WINNERS FIND A WAY PODCAST

Trent Clark Interviews Rob Velazquez

Trent: [00:00:05] Hello! Welcome to the Winner’s Hideaway Show, your weekly go to podcast for the 1% discussing winning strategies, how they built their winning teams and got winning results. If you’re ready to grow and execute, communicate better than ever, bring on that simplification and prioritization to make your dreams come true. Then get your headphones on and keep your notebook close and let’s go on a journey together. Hello and welcome to the Winner’s Hideaway show. I am your host, Trent Clark, CEO of leadership and serial entrepreneur, lifetime, and longtime speak out globally, speaking more in 17 countries. I’m a new recent author of a book, Leading Winning Teams. Most people, though they know me because I spent over 12 years in professional baseball coaching in three World Series. And welcome to the Winners Find a Way show! I am super excited to welcome my guest, Rob Velazquez. Rob, how are you doing, buddy? I’m doing.

Rob: [00:01:14] Good. I’m doing good. Thank you for having me.

Trent: [00:01:15] I didn’t get that out. Did you hear that? Almost out.

Rob: [00:01:18] It was a little tough, but winners find a way, right? You gotta. There you go, Velazquez.

Trent: [00:01:23] You know, I should know that, man. With all my time in baseball, a lot of cool Latin names that I always get, man. What’s your heritage, Rob?

Rob: [00:01:30] So I’m. I’m mixed. My dad is actually Puerto Rican, hence the last name. And then my mom is from a little island called Malta. So we’re half Puerto Rican, half Maltese. Yeah.

Trent: [00:01:40] That’s pretty sweet. Yeah. Malta. Beautiful. Both of them, actually. Beautiful, man. I’m. I’m ready to go to Puerto Rico right about now, actually. You know, that’s good. You ever get down?

Rob: [00:01:48] Of course. I’ve been down there probably six times in my life. Nice. You know? So beautiful. Good spot. Malta once. Definitely want to get back there. That’s good.

Trent: [00:01:57] Sure now Rob I’m super excited. You’re coming to us from Hallandale, Florida today. Uh, your new home. But we’re Michigan guys like we grew up in Michigan. You know, we’re from the Mitten State. Welcome. You know Rob over here. I’m over here. We got it. You know, like, we’re all on the same hand, man. Like we’re all there, you know? And if we have to use two hands, we can, you know, like we can some up action up there. All right. Exactly. But Rob and I are both trolls. We live below the bridge. So we are, you know, lower Michigan Peninsula people, and we’re surrounded by water. We live almost on an island, and we think we’re kind of a big deal, just so everybody else knows. All right. We’re Michigan and super excited about talking shop. I think you did what every Michigan kid wants to do, which you’ve moved to Florida and get the heck out of that cold and the weather. And brilliant. Grew up in Dearborn, which is a hot area of auto plant, man, there’s a lot going out just outside of Detroit. Dearborn has a number of things. Now we’re going to talk a little bit about, of course, the Henry Ford Museum right there in Dearborn and quote unquote, Dearborn Village and the Ford Estates. And it’s pretty special over there. If you’re an entrepreneur and you are an entrepreneur, you have been at this game developing sales for tons of brands, worked for great companies, RPM, Fabulous logistics Company out of Royal Oak, Michigan who just kicking butt taking names and man, Rob was a big part of that. I saw that firsthand, being in the logistics business myself with Chicago Marine Asset Management as I watched Coyote Logistics brilliantly just go through the roof and then sell off to UPS for a couple billion.

Trent: [00:03:29] So, you know, not a terrible exit there in any way. Rob. They did well yes. So you you’ve owned a couple you own a SaaS company right now. But you’re but you’re real passion. Is this sales training personal development. You got caught in network marketing came up through that. And man, no college. You’re the school of hard knocks, man. So you go through education on network marketing. And I think, Rob, you know, this is something I love about you, man, is that you really grabbed on to learning. And, you know, here’s this guy who’s like, hey, I’m not going to college, but I’m going to go work and I’m going to go learn and sponge everything I can get. And you know, we know the retention learning curves, right? And I love the pyramid of retention, which is always about doing it retains things right. Teaching it to others makes you and I. And I say that to a lot of people, Rob, hey, I’ll know you know it when you can teach it. And now you’ve developed great process, great ability to predict outcomes by putting the right process and systems in place for sales, which if you’re listening out there, people, I know you entrepreneurs suck at sales. Okay, you need to call Rob on this because it’s a struggle for a lot of companies. And the reality is that and I want you to speak to this, Rob, is yeah, it’s pretty simple, but super. It’s about doing it every day. It’s not easy. And we’re back to that simple. And everyone thinks simple is easy. And I’m telling people simple is not easy. Simple can be very hard because it’s consistency that wins the day. Yeah.

Rob: [00:05:10] And you know, Trent, I say all the time the things that are easy to do are equally as easy not to do. And so, you know, you have to find it within you to, like you said, be consistent and be persistent and put in the effort. But, you know, for me, you know, to go back to the learning, it’s very interesting. I find that so many people, you know, their education ends when they’re finished with school. And I was the complete polar opposite. I don’t think my education ever started when I was in school. Because I never paid attention. I was the only reason I went to school is because that’s where I knew my friends were going to be for eight hours a day, and I was going to have access to them. Right? Yeah. And there were girls.

Trent: [00:05:53] There.

Rob: [00:05:54] And there were girls there. Thankfully for me, I went to a co-ed private school. So the girls were there too, you know? Yeah. Hey, shout.

