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April 3rd, 2023
Did you know that about 90% of startups fail and 10% of them fail within the first year. About half are gone within five years. Author, coach and serial entrepreneur Brian Will sits down with Rob and tell you how those numbers shouldn’t depress you because he specializes in helping other defy those odds!
In this Pocket Sized Pep Talk, you’ll learn:
- How this book, The Dropout Multi-Millionaire: 37 Business Lessons on How to Succeed in Business With No Money No Education and No Clue found him!
- Why the, “No Clue” part of his title is relevant.
- A handful of his 37 business lessons he shares with businesses.
- His explanation as to why most businesses fail.
- Why many of us, particularly entrepreneurs, rely on their own advice is NOT always a good idea.
- Smart ways to build value in your business.
- What role does ego plays in your success.
- His belief in post success analysis.
- A few bits of wisdom Brian would tell his younger self if he could go back and whisper in his ear.
- Mentors along the way.
Rob Jolles (00:00):
Did you know that about 90% of startups fail and 10% of them fail within the first year? About half are gone within five years. Well, let’s have ourselves a pocket-sized pep talk because I didn’t bring up those numbers to depress you. I brought ’em up because we’re going to be hearing from a guest who can help you defy those eyes,
Intro (00:21):
A pocket size pep talk, the podcast that can help energize your business and your life with a quick inspiring message. Now, here’s your host, Rob Jolles.
Rob Jolles (00:35):
Today’s guest, Brian Will, is a serial entrepreneur who’s had a hand in creating seven very successful companies in four different industries, worth over a half a billion dollars at their peak, and a business and sales management consultant to companies from startups to Fortune 500 s is the author of The Dropout Multimillionaire 37 Business Lessons on How to Succeed in Business With No Money, no Education, and No clue. And now you know why I booked them. Glad to have you with us and welcome to the show, Brian.
Brian Will (01:09):
Thanks, Rob, I appreciate it. And yes, that was me. No clue when I started.
Rob Jolles (01:13):
Well, you’re talking to an entrepreneur, so we’ll be able to swap some stories there. But with you, I want to dive in. I do think it’s a gutsy title and we’ll break it down, but I, I’m always thought of starting a podcast called A Book Finds You because rarely do we find the book. So what drove you to it? What made you want to write this book?
Brian Will (01:36):
It was my second book. The first one I kind of started out to write for my kids. And some people love this title, some people hate it, but my first book’s called I Give the Dumb Kids Hope, and there’s a big story behind that. But I was a high school fail out, managed to graduate with a 1.2, didn’t go to college, didn’t have any education of any discernible type, and yet went on to create business and be successful. Well then after doing all this and doing all this consulting, I started noticing the same failure mechanisms in every small business that was out there. You know, used the term that 90% of people are going to fail 500,000 people a month start a business in America that’s 6 million a year, and by your numbers, four and a half million of them will fail. That’s four and a half million people every year who are going to fail because in my estimation, they make some of the exact same mistakes. And that’s what I kind of wrote the book for.
Rob Jolles (02:28):
Help. I’m 13 years in helping people in career transition. I sometimes think that part of those numbers, and it’s just a slice of it and be interested in your opinion. I think some of those numbers are due to the fact that when people are struggling and to find work or frustrated with what they’re doing, so they don’t want to do it anymore. The knee jerk reaction is, I’m going to start a business and they’re completely ill prepared. And I tell people when I’m coaching and counseling, I love the idea we’ll start a business. The only time we’re not going to start that business is right now while we’re trying to keep this raft afloat, but I worry that some of it is just knee jerk. I’m frustrated with my boss. I haven’t thought it out. I’m just going to go,
Brian Will (03:14):
I got a whole chapter in the book, Rob, where I talk about the fact that I will try to talk you out of starting that business because here’s what I know, I know that the amount of crap that’s going to come at you, the problems, the struggles, the stress, the family issues, if you’re not really willing and prepared to handle that, then you should have never started that business in the first place. So if I can talk you out of it, you never should have started. If I can’t and you get mad at me, okay, now I might have something here.
