Persistence Pays With Captain Jim Palmer

[00:00:00] Jim Palmer: I was planting the seeds, nurturing them, whatever that relates to. And then all of a sudden, you know, cause people buy when they're ready to buy, not because you need a client and you need to pay your rent. Right. So all of a sudden, all those relationships I'd been nurturing for 12 months started happening and ended up growing a successful first, first business.

[00:00:18] Jim Palmer: And, but if I had given up at seven months, nine months, what if I gave up at 11 months?

[00:00:24] Are you looking to improve your sales skills without compromising your values? Welcome to Sales Made Easy, a podcast for business and personal growth. Join Harry Spaight, author of Selling With Dignity, your Formula for Life-Changing Sales Results as he hosts sales experts and business owners who share their journeys of personal growth and business success without resorting to pushy sales tactics.

[00:00:50] Now, here's your host, Harry

[00:00:54] Harry: We are going to talk entrepreneurship with a one and only captain, [00:01:00] Jim Palmer, the dream business coach. Jim and I met recently and Jim has lived a pretty interesting life. And the last bit of it, he has been journeying on a.

[00:01:12] Harry: Boat living the life as a captain. And we're going to talk a little bit more about that. But Jim is a business coach. He helps people to grow their business. Obviously he helps with a mindset and a ton of different things. So we're going to talk about that today. So Jim, welcome to the sales made easy podcast.

[00:01:32] Harry: What's the good

[00:01:32] Jim Palmer: word. Great to connect with you, Harry, you know, I love doing these interviews and I like seeing people sometimes stumble over ridiculous introduction, you know, you know, they go and I'm not gonna be 1 of the people who goes, oh, that's so nice of you to say that. Because, you know, we wrote the words for our introduction, but you're right.

[00:01:53] Jim Palmer: It's, it was such a pleasure to meet you. And I meet an awful lot of people on my own podcast of which you're going to be a guest [00:02:00] of mine next week as we're doing this. And we really hit it off. So I'm, I'm excited for the introduction and to share with your audience. Yes,

[00:02:07] Harry: me too. So for those of you, I should have like a bloopers because I totally butchered the introduction earlier.

[00:02:15] Harry: So we just did a do over, which I just said, I'll speak from the heart because that's really my best. All right. So we're going to talk about A couple of things here. We were chatting about one was mindset and having skin in the game. I think there's a number of people out there who are looking to grow their business as an entrepreneur, maybe even to get started, but don't necessarily want to put skin in the game.

[00:02:40] Harry: So let's start there. What's the value of putting skin in the game and putting things on the line here to

[00:02:45] Jim Palmer: grow a business. I mean, being an entrepreneur today is nothing more than building a website. You can get business cards for free at Vistaprint. You can do so much and call yourself a business owner.

[00:02:57] Jim Palmer: But unless you're generating revenue, possibly, [00:03:00] you know, supporting a family or a staff or, or whatever that looks like, it's, there's really very little risk compared to, we'll call it yesteryear. A lot of the people that I work with are, we'll say middle age or on their second half, so to speak. Worked a corporate job, Harry, for awhile, and they want to do something else.

[00:03:19] Jim Palmer: And they've, they've created a pretty nice standard of living. Let's say they got one house, 2. 3 kids, however that works, two cars in the garage, maybe, maybe they have a summer home and a boat, but I'm going to be an entrepreneur now, but I'm not going to disturb what I have now. I'm not going to let my dream of being a business owner interrupt the lifestyle of my family.

[00:03:39] Jim Palmer: Unless you're like wealthy and you got a lot of money, you know, set aside, it's it's a recipe for disaster. A lot of times, you know, in the last I was doing a speech about, I'm going to say, 6, 7 years ago. And the person before me was referencing balance of life or life balance. How do you balance life as an [00:04:00] entrepreneur?

[00:04:00] Jim Palmer: You know, and I said, no, no disrespect. I mean, that's, that's a worthy goal is to have a balanced lifestyle. I said, but let me, let me give you what I'm talking about as far as being committed to growing your business. So let's say you're, you're five years in two years in, and you've been trying to get this new client and you've been nurturing this relationship for a while, and it's Thursday evening, it's five o'clock, you're getting ready to go home and the phone rings.

[00:04:28] Jim Palmer: And it's this person. He says, Hey, Jim, it's John. I just flew in from San Diego. I didn't tell you initially, cause I was going to fly right out, but my plane got canceled. I got to stay here overnight, fly out in the morning. Would you like to have dinner and tell me about your company? I know you've been after me for a while.

[00:04:42] Jim Palmer: What are you going to do? Sorry, John, I got to go to my ballerina recital or my T ball game. No offense to both of those are great things, but to me, I would have to take that gig. I don't know if that makes me a, you know, whatever you want to call me, but. That's a game changer. And that's just [00:05:00] an example.

[00:05:00] Jim Palmer: Other people say, Oh, I'm going to put in 10, 000 and see what happens. Well, okay, 3 years down the road, you're at, you're at 9, 999. And you've got an opportunity to maybe exhibit somewhere where you're going to be in front of a lot of prospective clients. What are you going to, are you going to put it on a credit card or what are you going to do?

[00:05:17] Jim Palmer: So people have these, they set these parameters. I realized. A little voice in my head said, you're going way long on question number one, but they have these parameters, whether it's about courage, money invested, what kind of change you're willing to make in order to have that dream business. Harry, I know John was my fictitious story there.

[00:05:36] Jim Palmer: Harry, I know you've heard the expression. That you know, to, to the effect that you're willing to put skin in the game and accept risk and change and, and work for a certain period of time at a very intense level. So you can live a wonderful life after that. So a lot of people don't want to go through that whole.