Trent: [00:06:00] Out to hey, shout out to Dearborn, Divine Child. All right. Little shout out to the boys down at, you know, DDC down there because that’s, you know, legit school and in the greater Detroit area. And if we’re talking about top parochial schools in the Detroit area, DDC is always right there athletically. Academically, it’s pretty special and it’s not easy to get there. Not easy.

Rob: [00:06:22] Yeah, I will say, even though I didn’t pay much attention in school, if it wasn’t for that foundation, you know, there was a lot of structure that was put into my life, and I was definitely given the tools to be a good student if I wanted to be right. And that’s where, you know, the old dean had always told me when I had to go visit him in the office for disrupting class, you know, hey, if you would just apply yourself, Rob, if you would just apply yourself, you know, your personality alone, you’re going to be so successful off that. Because I was the guy that I hung out with everybody. I was friends with the athletes, the mathletes, the debate team, the science guys and girls. You know, you know, I played odd sports in high school because you didn’t.

Trent: [00:07:02] The DDC not have burners. Like, you know, you left out a couple categories out there, man.

Rob: [00:07:07] They had them. And trust me, I was affiliated with them. But, you know, as I said, it was just once school had ended for me. That was when real life started. And a lot of my friends, you know, I don’t take anything away from them. A lot of people were super excited to go to college and university, whether it was U of M or Michigan State or out of state or something like that. But I just, you know, noticed that most of these kids weren’t excited to go to school to learn. They were excited to go to school because they wanted to party, right? They they wanted to be in dorm rooms and away from mom and dad so that they could live life on their terms and do what they wanted. And, you know, to each their own. There is a part of growing up that is developed in that aspect. But, you know, for me, I had a interesting introduction to entrepreneurship, which was network marketing, and it happened to me at the age of 17. And, you know, at that point in time, because I wasn’t going to school, you know, I grew up in a household where, you know, we weren’t exactly we didn’t like we weren’t poor.

Rob: [00:08:11] But we also, you know, any time that I wanted something, you know, we had to consider the cost of things before getting into it. Right? And I just never wanted that for myself, you know, that was how my life was from, from zero to 17 years old. And for whatever reason, I just thought that, you know, something had to change. And, you know, it sounds very simple, these concepts again. But I understood that in order for things in your life to change, you got to change the things in your life. And so for me, I got introduced to network marketing, and I was surrounded by these people that were just talking about success and money and wealth and sales and, and personal development. And I’m like, what the hell is personal development? And they’re talking about reading books and listening to audios. And I’m like, I haven’t read a book since Johnny Appleseed. Like, I don’t know what you’re talking about right now.

Trent: [00:08:58] And then I have this thing on audio. That’s all I know. Like these picture books at all. Are there any pictures? Let me stop you there, because, I mean, I gotta tell you, it’s the one massive value of network marketing. And there’s a lot of values in network marketing. But the biggest I’ve always seen and, you know, I’m living in the shadow of Amway. Right? I mean, of course, I don’t know if there’s anybody better at personal development and personal education and performance education than Amway. And they’re incredibly motivating. It’s grounding self awareness on the 400 level, and it’s amazing how many people get out of that. And I would also say, I mean great advice, by the way, from the dean like that, you can apply yourself, you will be something. And maybe, you know, you’re not the best student at that time. But I think that resonated with you as a man who now going into the work world going, hey, this guy believes in me. He knows that if I apply myself. So as I make those changes and apply myself, he wasn’t wrong. Is that fair? The other thing I would also say, yeah, the other thing that’s really interesting is I assume that your parents are immigrants. Are they first, immigrant first or their grandparents?

Rob: [00:10:06] My mom is first generation born here, you know. But it was it was definitely a situation where they, you know, they learned English because they went to school here. Right? It was it was Maltese in the household. And same with my dad. My dad was he was actually born in Puerto Rico and then came here and you know, you spoke Spanish at home and you learned English, you know, at school, obviously. So they you’re a three language.

Trent: [00:10:28] Guy coming out of, you know, first grade just because this is the thing, right? I got two languages at home. I got another one at school, you know, I mean, that’s amazing in itself of a skill right there for me.

Rob: [00:10:42] I didn’t translate, so I only speak English. Now I understand Spanish. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I we were never taught other languages in the household and it’s definitely a regret, I think even on our parents now, you know, because they were so and I think you got to understand there’s two types of, of immigrant families. You have the ones that are super proud and like want their kids to obviously stay the tradition. And I’m not saying that my parents are not traditional. We love our culture. We love where we’re from. We’re proud of it. But also when your parents grow up getting picked on by kids in school because they don’t know how to speak the language, I just think they didn’t want that for us, you know? That’s right.

Trent: [00:11:21] And so I think that makes perfect sense, by the way. I mean, for parents, they want better for their kids and realize this was hard for me. I came here not knowing the language I’m running behind. And I gotta deal with this stuff. And my kids. I don’t want them to deal with that. And I appreciate that. I got to think, because your parents worked their tails off to create a better life, and they certainly did that. Right. I mean, both Ford employees, Ford is a great company and they have done very well by their people and they’re lifers. They’ve been plant workers for a long time. And most I’ll just say this is no knock on anybody. There are not a lot of plant workers children over at Dearborn Divine Child. These schools are not inexpensive. You’re making a real sacrifice financially to have your children go to one of these schools and get this higher level of education. And I just had a great conversation in Kansas City about that last week. And so the reality is, is like, I gotta wonder what your parents are. You’re jacking around at school, really not meeting your, you know, academic potential. Let’s just say that and I’m thinking your parents are about to cut your hands off because they’re like, you know what? We’re sacrificing to have you there.

