Why The Best Doctor In Town Is Rarely The Busiest

Opening Hook and Podcast Introduction 0:00

Finding out if people want what I have more than they want the money they have. And if so, making the exchange. If not, you know, becoming aware that that's the case. They want to keep their money more that they wanna work with me. The first thing is to find out what somebody doesn't want. that they don't want, then there's no reason they're going to move toward it. Many people get too quickly in describing what they have, but I want to find out what the don' want. So usually I'll ask them, hey, why are we talking?

What's so going on is so screwed up in your life that we're talking. That kind of brings a confrontation. Oh, everything's wonderful. Great. No need to talk. Oh, wait just a minute. But there is one thing. You didn't build your clinic to feel like an employee in your own business. I'm Matthew Kalogli and on Out of the System, hosted by Doctor Talks, we challenge the broken rules holding health care entrepreneurs back. Hear from clinic owners, rebels and builders who are creating bold, profitable patient center practices and doing it their way.

All right. Good morning, good evening, and good afternoon, everyone. Matt Gologle here and welcome to Out of the System, the only podcast on the internet dedicated to showing doctors the way off the medical plantation where they no longer have to take insurance and they can heal the healers. So my guest today is a longtime friend of mine by the name of Kevin Nations. Now, unless you are in my world, there's a really good chance you have no idea who this man is. But the reality is, is he's really the go-to, let's call him, savant, guru, man on the mountain, whatever we want to call it, Kevin, of some of the biggest names in our industry, in the coaching industry consulting industry internet marketing, things of that nature.

His list of clients that he has worked with is pretty impressive.

Why Connection Matters in Sales 1:32

People like Frank Kern and the list goes on and on. If you don't know those names, it's okay. You probably don' t as a doctor. But Kevin is brilliant when it comes to showing people how to design businesses that matches their souls. and really structure your pricing and your offer so that it's either a hell yes or a no thanks. So we're going to dive into a lot of things today, Kevin. Thanks for speaking at my event a couple of weeks ago and thanks for taking the time to join us today. What's new in Planet Kevin nations these days?

What are the things that you are working on and diving into? I think one of the thing that is most notable at the present Speaking of the word present is the contrast between our desire to be efficient and using AI and the contracts contrast that with our. Desire and human need to. Be connected and still maintaining a presence with people. And I think that. Because those two data points have collided rather recently, it's been difficult for people to... Weigh the balance of increasing efficiency through the use of even more automation, AI, et cetera, and increasing the human connection that is a key factor.

I won't say essential, but I'd say perhaps essential. But definitely a factor in part of our continuing value as service providers. So when you talk about connection, why is it that connection One, explain why connection is so important with regards to the converting of prospects and how do you create connection in a world that is increasingly unconnected? Well, people want to be understood. And this goes back to one of my. early heroes was the late Stephen Covey and he said in one of his seven habits of highly successful people seek first to understand and then to be understood.

And I think that so many people, once they feel understood, will trust us much more with prognoses. So whatever we're selling, but especially things to do with their physical characteristics and the word diagnosis is very central to the medical community. Once they feel understood, they're much open to our diagnoses because they felt that those diagnosing are coming from a place of connection rather than from. A place. Of non-connection. So they feel empathy and when they are empathetic with them, they're much more likely to trust our diagnoses coming from a place of empathy rather than just from the platform of superior information.

Okay, so people get context of what you do. Well, explain to people what do you because I think it's really important so they understand how you've structured your life and your business. It's a very unique model, how have structured it. Give people a little bit of an insight of kind of your background. So background, I grew up in a religious community, multi-generations of actual pastors and leaders. a church community. And as such, I saw, you know, the central theme of there being a gospel, something good news, if you would call it that, this was in the Christian religion.

Background, Orthodoxy, and Community 5:30

From that I think that there is a number of things that happen within a religious community, one is the things you do community outreach, liturgy, the community, outreach the Saturday carnivals and fairs and how you show up in the. And then there's the orthodoxy and many, many times intellectuals want to. impose their orthodoxy on others because they feel it's superior, very prevalent in religion. My religion is better than yours because our orthodoxy is superior. It's been around longer or it was evolved after whatever the case might be.

Much is argued over orthodoxy. And I saw that, obviously, our religion, when I grew up, had the superior orthodoxy. I mean, who would? Why would you be in anything less? If you grew up in a, uh, strong political family or a strong religious family, or strong family with a central theme toward medicine or law or community activism or whatever that might be, your orthodoxy was superior. We are. You know, we are nations because of this. We are, you know. Baptist or Buddhist or Pentecostals or Republicans or Democrats because, of these superior orthodoxies.

But what I really found when I watched growing up, some churches grow and some not, is the ones that grew the most. Where most often they grew because have a superior connection to the community. And very few people that became a member of the church, in my view, looking at it from a child's perspective, but I would say fairly open-minded childs perspective. In my few, people came because they enjoyed the kids program. They liked how the church treated the family and then all of the sudden they reflectively embrace the orthodoxy as superior because it was necessary to defend their feeling of being understood.

And so I think in sales, many times we get on a platform I don't know anything about medicine, but, uh, my brother is a career physician and has been a practicing physician for a long time. So I've heard some things from him, we get on a platform of our modus operandi, our way of doing things is superior. And yet if we watch other people out selling us out, growing their businesses, very likely they are relating to their audience more than we are. And I noticed that as I was growing up, I grew up in a very fundamental, rules-based religious organization and many.

leaders, pastors, ministers would stand in their pulpits and adopt a platform of, our church is small because of our strict adherence to this superior orthodoxy. And you've heard this many times from, and I don't mean this in a negative way, but you heard just from extreme sects in politics, religion, even in science and medicine that, you know, not many people follow this because this is so correct. And that contrast so viscerally with Dr. Covey's statement of seek first to understand and then to be understood.

And when we have empathy for people and how that framed my background as I decided that I wanted to live a life, first of all, where I was free to choose everything that wanted, and I have built a live around doing exactly what I've wanted do, but if I were going to have a client, I would going need to, if was going choose to a have client I need was to give them what they wanted not what determined they needed. And it's really funny because Growing up Irish Catholic in Chicago, I remember, you know, there was the Irish part of town, the Polish part, and there's the Jewish part.

