All Selling Aside With Alex Mandossian

In 1960, Anthony J. Mahavoric was born in North Hollywood, California. Not sure who that is? Let me give you a hint: his mom remarried a man named Jim Robbins, who adopted young Tony as a 12-year-old. That’s right, today’s episode is all about Tony Robbins. This man has had the most profound influence on the coaching and consulting business, and has changed personal development as we know it. I believe that Tony has had three major inflection points over the course of his career. The first came when he was 17 years old and began working for Jim Rohn. The second came in the early 1980s, when he met John Grinder and started teaching NLP and Ericksonian Hypnosis. Tony’s third inflection point occurred in the early 1990s, when he met Bill Guthy and Greg Renker. My favorite quote of his is just three words long, but carries so much wisdom and insight: “Proximity is power.” If you want to turn your dreams into reality faster, you need to get yourself in physical proximity with people who are playing the game at

In the late 1930s, Patrick McDonald opened a food stand in Monrovia, California. Originally, the stand sold hot dogs, but—as you might guess from his last name—hamburgers were later added to the menu. A few years later, his sons Maurice and Richard moved the entire operation 40 miles east to San Bernardino. “McDonald’s Bar-B-Que” later shifted its focus from barbecue to a streamlined menu of burgers, drinks, and apple pie. The restaurant McDonald’s was born on December 12, 1948. Within a few years, other companies followed this lead and transformed into fast food establishments. Several of these, including Burger King and White Castle, are still familiar and successful today. Ray Kroc entered the picture in 1954. Ray, a milkshake mixer salesman, learned that the McDonald brothers were using eight of his machines in their restaurant, instead of just one like most other restaurants. Intrigued by the success that led to needing so many milkshake mixers, Ray offered to work as a franchising agent for the McDonald

Henry J. Kaiser isn’t talked about in modern business books, the way Elon Musk, Sir Richard Branson, Oprah Winfrey, and J.K. Rowling are. In fact, many (even most) people have never heard of him. This remarkable man, however, deserves acknowledgement and recognition for the incredible things that he accomplished during his lifetime. He was a larger-than-life man with big ideas who created industries that have yet to be matched in any American business endeavor. Henry’s building career began in 1914 with a road construction project in British Columbia. By 1930, he had completed several highway projects in California and Cuba. As his career progressed, he had many incredible accomplishments: He led the contracting consortium commission to build the Hoover Dam, which was completed two years early under his powerful leadership. Kaiser also led the construction of the Bonneville Dam and the Grand Coulee Dam. During World War II, Kaiser’s Pacific Coast shipyards built the famous Liberty Ships, which Winston Chur

You might guess that the best-selling food in America is the hamburger. But if you guess that the second-place food on the list is pizza, hot dogs, steak, or wings, you’d be wrong. In fact, it’s potato chips. Worldwide, they’re second only to rice. Despite the immense popularity of this food, many of us have no idea how it originated. It all started in New England in 1853. George Crum, a chef at a resort, grew frustrated as a guest repeatedly sent back his French fries, insisting they should be thinner and less soft. In his exasperation, Crum sliced a potato as thin as possible, fried it until it was completely crunchy, and sent it out to teach the picky customer a lesson. Instead of learning his lesson, though, the customer was ecstatic. He loved the crunchy, lightly browned, paper-thin potatoes. Soon, other diners started requesting the dish, and it eventually showed up on the menu as a house special. The chips were eventually packaged and sold throughout the region. In 1932, Herman Lay decided to start se

You don’t need to have sales ability to learn sales technique. You just have to memorize sales technique! If you’re intimidated by sales or wish that you had been born a great salesperson, the idea of being able to learn sales technique probably sounds reassuring. You’re in the right place, because that’s exactly what I’ll teach you about today! My friend Ted is known industry-wide as a closer. He closes sales, and seals the deal. He doesn’t do it by being pushy or through manipulation, or even at the end of his presentation. Instead, he uses trial closes and statements hundreds of times during a 90-minute presentation. If you’re bad at sales, trial closes will make you good. And if you’re already good at sales, trial closes will make you great! A trial close is like a seed being planted for your audience to give them an opportunity to give you compliance. I like to cluster them in trios, which takes advantage of the remarkable power of three, as you heard about last week. Tune into the episode to learn more