Rob: [00:12:32] I’ll put it to you this way. It wasn’t until I was maybe 21 years old where my parents definitely thought that they had taken a loss on that investment. You know, they were seriously, you know, upset because, again, this is a college prep school. This is where kids literally go to to get good grades. If you have good grades and you cross your t’s and you dot your I’s and that name is on your application to a university, chances are you’re getting in. And it just wasn’t the case for me. No college would accept me. Even the party colleges weren’t accepting me because they’re like, dude, you just don’t even have the framework to get here. You don’t even have the minimum requirements to get in here. Head over to community college.

Trent: [00:13:12] And there’s some there’s some great ones in Michigan, too.

Rob: [00:13:15] There are definitely some great ones. Fire up chips. So, you know, that was the one that a lot of people wanted to go to. But, you know, again, and it wasn’t for me, I didn’t care. I knew that college wasn’t going to be the route for me. I knew that that wasn’t going to be the place, but it didn’t have any type of, you know, hold back on my mindset that, like, I was going to be super successful. And, you know, I appreciate you for bringing up my parents here, Trent, because I always tell people when I do get the opportunity to tell the story of my parents, they’re the real rags to riches story, not me. Yes. I mean, the fact that they did what they did and put me in the position that they put me in, I should be doing what I’m doing with my life right now. And, you know, my goal is to do the same thing for my kids when I have them and they’re my age, they should be further advanced than I am because of the stage that they are given to perform on, you know? So they’re the real rags to riches story for me doing what I’m doing. You know, it’s expected in my opinion. Yeah.

Trent: [00:14:13] I really appreciate you saying that, Rob. I mean that is first of all, shout out right to Mr. and Mrs. Velazquez because that is Mr. Velazquez gave up a lot. You know, you’re married, you know you’re born in Puerto Rico. You come here and you know very little of the customs, very little of the ways. It’s a long way from Puerto Rico, especially on a culture. And for goodness sakes, coming to Michigan, for God’s sakes. You know, like most people in Puerto Rico have never seen snow. Just to clarify this, right. So it is a number of sacrifices on the front to create a better life for his children. So really, really admirable. And, you know, and so I love what you said about positioning because I think that’s a big deal that people don’t understand. A lot of this life is positioning yourself for the next opportunity, and people are giving you a hand up in how to do that. They’re showing you, they’re mentoring, they’re putting you in a position and your parents, by even introducing you to Dearborn Divine Child and getting you in that school automatically meant doors can be opened because of the education you’re going to get, because of the people you’re going to know, because of the friendships and the relationships and the fellowship and your ability to create value and contribute in this world.

Trent: [00:15:28] And you’re around a bunch of other people who’ve already created a bunch of value and contribution. So positioning is a really big deal, folks. And and I tell a lot of people in pro sports, man, you’re you’re looking you you hit double. Ball. A ball. In the minor leagues, you’re an injury away from the major leagues. You are positioned now for a potential really good opportunity. And absolutely. I like to say it this way. If I’m sitting in at Triple-A and I’m a 33 year old veteran who’s bounced up and down and we got young Rob Velazquez over here in the same position at Double-A, he’s a 23 year old superstar who’s got the same numbers I got. They’re betting on the young talent and let’s look at the future. Let’s not hire a guy that we already know that he’s about peaked here. And Rob still got a long way to get better. And so he is now positioned for the opportunity way better than I am. And it’s all about positioning if you’re looking to get ahead. So I think that’s a great place to try.

Rob: [00:16:27] I’d like to say that applies to in the business world, because that’s exactly what happened to me at the age of 21 years old. When I got hired by that logistics company. I was young, I was hungry, I really didn’t know anything about trucking and transportation. I didn’t, but I had a can do attitude, and I had an elaborate sales background leading up, you know, to that. And whereas, you know, you said the 33 year old, you know, Triple-A player, which, you know, was the directors at the time were sitting there and there would be a project or an environment or something, you know, would come up where the owner would come into the room and say, hey, look, you know, this is we have this contract here. We need this much capacity here. You know, I have this list of carriers, let’s call them all. Let’s source as many trucks as we can. And whereas you got, you know, kind of an older dog there that’s like, ah, you know, we did that before and it doesn’t work. You got me that’s saying, hey, listen, if he doesn’t want to do it, I’ll do it. Me and my department will handle it. Right. And when you have the right attitude, the facts don’t count. What other people have done in the past is irrelevant, right? And you go into things with the right mentality, and that’s where you produce the results. And that’s what allowed me to climb up that chain so quickly because of my position number one, and then my willingness number two. Right. So it applies in sports and in business and everything else. Right. It’s all applicable.

Trent: [00:17:55] 100% I think, you know, we have these events as coaches where we go, oh man. You know Hector’s just awesome. And you know I’ll take ten more just like him. Works his tail off. Always comes ready to practice coachable listening, trying to execute what you’re teaching him goes in willing to do the reps in business. What I just heard was the owner recognizes a young man named Rob who says, I will. Hey, I’ve got a project in the 33-35 year olds are going, man. I slumped through that crap and I was 23 and 25. I shouldn’t have to do that anymore because, you know, I’ve arrived now. I’m a guy and I’m past that. Right. And the people that say I will keep getting opportunity, I will. Hey, the cleaners aren’t going to be able to make it this week. Could someone take the trash out this week? So we just clear that out of the office? Hey, I will, sir, I will. And so you know, this this young Rob keeps saying I will. And he’s like going, hey man, I just need a winner who will find a way.