It was very segmented. I will never forget. When I had a sleepover at my friend's house, they lived on the other side of the town and they were Polish. And I spent a Saturday night and had to go to Sunday mass with them. My mom, when I got back home, she made me go the 12 o'clock mass. Even though it already been at nine 30 because she said, quote, even though its Catholic, it's not real Catholic. They're Polish. We're Irish. It's real catholic. And I just was like, that's stuck with me right now.

Somebody's going to think my mom was a bigot. She wasn't, she was just born in 1932. So, you know, I mean, think about it. Isn't amazing how people, how, people get so attuned and attached to a specific dogma and ideology. I mean, you can present facts to people and they'll still double down. What are your, like, I know you're a very thoughtful guy. Like what are, why do you think that is? Why do people double down on something that they, this, the data shows that it's wrong. Well, to reflect back on, something I've already said, once we feel understood and accepted, um, and this is especially true for people who are protecting community.

And this just kind of in the median of. Abraham Maslow's study on human needs and in the median of that, probably where the majority of people are is people want to be loved, understood, accepted, these types of things. And when they are loved accepted embraced understood then protecting that community, protecting, that tribe is of utmost importance. You know, we cannot be disrespectful to not only our Catholicism, but to the Irish sect of our catholicism which is even more specific and even More exclusive, But it includes me.

And because it, it Includes me and I can never be excluded from that. Cause your mother could be a lot of things, Right. No matter how poor she became, no matter, you know, how rejected by men she, became no, matter fired from jobs. I don't know anything about your mom's history, but no mater men could reject her jobs could fire her, many, things could do many things to her. But she can never be un-Irish. Right. And so obviously the dogma around that nationalism was significant because it was a hedge around her being understood, which is such an important thing for many people in the median and the vast majority of humans.

They want most to be understood and appreciated. So they will, in my view, defend any dogmas that makes them feel that they are protecting the tribe in which they feel most understood. It's really fascinating. I'm like you, I get fascinated by political parties. You know, when you really look at the stances of a lot of Republicans and a lotta Democrats, so I am not talking about the things that you see on CNN or Fox News. Im talking hanging out with your friends, right? Like I have friends that are Republicans, Democrats Socialists, whatever, Libertarians.

And it's amazing to me how They're also very similar, but defend their nuanced differences to the death. Which as a person who's in sales and marketing, so like basically our job is to convince people that white is black and black is white, right? Like that's what you do in marketing. And I think one of the hardest things to do is change somebody from a belief system. So when you are out and you are evangelizing your belief system and what you do and how you teach people. Walk me through that because I know you're not out there trying to change people's position, you're really trying to find the people that have already began the transformation.

Is that a fair assessment? I would believe so. And I think that if you rewind back to a number of things we've talked about already, first of all, we talked many political parties being very similar in some of their beliefs, but separating the nuances. Your mom was much the same way. I wouldn't say there was that much different than an Irish immigrant, a Polish immigrant in Chicago. But the distinctions were enough that she wanted to make sure that one was clear about which was which. You know, both of you guys and gals were one or two generations removed from Europe, which is so far away from Chicago.

But lest we be mistaken, you know, it wasn't if she was talking about, You know you guys as someone from an African nation or from Asian nation, or an island somewhere. Here's two European transplants into this melting pot of the US in the windy city. Making sure that someone understands that we're not like them, although, you know, Polish and Irish were probably more alike than many other sects of immigrants to Chicago. But let's one forget, we are going to make the key distinctions between these two likely very similar.

nationalities and families. So I just, I wanted to make that point when you were talking about that it's many times nuance. And then, so you asked the question, what is it that I do? I really look to find myself people who are already inclined to believe what I believe. There's, there's a couple of ways that one can do marketing. there is. making someone unhappy with their prior choices, and then inviting them obviously to your superior choice. Everything you've done was wrong and now this way is right.

That's one way of marketing. That way was wrong. This way is right. There needs to be a conversion. I look at my way marketing much more like a Euro stand outside of a nightclub. People most often, sometimes there are digressions from this, but people many times leaving a club or let's just say a Food truck at a construction site.

Finding Buyers Without Forcing Conversion 17:20

People at the construction side are happy. They're working, they're getting paid. they have no resistance to, nor frustration with the work site specifically as it relates to the food truck. But every so often they get hungry. Same thing at a nightclub, you leave. If there's no kitchen in the club, You know, even drinking, dancing, sweating, doing lots of things. You're about to go home, maybe have a little bit of a high alcohol content. What do you want? You want a Euro, whatever it is that they're serving in a food truck just outside the night club.

And so my way of attracting clients is I want people who have been incredibly happy already with the experiences that they've had most recently, even with competitors of mine, but also seeing that there's something that that competitor didn't offer with me because in My view, if one adopts the, the old way was bad and mine is good, then eventually if we think about evolutionary. You know, humans throughout the course of one lifetime evolution of our. uh, traits of choice, the evolution of our dis- distinguishing characteristics of how we appreciate things, then one would naturally evolve from me.

That would only be natural. But if I take people who have been happy with where they've been and offer myself as an alternative, if someone migrates from, let's just say, one religion to the other, then there's very few paths back or one political party to other. There are very paths. But if one migrates from the nightclub to. The food truck. Well, the next week, they're still gonna come to the nightclub and then they gonna go to food truck or the job site to their food trucks. And so my way of marketing my own services is that whatever someone's already doing, I want to endorse that, ratify that but offer what I'm doing as an addition to or feeling a missing piece for or an opportunity.

Maybe somebody goes into a night club pays a cover, but then also pays to be a bit segmented and buys a table or rents a tape, whatever you call it, you know, finds an exclusionary place. Maybe somebody goes to a concert, still watches the band. The band gets paid, they buy a VIP section. My job is not to rail against the other choices that they made, ratify the choices they've made. But offer an upgrade in, generally in exclusivity. so that they can enjoy things that may have appreciated in the past, not need to denounce those things.

They can still celebrate their past decisions and then begin to do some work with me. And many of my clients do the same. Yeah, so you're not talking about copycat marketing or copy cat offers or copied cat sales. You're gonna put another Euro food truck right next to the Euro truck and offer it at five cents less. either a different type of experience around the Yidro or something that supplements a Yiddro, like maybe, I don't know, Greek fries or Something like that, or the dessert that they didn't get, Or something like That.

