Mitch Axelrod 5:34
yeah, okay. Whatever the conflict is, you can actually resolve it. Because if you if you better align your soul, your role and your goal. So anyway, that’s what I did. I got off the road. And I spent the next 10 years at home working at home, and I had to completely change my business.
John Corcoran 5:55
Yeah, you were getting paid to speak and train. So what did you shift to?
Mitch Axelrod 5:59
Well, was fortunate in that
a couple of things I like to call them cosmic convergences because it’s like they’re out of your control but yet they converge at a time, you know, coincidence, but he says there’s no such thing as coincidence coincidences. I say there’s everything is a coincidence. Like everything you think of a co incident. So two things happen. One is teleconferencing got very cheap. Hmm. And so I could replace a lot of the work that I had to do live by teleconference. This is in the late 90s services in 9697.
John Corcoran 6:39
Okay, midnight,
Mitch Axelrod 6:42
which very interesting story. Five years before Jay Abraham hired me to train his $15,000 protegees because I did three to our teleconferences with is protegees on a Saturday, two hours back to back to back Take a guess what his 800 number conference line cost was for the day, you wouldn’t believe
John Corcoran 7:06
how many people were on the line.
Mitch Axelrod 7:08
hundred people times three groups. Okay.
John Corcoran 7:12
$10,000 man, and that’s like nothing today,
Mitch Axelrod 7:16
people don’t have any not have the tools that they have available today that are so taken for granted that when I started 40 years ago, but even 20 years ago, yes, in order to do that, so now he collected $15,000 from 900 protegees. So he could afford to do it right is still viable. Yeah. So my point is that when when I got off the road, I recognize that, okay, I could start doing teleconferences to replace some of okay, but the big chunk of it came from my intellectual property. Okay. And let me sort of riff on that for a bit if I might, yeah, my very first take on the whole information which is now the end. formation game but I’m not in the information game on the in the intellectual property game. Google is in the information game. We’re not in the information game and there’s so much so much bigger game and intellectual property. 1991 I’m doing a seminar for the insurance industry in New York City. I got paid $250 for the chalk because it was an industry conference, right? Huh. There’s 400 people in the room. I put down on a table this big black thing on a Moran’s cassette recorder. Okay, I hit play and record and I forget about it. The seminars over like two and a half hour seminar guy comes running up to me says bench that was the greatest thing I ever heard. I see. Wow, appreciate he says that and the cassette was still in the record. He says I want that.
Unknown Speaker 8:48
Okay, now tending to sell it or you’re just like, No,
Mitch Axelrod 8:51
okay. That was the first time I brought a recorder with me. And I said, I’m going to start recording everything. Okay, and I know I’ve got 3000 cassettes. Wow, I recorded over the past four, you know, to obviously we went digital just so. So since digital My point is I asked him a question that I came up with on the moment that has been a transformative question. What do you want to do with it? He said I have 5000 clients. This is clients, I was going to send him a calendar, a paperweight a pen set. He said, If I send them your recording, it’ll be worth some don’t love me, it’ll be so much more valuable than than other stuff which will never look at how much huh? I said. Would you pay me $1 per cassette above hard costs? He said that’s all I say. It’ll probably cost you a buck to produce it each right. two bucks per that’s it. I said yeah, you pay me the five. He says done daily writes on a piece of paper. Okay. I realized in that moment, it went from my mouth to the recorder. And he bought it without without a sales letter without a pitch without anything. And I realized, you know what, I’m in the intellectual property game. That was an information product that was a piece of intellectual property that he deployed as a marketing piece on his behalf. And I would have never thought to deploy it in that way. And all of a sudden, I recognize that my content was marketing currency, long before content became marketing currency in the past five or 10 years. Right. So what I did was because and I started to record everything. I got it. Uh, by the way, just as an aside, I sent a duplicator He says, Mitch, I’m going to put your phone number on on the cassettes, right. It’s a great, I didn’t think of it. Two weeks later, I get a call from an attorney. He says Mitch, I received your cassette and I’m Oh, crap. Okay, what did I do? Right attorney last thing says,
John Corcoran 11:02
to get a phone call from anyone it says this is an attorney calling,
Mitch Axelrod 11:05
especially like the major right? unexpectedly.
John Corcoran 11:09
I’ve got a paternity test in my hand, sir and
Mitch Axelrod 11:12
right and I’m thinking, Oh, man, okay, where did I go with foul of the law here? He says Mitch, I just listened to your cassette. It was fantastic. I wonder, I have 10,000 clients, business clients. I got this from, you know, guy I do business with? Do you? Would you permit me to give these away to 10,000 my business clients. I got paid to 50 for the talk. I got paid $15,000 with no inventory, no overhead from a stinking cassette. Because I asked them, What do you want to do with it? And I realized at that moment in time that I had intellectual property that was not just user content, but it was marketing content.