Trent: [00:18:52] And clearly it’s in Rob Velazquez. And this is where I, I want to be, man. And so at 23 years old, he makes you the director of sales. Yeah. You know, I’m I’m trying to navigate this. This guy’s got a lot on the line. And if you don’t know anything a lot about logistics business, I would say 70% of your operations is sales. Listen, the trucks will move. There’s not a lot of process behind how things. I don’t want to discount operations. And in logistics, it’s real and there’s a lot going on, but there’s really not a lot going on if no one sells anything. So, you know, you just have trucks sitting in a parking lot out back. So, you know, this is what happens if there’s no sales, there’s no activity. So this becomes a 70% portion of the business. It’s nearly or over two thirds of operations. And what’s happening. So man this guy is putting his house, his family. He’s putting his future on the line with a 23 year old that says, I will. Why would he do that?

Rob: [00:19:55] Yeah, it’s really simple. It’s because I would get results, right? You know, you had mentioned that I do coaching in sales now, and the reason that I do coaching in sales now, I like to go back and explain to everybody that I’ve done it all. I used to do door to door sales and the telecom space. I used to do fitness and wellness sales. You know, I was the general manager of, you know, four different locations for gyms. You know, I’ve done technology sales with my SaaS company. And when I went into this logistics space, it was, you know, at that time, again, I didn’t know much about logistic, and I had so many people that were telling me in my ear buzzing and buzzing and buzzing, oh, B2B is so much different from B to C, and you have to be logical and it has to make sense and this and that. And I just come to find that. That was all BS. And you know, I didn’t have to know about logistics to sell logistics because at the end of the day, the person that was on the other end of the phone that I was talking to was a person. And what I have found in sales that has worked for me since the beginning of time, it works now. It’ll probably continue to work in the future, as far as I can see. And that is, you know, people buy from people, they don’t buy from businesses and they don’t buy, you know, concepts or ideas.

Rob: [00:21:14] They you know, I get it. There are some strategies to that. And it depends on the type of person that you’re talking to and their personality. But ultimately people were not, you know, answering the phone that morning and deciding to work with me because I worked for RPM and RPM was a great company, and RPM had all these amazing assets not taking anything away from RPM. They decided to work with me because of me. People don’t really care and this is something that anyone who’s in sales here you should write this down is people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. At the end of the day, the person that you’re talking to, they have a a company that they’re responsible for as well, too, right? Whether they’re the owner of the company or the head of a department. Right. They’re the decision maker for a reason, because their job and their position and their company depends on the decisions that they make. So it’s in your best interest to identify why they do what they do. What they do is irrelevant, right? When they do it, who cares how often, how much, how big, how wide? It’s just all fill in the blank type information. The thing that matters is understanding why people make the decisions that they make. And if you can identify why they do what they do, and you can also ensure them that you can help them do that better, easier, faster, more cost effective, whatever it’s going to be now they’re going to give you the shot and that’s all you need is the shot.

Rob: [00:22:50] If you’re somebody that has the can do attitude that I had, I was promising people that I would give them a truck in a in a city and a state that I had never even heard of, because I knew that if they gave me the opportunity to get that load taken care of, I had the can do attitude to go find what it was that needed to fit the script. And, you know, the majority of the time that’s exactly what happened. Right? And then, you know, once you do it once, you can do it again and again and again. And that’s how I built a book of business very, very quickly. And, you know, the reason that I then became the director of sales is because, you know, the owner wanted that reduplicated. He didn’t want, you know, a sales team of people that looked around at their current circumstances, their current situation, the current load board, the current capacity of available trucks and selling based off of that. He wanted people who were going to sell damn near a magic trick and then go make magic happen. And, you know, again, it just so happened to be that I was the guy in the room that not only possessed it, but was willing to teach it to other people.

Trent: [00:24:02] It’s awesome. It’s funny when, you know, people get those rackets right about what sales are. And, you know, the funny thing about B2B, which I always loved, was I found out how motivated people were to look good at their job. That was very motivational to be successful. Second real benefit was that they were never spending their own money. You know me selling you Rob, of why you need to spend your hard earned money was always a much harder sale to me than saying, hey, what do you think about spending the company’s money on this? Like, yeah, that’s not really mine anyway. Like boom, 100%. We could get that. That was a huge difference for me. So I always have you know, I played, you know, a lot in the B2B space. Right. But let’s let’s come back to, you know, our show winners find a way winners when showing data that they are losing. Find a way to win. You know people would not know this about you. And maybe what most people don’t know about you, Rob, is that you were coming up as a young budding athlete. You love sports, you love to do this. And at 12 years old, you take a serious detour. When you’re diagnosed with cancer in your leg. Tell us a little bit about that and what happened from there.

Rob: [00:25:15] Yeah, it was a shell shock. It was completely unexpected. You’re talking about literally something that came from completely out of left field. But at the same time, and this is where, you know, I’m gonna talk about it, I’m going to go forward and then I’m going to come back to it. But getting sick at the age of 12 was probably the best thing that could have ever happened for me. And I think that you’ll find that, you know, when people have the mentality that I have, you know. To be on a show like this. Winners find a way. They’ll take a situation like that that was sent to destroy them, and they’ll literally say it was one of the best things that had ever happened to them. And it was genuinely because that it made me look through life from a different lens from a super young age. And what I mean by that is I was always a daydreamer, you know, in school again, I wasn’t, you know, paying attention to what the teacher was saying. I was sitting there, you know, either thinking about practice after or the game coming up on the weekend or what I was going to be doing with my friends. I was always someone that for, for whatever reason, I spent a majority of my time in either the present or the future. I very rarely spent any time, you know, thinking about the past. And so when I got sick, thankfully, and again, I don’t know where the skill set came from of being a daydreamer, but it had already developed. So I spent an unbelievable amount of time when I was going through my chemo therapy and recovering from surgery and doing the chemo again, it was it was all overall about an 18 month span.

