 JB, the wolf is in the house. Dude, thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it, buddy. Pleasure. 8% Nation, we have the Wolf of Wall Street, Mr. Jordan Belfort in, we're doubling down, right? Cause he's gonna be in Vegas with us, but we're doubling down and we got him on virtual as well. Huge thanks to you, buddy, for spending some time with us and doing this with us. I don't think anyone needs, you know, like an introduction per se, you know? If they do, I would say just go watch the movie, right? I mean, would you agree with that? Well, I mean, you know, the movie is mostly true. I mean, some of the things that are in the movie are not true, but the things that you think would not be true are true and the things that aren't true, it's like the opposite, you know? But I think it's a good feeling, listen, the bottom line is that, you know, in the context of what we're talking about today, you know, the secret to my success, you know, on Wall Street and throughout my life has been my ability to take people who maybe are not natural-born closers and very quickly turn them into superstar salespeople. And frankly, on Wall Street, Stockbrook was all glorified salespeople. That's what you're doing. So Wall Street is, you know, people think of Wall Street, you think of analysts or investment bankers or board and get-go. In reality, yeah, there are those types of people out there, but most of all, you have people on the phone pulling away, closing deals, so there you go. Well, let's jump into that. I love that. So do you believe that there are natural-born closers? Yeah, of course there are natural-born closers. I mean, I am one, I've seen many, obviously there were different degrees of it. So, you know, imagine like anything else, there's a continuum. So yeah, there's natural-born closers and there's like natural-born closers at the highest level. So why was that guy, that was the Uber natural-born closer? And what that means to me is that, you know, in some way, my brain, the way it's wired, the experiences that I've had, intuitively, I know exactly what someone needs to hear, what I need to look like, how I need to say things, to essentially get someone to agree with my point of view, which is buy from me, that what I have is value, it makes sense for you to part with your hard-earned money. So natural-born closers, without really even thinking about it, just intuitively knows what the other person needs to hear to get them to say yes. Now obviously you can unpack that a lot more. What does that mean then? We can really break it down through, you know, his minicable chunks as you're on here. And that's actually what I did, because what happens is, if you ask most natural-born closers, hey, you know, what do you do? How do you close at such a high level? They'll be like, oh, well, I just, you know, I'm a good people person. Or, oh man, I overcome every objection. Or, you know, I work hard, knock on lots of doors. They really can't verbalize it. And if you can't verbalize it, you can't chunk it down, then you can't teach other people. So while, yeah, I was an amazing salesperson myself, and I always looked at that as my superpower, my real superpower was that I had the ability to transfer that skill to other people. And that was really how I made all the money. It was by taking people who were not natural-born closers. In fact, some were just terrible closers, and I made them great. And I took people who were great and made them into the top 1% in the world. So whatever they were, you can rash yourself up. Yeah, and is that what you're doing now, right? Mostly training those that aren't natural-born closers or that are to be simply better at their craft. Yeah, I mean, I go around the world, and I do, you know, the most part, my business really consists of a couple things. Number one is actually recruiting. Companies hire my company to go out there and find the top producers of tomorrow. So fiercely competitive landscape in the past, right? So watch this in the past. You know, it was full employment, you know, you had to find great closers, right? So it was very easy for me with my brand to go out there and find the kids coming out of college or those that are just out there floundering in the workplace, haven't found the right place to work yet. And because my brand can attract them, then train them and then deliver them to a company. That's one aspect of it, right? In a post-COVID world, now what you have is a real problem for employers, is that think about this is a really interesting thing. You think, wow, now the employers have to pick a litter. Everyone's out of work. There's so many people with the jobs. Okay, great, but what happened? Let's slow that down for a second. When companies laid off the bulk of their workforce, if we focus on the sales aspect, who did they lay off? The bottom 80%, the top 20%, the top producers kept their job. So what you have now is a huge pool of people who are not at the top of the heap. So you need to be really, really careful as an employer right now, who you hire, because you might end up with a bunch of mid-level and low-level producers that you really can't build a world-class sales organization around. So I have systems and psychometric testing for our community that sit through people. And I also, this is intuitively my team, you know, after so many years of responding out to people that really have what it takes and that are dedicated. And then we actually train those people using a system called the Straight Line, which many people know about, which is the system I've been teaching for many years of how