John Corcoran 11:49
Yeah. Well, let me ask you, it’s a new world now. Because we have YouTube. We have iTunes, we have the internet. We have all these different places where there’s so much content out there. It’s Today, is it a different ball game today?
Mitch Axelrod 12:04
Yes, it is. And in some ways it’s even a better ball game. All right.
And part of that is because intellectual property 10 years ago I did. There was a speakers and authors networking group called saying SMGs Larabee
John Corcoran 12:19
nice group. Yes.
Mitch Axelrod 12:21
I did a panel with jack Canfield, Brendon Burchard, Tony Alessandra, and john Kilcullen who is the publisher of the dummies books, His face is on his the dummies face. And I got up there and I was the only one with the flip chart. I could actually send you this video. It’s killer. And I said, here’s my game, sell to sell through and rent your content. Here’s my prediction and my prediction came true. Like it’s almost as if I had vision into the future, but I could see it happening. I said number one content is now currency of the new game of business. That was my first book the new game of business, my first real published book. And I said, not only do you have content and not only is your content user currency, but your content now can be so true. So true and rented. No different than a nest at the time like a Netflix today, but 25 years ago was blockbuster. Right. Now, how did how did all this come to me? Well, when I got off the road, I’m starting to get calls from clients. Hey, Mitch, you know how you doing? We haven’t talked to you senior. I’m off the road. Okay. That’s why you haven’t heard from me. Yeah, guy calls me up. He says Mitch, I’d love to bring you out. We can forge i was i was like at six or $7,000 for the day. 20 something years ago, right? Yeah. Since we can’t afford anymore. I said I’m off the road, you know, so Okay. He says to me, I got a proposal for you. And this is what happens. This is the second time I listened to my client that changed my life. Okay. I can tell you the first time which was profound, he says to me Would you be willing to send me a module of your training, the video, the audio and the workbook, and each month, I’ll train my people on your stuff. He says, I’d like you to be sort of like the blockbuster of business development back then. Right? I said, you want to rent my content, like rented? He said, Yeah, you could say that. I said, I could come and kiss you. Okay, so I said, thousand bucks a month. How’s that? He says, That’s, is that enough for you? Good. That’s kind of relation talk about relationship. Yeah. Are you sure that’s enough for you? I know, you’ve got a client you want, by the way clients. And those are the kinds of clients I had, because my philosophy of businesses highest and best for all. I’m on your team. I’m on your side. My game is to make your elevate your game. That’s what I’m all about. I’ve always been. And so he says to me, is that enough for you? I said, Yeah, that’s enough. You know, I don’t want to push it, he says but I have one more thing. When I used to go out and speak, I would always invite the client to do a customer appreciation hour, hour and a half. charge them 50% more I say bring your clients morning after whenever we’ll do a special will record it and I’ll give you permission to give the recording to your clients. Nobody ever did that. In fact, that went so counter to what every speaker, no speakers would let anybody record them because they wanted to sell them their product, right? I was at lunch. I said, No, I want you to record me. You’re like the Grateful Dead. You had a section for the tapers. Exactly. And I said, you know what you’re going to want the experience. Right? Not not the memory. Right? If you remember memory, yes. Yeah. No, you don’t want you don’t want to off the shelf. You want Mitch live talking to your people without your things. And all of a sudden 30% of the people that I would offer that to Would book me, the I was already there coming out, they would pay me an extra 50% they would invite their customers, we’d record it. And it would be like you are the greatest thing in the world because not only are you training our people, but you’re now enabling us to bring a guy from New York and New Jersey, the expert from Florida come in and train our customers. They went crazy.
John Corcoran 16:21
But I’m sure also for you it led to more referrals, more business from those there was tremendous.
Mitch Axelrod 16:25
Where can I Where else could I go get paid to do what I love and have them put 50 or 100 prospects in the room? Yeah, right. Well, of course, that was there anyway. Right. Right. And when I rarely shared this with anybody in the speaking game, because I said, You know what, I could charge five grand just for that one piece of advice. I was so busy Anyway, here’s what happened. He says to me, Mitch, remember when we used to bring our customers in ice he says, Would you allow me to bring my customers in once or twice a month and train on your stuff too? I say yes, another thousand bucks. month. He said don’t do send me the video send me the audio. I want to start right away. I said I could kiss you. Thank you. I got on the phone. I started calling everybody I had done speaking and training for and I said I have a proposition for you. And all I did was reiterate exactly what he proposed to me. Mm hmm. And within 90 days, I had 10,000 a month coming in. Hmm. And within about six months, I had probably 15 depending upon some people fell off something I had like 15 to 20 grand coming in. Just going to the post office sending them video and audio. Ultimately I hired somebody to do that
John Corcoran 17:45
sending it to them each month
Mitch Axelrod 17:47
each month with a letter that said you have permission to use this. And I and I really said don’t even bother sending it back. You know I’ve been at blockbuster you have to return the
Unknown Speaker 17:59
bother God, they just can’t pay me.