[00:05:56] Jim Palmer: It's like, when you're, if you're a doctor, you know, a lot of people may [00:06:00] get a 2 year degree for your doctors. I think they go to school for, like, 9 years, 11 years, whatever. And people accept the fact that I'm going to be a doctor. There's that whole period. Of school training, you know, internship, enormous debt, but then they get the lead usually a pretty nice life.

[00:06:15] Jim Palmer: Why is it different? If you're an entrepreneur who does copywriting or sales training or, or coaching, why aren't you going to go through the the crap? So, sorry, that's question one, very long answer. Oh my goodness. We

[00:06:26] Harry: have time for two more questions, apparently. No, that's a great answer. I love it. I mean, it's like the time limit too.

[00:06:34] Harry: It's like, I'll give this six months or whatever, some ridiculous timeframe. And yeah, you know, if there's listening, finding musician, find a small business that's successful, see the number of years that they put in their overnight success. If it was only six months, man, there wouldn't be anywhere near as many failed businesses after five

[00:06:57] Jim Palmer: years.

[00:06:57] Jim Palmer: Right. Part of my, my backstory, [00:07:00] which is now all these years later, my Folklore, I guess, is my entire first year was revenue free. That's my fun way of saying it took me a year to get my first paying client. Well, what did I do after month one, month two? Well, it's a little longer than I thought. Six months in, this kind of sucks, but do I give up now?

[00:07:17] Jim Palmer: I kept saying to myself, how ridiculous would it be for me to quit now? After putting in six months, my next, my first client's right on the court by month 11, I'm a little. Desperate. I actually took a couple of part time jobs like at night and stuff. So it wouldn't interrupt my ability to go knock on doors and get customers.

[00:07:32] Jim Palmer: But I did whatever I could do to support myself until my first client, then the second, and it really happened, you know, in month 12 and then 13, it started growing and that, that, to me, I look at that now with the clear eyes of, of hindsight. The clear vision I should say, I was a farmer. I was prepping the field.

[00:07:50] Jim Palmer: I was planting the seeds, nurturing them, whatever that relates to. And then all of a sudden, you know, cause people buy when they're ready to buy, not because you need a client and you need to pay your [00:08:00] rent. Right. So all of a sudden, all those relationships I'd been nurturing for 12 months started happening and ended up growing a successful first, first business.

[00:08:09] Jim Palmer: And, but if I had given up at seven months, nine months, what if I gave up at 11 months? And I go get a job and then the, you know, the big chamber of commerce, Hey, Jim, we want you to do a newsletter for us. That would have been horrific.

[00:08:21] Harry: Right? Yes. And you know, if you think about that, as far as getting the job, you just don't know when it's like, I compare it in the book to just going on a hike.

[00:08:35] Harry: And you're looking for this beautiful view and you're climbing them out and then you just get tired. You're saying, I can't go any further. And then you meet someone that's coming down and they say, it's just around the corner and they give you that little oomph to just pick it up so that you keep going.

[00:08:50] Harry: But in this. Yeah. There is no one really knows. It's just like, you got to have faith that you keep doing the right things and having conversations and [00:09:00] doing the activity.

[00:09:01] Jim Palmer: That's true. It's and it's like that. As a matter of fact, my wife and I went on vacation up around the great lakes and we're I think we were by oh, no, we're on Mackinac Island in northern Michigan and riding our bikes around the island.

[00:09:15] Jim Palmer: Then everybody pulls over and you hike up the sink. Well, my God, I was already getting pooped halfway up this pretty steep, steep climb. So to me, I'm like, is it worth it? Are we almost there? Is there an open bar up there? I just like chit chat with the people. A couple of people go, you got miles to go.

[00:09:32] Jim Palmer: Somebody else says it's worth it. Keep going. But those conversations, by the way, can come from being in a mastermind group or some sort of, you know, being an entrepreneur can be very lonely, so you need to surround yourself with other people and hopefully other people who are further ahead than you are, because, you know, you, you can be pulled ahead with their experience and words of encouragement and things to look out for.

[00:09:56] Harry: Yeah, that's a great point. Yes. You and I are so alike on that. [00:10:00] I'd be on a hike and I'd be saying, is the seven 11 right around the corner or something, people look at me as like totally disgusted. So yeah, yeah. That's my sense of humor, but yes. So the mastermind, let's just talk about that. What, for those who don't know, talk, so share, what is a mastermind for those who don't know?

[00:10:19] Jim Palmer: Mastermind is a group of people you know, in the entrepreneur space, there's masterminds, which could be all the same people. A friend of mine runs a mastermind for jewelers. So it's all jewelers. I run a dream business mastermind, which has men, women, online, offline, every different niche, everybody from beginners to my largest client was doing 34 million, everything in between, because we can all learn from each other.

[00:10:42] Jim Palmer: We can encourage each other. Bring somebody along sometimes somebody who's very seasoned can learn something from somebody who's very, let's just call it naive. Like, hey, did you ever think of this? Because they don't know any better. So they blurted out. It's a great idea. So a mastermind is a collection of people all kind of pulling for [00:11:00] each other.

[00:11:00] Jim Palmer: But sharing was it? It wasn't Jim Rohn. It was the man who wrote Think and Grow Rich, name escapes me at the moment. Napoleon Hill. There you go, Napoleon Hill. You're, so you're the collection, you're, you're going to be the, the average of the five people that you spend the most time with. That actually might've been Jim Rohn.

[00:11:15] Jim Palmer: That's Jim Rohn. I've got all my old guy quotes down. There you go. But, but a mastermind is, I mean. I joined my first mastermind and I was still very cash poor in the early days. It was 400 a month, but I knew here's what I did know. I knew I have an intense work ethic. I'm in this to win it. And I figured if I can get an idea or two from some other smart people, I would implement the heck out of it.