Well, if I was right, but I'm actually thinking about being the food truck outside of a venue. Where is there a Venue of people That are happy with their experience, but missing a piece of an experience. Got it. And what experience could offer them that wouldn't have them need to denounce the current experiences they're having in life, But they could still, you know, benefit from mine as well. That way. You know, when, let's say you and I had complimentary services and in some ways we do, if I said mine are directly in competition with Matthew's and you must either choose to work with him or with me, then you could never refer me business.

If I were to say, you know here is the point in working with Mathew that you may want to with work me. Here's the porn and working me that she may wanna work Matthew then people could migrate from one of us to the other migrate back and forth between us migrate, from, one, of, us, to, the, both, have, a, set the same time. And they could do that because they don't have to denounce one to embrace the. So many people call. Yeah. Like a lot of times people play like the zero sum game. You have choose A or B, right?

In your case, you, when you take people through a discovery process of whether or not they want to work with you. Walk us through that a little bit because when I first learned this in 2005, it blew my mind. And then I spent the next, I don't know, 20 years trying to really figure out how to do it. So you have a very unique way You're not trial closing. You are not pressuring people. Your whole process is vastly different. Explain it to people? I think I know what you're asking. I mean, from the standpoint of, okay, I have an interest in you start to sell.

We used to, putting air quotes around selling, because you don't, you are converting or whatever you do, however you frame it. How would you free me? Do you call it selling? Are you converting? What do you called it? Does it matter? It's a good point. Finding out if people, finding out that people want what I have more than they want the money they have. And if so, making the exchange and if not, you know, becoming aware that that's the case, they wanna keep their money more that they wanted to work with me.

So the first thing is to find out what somebody doesn't want. Because if there's something, if it's not something they don't, then there is no reason they're going to move toward it. Coming out of a nightclub. People are happy with having been there. Saw the gals they wanted, saw the handsome guys they want to see, the band they wanna see. All their friends were there, they danced together, talked about old times. They talked, you know, about future things. Now they come out. If they don't wanna get pulled over for DUI, so they get some food in their body?

If their rational? They're hungry? Don't want the night to end? They just like the guy or gal at the food truck because they want to continue a conversation with somebody. They've been talking to the bartender and here's another person. So what they don't want is whatever is ending or whatever they're migrating from where they left. And many people get too quickly in describing what they have, but I want to find out what the don't want. So usually I'll ask them, Hey, why are we talking? What's so, what's going on is so screwed up in your life that we're talking.

Cause that kind of brings a confrontation. Oh, everything's wonderful. Great. No need to talk. All wait just a minute. But there is one thing. And so it's kind like a reverse. Colombo where you're allowing the prospect to be Columbo and you'd actually just kind of baiting them into it and letting them discover is most, many times, I won't say most of the time, but many time people reach out to talk to you to find out information about a solution you have. And it's because of an irritation that they have in their current life.

But they feel if they reveal that irritation, it's going to make them vulnerable. And so they're wanting to find out and self-diagnose, which is the worst possible thing to do. You know, as for someone to self diagnose and you guys as medical professionals watching this would definitely agree with that with, within, you know regards to legal representation, with in regards, to money within regards. To, your medical scenario. Even if you are a medical professional. You're probably less effective in the point of a heightened sense of stress, less able to diagnose yourself because you're in it.

And so never let a prospect who's in, even if they know all the things, Even If you guys are diagnosing another medical professionals, maybe somebody who knows more than you about it, that's In it that has an emotional attachment to it That's why you say, wait a minute, you're, your didn't mean for this to rhyme, but wait, a moment. You're in it. And let's move this along. So I asked them, well, what's, What's going on that we're even on the phone talking because it's not. It's your time. We think it, oh, we are investing so much time on phone with us, so they should be so happy.

Well, it is punitive to them as well. To be on a phone, talking to us about a solution. They have to take time out of their day. What is it that that matters, you know, to taking time out of your day. And then I'll go into, uh, well, I'm just going to ask you some questions. If there is something I have to offer, tell you more about it. You can ask me anything you want and then just tell me if this is the path you wanna take forward together or not. Is that fair? So really just like, I'm going to find out what's going on.

I'll tell you the only thing that I am expecting from a conversation is a choice or a decision. Not some continued constant circling of. the decision so that both parties are in this constant state of unawareness of what the final outcome would be, but can't now completely detach from the fact that we've already started a diagnosis together. So just let me know if this makes sense to you or not, or is that fair? Many people might consider this high pressure sales and this is where it becomes high-pressure sales.

When you make a stand for a choice And you have a bias for the affirmative. That is high pressure. Cause now I'm saying, Matthew, you need to work with me, but you to need work me today. Need to decide today, if you simply say, I work people who are decisive because they're easy to with. And it doesn't matter to me either way, whether you decide in the affirmative. or to work with somebody else or never address this once we've discovered what it is. Or to do it on your own. or anything else you might can phasm.

It doesn't matter to me, but I move forward with decisive people. And so if we're going to do it, we are going do do now or soon. If we aren't going it now, or so, that's just not the type of people I work with. Someone may feel that it's high pressure, But that pressure is all about you protecting your boundaries, not you projecting boundaries onto someone else. You're protecting access to yourself. You're not telling the other person what they should do with themselves. So if I'm telling you, you have to decide today, which protects my boundaries, but now I need you to.

Yes. Which is a violation of your boundaries. That's an unfair exchange. But if say, I work with people who are decisive and you can do whatever you want that only challenges people. who want to control my boundaries, which I'm sovereign. But then so are they. So that's the second part of that. And then I just try to, I'll use the word diagnose. Diagnose what the pain is as it relates to them in their situation. Not only the orthodox of the paint, in other words, where is this medically? in you guys' situation or in my situation, where might this be relating to their sales or the success of their business?

But how does this affect them? How has this affected anything else? Which they might bring up, oh, it's affecting my marriage. It's effecting my, I feel like I'd be a better dad if I could be away, or mom, if could I be way from my business more and still be just as financially effective. Or I really wish that I would X or Y, but I can't because And so then, you know, I want to get the entire complete impact of the pain, not only as it relates, if someone has an issue with mobility, there may be a lot more social issues that go along with just the medical issues.

