"The Secret To Life Is One Thing..." [Evidence Inside]

Good morning. All right, Journal 7, September of 1997. I had dinner with another entry on my Mount Rushmore of influential mentors that I've had. I've mentioned Joe Paul or Joe Stump and Dan Sullivan. And this gentleman, Jim Morton is someone who has been.

I've known Jim now I met, funny enough, I met Jim Morton and Joe Stump one day apart in the same year in 1993 I think it was. So we've been friends ever since then. But Jim was a realtor in real estate broker in Las Vegas and then he started working with Floyd Wickman as one of the sweathog trainers and then became launched Jim Morton Seminars in I think in 93 or 94. And he taught me first of all at the language skills, dialogue skills of overcoming objections. And when you think about Jim and Joe Stump are two of the greatest all time greatest presenters from stage that you will ever meet.

I would put them up against anybody and the language skills that I learned from Jim Morton were immediately effective. I remember. So Jim would do a multi week, 8 or 12 week program where you would meet once a week and you would train on dialogue skills and then you would go and implement them and come back and share. And I remember what a amazing immediate difference it was when you know exactly what to say to somebody in exactly the same situation. And he would, you know, his idea was that any realtors, the ones that are going to make the biggest difference are the ones that know what to say in the moment.

Dialogue skills is the lowest cost, highest return that you could develop. So we would drill, practice and drill and get language patterns for what to say when somebody wants you to lower your commission or when somebody wants to try and sell their house on their own or whatever the situation was. We had a language pattern to take somebody, always agree with them, take them to a safe island and then logically take them through a process so that they come to the conclusion that this is the right thing to do. And those skills are still with me to this day. That thinking of directing the language like a chess master to take people through a process.

So Jim has been an amazing mentor for me and we're very close friends. We're still friends. I still have. He flies over from Sarasota on his plane once or twice a month and we have breakfast together and I just cherish that relationship. It's been a big impact on me.

And at this particular dinner I remember just the eye opening thing Jim had was living in Longboat Key and we went over and had dinner with him there and at the time, this was 1997 now. So he was in an evolution of his own because when I met him, he was doing live workshops in different cities every week. His whole life was flying from one city to the next city to the next city. And his personal evolution was realizing, what if I created something that I didn't have to travel all over the country. So he saw what was happening with desktop publishing, the mid-90s, people were empowered to create their own marketing materials.

And so what Jim did was he created hundreds of templates of brochures and flyers and postcards and ads that you could just customize, customize for yourself. And he would go and do trainings about how to use all of these tools and then sell the kit, which was one disc with a little owner's manual in a cereal box sized software package shrink wrapped. And it was just to me the most elegant thing that here for $245, he was selling a disc and a cereal box shrink wrapped. But that's the power of thinking what is going to be valuable to the people that you're trying to help. He's showing them all the things to do and then providing the tools that are going to support everything that he was teaching them.

And at this time he was starting build out, he had a fleet of territory, I don't know what we call them, managers or sales guys who would go and do office meetings, do the training for the offices and sell the software, the boxes, sell the packages and send the money back to headquarters. And that was such a like eye opening thing for me. And that really brought home to me the power of packaging something, of making something that could be duplicatable. Right? That wasn't custom drapes.

You've heard me talk what Joe Stump taught me about custom drapes versus ready to wear. And this was definitely a ready to wear thing. You're selling one thing to one audience with a duplicatable process. These guys were trained and would go and do the exact same presentation to ex all the offices. You know, six or nine people out doing office presentations that were highly scripted, exactly the same every time.

And the end would be that people would buy this package. And I remember one of the things that Jim has kind of personified is this idea of one thing. And I remember this because he told me the, you know, everything you need to know about life is in the movie City Slickers. And if you remember City Slickers, the old cowboy was saying to Billy Crystal that the secret to life. And Billy said, well, what is the Secret to life.

And the old cowboy said one thing. And Billy said, what's the one thing that is the secret one thing? And I think that if you look at the path of what Jim has been able to build with Bill prospects plus as now the preeminent postcard mailer for the real estate industry, taking all of the tools that they have available for people now, being able to print and mail them for their clients, it's. He's built an empire on one thing. And I think that's been an amazing lesson and, you know, fortunate.

We've had. We've got some great joint ventures that we've had together. We built a program called Getting Listings Sold, which still sells to this day. I've done my. The world's most interesting postcard as a monthly postcard that is mailed to your top 150 and generates referrals.

And we've got people all over the country that mail Those postcards for 12 or so years now of that. So I think the two lessons here, number one, find yourself a mentor. Be open to that. Like people who have. Are ahead of you on the path that you're going on.

It's just, it's funny that I look at it that, you know, Joe Stump and Jim morton are exactly 10 years older than me, so they'd already been down the path of where I was going. Dan Sullivan is 22 years ahead of me. So it's important. Find your mentors and then find your one thing. Okay, I'm going to tell you a little joke because as soon as we finished recording, I was telling Josh that to this day, Jim Morton told me one of the funniest jokes that I've ever heard.

He told it at our, at one of the meetings that we were doing way back in 94 when he was doing his, his program. And so the joke goes, this guy, New Yorker, moves out to Montana and he's working on his fence, and he sees in the horizon a little, you know, dust cloud coming his way. And then he sees, as it's getting closer, you can see it's a guy on a horse. And the guy arrives at his fence. He gets off his horse and says, howdy, neighbor.

I'm your neighbor to the north. I just wanted to come and welcome you to the neighborhood. And the New Yorker goes, well, that's, that's friendly. Yeah, thank you for doing that. He said, matter of fact, we're thinking about having a little party for you back at the ranch tonight.

And he goes, oh, how. That's. That's very thoughtful. How nice. He goes, I gotta warn you though, there might be some drinking.

And the New Yorker goes, oh, well, that's fine. I'm from New York. I love a good drink, just like anybody. He goes, well, there might be some fighting. He said, fighting?

Well, I can hold my own. I mean, I imagine I'll be okay. He says, well, and there might even be some sex. He goes, wow, that sounds like a party. What should I wear?

He said, wear what you want. It's just going to be you and me. And I laughed and laughed. And to this day that is still one of the funniest jokes that I have ever heard. I hope you tell it in good health.

Every idea that I've had, every dollar that I've made over the last 30 years has gone through the my brain, through my pen, onto a piece of paper in my journal before it went out into the real world. And if I can turn people onto that activity as a driver for what to do, what to think about, what to ask yourself to draw out, what the next most valuable action is for you and how to find the most profitable things that you can install in your business, I'm all for it. So this Friday at 1pm I'm going to do for the first time a 50 minute profit finder workshop and you're going to join me live on Zoom and we're going to go through a 50 minute exercise. Bring your pen, bring a notebook or piece of paper and I'm going to guide you through a thinking process that that will help you identify where the lowest hanging fruit is in your business and maybe some fruit that you didn't even know was there. But I'm going to show you where to look for it.

So it's free. It's for you. It's Friday at 1pm this Friday just watch. Go to what did we call the website, Josh Minute Profit finder. Just go to 50minuteprofitfinder.com and I'll get you all the details and hopefully you can join us then.

Friday 1pM.