[00:11:39] Jim Palmer: In third month, I was earning more than 400 additional revenue in my business to pay for the mastermind. It was actually, I had a, my second business was called No Hassle Newsletter. Somebody said. What about no hassle social media? I'm simplifying it, but they said, what if he took all the content you're creating over here and did a little bit of spin and do something for social media?

[00:11:58] Jim Palmer: I mean, this goes back like [00:12:00] 2010. So I had a program called no hassle social media. I ran it for 5 years over 6 figures, social media change. So I kind of kind of let it morph. But That came from a mastermind and people are like, Oh, I get masterminding, but I'm just, I'm in a non paid version. Well, I guarantee you, if you're in a non paid, we'll call it a mastermind.

[00:12:22] Jim Palmer: It's more like maybe an accountability group or something like that. And, and, you know, you come together every month, somebody's got an important sales meeting. Boom, they're going to the sales meeting. You if there's no investment, no skin, here we are with skin in the game again, but if you got skin in the game and, or, you know, I.

[00:12:39] Jim Palmer: I don't rule with an iron fist far from it, but I, I do say you're going to get out of this what you put into it. So if you come to our mastermind meetings, only when you need something and then disappear, you know, I usually have a polite conversation off, you know, off the air, so to speak, but, you know, people, people will come and support each other.

[00:12:58] Jim Palmer: And it's that, it's that [00:13:00] encouragement that is often it's a very, very big difference maker. Yeah, I like it. How,

[00:13:05] Harry: so if you have a large group, how, I mean, how many people are typically in a

[00:13:10] Jim Palmer: mastermind that you run? I have 27 right now. Okay. I've had 36 was the largest and you know, I've had as small as 20.

[00:13:19] Jim Palmer: It's okay because most of the people that work with me do, I do one on one calls with them and coach them privately. And then I host a group call every month and I, on average, I get maybe 14 to 20 people that come to a group call, but not everybody speaks. Some people are just listening while they're working.

[00:13:36] Jim Palmer: Some people, and I'm okay with that. Initially, when I started the group in 2009, I'm like, this person hasn't been on in a while and this person doesn't speak up, this person's always listening. And then when I'm talking to them privately, Jim, I just get so much out of those calls, said you ought to speak up now, I'm just not that, and I'm okay with that, you know, it's like, everybody's different, but if this person contributes, we have a private Facebook group.

[00:13:57] Jim Palmer: If this person, somebody says, Hey, what's a good resource for [00:14:00] this? And that quiet person usually says, Oh, you want to go here? This is what I use. I'm okay with that.

[00:14:05] Harry: Okay. So you've got the master. So basically your business is if you could describe it is that you're coaching people one on one and then the mastermind is for those.

[00:14:16] Jim Palmer: Individuals and that's my main business say that's what has afforded me the lifestyle to travel for five years on that beautiful boat over my head, right there called it floating home and and when my wife left her job, which was pretty stressful in 2016 so long as I had good wifi, which was my challenge on the boat, I had all these hotspots and stuff.

[00:14:36] Jim Palmer: So I keep working but I, you know, at the time I, I had five different online businesses. I'm down to. Free right now, but my coaching business is my main revenue. I've been working three days a week for, for seven years now, just figured out a way to structure that business. So Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I'm doing all my calls.

[00:14:56] Jim Palmer: And then, you know Friday through Monday, if [00:15:00] we're on the boat, we could be traveling and park myself Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and do my work.

[00:15:07] Harry: All right, great. Well, good for you. You're living the dream and a lot of people think, well, they can get started and just work 3 days a week. What would you

[00:15:17] Jim Palmer: say to them?

[00:15:18] Jim Palmer: Some people might be able to do that. ? I don't think many people start at ground 0. But I did have a client, interestingly enough, he was a HVAC guy, grew a very successful business, and then he joined my program because he wanted me to show him how to run a group training program. And I showed him how to do that.

[00:15:37] Jim Palmer: He sold his main business and, and ran his coaching business for five years and sold that for a ton of money. Now he lives on the beach in New Jersey. But He, he got going pretty quickly, but then again, he had a very successful track record. In other words, in Dan Kennedy world, he had a herd, which means your community, your followers, your fans, et cetera.

[00:15:58] Jim Palmer: So he had a bunch of people [00:16:00] that he already, that wanted to be in his coaching program. If somebody starting a coaching program today, you're going to be working a lot more than three days a week for a while, you know, until you build up momentum. When I started in 2009, my program was either 97 a month or 197 a month.

[00:16:17] Jim Palmer: I have programs now at 500 a month 1, 800 a month and 2, 500 a month. So I didn't start there. I mean, it's pretty rare if you're going to do that, unless you've got an enormous track record with a long, very good list of followers, fans, et cetera. Yeah,

[00:16:35] Harry: exactly. And so what would be your suggestion for people to get the fans?

[00:16:41] Harry: What's, what are some of the things that they can be doing? I know you do them.

[00:16:45] Jim Palmer: Well, it is, it's all about your, it's all about your very attractive brand. And what I call very, very creative and bold marketing, right? So so there's 2 things you can do. You can go out and [00:17:00] acquire the skills and the experience to be the best at what you do, or you could have a decent skill set, but you then acquire the skills on how to be known as the best at what you do.

[00:17:12] Jim Palmer: See, I never went to school. I, I, I didn't even, I don't even have a college degree. I almost had a college degree, but I decided to go to work and get married and have kids. But so I never went to school for desktop publishing or writing or, you know, things like that. But in 2000, in 2001, I started my first business writing and designing newsletters for companies.