Rob Jolles (03:44):
Great. It’s funny, we really are. I see myself in you. I was always, I’m feeling a little guilty, but I just think there’s a time and a place and I just worry about that knee-jerk reaction. Then the second question I get, and I’m curious how you answer it is they’ll ask me, well, what’s the most important person in your business? And my answer is your accountant. Cause when I started I thought, well, I’ll figure all that out. And I was just getting fined left. I was late with this, never even heard of that. What’s that license called? So really an accountant to me was the first one who said, and a good one, I wasn’t looking for a bargain basement accountant, right?
Brian Will (04:26):
Yep.
Rob Jolles (04:26):
You get what you pay for. I can find a cheap one and I’ll get fined all year.
Brian Will (04:30):
So we call this knowing your numbers. If you’re in business and you don’t know your numbers, you’re dead in the water. And I’ve acquired a lot of businesses over the years and I am amazed every time I walk into a business and I say, okay, you want me to buy your business? Give me your last 24 months worth of PNLs and lemme take a look at it. And eight times out of 10, these small business owners go, well, I don’t really track that. I just threw my receipts in a shoebox and my bookkeeper fills in the numbers for me at the end of the year. And I’m like, how can you be in business if you don’t know what you’re doing? Yeah, it blows my mind. So yes, know your numbers. That’s an accountant.
Rob Jolles (05:05):
Yeah. And if you get a good accountant, and I’m not giving out my name here, but my account would not put up with that. My account is QuickBooks literate and I got things I have to send. And that really helped me also. Cause I remember as a kid watching my parents literally fill the shoe boxes up, and I think I was eight or nine years old already fearing taxes if that’s what it looks like. But we thank goodness we live in a time now where really if you keep things electronically and you’ve got a relationship with an accountant who understands it, you actually never have to physically be in the same room and they’ve got your shoebox.
Brian Will (05:46):
Yep, that’s exactly right. Yep. You’re exactly right.
Rob Jolles (05:49):
So I got to know money, I got to know education, but I have no clue, I don’t want to, neither one of us want to squash an entrepreneur’s dreams here. So let’s get ’em out of out of jail. The time is right. Somehow they want, this is a good time. W w walk me through the no clue part. How do you help somebody with no clue?
Brian Will (06:13):
So here’s what I talk about. So when you’re starting a business, everybody’s going to start their business at a different level. I call it people like me. Start your business at minus 10. I had no education, no idea what I was doing. I was clueless. Some people, they might have an mba, they might have some venture capital backing. Their parents were very successful, they got friends that are business people. They’re starting their business at plus 50. We all started a different level based on what we know, our knowledge, our background. What you need to understand as a business owner is that if you’re like me and you’re at negative 10 when you start, you’re going to have to go through a lot more learning and lessons than the person who started at plus 50. That doesn’t mean you can’t succeed at the same level. In fact, you can make more money and have more success when they can.
(06:52)
But you got to understand the number of lessons and the teachings and the things you’re going to have to learn and the failures you will probably have to go through to get to that level. So understand where you are. I had no clue I failed for 15 years before I finally figured it out. We just need to figure out where you are in the mix. And by the way, there’s a way to fast track that and it’s get a coach and a mentor and somebody who is 10 steps ahead of you that can go, no, no, no, no, no, Rob, you’re about to drive off the cliff. Stop doing that and do this. And this is one of the biggest failures I see with young entrepreneurs. Their ego’s too big to get help. If you just bring somebody in to coach you and mentor you, you can avoid a lot of those problems.
Rob Jolles (07:29):
Okay. Now, do you know of a redheaded coach anywhere?
Brian Will (07:33):
I know one, he’s pretty good. I’m just saying
Rob Jolles (07:36):
He’s looking at me. Folks, how do people get ahold of you? Because I let, let’s not bury the lead. We’ll put that in at the end too. But I totally agree with you. I was actually just at a lunch with one of the top realtors in the state of Virginia and a person who’s from another country and just got their license. And this person, the first thing that she said was, I found a coach. I found somebody who knew what I’m doing good and just helped me go to the line. So I firmly believe in that. So how do people get ahold of you?