Unknown Speaker 18:01
All right, yeah. All right.
Mitch Axelrod 18:03
So that passive money, yeah, plus a little bit more active money that I was able to produce mostly teleconferencing, team coaching, team training, and then occasionally, you know, one on one executive coaching, I was able to replace enough of my income to pay for the two households stay at home and spend the next 10 years it’s great, really developing a lot, a lot more of my intellectual properties. That’s great.
John Corcoran 18:29
And so ultimately, what you’ve just described is functioning today because there are plenty of people that do follow this model, plenty of thought leaders, experts, that sort of thing. You mentioned in there you said this was the second time you listen to your clients and to change your life. The first time was profound. I have to follow up on that.
Mitch Axelrod 18:49
open loop. Yeah. So here’s what those
Unknown Speaker 18:51
that loop for me,
Mitch Axelrod 18:52
okay. The company that I’m with, so I put together three years ago Three years into my be my business right 1988 I met I hooked up with Brian Tracy. Okay. I just lost over a million dollars in a restaurant on the Jersey Shore.
Unknown Speaker 19:13
A lot of money and then Canadian dollars.
Mitch Axelrod 19:15
Yeah, it was a half a half a million in cash and a half a million in equity. Hmm. We had a year of medical waste. timing right. My wife was eight months pregnant. I squirreled away five grand from all this hundreds of thousands of dollars we collected I was able to squirrel away five grand. I see an ad for Brian Tracy who I had met the year before at a conference. So I’m speak but all his product said I’m going to do I’m going to work with you one day and he just laughed at me scoffed at me and blew me off, right? Anyway, I see in it and I respond. I say to the guy Listen, here’s the deal. My wife is about to pop. She’s eight months pregnant. I just lost everything I owned in a restaurant. I have $5,000 to my name. It’s 13 thousand dollars to sign up with you. If you’ll take the last $5,000 that I have, I will pay you the balance at $777 per month I pick that number however many months it takes, he says won’t even present it Brian doesn’t financing we can’t go for it. I said you have a fax machine 10 minutes I’m going to send you a fax call me back say yes or no 10 minutes later I fax him get a call back he said that was the single greatest fax I’ve ever read. I and basically I just laid it out I said hey, I’m desperate. I need I need to work I have great connections. I have good experience. I was a financial planner for 10 years. My wife’s about to pop you’re getting the last five grand and I don’t have my mortgage payment for December. Hmm Okay. So if there’s anybody you so here’s the worst that happens don’t send me any inventory. I’ll just give you my five grand like a deposit. If I don’t produce the monthly payments for you after a couple months keep my five grand keep your inventory I lose My five grand. On the other hand, if I make my payments, once I make my payments you give me it give me at least enough inventory so I could show somebody give me one piece, right? And sure enough, that’s what happened. Anyway. Two years later, I put together a program called 21 ways to double your sales because I doubled my sales three years running. I presented it to Brian at the international conference where I was the keynote speaker. That year prior to me actually putting that together and insurance. I put the Table of Contents together and I called up companies I had worked with and I said, I want to do an all day program called 21 ways to double your sales. guy says great will hire $4,000 for the day.
