Jim is a Master Sales Trainer, an Expert Team Builder and a Launch Expert. With more than 20 years experience in building teams and leading them to success Jim has a solid track record of achieving results!
More than that, Jim is a launch expert! He and his team have led dozens of entrepreneurs to huge success in their launches, driving sales and surpassing goals and expectations! Having shared the stage with Jay Abraham and Les Brown, Jim brings an exceptional level of experience and talent to the world of sales. Jim’s God given talent and nature allow him to inspire his team and partners to achieve their full potential.
Find out more about Jim online at:
www.gaintheedgenow.com
Stefan Aarnio: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show Respect the Grind with Stefan. This the show where we interview people who have achieved mastery and freedom through discipline. We interview entrepreneurs, athletes, authors, artists, real estate investors, anyone who achieved mastery and examine what it took to get there.
Stefan Aarnio: Today on the show I have a friend of mine Jim Padilla, he is well known as a sales master. This guy has a very large sales organization down in the United States. He helps people with launches, he helps gurus, authors, coaches get the maximum amount of money that they’re going to get out of their launch. And he is a big believer in sales unscripted. Jim, thank you for being here. Welcome to the show, Respect the Grind.
Jim Padilla: Right on, man. Thanks to have me here and super glad to be able to be talking. Keeping the conversation going.
Stefan Aarnio: Yeah, exactly. I was on your podcast yesterday. I mean, it’s great to go back and forth to different audiences. Now Jim, we know each other through mutual friend. Who is Jim for the people at home who don’t know you that well. Quick in a nutshell, tell us a little about your story where you got started.
Jim Padilla: For sure. Basically, I’m somebody who stands for people no longer tolerating the nonsense. And it’s all about truth telling and regardless of the outcome and the circumstances, right? And regardless of where you are, you can overcome anything once you just dig deep. There are no excuses and there’s no nonsense. There’s only outcomes and feedback and results. And I’ll give you a quick synopsis the two minute version of my story from my childhood because it’s relevant here.
Jim Padilla: My parents had me as teenagers and they had no clue what they were doing. They were both siblings. Both had six and seven siblings, met each other in an orphanage in the Bronx in the ’60s. And my dad took off immediately and my mom is 16 year old teenage kid trying to raise a kid and that time. She responded with fear, anger and rage. She had no idea what she was doing. Beat the crap out of me on a daily basis. I used to compete with broomsticks, plates over my head, got hit with a Louisville Slugger once.
Stefan Aarnio: Ouch.
Jim Padilla: And, yeah, ouch. And as a little kid, you start thinking it’s your own fault. You’re wondering, what are you doing to get beat? You must be bad. So I started spending all of my time trying to figure out how to manipulate the environment so that my mom would feel safe enough to not want to hurt me. And so, that’s how I spent all my time. How do I control the environment so that it bends towards me? Now, I didn’t realize I was doing this intentionally at six and seven and eight-ten years old. But that’s what was happening.
Jim Padilla: I was in foster care at 13. I was on the streets at 16, and in jail at 19. And the one common thread that was in all of that was the fight for survival. And the same thing. I was always trying to figure out how can I bend the environment towards me instead of away from me. I didn’t want to be at conflict with people. I wanted to figure out how to make sure that I could win the day when I walk in the room. They wanted me there. That was my self defense mechanism so nobody would hurt me.
Jim Padilla: Fast forward 20 years and blessed to be making, you know, millions of dollars teaching people how to impact people around them so that you can lower their defenses so that they will trust you and like you and want to buy from you.
Stefan Aarnio: Wow.
Jim Padilla: You know, it’s now something that shows up in my everyday life. But it certainly wasn’t by design. It’s just been my journey.
Stefan Aarnio: So Jim, you know everybody starts out they get a job somewhere, maybe like a grocery store or like digging ditches, or you know, I read one guy’s book, a really successful guy. He started out shoveling manure. That was his first job. And he took that money and he invested it in a condo building and he actually became a millionaire, which is crazy from shoveling manure. What was your first job? And how did you fall into sales of all things because a lot of people, sales is a dirty word and, you know, I had to fight my family to get in sales. They didn’t want me and sales. So where’d you start? First job and then how’d you get into sales?
Jim Padilla: Yeah. My actual goal in life was to be a shortstop for the New York Yankees and I legitimately had no plan B. I thought that’s what I was going to do, until I realized you actually had to go to school and get grades in order to get into college and go make something happen. So that kind of scrapped that after a while. But what that led me to was not following a career path, just doing the hustle. I did whatever came along that would work. And because of the lack of guidance that I had in my life, I made a lot of stupid decisions. And I got myself in trouble with the IRS, the district attorney for child support, all kinds of different things. I lived in my whole life, the first 15 years as an adult, with my wages being garnished and I got to a place where I said “Okay, I can’t live like this. I need to be in control of my income.” And at the time, I was making $3,364 a month as a manager at a restaurant and taking half of my pay. So I was living on $1,800.
