't even like respond. I was just like, ah, fuck. So I literally was like from literally from a DM from two years ago, I was like, Hey man, nice to see you last night. I'd love to help you build your business. Hit me up later today. Let me know what I can do to get you on. Right. I was like, I'm going to take care of you because I was like, Oh shit. Yeah. The whole time you guys are talking, he's probably like that mom.

Well, you know what? That's why I was going nice to see you. I stopped saying that unless I know for sure. Like when you walked in today, I said, nice to be here. Cause I know I'd never met you before, but in this town, it's always nice to see you. That's, that's a good move. I'm actually going to take that. No. Yeah. Great to see you because I don't know. Yeah. Oh, trust me. I learned that one the hard way. We had our Christmas party one time and you know, we've got,

We have 580 agents that work here for us. And then you've got, you know, the mortgage company and the title company, all those people. It's a lot of people. And like my biggest stressor of the year is our holiday party. Because, you know, I'm like, fuck, all these people know who I am. And I got to know who they are. So I start studying like in November because we have our website. And I just start looking at names and faces to make sure that I like I want people to feel special when they interact with me at this party. Right.

And this is maybe six years ago. We're having our party seven years ago. It was at the Palms, right? When they just got done with the remodel and we're upstairs on one of the big, whatever restaurant it was, which was Playboy Club. They flipped into something else. And we're doing our party there and it's late in the night and this girl walks in that was friends with one of my buddies that works here.

And I saw her walk in late and I was like, oh man, she must've been in the casino. And he said, we're upstairs at a party, come up. And then here she is. It's like, Hey, good to see you. Thank God you're here. She's with this guy. And I'm like, oh, cool. So, you know, how do you know her? And he's like, I wouldn't be dating for like two months. And I'm like, oh, that's cool. Well, man, you know, dumb luck that, you know, she knew Scott and that's why you guys came up and blah, blah, blah. And he's like, I've worked for you for two years. Oh my God. I was like, ah, I just want to crawl under the desk and like,

Oh, so painful. But you know what? That says a lot though, as, as a, as a business owner and an employer, like, you know, if it didn't phase you, you know, if you didn't have that type of level of empathy and care, then it would be really, you should really feel like shit. Yeah. From that point, it became nice to see you too. Yeah. Cause you never know. All

All right. So you go to school for automotive retail and marketing. Where was this? Northwood University. Which is where? Midland, Michigan. Okay. It's got to be in Michigan, right? That's actually where NADA is. Okay. Got it. Yeah. I'm thinking there's no way there's not the best college for this. It's not located in Michigan. And that's where all the dealers, like you can imagine. What was college like?

It's fun, man. You know, a lot of just a lot of like minded people out of, you know, kids in my situation that, you know, we're going in to take over their family stores.

And it was really great. As a matter of fact, I always played music. I was in punk rock bands and stuff, metal bands, all the way through high school. What did you play? I played guitar and everything, but I was usually a vocalist or guitarist. Right on. We've had Tommy Vext on the show. I know Tommy. Yeah, Tommy's been on the show. I was talking to him the other day. Yeah, Tommy's been on the show before. Yeah, he was great. He was Bad Wolves, but honestly, I really like his self-titled band now. Yeah.

I met him through Jay Ferugio, actually, who's a client of mine. I don't know Jay. Jay has a Renegade podcast, Renegade Radio, and Jay Ferugio's show. He's great. He does a lot of stuff with WWE superstars, things like that. Very cool. Yeah, great dude. Great dude. But yeah, I love Tommy. He's awesome. He's fucking hilarious, man. Awesome.

Um, but, uh, so in college I actually had a, uh, like a kind of like hardcore punk rock, but like, you know, it was fun party rock band, you know? Yeah.

And so that was like kind of most of my college career was like we had a house. Actually, I bought a house in college. GMAC was like, you know, they would loan money to anybody that, you know, back then, you know, you can get back. Right. Right. So we had a I had a badass house was a Dow house.

uh if you know about dow chemical like yeah so one of the one of the weird it was like the weird cousin or son or whatever he was like a uh architect like a like a residential architect okay and he made these really odd houses but they were kind of cool well i had one it was a cool little house um and we had an unfinished basement so we completely like decked this thing out

full, you know, stage, everything. So we would throw like concerts there, you know, massive parties. So it was kind of like the, like the go-to house. Let's stop. Cause that's not something a lot of college kids do is buy a house. So,

is this something, were you working while you're going to school or you just, I had, I had a qualified, you had a qualified co-signer. Okay, cool. Yeah. Well, hang on. Cause I don't hate it because like my kids are getting ready to go to school too. And I'm like, I'm like, I'll do, I'm going to do the first semester in the dorm, second semester in fraternity house. And then we're buying a house and he can bring roommates and the roommates up here for the whole thing. Cause I just similar situation. I wasn't in a fraternity, but I'm not a punk rocker. It wasn't. Yeah, dude, that's a fraternity. It's on my phone. Yeah.

Edison fraternity, its own that never dies because let's just see. One of us is covered with tattoos. Tell him he's a guitar player. And one of us in this room has seen the exploited, dag nasty, circle jerks, dead Kennedys. Okay.

just name it off. That's awesome. Oh dude, when I was in high school, from the time I was like 12 to 18, I was on a skateboard every single day. Let's go. And I was at punk rock shows, the American Legion in Gainesville, Florida. All right. Every weekend. And I got to, in like the, and this isn't like,

mid 80s i got like the highlight of the punk rock scene that's awesome which is awesome so i saw it's cool i'm actually uh i became friends with clint from di yeah and uh it's pretty cool um he lives in huntington and obviously being in huntington it's like i'm around all of them i see mike ness like walking around main street dude i gotta you know what's funny about mike net well you know i'll tell you my mike i don't have a mike ness story

Let me ask real quick. He's the only person I get a little bit of starstruck with. Is it? Yeah, because it was like how many times I've been in a tattoo shop and just like that was...

you walk into any tattoo shop anywhere, you're going to have either rancid or social distortion. Like it doesn't matter which one you walk into. So it was like how many tattoos I got and then started watching them, going to see them and like, just like became some of my best friends are like the singers of like my favorite bands ever. But for some reason, when I see Mike Ness, I'm like, dude, this guy is just his theory. Well, for me, like, like a good friend of mine, John Isbell was the manager for social distortion. Okay. I've been in social D forever. Yeah.

