Episode 48 – Selling with The Velocity Mindset with Ron Karr

Introduction    00:00:03    Marketing, explosive growth, and revolutionary secrets that can catapult your business to new heights. You’re now listening to The Underground Marketer Podcast with your host Tudor Dumitrescu, the one podcast devoted to showing new businesses how to market themselves for high growth.  

 

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:00:24    Welcome to the underground marketer. This is the place where we deliver the real truth about marketing and explore big ideas that can help new businesses thrive and grow into big ones. I’m your host Tudor. And today it’s my pleasure to welcome Ron Karr to the underground marketer. He is a sales success expert, award-winning speaker and author of five books, including a bestseller and the newly released Velocity Mindset. Through his presentations and advisory services, Ron has generated over a billion dollars in incremental revenue for his clients. Welcome, Ron.  

 

Ron Karr    00:01:01    Thank you, Tudor. How are you today?  

 

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:01:03    I’m doing very well. Thank you. How about you?  

 

Ron Karr    00:01:06    I’m doing wonderful. Thank you for having me.  

 

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:01:08    It’s great to have you. So I mean, why don’t you start by telling us a little bit about your story and how you got involved into sales and how that took you to developing the velocity mindset as you call it.  

 

Ron Karr    00:01:22    And I know we have enough time to go through that whole story, but I’ll give it my best. So number one, I started selling in 1980. It was after two years after college, when I couldn’t get a sales job to save my life because companies were saying, well, you don’t have experience. And I’d say, well, how do you get experience in that? And given the chance, and I want it to be in medical device sales. Now I’ve literally saved a couple of medical device companies as that called me in to help them. So it’s funny how the world comes full circle in any event that sold professionally and managed for 10 years in the computer industry. And then I started my business as a result of a family tragedy that I had to navigate on my own, which turned out well, but it was that tragedy that taught me that we only have so much time.  

 

Ron Karr    00:02:10    And why do you want to be a victim of someone else’s decisions? Why don’t you control your own destiny? And my job wasn’t making sense. So it propelled me into starting my own business. If that tragedy didn’t happen, I’m not sure we will be speaking here today as the expert that you have brought onto your show. So I started that business in 1988 and I’ve been speaking, consulting, and coaching for the last 33 years. The velocity mindset is something that I guess I’ve been working on all my life because all my work has been how to help entrepreneurs and organizations grow their businesses. You know, I maybe Dave or they did, he does feel, you know, you might get scattered, but that scatteredness was a positive for me because when people are talking to me, I can actually see down the road and they can see what is not making sense.  

 

Ron Karr    00:03:00    And I asked them questions and then they got new ideas. So that was a big part of my practice and helping people get to where they want sooner than later, but it culminated in the actual velocity mindset. I was president of the national speakers association. And when I was done in June, 2014, I had nine surgeries in three years. Well, most of them on my back, I, you know, tiger woods had one level of fuse. I have nine levels, but I’m still playing golf today. Believe it or not, but it took a long time to come back. But during those three years, I couldn’t do anything. I can only consult by phone. I couldn’t travel at speed. So when you’re laid up in hospital beds, you know, on drugs and you’re thinking about your life. And at that time I was 57. I looked at all of them, good things and successes, I have noticed many, but then I looked at the things that I didn’t get to.  

 

Ron Karr    00:03:50    One did Y and then it came up for me, was simple. It’s the stories that you’re telling yourself as to whether or not you can, cannot do it. And I just learned things that were getting in the way of my velocity. And I realized I don’t have a lot of time left. You know, I’m 65 now. So I’m on the back nine. But, uh, if you really want to get to where you want to be before the time runs out, you better start moving. So that’s how the urgency and the velocity mindset came about and why I am a known sales and leadership expert. My mission right now is helping everyone get the velocity. Mark lived the velocity mindset in a way that doesn’t make them disappointed. After a period of time, when they realize they haven’t achieved the results that they wanted,  

 

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:04:36    I’m intrigued, drawn. What exactly is the velocity mindset and what are the steps that one needs to take to get there.  

 

Ron Karr    00:04:45    So if I asked you, what is the first word that comes to your mind to it, or when you hear the word velocity?

 

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:04:52    That word is speed. Fast, quick.  