[00:17:34] Jim Palmer: I had done that in my prior jobs and I was pretty good at it. But I was, I would consider myself a hack at desktop publishing and design, but I created some templates that absolutely work when I created no hassle newsletters. I had over, I've had over 1200 small business owners paying me monthly to use those.

[00:17:55] Jim Palmer: And the reason there's a lot of reasons for that success, but I, I [00:18:00] anointed myself or branded myself the newsletter guru. People thought, well, he's the newsletter guru. He must be the best. Right? Forget John. Who's got 6 years of Photoshop and Illustrator and this that Jim's just, but Jim's a great marketer.

[00:18:17] Jim Palmer: So I grew a very successful business. Well, twice in the newsletter business. So you, you want to have a very, very good brand and then market it. You know, using what I call my million dollar platform, and it's many different things. Harry, as you know, so you got a great website. It's very robust blog because blog makes it SEO friendly.

[00:18:38] Jim Palmer: If you're at your blogs correctly, you should have a podcast. You should be a guest on podcast. You should be doing videos. I did videos every week for five years starting in 2009 when that little Kodak flip camera came out for like a hundred bucks. Wow. That was the game changer before then you needed 3, 500 hours to shoot a video.

[00:18:55] Jim Palmer: Not anymore. Yeah. So I, I only missed two weeks in five years. I [00:19:00] started my own podcast almost six years ago, almost, I think getting close to 600 episodes. I've written well now seven books, six books that are framed and then my. New book, which you know about called Sir first published about a month ago.

[00:19:15] Jim Palmer: So being an author, I learned how to be a speaker, which was my lifelong fear. I mean, I almost didn't graduate high school because I wouldn't get up in history class and read out of the history book. I'd be sick that day, but everybody had to reach. I don't know. I was it was and I even grew a pretty good career.

[00:19:33] Jim Palmer: Figuring out how to do my job and avoid speaking in front of groups. But then when I became an entrepreneur and especially when I started writing books, it became painfully obvious. I need to solve that. So I did solve it, did a bunch of things. We'll bore you with all that, but I turned into a very good speaker.

[00:19:49] Jim Palmer: I did like 34 gigs in about 13 months that brought in, I don't, I don't mind saying this over a million dollars in coaching because I was out there on different stages, [00:20:00] not saying, Hey. By my coaching, I'm really smart, but by doing conversations, almost like we're doing now, sharing. This is what I know.

[00:20:07] Jim Palmer: This is what I know how to do. Here's some experience I have. And that makes you attractive to people. I used to tell people I'm not a good, if they say I'm not a good speaker. I said, you almost have to really try to suck enough to take away the power you get by being either in the front of the room or on the stage.

[00:20:24] Jim Palmer: And if you're an author, your book has to really stink to lose the credibility you have just by being an author. But if you're an author. And you're speaking on the stage. You've got credibility that very few people have. And if you do learn how to be a good speaker, you're going to grow a very successful business.

[00:20:42] Jim Palmer: That's for sure.

[00:20:44] Harry: Yeah, it's really great. The, when it comes to writing a book, you've written seven, but I think a lot of people are intimidated by the idea of writing a book, does the book need to be like a war and peace? [00:21:00] Number of, they go by a number of words, not by the number of chapters. I used to think, well, I only got so and so number of chapters and someone said, well, it's the word count that matters, but what's your thought on word count and the size

[00:21:14] Jim Palmer: of the book, I rarely disagree with the host, but I, it's not quite the word count or the page count it's.

[00:21:21] Jim Palmer: If, if somebody is going to read it, you know, we've all read page turners. I used to read like James Patterson and other like novels, CIA type stuff. Very engrossing. It's like, God, it's 1130 at night, but I want to read one more chapter, that type of book. Yeah. So when I started writing, my first book was like a little over 200 pages.

[00:21:40] Jim Palmer: My latest book. Right here. My latest book, Sir, first is 50 pages. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Somebody can read this in one sitting. Very important lesson. The last six books that I've helped my own mastermind members write for their business were in the 50 [00:22:00] to 70 page range. Well, how do you do, how do you like tell your whole story?

[00:22:04] Jim Palmer: This isn't about your life story. This is about, again, this is, this is who I am. This is what I can do. This is how I've helped other people. This is what you should do in your business. By the way, I invite you to see if I could help you do that. That's the message in a 50 to 60 page book. And if you look at a lot of books today, the whole reason to write a book like that, in my opinion, with somewhere between 50 to 70 pages is that's enough to tell a story.

[00:22:32] Jim Palmer: To get people to want to know more. And to at least make a phone call or shoot you an email. Hey, I just read your book. Seems like you got some experience here. This is my story. This is my challenge. Do you think you can help me? If you write a 400, 200 word, 200 page book, they're not going to read the whole thing, first of all.

[00:22:49] Jim Palmer: I learned firsthand when I, when I could barely afford it, I hired an expensive editor with my first book, magic newsletter marketing, they said, Jim, it's a good book, but it needs to. [00:23:00] Be completely reorganized. I said, what do you mean? I kind of went from soup to nuts about how to write and design. And they said, nobody gets through the first one third of most books.

[00:23:10] Jim Palmer: Think about that. I said, yeah, that's interesting. If I'm reading business books and I get one or two nuggets, I'm like, okay, I got enough of this book. Let me get onto the next book in my to be read pile. Right. So you have to put the good stuff or the hook up front and you can put more in there when you Write a 50 page book.

