Module 19: Sales Closing with Stephen Miller

Okay, welcome back guys. I've got Stephen Miller here in the studio audience. Stephen Miller is passionate about helping entrepreneurs, business owners, families, associations and organizations and youth live up to better and more productive lives. He teaches key principles and skills that can help you achieve more. Stephen is an internationally known expert and speaker and coach.

He's also a super entertainer. You guys are going to love what he does. As an international speaker, Stephen has shared the stage with Dan Clark, Les Brown, Craig Biswald, Marshall Silver and other world authorities in the field of personal and professional development. He's been featured in Real Estate Solutions Magazine and is a key contributor to the book The Straight Path to Real Estate Wealth. Stephen hosts the international weekly Strongbook Radio Show where he has interviewed some of the world's greatest and most renowned thought leaders.

Stephen's proven ability to creatively help people achieve greater results both personally and financially has revolutionized the business and the lives of professionals and families worldwide. And we're going to bring him up now. Stephen's going to tell a little bit of his story. He's one of the founders of Strongbook. His company has done more than a half a billion dollars in sales and he is amazing.

So I want everyone to give him a huge round of applause and welcome him out. Thank you. I appreciate that. You're awesome. Appreciate that.

Thank you so much. Absolutely. Thank you. Wow. Thank you.

Let's give him a stage, guys. Wow, what a warm welcome. Thank you so much for being here in the audience and all of you that are joining us online. I'm so glad to be able to share some things with you today. And my main focus today is going to be on sales.

But I want you to tune in for a second because William shared some things. He's been sharing a lot of amazing information and we're going to be continually going back to some of those concepts of how to create the life that we want because the reality is when we're talking about sales, we're talking about growing a business. We're talking about people, really, right? That's what it comes down to. We're talking about how we react with ourselves and how we react with other people.

So I want to start off with a story. I want you to get a little bit of an insight into my life. First of all, I grew up in a very poor family. Okay. Now, poor is relative for everybody.

I understand that. Poor for one person means something completely different than somebody else. But for me, let me give you my definition. Poor for me meant that we didn't go on field trips like the field trip that would cost four or five dollars. We would typically stay home because we didn't have the four or five dollars.

Poor for me meant that we were on welfare, either church or state welfare for the majority of my childhood. And when I was about seven years old, seven or eight years old, my father took me for the first time to learn the family trade. Any ideas as what the family trade was? Dumpster diving. All right.

That was how we got many meals, many, many meals got put on our table from wonderful grocery store dumpsters. Okay. Now, I don't want to paint a false picture. It wasn't all misery and poverty and horribleness. I actually I was born into a family that had a lot of love and I know that everyone doesn't experience that.

So I kept myself extremely, extremely just fortunate because of that. But I was growing. I was raising a strange dichotomy because I watched my parents and I watched them struggle day after day after day just to put food on the table. Yet they would tell me every single day. My mom almost every day would tell me, Stephen, you can do anything that you want.

You can become anything that you want to become. And as a child who was very innocent and trusting, I believed my parents. But I was raised, like I said, with a strange dichotomy where I was watching and observing everything that they were doing. Yet they were telling me that I could do the things that they were never able to do. So from a very young age, I decided that I wanted to seek out, I wanted to get out and I wanted to, I wanted to figure it out.

I wanted to figure out how I could actually create those type of results. And it started for me when I was about nine years old. Now, I want you to just chime in here for a second. Just raise your hand if you've ever had a massive dream that you've wanted to accomplish. Raise your hand.

Absolutely. I think we all do. Right. We have these massive dreams as children. For me, that massive dream was building a tree house.

Now, how many of you, anybody in the room ever want to build a tree house or built one? Okay. A bunch of you. That's fantastic. So this, to me, was my kind of sanctuary.

Like I wanted, I had my home, it was a great home, but financially speaking, we didn't have what we wanted. So I wanted my own space. Right. I had always shared a room with my brother my whole life, and I just, I wanted something that I could call my own. And so I wanted to build this tree house.

Now in my home, where I grew up in St. Petersburg, Florida, we had this old oak tree right in my backyard. Now this oak tree was massive. Okay. The lowest branches were so high that a grown adult couldn't reach them, couldn't even jump to touch them.

Right. This is a big old oak tree. And as a nine year old boy, I would circle this oak tree and I would go around it over and over and over again. And I would look up into these amazing big old branches and I would imagine my tree house. I'd envision it.

I'd think about, okay, well, I want to do a level here and I want to do a level there. These branches will support this level. You know what I mean? I was building this mansion of a tree house in my mind. Okay.

And I'm building it. I'm going around. I'm building it all in my mind. First, I'm going forward with my vision and I get to the point where I had thought about it enough. I knew exactly what I wanted and the thought came to me, you know, why don't you share this with some people that you care about?

So I said, okay, Steven, I'm going to, I'm going to go do this. I'm talking to myself now. Right. All right, Steven. I'm going to go share this with my siblings.

So I go to my siblings. I had three brothers and a sister and I said, I'm going to go share my dream, my vision, my goal with my siblings. Now, for those of you that have had a dream, have any of you ever shared it and not gotten the response that you wanted? Raise your hand. Yeah, absolutely.

That happens all the time. Why? Because people are living in their own experience, right? Their experience is not your experience. Their perspective is not your perspective.