Brian Will (08:11):
Www.brianwillmedia.com. That’s my website. Everything’s on there.
Rob Jolles (08:15):
Okay. All right. And the good news is, I’ve seen the spelling of his name just like it sounds because I get people like, yes, Brian will, but there’s a two Ys and a J in there
Brian Will (08:23):
And an S on the end
Rob Jolles (08:24):
Yeah. B R I A N W I L L. So he’s easy to find there. Okay, good. And I do want to go back on one thing you said, because that story was very compelling about the G P A, that wasn’t quite there, but I’m a half full guy, and I think my GPA was higher than that, but it was through scraping and hustling and reading things four times. And at that, when I went to school, we really didn’t label people as much as that was the guy that’s got to read it more times. But I think, and just curious, I think maybe somewhere that taught you how to fight, taught you how to grind out and work a little harder. Things didn’t come, apparently, didn’t come easily to you. So I sometimes think that’s can be an asset to people. When we’ve struggled early,
Brian Will (09:14):
You, you’d be surprised how many very successful people struggled in their early life, whether it was through, I grew up in an abusive home, I had A D H D like crazy in the early late seventies and early eighties. We didn’t know what ADHD was, right? We just said that at kids dumb, which was me, right? Right. Unknowing that A DH D. While it was a weakness, then it’s one of my strongest assets today because I can multitask at a very high level across multiple platforms and let the people that work for me do all the detail work. But because I’m a D H D, I’m all over the place, but I’m also in tune with a lot of different things where if I try to get down in the dirt and do it myself, forget about it, I’m going to fail.
Rob Jolles (09:52):
I’m so glad you said that. There’s a phrase that I’ve always been fined of called, we All Walk with a limp, we’ve all got something. And a lot of times, at the end of the day, people aren’t nearly as concerned about your limp as you are. And as long as you don’t make it a big deal and you basically learned how to create it, make it an asset for you, it doesn’t, doesn’t hold us back. So you just heard a great story there. Let let things like that hold you back. And there’s only two people who don’t have a limp. That’s somebody who is not being truthful with you or somebody has no capacity whatsoever to have empathy for another human being. And quite frankly, those aren’t the ones that I’m having a cup of coffee with, so, right. Good. All right, let’s keep pushing forward. Love that story. Let’s roll. Oh, okay. In your opinion, we’ve got a lot of businesses that are failing out there, and maybe we’ve tapped on it, but compartmentalize it a little bit, one or two, you’ve got 37 business lessons there. Maybe we just cherry pick a couple, but how about a couple that relate directly to the failure of businesses?
Brian Will (10:57):
Sure. So I’ll give you the very first chapter in my book, and it’s about your personal filter. And it talks about the fact that everything that’s gone into our brain since the day we were born has created this filter that’s kind of a subconscious thing that you don’t think about or even know is happening, but it’s back there and it filters every bit of information that comes at you. So everything that comes at you, including people listening to me right now, are thinking I’m crazy because their filters are rejecting what I’m telling them. And some people are going, oh my God, that’s gold. Because their filters are accepting it. And that filter then determines how you’re going to react to every decision you make moving forward. So that’s the basis. Now think about this person who’s new in business, who’s never been successful in business before.
(11:37)
The fact is, if you’ve never been successful in business, you don’t know what you are doing. Your filter doesn’t know how to process information. It doesn’t know how to make the right decisions in business. And because of that, we’re going to go right back to this. You need to find somebody who could come in and help you make those successful decisions so that your filter will start to become a success filter in whatever business it is in. If you’ve never been successful, you don’t know what you’re doing, you need some help. That’s rule number one.
Rob Jolles (12:05):
Yeah, it’s almost like writer to writer. It’s why we get readers to read our book. Yes, you and I can read our own book 50 times and miss some of the most obvious things that are very simple to us, but people don’t, they haven’t repeated in their heads 400 times. So we’re blind to a lot of things like that. And it’s one of the reasons why we get readers. We get other people to look at it who know nothing about what we’re doing. They, most publishers, just so you know, we’ll send out a book to some readers, and then you as authors, you got to have thick skin. But that’s the person you want reading it. If they don’t know a business from a hole in the wall, and they can understand what you’ve written there, you wrote something pretty good. Cause as we both know, symbol is a lot harder to write than complex. Yes. That the stars are the ones that take complex. And I’m thinking also, you as a business coach, when you can take complex thoughts and make them simpler to understand you didn’t wake up with that. That takes a decade or two to start learning. But that’s the value.