you step-by-step become a world-class closer and deliver those and onboard those to companies. That's my system. That's awesome. So, I mean, and there's a lot of individuals and companies that are gonna be watching this, that what should they look for when they're hiring people? Well, number one, you gotta realize that the typical interview questions out there are like, they're all well-known and most people to put it bluntly are, you know, what do you do when you're going through a year? You're full of shit, basically. You send your representative. It's like, you know, you have to say when you're on a date with someone, you don't really know the person you date until three months, because for the first three months they send their representative. It's like their best self. And then only, you wait, what? I can't believe, oh, I was lying the first, you know what I mean? So there are questions and what we do, especially, so there's two sides. Number one, there's psychometric testing. That's actually my own proprietary test based on what I've seen over the years. This was something I created in conjunction with psychologists and it's really intense. So it's 30 ways to ask the same questions to get to the truth of it. And then based on that, you see what certain competencies are in that predispositions. Predispositions, for example, someone might not be great for cold calling, but there'll be a world-class closer. There'll be the guy that you want to close. Other people might not be great at closing, but they're amazing at managing the long-term relationship, which is equally important for lifetime value of a customer. Some people are meant to just be more in face-to-face sales, others out there. So you gotta know, all salesmen aren't built alike. So this really sifts through all those people. Then through behavioral interviewing, you can really narrow that down even further. And then once you have those people, and here's these two other parts, the number one is onboarding. So the biggest danger point for any salesperson is the first 30 days. They have to show up already trained. So I'm a big believer, like I look at every company, say what's your biggest pain point in sales attrition? First year attrition of a salesperson is the death knell of every sales force. If you can get a salesperson trained onboarding correctly, and they don't leave that first year, you are literally at the top of the heap when it comes to sales, bottom line. The issue that I see even with really successful companies, for example, I do a lot of work in logistics and pharmaceuticals in auto, they will have 60 plus percent attrition rates, and they're still making a fortune. That's how insane it is. I had a company that had an 85% attrition rate. They were hiring 300 salesmen a year and blowing through 85% of them before I got involved. All right, and they were a billion dollar company. So just imagine the impact it has on a company's bottom line where you can choose who are the right people to actually hire, be make sure they're trained to a razor's edge on your industry-specific items before they show up, onboard them correctly, and then also coach them. We also coach them afterwards, free of charge for a period of two years to make sure they perform. So to me, that's a formula for success. Of course skill set, that's part of the training, but you gotta get the right person as well. Yeah, I mean, when you talk through like finding the right people, siffing through at you and your team, when you do, how do you end up identifying the right person? Do you use like a disc assessment, is there a certain? No, I use my own, no, this doesn't work. I found that this doesn't work, at best. I think it's mostly, no offense, I just think that my system, my test is proprietary just for sales. So if you're looking to hire psychologists or office workers, don't use my, what I do, I specialize in what they can do better than anyone in the world. That is, I know salespeople. I know how they tick, and I think he is unpacking it into a scientifically proven formula of how you spot out. So there's just a predisposition to succeed. Does not mean they're going to succeed. They need to be trained, they need to be onboarded correctly. And it's that at first year in the life of a salesperson, the reason that's so important is because of the way the belief systems work. Success to get success. When someone goes into sales and they fail in the beginning, they start to develop limiting beliefs about themselves, their capabilities, and it becomes a sort of self-defeating cycle here. So it's critical that the first experience that someone has in sales is a good one. Now, granted, there's many people that I made my living, taking people who were failing and making them succeed. But if I'm talking just from the company perspective and an experience at a company, the key is is you want them starting off on the right foot. So to me, the worst thing a company could do is to put people out there in the field or on the phone who are not ready, who don't know what they're doing, they, it's destructive to your brain because they say stupid shit, they say, you know, they do stupid things, right? And two, you find people who could have succeeded with the right training and the right, they've had the skill sets to close and knew the product well enough, yet you self-sabotage because they start off on the wrong foot, they never get going and that spreads throughout the sales force. And that's why you have so many subpar sales forces out there. So it's not like it's just finding the right person. It's finding the right