So even though it's exciting and wonderful for you, they sometimes bring other energy to the table. So I went to my siblings. I said, guys, I want to build a tree house and I said, Steven, what do you think they said? You're crazy. Yeah.

They weren't that nice. They said, Steven, you're stupid. Can't build a tree house. We don't have money for that. You can't go to mommy and daddy, which is what I called him.

Okay. You can't go to mommy and daddy and ask them for what you need for it. So just, you know, throw that idea out. Just forget about it. Right.

That's kind of like what they said to me. Well, I remember the moment that they said, Steven, you can't as a young kid and probably because of my parents and then telling me every day that I could do anything I wanted to. I had this fire lit inside of me and I wanted to show them and I wanted to show myself that I could do whatever I wanted to do. I was told this and I believed it. I believed it every single day that my mom told me.

So they said, Steven, you're stupid. You can't do it. And I, I said, watch, I didn't say it. I said it to myself. You watch.

Right. I'm going to, I'm going to make this happen. I went back outside. I circled that tree and I started thinking to myself, what can I do? Right.

Just imagine this nine year old boy circling this tree. What can I do? What can I do? How can I create this tree house? Because I lived in this world of scarcity where they told me, Steven, you can't, you can't, you can't.

So I went to my parents and said, Hey, mom and dad or mommy and daddy, I'd like to do something because we didn't have money. What would they say? No, we can't. And so here I was circling this tree thinking of what I could do. Well, it's interesting for me that sometimes our greatest trials, those things that we feel sometimes hold us back, provide us with the resources that we need.

The thought popped into my mind, Steven, you're no stranger to dumpster diving. Why don't you just go out and find the materials? And I was like, wow, that's, that's kind of a novel idea. Absolutely. You know, I'm, I'm this nine year old kid.

I've done it before. We lived on these old blocks that had these dirt alleyways. Okay. And all these dirt alleyways, we had these massive dumpsters that would facilitate four or five homes. Right.

I mean, these big old dumpsters. So I, as this nine year old boy, start going up and down these dirt alleyways, searching for materials. I found an old, an old exterior wood door, which is like a solid wood door. Perfect for a tree house. I found pallets.

I found two by fours that people had discarded from old construction materials. I even found an old water bed. Okay. Now raise your hand if you ever had an old water bed, water bed. Okay.

I had a few of you. All right. Some people don't want to admit it. Right. No water bed.

Nope. Didn't have that one. So I found this old water bed. And if you remember these old water beds, the base of it was primarily particle board, right? So there was a lot of water boards sometimes in it.

So that's not very good for tree houses, but the upper part were like pressure treated two by eights, right? Perfect tree house wood. And then we also had the plywood that would, you know, you'd set the bags on. So I, I'm gathering all this wood, I'm dragging it home and I'm piling it all next to this old dilapidated garage that we had, this detached garage from our home. The home was about over a hundred years old.

Okay. And so I'm piling all this wood. I get to the point where I felt like I had collected enough and I could go ahead and start my project, my tree house. But the problem was I had no new nails or screws. And so I'm circling my tree, my tree and I'm thinking, what can I do?

How can I do this? And the thought comes to my mind, that old dilapidated garage. Why don't you just search inside, clean it up, see if you can find something at least to get started with. So I said, okay, nine year old boy, I went and grabbed the broom and the dustpan and I want you to just imagine this for a second. Okay.

I want you to imagine my parents. I don't know if this really happened, but I, I imagine it may have, right? Just let him go, sweetheart. Let him, let him clean up the garage. We have no idea what he's doing.

Just let him, let him do it. Right. I'm, I'm with the broom and the dustpan and I'm sleeping up this garage. Now I want you, I want to put some perspective. This, this, this dilapidated garage was, was there were holes in the garage.

There were, the windows were knocked out. So the elements had gotten to it quite a bit. The once cement floor had kind of turned to dirt, right? That's, that's how bad it was. So anyway, I'm sweeping up.

I'm cleaning up. I'm organizing. I'm doing all my thing. And I find a decent little handful of nails and screws that I can use to start my, my project. So I, I get to work.

I cut some steps. First thing, put them up so I can climb up into the tree. I get up there. I start hoisting wood up there, right? And I'm starting to create, I'm starting to make my tree house.

I found this old, it's old garden hose that had some holes in it. I use that as some, as a rope to kind of leverage on some of the bigger pieces of wood. And I'm just, I'm having the time of my life. By the way, you realize that when you love what you do, it's no longer work, correct? Or work looks different.

Work looks like play. Well, for me, this was like the funnest thing I had ever done in my life and I'm building my tree house. So I'm doing, I'm going away, I'm hammering and I'm setting it up and I'm starting to build my different levels like I wanted it just like, you know, and it was just turning out wonderfully. But I got to the point where I, I ran out of nails, okay, ran out of screws and I'm up in my tree house and this one afternoon, and I don't remember everything that I was doing, but I remember I'm up there and it's a sunny day. It's Florida.

It's hot. And my mother comes out the back door and I didn't see her, but all of a sudden she calls my name. She said, Stephen, come on down here. So I quickly go down the tree and I go over to my mother and I, I look at her, I say, well, you know, what's going on? She was kind of acting a little strange and she had her hand behind her back.