Brian Will (13:11):
And I did eight years in the military, four Air Force, four Army, and one of the things we were taught in the military is you teach everything at a fifth grade level. Every time you’re talking to somebody, teaching something, learning a new skill, you do it at a fifth grade level so that there’s crystal clarity in what you’re saying. I’ve even heard today, people say third grade level because if, and I use this example all the time, Rob. Yeah. And have you ever been talking or you ever been listening to somebody and they’re talking and they say something you don’t understand, what does your brain do? It stops and your brain starts trying to figure out what they said. And by the time, this is a sales technique, by the way, time your brain figures it out. You catch back up with a conversation, you might have missed two or three or four minutes, and now you’re lost in the entire process. The problem was not you. The problem was your speaker or your teacher was talking about things that you didn’t clearly understand and got you lost in the process. That’s the thing you got to be careful of. Don’t lose the customer, don’t lose the person you’re teaching. Teach at a fifth grade level.
Rob Jolles (14:11):
Yeah. Well, I’m glad you said fifth. I don’t know if I can live with a third grade level. Hi, you scared me there for a moment, but I think we can all live with fifth and again, before we make fun of that, I’m telling you, there’s a skill to get it to that level. That’s where the good ones, it takes practice. Yes. Because we’re not talking like children. We’re just taking the known and tying it to the unknown. And there’s an art to that. So we smile when we hear that. But trust me, it’s a whole lot harder to speak at that level than it is to take it up a few years.
Brian Will (14:50):
This is the difference between an average salesperson and a phenomenal salesperson. You don’t lose the customer in the process. And by the way, one of my favorite things to tell salespeople is shut up and stop talking.
Rob Jolles (15:01):
Oh, yeah. Yeah. I, I’ve done two day workshops on sales and I’ll go into decision cycles and trial closes, objection, tactics, you name it. And yet, I’ve had people come up after two days and look me in the eye and say, for the rest of my life, I am committed to asking questions and listening, and I’m going to keep my questions open early and hundred percent. I’m never going to lose that lesson. And part of me always goes, that’s all you got. And the other part says, if I could look in the future, and you made that and you kept that promise, you just went to the best sales trading program. Yeah. You’ll ever attend. Yes. It’s that important. So you’re not losing me on that one. The more that other person talks generally, the more they like us.
Brian Will (15:43):
Yes. Yep. That’s a fact.
Rob Jolles (15:45):
It is a fact. And yet, but there’s it’s instinct versus logic. Brian. It’s a fact. And I, I’m guarantee you, somebody’s driving the car right now going that one again, but I’m telling you, I’m not, not Ryan, and I aren’t telling you we’re, we’re talking about isn’t logical. It’s not instinctive is the problem, particularly with salespeople who are getting sales trained, but really product trained and thinking they’re being sales trained. Yes. And they’re going out and spitting back I was a copier jock speeds and feeds. Yes. And thinking, I’m just took my class. How could I be good doing this wrong?
Brian Will (16:18):
Yep. There’s a proverb. By the way, a man is considered a genius until he starts talking. After that, it all goes downhill. I paraphrased, by the way.
Rob Jolles (16:29):
Yeah. I like your paraphrasing. All right. We all want to be successful. So give me a couple of ideas to build value in the business. Listen, April, I’ll be 30 years as an entrepreneur. I work for me longer than all the other companies I ever worked with combined. I think some of the things I’m doing, I, I’m going to do a few things well, but some of them I fear almost are unconsciously competent, meaning I’m doing, and I might not even know I’m doing them. That’s why I love having conversations with guys like you, because believe me, part of the audience right now is picking up some tips on things. They went, boy, I knew I needed to work on that. And others are thinking, I, I’ve been doing that, but I didn’t know it was called that. And that’s of value too. So a couple of ideas to build some value in this business.