Rob: [00:26:49] I spent the majority of that time in the future. And what I mean by that is just thinking about being back on the field, being back on the diamond, being back on the gridiron, being back, hanging out with my friends and doing the things that a 12 year old kid does. Right. And so, you know, I am playing sports and, you know, digress here a little bit. I’m playing sports and I’m having a little bit of pain in my leg. And that’s actually a really funny story. I remember I was at football practice one day and I go up to my coach because, you know, the only time I would ever experience pain was during like practice or when I was like sitting at home and my mom was like, hey, go do your homework. I’d be like, ah, my knee, you know? But then there was a day at practice. I’m at football practice. And, you know, we go and we got to run our laps and I come back and I’m like, coach, I don’t know what’s going on with my leg, but it’s hurting me. He’s like, all right, yeah, no problem. He’s like, go take a lap and see if it feels better, you know? So those were the types of things that I was dealing with. But you know, it was actually a day in gym class and I’m playing guys versus girls and basketball.

Rob: [00:27:53] And as you know, in Rob fashion, I hit the game winning shot. And I do a little nanana boo boo to this girl because we’re playing boys versus girls. And she kicks me in my knee and I dropped to the ground. I’m in excruciating pain. I was in so much pain. You know, again, that I was actually already starting to wear a knee brace, like a little compression sleeve. That’s what my dad was giving me, you know, to just kind of help with it. And, you know, I take this the sleeve off my leg. It’s super swollen. I can’t, you know, walk on it. And so I go to the doctors and the doctors, you know, they touch my leg, you know, they’re bending it, tweaking it, whatever. And it’s not broken. They’re like, he’s fine, you know, go home. He’ll he’ll be fine. And my mom, at that day, she was like, look, we’re not leaving here unless you do an x ray on his leg because he just missed baseball tryouts today and he wouldn’t have done that. I’m not the type. I don’t care if I’m on my deathbed, I’m going to practice or tryouts or whatever. Right? So she’s like, we’re not leaving here until we get an x ray. So they get an x ray and, you know, something was found, don’t know exactly what was found, but then it turned into going to the hospital x ray there. Then it turned into going to U of M March Children’s Hospital, getting an MRI. And then it turned into a biopsy. And that’s how they identified everything.

Rob: [00:29:09] So that was how I, how I found that I, you know, was sick. It all happens, you know, again, 18 months span. And what was interesting is that, you know, it wasn’t until 1314, it wasn’t until 5 to 6 years later where I was introduced to personal development. And that’s when I started learning the power of positive thoughts and visualization manifestation. A lot of these different concepts that I had never even heard of. Right. And it was finally at that time where I was able to connect the dots backwards and realize that, oh my God, the reason that I’m still here today was because of the mentality that I had, the mindset that I had and had developed. It was because of that lens that had been created that I looked through life with, because of the situation that I was in. Right? When your back’s up against the wall and you don’t really have a choice again, you you do, you figure it out. And so because that happened to me at such a young age and, and it produced the result that it did, which was, you know, victorious and coming out on top. And I’m as healthy as I’ve ever been before. And, you know, it’s been like that for a very long time now. It’s just been, you know, a lot of these lessons are things that they’re applicable in every which way, shape and form, you know. So I’ve been able to take that mentality and apply it to literally everything I’ve done since then. And and I’ll forever be grateful for it, you know? Yeah.

Trent: [00:30:38] Well, I love the idea of like first of. I do agree with you, and many people who have come on the show have talked about their biggest challenge is also their biggest blessing. And man, yeah, you talk about this. I mean, you were a visualizer. You were a visualizer because that’s what a dreamer is. They’re visualizing what their ideas are. I remember I think it was I think it was Paula Poundstone, an older, you know, comedian back in my day. And, you know, I’m older. Maybe she’s not. But, you know, she would say, you know what? You know why adults are asking kids what they want to be when they’re growing up. They’re looking for ideas, you know. And I always love that.

Rob: [00:31:15] Oh, that’s so bad.

Trent: [00:31:16] People are so bad at like, visualization. But here you are and I put this actually in leading winning teams and a little station identification like please go out, I’m going to drop in the bottom. You can pick up leading winning teams right now. And if you pick up two copies of leading winning teams right now on presales, send me the receipt. I will send you a workbook on the pain exchange, based on my TEDx talk and based on some exercises in the book, you can do a little workbook of the pain exchange and learn the discipline of the superstar athletes and the world beaters, so please check out those links below on Barnes and Noble and Amazon already. And those links are in the chat notes in the book Leading Winning Teams. I talk about this visualization, Rob, and there’s a little study that was done with basketball players, and they have a whole group of basketball players and one they break them into three groups. One group is allowed to practice their free throws and they physically practice. And then the next group is not allowed to practice at all, but they actually have practice time. And during that practice time, they sit and visualize making free throws. And then the other group does nothing. And of course the group that does nothing sucks. They don’t improve at all, right? They get worse. And the group between the team that physically practices and visualizes is fractional. The group that never picked up the ball but just sat there visualizing nearly made the same improvements as the team that sat there doing all the practice. So as you’re sitting there down for the count, you know, for a few years here through treatment, through rehabilitation, a lot of time to be in your mind, visualizing your future and what you wanted for your life and to and how you’re going to carve that out in the future. I think that’s super powerful.

