The Massimo Show

On this episode of the Massimo Show, Rod sits down with former NFL player turned motivational speaker JJ BIrden.

Born and raised in Portland Oregon, JJ went to the University of Oregon where he was a two sport star in Football and Track and Field. A 5'10", 157-pound wide receiver, JJ was drafted by the Cleveland Browns in the 1988 NFL Draft and played nine seasons (Cleveland Browns, Dallas Cowboys, Kansas City Chiefs, and Atlanta Falcons). He played two years with Hall of Fame Quarterback Joe Montana. He certainly was not the biggest, strongest, or fastest guy on the field, but he knew how to seize his once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and maximize his success through dedication and hard work.

JJ's ultimate passion was to be successful at something. Raised in the inner cities of Portland, JJ and his family knew what real struggle was and he was determined to break that cycle for himself one way or another. Unlike other kids his age JJ didn't play a team sport until his sophomore year in High School but he showed true talent and drive and quickly became an integral part of his teams. The first success was learning how to manage his time and prioritize early on in his life.

Becoming a Pro

JJ wasn't sure where he was headed when he qualified for the 1988 Olympic trials for the long jump and was the #1 high school wide receiver in Oregon. He thought it would be track and field when he didn't receive a single D1 scholarship offer.

After receiving a scholarship to the University of Oregon for track & field, JJ earned a walk-on spot with the football team his sophomore year. He was at the bottom of the depth chart and nowhere near seeing actual playing time on the field, but his coaches and teammates didn't know how hard he was willing to work. It didn't take long for them to find out: JJ became a starter the next season, his junior year.

But like all long-shot stories and underdog tales, JJ's trials were just beginning. The remainder of his college career was plagued with injuries and unimpressive stats. Still, JJ's speed and toughness were enough to earn him an invite to the NFL Combine, a yearly gathering of the top 300 college prospects in the nation. Unsurprising to his teammates, coaches, and fans, JJ dominated the Combine. His performance earned him the 216th pick in the 8th round of the 1988 NFL Draft. That's when the going got really tough.

"My first setback was tearing my ACL at the Cleveland Browns Rookie camp" JJ remembers. "The bright side was I was drafted and I got to sit on IR with the Browns and see what happens. The first year, there was no pressure. It was a learning curve."

Eventually he got back on the field. Having always excelled in athletics he was convinced he would continue to do so in the pros but he quickly learned there is a reason why they called it the professionals. "I remember I was grabbed by my pads and thrown to the ground" 'Rookie- this is the NFL and every day is game day. You better do better than that.' I got a quick wake-up call that It doesn't matter what I have done in the past, these guys bring their best every day. I better figure this out." JJ recalls. JJ learned a valuable lesson that he continues to apply to business: Every day is game day and you can't take days off.

As a motivational speaker JJ Shares principles from the point of view of the underdog and what it takes to leverage where you are to be successful. The truth is, JJ felt like an underdog his whole life but he was also convinced that stats didn't matter. "When opportunities knock, you don't' answer the door, you rip the door off the hinges and make opportunities and do what it takes." he says.

FASCO

An acronym: Failures Adversities SetBacks Challenges and Obstacles = The thing that is trying to stop you from achieving your goal. What does it look like to be outworking others? There is a thin line that separates you from your competitor and you have to make small incremental changes to continue to improve your game. What is your competitive advantage? What is the little extra thing that you bring to the table?

Your Why Factor

Understanding your "why" is the key to what you are doing. If the why is strong enough the process to get there is not a challenge. You will do whatever it takes. You need to ask yourself, what inspires you, motivates you, what gets you excited? That is what is going to take you to those good days and support you through the bad.

Jeb Blount is a best selling author including Fanatical Prospecting, Sales EQ, Objections and most recently Virtual Selling. He's published hundreds of articles and is among the world's most respected thought leaders on sales, leadership, and customer experience. He is the leader and CEO of Sales Gravy. Sales Gravy is the #1 most trafficked website in the world.

This week on The Massimo Show Rod sat down with an internationally recognized client-acquisition expert, author, and speaker - Bill Cates.

Bill has delivered his business-growth message to over 300,000 professionals, small business owners, and salespeople across 5 continents; helping them increase revenue without increasing their marketing budget.

Bill is the author of four popular books: Get More Referrals Now, Don't Keep Me a Secret, Beyond Referrals, and Radical Relevance.

Bill Cates' client-acquisition system has been featured in such publications as Success Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine, Selling Power, the Huffington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. His own business's success has been featured in Money Magazine.