Brian Will (17:19):
So I’ll give you one, and it really depends on the size of business and what the end goal of the business is, right? I talk about the difference between being an entrepreneur and being a business owner, because those are two different things. They have two different daily things that you do, and they have two different end results. So I talk a lot about a business owner, somebody who’s building a business that’s going to have intrinsic value that one day they can sell. So if I’m talking to this person that wants to build value in a business, then what I would tell you is that you need to check your ego and not try to be everything to everybody on every matter. Okay? And let me bring that back a step. You need to bring the right people in that are strong where you’re weak, and then allow them to do their job.
(18:04)
And in fact, you need to allow them to fail so that they can learn how to do their job better. Too many entrepreneurs bring people in. As soon as they fail, they want to throw ’em out, trash ’em, that person fail. They’re no good. No, no, no. As a business owner, that was an expensive lesson for you. Why would you throw that expensive lesson out and have to learn it again with the next person? Let your people fail, let them learn and then let them be able to take over all the areas in the business that you can’t or don’t want to do. Or quite frankly, you’re not good at. Everybody who starts a business is not a C E o. And this is another tip. Just because you started the business doesn’t mean you’re a ceo. O You could be the specialist that goes out and does a physical work.
(18:44)
You could be the manager that manages the office. You could be the salesperson that sells the product or the vision, but salespeople make terrible CEOs. Managers make terrible salespeople, technicians make terrible entrepreneurs. So figure out who you are in your business, figure out what you’re good at, bring the right people in to fill those other roles, and that’s what will allow your business to grow. Then let them fail and learn. And that’s what allow you to develop a lifestyle over time. It doesn’t have you work in a hundred hours a week and burning yourself out.
Rob Jolles (19:13):
It’s interesting because I’ve heard it said both ways. Traditionally, I even wrote a blur article about this, about I was a point guard. I that got figured out early in the first quarter of ball games when people started overplaying me left, I became a better player when I learned to go to my right, basically working that area. That isn’t my strength. Maybe we’ve got some people who aren’t writers. It doesn’t mean avoid writing. But the reason why I’m bringing it up, Brian, is because I’ve actually heard both sides of this argument of just stay in your lane. If you’re not a writer, then don’t write. Do what you’re good at. I always came from the school that said, no, if I’m not good at leading people, I want to take some management training. I want to get better at that. So I, who’s right? And I’m been shot down on that one, by the way. I think that’s more the traditional view and people are getting a little bit smarter. But where do you stand on that?
Brian Will (20:18):
I think it gets down to what I said a minute ago. And how many CEOs or entrepreneurs do you know that complain about burnout? It’s like a whole cottage industry of burnout. The reason they’re burning out is because they’re trying to do too many things. If you will bring the right people in, let them do their job. And I always say replace yourself at every level. I own a restaurant chain. I don’t know how to cook. I don’t know how to make drinks. I don’t even go to some of these restaurants because I put the right people in place, which gives me money and lifestyle. I make a little less money, but I have a better lifestyle. So it really, if I don’t think anybody started their business to work a hundred hours a week and get burned out and miss their family, that’s not why we start businesses.
(20:56)
We start businesses with this grand idea that I’m going to have a successful business, make a lot of money, have time with my family, and then we work a hundred hours a week because we don’t trust our people or we don’t bring in the right people to help us. Now, in the beginning of a business that’s different, you got to be everything to everybody. But as you grow that business, and if you want to get it to the point where somebody will buy it, nobody wants to buy your business if you are the only person that’s contributing or you are the key factor or the only person with the knowledge or every single customer knows you personally, and they’re not going to do business with you unless you’re there. So you got to build a business that replaces you in every role so that you can walk away one day. That’s my theory.
Rob Jolles (21:30):
Well, I think it’s a good theory. I was actually just had a guest on recently, and we were talking about management training, and I had been trained by a company called Zer Miller and it that broke down training management skills and I think 24 different separate skills, but the two that I held onto were recognition for obvious reasons. The other one was delegation. I think a lot of managers don’t delegate. They don’t hand that off because they don’t understand that well, there is a process to do that. You don’t just go, well, okay, so when I listen to Brian and here you do it, okay, get it done. The, it’s a little bit more complex than that. Yes. And I think getting burned by not following a process to do what you just said makes people run for the hills and then get back into, well, I’ll do it myself land.