John Corcoran 21:41
Terrific. I love that you haven’t created the content. You’ve just created the
Mitch Axelrod 21:44
table of frickin content. Okay, I have made so much money on tables of contents. You have no idea and I’ll say this is the story leading so we do the program prior to the engagement. He says Mitch, can we record this? I was going to ask him but he asked I said yes, but I get the master. No problem. Great. We record it knock it out of the park comes up to me after we says Mitch, that was amazing. We want we have 4000 sales people how much okay? He’s got their cassettes, the Masters in his hand, right? I said, here’s the deal. At the time, Nightingale Conant was selling their six cassette albums for about 39 bucks. Okay, which was eight times cost by the way, you can’t believe that the world today exists, but there was actually a time when Nightingale Conant so there, we didn’t matter how good the program was. It was eight times cost. Okay. I said I’ll make you deal. $10 a person, one condition. you master it, you duplicate it, I get the Masters, you print them up. I just want $40,000 you said done deal. We signed the papers the handshake, okay. 40,000 dollars for the masters. He duplicates them gives me perfect masters and nice six album of four album. He says to me, I got a request. Can we put our company logo on it? I said sure. So I should keep my copyrights. He says, Okay, great. Now why would I do that? When everybody in the business admit you’re crazy. What are you doing? I said, Follow this. He puts the company logo on it. So now they’re proud to put it out there because it’s a company product but it’s my copyrights. Now I have a product that they paid for. That they paid me to produce. If they paid me $40,000 to duplicate they gave me a finished master. Now I took that master. That was the only product ever printed 1000 of I put a space it in the in the industry publication 21 ways to double your sales just launched by mutual of New York. My we sold 1000 of them in like six months at 99 bucks apiece. Plus people were calling me saying would you Come and do seminars on 21 ways to double your sales. Sure, great. A title became intellectual property, table of contents, intellectual property lead to a product lead to a conversion. 30 days later, he calls me and says Mitch, fantastic. But we need one more thing. I was about to say I’m turning that into a book, what a great book 21 ways to double your sales, right? He says we need a workbook. I say great. I’m doing one right now. I said screw the book. I’ll do the workbook. He says how much I said 10 bucks apiece. You print them, you duplicate it. He says, Can we put our cover on it? You can put your cover on. Now what do I do? I take that product with their cover. And now I go out and I sell it everywhere. Not with my cover with their cover their cover much more impressive than my cover. Right? That leads to the next piece of this which was profound. Two years later, they called me and said we need a training program company wide Brian Tracy, Tony Robbins, Stephen Covey, are your competition? Would you like to throw your hat in the ring? I said, Sure, why not? What do I have to say? Here’s what we need. We need to know what you have. I said I don’t have a training program. I said, but I will have one in 21 days. says How you going to do that? I said 21 days, what’s making a point? 21 days later I walked in with what a table of contents
37 modules. I said, here’s the deal. If you film this, record it I will licenses back to you for $250,000 now, they had 4000 sales people. These other guys are going to charge them 250 bucks per person. You’re one that’s a million dollars. years two through five they have 20% turnover. So they’re going to have to buy 100 more every year at two sets another 200,000 $2 million commitment. And they don’t even get to put their name on it. It’s Brian Tracy, Tony Robbins. Stephen Covey. Right? Yeah. I said, if you film it, which is going to cost you 100 grand, you pay me 250,000. I will license it back to you. You have duplication company, you can print cheaper than I can, you can print as many copies for the rest of forever as you want. They said, what’s the catch? Okay? I said two catches. Number one, you’re going to pay me another quarter of a million to go out to your 82 offices and train people on it. Alright, so they know what to do. And number two, in six months after your launch, you’re going to write an endorsement letter to five of your biggest competitors. And you’re going to send out a press release that you just launched this nationwide. He said Is that all? I said? Yeah, because I’ll make enough money on the rest of these guys. And you’re going to put me on the map. We shook hands done the deal. Okay, now I have this killer trick. program this thick literally cassettes on one side but right now I carry this everywhere I go insurance agent guy calls me manager calls me and this is this is profound This is the part I walk in with this book ridiculous right he says met you think I’m going to buy that you’re crazy jersey guy I love dealing with jersey guys because
Unknown Speaker 27:22
right up front right speak the same language Yeah.
Mitch Axelrod 27:25
I said what’s about a mere combined it to you know we had it sort of a sort of relationship we knew each other. I said 250 bucks and you get the cassettes right. He says give me the show me the table of contents. I showed the table of contents. He I don’t he picks out five modules. He says I want these five How much? Okay, I’m going to be I’m a jersey guy. I’m a smartass. I said I’m going to come up with a number that’s going to make him buy the 250 for the whole workbook. I sit 500 bucks 100 bucks a month, a module $500 says Great. So when do we start? I said, timeout. What just happened. He said, here’s what happened. I’m going to tell you something that’s going to change your life. He says, You wanted me to have this your way. If you want me to take it your way, I’m not going to buy it because your way they’re going to put it on the shelf. It’s too much, it’s too big, they won’t even open it, I’m not going to buy it. If you give it to me, my way, I will hire you to come in and train one of these modules every month, for five months, and the six month you tie it all together. Now all I need is one sale per guy over that six months of $500 to get my 500 bucks back. Okay? The other way I have zero chance because they won’t open it this way. I got six shots every month. All I need is one and then I’m, I’m you know in profit forever
John Corcoran 28:54
and that’s the way he wanted his training to be.