Discovery Calls and Decision Boundaries 30:40

They go along, there may be a lot more familial issues that, or, someone might feel like, oh, my parents don't respect me because I'm not successful or I am proving a generational curse. All these things that they assign to not succeeding in business or having a medical issue or whatever someone's orthodoxy is or specific technical training is there's a lot more things that are impacted by our specific lineage of expertise. If we can get off of that, not to exclude it, but to include the wider embrace of what it might be impacting in a person's life.

And then ask them not, do you want to get the knee surgery? Do you to work with me to help you in your sales? do You want do the thing, you know, go on the vacation, But do want change this entire Recipe of pain that you've just described to me and invest X dollars and come in and. Come for a procedure on X day or come to a training like I do on next weekend. Or do you want to keep your funds and continue this? Or maybe a third alternative is, is there someone else that she've talked to in the past that should feel like would do this better?

Cause I want to bring this up because if I bring it up, then it to me is much more powerful than if they bring. Well, you become a collaborator in the decision versus an adversary. Yes. And you're reminding them of their autonomy while retaining your own. Yeah, that's an interesting way to look at it. Cause they are a collaborative, but you both have autonomy, which is really kind of fascinating duality. Isn't it? Yeah, I have full, you know, agency to say yes or no to things as they relate to me.

And until we're contractually obligated, which is a contract is the decision to relegate our autonomy for a specified period of time, for specified action, first specified investment, that's a decision too. give up that autonomy or endorse that our autonomy now extends to that collaboration. But while we're still in the conversation phase, it's like, this is what I will and won't do. And here, so then I'm affirming all of your options so that even by my silence, if you thought I didn't want you to work with anybody else, do you want to with me?

Do you wanna work? Do you want to do this on your own? Do want just let it, let the symptoms continue to persist now that you've seen the cost of both or would you like, you know, someone else to this for you? And I don't get into the nuances of, Oh, well, what about John and James and Bill and Sam? I'm completely outside of that. I've not going to compare all of those. Just going say if it is indeed someone. in a general sense, then go, if your choice is to work with them, I can't be your advisor for or against a specific other individual.

But if it's the only other name that I'm willing to talk about is not me. Right. And then, you know, now we've moved that decision away. So then I talked to him about all that pain and then identify what the potential solutions might be. Then I just asked him to make a choice whether or not We're going to work together and many times I'll lay out as many as I could think of, of the other alternatives. Like, do you want to do, you know, this or do want do these are the two or three alternatives I see, which is typically if it's helping someone.

with your expertise than the other alternatives are, you know, do it on their own, which I don't know their capacity to do that. But sometimes it might be of his heart surge. That might a little bit difficult, but yeah, that if it's learned, I did have a doctor do his own vasectomy. I had a urologist do its own Vasectomies. So there you go. Good for him. It's either do, it do on the road. Continue to, now that you've identified specifically the symptoms, let the systems persist or pray that they'll go away or something.

Find someone else to remedy the situation or let's do it together. And then I kind of lay out, Let's just do one of these four things. But I am, much of the time, my interest is going to wane on some option where they want to amplify their autonomy. I want a way to decide, which is an amplification of their autonomous, but diminish mine or retard mine, constrain mine. How long do I have to accept this offer? Which if you look at it, that's a amplifying their own autonomy and a constraint of mine fair enough.

Because now not only I have to be, I had to project into the future, my willingness to make the same offer that I'm making right now, which I don't know. I am not saying that it would take it away, but I do not know, and I want to not make commitments for the futures. So I did not what the futuro may hold. And I may get bought out tomorrow. I may win the lot, I don't play the lottery, but I'm going to win a lottery tomorrow. I made a side to retire. May I decide to retired tomorrow? I make it, you know, may buy another practice.

Let me bring on another practitioner. And may just not feel well. So while I might offer certain things, so the conversation is this offer that we've just discussed. expires the moment you tell me something other than yes, I might not be that explicit about it, but in my mind, and now you see why that is, it's not that it needs to be some sort of people have described this as a takeaway close. I'm not taking it away. It's right there. They are rejecting it. If you come into a car dealership, And I say, you know, for the cars have gone up for a hundred thousand dollars.

You can have the keys to this nice, nice fancy shiny car. And you say I'm not going to give you the a $100,000. and then I'd say fine. Thank you. Have a nice day and shake your hand. I didn't take the car away from you is never yours to begin with. Right. If you make an offer to someone, they had nothing to began with except a proposal for an exchange, and they never brought consideration, so you didn't bring the service or your consideration. And so many people propose that as a takeaway close, but I'm not taking anything away.

I am simply maintaining my autonomy in the future, although I was willing to exchange it for agreement at that moment. So let's say that person comes back a week later. You make the offer. come back a week later and now they want it. Does the offer change? Well, yes, no, not as a reaction to the fact. I don't say in my mind, Oh, they were here a we could go. So let's go do something punitive. Right. But if my business has changed, yes, if I just won the lottery, Yes, If my price coincidentally went up in the meantime.

Yes. If now, I told him I could do it the next day, but now I've already taken on 30 jobs, then yes. Many people may feel like if the offer changes and, and We need to be careful of this as service providers. Many people may feel like that it's our duty to change the offer, to show them a lesson. Well, that's not the point of maintaining the autonomy. We don't know what will happen in the meantime. we might have had a 10 day waiting period and they may come back and we may have a unit in stock or may they might be able to go the next day.

The offer may change for the better. So the offer doesn't necessarily, the author, did it, doesn' anymore. So they offer neither changes nor stays the same. The offer was for that conversation. They offer may have the terms with the time frame and the payment, but it's a new offer a week later. But in no way does any change for me serve to teach the person a punitive lesson and show them, well, how dare you wait to make a decision with me. That's not the purpose of that offer. But it may change, but it doesn't change just because they waited a week.

It changes because of all of the variables that may have changed with my offer in the week between. You know, when I was growing up playing golf, I had a temper, right? Golf, I was a small kid, kind of overweight, so I couldn't play football, couldn' play basketball, wasn't very good at baseball, but I pretty good a golf, and so nobody, none of my other friends played golf so, So I put this unbelievable pressure on myself to become a very skilled golfer, into a certain level I did as a former professional, PGA golf professional.

But one of the best lessons I ever learned about playing the game of golf and I still use it to this day in every walk of life and that is what's called NATO golf, not attached to outcome. And how that I hear you talking about this and how this relates is your sense of worth isn't dependent upon whether or not the client says yes or no is, what I'm hearing. Is that a safe assessment? Yeah. Okay. So is there a way, like, do you celebrate when you make a sale? Do you, you know, in all the years that you've been selling, when your closed a big client or you closed to big deal, would you celebrated or are you the same like every day?