She said, well, I've got a, I've got a secret for you. I got, I got a surprise for you, but you can't tell your siblings. Now I don't know if you're like me, but when mom said, don't tell your siblings, I'm, yes. Won't tell my siblings. Absolutely not.

Right? So she takes her arm out from behind her back and she's holding this brown paper bag. She opens up the brown paper bag and I look inside and as I look inside, I see a brand new box of 16 penny nails. Now for the average person, that wouldn't make a lick of difference. It wouldn't be a big deal.

But for me, that brand new box of 16 penny nails was the realization of my dream. That box of nails meant the world to me. I threw my arms around my mom's neck, gave her a big hug and kiss, grabbed the nails, shot up the tree and continued my project until it was done. I tell you the story for a couple of things because I learned some massive, massive lessons from this. Number one, and if you've got something to write down, you're going to want to pull it out right now and you're going to want to write this down.

Number one, I learned that it was not my circumstances, but my own limiting beliefs that were holding me back. Let me tell you what I mean by that. My goal was to build a tree house. I knew for a fact in my mind that I could not go to my parents to ask them for help. I knew it.

I knew my, I knew my circumstances. All of my past experiences had told me, Steven, you can't go to your parents because they don't have the money to do anything to help you. That was a belief of mine that was deep rooted because of, again, past experiences. I'm going to get back into this in a minute. But the reality was what?

In the end, who came to my rescue? Who provided me with a resource that I needed to finish my job? My mother. In the end, it was my mother and her love and her observation because honestly, I never went to her. I never went to my father.

I never went to anyone after I decided, after I went to my siblings initially, I never went to anyone else and told him anything or asked for anything. I just got to work, right? So I learned that I got in my own way. Could I have gone to my mother in the very beginning and saved myself some hassle and heartache? Most likely, I could have, but I chose not to.

That limiting belief kept me in a space for a while. Number two, I also learned that I and anybody can do whatever they set their heart to. Not set their mind to, whatever they set their heart to. Your why has to be large enough to drive you to do things that you would otherwise never do. It has to evoke this emotion.

William talked about it already. These emotions that bring power to the thing that you're trying to accomplish. Because the reality is, when you're doing something that's different, you have to do different things. You have to show up differently. There's one of my favorite quotes, and I can't remember where it came from, so excuse me.

But one of my favorite quotes is, different isn't always better. But better will always be different. Always. So if I'm looking to do something better, I know that it's going to be filled with different things that I've never done before that are going to push my buttons. But if I will persist in thought and do what Napoleon Hill says, which is go forward with that burning desire, right?

Every day, what did I do? I circled that tree, and I thought about it, and thought about it, and thought about what are the possibilities? What can I do? Not what can't I do, not what's holding me back. What can I do to positively affect the outcome of my goal?

That's where my focus was. And because of that focus and moving forward and persisting, even when the world seemed to be stacked against me, in my financial situation and where I was, I should have had no reason to move forward and build a cool treehouse. But I did. Because I got resourceful. Because I used my past experiences for positivity rather than for negativity.

I'm going to go into this for just a quick second because I feel this is super powerful. The other night, this is probably a few months ago, I'm sitting in bed, I'm talking with my wife, we're doing some different things, and I was contemplating this idea of creating the life that we want. And this image comes to mind, and I would like to share it with you. Are you okay with that? Okay.

So this is the image that came to my mind. A plus sign, sort of. Okay, back here we've got our past, right? We all have past experiences. Hopefully, we're all going to have some future, right?

Unfortunately, I don't have a crystal ball, so I can't tell you. Right? But we've got past experiences, we've got this future here, of course, we are living in the present. And if you look at life as we experience it, we have a slew of different experiences. Some of those we may label positive.

I'm going to put here past success, or excuse me, yes, past success. Some of those we may label bad or not as great as we had hoped would have helped. I'm going to just put that here as past failure. But the problem with this is, we typically will look at these things, and we will put them in our own light. Instead of looking at them actually as how they were, we'll cast a light on them.

Let me show you what I mean for just a second. Everyone stand up. If you're in your own home, please stand up right now. I want you to spread your arms out, as wide as you can, okay? I know we're a little cramped in here, but spread your arms out, and what I want you to do on my command, is I want you to pull forward and smack your hands together, okay?

So get into a place where you can smack them. But I want it to sting, okay? I want it to sting. So if you're at home, get into a clear space, don't hit anybody, right? And on three.

One, two, three. Okay, did that sting? Can you feel it? Do it one more time. One more time.

Ready? One, two, three. Oh, that felt good. Okay, go ahead and sit down. Thank you.

And if you're at home, go ahead and sit back down, jump back on the treadmill, whatever you're doing as you're watching this. All right. Now you feel what just happened there. I can still, can you still feel a little bit? Yeah, it's still tingling.

After a couple minutes, that tingling sensation will go away, okay? So here's what the majority of us will do. And this happens so often in sales, it's ridiculous. I promise you, I will tie it in. We have an experience.

And then I go around and I start doing things. What's your name? Josh Bayless. Josh Bayless. That's right.

Doesn't feel good to Bayless, right? I love it. So we do something where I come up to you, Josh, and I say, I just, Josh, man, I just had this experience. About 45 seconds ago, I smacked my hands together, and man, it hurt so bad. Like really bad.