person, making sure they're trained correctly, onboarded correctly, and then especially that year one attrition is the crucial part for anyone who owns a company and also for you the sales person yourself because the bottom line is, is how you perform in the beginning is gonna set the stage for a cycle of belief building that compels you to being a top producer. Absolutely. I totally agree with everything you're saying from a confidence standpoint, you can just totally crush it, you know? I love that. I love that. That's really good. When we, I wanna jump to the straight line for a second. For those that don't know maybe what that is or what that means, can you break that down and explain that for a quick second? Sure. So the straight line, that's the actual sales training aspect to what I do. And I think it's probably the most well-known system in the world that's been, you know, obviously I'm gonna have the benefit of a movie where Leo DiCaprio is, we buy the logo straight line and the background sell me this pen, right? But what the straight line really is, it's a backwards way of looking at selling. Meaning rather than saying, you know, it's like, okay, I'm standing at the front. What do I do here? I gotta close this question. It's imagine a person that bought. What would they have to hear? What things would they need to know? What would they wanna see before they said yes? So you say, what elements have to line up in another person's mind to get them to say yes? And when you have experience that you'll quickly find out, there are just a few things, it's not a million things. There are three things, core elements that must line up in every person's mind before they buy a product. And then there are a couple of ancillary things as well for the tougher closes. So that's one part is what are these five core elements that must line up? What are the things you have to say to essentially get them to line up? So the straight line essentially imagine it's the shortest distance to two points to straight line, right? So the philosophy is that at the beginning of the open, at the end you have the close and the straight line represents the perfect conversation. Imagine like an objectionless close when a person was a lay down, you know almost free sold before you ever open up your mouth speaking. As a salesperson, if you knock on enough doors or make enough calls, eventually you're gonna find people who just, oh yeah, great, oh my God, they're almost free sold to the easiest closes all. So that represents that perfect straight line sale, an objectionless close where the prospect agreed with everything you say. And the only problem is that those are few and far between. In the real world of sales, people have objections, they have questions, they interrupt you, they cut you off, they have concerns. So you use the sales and wanna keep them on the straight line, they want to go off the straight line. So what we have is this methodology that gives you boundaries above and below the line. How far the conversation can stray off of perfection before you lose control of the sale and start spiraling off to what I call the Pluto, where you're talking about the price of tea in China or things that have no relation to the sale or down here to your anus, not a good place for salespeople to be. The point is, is that what I realized, there was this magic moment I had when I couldn't get my guys, this is 30 years ago, right? When I was trying to train my first 12 salespeople and I was already teaching an amazing system. It did nothing, but I was a great sales trainer even then, but I switched from selling average moms and pops to the richest 1% of Americans. And the sale was infinitely hard. So it was a really tough sale. So the system I was teaching, the old one, yeah, it was good enough to close average moms and pops. But take the same type of sale to super rich, uh-uh, the system broke down, it collapsed. So I had to invent a new way of training salespeople because here's what was happening. I was calling the same and I was closing 50% of the people I spoke to. My junior partner Danny was calling these people, he was closing 30%. Yet my 12 average kids who had barely clawed away at a high school, they were closing zero. Same leaves, same script, same phone calls, selling the same product. I'm closing half, they're closing zero. I couldn't understand it. And that went on for a month. And I finally cracked the code in this one evening and I realized what it was was something very elemental. It was really simple actually. What it was, it's easy to learn, is that I had a certain way of talking, a certain way of looking, a certain way of the energy I exuded, that literally from the first few seconds of the conversation, when I get on the phone with the prospect, well face to face, they would perceive me in a certain way. And based on that perception, which was that I was sharp as a tack, enthusiastic as hell and an expert, most importantly an expert in my field. They'd say, wow, this is not the average bear, not the average guy. And they'd say, this is an expert and they would defer to me. They would let me control the flow of the encounter. Because what we do, we've been conditioned since we were yay big to defer to experts. We let experts guide us. We seek out experts to solve all problems. So by getting yourself into that position where you're perceived sharp, enthusiastic, expert in your field, people defer to you and once they do, they essentially hand you control the sale, well guess what? Now you can start lining up the elements in the same way every time. So I had this philosophy, I