Right. And I love Mike Ness. I love social D. I love all of that shit. But then I looked back at a period of my time when I wasn't having a lot of success in life. And I was listening to a lot like social D and shit. And then you go back and you're like, okay,

fucking sitting here in the Chevrolet waist. It's the most defeatist. It is defeat. But I firmly believe like it almost becomes like a mantra. Like that could be like you, like what you feature. I'm so big on like, obviously you're big on the, on what goes in your mouth matters. I'm really big on what goes in my head matters. Sure. And now even today, like,

outside of maybe like reach for the sky or some of that stuff that comes, came off some of the later records, but the early stuff, man, it's just so like, I can actually see that. I just want to give you a hug brother. Yeah. Well, it's not a surprise that, you know, he's in recovery and, and you know, just like, just like me, you know, and, and we, we,

go into similar rooms um but uh but yeah you've i've definitely noticed that like the punk rock and hardcore stuff that i've really gotten more into is like championing perseverance and and you know and overcoming and um i've definitely gone more into like that like real clean hardcore like uh just just guys that are jacked right they're like you know very uh disciplined and

So, yeah, I can definitely see where that would change. And I can definitely see why Social D would be very defeating. It's so hard. But you love it. But I love it. You love it. I love it. I look at it kind of like this. Like you used to do drugs and drink. You don't do that anymore. You live in a clean lifestyle, right? Yeah.

You probably look back very fondly. Well, now that you mention that, yeah. You look back very fondly on it, but you're still not going to do it. Yeah, well, thanks. Hey, John, thanks for ruining that for me. I appreciate it. Look, I'm not comparing. I'm not trying to compare Mike Ness to having a drinking problem. Maybe I am. I don't know. No, that's Dad Kennedy's. Yeah, that is. Agreed, agreed. Holiday Inn, Cambodia, probably that record. People are just like, what the fuck are these guys talking about? Isn't this supposed to be about real estate? I don't know. Yeah, this is cut off the rails.

No, but the point is, I think that you can love something and still limit it or eliminate it. I understand it's not probably good for you. Right. No, yeah, no, I definitely think, you know, but by that logic, though, you know, you also got to consider like,

the terrible things that people blame music on like Marilyn Manson and stuff like that, that it's like, you know, that's a slippery slope to start, you know, to start basing entire mindsets and actions upon music. You know what I mean? I agree. I will, however, say I, I, and I'm a, I'm somebody that beats the gong and people can be, and I've get, this is my conspiracy theory, right? All right. All right. Bring it.

I do think that the violent fucking video games are why kids go shoot up schools. Do you? A thousand percent, man. I think that becomes, I think with the hyper realism of some of these games now that become so desensitized to hyper violence, they just don't see it. Interesting. It's what it is. Why did this shit never happen?

Like, dude, because I can remember going to high school when I was a kid, right? In the late 80s. I graduated in 1990. Like, where I started in school was North Florida. So it was like Baja, Georgia, redneck-y as it gets, right? Yeah. And dudes would come to school with shotguns in the rack of the back of their truck because they were going hunting. And nobody ever said a word about it. Like, nobody thought twice about it. Like, you could literally come to school with a gun and nobody thought anything.

I think a lot of, like, you know, there could be a level of how people romanticize, like, that action and that, you know,

that action yeah i guess that's really all you can say um but i i do think that the the stakes are a lot higher when it comes to how like how psychological it like being a kid nowadays is compared to like back in the day like it was like rub dirt on it like go get a fight yeah you know don't get caught you know you know but now it's like so it's like so brutal um

I actually saw some text messages that my son got from some kid that's like a bully of his. And it was like the shit that that guy was saying, that kid was saying to my son was like, I

I wouldn't even think to say that. And I know how to undress a motherfucker. Yeah. Right. Like I'll make you feel, and just be in the industry that I grew up in and I'm watching guys that make you feel smaller than small. Yeah. But like, this was like a 12 year old said this kind of stuff. Like, you know, it's a lot more psychological. It digs a lot deeper. It cuts. So, you know, yeah, I'm sure it doesn't help when they're, when they're spending hours and hours and hours, you know,

Plastic people away. I know my kid is a better kid when he's unplugged. I know he is. Well, yeah. I know he is. Let's get back to being a better kid. So you graduate from college. See, that was a hard segue. See how hard that was? Man, we're drifting into some stuff we don't really have any business talking about. You're probably like, these guys aren't psychologists. What am I listening to this for? And now back to the success story. That's how we do it. That's how we do it. So you graduate from college. You go back to work at the dealership with dad. No, my dad wouldn't hire me.

I had to, uh, no, I had to, why would dad not hire you? No nepotism. You know, he had to earn it all himself. So, um, I, I had to, uh, I had to do it on my own. So, um, I got my first job selling cars for an auto group in Detroit and, uh, did okay.

You know, didn't have the best leadership at that store, but I did meet a guy that started to take me under his wing in special finance. And I kind of really started thriving with, you know,

alternative lending yeah buy here pay here that's what we're going not quite but yeah pretty bad um but i i you know was able to communicate to these people get down to their level and you know um and really and really make people feel comfortable with the decisions that they were going to make i was also really good at capturing cash so you know what i'm going to talk about that real quick because that reminded me of something that that i preach religiously in this business

The business that I'm in, of course, is real estate, which is so many people that do what I do, right? They're looking to disqualify people. You know, in this world of speed and efficiency, it's all about disqualify people. Correct. They're looking to disqualify people as quick as they can. And I teach all of the people that work for us. It's like, look, I don't care if somebody's qualified on the phone. I want to get them in here. Get them down. I don't care if they're qualified because here's the magic in it.

If somebody's sitting in our office and we get them on the phone with a lender and the lender says, "Yeah, can't buy a house. They got to fix this, this and this. It's going to take whatever."