 

Ron Karr    00:04:53    Exactly. And that’s what many people say and that many people, that’s all they say. And when I tell my audiences, when I’m speaking and that’s all you think velocity is the speed, then you’re going to get burnout. Now let me explain. Most of us are task oriented, not prep oriented. We’re so busy every day doing, up to do listen, try and do these tasks that we never really asked is this really supporting my overall purpose. And so we waste a lot of time. And then we wonder why after those days, when we didn’t even have a chance to have lunch, we know we keep asking ourselves how come I did move the needle forward. The true definition of velocity, the physics definition is velocity with direction. You have to start with the end of the side first. So let me give you an example.  

 

Ron Karr    00:05:38    You go to a pilot at an airport, let’s say in New York, New Jersey, and going to Miami, asked the pilot where we’re going today. And he says, I don’t know, wherever the winds take us, would you stay on that plane? No. From the, answer’s probably not here. Right? But what a pilot does, they’ll sit there and say, okay, we want to go to Miami from Newark. So they start with Miami, the end inside first. Then they work their way back to find the three or four way points that they know the flying over these, the one that way. And then they look at the potential obstacles like winds and storms. And at the end they have a flight plan. It’s going to get them there, the fastest and safest way possible. What most people don’t do entrepreneurs, especially they don’t start with the end in sight.  

 

Ron Karr    00:06:21    Meaning what’s your vision, what’s your vision for what you want to be a perfect example for an entrepreneurial would be, you know, if I’m brought in, let’s say to a $10 million company, and the CEO started the company about three, four years ago. And they said, okay, we want to grow to $20 million. And that’s their vision. They need to start making decisions today as if they were a $20 million company, because $20 million companies make different decisions than $10 million companies. So that’s why it’s so important to be focused on your purpose for everything you do. For example, on a sales call, I know sometimes I’ll speak to a sales executive and they say, yeah, I’m going on meeting this new prospect I’m dying to get to. And they finally gave me an appointment, said, great. What’d you call for the call? Oh, I want to close the deal.  

 

Ron Karr    00:07:09    Okay. Let’s just sales cycle, five calls. What caused this number one? So you’re telling me you’re going into call number one with the goal of trying to close the deal. If you do that, you’re going to be kicked out in two minutes because all you’re going to be doing is talking about why it’s so great, why your product is so great and close, close, close, close, and you haven’t even established any kind of interest or relationship. The goal for that call should be simple to qualify them. If they are really a true prospect for you and whether you’re good for them, and they’re good for you. And then if so, then create a path forward that you both agree on. So whatever we’re doing in life, we have to make sure that we know what the purpose is and let that purpose drive us. So we get the results that we want.  

 

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:07:51    This is very interesting. So I mean, a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with this very idea, the idea of creating that vision for the future. I mean, there’s all sorts of obstacles that I see. Some of them, they don’t dream big enough. Others have some sort of vague vision, but they have no idea how to identify the steps to make it happen. So how do you help people resolve those problems and go through them?  

 

Ron Karr    00:08:17    That’s a great question too. Darn. It definitely is a big issue. So number one, I hear that same thing over. I even said the same thing I still do. I don’t know what I want. Okay. But the first thing we say in the lastly mindset book is start with a clean piece of paper. And what that means is forget the past because the past is limited by what you think you know is possible. If you are obviously looking to create different and better results than if you were able to do it and with your tasks in the past, you would have achieved them already. So forget the past for a second. So on the clean piece of paper and fantasize, write down what you truly want now. And it, a colleague of mine gave me a different spin on a booster Cal because he wrote a book, you know, that is all there is.  

 

Ron Karr    00:08:59    And he has a neat little trick, what he does to help people to act. He says, write a list of the things you don’t want. We all can do that very easily. Absolutely. And then ask the opposite. If you don’t want that, what do you want now? Here’s what everybody has to understand. Number one, you don’t have to have the clear picture about what you want up front, that Nido Qubein, president of High Point University, who wrote the foreword to the velocity mindset. I interviewed him on a live stream and he came from Lebanon by himself. His mother sent him to United States, had quite a bit life from south whoa, the only $15 in his pocket. He settled in high point. And I said, so Nido. So you really had a vision of what you wanted? And this was a great distinction he gave, he goes, Ron.  

 

Ron Karr    00:09:42    I had a vision that I wanted to be a success in America, but clarity of vision only comes from walking the journey. So you have an idea. It’s usually a big idea. And the first thing that just stories will tell you is, oh, you can’t happen. They’ll know how to do it. And you forget about it. You start thinking about it. You don’t allow yourself to keep doing it. Now, there was a book written in 1913 called the science of getting rich by Wallace. Wattles 1913. He evaluated all the industrials who made it big and all the other want to be. So then, and he wanted to know if he could identify traits and why those industries succeeded. And it was a couple he identified, but one was called the thought and form of substance. The big idea. So all of a sudden, if driving down New York in 1980s and you see this building that you know has true potential, but it’s in a bad area and you feel like no one’s in here.