You ever felt that before? It hurts, doesn't it? Man, yeah, it hurts. Wow. Like it's enough to almost ruin your day, isn't it?

Yeah, I mean, it hurts. Hey, what's your name? Brandon. Brandon. Great to meet you, Brandon.

Like a minute and 30 seconds ago, I smacked my hands together, like really hard, and it hurt so bad. Like it hurt real bad. You ever felt that before? Yeah. Doesn't it hurt?

Yeah. Man, yeah, it does. Really bad. Hey, what's your name? Kimberly Skinner.

Kimberly. Hi, I'm Steven. Great to meet you. Great to meet you too. My day's just not going very well.

You want to know why? Yeah. About two and a half minutes ago, I smacked my hands together, and it really hurt. I'm sorry. Yeah.

Thank you. Oh, man. Do you get what I'm saying though? We do this. We experience life.

We experience it once, and that's called pain. By the way, when I slap my hands together, that's called pain. What was I just choosing into? I was living in the pain over and over and over again. That's called suffering.

Okay? Suffering is something that you choose, by the way. It is a choice. Don't be... don't be duped into this idea that it's not a choice because it is.

I experienced when I clap my hands together I experienced that pain once actually I experienced it twice okay because I chose to do it again okay but I experienced it because of choice both times okay in that circumstance sometimes pain though comes where we don't choose the pain necessarily but we do choose is to experience it over and over and over again so what we'll do is we'll take these past failures okay let's just I'm gonna represent these by some dots over here and we'll take these past failures and because of that action of going out and sharing it and blowing it up they'll start to look like this it's not really what they were but man we're living in it so much and so often that it seems like it was way bigger than it was in the first place way bigger and we'll start to tell the story like it was bigger right instead of just saying how I smacked my hands I'll be like you know what have you ever had your hands fall off well that's what happened to me five minutes ago like my hands fell off and I don't know why they're here because what they were off right and we start to tell those stories and those stories begin to outweigh these past successes that we've had and that's all we can begin to think about well what happens to us what happens when that's our situation what happens when our past success our past failures are driving how we're acting because we've blown them up so much we've blown them up to be this these huge things that is that we choose into acting a certain way so I want to talk about this for a second because again past success past failure of course we've got this future here we've got future failure and we've got future success now the reality this is just Steven 101 my truth is that the only power that we have is in the present moment correct this is the only power that we have this is what we call choice this is the only power that means the past has no power can your past make a decision for you right now no it can't your past by the way it's gone right it's not there anymore it's already happened can your past make a decision for you right now no it can't your past has no power it's already done it's already gone which means that your past experiences can never determine your future results because the only power that we have is in the right now and I want to talk about this again I want to move into this here for just a second I want you to think about in the moment what are some emotions that you can choose into on the negative side of life let's just let's just talk about it what are some negative emotions what's that doubt fear anger worry yes thank you depression regret thank you I'll stop there we could go on forever obviously we've all experienced a lot of a mega negative emotions at times on the flip side what are some of the positive emotions that we could experience peace thank you hope gratitude love connection I'm gonna put faith in here as well so that's one of my favorites faith I want to talk I'm actually gonna single out two here faith and fear now you know why I wanted to add it all right faith and fear what's your how would you define fear just think for a second we've all probably heard things we've heard false evidences appearing real you know fear is or things that we you know don't want to happen to us or whatever the case is I'm sitting in bed I'm thinking about this is all it's all kind of just came to me and I got a definition fear that really works well for me and it goes actually right along with faith because faith to me is doing things that I want to get me into a direction that I want to go right if I want to if I want to accomplish a goal and it's out here then I will put faith now I've never I've never achieved it before right again this is something better somebody doing different things I've never done before right so if I'm going this way I put faith that I can get there I have to put faith that it's possible and likewise if I've got something down here that I don't want to accomplish and you know what as a matter of fact we're gonna color code this just a little bit put that in red we don't like red do we just get I mean stop no right fear is putting faith in what I don't want that's a new concept fear is putting faith in the things that I don't want what happens every time you step up to the plate and you're out you know you're on a sales call and you pick up the phone you're ready to call and all of a sudden you get this feeling of I don't know what to say or this person could say no or what if I totally messed this up or what if it's not gonna work or whatever that fear may look like what is that fear what are we actually doing in that moment that fear comes up and that we entertain it what are we doing we're putting our faith into something that we don't want and here's my belief my belief is that you are all amazing unique wonderful individuals with experiences and talents and abilities that are unique to you've all experienced different things but I also believe that each one of us are powerful creators and either we will put our faith in the things that we want and get them or we will put our faith in the things that we don't want and get them but either way it's completely up to us it's completely up to you that's the power of this for me because as I as I was contemplating this and thinking about I thought you know what it is so true the reason why I was able to build my tree house isn't because I had any false evidence on of really one way or the other honestly I had all the false evidence actually of negativity or bad things that I couldn't do that was my false evidence and had I acted according to my false evidence that I would have gone forward and what I would have I would have failed because I would have made my choices based on that but the reality is we learned in this series that we can just do what change our state that as we change our state we change how we act we change what we do we change how we feel depression anxiety fear I hate those words I even hate I shouldn't say it I hate that doesn't work right all these all these negative emotions are choices let me ask you a question have you ever experienced someone that's been in depression or maybe experienced it yourself right raise your hands if you have okay we have all the either experienced or felt someone that has this is what happens when someone's depressed my father for the last 10 years of his life he passed away back in 2007 for the last 10 years of his life he was in a massive depression and I watched my father literally change states before then he was this bubbly man that would was all over the place I mean he was amazing he was he played Santa Claus he was an actor he sang I mean this guy he was just awesome love my father and he would give everyone anything that they asked for anytime he was always serving people and just always moving right moving doing things energy well when he got depressed I watched my father go from that to literally to this he stopped he stopped moving his breathing got more shallow his speaking got more sedated his energy his state changed how easy is it to grow a business when your state is like this it's not but here's the neat part about it in our darkest moments in the times where we feel like we are all alone that nobody else understands what we're doing or what we're going through or where we've been in the moments where we feel like the world is literally combining and conspiring against us the reality and the truth is that we have been given a power that's the greatest more it's more powerful than just about everything out there it's more powerful than stepping into your life and picking you up and moving you out of it yours it's the power of choice this power is real and you all have it's a gift which means in the moment where you're feeling down you're feeling depressed or you're you've had an experience you picked up the phone and