Jim Padilla: All I wanted was $3,300 ’cause I could live on $3,300 at the time. And so, I was trying to find a way to be paid for that. And I found this ad and they said “Earn what you’re worth.” And I thought okay. So I call him. I say “Hey man, can I make $6,600 a month so that could keep 33.” “You can make $10,000 a month. You can make 100 …” It was all this. So I called him every day for a week. And he’s like “Dude, just come down here and let’s talk.” And it turned out it’s an alarm company. And we’re going door to door. Going out. I’m educated. I’m a manager. I’m a professional. Ain’t going fricking’ door to door. Okay? That’s way beneath me at the time. That’s what I thought. And I’m going out and I’m knocking on doors, praying that people don’t open because I didn’t want to say crap to them, didn’t know what to say. And I’m watching these 19-20 year old runts making sales every night making two, 500, 700 bucks a night.
Jim Padilla: I’m like okay, there’s got to be something to this. So I poured into this. Okay, I’m smarter than these guys. I’ll figure this out. And pretty soon I started realizing okay, this actually works. Just talking to people and serving them on what they need. Pretty soon, my biggest challenge was there wasn’t enough doors to knock on and the sun went down too soon. So then, I hired a couple of guys like me to knock on doors so that all I’d have to do with go inside and do all the dog and pony show in the living room.
Stefan Aarnio: Closing. So you’re the closer. You got what? Two, three, four knockers and you’re the closer and you’re standing outside. And they go “Wait, let me speak to my manager.” And then you come in and you got the gold chains on and the rings like a wrestling promoter and you’re saying “All right, why don’t we do this?”
Jim Padilla: Absolutely. Man, pretty soon, I got a van running multiple teams on multiple streets and then my team is out producing the whole office. So then I decided okay, I like how this works. Let me get my own office. So then I got my own dealership and I put up offices in three cities, 150 reps, a phone room, knocking out cold calls and going gangbusters.
Stefan Aarnio: Wow. So Jim, just to give people at home an idea. I love this story. I think it’s powerful. So many people on this show who are millionaires, multimillionaires, super successful start out in door knocking, which I think is great. Give us an idea of what kind of income you’re making at every step of the way. When you started being successful on the street, one guy knocking, what were you making? And then when you’re the closer, what were you making? Then when you have the van, what were you making? Give us an idea of the money.
Jim Padilla: Yeah. One thing that came to me quickly is once I started figuring this out, it became more of a game to me because I found out that I had a bit of a rainmaker quality me and I can make this stuff happen. So I started making $500 a day door knocking. Then I realized by bringing on people and splitting with them, now I’m making $2,000 bucks a day and I’m paying half of it out. Then I started getting van and running teams. And then by the time I got to a place where I’m ready to push out and have an office, you know, our office was doing $100,000 a week and I was doing half of it. Right? So pretty soon, it just made no sense to stay in that office. And so, we just started rolling from there. And then, we start pushing for half a million dollar months with all three offices combined. Now back again, this is also 1998 when you had hard land mines. We had $4,000 a month phone bills and all this other crazy stuff, right?
Jim Padilla: But it took off really just kind of out of control. It just ran. All I had to do is keep it from going off the tracks for the most part once I got it in motion. And our whole objective was to be a distribution system. I didn’t care about the alarms, I was just trying to perfect how do I get this perfect distribution system so that if we’re not selling alarms, we could be pushing anything else through it. We got door knockers, we got appointment setters, we got closers. Let’s rock.
Stefan Aarnio: Right, because you know the two big ones door to door is alarms and then pest control. Right? Those are the two that are still big today. Like I got friends who do two million, three million, four million a year of alarms and pest control. Is that still the case?
Jim Padilla: Yeah. Solar. Solar is big now.
Stefan Aarnio: Oh, solar. Yeah. Oh man. Everybody’s running around doing solar. So the business you’re saying it’s like a five to $10 million business distribution system. That’s tremendous, man. I hope there’s people at home getting inspired by that because I went and did door to door one day selling energy contracts. I got so freaking sweaty, man. I was so sweaty, I was like dude, I can’t do this. I went into a vacuum sales. I really wanted to do direct vacuum sales. Man, I wanted it and my family for me so hard I had to quit. And then, I actually got my game in private equity selling investments. That’s where I got it on, but the guys train us for vacuum salesman. So it’s all this same stage.
Jim Padilla: I will tell you this. Anybody listening right now, if somebody comes to you and they sold something door to door, I don’t care what it was, as long as they had success, not if they quit. I had a lot of guys quit. More guys quit than didn’t. But if they sold door to door with success, hire them. You can train them on whatever the hell you’re doing. Hire them because they will run through a wall for you. They understand paying the price to get the result and they understand moving through the pain in order to make the power happen. So always hire them. Always.
Stefan Aarnio: That’s tremendous, Jim. So now, I guess you went from that business. Now today, you own a business. You got a whole, again, distribution center network of salespeople, closers. Tell us about the business today. You know, you guys doing seven, eight figures of phone services. Tell me about the business today?
Jim Padilla: Yeah, currently our outsourced operation, we do about 25,000 sales conversations a year through live event, back of the room sales, through online chats. We have a lot of different strategies that we deploy, but 25,000 engagements a year. We’re moving over $100 million in sales and products and for our clients. And things are rocking. The beauty of it is, again, don’t take this the wrong way, I absolutely care about the transformation that’s happening on the other end for our clients. For our team. What I’m solely focused on, though, from my end is how do we stay at the cutting edge of what’s working?
