Ep 184 - "Tough It Out" With the SalesBot

Hello, hello, hello and welcome back to another episode of Electric Purner Secrets, the Electricians podcast, where me and my esteemed co-host, joseph the sales bot Lucani, go live five days a week to help you master your sales, simplify your pricing and deliver premium level electrical service. We started out this week with a little bit of a mental health, mental awareness, mental toughness Monday whatever you would call it, joe and really breaking down the 75 hard routine, what that was doing for people, how it impacts us, and today I can't wait to get into a little bit more and start relating this to electricians. But even more so your story and how you had to get mentally tough and some of the exercises you did to grow yourself to that 1.3 million, consistently out of your very own service van. Would it be wrong of us to go there today, joe?

No, and I'm so down to make it happen.

All right, how are you doing today, brother?

It's a good day. You know I always enjoy working with you, man. It doesn't ever quite feel like work, even though we're always clocking in. I feel like I'm hanging out with a friend on a daily basis and it just really makes the days better.

Absolutely, man. Well, I can't agree with you. There is still some work. I think just before this podcast episode, I actually said to you oh yeah, just finishing up a couple of extracurricular activities, and I was like wait a minute, no, no, it's working hours and it was work. But yeah, man, feeling that, feeling that some of the stuff we get to do is pretty fun, including helping electricians rise up and make the most of their business. I couldn't agree more Can I just say one little thing that's bugging me today.

Sure, by all means, what's up.

I told you about Hank, the new Great Dane. Right yeah, Izzy's gotten more comfortable. He's barking more.

I haven't missed on our end yet.

It's bark. You haven't heard it yet? No, not yet. Good, good, I'm asking for an ounce of grace here if you do hear it over the calls. Over the coming days, as we try to train that out of the guy, we're going to be running a lot of treats here in this house for the dog's man. To keep it quiet.

It's all good. It's one of those things where, if anyone's watching us on the video and watching us on the live, you can play a game called Spot the Nero Divergent, where, if you have a random loud sound that comes out of nowhere, you'll get to see me almost glitch. So that'll be fun, right.

Yeah, yeah, totally hey. So yesterday we touched on the 75 hard. We didn't talk a lot about the guy who started it. I do want to start by just giving him some due introduction. Not that he's joining us here, but he was a big part of my past too, so I feel I owe that to him. I say past, but he's still having impacts. He's still a mentor of mine. It's just not someone I'm consuming as much as I once did. So the guy's name is Andy Fercella and he's actually from more of the gym scene, as a lot of these mentors tend to come from and become more motivational and influential from that space. But this is another guy who shares something, I think, in common with you, even where in the early days you can actually throw a mattress in his shop and just like survived out of a building just to get things going Now. Did you ever maybe it wasn't exactly that way, but did you ever feel like you were really bootstrapping your business when you guys first got started?

Yes, when we first started off, we made the plunge into joining the business and I was making $300 a month. It wasn't much, and I was trying to pay for a wedding which was coming up in the near future and we were trying to was that?

Does Mel know he's getting married?

to her yeah.

That giant bad joke, all right.

Sorry, no, no, no, it's all good, it's all good. So we were trying to figure out how we're going to pay for a wedding, how am I going to come up with the money for materials to actually do the jobs that we were trying to sell, and then also, how can we make the time to run the business. It was a lot going on, and even at a young age, I mean and once again I was 22 years old there wasn't a lot of life experience about what life really takes and all the things you need to do is set yourself up for it. So there was a lot of hard lessons learned, but the thing that I think was the coolest part of it was I ended up taking a night job so that I would do my business during the day, and I worked in a robotics factory where I would actually help run actually some of the machinery that would do like picking material, and that was what was paying for the material. So we were I was buying tools and I was buying material with my salary from the night job and then getting a couple hours sleep and then going to work with my partner like a zombie, but I did it.