  

Ron Karr    00:10:34    No one’s going to do anything. So it’s, yeah, it’s a great idea, but it’s too big for you. And you keep driving by 19 people drive by the 20th person does something different. They drive by and see the same potential, but they don’t give up on the idea. They don’t have the answers, but they let that idea fester in their conscious mind for every waking moment. And while that does that, they start asking questions of themselves and others. They start getting answers. It starts filling in the picture. They go to an architect, the architect takes out their ideas from their head and put it into a nice picture. Now you can touch and feel. They go to a contract and who explains what they need and materials and labor. They go do it. And before, you know, the building becomes a reality. What most people are not comfortable in life is not having the answers.  

 

Ron Karr    00:11:20    And what leaders have to understand is that your job is not to have all the answers. Your job is to look to the future and see the direction that you want to go. That has passion for you, and that you believe in it. And then go and ask the questions of yourself and others. And then the, uh, image you will fill in the blanks. And I can give you an actual example of this multinational chemical manufacturer. They had a small division in Tucson that, uh, produced chemical reagents. They were working on this one reagent for 20 years. When it came out in the 1980s, it literally saved the copper mines were going bankrupt because a few of them were going already that way. And this reagent cut in half the cost of mining copper. So when you come out with something new and so drastic like that, your sales jump up, they had 80% of the world market share, but then it waned because competitors started re-engineering it.  

 

Ron Karr    00:12:14    And even though their products are not as good, they beat them on price. So when they got ahold of me and after I spoke to the division, the VP said, look, you know, the biggest copper mining company, you know, we have 25% of the demand. All the bids for the mines are coming up and we’re meeting with the sourcing team next week. Can you help us? And I said, sure. So I flew to Tucson, sat down with them. And to, to the first question I asked them, was this, what do you want as a result of my intervention? And the answer was from the past, they said, oh, we want to win the bid. And I said, that was not my question. You’re answering from the past. If you can create your own destiny that has passion, what would it be? And then all of a sudden the passion came out and they said, why don’t we have to bid?  

 

Ron Karr    00:12:53    We started this industry. We saved the bus. So what do you want? We want a negotiated agreement. Okay, good. They usually buy the industry every three years for the lowest price, how long they want it for 10 years said, okay. And how much demand you got 25%, 75%. So then I looked at them and I said, you want a year deal, 75% of their demand and negotiate it. I said, yes. And I said to him, you can get that if you really want it. But it takes a different set of actions to get back than it does to win a bid. And so they were a little, you know, quizzical, not really believing it. And they said, how do we do it? I said, I had no clue. And they go, what? And I said, look, I know in my heart of hearts and I’ve been doing one 10th of what I’m going to suggest. So I really do believe you have the opportunity to get there. We may not get to exactly, but you’ll be well on your way, but you have to be willing to think differently. That’s an example of dealing with the white piece of paper and looking at things for what you want to create, not from the vision of why it won’t happen based on your past experiences and biases.  

 

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:13:55    That’s very insightful, Ron. I mean, even when you go to your clients and this is not just about the vision that you have for yourself, but even when you go reach out to clients, you often encounter this resistance because people, when they come to speak with you, they already have some preconceived ideas. Let’s call them in their mind. And they hold on to them very tightly usually. And the skill salesperson, as opposed to somebody who doesn’t have the same level of skill, knows how to give them the right insight. That’s going to enable them to have a bigger vision and to think differently. So I wanted to ask you, how does the philosophy mindset help us do that in our own selling? When we interact with our own clients?  

 

Ron Karr    00:14:42    Yeah. Great question. The skilled sales person doesn’t tell them anything. They ask questions and they elevate the conversation from the product to the what, to the enterprise conversation. In the last city mindset. We talk about hormones in the brain and how to engage people. They’ve all we do is puke, which is people who have the knowledge about everything. And what we do is start talking about products only in features and puking about them. We’re just stressing them out and they don’t want to hear it. If we change the conversation to about them and ask them where they’re going, not about our products, where they’re going, what they want to accomplish and what the biggest challenges are. And we flush it out. Then we’re in a much powerful position. First of all, there’ll be listening to you. They’ll be engaged. I want to explain the hormones on this brief interview, but they commit it in a book it’s very simple, but there’ll be engaged. So then when you present the one, two or three attributes of what you have to offer in context to what they just told you about that will be heard with power and you’ll have a significantly higher chance of closing the deal.  