Rob: [00:32:53] Yeah, it’s something that I later learned. It’s referred to as the training balance scale, and I teach about that now when I speak at companies or when I do my one-on-one coaching with clients. But essentially the training balance scale is that on one side of the scale, you have the how right this is going to be, the techniques, the activities, you know, the processes, the systems and all of that stuff. Right. And then on the other side of the training balance scale is you have the why. The why is going to be the thoughts, the emotions, the feelings, the mental processes, not the physical processes, but the mental processes. And a lot of people would tell you that, you know, 99% of it is based on the techniques. And, you know, the mentality is just the small percentage. It’s actually the complete opposite. 99% of success is on the why and the how really doesn’t matter. And the reason that I say that is because we’ve all heard of beginner’s luck. Right. Well, I’m going to explain what beginner’s luck really is. Beginner’s luck is someone that has no idea what the heck they’re doing right, and they also have no idea how to do it. But for some reason, they still go ahead and get the result. Why is that? It’s not because they’re good at what they do. It’s because they’re so damn excited to be there, and because they’re so freaking excited to get the result, whether it’s a sale or closing a deal, or getting on base or making the team or whatever it is, right? They’re just so excited to be there. And, you know, obviously they have to have a a positive mental attitude.

Rob: [00:34:41] It can’t be someone that’s coming from a place of scarcity where they’re like, ah, I’m not sure if this is going to work or whatever. Those people never have beginner’s luck. The people who have beginner’s luck ten times out of ten are the people that are just so fired up, right? I, I say this a lot. I say ignorance on fire is better than knowledge on ice. The people who know what to do but just don’t do anything. They might as well not know what to do. But for those who have no idea what they’re doing, and they’re just moving forward and putting in the action and the effort, they’re going to get results. It might not be the craziest results, it might not be the best results, but they’re going to get results. And t’s crazy because what you see a lot, especially in new people, whether it’s in in sales or athletes or whatever it is, you know, you’ve probably seen this as a coach, right? You have a guy that comes in and he’s like a rookie, okay? And he’s absolutely on fire. It’s like every time this guy steps up to the plate, he is getting on base. He’s scoring, he’s doing this, he’s doing that right. And then all of a sudden, halfway through the season, or maybe it’s after he has this amazing rookie of the year season, he gets into a slump and it’s like why is that. He didn’t forget how to hit the ball. He didn’t forget how to do what he was doing. He has lost touch with why he’s there. He has lost touch with it.

Trent: [00:36:08] I want to talk. It’s really good. Rob, I really want to talk about this. Getting results. Everybody wants productivity. Everybody wants that big 80. Right. Like they ultimately that’s our scorecard, right? We all go oh man, if I could just get these results and we could make and sell an extra $5 million this year. And we all put these numbers behind what we’re trying to do. You have one of the when we talk about the 16 strategies of growth, one of your superpowers is, you know, designing weekly activities, daily activities that can predict and produce outcomes. Talk to me about how you learn how to do that, and the discipline to set the daily consistency to make that happen 100%.

Rob: [00:36:56] So I learned it over a duration of time. It wasn’t in one situation at all whatsoever. Different companies working with different people. You know, again, being a student of the game, you know, paying for mentorships or programs. I used to go to a ton of, you know, events and like seminars and different things like that. And you know what? I’ve boiled it down to when it comes to productivity from a sales perspective. And it’s not just in sales. I mean, if you want to grow your revenue, if you want to grow your your client base, there’s a thousand ways to skin a cat, obviously, whatever metric it is that you want to look at, it’s very, very easy to decode it. Right. So there’s something that I’m sure a lot of people are familiar with here, but it’s called the law of averages. Right. And the way that the law of averages works t’s really, really simple. If you call ten people and you’re new, right? You’re just getting started. So essentially you suck at what you do, right? You’re just getting started. You call ten people, you get one person to buy or set an appointment or whatever it is that your ultimate goal to achieve is right.

Rob: [00:38:02] A ratio has a pair appeared there. It’s one out of ten. Well, what happens is the law of averages states that once a ratio has appeared, that ratio will either continue or increase. The only way for that ratio to no longer appear is for you to stop doing what you’re doing, right. So based on your current skill set, one out of ten you call the next ten people, one out of ten, you call the next ten people one out of ten. But then something magical happens on that next set of ten calls that you make. Either you learned a new phrase, or you figured out a value add, or you know something’s just working for you. Maybe it’s just your confidence. Maybe you’re you got a little bit more spunk in you. Right? And then what happens is you get two out of ten and then again that that magic happens. Confidence goes up, skill set gets a little bit better. Three out of ten right. And you know you as a baseball coach definitely know this. But at three out of ten times up to the plate, if you’re getting on base, it’s a damn good batting average. And three out of ten you.

Trent: [00:39:06] You’ll make millions, Rob.

Rob: [00:39:08] Exactly. You know, and it’s the same thing in sales. If you’re closing at a 30% rate. I don’t care what your product is. You’re going to do very, very well for yourself. And so once you understand that law of averages and you go ahead and you decode that. So for example, when I used to have a door to door office and we were selling telecom, right, we knew that you would do we would give you a territory. That territory would have anywhere from, let’s say, 150 to 200 addresses on it. Okay. And you would map out your territory. You were going to pick 60 houses. Okay. And out of those 60 houses, you were going to do three laps on all 60 houses, right? Because people are going to be home at different times of the day based on if you got those three laps in on those 60 houses, you’re going to see anywhere from 20 to 30 people that are going to come to the door and they’re going to talk to you. Out of those 20 to 30 people, you should give a full presentation to about half of that, which is going to be anywhere from five, 10 to 15 people. Out of giving that presentation to 10 to 15 people, you should be able to run credit on 3 to 4 out of those people. And then out of three of those four people that you’re running credit on, you should be getting 1 to 4 sales based on credit and everything like that. Right? So it was very, very simple when you had that law of averages built out like that.