someone said no what do you do you change your state you don't sit down you get up you're like yes this person just said no that's awesome how would you show up differently if every time you got to know you showed up that way if every time someone said i'm not interested sorry you showed up and said yeah thank you thank you for saying no because no is awesome and by the way does no really mean no not usually we'll talk about that sometimes it does okay guys i promise my wife's like huh so in order for us to have the true success that we want to create in life we get to choose to show up better in every moment there's never a moment where we come into a situation where something happens where we ever get to determine we don't have the luxury if we want to be the very best that we are if we want to influence the world if we want to be the best that we are we have to be the very best that we are if we want to influence the world if we want to use our unique set of talents gifts and abilities in the very best way if we want to inspire other people then we get to show up in our greatest power at every moment possible and what that looks like is showing up and making a choice it means showing up and making the choice that we are going to do something better in every moment that means that no matter what happens here no matter what happens no matter what failure we might be looking at or experiencing or seeing that we observe it and then we make a choice okay based on what i just did in the past or based on my track record of the past what am i going to do am i going to choose doubt fear depression worry or am i going to choose peace happiness hope love right what am i going to choose and if i will choose the peace the happiness the hope the love the faith then i will automatically think the thoughts my state will change right i will choose into that to changing my state and you'll find that all of a sudden you'll be doing those things that will bring about the success period and that's the success we want so i'm gonna i'm gonna race this year i want to switch gears just a little bit and i want to get into actually before i switch gears there's one more thing that i want to touch on and along this whole conversation of failure i've got seven children and here let me just get this a race and then i'll we'll jump into this yeah everyone's like what did i did i hear that right oh there's some energy up in here all right so i've got seven children and my oldest is 12 my youngest is two before it's spoken or thought yes i know how it happens it's it's been such a blast though raising seven children they're amazing and what i love about children is they observe everything they're sponges they're soaking it all up constantly soaking it up and so i'm my youngest son his name is abram and my youngest son's two-year-old was two years old i remember when he was first born i would watch and observe what he would do i would watch his observation okay it's so neat because what babies do when they're first born is they do something that we stop doing as adults which is they're constantly just bringing in and trying to focus on and imitate what they see around them right they're trying i mean they're constantly in the state of learning and my son when he was you know just born he would lay on his back let me let me do you mind if i show you what we i know we've got a camera up here too so i said if you want to watch you can but that's okay you won't need it so he'd lay up he'd lay on his back and he'd watch me and my wife and the other six kids and he would try to do what we did right so here's what it would look like by the way have you ever tried to imitate a baby for like an hour straight it's almost impossible okay anyway so he would try to imitate us he would try to do exactly what he saw us doing and in the process of him imitating or trying to imitate right he would see us walk so he would want to he would see us talk so he would try to what was he actually doing in the process what was he actually doing let me let me give you he was failing i was like babies can't fail but think about it for a second right as the baby is trying to imitate he's trying to walk and he's trying to talk all he's doing really is flailing his arms and legs right and speaking weird gibberish he's not really talking in sentences or words and he's he wasn't walking yet so he was failing you failure no right we would never say that don't ever say that to your child okay we would never say that because it's ludicrous when we look at it we think about it no what's the baby actually doing well the baby's learning babies know from a from a young from birth that they get to fail forward they know that their failure is just a step for them to achieve the greatness that they are going to achieve they know that they're going to walk why because they can see all around them everyone that is they know that they're going to talk eventually in full sentences because everyone else around them is and so they go about their day doing it over and over and over now i want to ask you a question how many or how not how many how long does it take the average child before he or she can walk and or talk it's 12 months right 12 18 months maybe a little bit longer just give or take a year to two years so what you're saying is that a baby a child will give themselves a year to two years to figure something out right to figure out the walking to figure out the talking so what happened what happened to us when did we all of a sudden decide that if we tried it once and we failed out all of a sudden we're just failures oh i suck right i just tried this once and it didn't go perfectly oh i should quit right there's a type here there's a lesson to learn just because i'm an adult just because i became a father just because i had seven children doesn't mean i'm an amazing father i still get to learn how to become a good father just because i'm starting a business and i've made the investment right doesn't mean that i'm going to have a successful thriving business just because i go out there and i buy a franchise i could go out and buy a mcdonald's right now and there's still no guarantee of success i have to be willing to do what it takes i have to be willing to learn from each failure i have to be able to learn from every experience and babies right they start off on their back failing they roll over still not walking failing right they get up on their knees and they start crawling nope they're they're not walking yet they're failing all right but along the way they're not they're not saying to themselves oh i shouldn't have tried that i shouldn't have gotten up because i obviously fell on my face like i shouldn't have done that was dumb i'm stupid they don't say that they don't say you know oh i just tried to speak that word and it came out horribly and i have a you know i can't say my r's yet i should probably stop trying no they continue on and why do they continue on they don't have this negative self-talk right they've got instead this cheerleading group of individuals around them and my baby you know when he would when he was laying on the ground there he twitches pinky finger and we'd all be like did you see that honey he twists his pinky finger you know and it's like the most amazing thing in the world so exciting and so we would give we give these children that encouragement well again this is an example of how we get to act and how we should act for ourselves we're entering the business when we're going forward and we're in the sales process and we're trying to help as many people as we possibly can there are going to be people that say no this isn't for me i don't like this and we get to instead of get down on ourselves and say oh they must hate me or they must hate my product or they must hate life or whatever we get to say no this is awesome wow thank you for showing up for yourself i appreciate that and by the way there's a couple things i probably didn't tell you that you should really know before i leave because i don't know anyone else that's saying no so i don't know why you're saying no because we should check on that right so failure or learning how to fail forward treating failure as a learning experience only seeing it as a positive because in this little diagram that i drew up earlier even those past failures can be turned into past successes you can actually utilize those past failures in growing your business for me my past failure was that i dumpster dove as a kid all right that's not something i was proud of but it's crazy how much that has taught me now that i'm older what i've been able to do and accomplish because of the lessons learned so i want to get into some things as you're out there and you're talking to people and you're selling whatever it is that you're selling right the expertise of you or whatever other products i want to talk about how we deal with the rejection what sales really is. I want to deal with some of those different things. So let's start with sales here. And what is a sale? What's a sale?