Mitch Axelrod 28:57
And I said thank you bless you. could kiss you and what he just did for me. I became the only Burger King in a world of McDonald’s. Everybody else was giving it to their customers their way you had to take the cassette book, two cassettes, the full thing you had to buy the whole thing I said to him, why don’t you just buy the whole thing for $250 and throw away the other 32 modules? He says, No. He says it’s intimidating. You know, if the first look of it somebody they’ll be overly intimidated. But if you give them one module, eight pages, they can digest that. I said, bless you. So why what happened? I stopped carrying the big workbook. What did I do? I just carried the table of contents. And I sold it by the module. And I said you can have the whole book. Or you can pick whatever number of modules you want at $100 a module and I will tell you, john, I sold thousands of modules. Jules, where I wouldn’t have sold hundreds of workbooks. And what I recognized is, I’m Burger King, I want you to have it your way. And because I see it as intellectual property 37 individual pieces of intellectual property, not one big training program, I now have multiplied my ability to leverage that piece of IP 37 times. Hmm, instead of just selling up against the tide of one big piece of content, which very few people can consume. Right, right. That was huge. And that really, that saved my bacon, because then once I got off the road, I still had these modules, and I could still make deals with people where I could sell individual modules, buckets of modules, bundles of modules. Mm hmm. Right. And then I could do one module a month for three months by teleconference. So I was able to sort of, you know, the timing the convergence of conference, calling The IP and the stigma of people working at home, which when I first started was pretty big, which I never wanted anybody to know I worked at in my house.
John Corcoran 31:12
Right, right. Yeah, these days is a totally different ballgame. But back then it was there was a stigma to it. Yeah,
Mitch Axelrod 31:17
I started working from home in 1986. Okay. And the first three or four years while I was doing financial planning, but when I got into corporate training and consulting nada, I once had a situation where my son, like, screamed out in the middle of a call laughed, you know, yes. Corporate guy says, Oh, is that a child in the background? And I said, Yes, it is. He says, What do you take your child? So that’s my son. He’s two years old. I’m sorry. Yeah. He says, Well, do you take your child to work? I said, Actually, no, my child takes me to work. And so I had to tell him, I worked at home and I said, Is that a problem? And he was, you know, very good office. We had our conversation and we made our niceties and we’re back It is hang up. And he says, I just have a question for you. It says, How did you do it? I said, How did I do what? You said, How did you come? How do you work at home? How did you make that? I said, Well, it was more important. It’s important for me to be home and I just chose it. You know, I chose to work home. And I know it’s not conventional, but it works for me. You know, I get to be with my son, and I still get to do the work I need to do. And it was like, at the end of the conversation, he was really curious more about how the heck Could you do something like that? Right. I mean, there’s a lot of things that today are just normal, right? Yeah. And we’re so abnormal, that you know, you just you had to really swim upstream so to speak. So, anyway, that taught me that when your burger king when you’re willing to give something to your clients the way they want it, you expand your possibilities exponentially. And that’s the difference between the IP game and the information product.
John Corcoran 32:55
Right and I can see why you are so passionate about controlling Your IP, being able to leverage it, use it slice it up. One of the areas of your IP is rainmaking. My background is as a lawyer that term Rainmaker is really big in the legal profession. Everyone wants to be a Rainmaker. Every law firm wants to Rainmaker. Let’s talk a little bit about that. Let’s talk a little bit about that concept. And I know it involves elements of selling. But why did you tackle that particular topic? And you know, what’s fundamental to our understanding? Explain to us how you become a Rainmaker.
Mitch Axelrod 33:37
Well, here’s what’s interesting. I’m not a big fan of labels. In fact, one of my pet peeves is do your best not to label yourself. Especially when coaching got really big because people were starting to label themselves coaches life coaches and, and my philosophy I’m a simpleton. The first five words in the new game is selling which was a number one bestseller for 100 straight days. Leonardo da Vinci simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. And I have always really strive to make everything as simple as possible so that people can integrate it use it, your the more cumbersome, the more complex it is, the more difficult it is to integrate it, right? And if you can put your ego out of the way and some people try to purposely make things difficult, you know, for their own ego, but for me, it’s like, I wanted as simple as could be, right? So about 15 years ago, I was working, I was doing predominantly selling work and my my, what I was known for was sales process, how to attract qualified convert, keep multiply and reactivate what I call the new game of self. Okay. And an attorney who I was working with says to me, we’re starting a group of attorneys, ironically, right? This is what you really can’t use the word settling. It says because if we if we say we’re going to teach them the new game of selling, he says they’re going to be turned on right they they’re professionals. They’re not says Yeah, why don’t we just call it rain make? Okay? He says, Wow, that’s great like that right? So, um, I created a program. I did like 10 straight months with these attorneys teleconference and I think created a program called rainmakers mastery. Okay, right. And it basically followed the Seven Pillars of rainmaking, right. Then a year later, I recruited 12 people and I said you know what, pay me five grand. But let’s work for a year. And I’ll teach you how to be a Rainmaker for higher. Okay, and so I really sort of expanded the six leverage points of selling became one of the Seven Pillars, but there’s six others that I discovered, were really, really excellent leverageable. And so that’s how I sort of came up with the Seven Pillars of rainmaking mastery. One of which is the six leverage points in your sales process which there’s amazing fertility of opportunity there.