That's tough man. That is a great chair, if we could just like highlight that statement. Hello, crew working in the back I'm speaking to our executive team in the back. No, just kidding, they don't exist. We come here, we don't edit, we just speak with you guys with whatever comes up in our heads with this topic. So there's no team to work on this, but I would highlight that, bold it, make a highlight off it. Absolutely, man, that's huge, that's a huge share, because I think so many of us and if you're with us live, please throw your hand up if you've ever felt like you're bootstrapping your business, in other words, just making it work, just doing anything to change your future, change your path. I've been there. I've been there when the bootstraps kind of come off too and things look up. I've also been there when your bootstrapping and things come off and look down and it's all very tough, it's very difficult to manage and it fits perfectly in line with what we're talking about, this mental toughness topic. So Andy Fursella was a guy like that, really believed in his business. James says, yeah, absolutely, he's been there too, or here there now. Thank you, james, for your vulnerability there. Brother, thanks for joining us. Andy did a similar thing and what it did is actually create a bit of an influencer who's kind of angry and all of his messaging. I think there was a time, joe, when I needed that in my influence. You know what I mean. So we don't, we don't come here and like rah-rah a lot for people. Sometimes we get on some tangent, sometimes there's a little more intestinal fortitude behind what we're saying. Sometimes it's a little more like go do this now. But pretty rarely for us Would you say that's true.

Yeah, I mean, my thing is that I the whole tough guy mentality it's. It's an interesting place to be, but I never saw that as something that I needed, because everything I was getting from others was that tough love as it was.

I didn't need more tough love, I needed direction right, yeah, and I just want to then say like there's a bit of a difference. But there's also a cycle in this learning and sometimes that stuff fits. And for me, at the time of life, I was in when someone said hey, listen to Andy for cella at the MF CEO Podcast, which was the motherfucking CEO, so you're already getting the undertone here. Yeah, he would do an episode like hey, man, if you're not getting up at 5 am To crush the day, what the fuck are you doing? Kind of stuff. Mm-hmm and at the time I was kind of feeling like a bit of a sloth, like I was in a valley, like there was just not a lot happening on the up and out from that valley, and so I think there's a time and a place for that and that's really where 75 hard was born From that place of like rah, rah, inspiration, go do something with your life, go get control of this thing, and that's why I think it's powerful. So, to spin that context back to us here this week, what we're really trying to do is bridge that back to okay, if you're an electrician in that space, without us yelling into the mic or deepening our voice and get real tough about it. Can we just set up like a framework and a challenge to pick people up out of that and get them back on the fucking winds?

Yeah, I actually have a lot of things, because I would did a lot of reflecting the other night thinking about this particular topic and I it was weird because I don't like looking back into my past Because I was a different person and the way my brain works, I have what's known as an identity memory, in that I can look back at a situation Back to when I was in it. But I realized that I'm looking at it through the lens of me now that I'm like man, I wish, I think I could have done things differently. But you also have to remind yourself that when you have those thoughts, I wish I could, but I couldn't at the time, and that's okay. That's a good way of overcoming that regrets.

Interesting and I've seen you actually a number of times. You probably don't notice this, because when you're trying to access like visuals of your old memories, you look up and, right, I think I'm seeing a mirror, yep. And when people watch you do that and you say, hey, I'm just checking, and you look up. The look on people's faces sometimes is actually hilarious.

Yeah, it's. It's weird because not a lot of people know what autism really looks like and I'm gifted in certain ways and I didn't know what it was. But now that I know it, I'm just, I'm just living, this is who I am and I'm grateful to have the gifts I have and I'm dealing with. You know the faults that I also have to come with it.

Yeah, but I also want to pivot there and liken you back to Anyone who's listening by saying, like anyone can follow the path that you chose. Correct, you did choose a great path, brother. Like you're here, mm-hmm, that means you won at some levels, right? Some people want to do and accomplish what you've done, and we believe that actually, you just scrape the surface. As your birthday is coming up, can we talk?

