Steve Johnsen

Wealth Comes from Service

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A lot of people have the misconception that wealth is things and comes from having things. This couldn’t be further from the truth. In reality, wealth comes from service. Put another way, wealth comes from our relationships with other people.

Here’s a brief thought experiment inspired by the work of Rabbi Daniel Lapin. Imagine that everyone in the world has made you their heir, and then suddenly everyone dies. You are now the owner of trillions upon trillions of dollars. You own all of the gold in the world, all of the silver in the world, even all of the banks in the world. Every car, every private jet, every yacht, and every expensive toy on the planet belongs to you. You own all of the world’s real estate, including every high-rent office building in every city on the planet.

But all of your gold, silver and cash cannot buy you anything. There are no new goods being produced, and no one to hire to provide you with any service. There is no pilot to fly your private jet, and no one running the oil refineries to produce fuel for your jets, yachts, boats and cars. There is no one to maintain the roads. Your high-rises are worthless because there is no one to rent anything, and there is no one who will maintain them for you.

The toys are fun (for a few days), but lose their appeal quickly because there is no one to enjoy them with. The worst part is that the tens of thousands of people who used to labor to provide you with groceries, electricity, running water, medical care, and everything else that made your life comfortable are now no longer available. You are quickly reduced to eking out a subsistence living as a hunter/gatherer in a decaying landscape. And the purpose you used to find in your life via your career, your family and the communities you served no longer exists.

None of the things that you own provide any real wealth. So we confused cause and effect. Real wealth results in having things, but having things is not wealth. True wealth comes from serving others and being served by others.

In sales and in business, it’s also easy to confuse this cause and effect. Success in sales and business IS a matter of serving others, and is its own reward; the tangible rewards that come later are the effect of that service.

Every day in driving to and from my office through the Denver Tech Center, I pass billions of dollars worth of property — more wealth than I could ever need or use in a lifetime. And yet none of that has any meaning apart from the people that I am also surrounded by — and that I am put on the planet to serve.

Byte to Byte with Steve Johnsen

Wealth Comes from Service

Steve Johnsen is a marketing strategist, a business coach, and the Founder of Cloud Mountain Marketing. He is also the author of the Amazon #1 best-seller, 5 Easy Steps to Make Your Website Your #1 Employee.

I don’t belong here

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There was a romantic comedy on Hallmark the other day about a young woman who had been set by her father on a track to become a high-powered lawyer. But instead she met a prince and fell in love.

The interesting part of the movie was not the Cinderella story of the “typical” American Harvard lawyer falling in love and becoming a princess. It was the two sets of conflicts going on throughout the film.

The first was the predicable conflict between what she expected her life to be–what she saw herself as (a career lawyer), and what she wants her life to be. In the standard Hollywood viewpoint, she did not want to be “cooped up in an office 24/7” for years, “while doing meaningless work that does helps no one but some corporation’s bottom line,” or to be a “cog in a machine” with no time for kids.

The second conflict, which was even more interesting, was between the fantastic opportunities that open up for her and the artificial limit in her mind of what she could be or have. She had a chance to take on personal and professional roles that were far more fulfilling than she had ever dreamed, but her responses were, “I don’t belong here.” “This isn’t my real life. It’s a fantasy.” “This is all happening too fast.”

These two conflicts sound familiar. A classic midlife crisis is the conflict between what I dream my life could be and the track that I find myself on. Then as I take action and new opportunities open up, there’s a part of me that wants to pull me back into the “safe” zone of the familiar, even if I am miserable there. In the movie, her wise friend counseled her regarding her first conflict: “You’re life is anything you want it to be.” Because of the second conflict her response was: “There are more important things in life than just being happy.”

To be truly successful in life usually requires us to overcome both sets of conflicts. We have to overcome what we think we’re supposed to do to figure out what we want. But if we figure that out and go for it and begin to succeed, we have to also overcome the feeling of “I don’t belong here. I don’t deserve this.” When I expand in my own mind my concept of what I allow myself to enjoy, I am finally free to experience a higher level of success.

I love it when they say no

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It’s wonderful when a prospect says No. Now it’s clear. Now we’re not wasting each other’s time. Now I can ask the real questions to uncover what they actually want or need.

Sometimes it is about price. After I’ve spent an hour helping her get clear about her goals, then outlining scope of service and detailed custom work, I finally got the price question. And her expectation was much lower that what it will actually take to get what she wants. That’s a good thing! Now we can adjust expectations and she can do some concrete planning. Or I can also refer to a cheaper (and lower quality) service provider. That’s a win! Because I served her and she knows I am at a higher level of quality. She knows my price, and she can come back. Because she will eventually grow to the point where she’s disenchanted with the cheap service provider. In the mean time, she can refer people to me who are looking for quality.

Sometimes it’s about commitment. To invest in a strong marketing program you have to be ready to grow your business. And many times the No is not about me, or the quality of my service, or the pricing, but about the fact that they’re not ready to grow yet. I’ve just helped the prospect get a lot clearer about what they really want. And that’s a tremendous service.

Also, I can stay in service. Don’t write them off. Offer to review the proposal they get from somewhere else. Send articles. Continue to serve in any way I reasonably can that doesn’t take a lot of my time.

You’ve probably never had this problem, but many times in the past I would sit and stare at the list of prospects on my screen, avoiding phone calls. And it wasn’t really because I was afraid of talking to people. Deep down inside, it was because I was afraid of finding out that my list of prospects wasn’t real, that actually I didn’t have any prospects. And if I did talk to people, I’d avoid the closing question. So I would prefer to sit and imagine that my pipeline is full rather than asking for a definite yes or no.