I want you to think about this for a second, because this is really crucial. Most of us have some sort of limiting belief around sales, which is why we're not experts at it yet. And when I say we, I mean you, because I'm an expert at sales. No, I'm just kidding. Right?

So what is that limiting belief surrounding sales? Have you been taught your whole life that sales are bad? Dirty, rotten salesmen, those sleazy used car salesmen, women, right? Whatever. You ever heard those things?

These are deep rooted beliefs that we put in our subconscious. William talked about the subconscious mind, how to take those out of our subconscious and change them. If you think that sales are dirty and wrong, and all people that are in them are sleazy and obnoxious, are you ever going to want to be good at sales? No. You're not going to want to be good at sales.

You'll never want to be good at sales. So you'll spend all of your time, even if you enter a sales job, self-sabotaging them. Because you want to prove to yourself, you want to create some of those negative evidences to give yourself permission to choose out. So when you're in that situation and someone says no, you'll say, oh, this obviously isn't good, or I don't want to be a sales guy because I don't want to be sleazy and this, that, and the other. I don't want to have to lie to people to sell.

By the way, do you have to lie to people to sell? Absolutely not. So I want to talk about what sales really is. Sales, and you want to write this one down. Sales is learning how to listen longer.

That's my definition of sales. The best salesmen and women that I know are people that truly care about the person that they're talking to. Truly care. And how do we show that we care? Caring is something that you can do by just jumping into your pitch.

You don't just jump in, hey, my name is Steven Michael Miller and I've got this amazing thing. We've done this, all this, blah, blah, blah. You don't jump into it. Sales means that you first find out, even if there is a need, you listen longer. God gave us two ears and a mouth.

You've heard that, right? Use them proportionately. Listen longer. How do you listen longer? So listen longer.

That's what sales is. So if that's what sales is, then how do we do that? The best way that I've found to listen longer is to ask questions. Oh, man, asking the right questions. This is so imperative when you want to build your business.

And asking the right questions with really the intent and desire to know. Now, there's some things that we've probably all learned. If you're not brand new at sales, there's some things that we learned. I mean, this is the Max Performance Master Course. So hopefully you've got a little bit of foundation.

But if you want it just in case, in sales, there's this thing called form. Do we all know what form is? Family, occupation, recreation, and message. Family, occupation, recreation, and message. In other words, before you get into your sales pitch, you want to ask questions about things that are important to that person.

You want to get to know this person as quickly as you possibly can or as long as you possibly want to. You want to just get to know them. Ask them about their family. I could go on four days about my seven children. I love them, each one of them.

They're amazing, and they're different, and they all love different things, and they act differently, and I have to punish them differently. I could talk about all the different things about my children. And if you asked about specifics, I would just go, and go, and go, and go until I was whatever, until it was midnight, and that next 17 hours that you're all here listening to me, just kidding. Ask them about their family. When you ever get stuck, by the way, this is one thing you want to write down.

If you ever get stuck and you don't know what to ask anymore, just say this. Tell me more about that. Memorize that one phrase. Tell me more about that, whatever it is. And all of a sudden, the conversation that could have been awkward is going to be the most amazing conversation you've ever had because you're not surface.