Yes, your age.

Is that okay?

Sure, yeah, I'm gonna be 33.

Gonna be 33. Mm-hmm, so when you were hitting 1.3 million out of your sales van.

I was there's 2019. So I was 29 years old 29, so pre 30 years old.

Do you think you were at your peak in the field?

in the field like you mean, like sales ability, or field as a Totally. So I can actually tell you I've actually tracked in my life the moments in the hills of where it brought me, where I was, so I can give you actually that clear cut if you're open to it.

Yep, can you answer the question first, though, with just a simple yes or no? Were you at your peak?

No.

Okay, please jump in. I believe so.

So I Was Consistently growing in my sales ability from pretty much 2013 to about 2017 on like a slower scale. It didn't really have any dips, it was always upward momentum, but it wasn't like a huge up, it was more like a gradual increase, and I realized that the main thing that was holding me back was I didn't have Personal direction in that I knew I was doing the job because I felt the job needed to be done and Not because my life and calling was this job.

Can I ask a question, and this might seem oversimplified, but what does it mean to do a job that you feel like just needed to be done?

So you got. You know, I loved being an electrician yeah, I liked doing the work and I enjoyed running a business, but it wasn't something that I woke up and I was like this is my life, this is my calling, this is what I want to hang my head on every single day. There was always this part of me that was like there's got to be more than this, like that has to be more. Yeah, and what I was with. The problem that I had was I was identifying Myself with my business. When my business did good, I was good. When my business did bad, I was bad, and that was an unhealthy place to be, because Seasons happen. You know, we all have slow seasons. We all have slow times. We all have peaks in the valley. That happens, but to put your own personal worth on your performance Means that when your performance goes down despite your best efforts, it can really cripple someone. So I had to learn how to step away from that, and what actually helped me step away was I remember 2017, I started getting involved in therapy, and the reason being was I was an angry person, I was drinking a lot, I struggled with alcoholism, and it was one of those moments where I was like you know, something's got to change, something has to change here. And I was willing to put myself and expose myself to that change because I was tired of hiding and I said if there's more to me, there's got to be more to life, or vice versa, if there's more to life, there's got to be more to me, because I don't think this is where I'm supposed to be. And when I started, what I found was I started investing more in my relationship and I started really understanding more of what I wanted, really just meditating on what is it I'm actually trying to get out of this, what really speaks to me. And that's when I started improving. Because when I noticed actually, I started investing in my family and I started I want to have kids. Now I had a reason. There was a purpose again. There was like I want to be a better father. I want to be a better father than what I was exposed to. I want to be better so much so that they don't resent me. And even if they do come to resent me, I can say I truly did my best. And being your best doesn't mean just putting the check on the table. It means saying I'm going to physically be there. So I had to make my business a place where I could not only provide for them financially, but that I could be there physically. And that pushed me to want to get better, and that push is really what created the big jump.

Do you know what? As you're speaking, I just made a connection and you tell me if you agree with this. Therapy in itself is just the pursuit of answers. Looking for understanding even better than answers, and seeking true understanding, not just outside of yourself, but being able to withstand the weight of the mirror, to seek understanding within yourself and how that reflects in your external world.

I would agree with what you're saying. I would agree with that. I want to also put it in the perspective of I was not emotionally, mentally or physically prepared for the therapy journey. I was going on that if I wasn't in that place at that time, I wouldn't have committed myself fully to it, and I feel that that's what a lot of people need to understand.

So sorry, there was an if before that. If you weren't prepared, correct Okay.

Yeah, so the thing was is that it, let's say, sake of argument? I went in in 2017. But let's say I was mandated in 2014. I'm just picking up, picking up times. Just doing the therapy isn't enough. You have to want the outcome enough to be willing to push past hard conversations, right? No one goes to therapy to make friends or feel good about themselves. You go to therapy because you're like I'm done with how this is and I'm willing to fight even myself to get there.