Bill was born and Raised in Silver Springs, Maryland just outside of Washington, DC. While attending the University of Maryland he was a drummer in a rock n roll band who turned professional after college, even touring the country after he finished graduate school. While they were fairly successful Bill knew enough to realize he didn't want to play at Holiday Inns for the rest of his life. After working for American Airlines in customer service he got the itch to own his own business.

A woman was selling her cookbook at a "pick your own strawberry" farms. She stole all his ideas and he was not compensated for it. He thought "I could do better than this" so he identified 1500 pick your own strawberry farms around the county and got an offer to write a cookbook and sell it to the farmers. The first year he sold 15000 copies of the book. He moved on to an apple and honey cookbook. It was a niche for the farmers. Bill was selling around 80000 copies of his cookbooks a year. He started selling in kitchen stores, gourmet shops, and grocery stores. He then moved on to writing specialty cookbooks for equipment manufacturers. He wrote for Weber grills, a smoker company, a cookie cookbook for American Greeting Cards. He created this niche of smaller cookbooks. He built the business until it was saleable and publishing his cookbooks was going great.

They say liberal arts majors make good entrepreneurs because they learn how to learn and teach. Bil sold several businesses and was looking for the next thing to do. A friend of his said "you should be a professional speaker" so he started hanging out at the National Speaker Association.

After trying his hand at running a book publishing company he discovered his passion for speaking and teaching other entrepreneurs.

It didn't matter if Bill was getting gigs for his band, soothing ruffled feathers of airline clients, or connecting with farmers over a great recipe - he was learning to make real connections. This led to Bill's niche - referral marketing. Bill believes in the power of multiplying your best clients.

"It doesn't cost money to do that," Bill notes. "What I learned is not only about referrals but about introductions. Make sure you are getting introduced to the people who will give you referrals. Referrals and introductions work because of borrowed trust. Make sure to have a Value Check-in. This is when you check-in in along the way so your client knows the value we are bringing. To see that we are exceeding their expectation because most businesses don't check in enough. When you check-in and ask how do you think we are doing? When you bring that openness to checking in on a regular basis, that is the beginning step for asking for an introduction. It solidifies the connection."

Rod and Bill go on to discuss the delegation of 5 things that will free you up to do the things that need to be done:

1. The sales division is handled by a referral network and reputation.
2. Marketing by speaking in key conferences, newsletters, blogs. Reputation building and maintenance. Run by his team.
3. Personnel- marketing run by his team.
4. Operations use CRM.
5. Finance has an accounting team and book-keeping service

Bill and Rod end with some helpful information on how to multiply your best clients in five steps and more about Bill's books Beyond Referrals and Radical Relevance

On this episode of the Massimo Show, Rod sits down with Joe Calloway

Joe Calloway helps leaders, owners, and entrepreneurs make great companies even better. He helps organizations focus on what is truly important, inspires new thinking about challenges and opportunities, and motivates people to immediate action.

Joe is the Executive In Residence at Belmont University's Center For Entrepreneurship. He is a business author, consultant and speaker whose client list reads like an international Who's Who in business, ranging from Coca Cola and Verizon to Cadillac and American Express. Joe also works with small to mid-sized business groups including franchisees, medical practices, law firms, and a range of professional services groups.

Joe is the author of Be the Best at What Matters Most and five other ground-breaking business books including Becoming A Category of One: How Extraordinary Companies Transcend Commodity And Defy Comparison, which received rave reviews from The New York Times, Retailing Today, Publishers Weekly, and many others.

His newest book is Magnetic: The Art of Attracting Business.

Joe's business experience includes having owned a restaurant in Nashville, and he is currently serving as Advisor on Business Development with Gilson Boards, a snowboard design and manufacturing company based in Pennsylvania.

Joe grew up in a rural community in Tennessee where he focused mainly on his passion for rock and roll bands such as Rolling Stones, The Who, Doors, and the Beatles. He started off as a drummer and eventually became the frontman!

Joe also had a passion for all things political and after college, he worked in the House of Representatives representing the state of Tennessee. Eventually, Joe changed directions because he was becoming tired of the political scene.

From there he went to work with his Brother in law in Real Estate taking a big leap and leaving his home town to move to Washington State. He became the General Manager of his brother in law's company where there were about 10 agents.

"My job was to help the agents become more successful. I was paid based on the company revenue. I got intrigued by coming up with ideas to help the agents become better at what they do. That is when I left the Real Estate business to go off on my own to seminars and workshops for some real estate companies, banks, all different areas from time management and sales programs. That evolved into people asking for me to do a speech at a trade association and that grew to speak at big conventions being the keynote speaker."