Guys, sales is not about being surface because I can never sell you something that you don't want. And I only want to sell you things that you want. I just need to figure out and find out why you want it. I need to get down into that why. I need to figure that out.

It doesn't happen by me just giving you the surface questions. Oh, how many kids you have? Oh, great. Oh, where do you live? Oh, great.

No. What is the one thing that scares you most about raising your children? That's a question that dives deep. What do you hate or what do you love about what you do? Not what do you do.

I mean, you could ask that, too, right? You could start there, maybe. What do you do for work? Or what do you like to do for recreation? What do you do when you're out there?

You can ask those questions. But then one of the biggest things here with asking questions is diving deep. Don't stay surface. It is crazy. We live in a world of surface.

Everyone is just doing what they've been taught, what they've been told. There's this kind of social norm that, oh, you don't ask that question, right? I spent a couple of years in Germany back in 98 to 2000. And while I was there, I got to know some people really well, made a lot of great friends. I left this area for a while and then came back.

And after leaving for, I think it was a year and a half, a year and a half, I left this area for a while and then came back. And after leaving for, I think it was probably six to eight months, and when I came back, I had gained like 40 pounds. German food is really good. So I had gained 40 pounds. I get back, and one of my friends comes up to me and says, Stephen, you sure are fat.

Now, in America, I'd start crying. You know, I'd go into my little hole, you know, recluse. But it was actually kind of refreshing because Germans were just to the point and straightforward. It wasn't to cut me down. That wasn't a cut.

That wasn't an insult. They were just making an observation. Can we be that direct or something close to it, right? Maybe don't go around calling people fat necessarily, right? Unless you're selling weight loss stuff.

I'm just kidding. But can we be direct? Can we actually get to the heart of the matter? Ask them questions. What is hurting right now in your family?

Like, what's the pain point for you? What's the one thing that you could change if you could? What are you doing right now to go about doing that? At work, do you feel listened to? Do you love what you're doing?

Do you feel listened to? Do you love who you work with? Do you dislike your situation? Would you like to step up into more of a leadership position? Right, whatever those questions are, dive deep with those questions.

The deeper you get, the more you're going to connect with that person. And then when you reach out to them, you say, you know what? What we talked about earlier, where you said that you were struggling with this, that, and the other, something came to my mind that I feel could help you. And it's this, that, and the other. And I'm involved with whatever, and I'm selling this, and this is amazing, and this is something that you need to try.

Because I connected with that individual, because I went deep, instead of staying surface, all of a sudden, they realized the true intention of what I'm doing here. I'm not just trying to ram a product down someone's throat. That's never going to work. I want to make sure they understand that I truly care about and love them. And in that space, get to invite them to take action, better action, which will always be different for them.

A friend of mine once said, if you've been doing the wrong things for the last 40 years, sometimes doing the right things can feel wrong. And in sales, you're often dealing with people that don't even know that they've got that problem yet, until all of a sudden, you've uncovered it. You find that gap, because you've gone deep, and now you can fill that gap with something amazing that will step into their lives and truly change their life. So sales. Part of sales is overcoming objections.

And this is something that I've really grown to love, because I believe that all objections, again, are deep-rooted and formed out of the same thing. Even when we talk about this conversation of limiting beliefs that William was talking about in one of the other modules, we talk about these core limiting beliefs. And some of the core limiting beliefs, when we go deep into the roots, are things like, I'm not worthy. I don't deserve it. I'm not loved.

These are some of the root core beliefs from thousands of other more surface-limiting beliefs. Well, the same is true with objections. So what are some of the common objections that you face? What do people say? Some of the ones that I can think of are, I have no time.

I have no money. Thank you. Not interested. That's a funny one. Oh, good.

No help. And I think I missed one. What did you say? No urgency. OK.

So I'm just going to leave it there for a minute. I think these are kind of some of the basics. When you look at objections, what are people really saying when they're objecting? First of all, the funniest thing to me is, most of the time in my experience, the objection comes up before you've actually ever even given your pitch. It's kind of crazy, right?

You'll go up to a friend, or you'll go up to a prospect, or you'll be cold contacting, whatever it is. And you'll say, hey. They'll say, oh, I'm not interested. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Huh?

You're not interested? You're not interested in what? I'm sorry, but I haven't even said anything yet. I said, hey. I was going to give you a million dollars.

Oh, you're not interested. Never mind. I'll put it in the back of my pocket. Right? Not interested.

People say, I'm not interested all the time. We are, again, taught in our society to say certain things. These are just placeholders. These don't really mean anything, for the most part. When someone says, I don't have time, I don't have money, I'm not interested, no help, no urgency, what they're really saying is, I don't know that you care about me yet.

I don't understand that you really care about me yet. So because of that, I'm going to throw up a barrier. And the only way to get through this barrier is going to be for you to dig deep, OK? You can't blast through it, OK? It goes on forever and forever, OK?

You've got to dig deep. That's the only way for you to get past this barrier. So when that happens, and someone says, I don't have time, or I don't have money, or interest, or whatever, whatever their objection is, I ask more questions. Remember, two ears, one mouth? I ask more questions so I can listen longer.