 

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:15:43    That’s awesome. I mean, the, the, that whole approach really is very similar to the spin selling model based on really asking them questions and uncovering the exact problems that they are faced with before actually going into the pitch. And this brings us to an interesting part of the discussion. So very often the one thing that I’ve noticed a lot of entrepreneurs have trouble with is closing new business and especially closing new business that doesn’t come through referrals or through their network or through people who know them, but closing new business that comes as a result of a cold approach. And the big problem there seems to be how to get their attention, how to get that initial meeting with a key decision-maker or really anybody who could have interest from the company that they are targeting. So how would you approach that issue?  

 

Ron Karr    00:16:39    So when you’re cold calling, email, phone, voicemail message, or even speaking to somebody, you need to start with something that’s general, but thought provoking. It can’t be about your products and services. Like for example, we get so many calls from phone companies saying, we can reduce your phone bills by 10% and just hang up on them. And they know nothing about me. They don’t care about me. Okay. So there was a great book written called The Challenger Sale, which I’ve been teaching my clients since day one. I was kind of upset that he actually coined it so well, but it was a great book. And one of the things he says is what I teach my clients is you’ve got to challenge your clients. So, you know, if you’re selling, let’s say, um, insurance, instead of just saying, Hey, you know, I want to talk to you about life insurance.  

 

Ron Karr    00:17:27    My name is Ron Karr now from life insurance. And I got a great package. Those first two lines. You just lost the attention, the most important lines in email, the subject line and the first line. And if you don’t grab their attention, then you’re gone. Same thing in the voicemail. The first words out of your mouth have to be like a subject line that gets the attention. It has to be about outcomes. It has not about the, how, which is what you do, outcomes. What are they usually looking for? So for example, if you’re writing a letter to, um, procurement officers, let’s say in, uh, for capital equipment, align, convene, and beginning procurement offices are really charged with reducing the cost of purchasing. And yet they often go about it the wrong way. And then you give them a couple of points that they should be considering.  

 

Ron Karr    00:18:14    And then you say, I’d love to discuss this further with you. So we can really show you how to reduce your costs. Please give me a call. And that conversation, there was nothing about your products, nothing about your services. It was all about them and what they’re usually fighting with and how you teach them that there’s a different way. And you’re challenging them to think differently. And that’s the value bills. I look tutor, not evidence works for a hundred percent, all right? But your clients and entrepreneurs have to understand. You cannot do business with everybody. You need to figure out who your ideal clients are. What are the things they demand that are in your sweet spot. If you take on business from everybody, you don’t do a half ass job and some will not be in your sweet spot. They’ll take more of your time than you have.  

 

Ron Karr    00:19:00    It will affect your business customers. And it’s not a good thing. Give you an example. I just did a keynote in Denver about two months ago for a national supply company. And I was interviewing some of their owners, you know, the officer’s owned by the employees and I asked one of them, you know how you’re handling the supply shortage and everything. He goes, we doubled our revenue. So how do you do that as well? We’re dealing with a supply shortage. And what we did was we went to our biggest customers and we said, look, we have no control of all the shipments and all this. So to make sure that we’re there when you need it, we propose that we increase your inventory on hand. Let us buy a lot more for you, but you need to fund it because we can’t fund it. That was one thing they did. And on the other side, they refused new business. Why? Because if they took a new business, it would be in the demand for the existing customers who have gotten to where they were. And what it allowed them to do is concentrate on the existing customers, help them become successful and they bought more and they doubled their revenue. If they took on more new business, it could have done the opposite. And I said, wow, that’s really powerful. You should be able to pull it up because you had the guts to do that.  

 

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:20:10    It is very powerful. And I mean, this entire story just shows the power of what we were talking about, of having a vision and having a direction that you are pursuing. And I agree with you. I mean, I think that sales at the moment, as it’s taught very often ends up being a lot about the speed ax aspect. You know, how can we close more deals? How can we go faster? But it sort of ignores the more fundamental, let’s say strategic issues, which are left unaddressed. And I mean, a lot of people take this as the norm. I mean, I’ve read sales where, um, they say that, you know, strategy should come from the top. I mean, it’s not your business as the sales guy to worry about it. Obviously this isn’t the case for entrepreneurs. They have to worry about it. And one of the shortages that I’ve seen on the market personally is that most sales books, they’re not addressed to entrepreneurs.  