Yeah and I would bet I mean as much as this is becoming more and more commonplace for us to accept that, hey, there's mental health issues out here. Mm, hmm, Like some of the most alpha people I've ever met in my life, I've been shocked to hear like oh yeah, I went to do an oil change in my truck the other day and had a panic attack under it. For some reason, I just all of a sudden imagine this truck falling off the jacks and onto my you know what I mean. Like the toughest people I've ever known and thought, God, I wish I had their mental toughness. I've also come to realize that that was a complete far, something that I was making up and projecting onto them.

Every one of us is made of the same thing. We're all for lack of better words. We're squishy balls of jelly in piloting a mech meat suit. That's really all it is you know what I mean.

That's good. Can you say that one more time?

A squishy ball of jelly piloting a meat suit. Yeah, that's really what it is Like if you think about it. We all have an interior component, right, you can call it the soul, you can call it the spirit, you can call whatever you want to call it, but that and the body are different, and when they work in tandem, it's usually because you've got a singular goal that both speaks to you emotionally and calls you to action in the physical. Yeah, I had that experience and I recognize that for me to truly want what was going on in my life, it was beyond what I could do. My kids, my daughter, my first daughter being born, was that catalyst to push, and the year that she was born was the first year I hit the 1.3. Well, because and what I found was it made me more relatable with people, because I was. I was reading, like you know, parenting books. I was going to parenting classes, I was investing in therapy about it. It was worth doing, it made my life better.

Now that you say that, like our timelines, we've acknowledged, are vastly different, but I don't think we've really discussed in the same space how, where that difference is. And as you say that, I'm thinking you know, I felt like saying you know what my first born daughter saved me too, but it was a totally different time. It wasn't at my peak, it was in my valley, because my first business was an absolute disaster, as many of you already know, and all I could see In that squishy mush pile in my head, everything I could see was shame and failure and like there's one path and it's on fire. I Mean I don't mean the good fire, no, like not a trailing fire not coming over the exhaust, I mean the house is burning. What the fuck do we do now? Pure panic and I, reflecting on it, I feel like there was just months of being in a shell. Mm-hmm like just literally, like hiding cash in my Xbox, like just hiding from the government and the bank and anyone who would call the Contractors, the staff that I employed, even though I paid them. I was afraid to answer their calls, mm-hmm, you don't mean. Like a real place of fear. Man fear, absolute fear. And Then my daughter was actually the rock. That was like a wait a minute, there's still another path. And yet it goes around and up and over the fucking mountain. It's not gonna be easy. Mm-hmm but the old house is burned down and it just feels like that fork in the road has always been present, ever since and at every turn. Where, where my emotions, my anger, my lows and all that is sitting in that old, burned fucking house, joe, and it's right there at the left every time, and I just keep choosing right Because I remember what the fuck that felt like.

I'm with you there.

I'm with you, men and it takes a lot to unpack that kind of shit. It really does. Reflecting back, I honestly can sit here and say I have to Agree with our own coaches who had said you know what? We just find that people who have been down that journey that's self understanding have demonstrated pulling out the mirror and talking through some shit, trying to figure it out Tend to perform better when it comes to sales, when it comes to client success, when it comes to being out there and just putting your best foot forward.

I think there's a really good reason for that, okay, and that is when you feel like there's nothing left to lose, you're willing to make actions that other people who are afraid won't take. That's really what it came down to for me. I mean, I had already considered suicide for years, and when you're at that place between, like, I'm going to live or I'm going to die, and these actions will determine whether I take it or not, that's a big statement for people to take, and I really feel that you need to be in a place of fear, or at least have an experience to what that real fear is like for you to appreciate what grace is like.

Yep, I agree with that John's, with us saying absolutely, and that you know what the bad times, the scary times, make. You appreciate the good times. I appreciate that, john. I share that sentiment with you. I Feel like there's a spin here that we need to touch on, though at some point the fear might be what drives us Mm-hmm, and at some point it's necessary to disconnect from that and Just recognize that you can be driven by goals and strategy and sometimes You're able to make a decision that driving straight towards the fear is actually what needs to happen.