Jim Padilla: So I’m always looking at what how do we get more people to show up? How do we get the right people to show up? How do we get the right people to show up at the right time? How do we make sure that the team is super prepared so that they understand the pain, the needs, the desires and the urgencies, and please don’t let that lure you to sleep. I want you to hear that because I guarantee every one of you listening right now thinks you already do that and I promise you, you probably don’t.
Jim Padilla: So make sure that you truly understand what’s the pain point? What’s the story arc of the person who is coming to you on a call because if you can better articulate their user experience and what’s going on in their mind in their life better than they can, they automatically give you credit for knowing the solution. Right, because they will see you as the expert and they will fall in line. Right? So.
Stefan Aarnio: That’s massive empathy there.
Jim Padilla: Big. And the key is, though, we take a different approach to like rapport. It’s one of my buzzwords. It drives me nuts because everybody talks “You gotta build rapport.” But most people don’t build rapport, they build dialogue. And just because your kid plays soccer and so did mine, that’s not rapport. That’s a common interest. It doesn’t matter to anybody and quite honestly, if I’m on the phone and that’s what you’re talking to me about, I’m getting irritated because that’s not why I’m here. Don’t talk to me about that stuff. You know?
Jim Padilla: You know how else you create rapport? By setting the pace and allowing me to follow. Right? There’s a relationship. A relationship and a symbiotic journey that is automatically implied. When you get pulled over by a police officer, he’s not asking you how your kids are and how soccer … But you got instant rapport. They lead, you follow and that’s how it works. That’s called rapport as connection. There’s a journey to be had there. Stop looking to be their best friend and get them to want to please people.
Stefan Aarnio: Wow. Wow. Rapport, dude, I agree with you man. Rapport is one of those things they say talk about fishing if they’re into fishing. Nobody cares.
Stefan Aarnio: What do you think about the Jordan Belfort? Sharp as a tack, enthusiastic as hell expert in your field version of rapport?
Jim Padilla: Yeah. Absolutely. Because what it is, you know, something that I happen to have a lot of is I’m a Bronx Puerto Rican and I do this is me. If you’re listening on the audio, you know, my hands are always going, my energy is always up. I believe firmly that if they buy you before they buy anything else, and you have to have passion and certainty. Right? When they know that you know, they buy your confidence and your certainty before they buy it themselves. And most of the time they’re borrowing yours because you know what the likely outcome is. They don’t.
Stefan Aarnio: Right. Right.
Jim Padilla: So you have to lean on you.
Stefan Aarnio: Right. So Jim, one thing that really interested me when we spoke earlier is you got how many agents and decentralized all over the country? How do you manage all those people?
Jim Padilla: It’s been a journey, man. I can tell you this, if I knew what I was getting into before I started this, I don’t think I would have done it.
Stefan Aarnio: So, hold on. How many agents? A couple hundred? Or what are we talking-
Jim Padilla: We have 120.
Stefan Aarnio: 120 agents all over-
Jim Padilla: All over. We have US, Canada, UK and Australia. And so, we’ve got about 22 hours of the day covering and it’s 100% virtual. This is my corporate headquarters, which is our office at home. This is a great life. The thing that we constantly focus on is how do you put a building over this? We try to run this as if we were all in one building. So things that you see on a daily basis because you’re engaged with somebody personally, you can watch them walking up and down the halls, we don’t see that. So we try to find other ways to engage at a different level so that we can stay plugged into what they’re doing and help increase their user experience.
Stefan Aarnio: So here’s a big question that I have. You know, I’ve been building my team here. I got a little team. You got 10 people here in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, Central Time Zone. And I’ve got three phone agents that do phone sales. I got three guys that do acquisitions in real estate. Now big thing for me is culture. And I always insist that people fly here and live here. And I actually bought the house next to the office here so people live in the house next door, come to work. I’m a big culture. Culture, like almost cult like culture. How do you have a cult like culture with 120 people virtually all over the place? Because to me, that just seems totally out of control to me.
Jim Padilla: Yeah, it’s great, man. Like I said, it’s not something that you would make … It doesn’t make sense. It defies logic. But we’ve worked very hard at it. We’ve been doing this for five years. And we are always emphasizing our culture and our values. Our is our values is not something that we just post on a wall or stick in a drawer. We talked about it on our calls, we talk about it with the team, we recognize them when they’re living them out. We always address it when they’re not. So like when they come to us to talk about “Hey, we just met with such and such client. Here was the problem.” And I say “Well, what was the value proposition that we missed here?” You know, because our values are results, engagement, partnership, ownership and flexibility. And so, if you come in going “Yeah, they didn’t want to do this. And I didn’t like how they did it.” And I said “Well, you taking partners with them. Are you demonstrating flexibility? You’re missing the value mark.”
Jim Padilla: So if we actually show up in the value set, we’re creating the culture that is being emanated out. The key is all of those values have to constantly be addressed. And more importantly, they have to see us living it out. So the more they see us living it out, then they follow the example. And then, it gives us the ability to speak into it all the time. And because it’s verbalized, you know, that which gets repeated typically gets believed, right? So we’re always beating the drum over and over and over. And you have to in a virtual environment because you can walk down the hall and emanate a certain value without saying anything, I don’t have that same luxury. I can’t walk down the hall and dose of energy all of a sudden is exuded. I have to find other ways to do that, inbox or messages, in email messages and Facebook posts. We over acknowledge everybody for everything because we want them to feel our presence all the time.