 

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:21:07    They’re not addressed to the concerns that entrepreneurs have when it comes to not actually having a sales process already in place that works and where they have to actually figure it out from the scratch. So how would you say the velocity mindset helps entrepreneurs do just that build their own sales process from scratch? Because as you may know, when you’re first going out and starting your business, you don’t know if your product or service really fits with what the market needs. And you sort of have to figure that out, iterate around it until finally you get something that resonates with the shareable size of your market and you can grow from there.  

 

Ron Karr    00:21:50    It all starts with what you’re trying to accomplish. Again, the purpose, I have a start-up that put me on retainer. I’m not going to get into their products or anything, but they were trying to get into a new market. They were actually spun off from a bigger company. That was just so, and I’m one of their competitors who’s doing well, no, all over Amazon. And they’re doing a big internet business and all that, but money in that’s the gated, he realized that the hundreds of millions of dollars in this thing, tens of millions of dollars, and they have that because I’m part of a bigger company. This guy doesn’t have that because they need to build those. They need to build it as they get it. So I said, why then are you trying to do the same thing they are when you don’t have the money?  

 

Ron Karr    00:22:38    How can you leverage what you have? And they have an existing marketplace who’s ready. And who’s in that business and wanting to leverage those business owners. And let’s come up with a sales process. That’s going to help you get those people, buying this product that you’re trying to launch, get those sales going, and then you’ll build it. And that’s when the process of doing. But again, you know, they were so seduced about going all over and then might thinks the internet is so easy. Do you realize if you’re going to succeed in internet sales, how much money you need to float the education of the consumer so that they want to buy it and everything else that’s involved. So anyway, it was my role was helping them. We view their purpose, explaining to them what, what will make sense and what won’t they started a grave. I mean, and now in the process of developing those processes, you talked about. 

 

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:23:30    That’s awesome. And I mean, it really shows the value of going through this exercise to get very clear in your vision. 

 

Ron Karr    00:23:40    So, I mean, this book is going to be a gold mine. But the other thing, the other thing you just said is valuable to go through this exercise, but you can’t do it by yourself. And that’s what you listen to have to understand because you’re emotionally involved. Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest and the trees, but you’re better off as getting a mentor or being part of a mastermind guide, run, achieve revenue ops, a mastermind group for CEOs and VPs of small to mid-sized companies, 10 million to 200 million. And they valued his minions because they are peer to peer mentors. When they come in and they share their issues, their concerns, and what they’re doing. And then they are questioned by their peers. Is this the way it should be thinking it should be looking at this and then walk out with different ideas based on that conversation. So I suggest to the entrepreneurs, you should always have an advisor who’s life is behind you, a mentor, and you should be going to them and sitting down and talking about your purpose.  

 

Ron Karr    00:24:32    And does this make sense? Come out. They hear it and let them ask you questions. But the key here is you have to be coachable. And what that means is if you’re asking someone to hear you and then give you their opinion, when they start giving you their opinion, don’t start doing what most people do, which is they take an idea or a suggestion, and then they try to fit it into the world. As they see it today. And then they say, no, this won’t work because we do it this way. We do it that way. You’re not being coachable, being coachable. As you’ve put all your ideas aside and you try to get into the mindset of the person, who’s sharing it with you and just let it sit in your mind. Like we talked about that big idea and eventually some ideas will come to you. That’s when you get the biggest power. But if all you’re going to do is poopoo people’s advice. So tell them why it can or can’t. Cause you’re living in the past. Don’t even bother. Cause you’re wasting both your time and theirs.  

 

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:25:25    That’s fantastic advice. I mean, how can people go about developing this more? Let’s say a positive mindset where they’re actually open to the world instead of closed. And I think from my experience, the biggest reasons why a lot of entrepreneurs tend to close up is because of fear. The pandemic is one of the recent things that people are, people are afraid of. They’re afraid of the fast changes that are happening and the inability to foresee what’s going to happen next with certainty. How can people actually navigate this sort of uncertain environment with a positive mindset, with a mindset that says we have to go for it? You know, we have to go for our vision for our dreams. And we don’t just have to settle with surviving.  