Once upon a time, Goldilocks stumbled upon a home inhabited by three bears. You know the rest of the story, but do you know the selling and influence lessons it can teach? Today, I’ll tell you this story with some commentary to illuminate its relevance to selling through storytelling. Don’t roll your eyes; instead, do as Marcel Proust recommended and look for discovery by viewing the same landscape through new eyes. You probably remember that Goldilocks always had three choices in the story: three bowls of porridge, three chairs, and three beds. She tried each until she found the one that was just right. What I want to dig into today is the fact that she always had three choices, and why this particular number is so important. You see, if you give someone one option, it’s not a choice. If you give two options, it’s a dilemma. But if you give three options, you’re giving someone the chance to make a discerning decision, and they feel as if they have the freedom to choose. They’re buying; you aren’t selling the

The environment always wins. If you’ve ever had an exhausting day full of too many decisions (and haven’t we all?), you know all too well that willpower is finite. World power, on the other hand, doesn’t run out. World power means designing an environment with just the right balance and harmony to support you and challenge you to grow and get results, so you can rely on your environment instead of your limited willpower. This is why designing your environment sets up a framework for success, whether in business, ethical influence, teambuilding, or even with family and friends. According to Thomas Leonard’s theory, there are nine environments. These surround you, where you’re the unchanging core at the center of a pie chart. The nine environments are: The memetic environment, composed of ideas, surrounds the inner core. The body environment, which is your appearance, clothing, and so on. The self environment, such as your strengths, talents, and character. Your spiritual environment. The relationship environ

When my daughter Breanna was about a year and a half old, she would look up at me after bath time and put her arms up, as if asking me to pick her up and lift her out of the tub. This was a defining moment for me, and I believe it defined her interdependence on me for her future. When she put her arms up, instead of lifting her out of the tub, I would give her my finger so she could grab it and step out of the bathtub with my assistance. This way, she would know how to get to the other side herself. Not surprisingly, she didn’t like this! I figured, though, that if I just lifted her to the other side, she would be codependent on me and wouldn’t learn how to get out of the bathtub on her own. Of course, this is also relevant in other parts of her life! Giving her too much help would only lead to struggle and trouble. She eventually took my finger and climbed out of the tub, banging her knee and ankle in the process. She started to cry loudly, and I held and comforted her. Two days later, my daughter reached up

Let me tell you about Harvey, a 26-year old who decided to go into the envelope business as a salesman. Keep in mind that envelopes are only used once, so people need to buy them over and over. One day, at 5:30 AM, Harvey was sitting in a car with one of the best salespeople in the company, right outside the manufacturing plant of the biggest envelope manufacturer in all the city. Soon, a delivery truck came out of the stockyard. Harvey and his mentor followed the truck, taking notes on where it stopped. This continued for the better part of the morning, before the truck returned to the factory. They did the same thing the next morning, and the next. Within a week, they had a record of over 100 accounts of the top manufacturing company in the area. Once Harvey had his list, he asked his mentor what to do with it. His mentor told him not to try to steal the business away. Instead, Harvey was to go in and acknowledge who they were already buying envelopes from, acknowledge that he didn’t want to steal the busin

I heard this story from Steven Covey in his book First Things First. One day, a teacher was speaking to a group of high-achieving students. The teacher was trying to drive a point home using an illustration that the students would never forget. (I don’t think you’ll forget it, either!) The teacher pulled out a one-gallon wide-mouth glass jar and set it on the table in front of him, and carefully filled it with fist-sized rocks until it couldn’t possibly hold another. The teacher asked his students if the jar was full, and they all said, “Yes!” The teacher then reached under the table and pulled out a jar of gravel. He poured it into the first jar, shaking it to let the gravel sift down among the fist-sized rocks. With a smile, he asked the students again, “Is the jar full?” The class was onto him by now, and the response was, “Probably not.” This time, the teacher brought out a bucket of ocean sand, and dumped the sand into the jar of rocks and gravel, filling all the small spaces. He asked his class again i