And when you look across, like somebody, nobody goes to a meeting and a surprise, their credit's fucked up. Right. Nobody's surprised. No, they know, you know, they're very aware and they're literally just sitting there waiting for you to disrespect them as they've been disrespected by everyone else in financial situations. And they're waiting for you to slam the door to them and treat them like shit. And when you look across that table and you, you say, look,

I don't care if it takes six months or six years. If you have a dream of owning a house, we're going to get you from where we are right now to getting this credit fixed, to getting you where you want to be. Right. I'm we're in this together. I'm here for you. And in that time,

I'm going to, we're going to work together, but if you know anybody else that wants to buy a house, refer them to me. And that person will send you more people than the person you did a perfect job for and sold them a house. Correct. Yeah. I think that one of them, and I, and we'll probably circle back to this here when we start getting into, you know, current matters. But I think that it's short-sighted to only, to only attract to,

super qualified leads, the cash down, whatever it is. It's very short-sighted for one. For two, what I've learned is the business people who...

value, qualification, cash on hand, all of that, they become a certain level of success. But the person that values level of interest over all of it is the hyper successful. And again, that is that obviously you don't want to waste your time. You want to prioritize your stuff. But

You take somebody who knows how to qualify, knows how to, how to, you know, get the deals done that can get done right away, but also still have strong followup, a really nice pipeline, whatever. And you're, you know, cause a lot of times, and you know, this, most of, most of your contacts that you make day one, you're not even in, in, in our industry, the industry. I'm in now you're, you may not even have any, anything come, come with that until day 90.

Yeah. You know, day one 20, but if you have the right tools, you utilize a CRM, you know, you, you, you have an email or you have all this stuff to continuously, because earlier we talked about frequency and I think a lot of people, they, they don't understand the power of frequency, but the, but the thing is, is, and this is way off, this is still on track, but a little bit off of the point I'm trying to make is that most people can only afford frequency, meaning that you have range or you have frequency, right? Yeah.

And unless you're Starbucks, Nike, Apple, you don't get range. Most people do not get range. Too expensive. Too expensive. So instead, like you can pick an audience or pick a group of individuals and hammer them over and over and over and over again, whether it is through follow-up, whether it is through email campaign, whatever it is. And I just found that like, you know,

really dialing into those individuals had started making me really successful right out of college. Right. And then later on in life now, that's really bled into what I do nowadays. How long, when did you decide to move out of the automotive automotive industry and kind of what you're doing now? So I, I, I actually, I worked myself up, uh, did pretty well at a few dealer or two dealerships and then, uh, knocked up my girlfriend from college and father, like son, baby. Yeah, there we go. And,

And, uh, and it was, uh, it was a matter of like, okay, well, you know, I've, I've really been proving myself in the auto industry and I got up to being a finance manager and, uh,

I, so I finally called my dad like, Hey, you know, knock this girl up, but I'm doing really well, but I really like an opportunity to work for you. He's like, yeah, it's fine. You're going to sell cars though. First. I'm like, fuck. Okay. I'm back. Like I worked my ass off to be like 22 years old, you know, 23 years old in a finance manager position. Like I made it like now I'm like close to 200 grand a year, you know? So he put me back into sales and I had to work my way into finance and

you know then do us then to a finance director then do a sales manager so on and so forth um and work my way all the way back up through the ranks at my uh my dad's store and i left a couple times and started to get really started to become really really good at what i did and helped a buddy with his chevy store um you know that was failing we turned that one around things like that you know so like certain things like started happening for me in the auto industry and then i obviously

eventually was able to have my own well my own stores and things like that so i was you got you got to owning your own dealership not well not really ownership but through family yeah sure i mean okay but uh yeah i mean full transparency yeah it's all family business you know what i mean but um so yeah so that was that was kind of you know where i was at and then

All along, I was pretty bad alcoholic, pretty bad drug addict. Still managed my job, still managed my lifestyle. High functioning. Very high functioning until it didn't get to that. And then I needed to get some help. So I moved out to Huntington Beach. What was the catalyst? I don't know if you mind telling us. No, I don't give a fuck, man. I put everything out there. Yeah.

I had some relationship things happen, you know, and then I got into some trouble. I got a DUI and then was kind of spiraling out of control, you know, from that. And the beginning of COVID was really tough, tough on the auto industry, just tough on everything. You had a lot of time on your hands. So it just slipped away from me. Went through a divorce affair, you know, the whole thing. So it was just kind of a rough time. So I needed to get some help.

Um, got, became pretty, pretty, pretty down suicidal, you know, whatever. And, um, I had never had that. Like I said, like earlier I said, like I had such a great childhood. I don't, I can't really put my finger on why I ended up the way that I did, but, um, I

Moved out to Huntington Beach just for, to do a 90 day treatment program. Really nice facility right on the beach. As a matter of fact, it's three houses down from my home now. I walk by it almost every single day and, you know, beautiful home. Another one of the tall skinny houses, you know, and, and it was, it was a really great treatment center that I went to really expensive. Went for nine, my original thing was I was going to go for 90 days.

Um, at the time I was in a relationship that was rocky, but I was crazy about the person we owned, just had built a really beautiful home. And, uh, and I was like, you know, my, my goal in it was to go back and try to fix things with her and take back over, you know, my, my seat and my dealerships, things like that. And I felt like the, I felt like the, the first 60 days of my treatment was wasted because I was doing it for the wrong reasons. Yeah. Yeah.

And it didn't help that she ghosted me too, right? Because it was like, you need to do this for you. She ghosted me for the right reason. It wasn't because of anything else other than maybe she was hurt because of where I had landed, but also because she needed to focus on herself and understand that I needed to focus on myself. So when she ghosted me, I was like, okay, I had to wake up. And that was the biggest favor that anyone could have ever done for me was her making that decision to ghost me because then it was like, I'm alone out here, right? I don't know anybody.

you know i'm here with like you know getting driven around in a piece of van like i've grown up a nice lifestyle you know this was very humbling yeah you know getting driven around having a kid 10 years younger than me look at my dick while i'm pissing in a cup like it was it was tough yeah you know very very woke me up but after 60 days i was like man i need to start my program over so i stayed for another 90 days

And that's when I really started to put my work in. Started going to a meeting in Newport right on 16th.

and uh right there across from lido house yeah and uh started meeting guys and they were all like me like successful you know and they uh just really like i just really wanted that lifestyle like i i've already had money i've already done pretty well for you know being 30 uh 33 at the time but

I just wanted that clarity like they had, and I wanted that confidence like they had. So I put a ton of work in on myself. And after my five-month program was up, I called my dad. I called my family, and I said, I'm not coming back. And my dad was like, fuck, that's a blow. He raised me to take over the stores. I left a billion-dollar lottery ticket. And here we are. Yeah. And I said, you know what? This is it. I'm done. I'm going to stay out here and just rebuild my life.