[00:23:29] Jim Palmer: You work really hard. It's almost all good stuff. Like, I'll use Twitter, for example, which is kind of like a cesspool right now. But in the early days in Twitter, I forget if it was 40 or 60 characters or 30, but I would take a message that I was putting on other social media. I'd try and put it in Twitter too, too long, too long.

[00:23:48] Jim Palmer: Cut this, cut this, cut this. It really forced me. To give a very succinct message with as few words as possible. I never forgot that. And with some of my clients today, they say, Jim, [00:24:00] what do you think about this for a headline? What I'll say to them is every word is worth 500. So if that word on the second line is worth 500 bucks, leave it in.

[00:24:11] Jim Palmer: Well, I can live without that one. So you start. Peeling it back to the very essence of a great headline. Same thing with a book. You peel it back to the very essence of what's most important. What do you want your prospective customer to know? And it, believe me, it doesn't start with, I was born June 14th, 1958.

[00:24:33] Jim Palmer: I then went to high school, but, and then I got into drugs. I ended up living under a bridge, but then a gentleman came by and showed me how to do this next thing. You know, I'm making millions of dollars and this is how I can show you how to do it. That book, that's not the book you want to write. Oh,

[00:24:48] Harry: I think we're on the same page.

[00:24:51] Harry: This yeah, so good. The, the ideas, so I wrote a book. Not really knowing what I was going to do with the book, [00:25:00] but the next book I write, I think I'm going to do exactly what you just described because there's just, just the idea of the thought of writing a book for the sake of writing a book does not appeal to me.

[00:25:13] Jim Palmer: Well, see that, but that's what a lot of people, entrepreneurs, I'll just go and stay in our world. They want to do that because they know they should write a book. Well, let me check that box off. It's kind of like putting on your, becoming a speaker. You can become a speaker and, and work towards an elegant speech that gets you a standing ovation, or you can give a very good speech that leads people to rush the back of the room, say, I want to buy your stuff.

[00:25:42] Jim Palmer: I'm not all about ego and gratification of a, of a standing ovation, which fades by the time you hit your first traffic jam on the way home. I learned how to speak what's called sell from the stage. I can give a speech, which doesn't say it doesn't like hit them over the head, like Ginsu [00:26:00] knives here, you know, get two for one or anything, but I can give a speech, which will have people like, wow, that was great.

[00:26:06] Jim Palmer: How do I work with you? That's a different kind of speech. That's what I learned how to perfect. But that's the message in the book. I'll give you a quick example. One of my one of my clients, he actually passed away last year. He was a chiropractor and he didn't just like do, you know, the 75 adjustments.

[00:26:24] Jim Palmer: He had this machine. It cost him like a million dollars or. A couple hundred thousand, which is pretty good spread, I think, but it helps stretch the spine, not like with machines, but just with gravity. And it's amazing how so many of the nerves that go through there were relieved and it released pain, et cetera.

[00:26:43] Jim Palmer: But the cost of the machine and it took about 12 or 15 visits. So the price for this service was about five grand. That's the investment. A lot of people would say, I don't have it. I want the So I helped him write a book and just like [00:27:00] I would coach him on how to talk to patients when they say, I can't afford it.

[00:27:04] Jim Palmer: A lot of chiropractors might say it's worth it though. Isn't it worth it to be pain free? No. What I would say what I taught him in the sales capacity, but also put in the book. It is a lot of money. I agree with you. Agree with them, show empathy, but then say, this is this is why I think it's worthy of your investment.

[00:27:25] Jim Palmer: You got the grandkids. I'm sure you want to get on the floor and play with them and not get 2 people to help you off the ground. I'm sure you understand that you've been struggling in your job. You've told me for 10 years. We can take care of this. Right? And so I showed him how to do that. And in the book, we walked through this 5 step program and each way we gave it another what another reason this.

[00:27:48] Jim Palmer: Court or the program would be beneficial, but then we tied it in with a couple of patient testimonials, usually the first name with just the last letter because of, you know, HIPAA or something. But, and we said, this is so, but [00:28:00] boom. And so in about 60 pages, they fully understood how it works, why it works.

[00:28:06] Jim Palmer: And it was backed up, almost weaved through like a beautiful crochet. It was weaved through with these patient success stories. So by the end of it, It helps people over that hump. So he did a couple things. Actually, I'll give you one more quick example of why you want a book like that. So one of my, one of my current clients is a she's a franchise.

[00:28:27] Jim Palmer: She's a franchise recruiter. She's independent. So very much like a residential real estate person. She doesn't get paid unless she matches up. Somebody wants a franchise business with somebody selling one. So we helped her write a book, a short book. We developed this whole strategy around how and why you want to franchise business.

[00:28:49] Jim Palmer: And so everybody that calls her office to talk with her gets mailed a copy of the book before they get on the phone. So somebody can talk to her assistant and get a little information. I'm going to schedule you with [00:29:00] Kate for next Tuesday and boom, that book would go in the mail. And so they'd have that book.

[00:29:04] Jim Palmer: The other thing she's done, which I encourage her to do is she took that book and mail it to about. 30 franchisors, so they get to know who Kate Ross is. So now she's helping to educate both the franchise community and people interested in franchise, why they want to work with her. So that's a, that's another reason you want to have a book like that.

[00:29:23] Jim Palmer: And again, the book was not Kate saying I was born in, you know, 19, whatever it was, it was what, this is what you want to look out for. These are some of the pitfalls of buying a franchise. These are some of the benefits of buying a franchise. And by the way, we will walk through and hold your hand every step of the way.

[00:29:38] Jim Palmer: Essentially, that's how the per book is written. Oh, yeah,

[00:29:42] Harry: that sounds great. Super helpful. All right. So the speaking, I mean, I find this really interesting. So I'm thinking about Toastmasters where people go not that I'm speaking negatively of Toastmasters, but yeah [00:30:00] this is different than Toastmasters, right?