The law of precession is the effect of bodies on motion on other bodies in motion, as Buckminster Fuller put it. In other words, for every action you take, there will be a side effect. This is similar to karmic marketing, which you may be familiar with from a previous episode. Just a honeybee doesn’t know the side effect of making honey, you probably won’t know what the side effect will be. The universal purpose of a honeybee is cross-pollination, which sustains life on earth. If the honeybee went extinct, humans would soon follow. However, the honeybee doesn’t realize this universal purpose; it only knows that it’s making honey. Pollination is the precession effect of the honeybee following its instinct. If the bee didn’t move forward to make honey, there wouldn’t be any cross-pollination. The same is true for you! There’s no way to find your true purpose until it finds you. One thing we can learn from the honeybee is that it’s okay not to have full clarity about what your purpose is at first. As long as you

No matter how delighted or disappointed you are in your life right now, you have a verb deep inside of you that wants a way out. What does that mean? Your verb is your one-word language that expresses to the rest of the world who you are, and why you’re here. Discovering what you verb is can cause a meaningful change not only in your own life, but also the lives of those who you interact with. I’ve been an advertising man for over 25 years, and the biggest lesson I’ve learned in that time is that the one thing that makes a good ad great is the same thing that makes a good leader great: movement. Without movement, nothing happens, and permanent change isn’t possible. Movement, of course, is all about verbs! There are three ways that each of us can live. The first option is to live as a noun, and bore people. The second is to live as an adjective, casting doubt and skepticism in people. Finally, we can live as a verb. We’re human beings, but it’s our human doings that create our legacy and our future. No doubt

Once upon a time (although this is a true story), on a dark and bitterly cold winter evening in 1927, a short man was standing on the shore of Lake Michigan and preparing to swim out into the icy waters to drown himself. Why? Because he considered himself a total failure. He had been expelled from Harvard University twice, had been fired from more jobs than he could remember, had a drinking problem, and had recently lost his infant daughter to a disease. The man paused for a moment before stepping into the freezing waters of the lake, and thought back over his life. He realized that despite his perceived failures, his life had been rich in deep knowledge and meaningful experiences. “What if,” he thought, “I did whatever it takes to use my deep and abundant storehouse of knowledge to bring more value to other people?” He decided to see what would happen if he looked at his life as an experiment in making the world work. From then on, he pledged his life to the service of humankind. This experiment, which start

Have you heard of the marshmallow experiment? Even if you have, pay close attention and see if you can spot some distinctions. Years ago, a large group of 4-year-olds was led into a room that looked like a classroom. One wall had a one-way mirror that allowed researchers to watch the children. Each child had a marshmallow put in front of him or her, and was given simple instructions by a researcher: feel free to eat the marshmallow now, or wait to eat it until after the researcher’s return and receive a second marshmallow. Then the researcher left the room. About a third of the kids immediately ate the marshmallow. Another third of the kids held out for a few minutes before succumbing to temptation and eating the marshmallow. The final third of the kids managed to wait the 15-20 minutes until the researcher returned. These kids received a second marshmallow. Fourteen years later, researchers tracked down the now-18-year-olds. The ones who had waited to eat the marshmallow until the researcher returned scored

Let’s start with a story! Once upon a time, a professor approached a boatman for a ride downstream in exchange for a small sum of money. The professor decided to show off his intelligence while they were in the boat, and started arrogantly testing the simple boatman. First, the professor started grilling the boatman about geology, then said that 25% of the boatman’s life is gone simply because he doesn’t understand the subject. Next, the professor scooped a leaf from the water and asked if the boatman understood botany. When the answer was no, the professor claimed the boatman’s life was 50% gone. The professor was so wrapped up in his desire to stump the boatman that he didn’t notice the water starting to get rough and choppy. The professor then pointed at a mountain and asked the boatman if he knew geography. Again, the boatman didn’t, and the professor claimed that the boatman’s life was 75% gone because of ignorance. At that moment, the choppy water became so rough that the boatman lost control of his row