You just go yay. And, and go on to the next thing. How does that, how does your psyche play on this and look at that? Well, of course I celebrate because I like to celebrate things that happen that are good, but also my pipeline just got a lot smaller. So one forgets the negative, the downside of a big sale. You know, we celebrate the upside, but we've been, you know if it happened, if took more than a day, even if you've waiting to talk to the person and knew a couple of days and new that, there was a potential windfall coming through for you.

The moment that happens and it's in the pipeline or in, I'm sorry, in been built off. Well, now your pipeline has been reduced by that amount. So you don't have, you know, the forward thinking positivity. When I make a sale, of course I celebrate. I like to celebrate great things. At the same time, I realize what that's just done for my prospecting. And I need to, focus on prospect again. It's interesting that their only thing between a trophy and atrophy is space. I feel you 20 years, I've never heard you say that.

I said it a few times. So be careful when you get a trophy. that you don't let it, you know, collapse into atrophy. And many people do that. You know we've seen this happen. People go out after a big win, celebrate and lose all momentum that they had. So I do celebrate just a bit, but I certainly don t want to celebrate with lethargy because that's probably the worst, probably some of the best times I know this might sound like I'm obsessed with my business. I really like my life outside of my businesses, but some of the best times to keep pushing in sales is while you're on that high of a big sale.

Like literally probably the time. And some the worst things one could do being on a high a of big sales, is to go and immediately go on vacation. Or immediately do, I got this big sale, it's gone vacation because it literally, if you think about that rationally for a moment versus, Oh, deserve to celebrate. It's almost like I deserve. To regulate back. down to my level of success that I'm willing to tolerate because I've had a success, that exceeds that.

Celebrating Wins Without Losing Momentum 43:40

And so I need to find something to relegate me back down, to anchor me, back to down my mediocrity, lest I get too successful. You remind me again of a game we used to play in high school and college. We used play a called Streaks when we were playing golf. It was what it taught you was it thought you how to play keep playing your hot hand right so like for those of you that don't know golf when you get a birdie if the par score on a hole is four and you got a three that's called a Birdie. If you go to bogey it's a five right to one over so we would play this game where.

you would get points based on streaks. And there were negative points, like if you got bogeys and double boagies, you lost points. If you've got pars in a row, You didn't lose any points you just remained flat stasis. and if he made birdies and eagles, then you get more points and the more birdie's you made in the row the points that exponentially went up. And you paid like a dollar a point or, you know, we would, uh, We were playing like $1, $5 a. Which got pretty expensive by the way. Um, You know like couple hundred bucks and this was in the 1980s and late eighties and early nineties.

And so you just heard me say like, that is the thing is that when you make a sale, people want to celebrate. I think, I, think of, all right, just close somebody. Fantastic. A little high five, but you get back in. Like I have to do this with my team all the time. We just, you know, we'll have really good weeks. We'll really get months. And I said, I want you to think about it like this in a football game. It's a full 60 minutes. Okay. What we're looking to do is we were looking, to win the game, not, no, if we focus on the process, the statistics, and we know that we have to run the ball 20 times or whatever like that.

Those are the parts of the that are going to lead us to having the outcome that But if we spend too much time celebrating the touchdown that we scored in the first quarter, it's going to suck energy away from what we need for the second, third and fourth quarter. So if you watch football, they high five, They do a little dance in end zone. They go back to half everybody. they sit down and they grab game tape and start watching the plays. Right? That's right. Like that's what the champions do. Yes.

You're, you know, the ain't celebrating getting close. they take that energy and they go, okay, we've got momentum, how do we do it again? Where can we, not exploit isn't the right word, that's a football phrase, but in our parlance, it's, you know, Okay, How can I stay in the flow of that, of finding the people in market that are in flow with my offer that want, That are need or want of what I have. So yeah, I think the whole point of celebrating, sometimes people, a backlash that they don't even realize exists.

Comments on that? I agree. And I think the converse is often true. When people hit a slump or a slow spell, they just try to double down and grind it out. It really isn't much momentum you can make when you're miserable by becoming even more miserable. What do you do? Go on vacation, get in my RV and go out to the mountains. and get, get away from it and come back to a more successful week. Why are the king of getaway? Why keep grinding against something that is never going to happen? Obviously you want to play out the game with, you know, with success, but You know, if you're in the middle of a playoff series and you find yourself down by an almost unwinnable amount, you may or may not rest your starters because just two nights from now you going to be back at zero zero.

And if your this far down and your trying to recover this game You know, fans think in terms of, you know. Games players many times think, in the seasons, coaches think. In terms. Of careers and owners think In. Terms of legacies, like they're going to hand this down to their kids and their kid's kids. And so all of them are making decisions from a different time perspective. So, you know, all of them are playing the same game, but they're on a different field. The owner's like, I want my kids to have a billion dollar asset.

the coaches are like I wanna retire. Well, the players are. I know I'm going to be traded. And the fans are just like a bet a hundred bucks on this game and I don't want to lose to Matthew. You know, so all of them are on the same game field at the time, but they have a vastly different perspective of how you're viewing it. And so if you are always out there, often out, they're, you know. Oh, this is a terrible sucky day and I'm not making the. Cause sales are a bad week. I am making a sales that I want, I wanna get here and grind it out.

Well, that just is going to, in my view, it's just my. But that's going. Further reinforce that work is supposed to be punitive and painful. I don't believe that I love what I do. Glad to. You and I've worked together for a long time. Don't think you've seen me have a miserable day's work in my life. No, haven't. Since I started this, you are the same every day. Well, if I'm not though, I not working. Right. Obviously if you have an appointment or if, like I'd do events and things, but My daughter and I go many times, my daughter works with me, for those of you who don't know, Matthew does.

She's worked with us since she graduated college. When we come and we have an event, a lot of people prepare for an even by doing all the study. Well, I do it like a week or two ahead of time. And then few days before I'm supposed to show up for everyone. We go to Bryce Canyon, we go Zion, and just chill out and get away from everybody so that we can come back on the backside of a holiday. rather than having grounded outright to the moment. Go ahead. Yeah. That's the thing that I want to dive in with you because I think it's one of your most beautiful skills.