said to my guys, guys, don't you get it? Every sale is the same. And they were like, what? Like how could every sale be the same? And my guys, every sale is the same. To me, because I was taking control, I can move it down the same path every time. People have different needs, different values, different pain points. They say different things, but the same core elements must line up in a prospect's mind before they say yes. And with the straight line system, once you're in control, you can then line those elements up in the same order every time. It's almost like picking the lock of a safe. The way you crack, a safe crack, a crack's a safe. He puts his ear, spins it one way, click, he has a number. Does he try to open the safe? No, he knows there's more numbers. He spins it the other way. He has the second click. Spins it the third way. He has the third click and then he tests it. That's when you ask for the order. If he got all three numbers right, the safe opens. If it doesn't, it wants to do, oh damn, it's uncrackable, no. He goes back to the beginning and he tries the three numbers again. So with the straight line, with a very similar tactic we call looping, we loop back and try again. And every time you essentially run these patterns, you're cracking these numbers of his buying combination. You ask for the order is essentially seeing if the safe will open and when it opens, victory. That's the shortest way to explain it. And it's so simple to learn that when I teach it to companies at the people, like they have these 30 or 40% uptick in close range in a matter of days. That's just in days and much more effort. It's a very simple system. And the reason it's simple is because it had to be. Because my guys were basically morons. They were not NASA scientists. They were kids that barely graduated high school. They came from poor families. They could barely walk and shoot government at the same time. And the movie was very accurate. They were that fucking dumb, all right? So because of that, I had to invent a system that was so simple and so intuitive, so easy to learn that even a moron could learn it because they were morons. Bottom line. Yeah, well, I mean, and I love how simple you make it, right? Getting in control earlier, you know, following the straight line. If they give you an objection, obviously you're pivoting back. I mean, it makes a ton of sense. That's one of the things that I'm glad we're covering because the theme of 8% nation is that 92% of insurance agents fail. Well, the 92% that fail, the most common thing that we hear from them that they have questions on is objections and being able to overcome objections and objections just startling them and scaring them, you know, and so I love that you're addressing that. Yeah, remember this. So that one little point here is that objections are smoke screens for uncertainty. Someone says to you, let me think about it or let me call you back. That's very different than saying, no, I'm not interested. See, no means no. And my mind says, no, I don't want it. I don't see, as a sales person, there's one thing everyone here takes away from this outside the critical importance of being in control of the conversation is that as a sales person, as a top producer, your job is not to take the word no and turn it into yes. That's not how sales people make their money. I don't turn nos into buyers. I turn, let me think about it, into buyers. I turn bedtime of year into buyers. I turn, let me speak to my wife into buyers. I take objections. It's very different than, no, I don't want it. I'd rather knock on the next door or make the next call. I'm not trying to convince someone to buy so they don't want or need. I want people who need my product, want my product, convince my product, right? But they are skeptical and as they should be. So when someone hits me with an objection, what I'm saying to them is, ah, perfect. They're interested to smoke screen. They're not certain yet. So I will answer the objection, whatever that objection might be, but by answering the objection, all I've done is given myself the right to speak more. So if someone says I want to speak to my wife and I haven't answered why, well, you really don't have to speak to your wife for blah, blah, blah reason why, if I then try to close the sale, I have no shot, but because the wife was just a knee jerk reaction, okay? Now in some industries, maybe they actually do. So I feel you can, so in some cases, probably not the best one to use better. So let me think about it, all right? Let me think about it means I need to think about it to become more certain. So so as we think about it, I will answer the objection, but I'll never ask for the order afterwards. I answer the objection and then loop back and create more certainty about the product, about myself, the salesperson, even I'm trustworthy, dependable, you want me in your life for the long term, the company that stands behind, in this case, the insurance product, and then I will ask for the order. So an objection only gives me the right to speak more, but the answer to the objection, the rebuttal gives me the right to speak more. It's when I say after that, that's gonna get the job done. That's good, that's really good. I wanna transition now to one of things that I'm always studying and wanting to learn from successful people, and I know agents that are part of our conference are the exact same way, is the daily habits, the routine of those successful people, what are some of your daily habits or routine or that you recommend for others? When it comes to selling, to me, I never would sell, I'm