John Corcoran 36:05
So let’s I want to go through them. We don’t have a lot of time left, but we can try and maybe touch on a couple of them. But also you said Rainmaker for hire. Yeah, yeah. So how does that work? Because I think everyone distracted that idea. Okay. Oh, could I attract someone? Either? Could I be a Rainmaker or could I attract so narrow my business who could just get me leads get me business in the door? That sounds like the, you know, the golden goose, so to speak?
Mitch Axelrod 36:33
Well, and that’s what it’s so funny. How words why I don’t like labels, you know, because people have a locked box in their head. And the minute you use a label, if that label triggers the lockbox, if it’s open, you have a shot, if it’s already occupied and close the game over before it starts and you don’t know it. Right. So labels are dangerous, unless your brain surgeon Of course, you know, if you’re a lawyer, but even if you’re a lawyer, it’s like what kind of where are you? Right? Yes, yeah. So I was always wanting to say don’t tell people what you are, tell them what you do. So I said, What word Could I use that one word with the right audience would immediately tell them what I do, obviously, right, Nick? Right. So we did this eight session or 10 session thing for the attorneys. I followed it up with a program called rainmakers mastery. And then I created this program, which I still haven’t, I’m resurrecting now called rainmakers for hire. How do you essentially sell yourself as a Rainmaker and then I came up with these Seven Pillars of what I think are the most important elements of foundational rainmaking, all right. And all you need to do is really pick one or two. And if you can leverage one or two of these better than you’re already leveraging them, then there’s you know, potential for multiply multiplicative upside or exponential upside or who knows quantum upside, maybe I don’t know.
So I’ll jump in wherever you think would be appealing.
John Corcoran 38:01
Yeah. So Well, let’s see. So here’s one that one of the one of the seven different features of the Seven Pillars of rainmaking is the money talk escalating your pricing from time and product value and experience. And that’s one. I know that people who listen to this podcast struggle with how do you charge what you’re worth, and not charge? You know what, you know, even something much higher than what your competitors are charged? Right,
Mitch Axelrod 38:31
right. Okay. Yeah, I do an entire thing called the money talk. I have an insider trading on the five levels of money of pricing, cost, time, project value, experience, those are the five escalating levels of price, right? If you’re in the service business, you’re probably charging by time, which I don’t buy into the don’t don’t trade time for money. We all trade time for money. The problem is too many people give away too much of their time with the idea that they’re going to get it On the back end. So there’s actually an advantage sometimes to charging for time, because people recognize that there’s no free sessions. You know, there’s no strategies that you’re paying me for my advice and counsel, you know, you’re not paying me for, like, I like to say you’re not paying the doctor. For the 30 seconds it takes him to write the prescription you’re taking, you’re paying him for the 30,000 hours, it took him to know what to write in 30 seconds. Right. Okay. You’re not paying me for the hour or the 60 minutes. You’re paying me from the 60,000 hours that I’ve been a Rainmaker that I can zero in on so if you start to look at how do you price, let’s say you start with time, okay, you said I want to move up from time because I don’t want to get stuck on time. Now you move to project you say well project I can add a little bit more because I’m, I’m maybe outsourcing my time and my costs, and I add a project price like a general contractor. Okay. So if you can, and if you can combine these it’s even better. That’s pretty top tier where most people stop. All right, they figure what’s the project work. But the conversation changes when you have a value conversation. So I love stories because everything I learned, I learned by experience and stories, right? I’m not a theoretician very much. I’m sitting with a corporate executive sales VP. He says Mitch, we called you in because you got referred, we know of you blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We have a project, okay, we get to the project, we talk about the project. I’m thinking in my head $25,000, which we all know when we’re talking to somebody, we’re immediately thinking of what we’re going to charge. Okay. So we get to talk about money. All right. And for some stupid reason, I said to him, I’m just curious, john, what have you allocated for this project? And he said, we’ve allocated $100,000. I said, Okay, how much of that and this is against some time. You do things in the moment that you’re not thinking because you’re not pre prepared. And sometimes you need to be open enough to do it in the mindset. How much of that? Would you allocate for me? He said, we’re looking at around 70 grand. Can you do it for that? And I just, I mean, I almost passed out, right? 25 grand, and I’m ready to go. Yeah, this 70 grand, can you do it for that? I said, Yes, I can. I said, in fact, I will make this my primary attention. Because it was like a 60 day project for the next 60 days. Nothing else will get in the way. Now, what did I learn? First of all, I learned that a project could be worth a lot more to the person buying it than the person who’s pricing it and selling it.