Brian Will (22:20):
That’s the challenge with these types of things. So I’m telling you something that’s really much more deeply involved than what I’m giving you on the surface level. So you’re getting the surface level superficial answer, but there’s so much below it, which is what you just said, that still needs to get done. This is why you need to bring the mentor, the coach in.
Rob Jolles (22:37):
Yeah. Back to your failure. I’m going to throw a I’m, I’m sure you’ve been on a few red eyes. You’re out there doing your job. I think it was one of these red eyes when you’re in that, I’m not sure if I even slept. I may have worry, but I came up with this definition for wisdom, and my definition is it always has been. Wisdom consists of three things. It consists of success, it consists of failure, and it consists of a conscious knowledge of the lessons learned from each. Yes. So if all you’ve been as successful, that’s great. I wouldn’t necessarily call you wise, but you are lucky and good wouldn’t mind trading places with you. And if all you’ve had is failure, well, my heart goes out to you, but most of us have had a piece of each. It’s can we articulate the lesson when we failed, why? When we succeeded, why? Yes. And are we being methodically observant about it?
Brian Will (23:36):
Yes. We call this the post failure analysis. So there’s this old adage, and I see it all the time, and I hear gurus say it, you got to fail to succeed. You got to fail to succeed. The faster you fail, the faster you’re going to succeed. And every time I hear it, I cringe. Yeah. Because failure leads to failure. Learning from failure leads to success. And that’s the difference. Back to what I said earlier, you might have to fail 10 times, but if you will learn from each failure, it will create the success that you’re looking for down the road. Don’t just think, I got to a fail, fail, fail. That’s a horrible thing to do. So yes, learning from that failure is what’s going to lead you to where you want to go.
Rob Jolles (24:13):
Yeah. And lemme ask you a question. Do you keep a journal yourself?
Brian Will (24:21):
I do. I’m a big list maker, a writer. I’m on city council. I keep a journal of every city council meeting we’re in. I have all my goals laid out, got, I can show you goal sheets from the past 10 years, and I’ve got ’em for the next five years. I keep all that stuff. The weird guy, Rob, when I get in the shower in the morning and my glass steams up, I write my goals on the glass in the she in the steam. And then the next morning I get in. It’s weird right there again, it is weird, but I always keep stuff in front of me. Always.
Rob Jolles (24:49):
Well, and it’s not like you and I talked about this beforehand, but I commend you and I sense that you did because that’s really where a lot of this begins to come from. I snuck in the words methodically, observant. There has to be a method to be observant. We can’t just go now, go out there and be observant. We’ll try. And that’s why a journal is kind of, it for me works. And I typically write when I’m leaving on a trip, when I’m coming back on the trip and the rules are by free, I have very little to say. Then I’ll say, today, I have very little to say, but I don’t stay off the keyboard because I don’t think I have enough to say. Oh, in ps, typically when we don’t think we have a lot to say, that’s when you say the most important things.
(25:36)
When you think you know exactly what you’re going to be writing about, it’s actually not all that exciting allowing that to just kind of go. But I’m impressed with the fact that you do that and it tells me a lot about you because again, I think that’s where a lot of that for a coach, you’ve got to have some wisdom and where is the wisdom come from? It’s coming from a guy who’s not only had a taste of both sides of this apple success of failure, but is trying to record that. It’s trying to process it. It’s trying to work it out. It can’t keep it in your head. Got to get it down somewhere.
Brian Will (26:07):
Yep. You’re exactly right. You’re exactly right.
Rob Jolles (26:10):
Yeah. And the last advertisement for the Brian and Rob journals that we’ll be making available always another, we call it a wiffle in sales. What’s in it for me? Another whiff m to do what we’re talking about here is I actually went into it thinking, wait, what I wouldn’t give to be able to read what my dad was thinking was when he was in the wheelhouse, when he was of his career, when he was getting knocked around, when he was getting some victories. So I’ve kept him in. I let my children see him, but I’m looking forward to reading them myself when I retire.