And he was like, I support you. I said, whoa. But we support you. We want you to be a happy stay. So I did. Got out of rehab. And I was like, well, now what the fuck am I going to do? Yeah, what year was this? This was 21? Yeah. Like, well, now what the fuck am I going to do?

So I went in for a get well job, which is a finance director for an auto group, met the dealer. And he was like, yeah, you're not going to be a finance director. Made me variable ops director, vice president. Okay. So right away, I was like million and a half a year salary. I was like, this is fucking sweet. Like, you know, I'm back, baby. I'm back. But I started, you know, and I was doing well. And I was like, you know, but this is...

You know, this is just back to what I've always done. Did you... Not to cut you off, but do you find... You brought up something I thought was interesting. And it's a mistake I think a lot of people make in life, which was...

Would you say that when you were in the automotive stuff up until the point where you decided you had to go rehab, when looking back in your life, were you always kind of surrounded by people in the automotive industry? Did you put yourself in a bubble that way? And then when you got to California and got around, wow, here's some other people doing other things, it was kind of eye-opening for you? It was. Yeah, I think that...

People are so bubble driven. They're like, I want to put themselves in a group. I want to, you know, I am this, I am a, you know, real estate people. It's the dumbest shit I've ever seen. A real estate, a realtor will drop everything at the drop of a hat to go to an event with a bunch of other realtors.

That will never buy a house from that. Like, why? What do you do? Like, that's the last place you should go. It's where they all go. Right. And I just have never understood it. And it's like, I find I purposely am always trying to seek people outside of what I do because that's how you broaden your horizons. Not just in business, but the way that you think and the way ideas and everything else flows. Right. And,

I find that really interesting that that was so true with your story. Well, yeah, you know, big thinkers, creative minds, you know, living in Southern California, it was like, yeah, it was very eyeopening for me. I'm a musician. I've been an artist. Like I'm, I'm, you know, it was really, it was really cool. Like to start seeing people that were doing big things. And I had a good Instagram following. Um, I had, I had shut it down. Um,

I shut it down when I went through my divorce and I'd left it for like a year and a half. And I had a decent following though, you know, nothing crazy like now, but like, um,

you know it was like when i turned it back on i just started to like you know show more meal prep stuff again started to like you know do some training stuff had a buddy that wanted to like film me in the gym and stuff that was a barber of mine at the time and uh in huntington you know so it was like you know i started to just kind of do so i didn't really think anything of it um working you know auto industry in california is even crazier than michigan so working crazy hours you know um

And, uh, then I met a dude, I'm not going to say who it is. Um, but I met a dude who, uh, was selling online coaching, um, teaching people how to coach. And I was like, you know what? I'd like to do this. I think, I think I can do well at this, you know?

and he promised the world, didn't deliver, but that's okay. I can probably guess who this is. Yeah, no problem. I can probably guess who this is. So we'll leave that alone. Yep, we'll leave it alone. But that's okay. Again, the track record kind of shows, but again, it was getting my foot in the door. I don't regret spending the money. It wasn't even a lot of money. Sure.

7,500 bucks or something. So, but I, but originally, you know, his price point was he wanted us selling things for $250 a month. And I'm like, ain't no fucking way. I'm going to be able to do this at the level that I want to in charge $250 a month. And my network has more money than that. So a lot of my friends in the auto industry and stuff like that had seen me like get super jacked.

and seeing me get sober and like seeing that I was living this great life. So I was like, I'm just going to go towards car dealers that want to get sober and guys that are high ups in the auto industry that want to get sober. Cause that's a, that's a, I was going to say, man, I can't even imagine going from rehab back into the car biz. It's tough.

that's a end of month party clinky clinky glass mazzi madman shit right right right to this day over that oh yeah oh yeah yeah okay so yeah so i i started doing more high ticket stuff knowing like you know that if i charge more i'm gonna get better people and uh leveled that up very quickly and then i started having some i started putting a ton of content out and for me at that time a ton of content is not even close to what today is for a ton of content yeah but um

Started putting a ton of content out and eventually had a couple things hit hard. And there was one that that was like crazy, crazy umpteen million views on Facebook that I funneled into my Instagram. And then the next thing you know, I was like over a hundred and some thousand followers on Instagram. And I was like, fucking right.

Is that just pull that a little closer? Sorry. That's all right. So, uh, so that, that really set me up for success. You know, then it was like, I had the, I had the authority, I had the credibility. I got cast in two movies. Um, yeah, yeah. They should come out this summer. I don't know one of them, but the other one should come out this summer. Got flown out to Boston. I was like, you know, to do this, this one film and a couple articles, podcasts, like things started happening for me and I didn't even expect this. So I was able to walk away from the auto industry. I started doing,

you know, at the time about a hundred and 150 grand a month. Then it became like quarter million a month. And then it like, then I had a couple of months that I had a half million in a month and I was like, okay, I'm onto something. I'm like, fucking a, like, this is really cool. So about a year in, I was like,

And I'm not going to lie. I had hired a number of mentors after that to teach me other parts of the industry. The coaching part was easy, right? But it was like, you know, meta ads and, and, you know, content and branding and all of these different things. And I was like,

like you know i took the time to actually learn that or because that that for some of that stuff for me is a who not the how like i'd rather find the who than the how yeah so well yeah so i did i paid for some there was a lot of money that was spent on done for you services and in a lot of cases i found that the done for you services would just set like send you inflated metrics i have never had a done for you service that has brought what they promised ever once

Yeah, that's true. You know what I mean? No, no. I mean, you look, you know, we, I've talked about it here before, but like when this is 2022, maybe 2021, maybe when it was still a bitch to get verified on Instagram. Yeah. And it was like, there were services. There was a couple of dude here in town that had done it for a couple of guys I know. And, you know, there's, there's a couple of guys in our circle that when they say this is a good dude, you just kind of go, okay, cool. That's a good dude. Yeah.

And then, you know, the shit hits the fan quick. Right, right. With certain things. And like, you know, dude, I think to get my Instagram verified, I think I've spent probably 30 grand or some shit. Yeah, that's about right. Yeah. So I was able to, once I had Screen Actors Guild credentials and things like that. But you know what fucking sucks? Is a month after I got mine, they opened it up.