 

Ron Karr    00:26:13    Number one, don’t go into a scarcity mindset, go into it. When the prosperity mindset and number two, stop thinking about fear. Fear will never get you anywhere. Look, crap is going to happen. It’s life issue is not to the crap happen. The issue is how do you respond? And it can’t respond well out of fear and the story. Now I’ll give you a personal example. You know, after those surgeries, I lost a ton of money. Couldn’t speak for three years. I lost so much money from that. And from having to pay for 24 7 home care for a year, cause I didn’t have a, uh, you know, extended home benefit or whatever that I had to realize. I’m going to go do keynote, speaking to him 70 years old until I drop and then make the money back. And then I’ll move to Florida and lived in New York, all my life.  

 

Ron Karr    00:27:01    Well COVID hits all of a sudden. The first thing that happens is somebody cancels the meetings. They go 70% of my business. Again, are you kidding me? And then I saw what was happening in my industry. A lot of my client and my colleagues were like fighting over it. It was going virtual. No one knows what virtual means. Clients are saying, well, you’re not really here. So you’re not spending as much time and they don’t have budgets. They don’t know what’s going to work. So often speakers that were getting 15 grand. I paid 500 and I’m going, oh, I don’t want this game. So I stayed focused on what I wanted. And I knew what I wanted was I had to get this money back and I wanted to get to Florida. Cause I wanted to have a different lifestyle. I couldn’t stand the cold and everything.  

 

Ron Karr    00:27:43    And I want to get myself ready for retirement, but keep working, but in a better environment. So I said, what’s the fastest way to do that. And I said, well, you got the velocity mindset. You know, you want to write the book and everything’s closed right now. What better time to write the book now and have it ready in September. So when it comes to print in March, 2021, or in may, there’ll be as everybody’s coming out of the lockdown and we perfectly timing. So I decided at that time to write the book, spend most of my time on that and keep my consulting clients and on retainers and work with them. And I gave up the speeding. Now people still call it, but I still did virtuals. Okay. But I wasn’t wasting my time trying to fight for a little crumbs, but that’s because I was clear on my vision of what I wanted for me and my business. That’s how you’re doing now. What would have done me any good if I sat and go, oh, I can’t believe COVID. Oh my God. Now look, I had a little bit of that. We all do. We’re human, but you have to get yourself out of it because if you don’t, where’s it going to take you so stop trying to prevent the inevitable and stop. Trying to be a perfectionist crap is going to happen. Don’t worry about it happening, worrying about how you respond.  

 

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:28:59    That’s awesome. Advice. One of the first lessons that I learned as an entrepreneur, which is related to this is that in this nobody’s coming to save you, you have to ultimately find a way to do it yourself. And just as you said, vision is mission critical, really when it comes to that  

 

Ron Karr    00:29:16    And by the way, mission with passion, because if you don’t have a passion behind it, it’s not going to be strong enough to keep going to track when things push you off the track, like COVID, you know, if something’s really interesting to happen in Cobra. And it was a great point that we talked about the pause in our book, we all have to take a pause to reassess our purpose and all that COVID was a great equalizer for all of us and made us all pause and unique things happen. All of a sudden people started moving to different parts of the country. People started asking myself, why am I doing this? They started the mass resignation. They didn’t even like what they were doing. That all came from that. So in a sense while COVID was horrible, it was horrible. Don’t get me wrong. A lot of people’s stuff that we all suffered to some degrees, but some stuff I even more visibly deaths. If you look at the positives out of it, it was a great equalizer. And allowing us to really ask ourselves, is this what I really want in life? And if not, what do I want? Otherwise, without it, we would have kept going on that hamster wheel. So while there was some really tragic situations, there is opportunity in every situation.  

 

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:30:22    Can you tell us more about the art of the pause as you call it in the velocity mindset and how exactly you use that?  

 

Ron Karr    00:30:31    Well, you know, the old saying is that all the time, if you keep doing something over and over and expecting different results that ain’t happening. So what everybody has to understand is simple. You create a, you do an action, it creates a reaction. If you don’t like it, change the action. It’s as simple as that. And it bring into a conversation as not going well or a relationship. And it doesn’t take two people to make the conversation go better and only takes one. The person who’s owning up to be a leader in life. If you don’t like the reaction, change, how you are approaching it. And that’s the premise of the velocity mindset. One of the things there’s a couple of premises in that book, what would the world look like if everybody acted like a leader and not as a victim of circumstance and a second premise, if you accept the fact that you are a leader, whether you’re a manager or not, and that everybody is lyric, except that you’re a leader.  