Stefan Aarnio: Wow. That’s incredible, Jim. What I love about what you built there is it’s scalable. You can scale it almost infinitely, which is amazing. You know, with my company here, we have to go get a bigger building pretty soon ’cause everybody’s in a building and there’s toilet paper and soap in the bathroom, and people leaving their forks and cups. It’s almost like a family. And I got signs everywhere. I got this grind sign up here. Grind, you know, you got signs, no negativity. And that’s tremendous you’re doing it all virtue … Let me ask you this, Jim. As an operator, what’s your obsession? Everybody I meet who’s a high level performers is obsessed about something. What’s something that you’re obsessed about?
Jim Padilla: Relationships and engagement. It’s on my brain all the time. How do I improve relationships? How do I increase engagement? And it’s from … I think part of this stems from my childhood because it was such a broken part of me, that it’s how I healed myself was by creating relationships with other people. I did it in an unhealthy way. For years now, I do it from a very healthy, strong perspective. But it’s what fuels us. We were designed as human beings for community, for engagement with each other. We weren’t ever designed to be alone. We were designed to be engaged with other human beings. So, I’m always looking at how do I maximize this relationship from the perspective of how do I enhance you?
Jim Padilla: You know, there’s a concept that we have all heard, the win-win philosophy. And my only problem with that is that win-win implies equality, and no two people are equal. There’s nothing you and I can ever do where we’re going to be both equal. We both are badasses in our own right, we bring something different. But in order for equality happen, somebody has to compromise, and I’m not about compromise. So I show up. My whole philosophy is win them. We show up to ensure they win. So my strategy every day is to ensure you win the relationship, I will get everything in return that I need. So how do I serve you to the utmost? How do I go over and above and beyond? And how do we engage at that level? And if everybody on the team shows up that way, then you never have to worry about your back because everybody else has it.
Stefan Aarnio: Yeah, I love that. Make it the best deal for them. You know, I’ve always said with relationships, if you’re the best deal for them, they’re always going to pick you. And you know, whether it’s a marriage. If you’re the best deal for your wife, or if you’re the best deal for your employees, or if you’re the best deal, they’re always going to pick the best deal because humans are opportunists, right?
Jim Padilla: For sure.
Stefan Aarnio: Now, I got a question about equality. You know, equality is a big buzzword these days. You see it on TV. You got people having parades about equality and all these things. Let’s talk about that a little more, Jim. You know, I’m a believer in more complementary. I think that people are more complementary to each other, like peanut butter and jelly, you know, husband and wife, you know, coke and chips. I think people go together. You know, admin and sales, whatever, right? I think that there’s a complimentary thing.
Stefan Aarnio: With equality, do you have to kind of stamp that out to people when they come into your office and say “Hey, we’re not talking about equality here.” Is that something that you have to work with? Because that’s a big like thought, that’s a big meme out there in the society we live in right now.
Jim Padilla: Yeah. You know, it’s interesting because I have a different perspective to leadership, right? I played college baseball. I’ve coached elite level athletes in high school and basketball and golf and baseball. And one of the common thread in all of these of the time is my philosophy on coaching is that I always coach to the high end of the gene pool. Meaning if you’re the last guy in line, it’s your job to figure out how to get help because if we turn the coaching to you, that means our best guys don’t get better every day. I want everybody getting better every day, especially our best guys. And then what happens is we create the culture where when it’s the person being left behind, it’s a self policing environment because they all will reach out and make it part of what they do to bring him along or push them out, right?
Jim Padilla: So my team comes to us and say “Look, he’s not keeping up anymore.” “But what do you want do about it? It’s not up to me. It’s your team, right?” So if you feel like it’s negative drain to the culture, is it screwing up the value set? Is it beyond repair? Or is this just a personal peeve for you? Right? And then, what do you suppose to recommend?
Jim Padilla: And I actually got this from a restaurant manager that I used to work for, this little five foot two Asian manager named Mike Nishimura, I’ll never forget him. He’s the reason I didn’t want to become an restaurant manager because he worked his ass off. He worked like 20 hour days because he was the best manager I ever had. He’d do anything for you. But he empowered us. Anytime a customer had a complaint, we come and say “Hey, the sauce was wrong.” Or “These people aren’t happy because it’s cold.” He’d say “Well, what are you gonna do about it?” “Well, let’s give you a free dessert.” “Okay, awesome. Let’s do that. Let’s give them free dessert.” You know, or “Let’s give them a two for one coupon to come back.” They let us figure out how to solve the problem so we took ownership of it. So we would go in and solve problems together and all he had to do was give a stamp of approval.
Stefan Aarnio: Wow. I love that and I also what you’re saying about the gene pool there. At the top of the gene pool, bottom of the gene pool. What do you think separates that top performer from the middle and the bottom? Because that’s something I’ve really struggled with myself. You know, I’ve been hiring people for six years now. And I’ve come to the cruel realization that a seven’s a seven, an eight’s an eight, a nine’s a nine, and a ten is a ten. And no matter how hard you polish that seven, it’s never gonna be a ten. No matter how much you polish a five, it’s never going to be a six. Tell me the differences between those people.