Oh, yeah. See, I, but I didn't have to pay anything. At least I got like two, at least I got like two years of, yeah, yeah. Some crowd, some, yeah, some clout. Right. But we'll be able to get, um, legacy when that comes out. Okay, good. Cause now it's like, Ooh, he spent nine, he spends $9 a month. Not exactly. Right, right. Yeah. No, it's, no, they'll turn gold for legacy. Okay, good. Well then I'll have a cold check market. That'll be fancy again.

it's it's helpful i i dude i agree because i i agree and for me it was like you know what else you have that that is like very very valuable what's that your first and last name no spaces no underscore nothing yeah yeah yeah same here same here that's it you got it yeah i mean i have that i got it and here's here's a little lesson too if you're if you know it seems weird to do but in the world we live in it's important when you're thinking about naming your kid

grab the grab them yeah i grabbed all i grabbed the g literally my kids were born i grabbed the gmails form i grabbed all their accounts i grabbed everything for them so they would have their names yep on everything yep it's it's really valuable as a matter of fact it's funny the kid who was at justin wenzel no spaces no anything um he had he has probably five or six dms one for 1500 one for 2500 one for five grand

One for six grand. And he never used the account. I literally, I like literally I sent him...

Yo, bro. If you see this, I will literally Venmo you six grand right now for you to move your name. You're not even on your account anyways. You're six grand right here. He didn't even fucking open it. So at Justin Wenzel, if you're watching this, bro, you fucking missed big. Yeah, not only did you lose a massive platform that could have been, well, probably not. But either way, yeah, so I paid one cat, my PR guy. Paid him $1,500. He went in through our meta rep.

And was like, yo, this account isn't active. Like, can we cut them? Yeah. And they just changed her out of one, you know, or whatever. And then.

gave it to me fix it but yeah when when it comes to personal branding like that i honestly i think nowadays having your first and last name no underscores no no dots or anything like that is more valuable than the check mark i agree what's like you know you look at like uh like do you know travis lebensky do you know him do you know trav travin here a couple weeks ago and it's like dude you got at trav like yeah i'm sorry that is yeah that's gangster that's good dude what's your what's your name at trav yeah it's gangster come on man

For sure. Come on, man. Probably the most gangster one is Charlie with the Dream Factory. It's his deal, just at Charlie. Yeah. That's just...

Yeah. It's, it's super gangster, but anyways. Yeah. So I, you know, again, like I said, I had no luck with any of like the real done for you services, but I did have a lot of luck and I'll give them a shout out right now with Justin Saunders from, uh, um, authority income accelerator. And he started teaching me, um, how to run, uh, targeted DM ads. And I, then I just kind of took my, uh,

talent maybe for writing copy and i write some fucking badass who'd you study who do you who's your hero there who do you study for copy um frank kern yeah i like i love kern um but i know honestly man i'm just like i free flow do you yeah you didn't start you didn't teach yourself you just you just you went with it yeah i just started i started like coming up with so i've been i've always written really persuade like well persuasives like essays things like that

So, and I'm, you know, being in the level of finance, like I went away to like do some like finance training and sales training to where I'm really good at logic trap and, you know, and stuff like that. So like my, my copies are in, you know, all my, my ads, dude, I'll tell you what my row as is on one of my copies and you won't even believe me. Okay. Give it 32 X. Oh yeah. That's pretty good. Yep. I know 32 X and that's one of the high that's, that's,

The only one I've ever heard higher in this room was the guys from V shred. Oh, I can imagine came out, had, had the first one that hit for them hit 125 X. Well, that's insane. Yeah. So, so for a lot of failure after, yeah. And, and I'll, and I'll tell you that that's as high as it's been, but it was, it held there for like two weeks last month, but I'll tell you this. I've been running that same exact copy, that same creative, um,

um for about 11 months now to one single target and it's still holding and it still holds around 16x to 32x yeah that's that's that's so that's that's really i've even recreated the ad and it doesn't perform compared to just this one little something about it that funny man how you just it just you just sometimes you just catch that one little that one little lightning bug yeah one word either way in a different sequence or out there it's insane

But anyways, yeah. So that was one valuable one, but, but that's, that was where I was really inspired was because he wasn't a done for you service. He was educational platform with a really solid curriculum and a really great formula. And I was like, well, shit, like this is really where it's at. Yeah. It's like, but he was all, he was all module based for the most part. He had coaching calls and things like that, but there was really no one-on-one.

You got a couple, but like, it wasn't like super invested. Yeah. So I was like, man, if I ran like one really high ticket offer and got super invested, built it all like ecosystem, like I had built my, my community for the clients that I was coaching. I was like, this could be insane. So I called up one of my best friends in the world that I grew up with. I was like, yo, this is a vision I have. I want you to be my test subject. It's going to cost you a little bit of money, but he was, he owned a custom homes construction company at the time.

and I was like, I want to, I want to, you know, I was like, have you ever thought about online coaching? He's like, yeah, bro, I see what you're doing. Like, you're crushing it. Like, how do I do this? So I was like, all right, well, send me 10 grand. I'm going to show you how to do it. He's like, all right, cool. So he did. And thank God, because within seven months, he literally dissolved his construction. Good for him. Yeah. And then we started teaching people, you know, just case by case. I'm going to stop you for one second, because...

I want you to say it because I know the answer, but I want you to say it. Why did you make him send you 10 grand? Because he had to be invested.

That's the answer. You know, I love when people that hate on the coaching and education space say, why does somebody that makes all this money need to charge people? Do they need to see if they were so good at what they're teaching? They would sell education. It's because they understand if people are not people fucking do it. No, but you've got, you put us a value on things based on the cost.

Stuff that's free is shit. It's just how it is. Right. If you, if you charge me $10,000 for a cookie and they're going to eat it, they're going to say it's the best fucking cookie they've ever had. Yeah. I can hand you the best cookie in the world on the side of a, you know, a subway platform in New York and you'll just fucking throw it in the trash where you can taste it. Right.

Why do I have that backpack? Why do you have that watch? Why? Like, well, you know what I mean? Cause it costs a lot of money and we value it. And that's why. Yeah. Or as Brad, or as Brad likes to spread, Lee, like say, I have this watch, not tell me what time it is. I won't tell you. Yeah. I told him that I said, I said last night at dinner with him, I was like, I love that one. But I was like, I have a white gold diamond spirit. And I go, this one is the Rolex may tell you what time it is. This one tells you, fuck you pay me.

And he was like, that's fucking good, bro. That's it. But, but no, and I love my Rolexes too, but either way. But yeah, so that, that's really where it started happening. And then I was like, you know, take two Midwest boys with construction work ethic and car business work ethic. We have the automation.