[00:30:02] Harry: The type of speaking. I

[00:30:03] Jim Palmer: applaud people who go to toast. I went to a couple of meetings. I went through and paid back in the day. It was like 1, 200 to go through the Dale Carnegie program, which is like 12 weeks. I did a lot of things, including hypnosis. I mean, I. Kick my fear to the curb. And then I started my first speech.

[00:30:20] Jim Palmer: I was in front of 18 people. I've spoken in front of hundreds of doctors. But the thing is when you go to Toastmasters Dale Carnegie or speak in front of the chamber, that's to get that's to build up your reservoir of courage. But it's also to try a few things out. It's like a comedian who might go to a small club and try out some new material because you don't want to fail in front of 400 doctors before I went in front of 400 doctors.

[00:30:45] Jim Palmer: I spent about a year and a half doing these other gigs and building up there. By the time I got in front of this gig with 400 doctors, I walked away with 60 grand after one hour from enough people wanting to buy my stuff, my courses and my newsletter programs, but [00:31:00] that you don't start there. So go to Toastmasters, go to all that stuff, learn how to be a good speaker.

[00:31:05] Jim Palmer: Just recognize if you're an entrepreneur who has courses. Books, programs whatever services you're selling, you can learn how to sell those from the platform, but it's a very different speech than you might learn at one of those organizations. So I applaud them. Just recognize one of my clients, the in fact, I mentioned him earlier in the interview, Harry, he, he he's a very successful jeweler.

[00:31:33] Jim Palmer: And he says, I'd love, I'd always want to have a mastermind. So I helped him create a mastermind for jewelers. And he very proudly on his, one of his early calls to me said, yeah, I'm doing these gigs are actually paid. I get paid money to speak. I said, what do you get paid? He said, well, sometimes 500, 1500, 2000 said it very proudly, but.

[00:31:52] Jim Palmer: And I said, I think you turned down the money from now on in exchange for being able to talk about your mastermind. I'm still [00:32:00] going to deliver great content, but I have an opportunity if you'd like to continue the education, talk to me afterwards about getting into my mastermind. This gentleman has over 58 members paying him 500 a month in his mastermind.

[00:32:14] Jim Palmer: So. Oh, he's, he's, he's, he's way past 1, 500 for a nice chunk of change. It is recurring revenue. I might remind you, but, but that's the kind of thing I, I helped him develop a different presentation, which is still full of value, but it kind of skillfully weaves in there why people want to connect with you afterwards to continue the education.

[00:32:41] Jim Palmer: Yeah.

[00:32:42] Harry: That's great. Do you recommend, I mean, is there one of your books if someone wants to be a better speaker or is there something that you recommend for the entrepreneurs that are just beginning the journey or the soul, the person who's thinking about becoming an entrepreneur, or someone who's [00:33:00] relatively new.

[00:33:01] Harry: And we'd like to go to another level. Do you

[00:33:03] Jim Palmer: have books for them? I do have books and actually I don't have a book on speaking. I do have a speaking course. It's not inexpensive, but it neither should it be. Cause, but one thing I did, so I woke up one morning about two years ago and discovered my face was all white.

[00:33:19] Jim Palmer: And then I checked my birthday and I said, well, I'm really moving on here. And and actually, I'm just kidding. All kidding aside, I interviewed a longtime friend and associate. Who wrote a book and I interviewed him for my show. And one of the chapters was investing in your legacy, focusing on kind of what's next instead of just current business.

[00:33:43] Jim Palmer: And I started thinking about that. I'm 65 now or 63 at the time. I was really enjoying my lifestyle, living on the boat, working three days a week. And I really felt the Lord just tapping me and said, you're not going to slow down anymore. You, I, you've got a gift, you keep working with people and whatever.

[00:33:59] Jim Palmer: And, [00:34:00] but I don't want to work more than three days a week. And I came up with this idea after thinking about it, what got me thinking about the legacy was my friend David's book. Excuse me. And I said, Oh, I've got books. I think they happen to be pretty good books. So what I did, Harry, is I figured out a way to make the digital copies free.

[00:34:20] Jim Palmer: Somebody goes, that's not hard. It is. Amazon won't let you do it. I figured out a way. My books on Amazon and Kindle are zero. They're free. If you go to Barnes and Noble, which they're Nook books, they're free. My books are in the iBook store for free in digital. So you can download all of those six books, get quite the education.

[00:34:41] Jim Palmer: My new book, Serve First, is not there. I'm not going to go through all the steps that I went through initially. I think I priced this at 5. 99. This book will change your life, by the way. But if, if you're new so my book Decide, that's my mindset book. So that'll help create or not create, but [00:35:00] that'll help solve some of the crap you got in there, whether it's confidence, perfectionism, imposter syndrome, if you're dealing with money issues, which AKA means you're too cheap to invest in your business, you should read Decide.

[00:35:11] Jim Palmer: Stop waiting for it to get easier came out right before that and my, my latest book before serve first, which is actually not framed because I wrote it when I was on the boat. Those things are in storage. What's called just say yes. I thought I was done writing books, Harry, but as Stephanie and I got on this boat.

[00:35:29] Jim Palmer: Having the only time I had experience in the ocean was when I think I was 10, my parents took me to Martha's vineyard and I was on this big ferry. But here we are. We're 20 miles offshore in our 50 foot boat. And I'm like, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to that's a pretty big wave over there. I don't see land anymore, but I felt like I had come alive.