gonna go out and sell for an hour. I'm gonna dial up over 30 minutes. It doesn't work. You need to have blocks of time dedicated to do. This is the biggest thing. Number one is that if I'm gonna go out there and I'm gonna cold call, I'm doing it for two or three hours, block of time. I'm not gonna do it for 20 minutes. You only got three, 20 minutes to make a few cold calls. If I'm gonna go out to knock on doors, I'm going out for six hours, whatever that amount of time that I set at time. Number two, I don't ever, here's a big one. I don't ever take good days and use that as an opportunity to stop early. Wow, I made two sales today, done. No, if I made two sales and I'm hot, I'm going for six sales. In other words, I set time frames. I'm gonna knock on doors till X time. Well, I'm gonna make calls until X time and I am literally going to make every single call till that clock hits. I don't care how bad I'm doing, how negative people are towards me, or how awesome I'm doing. I am unabated going through that time period. And third, with every single call, every single pitch, every single knock on door, whichever way you're doing it, right? Every call I'm as excited as my first call. See, this is the problem a lot of sales people have in terms of that intergame, is what happens is throughout the day, you're saying the same thing over and over and over again. So you almost start feeling silly about that level of enthusiasm and excitement. So when you go into a difficult sales room, it's like, there's gonna be Dahlia, how you doing, Mr. Jones. And yet in the morning, in the first pitch day, you're like, hey, what are you doing? They're really upbeat. What you don't realize is that this person, let me call it at that moment, they're hearing it for the first time. Every pitch has gotta be like your first pitch. So I've learned, I've gotten to this habit over the years of triggering this positive and powered state in the beginning of every sales call. So I treat every sales call like it's my first sales call. Those are three examples of habits I have when I'm selling. And also I do massive preparation. I would never sell something without knowing what I have to say before I'm going to say it. I script out everything before it. I know my language patterns, the logical cases I'm making, how I'm gonna make the emotional case. I wonder all about my product, the product knowledge, is it necessary, all the benefits, the features that are associated with those benefits. I'm gonna have comparisons and metaphors and examples to use. I'm gonna have all of that stuff memorized up here and in front of me, I'm on the phone. Obviously when in person, I'm not like, look in your house, I'm not doing it in person. But the point is, is I prepare myself. I don't wing it. That's crucial. That's really good, yeah. And you embodied that. Whether you're selling coolers on the beach or meat out of a freezer or stocks, all those things you said, you embodied. You just mentioned perfectly in line with the theme for this virtual conference, which is if you don't quit, you can't fail. And a lot of agents out there. I think that a lot of people really don't understand what rejection really means in terms of the very simple way of looking at it. It's like, oh, they're not rejecting me personally. They're rejecting blah blah blah. And we've all read that in books. That doesn't really go very far with most people. They still feel terrible about it. They still feel like they still feel futile. It's an exercise of futility. The media better way of looking at this, okay? And that is keeping track of exactly how many co-calls you make in a day, how many presentations you make in a day and how many of those openly lead to closures. Once you know those numbers, let's say you know you gotta make 100 dials or knock on 100 doors to get one sale. And that sale's been making $5,000. And I'm just completely making up numbers here, right? Those numbers could be anything, right? So that means that I make $5,000, right? Over 100 door knocks. That means I'm making $20 for every time I knock on a door, not $5,000 for one close. So I don't look at it like I make $5,000 every time I close a sale. I make 20 bucks every time I knock on the door. That means the no's are as good as the yeses. Someone says, haven't I say, I'm like, that's $20. So when they say, I don't close the sale, I make 20 bucks. Every cost 20 bucks, 20 bucks, 20 bucks, 20 bucks. Rather than saying I'm making nothing and I only make money when I close, it's not true because it's just simply a numbers game. Once you know your numbers and you really keep tracking, you realize, hey, if I close, knock on 100s, I know I'm gonna eventually close a sale and might take me to the 98, knock, or call, might be the 50, might be 300 and I'll close three at once, but those averages work. So once you do that, you're sort of attributing a dollar value to the people who don't buy from you. And that's a really, really empowering way to look at things. You just heard it from the wolf himself. If you don't quit, you can't fail. Only 8% of insurance agents succeed in their first three years. What's your thoughts on that? What does 8% mean to you and how can the 92% become part of the eight? The 8% means you're not being trained correctly or onboarded correctly. Listen, there's no doubt. I wear two hats. I recruit for companies and I help salespeople get jobs, right? So there's no doubt that if I give, if I test people, you have people with higher aptitudes or lower aptitudes. What I will tell you is that the great equalizer or all this is the straight line system. I