We have all the tools, all the curriculums, all the modules. We have all that stuff too. But imagine if you had mentors that actually showed up day in, day out for their coaches, clients, and things like that. And didn't call you a little bitch on a coaching call. Stop, stop. No, and respected you and treated you like a human being. And then the last part was didn't chase retention. And this may be where it was like, huh?

No, once you're in, you can take advantage of everything for life. Yeah, get it. And everyone was like, that's not fucking scalable. Well, here we are. Here we are. The most sought after, like we turn more business down because we don't chase retention. We don't have to. We don't dilute our community. We only bring in the people that we want to. We only work with the people that we want to work with. Do you think that's the biggest problem in the coach? What's the biggest problem in the coaching industry right now? What is the biggest problem? Well, there's no barrier to entry, right? Yeah.

Yeah. And that's okay. The, uh, there's like this, uh, this, this imagery of coaching that it's saturated. And I hate the word saturated. I fuck, that's like my least favorite word in the world. Unless you put it this way, online fitness coaching is saturated with clients. Everybody's fat. Everybody's fucking fat. So if you need a client,

Walk into an area where there's more than five people and spin in a circle with your eyes closed and stop and you're going to land on a client. Okay. They're everywhere. Well, by that logic, pizza places are saturated, barbershops, car dealerships, everything is, everything's fucking saturated. So what do you need to do? You need to find the person that's doing it well or doing it the best, figure out what they're doing and then do it better and work harder. Otherwise, yeah, it's not saturated. It's competitive and you happen to suck. Yeah. Yeah.

it's, it's, you know, right now I'm in the middle of this thing. Cause you know, I've been in real estate for 18 years doing this a long time. And you know, for the last, I don't know, maybe call it four years, I just been focusing at a very high level in all of our companies. And we have a lot of different brands. We have a lot of different companies in the real estate space. And somebody asked me when I was in Newport, if you go back to the video, I'm sitting in my house in Newport beach one, I say this, but one of my buddies down there asked me, they said, uh,

Because we're talking about the price of houses in Vegas has just gotten crazy, right? Like if you would have told me 12 years ago, we'd have $20 million houses here. I told you you're out of your fucking mind. You're just out of your mind. But we do, right? We do now. And so we were talking about just how expensive the houses have gotten. Somebody said to me, they said, how long would it take you to spend back up selling luxury homes? I'm like, do it in 90 days.

Like, I'll bet you 10 grand. I'm like, all right, let's go. So literally, if you see my Instagram right now, it's like this 90 days of luxury. I think that's what it is. I'm awesome. I'm going to spin this. I'm spinning this brand, Luxury Homes of Henderson, back up that I plan to be able to just get in and then exit the brand at some point. All right. But yeah, we'll have it up and we'll have, yeah, we'll be screaming along. Because again, like you just said, the reason I mentioned that is

is because so many real estate's not saturated. There's a million people. You could walk out and throw a football in any direction and hit a realtor in the back of the head. But there's very few people that do it really, really high level and do it well. Correct. Luckily, I'm surrounded by a lot of them in our company here. Well, there is a barrier to entry in real estate. My company here, I'm the only brokerage in Vegas that I know of that fires people for non-production.

Oh, wow. Yeah. If you're a zero, I mean, no offense. If you just want to carry a business card to tell people you sell real estate as something to tell people at cocktail parties, there's a lot of places you can work. This is not one of them. Yeah. We sell homes. Yeah. You want soldiers. Yeah. I think I looked at the metrics yesterday. One out of every 18 homes that gets sold in all of Las Vegas is sold by this company. Wow. So I'm pretty proud about that. That's fantastic. Congratulations. That's great. Yeah. Pop myself in the back a little bit. But anyway, back to you. That's enough about me today. That's awesome.

That's awesome. I celebrate myself all day. I love watching people win, bro. I don't need to do it while you're here. I don't need to do it while you're here. God, I got it. Well, yeah, but I mean, I'm just getting to know you too. So this is great. That's why I have mirrors in my house. I can look and just tell myself how great I am. Yeah. Never seen a mirror I didn't like though, right? No, no, no, no. Didn't do it. So you think, so people think it's saturated. That's a problem. Yeah. And I think that, do you think, all right, now I got to ask you this question because it's out there and yes, it's,

I'm going to preface this with saying my opinion on it sometimes falls somewhere in the middle of this. You have like the accounts out there on Instagram that are out for, you know, exposing the, what is it? The flexers or whatever they say they are. Oh yeah. Like baller busters. Yeah. They say that I fall somewhere in the middle of it. Some of this stuff I think is, is probably if there's people that are running strictly on hype, I a hundred percent think they should get smoked. Yeah. Yeah.

But I think what that also does is it gives people this wrong impression that everybody out there is like this. Right. Yeah, that sucks. And I didn't mean to cut you off, but before I lost my thought, you know that scene in 8 Mile where Eminem just like,

He basically like undresses himself before like just self deprecate. What are you going to say now? What are you going to say now? That was what I did. That was the method that I went with. Did they say something to you? No. Oh, just in general. Just in general. I was like, you know what? At some point people are going to like look at my lifestyle and stuff like that and start talking shit. So I'm going to start just putting it all out there.

Talk about my addiction, talk about the shit I've been through, talk about everything. Show my home, show my car, show my stuff, but I live within my means. You know what I mean? I don't try to pretend like anything. If I'm not, I don't fly private, JSX at best.

you know, but I, you know, I always fight first class because I can't fit in the back of the planes. But like, you know, I don't pretend like I'm anything I'm not. And I'm like, you know what? There, cause there is a lot of people out there. There is a lot of scam. There is a lot of that stuff. But I found that we've maintained such a good reputation and we've just, you know,

been overly you know we put out we put out our real lives every single day and don't we don't really like you know sugarcoat anything how do you handle because i mean look if you if you look at any business and it's all five-star reviews those five-star reviews are bullshit right

If you look at a business, they get a lot of five-star reviews, and then there's that one or two or three one-star reviews. Yeah. How do you deal with those? Because I'll tell you how I deal with it. I'm just curious how you deal with it. Bury it with more good stuff, but, you know... Yeah, well, that's part of it. Yeah. Do you make an effort to get to with those one-stars and kind of see what happened, make it up to them? Yeah. Yeah, in this industry...