Joe's roles continued to evolve over the years from customer service, to building your brand with your people, to eventually transitioning into leadership speaking engagements working with smaller groups.

Joe and Rod discuss what it takes to be a successful leader. Joe remarks that:

"There are a lot of things, but there is no set answer. What comes to mind is Clarity. No one wonders what is going on. It is clear. This who we are, this is what we value, here is what is important. Here is the way we treat people. And clarity on where we are going. Our vision for the organization and how to get there."

Joe and Rod close out the show with Five Factors in Five Minutes where they cover Prospecting, Marketing, Productivity, CRMs, and how Joe is handling his team during COVID.

On this episode of the Massimo Show Rod sits down with David Newman certified speaking professional marketing expert and founder of Do it! Marketing.

David is the creator of the Speaker Profit Formula seminar and mentoring program.

He has worked with over 600 executives and entrepreneurs to monetize their message including IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Qvc, Merrill lynch and more. His podcast is the #1 podcast for

experts who want to speak more profitably and his new book Do it! Speaking is a must for anyone to read regardless if you are a speaker or not.

David grew up in Northern New Jersey with dreams of being a doctor like his godfather. He went to college for pre-med and failed out but that didn't deter him. He changed his major to drama and graduated with an undergraduate drama degree and went on to graduate school to receive his MFA in stage directing from the City University of New York. After school he worked in professional theatre - directing, stage managing, and assistant directing for 4 years in NY.

Eventually a friend said "you are teaching at graduate school to pay the bills, you could do that with companies and that is called corporate training" and David took his advice.

Over the next 10 years he had three corporate training or corporate consulting jobs in management and Human Resources. David worked for Microsoft, doing internal training, trainer to trainer, client based training on technology and HR management topics. "When you are an internal consultant at a big firm, you are doing a big portfolio of things. You are given a binder of things to learn. You are flying all over the country teaching at different locations. You have to be flexible and versatile." David said. "I was teaching anything to anyone, I began to think how hard could this be to go out on your own? I know what I am doing. I learn anything and go out and teach it the next day. Let me go out on my own as an entrepreneurial speaking consultant."

David found out quickly how hard it could be. He learned that it's not about doing the work, it's about getting the work. "It took me 3 years to figure out how to get clarity, focus and momentum. It took me a while to be able to answer questions outside the binder." he said. David invested in sales training and sales coaching and came to the conclusion that he should focus on sales and marketing. He launched Do it! Marketing.

"When I had alignment of what I was doing who I was doing it for and what I was saying about

my business, That is when the flood gates opened."

The 4 greatest foundational decisions you can make are:

• Who you are
• Who you not
• Who your clients are
• Who your clients are not

You are either Timex or Rolex. If you are selling "cheap" you are going to

attract cheap people. If you are selling "premium" you will attract premium people. Low fees lead to low attention. Low attention leads to low respect. Low respect means low implementation of your ideas and thus, low results. When you undercut your price you are doing your clients a disservice. They don't take you as seriously, they don't follow your advice. They don't show up on calls or follow through on your recommendation. They start looking at other places for results. Pricing is positioning.

David and Rod spend the remainder of the podcast discussing Influence, engagement, and speaking. They touch on Podcasting and the importance of leveraging other people in your own business to add value to your audience!

Joe was born and raised in Seymour, Wisconsin just outside of Green Bay. As a kid he loved sports, all sports. His mother would have to call him in at night because he was always outside playing until the sun went down. But there was just one problem - Joe was not a very good athlete. At some point, someone said to him "with your love of sports and your big mouth you ought to put those two together and become a sports broadcaster". From the age of 14 on he dreamt of being a TV Sports Broadcaster. With a lot of luck and a little work he's done just that.He's reached his goal to get into a major sports market where all sports are covered, and it was a great place to raise a family too!

On this episode of The Masimo Show, Rod sits down with two-time memory champion, Ron White, as they discuss how to mastery your memory.

Ron is best known for winning the USA Memory Championship in 2009 and 2010 and held the record for the fastest to memorize a deck of shuffled cards in only 1 minute and 27 seconds. But Ron isn't interested in showing off how great his memory is, he is on a quest to help others have trained memories as well.

Ron recalls that he was a good student and definitely an introvert growing up. Like so many others, he and his lifelong friend Brian made the decision to join the military after 9/11 but before they were soldiers Ron had had his fair share of real-world experience.