John Corcoran 41:52
often the case, right, because we undervalue the things that we do over and over again and we’re naturally good at right
Mitch Axelrod 41:57
that’s the other part of it. Yeah. Can’t say how I trained a million people. I asked people do you more often undervalued or overvalued, of underpriced over price? You know your audience? Yeah, yeah. They always get your five or six people are like I always overpriced. God bless you. All right. I want to hang with you. I always felt like I wanted to be at the higher end of the, you know, mid range because I wasn’t quite well. Anyway, the point I learned was stop pricing yourself and quoting, start asking how much is the project worth? Okay. Yeah, well, one other quick story a big 1996 or seven, or five or six right before I got off the road calls me an executive vice president used to be at another company I worked with went to went to AIG calls me and he says Mitch, we got a project for you. Okay. Okay. What do you want me says we have an event in Vegas watch, come out, speak for 45 minutes. I say great. Okay, what do you want me to do? He says, We have 100 million dollar initiative. We want you to pitch it for us. I said Why? He says, Yeah, we asked around the company and said, Who’s the best guy we can hire to pitch for this? Or do it? And everybody said, Yes, I said, but I’m not part of your company. He says, that’s why we want to hire you because we have to convince our 20 regional managers and if it comes from within the company, they’re not going to be we want you to do your thing. And he slips a piece of paper across the table, and he had $20,000.
John Corcoran 43:28
I said, Jerry to do this one project. I mean,
Mitch Axelrod 43:31
this one speech, one speech, one talk 45 minutes. I said, Jerry, my fee is seven grand what you know what my fee is, we know we’ve known each other five. He says, I don’t care what your fee is. This is what it’s worth to me. He says, I don’t want you thinking, doing sleeping about anybody else but me for the next 30 days. Right? Is that gonna do it? I said, Yeah, that’s good. We’re gonna fly your first clip. We’re going to give you three days, he says that all I’m going to do is Anyway, here’s my point. Very few of us really know what we’re really worth, until we break through that ceiling and ask people, what’s it worth to you? And then how much would you allocate for me to be able to deliver that for you? And people might actually give you more than you would have asked for. Right? Now, let’s say they offer you less. You say, okay, 20 grand, I gotta get 25 for that project. And now you’ve got, you know, some conversation. Yeah, right. But if you audit so what I tell people is don’t do proposals on people unless people are willing to do it with you. The only way I will do a proposal unless it’s something very unusual, because if you do the proposal with me, then I have a much better chance of having the proposal get accepted. You’re not willing to do the proposal with me, then you’re not telling me that I’m going to be part of your team and you’re going to be part of my team. Now I’m sort of competing. Who am I competing against? Do I even want to throw my hat? Right? Good. So my point is when you break to value, you all of a sudden having a different conversation now what’s experienced price? until maybe 10 years ago, the only thing that was experienced pricing were concerts. Broadway shows where you would pay $500 to go see Bruce Springsteen with a cover price was 100 bucks. Yeah, right. We’ve all paid more for an experience. Yeah. 10 years ago, 15 years ago, all of a sudden, people started charging obscene amounts of money for group coaching. And these excursions, they had no basis in time. It wasn’t a project price, and it wasn’t really value. Because if you ask people like what did you get? Did you get already One return of investment No, did you get ROI to return on investment know, what did you get? Well, I got relationships could be relationships, and I went on the mountains, it’s like wait a minute, you paid $50,000 for that experience with no consideration whatsoever for the value, or what the project cost them would. And all of a sudden, a whole new level of pricing, which has no parameters other than whatever the hell you think it’s worth, and you can command experienced pricing is where people will pay way more for something because they want the experience of it. Or they want the experience of you. And that when I wrote the new game of business I 15 years ago, I said here’s what’s happening. We are now in the experience, economy long before that became popular. I said people are not just buying on price in terms anymore. They’re looking for an experience. They’re looking for transformation, they’re looking for relevance. They’re looking for meaning they’re looking for purpose. Wait a second, I grew up in a world where you got a widget, I got the money, here’s your widget, here’s the MC is pricing terms, right? relationships now, all of a sudden became the most valuable capital. Because if you could keep somebody for five or 10 or 15 years as a customer, that lifetime value really started to pay off exponentially. So the whole idea is, if you can start looking at value pricing and potentially experience or some combination, you just by your pricing, you can set yourself aside provided you can deliver the value and you can deliver the experience deliver the experience. Yeah,
John Corcoran 47:43
yeah, well, we’re running short on time, Mitch, this is an awesome you know, I want to book in this conversation. We started at the beginning about asking you about your experience, deciding to go off the road, stay home with your son and before he We were talking about you had you were raised by a father, who was a cop, you were raised in Brooklyn, you had seven siblings. And I don’t know how that’s even possible. I have four kids, and it seems crazy. But tell me about that experience with that was like, and also how that made you who you are today?
