 Hey guys, Andy Elliott. Today I'm going to be going over the three things that I learned while building the Elliott group. Now, I'm going to explain this to you. If you're going to build something big in life, build something special, something super cool, I'm going to give you three things that really help me that I know if I would have known and I could have watched this video went back when I was building my business, it would have made my life a lot easier. So, guys, check this out. This is going to change your life. All right guys, building of the Elliott group. Three years we built a nine figure business, we kicked ass. I need you to understand this. In the beginning, I want to tell you about hiring. Write this down. Hiring. I made a big false choice on hiring in the beginning. Now, I need you to understand this because when you want to build a big business, what do you think? Man, I need the best. I got to have the best people, right? So, immediately I went out and I knew how to sell. I knew how to take care of my people. I knew how I wanted my business to be and I thought, what do I need to do? Because I came out of the automotive space and in the automotive space, you could either train a new guy or you could go hire somebody who had been selling cars for a long time and just plug them in and they would help you. So, I tried to find a couple people that I knew were good at sales and bring them into my company. Now, I need you to understand this. In any company, there's always going to be change. Change is going to happen inevitably. It's going to happen all the time. So, you need to have people that are okay with changing with you, which is what great companies do. They have people that are all cool from changing one day to the next because it's part of the mission to grow for the better of the company. But I hired two or three sales people which I ended up firing. I ended up letting them go. And I need you to understand this. My wife said, Andy, why don't we hire people within our coaching program, which is what we do today? And we hire people who I don't care who they used to be, we care about who they're becoming, how coachable they are, can they become the real deal, the Elliott way that we believe? Hey, guys, what's going on? It's Andy. A lot of you leave comments telling me that you need help. Do me a favor. I'm going to tell you the best way to get a hold of me. Shoot me a text message right now, 918-210-0254. 918-210-0254. I'll help you with whatever you need. I got your back for life. Let's get back to the video. And that's what we believe. But in the beginning, I found a couple sales people that were good at selling. And so, I brought them in. Our numbers go up. I'm like, man, these guys are great at selling. I did such a good job. But then as the little changes would come into place, I would have a meeting. I'd say, all right, guys, I need your help. We got to make some changes. We got to do this. And you know what I would see? I would see eye rolling. I'd see under the breath, people being like, I hate that. Dude, I'm the owner of my business. I'm risking everything. I'm putting everything out there on the line. I want these people to have my back and I want them to be willing to change with me. Okay? And guess what? They resisted the change. You know why? Because I hired some prima donna ass sales people. So, you know what I did? Simple. I fired them. You know what happened to those guys that I fired? Best thing in the world happened. I had an opportunity to hire people that weren't as good as them. People that were loyal. People that wanted an opportunity. People that were looking for trust. People that had been burned and in other places. And I made a commitment and a promise that I would never burn them, that I would train them and I would teach them as long as they were coachable. There were people that have gone through my own training system. And guess what? These guys that weren't as good as those ended up being 10 times better to them very quickly because they actually were okay with change. They were actually okay with being coached. They're actually okay with being learning. So, one of the biggest things that I'll tell you if you're going to build something great is find people who believe in your mission. Find people who love what you do. Find people who are so sold. It's like they're going to die with you doing this with you forever. Don't find people that just know how to sell what you have. Those people will be there for six months. They'll be there for a year. And then you're going to end up replacing them anyways. They're not going to be with you long term. So, I would tell you hire people that believe in the core values and the culture and the way that you believe. Don't hire for skill in sales. Okay? Those people the next time somebody raises their hand and offers them more money they're going to leave you and go there. That's how these people operate. They have no loyalty to nobody. And they don't want to change. I remember when we integrated in a CRM. I was telling them they had to log into their customers in the CRM. And they told me, I'm not logging my people. You hire somebody to log my deals for me. Listen, I get it. But we all know someone in a company that's like this. Guess what? Fire them if they're not willing to change. The tail's not going to wag the dog. So, that was lesson number one of building the Elliott Group. We no longer have those problems anymore. I've got 10 million people lined up ready to work for us today. The people that do work in my company. They're amazing. They'll be with me until I die. They love us. I love them. It's just it's truly a family. It's not even a business. It's not even a job. It's just family. So, I love you guys. But that was rule number one. So, just if it's the wrong person and you feel like they're not going to learn and they're and they're breathing hard underneath their breath or eye rolling you just just get rid of them today. Okay? You'll find the right people and you'll kill it. So, that's lesson number one. All right. Lesson number two on the build of the Elliott Group. All right? Everything is possible. I need you to understand this. Okay? What you don't know you can learn. I had a lot of people and I need you to understand this. I'm a very good salesperson. I'm a very good leader. And I've taught you in sales and leadership those two things you can take over the world. But I don't understand technology. I really don't. At this point in time when I started my business. I don't understand social media. I don't have a lot of systems and processes in place. You know because I've worked for other companies. I've had them and I don't really have my own. But you know what? I had all these people tell me... Listen to me. Are you ready? That I need to go hire a COO. That I need to go hire a CEO. That I need to go hire an attorney. That I need to go hire all these people to self-incorporate this business. I mean just look at the cost of expenses going into this. An IT guy. And internet. I had to hire all these people. I had to go get phone software. I had to go get all of these gadgets and tools that businesses have. I had to go buy the best CRM in the beginning. Everybody told me this. Dude had I went and got all these things when I had started my business. I'm going to tell you this. I would have gone broke and we wouldn't have made it. But you know what I did? I learned how to do all of them. Between me and my wife. My wife. She handled payroll. She handled being the COO. The CEO. The attorney. She handled being HR. She handled all of it. By the way. So what am I trying to tell you to do? Learn to wear every hat. I'm going to tell you this. One of the biggest mistakes that I almost made