At 18, Brian asked Ron if he wanted a job working as a telemarketer for a chimney cleaning business. In his first two weeks, he made a call to a guy who said "I do not want my chimney cleaned, but you are a great telemarketer - will you come work for me? I sell memory seminars and I will pay you more than you are making." Ron worked for him for a year and then started his own company and was in the business for 8 or 9 years.

Needless to say, If you ask Ron, he will tell you that if he'd known then what he knows now about what it takes to start a business, he wouldn't have done it. "It was so much harder than going down to the courthouse, registering a company name, taking that paper to the back to set up an account" he recalls. He never anticipated going broke, living in his car, waking up and owing IRS $150K, and having $150 in his bank account.

"When I was 24 years old, I thought I was a Rockafeller," Ron said. "I was telling a guy I met in a bar that I made 20k this month and I am only 24. The guy listened and then shared he was a multi-millionaire, owned restaurants across the country, and friends with higher-ups in Microsoft." Unfortunately, that turned out to be a lie. This guy was a high-level con artist but it was too late, Ron had given him control to run his business because he had no confidence in himself. Ron gave him total control of the business and his bank account and the next thing he knew, the guy took his money and left. After that Ron learned to trust himself.

In the late 90s, Ron contacted Billy Burdon, a competitor who owned a company called Memory Masters. He was 25, had been in the business for 6 years, and was asking for advice. The biggest piece of advice Billy gave him was to create a cassette program with a call to action for people to purchase at the end of speeches. He created a cassette course in 1998 and that opened up so many doors. Duplicating himself and having a product changed his business and his mindset.

Like so many other patriots, Ron and his lifelong friend Brian made the decision to join the military after 9/11. Brian joined the Army and Ron joined the Navy where he served for 8 years as a reservist. Brian still was a high school teacher and Ron was a memory expert. In 2005 Brian was deployed to Afghanistan and came back, and in 2007, Ron was deployed to Afghanistan. They both retired from the military in 2010.

During his time in Afghanistan Ron was looking at a website and saw a news article about a memory tournament. He realized that in his speeches he was referring to himself as of the experts in the world but he had done nothing to prove that. Tournaments started in 2005. "I needed to compete with the guys that were winning the memory tournaments and win or take out from my bio," he recalls. In 2008, he competed in his first tournament. He had been back from Afghanistan for about 8 weeks and came in 4th place. He resolved to train much more seriously for the next one—2009 would be his year, and it was. As was 2010.

"After breaking records, I was thinking what is next?" Ron says. "And then someone said how long would it take you to memorize the Vietnam wall?" Ron thought, "I served In Afghanistan, why not do those who served in Afghanistan instead?" As a tribute to the fallen, Ron has memorized the names of more than 2,300 American service members killed in Afghanistan. He travels the USA writing the names on a 52-foot long wall from memory. It took 10 months to memorize the 7,000+ words.

Ron encourages listeners to look into getting their "black belt in memory" with his courses!

Rod sits down with Tremendous Tracey Jones.

Author of eight books and counting, Dr. Tracey C. Jones is a motivational speaker, business leadership resource, and president of Tremendous Leadership - a company that offers you the very best books, resources and programs to cultivate your professional and personal development.

Tracy's story is really the beginning of a beautiful love story. Her Father and mentor, motivational speaker Charlie "Tremendous" Jones, always talked about how he hit the trifecta when he met her mother, got involved in the insurance industry and found Christ. His love for his family and his work provided Tracy with a lifelong example of great leadership which she strives to uphold to this day. Tracy describes her childhood as a cross between bootcamp and a sitcom. Her father was an incredibly driven individual with a great sense of humor. For him, everything had a purpose and more than that, it had to be fun! She grew up believing work was a vacation because if you love what you do your work is a joy. She recalls that her vacations often consisted of packing up in an RV and going around to speaking engagements for her father. If they weren't on the road traveling to speaking engagements, there were many other things to do such as get a job, work in the yard or play. Watching TV was not an option because they were locked up in the attic!

Tracy grew up listening to other great mentors as well. Zig Zigler, Ted Blanchard and Norman Vincent Peale all influenced her and so many others in her industry because they bring value to the table and their stories are triumphant. Listening to these stories and those of her father taught her life was never easy. Tracy's father taught self-efficacy, resilience, tenacity, and adaptive capacity. He encouraged her to "go out and earn [her] stripes" and often reminded her that "Life is great, but it is what you make of it" and "It doesn't matter what life throws at you it is how you respond to it".

With these ideals in mind Tracey decided she wanted to serve her country. She went into the Airforce academy and graduated as a Lieutenant who then got trained to work on fighter jets- F15 & 16s.