So I grew up in a day and age that, and in our family, you grew in working class family. Irish Catholic family from Chicago. I always say my brother, the union plumber, if, hard work dictated wealth, he would be a multi-billionaire because, I don't know anybody who works harder than my Brother Tim. Okay. And so I adopted that, like when things got down, you just worked harder. One of the things that I've really learned to appreciate as I get older is the power of. what the outside world would think of as doing nothing, as being wasteful, and some of the most powerful things that I can do.

So you just mentioned something. I know you take huge amounts of times where you get in your RV, you go out to the desert. When did you learn to start to do that? What was the turning point in you life that you said, You know what? This way that the world tells me to it is not really working for me. Im going to create this other model. Walk me through that. This wasn't necessarily about taking off, but I, in 2000, late 2000 early 2001, I was working at a division of SBC, which became AT&T. And I.

Was working for one of their consulting division, selling consulting and technology services. When I went to work there, was assigned about a hundred government accounts. And I had a $16 million quota and I noticed that many of these accounts were not buying stuff from my division, although we're buying things from SBC, but they weren't buying for my vision. But yet I was supposed to quote them and just keep, you know, making the quotes as a matter of course. Well, I just started no-bidding everybody who hadn't bought from us in the last few years.

Which got me fired from over 90 of those accounts, 90, of the a hundred with no quota relief. A few months after that I, with the Columbus public schools, I sold beginning in August of 2000, well, the sales process started before, but the first conversion was for about $6 million and then came to be about a $100 million over the next six or eight months. of services to Columbus public schools, all outside of the normal bid process, soul source back to our company, against the resistance of much of internal politics within SBC.

Because I had the free time to think of something more successful that was an opportunity rather than just continuing to go and to make bids in these nearly zero likelihood opportunities that came about. And so, you know, I learned the benefit of going forward the clients that I want. I don't email prospects, right? Or, massive prospects. Right. Which is completely against what's taught for the last 20 years I've been in this industry and nearly all of my friends do. Very much of the many of things that people think that they need to do going after the masses, You know, where is the specific place that, that there are people who'll be exiting this opportunity that they like and what is this thing that'd be like.

And as it sits, I've got about 23 names just over here that my daughter, she was just out. She and I wrote up about people that we would like to work with that either we have worked with and we've known about, you know we're going to send specific invites out to them. Uh, and say, Hey, we'd like to work with you like very well put together, but 23, not, you know, people are like, Oh, I've got this 20,000 name email list. No, this is like 23 people. And I think that is the. The thing that I like the most is, is focusing on the highest likelihood and also the thing that I enjoy, like you and I work together.

I enjoyed working with you. It's fun. Uh, we get to talk today. And so this isn't something I go out and just get on, uh, tons of podcasts because. Hey, it's a necessity. Probably been on four or five ever, but you asked him, just like, well, have a great conversation.

Creating Space for Creativity and AI 55:00

Learned from the questions that you've asked, you know, and so. Of course I've learned a lot already, to be honest about the entire process, reaffirmed some own thoughts and how to think of new things and then also learn from, you know, your questions. But as, as it relates to taking time, I don't think that it's really possible to do something new if you don' have any time away from doing everything the same. Yeah, that's a quote. And so Michael Saylor owns a company called strategy, which used to be a technology company.

Now it's basically a bit cold holding company and Michael strategy talks about his use. There's an interview he did, I think in July of 2026. where he was talking about his use of AI over the last year prior to July 26. And he used AI to source a lot of ideas for some of his new funding ideas to Fund his new Bitcoin acquisitions. Now you guys might be a hundred percent pro crypto, anti crypto. You might pro AI, Anti AI. you might love strategy, hate strategy. Love Michael Saylor, Hate Michael. None of these, this is not an endorsement of any of those nor rejection of.

But one of the things that he said was that a lot of people are using AI to guide them into doing what's always been done. And I decided to use mine to find some sort, I'd need to go back and source the quote so I can attribute it more accurately. And, and I recommend you do because what he said was more potent than what I'm about to share as my recollection of it. But he says I used it to source an amalgamation of sorts, he didn't use that word, of other things into something that had never been done.

so that I could create something unique. Well, that is an interesting way of looking at it, but he had to first accept that everything that had been done in the past, he didn't need to make some edit. And I think, you know, we've been lulled into what I would maybe not so affectionately label as the laziness of revision taking something somebody's done and making a slight edit in and calling our own. And it's taken us away from any type of creation. I get that creation is just very likely a significant revision, but let's just say we've gone from very, very dedicated revisions to more lazy ones.

You know, I can call those dedicated revisions creations, you know the movement of a, from a horse to a car. Yes, that might've, might have been just a bit of, a revision because we had the horse pulled wagons, et cetera, etc. We had, the steamboats, etcetera, moving that into a combustion engine. yes, That was just to revision, but it was a significant. Revision. And so I think, you know, one of the things it's really difficult to me to make significant revisions in my life. If I'm still caught in the mundane of practicing the sameness of repetition over and over again.

So I try to get away from that as much as possible. Yeah, you talk about AI, because I think AI is a fascinating thing, right? And it's most people don't realize it gives you the average. It gives the most common answer. But if you train AI the right way, like you and I have, for me, AI becomes my Bernie Toppin to the melodies of Elton John. And for those of you that don' know, Bernie top and wrote the lyrics, El and John wrote Uh, one does not exist without the other. Okay. And. When you, you know, when you view, like I take this week's a classic week, this weeks been, we, I've got a couple of clients in next week and then Christine and I go on vacation for two weeks and we're completely shut down, right?

We're going to Manchester. We were driving down the California coast. I'll be completely off the grid, but this has been really just prepping for my two clients that I have coming in. Next week. doing this, and I've got two podcast interviews. When you are able to take the time and just sit and let the ideas flow, then you can use something like AI to maybe refine the idea. To me, that's a viable use of it, right? It's kind of like having somebody that you can bounce an idea off of. Okay, have you thought about this?