Let me share with you the true story of my mentor, Michael. He was a Princeton honor student and is fluent in many language, but he has overcome obstacles of his own. He faced three disasters: the deaths of his mother, father, and brother within a close time period. Imagine how traumatic that must be. Michael met a gentleman of Indian descent while he was at Princeton, and decided to fly to India to meet this gentleman and get a deeper insight into why so much of his family died. When he landed in India, he couldn’t find the man he was looking for. Instead, he found a taxi driver who had a room for rent in his family home. Michael rented the room, and asked the taxi driver where he could find Buddhists. The taxi driver looked at his watch and said, “You’re about a thousand years too late.” Not surprisingly, Michael wasn’t very happy. He ended up going north to Tibet to study, and got his teaching degree (as well as learning the Tibetan language). Michael came back to New Jersey and continued studying in the s

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. is among the most famous of all US Supreme Court justices. He was born to a prominent boston family, and graduated from Harvard Law School in the 1860s. He then prepared a series of lectures that were published as The Common Law in 1881. Holmes served on the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts from 1882 until his appointment to the US Supreme Court in 1902. During his 30 years serving on the country’s highest court, Holmes became known for his “clear and present danger” argument for the limitation of free speech, illustrated by a reference to a person falsely shouting “fire!” in a theater. Holmes retired in 1932, just after the start of the Great Depression. He has remained among the best-known of all of those who have served on the Supreme Court. Holmes was a prolific writer, and is quoted frequently. My favorite of his quotes, though, is particularly powerful: “I would not give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity o

No one is required to change more than those of us who present ourselves as leaders of educational reform and transformation. And if you’re ethically influencing others, that’s you! Ethical influences reform others, cause permanent change, and transform people. Why do you need to have change in yourself before you can change others? Simply because you are required to model the behavior that you want others to adapt. No one is better known for this than Mahatma Gandhi, who started off as a lawyer and ended up becoming a thought leader. He lived with integrity, which is something that is integrated. if you are integrated with what you say, and do what you say you’re going to do, then you have integrity. If you want true, massive change as you ethically influence others, then you need to live into the advice that you’re giving them. As you’ll learn in this episode, I don’t believe that integrity is inherently either good or bad. By my definition, Gandhi had integrity, but so did Hitler and Stalin. All of these m

Imagine the ideal personal and professional workday. You go to sleep at the perfect time, wake up at the perfect time, you feel completely in control, you own your morning, and you don’t let any interruptions or disruptions to get in the way of getting stuff done. You also block out time at the prime times to get things done in your way, and do not only what’s urgent, but also what’s important. Does that sound like the kind of day you could live? If so, you’ll love this episode about the anatomy of an ideal workday. The ideal workday is about planning. After all, without a plan, it’s impossible to have spectacular achievement. Planning allows you to anticipate your day, and that anticipation allows you to grab control of your day. Prime-timing your day is another key to having the perfect day. This involves blocking out time segments in your day. During these times, you have no distractions and no interruptions, which allows you to own your time. Whether you’re a night owl or a morning glory, I recommend doin

This about avatar identification, not about religion, but I’m going to start off with the story of the Saddleback Church and its founder, Rick Warren. Warren was born in San Jose, California, to a Baptist minister and a high school librarian. He graduated from Ukiah High School in 1972, and went on to study at California Baptist University, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA. Again, this episode isn’t about religion. Instead, it’s about a man understanding who his congregation is, and exploring how this relates to you. After all, you too have a congregation; your following is your congregation. Your congregation is about your prospects and clients. When you understand your congregation deeply, you will understand your business even better than you already do. What Warren did exceptionally well was to simplify the avatar for those who went to his church, or his congregation. Remember that your congregation doesn’t have to be religious. It can be your mailing