I have a perfect example for this, but I need your permission in order to go there. Okay, because it's super in it. It's super nerdy, but it's.

Man, we're so in deep, I would love a little nerdiness to laugh along you, if I have permission to laugh. If it's that, okay with that, then you've got no problem.

Okay, there is a quote that and I'll say where it's from in a little bit, but I want to say where it comes from and why. Fear attracts the fearful. It attracts the strong, but it attracts the weak. It attracts the innocent, it attracts the corrupt, but fear, fear can be an ally. Now, what that means is that fear is present in all people. It's present in all things. You may look at the tough guy and be like he's got a tough mentality, but he experiences fear. Look at someone who could see if it's a weak person. They experience fear, but it's what we do with the fear and where we allow it to take us that determines its trajectory. Fear to me was a fire. It was a fire that I could hold and I could easily tap into it. But the problem is is when you hold a fire in your hand, the longer you hold it, the more you burn. Fear is a drug, same as anger. When you tap into it, all you find is just more of the same, and it may quickly get you to where you want to go. But you need to look and access things beyond fear in order to reach your best potentials.

Wow, that was deep. That was a mic drop moment, maybe an action item too. I don't even know, joe, I don't even know, brother, do you want to hear where it's?

nerdy.

Please, is it from Star Wars?

It is Star Wars philosophy. Yes. I was like this isn't funny at all well, no, well, the fact is is I tell everyone that I'm covered in sith ink, but really it's just because I'm not a bad person. I just acknowledged a wider view of the world. Yeah, and this is just part of what that touches.

Well, brilliant philosophy, man. I Think that's important. I think everything we've talked about is important. I think we've barely scratched the surface because, as it happens so often, we get down one of these Rabbit holes and realize how important it is down there too. Hmm, can I ask you a hard question right here? Always air. Why do we say on the air? By the way, it's not like because they're old. That's why, yeah, on the fiber. What are you fearful of now? That's our Russian. I'm sorry, I'm sorry to do that here. I'm gonna try to fill the space so we don't leave you blank of avoid everyone. But I've just asked a mic drop question.

No, it's not a bad question to ask. What am I afraid of? I am not sure how to answer that question, because I Believe in something bigger than myself. I believe in a higher power. I believe that Through my actions, I am led to a place where I'm meant to be, for better or for worse, and that all things that I reap or so are direct, reproperous repercussions of that path. So to say that I'm afraid. I'm not afraid of what's in the future, I'm afraid more of what I'm capable of. I'm afraid of myself in a way. And what then? What that means is that I Know I have so much potential and that potential, in the wrong hands, can cause a lot of damage.

Hmm, it's why I take, it's why I take.

I take so much time in spiritual, spiritual reflection. I take time in meditation, I take time to keep myself, even so that I don't become a monster, mmm.

That's good. That's good stuff. I have both a rational and an irrational fear late on us. The irrational fear that we head straight towards, as we've talked about on this, is, honestly, that our help doesn't work, that People will listen and take efforts and not actually see any wins Hmm, and I live with that almost every day. And yet we plow straight towards and through that and even as with all the engagement we've had today Joe, I know you're not looking I've got when I open on it, like Rob Great, rob Galey's with us and he said you know he used to have some Lows and some concerns about his business, as this was about 20 minutes ago, but what he's learned from us and guys like Lloyd and the Rebs group has changed that for him and made his income skyrocket. So, even where there's absolute proof, every corner, like every post, every day, we just get more wins. To date, we're over 2.5 million in coach assisted revenue, just reported wins in our program, and yet I still have the irrational fear that do you know why? And we're not gonna provide value today.