Have you though about that? Versus going to AI and saying, solve this problem for me because it's gonna go give you the sameness of what everything else is. And I think one of the most powerful things we can do as entrepreneurs is to have the courage to take time and say, no, I'm not going to grind. I am going do this a different way because it's the creative act. It's a new way of, you know, Chris Centeno did this with, with regenerative therapies. He's, he's you the pioneer of it. You create this environment where the ideas feel safe.

where they feel trusted, where the feel heard. And they then more and more come. So you were, I saw your wheels turn in there. I think you have some comments and thoughts on this. Cause how I was saying, now we see AI. Well, AI is a tool, but DaVinci did it with pen and paper. You know, Edison did with it, with Pen and Paper. You know, people have done it in much more austere environments than the tools we now have. And I'm a big fan, so I am not here to do anything other than endorse superior tools.

But one of the things to be aware of is, if you think about this for a minute, you don't have an advantage because you have a superior tool. That the rest of the world got at the same time you did. Yeah. You know, that's not an advantage. That's just an asset, but everybody got the asset at same. Some may use it, some may not use, it but the acid is there. So the only asset we can have that the, the word doesn't have is our own space and our creativity. Cause you know I've got this same, I got to same subscription as someone else who's doing much less.

And I've got the same subscription as Michael Saylor, who, you know, went and got $15 billion in funding through some creative ways that made people believe in him. Now, he also had built, goodwill from some, and you may not be a fan, but he built enough good will that some people decided to either do their good-will or their greed or combination to invest billions and billions of dollars in some of his new service offerings. But I was just suggesting that he is always seeking for a creative edge, or that interview seemed to indicate that, at least at this point he was, and that our competitive advantage Is our creative edge, our quantum competitive advantage.

You might have a, you might a linear competitive advantages in that you can, do a procedure 10% better than someone else or two, a hundred percent better. But your 10,000% advantage, your a 100,00% advantages. That's always a new procedure. And most of the time. That gets discovered in a lab or in silence or at a place where you can be away from the repetition of practice into the freedom to either practice new things or just, you know, invent, go through the practice of new thing in your mind. I'm a big fan of, Tom, a way to think uninterrupted thinking.

with AI, but it can also bring you back and have you be reacted to it. Uninterrupted AI you know, pen and a journal, all these types of things, regardless of the industry that you're in, uninterruptive thinking is probably the competitive advantage that is the most superior one that anyone could have and the one is impossible to replicate. What's your, what's kind of your process when you do the creative process, when do you this thinking? What's your, is there a standard kind of process that you go through?

Is it kind by feel? Explain that to me. Well, one thing I, I find to be true for me, you guys and gals may find it to true in your life or not. A lot of people say that they get, ideas when they're in the shower. They get ideas. When they wake up. I tend to get. Ideas early in morning quite a bit. But if you're different, then find out when you, this is kind of like the sales thing. I'm not going to go out with a journal and then sit there with the pen in my hand, say, Oh, what are my thoughts? Because that's too stressful.

And I just going try to have, you know, a recorder or something around or pen and paper around such that. When I wake up first thing in the morning, one of my credos is create before you consume. So not going to turn YouTube on in a morning. I'm not gonna go look out and see, you know, what the stock market did last night while I was a sleeper to put the Asian market, did when it opened up or this or that. And I will go out. Do all of those types of things. Okay. Try to find some moment of even turning, for me, Apple notes on and just starting to ramble.

in the dark or put some coffee on and just start, you know, You can talk now you mentioned AI. You could talk into AI talking to Apple notes. I have as many small digital recorders laying around the house as I Have reading glasses. And so some, which is a lot for those. For those of you that are not in your late 50s, early 60s. You don't understand. There's a lot of those. So, you know, just, I just have a little digital recorder, most everywhere I go and have them in the car or in a car. I can just turn on, Apple notes.

Just get it a practice when an idea comes to mind to get recorded. And get it recorded with enough specificity. You can develop it later. And then when you want to take some time and set down, you've got all these brilliant things that obviously, well, I don't know. I think we'll under stress. But obviously then when you find yourself wanting to get into some sort of structured creation, you got like between two and a hundred, I don't know how long it would be between those, but you've got a bunch of little things that you have done.

And you know, we can just take those little recorders if you happen to record something and go upload it into your computer and get all those things in one place, let those come as they come. And then when it's time to do something structured, then you have all of these things that happen divinely. You know, it. Those, those ideas are very difficult for me to come up with when I'm under stress, but they're pretty easy to up. When they just kind of pop into your head. So. Those are, that's what I do is I try to just, you know, whatever comes up, there's moments I tried to record many of my costs.

I'll, I will put the audio transcript of this into AI with a bunch of other, like probably. 4,000 or 5,00 hours of other stuff, and then try to find out, you know, what did I say that was an evolution? What was incongruent? what was further endorsement? Where did it go deeper? Did I bring up anything that different than what I said before? I'll probably have a 10 or 15 page breakdown of this conversation after, a little bit after it's done. Yeah. I read something, I can't remember, maybe it was 15 years ago.

And the Bee Gees wrote a song every day. Now think about that. They started writing songs in the 60s. And it was in the mid-70s where they hit their fame. And they, up until, you know, and I forget which one is still alive. I think it's Annie. Anyway, Barry. But, two of the three brothers are now passed away, but he said they wrote songs every single day. He said, it is not that it a discipline. It is a respect for the muses for process. If you are a good steward of money, More money generally comes to you because it feels safe, right?

And I feel the same way about ideas. If you have ideas and they come to, and you don't write them down, you know, honor them, record them or track them. Then they're not going to come. They're going feel safe to. And so what I like to do is I'm like you, I get up. I have music playing in the house throughout the night, binaural beats, delta waves.

Art, Hospitality, and Final Advice 1:09:00

It switches over to something else in morning to kind of begin this little wake up. And I grab my laptop and I start, or my voice recorder, and start typing recording. Like this morning, it was a good hour, right? I'll have some water, a little bit of coffee, but that's it. I'm not checking the news, not check any ESPN and any of that stuff. But the ideas flow. They feel safe. It's almost like they know that they have a safe place to come to be nurtured. And 99% of them, maybe 95% percent of the don't, they don' on the surface, you don''t materialize into stuff, But like yesterday, I was working on something and all of a sudden, bam, something came for me and I'm like, oh my God, this came to me 18 months ago.

And I able to go back, find it, boom, like oh, my gosh, that's the thing. It's like it's time for this now. Back then it wasn't time. Today it is time, now is the time it' ready to come out. I think the creative process for entrepreneurs, the process in general for But the creative process for entrepreneurs, because we don't really look at ourselves as artists, but we are in a way. I feel like we're artists in away. Feel like the work that you do is art. It's your way, it's, your form of self-expression.