And with us, any time we've had a bad experience, it's like we know. We film everything that we do. We provide. We do show up. We deliver all of our stuff. And we put ourselves in a really good situation to where it's like, if you didn't succeed, it's because you didn't do the work. Yeah, because, well, in the victim mentality, there is some of that with the victim mentality. Correct.

Well, they told me I was going to make a million dollars. Like you were just going to sit on the couch and eat Fritos. And that was going to be your input to this. Correct. And as a matter of fact, I did have to deal with one. Um, and I don't want to dive too far into this, but I had to deal with one situation that, um, got to, got to a level of, uh, of an AG situation. And, and now I'm,

I have a friend that's an attorney general in another state here close by that calls me by my first name and absolutely loves me because I showed up with a 16 page report and several videos and everything that literally showed me doing every single thing that was he said, she said. But I was like, no, I film everything that I do being in the auto industry. And in finance, we have a camera over our shoulder and a camera on the person hand their hand when they're signing.

So I took that same mentality. I took the same mentality. I love that. I'm going to be bulletproof. I love that. Yeah. With us, man, like nothing just hurts me in my core when I see that one star review of somewhere. Well, yeah. Cause you care. Well, that's exactly what the AG said to me. They were like, you, we, we actually see how much you care because of how much you put into this. Yeah.

You know, what's harder for me though, is like, you're defending you. Like I got it. Like if somebody goes, Oh, I work with a simply Vegas person. It was terrible. Don't use this company.

Well, see, I don't have employees here. I have 550 independent contractors that are choosing to run their business under our flag. Yeah. So I've got, I'm defending all 550 of those businesses. That's how I look at it. Yeah, that's rough. So I'm like, oh shit, because that one, you know, bad review that's got nothing to do about nothing affects everybody if they look it up. So I immediately, you know, get on the phone and I mean, dude, I will spend an hour and a half on the phone. I'll go to somebody's house. I will do whatever I got to do to get that one star off. Right.

Right. I mean, I will. And if I can't get it off, I at least say, can you please be very specific about who the agent was? Like what happened exactly? Like let's, let's, if this is really, because do people do screw up, man, nobody's perfect. Right. We've had some situations we do what we do 4,000 plus deals a year here.

We're going to have some missteps. It's just what it is. But I want to make sure that that blame is laid exactly where it needs to be in a very finite way and not wide open. Right, right. Yeah, you want to correct it. That's for sure. So people looking for success, Mr. Coach. What are the biggest mistakes people make right now? What do you see, man? Like what is the number one thing you've got to get people overcoming? So I really think, you know, obviously there's like fear of getting on the camera. Yeah.

You know, this is so stupid. It's so dumb. You know, first things first, like you have this and you're comfortable doing this. Like in general, typically, you know, people will do stuff, but when it happens to be on topic, it's,

They freeze up, they overthink they, and they fall. Okay. Um, first of all, if you're just getting started and nobody's watching your shit anyway, so like if you fuck up, it doesn't matter. Yeah. Um, but yeah, it's, it's really is that. And then the biggest thing is you're these people that don't make it there. They, they're delusional about their work ethic. Let's just call it what it is. Yeah. They think they're working hard.

I tell people a lot. I'm like, if people that tell me that, I'm like, we're on a stopwatch on your day. Yeah. When you're actually prospecting, you're actually physically doing something that's going to lead to a transaction or lead to more business. Track that. Because I think you're going to find, especially when you come to the office, right? Real estate company. Oh, I'm just going to grab a coffee. Oh, there's a class. I'm going to go sit in. Oh, I'm going to do this. And like most businesses,

Places are just hives of inactivity. Right. Or nonsense. Yeah. So they mask that or they decorate it as they are. I'm working. Working. No, you're not. No, it's not working at all. And if you were, because if you were, if you were actually working, you would have the one thing that would be a show for that. And that's results. You find it's a huge hump because you mentioned something when you say KPIs.

for those of you who don't know what that is, it's a key performance indicator. It's the activities that actually lead to money. Do you find that getting people that have never tried KPIs to track KPIs to be a giant hill to climb over? Yeah, yeah. Sometimes I don't even know why I even say it. There's like acronyms out there that I'm like, they don't even need to exist because nobody gives a fuck anyways. But yeah, it's especially when you're like, when it comes to advertising and tracking KPIs, it's like...

It's like these people are just going to boost a post for $150. Okay, so you're just going to throw $150 into the ocean and hope that it lands in a fishing net. And does something. And that person comes back to you with that money. Like, you know, but...

Yeah, I don't, I think it's sometimes a lost cause, but again, I needed to show up and do my job and the people that, cause we talked about this before we got started was, you know, you can talk to a hundred people, five of them are going to actually do it. Yeah. But that doesn't mean you, you hold back. And you, you know, you got to keep a very open and abundant mindset for people. And if you're a good leader, you want to see everybody succeed. But the reality is, is most

Most people are going to take it for granted. Most people are going to get distracted, cave for instant gratification, and do anything but actually just do the fucking work.

I have a question for you because you just said something I thought was interesting because this is one of my biggest struggles, right? And I'll tell you how I got, I want to hear what you would do. And I'm going to tell you how I do it now because I recently shifted this and it's been very successful for me. But how do you, so let's say you're coaching somebody, right? And you've coached them and then you just see that they're just not doing what they're supposed to do. They're just not doing it.

Like, especially in a group setting when there's, like you just said, there's 105 of them are doing well and 95 are not doing. How do you handle the 95? Do you just continue to just pour it into them and just, what do you do? Well, yeah, it's tough when you're very invested into the person.