After the military Tracey moved to Austin, Texas to work in the high tech field. She worked for a Fortune 100 company with a great leadership but after a couple of years, she realized that everything is the same. Even though she was out of the bureaucracy of the government, so many of the same people, problems, and processes hadn't changed. She was looking for something more. Tracey moved to St Louis to work in defense contracting. She was excited to blend her Fortune 100 edge with her love for the military. Two years into it, the same issues arose. She knew she needed to make a change and do something that was going to make a difference.

Tracey always knew there was something more for her. Growing up around entrepreneurs she knew that someday she would love to do her own thing. Her father always told her you have two choices: work for yourself or work for someone else. As long as you work for someone else there will always be the bureaucratic side to things. It wasn't until her father's failing health that she told him she was going to come back and run the family business.

After the break Rod and Tracey discuss how you sell yourself and business. Hint: Repeat business and ask for referrals!

Rod and Tracey close out the show with a bonus section talking about her new book - Igniting the greatness within - SPARK. Singularity Persistence Advocate Resource Knowledge. Don't miss it!

On today's episode of The Massimo Show, Rod sits down with Jessica Magoch.

When you think about art, whether that be painting, music or your favorite art, you may think about something that has moved or changed you. Sales is about moving people to take action. To show someone a different way of looking at things that they haven't seen before. Sales is creating a story of helping people move from where they are to where they want to be.

Jessica Magoch, JPM partners founder is a professional sales manager and trainer. Leveraging a great mentor positioned her for sales success. After graduating from acting school, Jessica Magoch learned about the craft of selling from the ultimate mentor, her father. She has since grown to lead a multi-million-dollar sales teams and is an adjunct professor at the Wharton School of Business, teaching in their Start-Up Accelerator programs focusing on teaching entrepreneur's how to sell.

The only sales experience Jessica had was selling girls scout cookies, she was more into theatre, singing, and dancing. Jessica had no interest in going into the family business, however, her father and mentor presented an opportunity she could not pass up after graduating from acting school. She moved to New York to work in sales and her father would teach her everything he knew. This is where she learned to do sales and grow a business. She hit the ground running and built up a $100 million-dollar sales team. With her own office space and 30 sales reps, this is where she learned how to build a business within a business.

Jessica shares how she works out of her house creating work-life balance with her family and started an amazing company within the last five years. She shared her sales funnel and how to market and leverage talent across the globe. These lessons will help anyone grow their business.

Rod and Jessica closed out the show by reviewing her 5 factors of success focused on helping people sell more.

Betty started her life in Columbia, South America, and wanted for nothing. Despite having everything she could have asked for; life was not as perfect as it seemed in her house. Although she had a loving millionaire father his demons often got the best of him when it came to alcohol. By the time Betty was 12 her mother had had it and she wanted to leave her husband and move to America. Betty was given the choice to stay or to leave and even though she loved her father and was often referred to as "Daddy's little girl" she was old enough to recognize what was happening and she decided to move to America with just the belongings she had in her luggage. Betty regards this as the first value-based decision she made as a young woman and that idea became the basis for her book and her great success.

But like any great success story, this one took time. Betty was what we would refer to as a serial entrepreneur. Although she had a kind of love-hate relationship with him her father was an amazing businessman and she believes her spirit for business was in her blood. When she was young her dad took her to visit clients and employees and, although she didn't realize it at the time, he was teaching her how to be an entrepreneur. He took care of his family and his aunt and made lots of value-based decisions when it came to his business. Those were the parts of her father Betty wanted to keep and carry on in her own businesses.

Her first entrepreneurial venture was in engineering and manufacturing and made pieces of a surgical light in her garage. She was working as a secretary for an engineering company and took a course about free enterprise and how to pay people by the piece instead of the hour. She thought "I have a garage; we can do this!" and with a great idea and an even better drive for success, she was up and running.

By the time Betty went to get her doctorate, she had performed many turnarounds in the finical services industry. She was focused on entrepreneurs and could walk into a business and tell them what to do to increase their revenue. In this line of work and at that time, she started to notice a trend. She was seeing a lot of people who were meeting their downfall and she noticed the common thread was that what they said they stood for and how they were behaving did not align; their decisions were not value-based. But people also want to be successful, so she knew that merging the two ideas was key. She wanted to teach companies how they could create bottom line unprecedented results if they followed their core values. This idea became her first book!

Rod and Betty talk about her first executive position, her values of leadership, and what's next for Dr. Betty.