You ever think about it in those terms, Kevin? I do. Tell me about. Actually more than I, I've not thought about it so much as myself as art, but I guess that would be true. But I thought it more as in Christianity, gospel means good news. That's one of the things that, you know, we as Christians attribute the Four books that the apostles wrote about their experience alongside Jesus, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as the gospels, that is the good news of Jesus Christ. So in a business, like the gospel of business is, the thing that you've decided was your acts and your orthodoxies, right?

And that's in your business. You know, everybody has their orthodoxies. Let's just take a muffler shop, for example, who's been writing about that. for a particular case study. Everybody that cares in the muffler business can talk about how their joints are welded better, the muffler parts that they choose are better. But if the customer touches a greasy door handle or goes into a restroom with paper piling out the top of the trash can, Or waits for an hour and a half in a lobby without wifi. All of these things are part of the experience.

And so, you know, our orthodoxy is what we know about our technical parts of our business. That's maybe superior to other things. I think there's things that I know. sales and business and things like that, that are far superior to my, some of my competitors in the same vein. At the time. It's imperative that when I have clients come or important, at least when i have, clients, come, I like to be in a venue. That's not that far from the airport being a venues, not far, from nice restaurants. A venue that makes people feel like they're embraced.

I live in a condo where a lot of my clients come and it's got like windows on two sides and overlooks the strip. So, and you can see like 50 miles probably out of any of our windows. And so I like to be in place where people can, you know, have big dreams and big things when they are here. Would that orthodoxy translate in an inferior environment? Yes. But then I would likely. B, without any disrespect, that small, resentful, congregation atrophying pastor that constantly railed against how they were more pious, yet people were following all of these less pius, leaders when in reality, the likelihood is those people that they labeled less pious and maybe they were, I don't know, but maybe the people they label less Pius were really being followed because they more empathetic.

And that wasn't a reduction of orthodoxy, But an increase in empathy. So could I still teach my stuff out in the middle of nowhere? Well, you came to you the first time we met. You actually came as a client along with a friend and we met at the Columbus airport, Marriott, Ohio, which was close to the airport. But it was a tiny little room that was kind of like a sleeping room with. Conference table inside. Yep. You know, small conference table side, it probably even had the bed still there and maybe partitioned off, maybe not.

And, you know now my surroundings have. measurably upgraded. Well, one would think, you know, do you need, after you've been in business a long time, wouldn't people just come because you learn more? Well possibly, but I've become to notice also, and I think that our hospitality is a lot better now than it was then, because all of those things matter. You can't, it's difficult to just work on. Your, I'll call it orthodoxy, but your, your craft, you know, there's the science and the art and much of what we do in our specific orthodoxy is the of we.

And those of us who are smart, anybody in a skill and attorney, a doctor, A. consultant, anything, anybody at a high level of scientific oversight of a particular skill set that can transmit that skill. It's very imperative that we transmit the science with the honor that's due of developing that science and becoming good at it. But also the art is in my view, and we can have art in the way we practice our science, but the artist also everything else we do to make the receipt of our work be empathetic.

Like, um. Performers work on videos that are going to sell their song. They, back in the day in MTV generation, maybe now still, you know, some places on streaming services, they have the video side, the artistic side. Uh, it's still important that we embrace all the senses. And if you have a superior craft and an inferior. you know, case that it's enclosed in, we all go get, many of us go, get Apple products and the, uh, the casing of that, that the unboxing of, it was just impeccable. Just got a new iPhone yesterday.

Couldn't wait to open the box. It's a great experience. You know, you can open it without any challenges. And so, we need, I think, to look at the art of how we're doing everything that we do so that, remove any friction that might happen when people are at that vulnerable moment of making a decision as to whether to work with us or to, work us more deeply or, refer somebody to working with, us, or any of those choices. Yeah. Yeah, well said. Well said, yeah. Kevin, we are getting to the end of the line here.

Any final thoughts? You've had a chance to speak in the room full of our folks, any final things that are on your heart that you want to share in part to our listeners? Well, I talked about growing up in a church environment, I just thought of a scripture. I don't even remember where it's from, but it said, it says, you know, that the man that knows to do good and doesn't do it. To him, it's sin. I don't even remember where exactly in the scripture that is, but it is there. And I can tell you, It's very great to work with someone.

You likely to be working with Matthew, a number of other people. you might be finding ideas, certain places, the speed to implementation, even poor implementation. The speed of implementation is likely what separates some of the most successful of you from those who are less successful. I would submit that those of who who're at least in the bottom, like the third quartile, I've usually found the Third Quartile of successful people to be the smartest. So you look first, second, third and fourth.

They're not in a very bottom. But they're like in third quarter, just below half. And the reason is that they want to define and refine all the nuances of the learning before they put it all into practice. And again, what somebody might say, you know, people are putting things into practice too soon. It's not that pious. Is not honoring the orthodoxy. They don't know it all yet. And some of there might be some wisdom to that caution. At the same time, You know the speed to implementation is such an important metric to watch.

So if anything I could leave to you at the end, if I've shared something that's been helpful, that awesome. Go do something with it. If Matthew shares something, go do with. is affirmed by your actions, great. If it's not affirming by actions then discontinue it. But all of these things don't hold on to them as ideas to continue to evaluate but actually find some sort of commitment in yourself to when you learn a specific thing to work on your speed to putting that into some practice as quickly as possible Then you can decide where to develop it into a more complete practice or just abandon.

It doesn't apply to you revise it, whatever you may want to do with it. Great. Kevin, thanks so much for taking the time. If somebody wants to learn more about you, what's the best way for them to find you in stock? Uh, probably Facebook. I spend a lot of time there. Don't do a. On the internet. Uh you could just, you know, Google me. Kevin nation's pretty easy to find or just send me a message. Kevin nations at Gmail and ask me what kind of questions you have and there's some way I can help you.

Great. And if not be very, very easy. To get to that as well. All right, Kevin, thanks for taking the time and folks. Thanks for joining us for another episode of out of the system. Thank you If this episode got you thinking differently, hit follow and share with someone stuck in the system. Please leave a review, it helps us grow. Want more? Visit MavericksProfitSystem.com to schedule your free discovery call and explore how far your business can go.