I Think I can tell you why okay, please do. You're a good person With good morals and a sense of justice and honesty, and I do believe that because you see yourself as a leader, you don't want to lead people down the wrong path and you believe in this path and I believe in this path. But there's no worse fear for a leader Then consciously or unconsciously leading people that are on destruction.

Mmm, that's good. Yeah, you probably nailed it. I'll just go ahead and count cancel my next counseling appointment. We solved it there. Here's the rational one, and then I'll shut up that we don't find balance. My rational fear is that we overwork, we detach from our values of health, family, then business, and we never really check the box and stop the madness that is just work, work, work, work, work. That with every goal reached comes a bigger goal to reach, and that that, that that perpetual state of striving is I think Matthew McConaughey said this once eliminates the possibility for arrival.

That's pretty amazing. I think you're able to do that.

Brother, we're going long. We got 90 seconds to the 30 minute mark. How about we crank out a couple of action items from this deep chat today?

I can do that action or all star.

Give me the all star, all star, are you gonna make me start?

Okay, I could be. I could be both of you want like I got him.

Let me go back to this moment of clarity I had earlier.

Mm-hmm.

Where we talked about the heavy weight of the mirror, and this wouldn't be the first time this action items come out, but it's important and it probably should happen more often than we're using it anyway. I. Are you seeking to understand your environment, your results, the reactions around you, your communication, internal and external? Are you seeking counsel? Are you making space to really reflect on that stuff? Because I honestly believe that if you do, or if you did or if you will, your potential will grow with that time spent. I don't think there's bad, bad time when you're in reflection, bad investment of time. Rather, that makes sense.

And actually ties in perfectly what I was gonna talk about.

All right, drop it.

I love it. So my All Star Action is a direct assignment for everyone who's listening, that's willing and wanting to understand their own fear and, even more so, how you can use that fear to propel yourself forward. But it's not an easy exercise. I don't recommend it for the faint of heart. In order to understand fear, you must be willing to bask in it. You must be willing to sit in it, to understand it and to make it welcome into your mind, so it's no longer an enemy, it's just a part of who you are. You cannot be fearful and let that fear at the same time guide your actions. Instead, you need to learn how to be conscious of the fear and accept it for what it is and be able to turn it off or at least walk with it like a friend. The way that I recommend doing that and what worked for me was I would literally sit in deep meditation without any light, without. I'd sit in an absolute black room with no sound whatsoever that I could, and simply just sitting in a meditative position. I would sit and say I'm going to explore my fear and say I'm going to listen and think about all the things that make me afraid, get myself into that panic place and then hold that as long as I can and then climb myself out of it. The reason why I'm saying that is an all-star action is because when we experience those panic moments, a lot of times we think to ourselves we need to shut down and run from this, because this is a problem. But if you can acknowledge that this is just a part of you, a fear-based response based on your own biology whether it's fight or flight, whether it's adrenaline, whether it's whatever it is you'll start recognizing that this isn't an enemy that needs to be defeated, but it's just you being you, and you can't get there unless you're willing to accept your own darkness.

Well, powerful stuff, man. As you said, fight or flight. I'm reminded of Bob the caveman who got eaten by the sabertooth, and Bill never went back to that cave again. Makes sense, that's one of the first examples I have of the flight right. So, guys, this has been. Julie had said my fight or flight is screaming. John Barnes, thank you for joining us. Really powerful contributions today, brother. Thank you everyone for engaging. This has been another episode of Electric Nurse Secrets, the electricians podcast, in fact, episode 184,. Just this morning, joe I hadn't said it yet we broke through 30,000 downloads. That was not from this Facebook page, but actually our Apple, our Google or Spotify, so you can listen to us, get us wherever you want after, not just when it's live, but catch the replay, so you're never missing this value. And I promise we'll try to keep them short so you can get us between the jobs too. It's been another episode and you have our eternal grace. Thank you, joe, for joining and being so vulnerable today. Thanks everyone for listening. We'll talk to you soon.

I'll look forward to seeing you soon.