can teach someone the straight line system was a very low sales IQ and scores very poorly on a test. And then I'll repest them and they're actually will score the exact opposite. It will dramatically raise their competencies and change their beliefs because those two, what very few people don't get is that your psychology and your skill sets, they play into each other. They're very much interrelated because when we think we're great at things, we actually work harder at them. We enjoy them more. For example, it's one thing to try to motivate people saying you're great, you're capable of greatness, you're gonna achieve, just work hard like the most motivational speakers is they just motivate, they focus on the inner game of success. The problem is, is if you motivate people to work really hard, go out, they kick ass, but you don't give them the tools to succeed, they get negative results, those negative results reinforce limiting beliefs. So what happens is, like when I had all these kids that come to me and they were never successful for them, they had made a lot of money. But then they say, wait a second, I'm looking at all kids who are just like me all making over a million dollars a year because they've learned the system, they've learned the straight line. So they call the straight line system the great equalizer. It equalized you and people were better educated, had more natural ability, but by learning the system of influence and persuasion, it equalized you. So if you're in that 92%, you don't have to be sales, there's a learnable skill. It takes work, dedication and mindset, but once you possess the skill, guess what happens? You start saying, wait a second. So my past results don't necessarily have to equal my future results. I didn't notice. You know, when you learn this skill, it's powerful. It's, and you know you sound better. And people will walk saying, wow, you sound really good. And you start to gain that self-confidence and it feeds on itself and it feeds on itself and actually changes your own belief systems about selling, about persuasion and about your ability to succeed in that landscape. So it's a huge plus. It's the first thing I do is I literally learn a straight line and master your craft. The rest of it is gonna become really easy once you do that. In fact, I'm giving it, and by the way, because of the Corona, I normally don't do this, but I'm giving everybody a free training here. So on the score, I'm giving you guys a free module. I have a very high level, robust corporate training program. So everyone here, this is free. And it's not sort of free. We have to enter your credit card free. I mean, it's just fucking free. It's my gift to you. There's no catches. Enter your credit card. I hope you forget about canceling. No, it's not that. It's just free. So if you go to my website, JordanBeltwork.com slash 8% nation, you can get this training for free. It's powerful and it's life changing. Wow. Thank you for doing that buddy. That's huge. That means a lot, man. One last question for you. What's your, I'm big on goals. I write down my goals every day. What's JB's goal, man? What's your goal now? What's your in-game? What's your big goal? My goal is to really build the largest recruiting agency in the world right now. And I believe that there is gonna be such massive, I'm sorry to say that I believe there's gonna be massive unemployment that's gonna stay for a while. I don't think it's gonna be this wild instant D-shaped recovery. I believe one day we will achieve our past glory here but I think there's gonna be some pain. The beauty is, is that sales people who know the straight line system will always be able to get a job and always make a lot of money. Yes, everyone has lean times as well. There are no guarantees in life. But this is a skill set. It's a required skill and just to understand the straight line was invented for distance selling. It specializes in distance selling, meaning over the phone or like this it was invented as a phone based, we didn't see someone. And by the way, even though we can see each other it's not the same as in person where there's a certain energy exchange with body language. It's still not there yet with the technology. It's just not, okay? So you need to learn how to use your tonality, how to use certain facial expressions even on a Zoom call like this but the straight line is like built for distance persuasion. So right now more than ever it's a system that is like, I look at it as a more quiet force. When you choose to take it, that's your choice. But until you do, you're gonna be feeling a lot of pain in this new economy that's gonna emerge unless of course you're one of those lucky, natural bull closers who hasn't all figured out and even you could benefit because it'll show you why you do what you do so well and make you that your best day is every day. Bottom line. Unbelievable, buddy. I know we're running out of time. Thank you so much for your time. Thanks for being on the virtual 8% nation. Super excited to meet you at 8% Vegas, buddy. Thank you so much. Put the link up so everyone can see the link here. So JordanBeltdorf.com is less 8% nation. We will put it up, buddy. Thank you so much. Appreciate your time so much. Susan. Thank you. If you watched this video and you wanna learn how to take a live call and transfer it from an opener to a closer, that video's for you. Click on it and I'll see you there. Again, I'm not sure what time you're watching this video, right? Intro, expert, control, qualify, transfer. This is how to effectively transfer a live call from an opener to a closer.