Jim Padilla: Yeah, first, I’m not sure I totally agree with that. I think there’s a 10 inside of everybody. Everybody’s got their own differences. Your ten might not be my ten, right? My ten is typically higher than everybody else’s. At least everybody has a ten. I look at ten, I go huh. I know what I’m capable of, but let’s see what would it take for you to actually see that for yourself, because if you’re buried in too much denial, then you might not want the ten because of all the fears or whatever else is going on. But there’s a ten inside of you. Right? The key is are you content being a seven. But what I see more than anything in the tens is a relentless pursuit of excellence, which puts them in a position of doing two things really well that are vital in our world is like we do option. We call them CPR calls.
Jim Padilla: So we do CPR calls where you can just show up and get some help. Like “Hey, what’s going on? You having a rough day?” They’re never mandatory, but you know who always shows up? The tens. They always show up, even though they don’t quote unquote need it because they know it’s what makes them optimal. So you never have to make it mandatory. Just like your coach and athletes, you make a shooting practice on a Saturday morning optional, you know who doesn’t show up? The guy who needs a damn shooting practice. You know who does show up? The guy who’s shooting 90% from the line.
Stefan Aarnio: Right, right.
Jim Padilla: He shows up every time. You know? And that’s the same thing here. The preparation is vital. But what goes hand in hand with that is the complete curiosity of self. Right? I’m actually reading Brendan Bouchard’s High Performing Habits. If you haven’t read that, please do. Great book.
Stefan Aarnio: I got it in the stack, man. It’s in the queue.
Jim Padilla: And one of the things he talks about in high performers is that we have this unrelenting ability to be curious about how do I do it better every day, which means that no matter how good I did it, I could have done it better. And that’s the perspective we take. We say “Look, you could have had the best day ever. And that’s awesome. And how could we have done it better?” And that doesn’t mean you didn’t do it well, it just means it could have been done better. So how can we? And if you can at least have that question in that conversation, that means you’re showing up again being of service to ensure they win. If I’m showing up worried about me, then I’m worried about being evaluated and judged. If I show up worrying about you, then I’m worried about how can I be better. Right? Well, the tens always have that perspective. Like I know where I’m going and I’m always open to being shown another path.
Stefan Aarnio: Amazing. I love that. So Jim, how do you turn the seven into a ten then because this is interesting. I’m saying a seven’s a seven. I have not been able to polish that seven to knock them into a ten. You’re saying, well, there’s a 10 inside of a seven. How do you bring that seven into a ten because it sounds like you’re going to be the Philosopher’s Stone turning lead into gold. How do you do it?
Jim Padilla: It’s really about the inclusion in a relationship, right? Again, that relationship is always going to be coming to the surface. It’s part of everything we do. When you start in our company, you’re assigned a buddy. Let’s say if I’m in the team and today’s your first day, I’m your buddy. My job for the first 30 days is to make sure you know where all the training supplies are. That you’re doing everything you need to be doing to meet your milestones to get through our onboarding sequence. And then, I get an override on your first 30 days of sales, which means it is in my best interest to make sure you freaking’ rock so that I can win. And then, that’s how the foundation of the relationship starts. So then it just builds from there.
Jim Padilla: So now let’s say I’m a ten and you’re a seven. Three months from now, we’ve created the reciprocity where you’ve got an open door to reach out to me because you know that I’m ready here to help you. And so now it’s that stage for that. And if I’m a ten, I’m being pushed constantly so I don’t sit around and wait to help you. I’m running forward and I’ve got a seat next to me if you want it. Right? But we try to keep the tens so busy, they don’t have time to sit around.
Jim Padilla: But what we also see is we create a culture where you’re rewarded for the efforts that you make in the team. So when we see you show up on our weekly calls, when you show up on the mindset calls, when you’re encouraging people in the groups, when you’re auditing calls, when you’re doing role plays, we can physically see that stuff. And so, those are the people that get the best assignments. And so, if you want to be one of those people, then you hit all of those milestones. And guess what? As a result of hitting all those milestones, that 10 emerges because you’re doing audits, you’re in role play calls, you’re helping somebody else because y’all you’ve seen is everybody else help you. And guess who becomes an eight? And then becomes a nine. Again, you may never be the ten that I am, but you’ll be your ten.
Stefan Aarnio: Right. Love that. So Jim, you know, something I’ve noticed training people. And I’ve been training people for six years now. You train people, you put on a training, you put on a seminar, you put on a class, you get people to read a book, whatever. I’ve noticed 50% of people just do nothing. They sign up, you put these people in there, you give them homework, at least half just do nothing. It might be more. What do you think causes failure in people? What do you think the biggest thing that just holds them back? Because you probably got people coming in your sales company all the time. You see them sink, you see them swim. Same with the door knocking. Are you doing door knocking, a great deal of people just fail. What causes these people to fail?