Rob: [00:40:34] And let’s say that I had someone come, you know, come back to the office after because I always used to do end of the day setup. Where every rep would have to bring me, you know, their tick sheet. And I would look at it and see what their numbers were and their metrics for the day. Right. And it was a really, really simple conversation. Trent. At the end of it, if I had someone who brought me their sheet and they only had one lap, right, I would just have the conversation with them. I would say, listen, you know, how many sales did you want to get today? And they’re like, oh, I went on to get 2 to 3 sales a day. Okay. Well, based on your effort metrics here, which is just the amount of laps that you did and everything, you know, just start at the top of the funnel, the amount of laps that you did, you did one lap and you’re supposed to do three. So it’s impossible for you to even be able to hit the goal that you wanted. So tomorrow we’re going to do 1 or 2 things here. Either we’re going to decrease your goal or we’re going to increase your productivity and your effort. Which one would you like to do? And nine times out of ten, obviously they’re going to say, oh yeah, I’ll increase my activity, my productivity. Right. Because no one wants to decrease their goal. Right? Right. So that’s the law of averages. The second thing is knowing the score, okay. Coming from a guy that you know, again has that background of being an athlete, I used to constantly be looking at the scoreboard.

Rob: [00:41:55] I used to constantly want to know what did the other team have, what did I have, how many fouls, how many timeouts, what quarter is it? How much time is left in the game. Right. And so I feel like a reason that a lot of people fall short of the growth and production that they want is they maybe the owner knows how much revenue he’s doing. Maybe the director knows how much in volume of sales. But the question is, does each individual person on your team know exactly what the score is and if they don’t? Right. We actually saw it in I think it was an NBA finals game with you. Remember when JR Smith the rebound came down. They outlet it to JR Smith. And he goes ahead and calls a timeout. Do you remember that in and they’re they’re going against the Warriors in LeBron is like what are you doing. And he’s like I thought we were up by one. Um I thought we were up right. Yeah. And they lost the game. They lost the game because he went ahead. And instead of getting the rebound and putting the ball right back up and taking the lead, he gets it and he sends it out and calls a timeout. And literally LeBron’s like what are you doing. Because LeBron’s a type of guy that always knows the score. He knows exactly what the score is, exactly how much time is on the clock. But one of his teammates didn’t and it cost them the entire game.

Rob: [00:43:25] I think it cost them the whole NBA finals that year. I don’t know exactly, but it’s the same situation in your business. If you know the score or your top producers or your captain of your teams, they know the score, but you know, and not to take anything away from anyone but your lower level salespeople, your entry level salespeople have no idea what’s going on. You’re setting yourself up to lose the finals, right? You’re setting yourself up for failure there. So everyone needs to know the score. Everyone needs to know what their revenue goal is, how many sales it takes to get that, how many sales are they at decoding their effort metrics to the law of averages. And at that point, you know it’s going to be different for everybody too. You know, another thing that I always said to people is, you know, you got to make up in numbers what you lack in skill. So your entry level sales guy is going to have to do, you know, ten times the amount of calls as your senior sales guy and make it known to people you know, you can’t do you know, someone who’s a brand new coach can’t come in and do what you do as a coach because you’ve been doing this for years. You’re just way better and with way less effort. But it’s not that you’re putting in less effort. It’s just you have years of experience, right? So all of this stuff comes together to produce, you know, the growth that people are looking for.

Trent: [00:44:47] Yeah. It’s so good. Let’s talk about another strategy of growth where you’ve been challenged, you know, designing spending plan on where to best put your assets, you know, generate that revenue and then how to use it successfully to scale the business you’ve dialed in process and even the culture for your people. We’re going to talk about, too. And so you’ve got some things that you’re really good at. What do you think’s been the biggest challenge in the hurdle for you as an owner now you’ve helped a lot of other owners really scale. Now you’re the guy sitting in that seat and finding out that what it’s it’s more than you thought or what are you thinking?

Rob: [00:45:27] Definitely more. I mean, ultimately, look, everything falls on you, even at a high level when you’re the director of a company or even an executive of a company, you know, ultimately it’s not your money. You know that. That gets lost in the event that something goes wrong, you know you might lose your position, but you don’t lose your money. So it’s definitely more. And I think that when you have a business and you’re looking to scale, you know, for me personally, the biggest struggle that I’ve had is when starting a business and being in that startup phase. Right. You think that what you want and you think that what you’re going to get is going to be a bunch of other like minded individuals, like entrepreneurial individuals. And sometimes, you know, there’s there’s people out there who create a dream team like that. But ultimately, what you have to realize is in order to scale your business, you know, no matter how much of a startup it is or it isn’t, when you get to that scaling point, you’re going to have people that are employees and they’re looking to only be employees. They’re not looking to be anything more. They don’t want to bear the responsibility. They don’t want to bear. You know, anything else other than like, hey, I have a job, I’m getting paid. I do what I’m supposed to do and that’s it. Right? And, you know, for you, at that point in time, you need to really understand. And, you know, I’m an amateur on this, truthfully. But I think I heard a guy, you know, just tell me this. I’m trying to remember what he said, but I had my goals.