Mitch Axelrod 48:25
That’s a great question. I don’t know, I can get asked that question up. First of all, being the youngest, I didn’t talk much until I was like five or six, because I didn’t have any standing there was so loud. You know, I learned to listen. And I think it’s the single most valuable skill I’ve ever developed, that I can really listen, I can listen with my ears, my eyes, my heart, my soul, and I listened in for what’s not being said, because I could see the dynamic of all these people. Plus I could, I was always sort of the peacemaker. You know, so I sort of grew up as a peacemaker. And I thought it was because they were all fighting. It’s just because they’re all loud. But I sort of gravitated toward being a peacemaker, but the thing that really jumped out because I had a lot of time with myself, after they were all married, I was eight years old. I was great at putting puzzles together from when I was three years old. I could put adult puzzles together. And my parents who didn’t have a lot of money, my dad was a cop. They stopped buying me puzzles because they couldn’t afford it. He put a baseball glove in and ball in my hand at three years old, say here, go play baseball. Like we can’t afford these puzzles anymore. But I became a semi pro baseball player and have a tryout with the Cardinals at one time. But those those puzzles, I became like a puzzle master. And it’s one of my great, I guess gifts you could call it where I could see a mosaic of disparate pieces and I could see how those pieces fit together. I could see what the missing pieces are. You know when we do sales process We look at six leverage points how you attract qualified, convert, keep multiply, reactivate, I can like in five or 10 minutes, I can isolate with you, one or more of those where you have what I call push button profits where you could leverage one of those right away. So part of it was listening. No wonder I became a speaker. Part of it was sort of, you know, being a peacemaker and looking at how could I, how could I help keep these people together? And then relationships because I was the youngest. I was close to my siblings, and I was close to my 20 nieces and nephews. Wow. And today, I’ve got 40 great nieces and nephews. And because a few of my siblings have passed, now I’m sort of the connective tissue. So it’s, it’s it’s been quite the ride and and so it taught me a lot about my parents taught me two things that they never said, but they show up. They always showed up and be there. You know, like, whatever you do show up, but don’t just show up. Be there be present, be the first to get there be the last to leave. And so I’ve always sort of practice that and, and it served me well.
John Corcoran 51:09
Yeah, absolutely. Well, Mitch, this has been wonderful. I want to wrap things up. Last question I always ask, let’s pretend we’re at an awards banquet, much like the Oscars or the Emmys and you, Mitch are receiving Award for Lifetime Achievement for everything that you’ve done up until this point. And we all want to know is who do you think who are the siblings? Who are the friends who are the mentors? Who are the relationships that you would acknowledge in your remarks?
Mitch Axelrod 51:36
Well, first and foremost, my son because he’s taught me more about life than anything. One of my brothers who spent the last 15 years of his life with mouth cancer and lost his tongue, his teeth, his voice box and his nasal cavity and had to talk through a machine and was the single most courageous human being I’ve ever known and ever met. Of course, my dad who I don’t know how we managed to do what he Kids are yours mine, ours and have everybody still love him? Yeah. And there’s a few people in the business world. Certainly Brian Tracy, who was one of my original mentors and got the great good fortune to work with for quite a while Jay Abraham too. And there’s one guy who, who I never met never will he died in 1973. His name was Dr. Robert Hartman. He was nominated for a Nobel Prize because he cracked the code on how we actually can think and make decisions. He created this thing called a value profile. It’s based on a science called axiology, a three dimensional value science. And I got so hooked on this 25 years ago, when I was going through that difficult decision of sole role and goal, which actually those three words come from this sort of my own iteration of this science. And so Dr. Hartman is sort of the mentor I never met, but has guided my life and I’ve immersed myself in his work more deeply than any other single human being. And actually That’s sort of the next iteration of my work around soul roll going also this whole issue of values. So he was sort of the person I never met, but who had the greatest impact on me.
John Corcoran 53:15
That’s great. Mitch Axelrod. com MIT ch axlrod.com. Where else can people learn more about you with
Mitch Axelrod 53:26
the new game of selling.com, which is our sales training and our sales program or sales performance program, and then just do a search on me. You could go into my YouTube channel, there’s plenty of good stuff there. And if you search for me, you’ll find me
John Corcoran 53:42
and you’re doing trainings for companies still.
Mitch Axelrod 53:45
Yeah, I do rainmaking training, I do sales training, sales management. We also do great assessments on how do you help your people become full potential players in in whatever Role they’re playing. And so we also have an instrument that can measure your soul role and goal frustration and figure out Okay, which one of these stress factors is really holding you back and then how to sort of rearrange those three elements in your life to live a more full life in all three dimensions. So that’s great and you know, the other side by the way, so you out so so you will are allele, Gio al so we’ll go calm.
John Corcoran 54:27
Excellent. And you have already worked with some amazing companies IBM, at&t, MetLife, Citibank, Pfizer, Prudential dozens more you’ve already, you know, spoken, taught at NYU, USC, Notre Dame and a bunch of other places and Harvard as well. So if you want to learn more about Mitch, go check him out. He’s a great guy. great storyteller Mitch. Thanks so much.
Mitch Axelrod 54:50
My pleasure, john. Thank you.