When someone says, I don't have, I'm not interested, I truly ask them, would you mind telling me, not to offend you or anything, but would you mind telling me what you're not interested in? Like, what part of it are you not interested in? What about it doesn't interest you? I'm trying to change the world right now. I'm doing things to influence and just get out there.

So when you say you're not interested, I am truly interested in what you're not interested in. Can you tell me? Like, ask them for real. Whenever there's an elephant in the room, I love to address it. In our society, again, where we are a bunch of liars, can I just say it?

Hey, Steven, will you come to my party on Friday? Oh, yeah, I'll be there. Nope. You know, oh, I got, sorry, something came up. Yeah, some, hold on, let me check my schedule.

Sweetheart, call me in five minutes. Yeah, all right. Come on, don't lie. It's happened. But we're in a society where we say one thing, we say something service, hoping that will suffice and that will be enough, when in reality, we know that we're not gonna do it, we know that we're gonna do something else.

So we need to cut to it. So when someone objects, when someone says I'm not interested, when there's that elephant in the room, then just address it. If you've been in business for yourself before, and you've gone to your same group of friends and told them about your other past businesses or whatever, and now you're in a new one, and this is different than anything you've ever done, then just address it. Say, hey, I know that I've been involved with 47 other companies in the past, and I know that every single time you buy something from me, and I really appreciate that, by the way. And I know this is probably awkward because I'm coming to you again with something else, but let me tell you that this is different for me, and let me tell you why.

I had this, that, and the other, right? This is again after you've listened first. So dig deep. No time. What can we say about that when someone says, you know what, I'm just so busy, I have no time.

I go to questions. Tell me, how does it feel not to have any time? Can you tell me what that means? Are you busy doing things that you love? Or is your time filled with someone else's agenda?

How does that look for you? Would you like more time? Would you like that to change? Would you like to spend more time with your spouse or your children or your significant other or whatever? What does that look like?

Because usually when they say no time, really that's what it is, it's a plea for, show me please how I can have more time. Because I am so busy running from place to place, not getting the results that I really want. So many people are stuck doing these things that we call active action, which means that they're busy, they're spinning the wheels, it looks like they're doing a lot, which is why they say they have no time, but nothing's taking hold. Nothing's giving them the traction that they want, right? So when someone says I have no time, you say, well, how does that feel?

Are you spending your time doing things you love or not? No money, same thing. I'll tell you a quick story. My father, excuse me, my father. My mother, back in 2007, before my father passed away, she got level four aggressive breast cancer.

And when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, I had just moved out of Florida, I had just moved out to Utah to start a business and to do some things, Strongbrook that we mentioned. And I was in the throes of everything really busy, but when she got cancer, I had this massive pulling that I needed to go back and spend as much time as I possibly could with my mom and my dad and my other siblings. And so we gathered around my mom, spent a ton of time with her. And in those spaces, we created memories, we had discussions that we otherwise never would have. It was just tremendous.

Unbeknownst to us, six months after my mother got cancer, my father passed away from a massive heart attack. Now, I had a choice. I've had lots of choices. But in that moment, I could either look at cancer as something horrible and crappy and look at all these, look at those tragedy that's happening around me, or I could choose to look at it differently, to look at it as something that could potentially be a catapult for so much greater good in my life. I looked at that cancer and I thought to myself, what a huge blessing this cancer has been.

Because had it not been for the cancer, I wouldn't have been able to spend the last six months of my father's life with him and my other siblings and my mother. It was truly amazing. When you're thinking about different things that people are experiencing, when you're getting into the space of really digging deep and diving deep, everyone's got different stories, everyone has different experiences, but most of them are living so surface that when you decide to dig deep and you start to ask some questions, it gets into pause. It gets into pause just for a moment so that they can recognize and realize that this person truly does care about me. This person isn't just trying to get a dollar out of my pocket, this person is listening long enough to learn and then to offer me solutions.

At the end of the day, I can't force anybody to make any decision. They all have their choice just like I do. I can choose to show up in as powerful of a manner as I possibly can, or I can choose to show up really weak for them. I can choose to take circumstances and people saying no and whatever and let it deject me and put me down into a funk where I have to wait two weeks before I'm ready to get up and get that next sales call going. Or I can celebrate in every moment no matter what the moment is.

My challenge for everyone that's here watching this, that's here in the audience as well, is just to move forward, learn to not just overcome objections and not just go about sales and all some of these things that we've talked about, but really at the end of the day, this is all about where am I right now and how can I improve? That's what sales is all about. I hate to say it, it's not about the tools, it's not about the, you know, I could give everyone in this room a shiny red Ferrari and some of you would wrap around a car and some of you would drive it wonderfully and some of you would stick it in a garage and never drive it. So it's not the tool that makes the difference, it's the driver, right? So my challenge for you is decide today, create that intention that you're gonna be better.

That as you go out there and you're building your business, as you're making the sales calls, as you're overcoming objections, that you're going to show up better. You're gonna show up differently for people. You're gonna show up in a way that's going to empower them to make the very best choice for them. Because at the end of the day, again, I can't twist someone's arm, but I can twist my own. I can make myself show up in a way that will be to their greatest and best good.

And when I do, and when I put it all out there on the table, and when I leave nothing behind, they then have a choice. They are more empowered to do something better for themselves than if I show up weak. So show up in power. Thank you, everybody. Thanks for having me.

Appreciate it. Thank you.