 

Ron Karr    00:31:17    And when something goes wrong, the first tendency everybody does is blame something else or somebody else what a true leader does before they even get to that point. They ask themselves, what could I do differently? Next time, give you an example. My first sales job was in 1980 sign copies. I finally got someone to give me a shot, Royal business machines. They were seducing me to take the job. It was their first plane, Bon copier. Now for your younger people, they may not know what I’m talking about, but that was a revolutionary discovery. But now they can get a little tone of quiet twits that has powder versus liquid that destroyed your clothes. And there was showing me the 15 sexy copies. It does a minute. And I said, do you have a call later? I will be here in six months, duplicate it six months.  

 

Ron Karr    00:32:03    So I took the job, but all I had was, is one copier that can only do 15 copies a minute, even though they were crystal clear, perfect. And I had to go up against the big machines, like zero X. They had all the other features. So I started cold calling and going to people’s offices. Hey, I’m signing copies. And they say, what can you do with the big machine? Doesn’t a third floor. Can you call late? Not yet. Duplicate, not yet. Come back when you can, after my butt had the door slam on it so many times and it started turning purple. I decided something’s got to give. I knew at that young age, well, if you don’t like the reaction, who’s going change it. You. So I took a pause in this case, the pause was a board meeting me, myself and I. We went to the diner in New Jersey, Aidan, and as many of them.  

 

Ron Karr    00:32:48    And when you realize you’ve got to understand something, stories is what prevents us. Moving forward. Something happens to us. When someone says something to us, we immediately create a story as to what we think it means. I had stories going on in my mind at that moment. I’m not good enough. I can’t sell the same my life. I only got this one product. There’s no way you’re going to sell it. You get the point. Stories are fueled with emotion. For example, if you’re a young kid, two young kids, and they’re both told by a seventh grade music teacher, you have no hope of being a musician. Find something else. You love a kid who gets that statement. They use a chip on the shoulder and they go about to become the best musician ever in the world to prove her wrong. The other kid believes the instructor and will never touch a musical instrument and hates music for the rest of their lives.  

 

Ron Karr    00:33:36    An example of two different stories. So one of the things you have to realize, and the story is good. Keep it going. Cause it’s pushing you forward. Unless it pushes you forward where you are now sacrificing your family, then you may need to pull back. But if a story is not serving you well, then here’s the real powerful thing to think about. He or she who writes a story can change it because after all, it’s just a story and you wrote it. No one else tells you that it’s your story. And when you think about it like that, the emotion goes away. The negative emotion. Now you can sit there clearly. So when I took myself to the diner, I said, okay, let’s think about how we can do this. Definitely. And I was in the process now, pausing to lead, change my story. So I said, what’s going on?  

 

Ron Karr    00:34:17    You’re going in? And you’re saying, it’s all a copy of what did I say to compare to Xerox? You can’t do it. So you get kicked out. Well, are you really sung a copier? Because I knew I was signing outcomes. What does a copy of do? It’s a communication vehicle. I said, maybe we changed the conversation to that. And then next call, I went in and I asked the office manager, would you agree with me that a copy is nothing, one a communications vehicle? And they said, yes. I said, well, when it comes to that, what are your biggest issues and tutor? It was almost like she was in a therapist office laying on a couch. Oh my God, can we talk JOA, Sally has to get up from the desk and to press four, to make one copy. By the time they talk to everybody, get to the staircase, go up to the third floor.  

 

Ron Karr    00:34:53    Then they have to wait behind all those big jobs to make one copy. Then they have to make the reverse trip. My God, it could take them two hours. I said, wow, how often does that happen? Try the equivalent of two full-time employees. Wow. How do I, those two full-time employees back. So that’s how you’re going to do that. And I said, look, I’m not competing with them in the machine on the third floor. That’s a great machine keeper. I’m here to fill in the gaps. I suggest you don’t buy one machine from me by three, put one on every floor for those one or two copies. And you’ll get those two full-time employees back. She bought three machines that day. Well, awesome story. And I started simultaneous machines. And this is someone guy that for four months was convinced he couldn’t sell the servers. Like .  