Rob: [00:46:59] This is I used to have an office in Detroit, Michigan, and there was a guy he was like a venture capitalist, I believe, and he was in one of the offices across from us, and he saw that on my on my thing for 2023. I had a revenue goal of doing $1 million a month. I had a employee goal at the end of 2023. At that time, I wanted like 15 employees or something like that. Or maybe the revenue goal was I forget exactly what it was that I had, but he came in and he was like, hey, do you mind if I share a piece of advice with you and I? And I was like, yeah, of course, whatever you think is going to help. And he had mentioned that for every employee that you have, you want that employee to generate, I believe it was $300,000. And if they don’t generate $300,000 that, you know, it’s probably not a good idea to like scale it. So I say that to say that whatever my employee goal and my revenue goal was, wasn’t making sense. I wanted way too many employees and genuinely for no reason. You know, I didn’t have positions for them or anything like that. You know, I just had this, this vision that like, okay, we’re going to make a lot of money. We’re going to have a team of people and everything is going to be delegated. And we’re just going to be, you know, making all this money and life’s going to be good, right? Yeah. And that’s just not the case.

Trent: [00:48:19] It’s not that easy, right? It is that simple. But it’s not that easy I love that good recognition. Okay. And then the last thing of the 16 strategies that you guys have another superpower in is and I want to talk about where this came from, like most companies I see really lose the benefit its work. And since we’re going to be here all the time, let’s have some fun. Let’s celebrate the victories. Let’s do stuff together and enjoy being together. Enjoy the work, enjoy the success together. And you’ve really dialed this in. Talk to me how you got that early. Because as a young man, I see a lot of people who don’t get this.

Rob: [00:49:00] I’m not going to sit here and say that I wasn’t part of a hustle culture because I was, you know, especially in the beginning. And there’s even times where, you know, I’ll just want to work, work, work, work, work, work, work, right. But at the same time, you know, and again, I credit this back to network marketing, you know, network marketing, I’ll forever be indebted to that industry and forever grateful for it, not because of the amount of money that I made, because it wasn’t a ton, but because of the concepts and the personal development, all the things that I learned. One thing that I heard, and this was at like one of the very first events that I ever went to, and it has stuck with me forever. And that is if you build the people, the people will build the business. Right? So if you build the people, the people will build the business. What that means is that if you develop individuals, they’ll want to work with you. They’ll enjoy what they do. They’ll love what they’re doing, because not only are they producing, you know, results. And you got to understand people producing results as a byproduct of people becoming something more and something better, right? So if you have somebody who isn’t producing the results that you want, it doesn’t make them a bad person.

Rob: [00:50:17] It just means that they’re not developed to the level that you need them to be developed. So you got two choices. Get rid of them and replace them with somebody who is developed. Just know that that might be more expensive, or you use the investment of your time and develop that individual to be, you know, someone who produces the results that you. The other thing that, you know, helps build a great culture. And you know, this was the exact reason that I got hired when I worked for RPM. I’ll never forget that interview. It’s the only interview that, you know, that sticks out to me like a sore thumb. And it was, you know, when I went into that interview, they were talking about, well, look, again, I didn’t know anything about logistics and supply chain. And we didn’t talk about logistics and supply chain. We talked about the way that they trained their salespeople. They were talking about straight line persuasion. They were talking about ten-x. They were talking about, you know, a book called Think and Grow Rich and The Law of Attraction. And I’m sitting here thinking, this is all of the stuff that I’ve studied for the past 3 to 4 years.

Rob: [00:51:27] And there’s, uh, you talked about your Ted talk. There’s another a really good Ted talk. I would encourage anyone here to listen to. It’s by Simon Sinek. It’s called The Golden Circle. Okay. And in that, Simon says the goal of doing good business is not to do business with people who have what you want. The goal of doing good business is to do business with people who believe what you believe. So if you want to build a good culture, and if you want to build a team that is going to absolutely kick ass and have fun doing it, you have to work with people who believe what you believe, not people who have what you want. Right? A guy might have the skill set, a guy might have the skill set that you need that you’re lacking. But then, you know, on a personal level, you guys just don’t align with each other. Your beliefs are not in alignment. You know that guy at the end of the day when things get tough, he isn’t working for your company for a greater cause. He’s literally just working for you because he needs the money.

Trent: [00:52:28] You know I love it. Rob Velazquez, Rob, thank you so much for joining us today on the show. Man. Tons of learning in there, people. I got all sorts of great notes. Check it out. Just dropping some great nuggets there. I am going to check out that Ted on the Golden Circle for everyone. Winners find a way show every Friday 12:30 p.m. eastern, 9:30 a.m. Pacific on LinkedIn live, Facebook Live, YouTube live on the Leadership Channel. You can always find our podcast on all the major networks. Check out below. We are having a great retreat coming up in Tulum, Mexico. Only 12 places and I think there’s only ten left, so jump in. That’s going to be right at the end of May after Memorial Day, where we’re going to be talking about how to double to exit your business fast investors and growth event. And I’m telling you, there’s so much good investment going on in Tulum. You’re going to love it. It’s one of the most beautiful places in the world. I can’t wait to get down. And you’re going to be with me and Corey Warfield and I, and it is going to be incredible. Rachel Weaver and PR and talk about scaling your business for everybody else. Rob, thank you so much. And thank you for joining us on the winner’s Find a Way show. We’ll see you next time. Thanks, Trent. Organizations come to me all the time with challenges of execution and communication with their teams. We help build a system through bloom growth and software that gives them simplification and prioritization. I teach, facilitate, and coach these organizations to literally double their value. If you’re interested in training your individual and organizational growth, please email me at Trent at Leadership at Aecom, or click the link below and book a 15 minute call on my Calendly.