Brian Will (26:44):
That was a genesis on my whole first book. It started out just a story about your dad. What have I done? Where did it come from? What happened before you were born? And then the more I wrote and people kept reading it for me and proofreading it for me, it ended up turning into a whole book. The genesis, the ending genesis of the book is, no matter where you are, no matter what your background is, no matter how hard you think you’ve had it, you got bad credit. Me too. You’ve had health problems. Me too. You got kid problems. Me too. You grew up in a bad house. Me too. Failed out of high school, me. Doesn’t matter. You can still do anything you want in life. Your future starts today. Forget all that and move forward. And so that was a genesis of that book. It was just a story for my kids.
Rob Jolles (27:22):
That’s beautiful. Hey, do you have an author’s page on Amazon
Brian Will (27:26):
Author’s page? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rob Jolles (27:28):
I’m only mentioning it because it folks go to the author’s page. You’ll see all of what he’s working on both books and because I’m intrigued by both of them, quite frankly. But I’m it, it’s so interesting meeting you, Brian, because truly the part that really connects you in my mind is the writing it, not the book necessarily, is the trying to figure, keep figuring things out. And again, may come back, maybe back because neither one of us went through school as it wasn’t a layup for either one of us. So we had no choice but to figure it out. But that’s why I always smile and I see people that are making their way, and I think they got one thing. I got one thing they don’t have. I got a fighter’s heart because, because I had to fight. Just like you
Brian Will (28:19):
Didn’t have a choice.
Rob Jolles (28:20):
Yeah. So bully for us, who knew? And actually most of the things you’ve ever noticed in life, every time you think now this can’t possibly be contributing to anything that’s going to help me moving forward. It not that minute. Maybe not that week or year. Oh my gosh. But it’s funny how everything begins to connect and it’s all vital.
Brian Will (28:43):
I can look back at my life at every failure slash disaster and track how that led to where I am today and how it turned out to be a good thing. Even in my company today, when things go wrong, I’ve a woman who is one of my senior people, and she’s like, I don’t understand why you’re not upset about this. And I’m like, look, you don’t understand. I’ve had worse happen. And it turned into better. My first company collapsed. It turned into something better when my, I can just track it all the way through. Now, here’s the question I’ll ask you.
Rob Jolles (29:13):
Okay.
Brian Will (29:15):
Oops. Is that because literally every door that closes leads to another door that’s open? Or is it because you as a person have the mindset to take that failure, failure and learn from it and move forward? Which one is it?
Rob Jolles (29:30):
I think it’s door number two. I think it’s I and I also, meaning we begin conditioned of, I want to figure out what happened there. I want to get smarter. I want to get wiser. I want to use that. This pandemic has not been a party for professional speakers like myself, and yet now I’m booked three, four months in advance right now. That’s awesome. Life is very wonderful and I’m happy. But I will tell you that the pandemic for me, because I’m a very half full guy, I deal with people in sales that are struggling all the time. It’s kind of tough to look at somebody and say, I read about it. It sounds scary. No, you have to be able to want to have empathy for another human being. You have to get knocked around a little bit yourself. And by the way, as entrepreneur to entrepreneur, if I were looking for characteristics and I wanted to give birth to an entrepreneur, one thing I would be looking for is can they take a punch? Yes. Can they? Because we all take a punch. Can you dust yourself off, spit out a little bit of blood, wipe your mouth and go forward, get up and go until you get knocked around? How do you know?
Brian Will (30:37):
Yep. You’re exactly right. A hundred percent. A hundred percent.
Rob Jolles (30:41):
If you were talking to a younger you and you could whisper something in that younger you’s ear right now. Yeah. Give me a couple things you tell. I’m not even sure where age we’ve got to right now, but let’s get you out of school and sort of making your way into this world.
Brian Will (31:02):
Yeah,
Rob Jolles (31:02):
What would you whisper in your ear?
Brian Will (31:03):
You know what? You have a lottery ticket in your pocket. Keep going. It’s going to be okay.