Jim Padilla: It comes back to that same perspective of focusing on them instead of you. Right? If I’m in this because I’m about the mission and the message and I want to be part of what’s being created here, then I’ll move myself through uncomfort to get what I need to get. If I’m showing up here because I want to make money, then usually we’re not willing to trade off what’s necessary in terms of doing the work, doing the preparation, right? You know, one of the reasons that we love to hire athletes and performers here is because they understand the concept of … You know, if you’re a football player, you practice 30 hours a week to play seven minutes a game. Right? That’s not logical. And most people don’t want anything to do with that. If I’m gonna practice for 30 minutes, I better played for three hours-
Stefan Aarnio: Right, well, they’re gonna say “I want the union. I want to be paid for 30 hours because I was here for 30 hours”-
Jim Padilla: And back.
Stefan Aarnio: I’m on the bench. I want to be paid while I’m on the bench. I hear that all the time. People say “I want to get paid for this and that.” I go “Whoa, whoa, whoa, buddy. You got to do your own push ups, your own homework.” You know, the tens that I know don’t complain about that.
Jim Padilla: No. Matter of fact, the last hourly job I worked for a sales trainer when I left the mortgage in 2008, and I started out on an hourly post, a small commission. And after like two days, I was like so let’s do the math. How many sales do I need to make to get off this hourly shit and give me a bigger commission ’cause I ain’t down with this. I want to be rewarded for what I do. Right? So you know, 60 days later, I maxed out the sales, we flipped the comp plan, and then I was on commission only and kicking ass. My own [inaudible 00:31:17] hourly, you know? The whole business structure is designed that if you’re paying somebody hourly is because you’re winning. You’re making more money off of their labor than they are. So why on earth would you want to be part of that?
Stefan Aarnio: Right, but you got to offset the risk, right? You know, I always have people in my office. I got admin and support people and I got sales people, and the admin people always want more money. And I go “Well, you’re admin. You push paper, you push buttons, you’re support. You know, there’s not a lot more value.” I said “If you want more money, go in sales.”
Jim Padilla: Yep.
Stefan Aarnio: Right? But then there’s a risk. It’s interesting with jobs, they talked about the wage gap and the gender gap. Oh, men make more money than women. But it’s also true that men choose riskier jobs, they choose the forestry, the ice fishing, the crab fishing, all the things you can die at, the really hardcore jobs, the military-
Jim Padilla: You know, and a lot of that’s about deficiencies, though. That’s the problem. And that’s what they don’t look at. ‘Cause we don’t want to dive down this whole feminist argument and stuff right now, but the thing they don’t look at is we men we’re a screwed up breed of human, man. We’re broken. The reason we do all of these crazy jobs is because we’re trying to prove our manhood.
Stefan Aarnio: Right.
Jim Padilla: And so, we go out there and do this stuff. And god love them, you know, business people are smart enough to know “Hey, if I hire this guy who’s willing to kill himself to make me money, let’s go put them out there and pay him really well to do it.” And women don’t do that because they’re not out there trying to kill themselves to prove their macho as a man/
Stefan Aarnio: Right. They don’t have that testosterone. They don’t have the balls surging there, wanting to just reproduce all the time. Yeah, it’s interesting, man. I noticed in my office amongst other places is men gravitate towards these risky jobs, straight commission, negotiators, hardcore real estate. If you see a woman who is a realtor, she’s so like hard, she’s kind of a man sometimes. And then the women, I noticed they gravitate towards more support jobs. And I think it was Norway or Denmark or something, they tried to reverse the genders, they couldn’t do it because it was still 10% of men in nursing, the men didn’t want to sign up for nursing and the women still didn’t want to sign up for engineering. It just didn’t do that. Now in your culture, you got salespeople, closers, negotiators, do you have mostly men or women in your company?
Jim Padilla: You would be surprised. I have four men.
Stefan Aarnio: Four men out of 120. And you’re one of them.
Jim Padilla: Four men. I just hired two last week, actually.
Stefan Aarnio: Wow.
Jim Padilla: Four men, well now six. We have almost exclusively women.
Stefan Aarnio: Now why is that because that’s an anomaly. Like a lot of sales organizations are not, what is that 98% female? Tell me about that. And how that makes sense.
Jim Padilla: Well, basically, one of the key components to our outsource deliverable is we focus on providing a branded seamless user experience. And so meaning, we will never compromise the user experience to make a sale because if you don’t make the sale today, you want them around to make the sale tomorrow. So we are all about being able to really dive into the relationship of the buyer. And typically, females are more driven for that. They’re here to build that relationship. Now, the women I have on our team, they’re closers. They’re all badass. They’re phenomenal at what they do. And they bring the human component, whereas sometimes the guys that’s a tougher bridge to gap for a lot of them or a gap to bridge
Jim Padilla: You know, I’m a unicorn and I know you’re probably in the same vein. You know, I can dance both sides of the feminine-masculine. I know how to ebb and flow and move and connect with people in the right ways. And it’s easier to pull an edge out of somebody who’s leading with their heart than it is to pull a heart from somebody who’s leading with their head. Too many times people are just hard charging and they just can not get into … They just want this is a transaction. You know, turn and burn transactions ago and a lot of our clients, we sell coaching services, we sell coaching consulting packages. Most of our clients don’t want a hard charging bull in a china shop. Right? They want to provide a great experience because they truly care about their clients and they don’t want us just trampling on their clients.
Stefan Aarnio: That’s amazing. I’ve done a lot of high ticket closing myself, but I noticed that it’s all about the care. I call it care and the white gloves. That you got to handle that person because they’re usually terrified of spending high ticket money. What’s the usual tech you guys are selling? You guys selling $40,000 packages? Or 20,000?