[00:35:47] Jim Palmer: With the, with the accepting risk and doing things outside the box, truth be told, you know, the last five, six years, we've lived a very comfortable lifestyle and now we put ourselves out there [00:36:00] again and it felt weird. Like my personal life, I'm now experiencing what risk and fear is like and overcoming that and figuring out solutions and stepping forward.

[00:36:11] Jim Palmer: And we did all of that. So I wrote this book called just say yes, which is really a. That also is a somewhat short book. I think it's only 80 or 90 pages, but it's about, you know, when, when you got an idea for, for a business or something else, or you're, you're feeling like you're being called to do something and a little voice in your head is pulling you back into safe zone.

[00:36:30] Jim Palmer: I'm saying just say, yes, do it. Anyway, go for the ride and see what happens. That's kind of what we did having no experience. Buying a boat like that. Not, not doing it just for the weekend. We sold our house and we moved on the boat and we started traveling. We did 12, 000 miles in five years. What was

[00:36:50] Harry: a crazy story for you in this journey?

[00:36:54] Jim Palmer: Let's see. Should I tell the fire? No, that's, that was too scary. So we, we would love [00:37:00] to we stayed in marinas a lot. We had an old dog for four of the five years. But one time we were sleeping on anchor we were up off Long Island Sound on the way to New England. It was dead calm. We were expecting a beautiful evening, just very, very calm.

[00:37:17] Jim Palmer: When you're on a boat, you need to learn how to properly set your anchor because if it drags, it's unbeknownst to you in the sleep, you're dragging in your sleep, you don't even know. Well, the anchor was set firmly, but it was every, it was the season when there's kind of like actually this summer. Pop up thunderstorms come raging up for 10 minutes or 20 minutes, thunder, lightning, 30 mile an hour winds, et cetera.

[00:37:38] Jim Palmer: Once I go to sleep, I'm pretty good. All of a sudden we heard these voices. Hey, our boat was dragging. The current was heading out this way. The 30 knot winds were going in the same direction, caused my anchor to unseat. And our boat was going backwards. And the back of our boat was probably a hundred yards.

[00:37:58] Jim Palmer: From the front of these commercial fishing [00:38:00] boats that were working at night with their big lights getting ready to head out at five in the morning and they were screaming to us and Steph woke up open the back door. She goes, Jim, we're, we're going to hit the fishing boats. Oh, my God. From a dead sleep up up.

[00:38:14] Jim Palmer: One flight and then up another flight to the bridge, start the engines, hit forward gear to stop the backward momentum. But it's pitch dark, thundering and lightning. It's raining to beat the band. I stopped the momentum, but I'm, I'm looking at it's pitch black, except for the fishing boats with those giant halogens shining down on their nets and stuff.

[00:38:34] Jim Palmer: I said, Steph, you've got to go up and get the anchor up. I mean, she had to go up to the bow. She's what? It's lightning. I said, we, I cannot go forward. If I wrap the chain around the props and I don't know where it is, we're, we're dead, literally dead in the water or worse. Okay. She put on a life jacket. She went up there and thundering and lightning.

[00:38:55] Jim Palmer: And brought up the anchor and now I'm loose. So now I can go anywhere and [00:39:00] I'd kind of go a little bit and it'd be dark and then the next crash of lightning and it would hit. I could see. Oh, there's the beach over there. And I would, I would kind of stay in this area. And somehow I got turned around enough.

[00:39:11] Jim Palmer: And I, this is 100 percent a God moment. When I pulled in that day in that calm afternoon, I come into this channel, which has like big rocks on both sides and come in the, the get what they call it the inlet. Right? And I look to my left and there was these, it was the fuel dock where the commercial fishing boats get fuel.

[00:39:29] Jim Palmer: And they had these giant orange balls, kind of like the kids, right? Ball you jump on. That was their fenders. I said, look at the size of those fenders. My fenders about this big. And and then we went on an anchored and then all of a sudden I'm spinning around with the wave and the lightning and the next crash of lightning.

[00:39:45] Jim Palmer: I catch my eye and I see a bunch of orange balls. She goes, what are we going to do? Should we reseat the anchor? I said, no, we're, we're going to the fuel dock. And, but my boat in the wind, it was kind of tall and I'm getting blown around. I'm doing okay. I said, you got to get some [00:40:00] lines ready. We don't have lines.

[00:40:01] Jim Palmer: We're on an anchor. Oh my God. My wife. God bless her. She's back up there getting lines ready on the, on the cleats. And I had one, I'm kind of holding off until she's ready. And I knew I had one shot because the wind was blowing so strong and it was blowing me on the dock. So I knew if I came, if the boat came out here, the wind's going to go bam.

[00:40:21] Jim Palmer: If I come in too far, I'm going to miss the dock. And it's gonna be hard to back up in the wind and in the current. So I have one shot coming in very slowly and I kept metering and correcting course. So we came in about right here and boom, we hit the dock. And then, you know, she was able to tie us off.

[00:40:37] Jim Palmer: And we literally sat down, we all sat there just crying, like, holy crap, I mean, yeah, could have been could have been disaster. Oh, my gosh. What a story. Wow. That but then we woke up the next day. The sun was shining. The birds were chirping. You could hear the seagulls and we finished our journey up to Rhode Island.

[00:40:55] Jim Palmer: And it was like. Okay. I guess it wasn't that bad, but in the moment it was, it was 10 [00:41:00] minutes of sheer terror. We were on the phone with the Coast Guard, not the phone, the radio with the Coast Guard floating home. Are you okay? Yeah. We're, we're going to this fuel dock. Do you know anything? Do you know if they're open, sir?

[00:41:10] Jim Palmer: We don't know what fuel dock you're talking about, but they were monitoring to make sure. Are you okay? Do you need anything? I said, well, right now we're floating. I'm trying to go to the fuel dock. We'll let you know. And then we called him, said, we're tied up at the fuel dock. We stayed there the night.

