In this week’s episode of The Secrets of Business Mastery Podcast, Mike Agugliaro interviews J Massey, who is a true American success story. In just six years, J went from struggling to provide for his family to an impressive portfolio of 300 units that includes residential and commercial properties, as well as private notes and mortgages. J has built a booming real estate investing business using very little of his own cash or credit. In this podcast you’ll find out why sales isn’t a four-letter word, why it’s important to fail fast, fail forward and fail frequently, and why you should start before you are ready.
Main Questions Asked:
• What was your mind like when you got to the point of, “I need to see a way out”?
• Tell me about the dark time and how you broke out of that.
• Talk about raising capital or what you have done to do business without having any money.
• What would you do differently if you were to start all over again?
• Was there a game changing moment in your career?
• What are the things you’ve learned about sales?
• Give us a couple of goodies on how to get and think about capital.
• Do business owners today have the fear of getting the ‘no,’ or is there other intimidation when asking for capital?
• What do you want to tell business owners today?
Key Lessons Learned:
• When you can move at the speed of instruction, you will take action on items you wouldn’t ordinarily take action on.
• Most business owners focus on what they don’t have. You need to ask yourself what would happen if you were forced to find a way to operate. What would you do?
• We all have fear of stepping into the greatness we were born to be.
• Until we are willing to let the greatness come out, then we may not discover what’s inside.
• An excuse is just a form of fear. We tend to pick excuses that our friends around us will justify.
• A valid excuse has to be something that someone has never overcome.
The Path To Becoming:
This is an 8-step process to get to where people will entrust capital to you.
1. Desire – Must be ‘I want to’ to make it happen.
2. Learn how to properly use and package your number one asset (time).
3. Develop skills that count.
4. Get relationships.
5. Develop credit and credibility.
6. Do business in the form of getting cash.
7. Build and produce assets.
8. Be a person of significance.
Fail Fast, Fail Forward, and Fail Frequently
• Very few business owners get it right the first time, and as a society, we don’t teach people how to fail.
• Business owners are who they are because they were willing to fail and interpret that failure as feedback. The best advice is to use that feedback to make corrections and try again. Repeat the process until it works.
• If we don’t give ourselves the opportunity to get it wrong, then we won’t have the opportunity to get it right.
Sales Isn’t A Four Letter Word
• Sales isn’t about closing the deal, it’s about opening the relationships to possibility.
• Learning how to sell and raise capital is important, as well as gaining access to other people’s resources, such as time, knowledge, and money.
• J believes everyone loves sales, but what they actually don’t like is ‘not’ selling.
• Having the “I don’t like sales” mindset isn’t going to help you. What you need to figure out is who to sell to.
• Sales comes down to learning how to communicate your vision. It is essentially a service so there must be an equal exchange of value.
• The major reason people don’t enjoy the process of sales is that they aren’t trying to solve a problem but are simply trying to earn money.
Capital
• Money gives you access to the intellectual property (goods and services) of other people. It is just a tool and medium of exchange that facilitates transactions.
• Sometimes people just want to participate in the creation process, and are willing to provide the capital to do so.
• Capital is a tool in the hands of entrepreneurs that allows them to create, however, we also assign emotional weight.
• When business owners ask for capital, they have the fear of ‘no,’ and ask ‘what happens if I lose it?’ Or think to themselves, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing.’
You need to focus on the systems of sales and the team behind the systems, as well as whose job it is to protect the capital. Remember, as a business owner, it’s not always about you.