is I started hiring these other people and they would get paid money and they wouldn't even be doing anything. Ultimately we had to do it anyways because a lot of them were too good to do it. So you know what I decided to do? Me and my wife. Remember I tell you the greatest thing you'll ever do in your life is self-developed past any other person. We started paying instead of paying for employees. We started paying to learn all of these things that no one else in other industries were learning themselves. There would be a business owner and they would hire all these people. What I what we did me and my wife we were the business owners. We went and learned all this stuff. I learned technology like the back of my hand and I never knew it. I learned social media like the back of my hand. I never knew it. Everybody told me right that paid marketing was the way to go. Until this last year I never did it. We averaged 150 million views a month on social media. I need you to understand this. Paid marketing. Everybody told me you got to spend at least $100,000 a month in paid marketing. We spent zero and had more leads coming in than people with paid marketing. I need you to understand this. One of the biggest falls and things that I see people in business do first is that everybody tells them they need all of this stuff and really they don't need it all. What you need to do is that you need to go learn it all yourself and you need to learn every aspect of your business. And now today I do have some of those people that work in this company. But I know their jobs very well. I know what to do. I know what they do. I know how it works and I understand it. So as I'm watching them do it I can have conversations with them because I used to do it. So I would tell you one of the biggest things why most businesses don't make it early on is because of cash flow issue. They go and hire out all these people and they don't spend the time to learn it themselves. You don't have to do it forever but number two would be everything that you need in your company. Learn how to do that job. Learn how to play that position so that way you can communicate with the person that does that down the road. And also when you learn how to do it maybe there's a way that you should do it in your company that's better than everybody else tells you to do it. And you can't figure that out or find that if you don't do it on your own. So it's going to be rule number two. All right guys the number three the three biggest mistakes on the build of the Elliott group that I could have made on this third one was listening to what other people had to tell me how I should run my business. Now I need you to understand this I'm a sales trainer rival very large sales training company but we're going to go back. I did not have a large company I was just starting a business. When we're looking in sales training coaching spaces we see a couple different things. We see Grant Cardone over here and a lot of people thought that I was going to try to emulate what Grant Cardone did. No ways not even close completely different. I had a different idea. See I've always wanted me personally always wanted people to be very fit around me. I wanted to have like a warrior type team. So I created the sales warrior training platform. I remember people telling me you can't use sales warrior you can't use the word savage. They're like dude you need a word use words like advanced education not sales warrior savages. So one of the biggest mistakes I could have made was letting other people's ideas civilize me and I could have conformed to way other companies operate. You know what I did? I completely took a hard right. I created the sales warrior training platform. I created savagery. My guys got you know mindset monster. They've got these names. We broke into literally the psychology of how people operate the way they run. You know does a guy kill it in business when he's in his most elite shape or whenever he's not in shape at all. Does a guy kill it in business when he's eating grilled chicken? You know or does he compete well when he's eating cheeseburgers? Does a guy compete when he wakes up early and hits the gym so he's in a great mood all day long or does a guy do well when he crawls out of bed at the last minute and races into work without his hair fixed. Like all this common sense stuff I decided I was going to tell the truth okay. I was sick of people conforming and not getting real results. The reason why our training system is the best is because I tell people the freaking truth and I learned that all these other training platforms they just want to make people feel good but nobody gets better. Everybody stays the freaking same. There's no results. I decided when I went to go build my business that I was going to create in the beginning the the master closer seminar which we've done about 50 in a row now. Before every training we would do a hard workout because I wanted people to come out to learn business and sales and leadership with me but also I wanted them to work out with me and I wanted to beat the quitting mind out of them. I wanted to teach them to go back home and be physically fit. I wanted them to grind with me. I wanted to do things differently. People go dude nobody has people come out to a sales event and makes them work out before they get to train. Well you know what? I could have conformed. Imagine where the LA group would have been today. We wouldn't have it. I changed and I said not we're going to work out. Due to our first event we had 20 and then there were 40 and then there were 100 and then there were 300 and then it just keeps growing and every time we do our events before sales training we got hundreds of people all out there sweating working out grinding thousands of people pushing each other in physical mental business. I need you to understand something okay. The Elliott group would not be what it is today had I not decided to call my own shot. Not be a crowd pleaser. Not be an ass kisser. And literally believe in the dream that I had and took the passion in my heart for what I believe the most elite salesperson business owner family person that could look in the mirror love their paycheck and who they are what that would look like and what that system would need to look like and I followed my dream to a T. That's why we have the Elliott group today and that's why we're the number one fastest growing sales training company in the world. I need you to understand this. The biggest mistake the Elliott group could have made is by conforming to other companies. Okay we took a lot of risks we did it our own way and the payoff has been massive. I want to tell you something be who you are. Don't conform. Don't let other people's advice you know water down your dream. Stay crazy. Only crazy people make it. You know electricity was created by crazy people. Everything in this world that was worth having anybody that's worth being remembered was crazy Kobe Bryant was crazy. That's how he became an icon the mom of mentality. They said Kobe why you have to beat why are you out here at 2 a.m. shooting baskets you just went to bed at you know at 8 o'clock you know I mean 9 o'clock why everybody else went to bed at 12 he went to bed at 8 was out back back on the court at 3. Why did he get remembered because he was crazy. Okay so I would just tell you if you're going to build something massive you're going to need to be crazy. You're going to need to make sure you hire people that aren't pre-Madonna's that are like you and you need to go all in on your mission and just be different. And if you are I promise you you'll look up in a couple years and this advice that I gave you on this video is the one that changed your life forever.