[00:41:23] Jim Palmer: Even after the storm passed we, we had a hard time going back to sleep to be honest with you, but we set an alarm just in case for 5am because I, I did not want to be there when those fishing boats go out. I didn't know if they need to come in for fuel. It turns out they come in for fuel when they get back.

[00:41:38] Jim Palmer: So they're ready just to leave, but I said, I'm not going to be in the way of those big boats. These are the big boats or the big outriggers and stuff. Yeah. So at 5am Stephanie walked the dog. Rub my eyes started the engines and we got going to Rhode Island, but that's why I wrote. Just say yes, because, you know, we lived an incredible life on that boat [00:42:00] for 5 years.

[00:42:01] Harry: That's amazing. Yeah, tense. And you said, I don't want to tell the other story because

[00:42:06] Jim Palmer: I'll make it very, very quick. We're in this tiny little town in North Carolina. I mean, a town with, like, a 3, 000 people max, maybe less cute little town. They put out a, they put out a dock. You can travel through because they hope you'll come in and go to the restaurants and stuff.

[00:42:22] Jim Palmer: Our boat took over the whole dock plus a little bit, but we're okay there. They wanted us there. And we woke up and Steph woke up in the middle of the night and goes. Jim, I smell smoke. Again, from, from like dead sleep to holy crap. And I go up and there was smoke. I immediately started assessing and I, I surmised that it was an electrical smoke.

[00:42:43] Jim Palmer: You could smell like hot plastic. We had rehearsed, we rehearsed this. So we had what's called a ditch bag. A waterproof bag that was either in our bedroom or if we go up to the bridge to drive it went there. So it had passports all it had energy bars. It had a knife. It actually [00:43:00] had 1 of those beacons. So if we sank in the middle of the ocean, they'd find us.

[00:43:03] Jim Palmer: That was our ditch bag. So she grabbed the ditch bag and the dog and went out the back door. She said, come on. I said, I'm going to find this. I promise you if I see fire, I'll get off the boat. And 1 of our main air conditioner heater units. Well, it's called a capacitor, but the thing melted down. The event was over, but it reeked of smoke.

[00:43:22] Jim Palmer: And once I found, but Stephanie called 911. I'm telling you, this town is so small. Within four minutes, there was, I used to say there was a dozen burly men on my boat with me in my shorts. And they're all, I knew they didn't think it was too much because I'm looking at all the, I'm trying to find the source of the smoke and they go.

[00:43:42] Jim Palmer: It's a hell of a nice boat. Didn't your brother in law have a boat like this? And I, I said, I think this is it, but I need one of you guys in a suit and official looking gear to say, yep, we found it. So Stephanie will get back on the boat. Oh my goodness. Those are the two scariest [00:44:00] moments in five years for sure.

[00:44:01] Jim Palmer: Yeah.

[00:44:02] Harry: Well, we're glad you made it. And yeah, a lot more left in you to bring more gifts of service to others, make the world a better place.

[00:44:10] Jim Palmer: Absolutely.

[00:44:11] Harry: Just absolutely love the

[00:44:12] Jim Palmer: conversation. Well, thanks, Harry. I was looking forward to being on your program. And you know, I'll, I'll, I'll say this. I, well, I, I shouldn't assume I assume we're getting ready to wrap up or, or, yeah, I was thinking that we can keep going, but I'm looking at my clock.

[00:44:28] Jim Palmer: I do have another call, but, you know, you, you can again, you can choose to be the best at what you do skill wise. You can choose to be known to be to be the best. Those are 2 different outcomes. I'm telling you, you will make significantly more money going the other way. And, you know, there's a, there's a way to say that is you will earn significantly more income for who you are.

[00:44:52] Jim Palmer: And not what you do, because what you do, whether you're an accountant, dentist, copywriter, sales trainer, whatever, [00:45:00] there are a thousand other people that do what you do. They're called alsos or others. And the way that you're going to stand out and, and instead of being one of those thousand other people who are fishing in the same pond, everybody's got their hookout, the way you go from being the one who's fishing to the way who has fish jumping in the boat is when you become known and have a great brand.

[00:45:21] Jim Palmer: And you back up that brand with a book and a podcast and, and videos and a great website and learn how to be a speaker and all the, all those different things go into becoming the, the person who's hunted instead of the other thousand who are always out there hunting for their, for their next. Yeah, beautiful stuff.

[00:45:40] Harry: Thank you so much. And one last question, where are people finding more of captain Jim

[00:45:45] Jim Palmer: Palmer? So my home base is get Jim Palmer because it turns out he's a former baseball player. Yeah. Who's he? Underwear salesman. Right. Get Jim Palmer dot com. Everything kind of flows off of that. [00:46:00] And since we spent the last 10 minutes talking about our boating lifestyle our YouTube channel was our floating home, our floating home.

[00:46:08] Jim Palmer: And Stephanie did all the filming and editing. She's got several videos of our journey and our travels and experiences and stuff. So if anybody's curious, you know, go look there.

[00:46:17] Harry: Sounds like a blast. This has been a blast as well. So thanks again, Jim.

[00:46:21] Jim Palmer: We'll talk to you real soon. Thanks, Harry.

[00:46:23] Thank you for listening to Sales Made Easy. If you found value in our conversations, please subscribe and leave a review. Our goal is to provide practical strategies for growing your business while staying true to your values. Remember, six. Success in sales is about serving your clients. Serve first and the selling will follow.

[00:46:49] We'll be back soon with more insights and inspiration. Until then, keep serving and providing value to others. Good thin