Jim Padilla: Yeah, the floor starts for us at 1,000 and that’s usually in launch mode. So for less than 5,000, it’s because we’re doing high volume like in a launch. Otherwise, 5,000’s the floor and we sell all the way up to 100K.
Stefan Aarnio: Wow. Wow. So really lots of care there because 100,000 over the phone on somebody you never met, you got to have some velvet gloves to handle that person’s emotions and especially the fear.
Stefan Aarnio: Jim, you got a program called Sales Unscripted. Now I was on your podcast and I’m like a pretty heavy scripted guy. I got my guys heavily scripted. I’ve had my guys unscripted before. I’ve had them scripted. The script has better results for me. Tell me about what Sales Unscripted is because I know I gotta hear about this.
Jim Padilla: Well, it was born from doing hundreds of thousands of sales conversations in all the different businesses that I’ve run, but especially in this last iteration, these last five years that we’ve been in because most of the clients we sell for, they all have a sales training program. And it’s all the seven steps to this, the six steps to that, this blueprint, that system. And instead of mastering all of their processes, we have seen we just get better results by just engaging people and having powerful truth telling conversations about their clarity and convictions and commitment about solving their problems and wanting something more.
Jim Padilla: So we just essentially take a park bench approach to a conversation. If you were to sit down with a random stranger in a park bench, inside of 30 minutes, you should know what they want, why they want it, what’s in the way of them getting it, how bad do they want it, and what are they willing to do to go make it happen. And that doesn’t require a script or a funnel. That requires human engagement. Right? Now, obviously, you need to understand, you know … First of all, let me make this clear, Sales Unscripted is not an excuse. This is not a “Oh, cool. I didn’t want any discipline and formula in my life.” That’s not what this is about. Somebody who doesn’t want to work more. This is more for somebody who’s tired of holding back. This is for somebody who just doesn’t fit into the box that somebody else created for them. And they just had a tough time implementing and executing somebody else’s formula because quite honestly, your formula was created for you and for your optimal situation. It doesn’t mean it was created for me. Doesn’t mean I can’t make it work. Right? I’m not knocking scripts. I’m just saying they’re not necessary.
Jim Padilla: But the key, we do a trade off. What we don’t master in scripting, we go way to the other side and overcompensate on preparation and relationship development. I promise you, like yesterday I had a call with somebody yesterday. And I watched five hours of her YouTube videos. Right? I know her language, her buzzwords, her keys, her components or passion, what her clients. I engaged a process. I stalked her Facebook page, you know, I wanted to make sure I understand why she’s doing what she’s doing and why does it matter because I want her to know that I care. Right?
Jim Padilla: So we put massive preparation into that and it starts before that with relationship. Massive, I keep coming back to that word. Relationship is vital for us in how we position in the marketplace because like my calendar is full every week because I have a great relationship with the marketplace. I focus on results in relationships. Those two things that people sending people our way all the time. And when they show up, they’ve been pre-sold and primed and ready to go. All they need to see for me is that I know what I’m talking about and that I care about their outcome. They don’t need me to lead them through a formula and they show up ready to buy, as long as I don’t, you know, piss on myself and make it about their money and that, you know.
Jim Padilla: So that’s the concept here. Now, there’s a lot that goes into it, again, building the system around it so that you can be free in the conversation. I’m just not somebody who operates really well inside of a script. I feel it takes me out of me being myself. I wasn’t reckless and just said “Okay, I’m breaking free from structure.” I said “What other structures can I deploy to keep me free from having to be in the script?”
Stefan Aarnio: Right, and that’s one of the biggest things with a script is it has to be undetectable. You know, as soon as someone detects you’re on a script or they feel like you said this a million times, that’s where their bullshit meter goes off, their gut kind of closes a little bit, and the authenticity goes down. So Jim, you’re like a back end provider for all these other brands. Tell me about the challenges of servicing all these different brands and all these different audiences because you almost have to be like a stock sauce. You know, you’re like the stock white sauce that you add Parmesan and garlic to make it in Alfredo over here. And then you add something else, it’s a bechamel. You add something else. Tell me about the challenges of working with all these brands. I’m sure some of our very big famous people that you may say or may not say their names because they’re big and they’re famous.
Jim Padilla: Yeah. Exactly. I mean, most of the clients that we work with are people that a lot of your clients would know if they’re involved in the coaching game at all. And yeah, everybody’s different. Everybody’s got their own brand and their own style. And they rightfully, they want us to represent that brand. And so, the beauty of it is because we’re doing so much at scale, we see more. We just see more than you’ll see in probably five years or potentially in your lifetime in conversation. So we can “Okay, look, we just did 10,000 conversations over here or 1,000 conversations on this campaign in this funnel with this sequence. This worked really well, let’s apply it to this other funnel over here. This didn’t work well, let’s make sure we don’t do that here.” So it’s a lot of cross pollination. We take what works and what doesn’t. That’s the benefit of being a platform. Right? Lead pages [crosstalk 00:42:23] They take every enhancement you make on your page, your opt-in page and they pull and literally infuse it into everybody else’s. So everybody gets the benefit. Right? It’s [crosstalk 00:42:35]-
Stefan Aarnio: It’s like a mastermind almost.