And it's easy at first to become invested into somebody, especially if you share similarities and things like that. For me to work with the person, I have to like them or my team has to accept them. So it's not just going to be anybody and everybody. So I try to really believe in every single person. Ridiculing, belittling,

criticizing, condemning that shit doesn't work. Okay. We know that, you know, it's, it's not the way to win friends and influence people. Right. Uh, that wasn't on page 47 of that. Come on. Come on. What's going on? Chapter two. Uh, yeah, it's our chapter one, actually. Uh, it's not, yeah, it's not gonna, it's not gonna work. It just doesn't. Right. So, um, uh,

I've really tried hard with, with doing more of a rewarding style. One thing that we do, um, typically like every other Tuesday night is our big call. That's usually in front of like 150 people on, on zoom. Um, I'll do, uh,

different marketing, different advertising contests where I'll give away money. Love that. Um, usually I'll give away like 1500 to 2,500 bucks cash and they're going to put it in their ad spend things like that. I'll be like, you know, let's see who writes the best, the best copy, the best creative. Yeah. And I tell this story all the time because it's so applicable to this and probably to, um, to what you deal with on, on a case to case situation. But, um,

General Motors, they used to weigh in, they still do weigh in really heavy on the OnStar button, right? The little blue button. Yeah, sure. Okay. And back in the day, they wanted their salespeople to go sit in the passenger seat when they're delivering their vehicle to their customer and have them push the OnStar button. And-

nobody did it no salesman did it it's like that's all you have to do like these people are feeding your families yeah just push the button push the button that's it but they wouldn't do it so general motors um chevy specifically uh got pretty in bed with disney and disney has a program called paid for behavior where they pay you to do your job like for like behaviors that they want you to start to do so gm said here's the deal

You hit a certain number of buttons pushed. We're going to pay you $50 retro back to the first per button pushed. So everybody's pushing the button. No one did. What? They didn't do it. They didn't do it. The campaign failed miserably.

really but here's the thing so then dealers were like okay fuck this dude i'll push a button for five bucks right now well that is the fucking button right right right it takes 20 seconds but they didn't do it that's across the country so what was it okay i'm dying to hear how this science experiment right why this failed so dealers were like okay fuckers you don't push the button we're gonna pull 50 out of your check or it might in some cases it might have been more

So now you go from, do you run further from pain, faster from pain than you towards pleasure? Correct. Okay. So now everybody's pushing buttons. Now everybody's pushing the buttons. So I learned this, that like I, we did, we did a thing called marketing bingo. Um, and, uh, I thought it was brilliant.

It was like, do a collab with a local business, you know, run a live once a week. And like they literally all, they all had bingo cards and it was like all things that will bring your business up. And if you hit an X cause you don't have the X in our name, then you got 1500 bucks.

I like it. If you clear the board, you get 2,500 bucks. A coverall, as we call it. A coverall. As we call it in bingo here in Las Vegas. Okay. The coverall. The coverall. If you do a coverall. I hate bingo. My wife loves it. I hate it. I'm not a bingo guy either. I hate it. But it was cool. It was a cool concept. One of my marketing guys came up with, and I really liked it. And I was like, man, this is going to slap. These guys are going to, this is stuff they should be doing anyways, and we're going to pay them to do it.

And understand like they paid me to mentor them and I'm paying them just to better their businesses. Yeah. Six people did it out of 200 and 280. Yeah. And it's like, it's like, damn, like, you know, you want it for people so bad. You do like, I want every single one of them to win. This is when I started doing right. I always did one part of this and I just added the second part.

So the first part is when everybody comes to work for me, I always tell them that you're going to get exactly out of me what I put, what you put in. I will match you energy. I will match you investment. The good news is, is all of that winds up on your side of the table. You get all of it, right? So I will match you point for point. And then inevitably you,

Hopefully very soon it happens. Hopefully very quick happens in the relationship. Doesn't happen eight months down the road. It happens in like the first, hopefully a week or two weeks where they, they, they fall on something. They don't get something done. Case in point. I had somebody that just came to work for me. I asked them to watch two hours of my training videos in the training portal, two hours. I asked him to do this on a Tuesday on Friday. I came in and I said, Hey, have you watched everything? Cause I said, you need to watch this cause then we'll be speaking the same language and now I can help you.

And this person said, well, I got like two more left. Two hours from Tuesday to Friday. So I sat the person down and I said, listen, this is the second part of the equation. I said, listen, I said, I put such a high value on my time. My time is incredibly valuable to me. Not because I make so much money with my time, just because I've only got my kids till they're 18, right? I've got two more years of my son. I got four more years of my daughter and then they're off to college and I won't spend more time with them. So I'm very cognizant of every second I spend.

So if you, if you're not, if you're not going to be the respect of investing your time, when I'm investing my time equally, this is not going to work. And immediately it is this whole, it's, you could just see them just fall into the floor.

And it wasn't, I didn't call him a name. I didn't call him lazy. I didn't tell him they should have got it done. I didn't tell him anything. It was just, this is where I value my time. I'm giving it to you. And if you're not going to match me, I'm not going to give it to you. And dude, instantaneous turnaround. Really? Oh, dude. Instantaneous. But was that a, how long ago was this?

Two weeks ago. Two weeks ago. So I'm always curious as to like after. No, because again, because again, I think it's, I think it just sets the price. I think if everybody you're involved with in a mentor, mentee, coach, coachees, if you just literally come out of the box, man, stressing how valuable your time is to you because it's so finite, right? Right. Shit. We could be done. We could walk out of this podcast and

get in my fucking Sprinter van and get, you know, carbon monoxide poisoning. I don't know what Mercedes does. Right. I don't know. God, I hope not. Who knows? But yeah, but who knows what happens? But the point being is, you know, it just, it's finite. And I think if you just, if you, if you break it down to people that just how much you value your time. Yeah. It's not about dollars. It's not about, I told you to do something. You didn't do it. It's just about,

man, if we're not really going to do this together, then I need to spend my time better. Right. You know what I mean? Yeah. I love that. I love that.

But dude, this has been a great chat, man. It's awesome. If people want to find you, how do they find you? Cause there's a shit ton of other people have found you. Well, yeah, yeah. So just add Justin Wenzel on Instagram is fine. JWXinc.com works as well. And then JustinWenzelfitness.com if you want to get lined up as a client of mine. Yeah. As a client on a...

A coaching. Yeah. If you want to get fit, you go that route. Yeah. Fit, sober in the best mental health of your life. And yeah, the number, obviously YouTube, all of it. You can find me anywhere. It's always just Justin Wenzel. I love that. Well, brother, I appreciate you stopping out on Saturday, coming to see us, which was lovely. And man, if you're listening to this thing again, you got to stop drifting along with those currents of life, man. You got to start swimming against currents.

Because nobody's coming to help you. Nobody's coming to save you. I love that. Except for maybe Justin. All right. We'll see you next week.

What's up, everybody? Thanks for joining us for another episode of Escaping the Drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it, or at least as much as I did out of it. Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over to escapingthedrift.com. You can join our mailing list. But do me a favor, if you wouldn't mind, throw up that five-star review, give us a share, do something, man. We're here for you. Hopefully, you'll be here for us. But anyway, in the meantime, we will see you at the next episode.