Rob Jolles (31:08):
Yeah,
Brian Will (31:09):
Yeah. Just keep going.
Rob Jolles (31:11):
Yeah. What was it? There’s a politically incorrect, but I was always a Mike Tyson fan, and I mean, we had his issues. Like I said, we all have a limp. But I love that quote from Tyson that says every, and I’m going to get close to it. Everybody’s brave until they get punched in the face.
Brian Will (31:31):
Exactly. Yep.
Rob Jolles (31:34):
Sometimes that resonates with me.
Brian Will (31:36):
Sometimes you just got to understand that if you just keep going, yeah. It can be okay.
Rob Jolles (31:41):
Yeah. All right. How about a couple of mentors that help shape the Brian will? I see today?
Brian Will (31:49):
Early on, there was a guy, I’m out in Park City by the way, skiing this week. And one of my early mentors lives out here. His name’s Paul Pilzer, and he was a big time speaker and wrote a bunch of books and speaks all over the world. And he got me launched into this next phase of my life a few years back. Give you a quick story. I sold my company about 10 years ago, and I’m out here in Park City having lunch with him, the Starbucks, right down the street. And he said, Brian, what are you going to do now? And I said, Paul, I don’t know. I guess maybe I’ll start another business. And he said, why do you need the money? And I said, well, no. He goes, what are you passionate about? I said, what do you mean? He said, what are you passionate about?
(32:25)
I said, I have no idea. I’ve been building a business for the last 20 years. I don’t even know what passion is. He goes, let me tell you something. If you’re going to be happy for the rest of your life, you need to find a passion and you need to find a way to give back to the world that allowed you to have what you have today. And I was like, wow. And it took me another five years before I started writing my first book and realized that I have a passion for writing and then joined city council and local politics is my way of giving back to my community. So he was one of my early, early mentors. And then after that was my business partner, Steve, who just passed away a couple weeks ago. I struggled in business for a long time until I met him.
(33:03)
And he just, by watching him, nothing he said to me specifically, but I just watched him and how he dealt with people and the way he was in business and in life. And he inspired me to be a better person, which is something I struggled with early on. If you’re a young entrepreneur with the chip on your shoulder in a bad background like me, I was just angry. I was the hammer and everything was a nail. And it never serves me well because I had an ego problem. And when I met Steve that I realized wasn’t the person I needed to be in order to grow into the person I wanted to be. And so he helped me tremendously in that area.
Rob Jolles (33:36):
Wow. It’s great. We all have mentors. I mine, I shout out to Larry Dam Monks, one of the Xerox managers who I really learned a ton from. But again, the key is we have to be receptive to, to want to listen and know that there are people out there with our best interests at heart who are there to help us, but sometimes we miss that. So I tend to tuck in the mentor question about every third interview. I wish I should do it for every interview because rarely do I bump into somebody and go, mentor, what’s that? I don’t have a mentor now. There’s always somebody there went, well, I was going to the left and they got me going to the right.
(34:19)
That’s important. Everybody drop out multimillionaire, 37 business lessons on how to succeed in business with no money, no education, no clue. We can find that on Amazon and any online store, I’m assuming. Yep. And we got Brian’s. You can jump to his author’s page, maybe see a couple of his books there. And my audience knows that you only get extra credit when you get the book, read the book and post a review on the book. Yes. So we we’re going to do that as well. And we want you to get the book because we like ’em verified. So go get that book and Brian, give it to me again. How can people reach out to you for coaching?
Brian Will (35:05):
Again, back to my website, www.brianwille.com. B R I A N W I L L. Brianwill media.com. You can get me on there.
Rob Jolles (35:14):
Perfect. Well, I have to tell you really enjoyed the conversation, learned a lot, and I am absolutely grateful you had an opportunity to get on this show. Appreciate it. You did fantastic. Thank you.
Brian Will (35:28):
Thank you. I appreciate it.
Rob Jolles (35:30):
Well, folks, we’ll do it again as well as we can next time. Until then, stay safe.
Outro (35:41):
Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed today’s show, please rate and recommend it on iTunes, outcasts, wherever you get your podcast. You can also get more information on this show and rob@jolles.com.