Jim Padilla: Exactly. And so, we bring that in. And what we do is we lead as a team. So like if we were to talk right now about you hiring us for services, I would build a case for why we should hire you and then I would take it to my leadership team. And then, my ops manager says “Well, this is going to cost us X,Y,Z.” My campaign coordinator say “This is what we’re going to have to do on it.” And then we come back and say “Okay, either we want to do it or we don’t. And this is what it’s going to cost.” And then I go back to the clients say “Okay, we’ve decided we can take you and here’s the terms.” Or we say “It just doesn’t fit. We’re not going to go forward.” Right?
Jim Padilla: And it’s the same thing with our strategy. So our PSAs, as we call them, Partnership Success Advocates, their job is to be the face of us to the client, and then to be the face of the clients back to us. So each client has their own PSA because I certainly can’t be that person. I’m only there to be brought in if strategy is needed or some oversight is needed. But our PSAs take care of managing all that. That way, they can stay focused on that campaign and have full time presence there.
Jim Padilla: And they come back to the team, and if they have a problem to solve, instead of them solving it by themselves, all the PSAs and leadership team gets together to solve them.
Stefan Aarnio: Wow. Big infrastructure there. That’s a big team. Jim, if you can go back in time, you know right now, I think you mentioned to me you’re what? In your 50s now?
Jim Padilla: I’ll be 50 in February. Yeah.
Stefan Aarnio: Wow. So late 40s, early 50s. If you can go back to, you know, 18 year old Jim or 16 year old Jim, what’s a piece of advice you give yourself?
Jim Padilla: It doesn’t have to be that hard and you’re going to be fine. And the message behind that would be you don’t have to take advantage of other people to get what you want.
Stefan Aarnio: Well, I’m sure there’s a whole nother interview inside of that. Jim, one question I ask every person on my show. Top three books that changed your life?
Jim Padilla: How to Win Friends and Influence People is the only book that I have personally bought multiple times because I give it away to everybody. It’s one of those deals when I’m talking to you “Dude, you need to read this book because I’ve read it a dozen times.” So that’s powerful. The Greatest Salesman in the World, Og Mandino. Absolutely a great read and just so many lessons if you just open yourself up to the story. And the Bible. I’m in that Bible daily. It’s right there. It guides my steps. You know, I will with Jesus and that is the ultimate self help book.
Stefan Aarnio: It’s the original. The Bible means book, so it’s the only book we’ve had for 2,000 years, man. That’s huge. All right, great. So this is another question I ask everybody before we wrap up, Jim, is what’s the one thing that young people, the Millennials, the generations that need there to succeed these days?
Jim Padilla: They need to understand that everything isn’t a shortcut. There are no shortcuts to winning. So I’m all for making things convenient and comfortable, believe me, I got air conditioner on right now. I love that I live under a roof and not out in a cave in the wilds. However, you cannot buy and shortcut success. The reason I have all the knowledge I have now is because I’ve gone through experiences, struggles and challenges and you need to be a little openly embrace them.
Stefan Aarnio: I love it. I guess they got to respect the grind.
Jim Padilla: Amen.
Stefan Aarnio: All right, brother. How can people get in touch with Jim?
Jim Padilla: Yeah, if you go to salesunscripted.com. Our podcasts are there. What I would invite you to is if you go salesunscripted.com/getmore, we have a drop-in coaching group. It’s a $47 a month membership, but you get a first free 30 days to check it out if you just go rate and review our podcast. And please be a guest there. Go in and ask questions. The goal is our coaching team is there, I’m in there. You can ask any questions you got about sales, conversations or what’s going on and we’ll help you. And you get a taste to see what we’re like. And if you like it, then you stick around for $47 a month. It’s the easiest, easiest ROI you’ll ever make in business, I guarantee you that.
Stefan Aarnio: That’s huge, man. $47 a month for live coaching, that is you’re giving it away. Unbelievable. Thank you, Jim. Any final words before we finish today?
Jim Padilla: Yeah, there is nothing that you can’t overcome. Just focus on being yourself. Stop trying to be what everybody else thinks you should be.
Stefan Aarnio: Love it, Jim. Thanks so much for being on the show, Respect the Grind.
Jim Padilla: Amen.
Stefan Aarnio: Hi, Stefan Aarnio here. Thank you for listening to another episode of Respect the Grind, my podcast where I bring entrepreneurs, athletes, real estate investors and other top achievers just to you. Now if you love this episode, I want to offer you a brand new product by my team. It’s called the High Performance Journal. Now this High Performance Journals is a 90 day journal to get clear on all your goals. You’re going to pick your top three goals over the next 90 days and zero in on them and focus in on them the way billionaires, Olympic athletes do. This is high performance stuff inside this journal. It’s the exact method I use to plan out the next 90 days and I think you’re gonna love it.
Stefan Aarnio: If you can get your thoughts, get your goals written down on paper, magic literally happens before your eyes. So if you want to try out my journal, go to the highperformancejournal.com/podcast. I have a special offer just for you, just for podcast listeners at the highperformancejournal.com/podcast. Go there now. Check out my journal. Get a coffee. You’re gonna love it. It’s good to change your life.