So there I am, maybe sitting with a list of people who would love to buy from me, if I would only ask the question. Or, maybe sitting with a list of people who will never buy from me, but I’m sitting there by the phone waiting for one of them to call me. How sad! Sitting there afraid–afraid to make anything real and concrete, to shine the light on it to see what it really is. Sitting there afraid to know what’s real and what’s not.

My coach helped me to see how disempowering that is. Why not find out? Ask them all right now. And if all of them say no, that’s so liberating! Even empowering! Because now I know what I need to do and I can go out and take action. Fantasy is disempowering and leads to inaction. Reality is empowering and leads to action. And action leads to sales success.

Gestation period

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“When riches begin to come, they come so quickly, in such great abundance, that one wonders where they have been hiding during all those lean years.”
— Napoleon Hill

In high school, one of the coaches for the swimming and diving team was an Olympic medalist. She would teach the divers some pretty complicated moves. I would watch them practice a new dive awkwardly for days, sometimes for weeks. Maybe with their arms flailing. Maybe sometimes falling flat. Then all of sudden it would click, and the dive would become part of their repertoire. Something they could do over and over again with grace and ease.

Some things take time to click. I’m not talking about sitting around for days waiting for things to turn around. And I’m not talking about practicing the wrong thing for weeks and then getting a different result. These divers were practicing the right thing, in the right way, being taught by a very experienced coach, and it took time.

You’ve probably heard the story of the Chinese bamboo tree. You water it faithfully for five years and nothing grows (above the ground, anyway). Then suddenly after five years it grows 20 feet in a few months. Because during those five years, it was growing an extensive root system underground.

You might say that it took a lot of faith for someone to keep watering the bamboo for five years. That may be true. It would certainly be a lot easier if the person had some experience of bamboo trees sprouting up after five years. If they had seen it and knew that this was possible.

And of course, if the bamboo tree had feelings, it might have gotten frustrated. “What’s the matter with me? I’ve been watered for years and still nothing to show for it!” But the bamboo tree also knows that something is going on underground.

This is also true in selling or in growing a business. Sometimes the inner work goes on for a while and you don’t see the outer result right away. Switching to a service approach is like growing roots. You put out a lot of effort without any visible return. Then all of sudden it takes off.

True effortless selling is comprised of mindset + service + structure. It can take some time to have the insights and acquire the service mindset. Then there are practical systems and tools that take a while to get the hang of. If you stay on the path it can have tremendous results.

But don’t take my word for it. Test it out thoroughly for yourself and see if it works for you.

Break through the Terror Barrier

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Melissa Ford is a sales coach known throughout the world for her amazing sales training programs. She talks about the “terror barrier” that stops us from taking the action we know we need to take.

When we’re faced with something that really scares us, the tendency is to want to curl up in a fetal position and hide, like corporal Timothy Upham in Saving Private Ryan. Viewers get angry about at him for not saving his friend—it would have been so easy for him to intervene!—but I can certainly relate to being paralyzed from fear. Even when it’s not a life or death situation. I’m curled up under my desk—or watching cat videos on Facebook—because I’m supposed to make a cold call, yet I just can’t make myself pick up the phone and do it. Because someone might say “no” to me.

Here’s a trick I learned from Melissa that helps me break through the Terror Barrier: Prove to yourself that you’re not going to die. Making that cold call isn’t about succeeding or failing in making the sale. It’s about proving that I won’t die. In fact, I know that I’m going to succeed at not dying when I make that call. Even in my terrified state, I can see the humor in that challenge. And then by proving I’m not dying, I start really living.

P.S. If anyone wants an audio recording of an interview I did with Melissa called “Why I Love Selling,” please email me.

A better chocolate cake

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Imagine for a moment that you’ve been working at becoming a good pastry chef. Every day for the last week you’ve made a chocolate cake. But each time, the cake looks flat and tastes horrible.

To fix it, you might work hard on your technique. How you whisk the batter, how you crack the eggs, mixing the dry ingredients before adding the wet, etc., but nothing seems to produce any better results. Finally, you give up in failure thinking, “I’m just not meant to be a cook.”

Then a friend stops by and looks at your recipe. Somehow the recipe you’ve been following calls for a cup of salt and a teaspoon of sugar instead of a cup of sugar and a teaspoon of salt. No wonder the cake turns out horrible! The problem is not you; it’s not your technique, and it’s not your oven. You’ve been working off of a bad recipe!

This happens to a lot of people when they build a website. There’s a lot of misinformation about how the process actually works. So many people are following a bad recipe. But they blame themselves for the result. It’s frustrating and demeaning. I think websites just don’t work in my industry. I’m a failure. I’m really bad at getting what I need in a website. I should just focus on networking or direct mail.

But if we see that it’s the recipe that’s at fault, we can let go of all our stories of failure.

I can tell myself the story that I’m a bad cook, or I can throw away my entire history of cake failure and simply upgrade the recipe. Your technique can be perfect, but if your recipe is wrong you’re going to fail every time.

We have a recipe that works for building an effective website. Without a good recipe, you might think that you’re just not cut out to have a good website. But having the right recipe makes all the difference in the world. If your website has never worked as well as you want it to, and you’re open to trying a new approach, send me an email and let’s talk.