 

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:35:39    I mean, it’s all about the ownership really that you decided to take over your story and how things were going that made the difference. You know, I really love a book written by a, uh, an ex Navy seal, Joko Willink called extreme ownership, which talks exactly about this mindset. That whatever happens, even if you don’t directly cause it, you are responsible for it because you’re the only one who can do something to change it, to make it different. And I think that that is amazing, uh, for entrepreneurs. I think that everybody to be really successful needs to go through the phase where they have this insight that, oh, I need to take ownership of this and it’s on me to make it work for my next question. I wanted to ask you something that startups often struggle with because unlike existing businesses, startups, don’t already have proof that their solution works necessarily. And they also don’t have the credibility that bigger organizations have. So how do you go about doing sales when you have little credibility to offer?  

 

Ron Karr    00:36:43    Well, number one, sometimes they have some credibility, but they don’t even see it or know it and they don’t leverage it. When this thought up that we have. We’ll just say that there’s a couple of highly well-known government entities that are using their technology because they believe in it, but they don’t talk about it. So it’s leveraging what you have. If you go out and you get one customer is really happy. Take your cell phone out and ask them one question. Would you mind giving me an answer to this one question and give me permission to use it? Sure. What is it? One of the three things that really turned you on about this product? That’s credibility. Somebody else saying it, not you now in some industries like in medical devices, sometimes they will get doctors who are well-known in their field. They’ll get them to look at their research on a new machine and they’ll get really interested and they’ll say, Hey, would you like to be an influencer for us?  

 

Ron Karr    00:37:34    And it’s all above board and they’ll put them on whatever. And those people are now recommending it because they’re using it. They believe in it and they’re leveraging their expertise. So there’s ways to do it. Right? The question is, are you looking for now ways that startups can easily do it is send out free units to people, to influencers, have them look at it, have them check it out and say, would you tell us what you think? Number one, and number two, can we share your comments? So does different ways. Okay. You can have, um, when I started my business in 1988, you know, I went to the local newspapers, the Bergen county record and so forth and did a press release on who I am and why I’m doing this business and what it is. And we got interviewed. And next thing you know, there was an article out there there’s so much media out there in terms of TV shows and newspapers, podcasts, and we’re on the all looking for good stories. So why not create a really good story about what you’re doing and put it out there, let people interview. Then you have the credibility. Also there’s many ways you can do it, but credibility is a real important factor, as you say. And it has to be part of the business plan.  

 

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:38:43    Thank you for sharing that, Brian. That’s absolutely fantastic. I wanted to ask you now, if you can tell us who will benefit most from reading the velocity mindset and what sort of results can they expect after having read it,  

 

Ron Karr    00:39:00    Everybody. And I’m not being glib. The reason why I’m saying everybody, because you’re going to find out what stops you and how can you move forward. And also when you, when you need to get people to support you, because you know, your success is not just by you. You need to depend on others. When you learn how to get people, to support you, how to bring works, how to engage everybody else, and also how to engage yourself and not let yourself get turned down by your own stories. That’s really anybody.  

 

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:39:26    That’s fantastic. Also wanted to ask you the question that I ask every guest, because our audience really wants to know this kind of stuff from people. And that’s the question basically, what are your top five books for entrepreneurs, not your books here, but generally top five books that you would recommend.  

 

Ron Karr    00:39:46    Uh, and that’s a tough one cause I don’t remember names. So the challenge of sale is one spin selling. I love Neil Rackham did a great job of that in the 1980s. Um, great research and there was a book called the self esteem. Prophecy. The reason I love that one, it’s a very old book being read field wrote it, but I’m all about the questions you ask. As a matter of fact, I had the question man, trademarked in the nineties as part of my marketing, but, and he’ll vote about the power of questions. And what I also loved the, in his book was no one knew about him for two years in his book. So I went around to local. Um,  um, what would we clubs and the talks for free sold a couple of books, but eventually over two years he gained the following two, which publishers. So, and they gave him a big contract and the, his became a true best sell for five years. I used that to motivate me. Let’s see what else I gave you three, you need two more, uh, um,  

 

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:40:43    Doesn’t necessarily have to be sales related. So anything  

 

Ron Karr    00:40:48    Think and Grow Rich, obviously is a good one. And well, I’ve done a lot on, um, neuroscience and so forth. I can’t remember. Well, my best one, Healing Back Pain by John Sarno. You know, I had those back surgeries and all, and someone said, you should read his book. I wish I had read it 30 years ago. Cause I wouldn’t have had the surgeries and I can go into what that book was, but it changed my life. It’s for everybody. I don’t care if your back pain and not read it because it tells you what goes on to create stress and in turn creates any kind of pain in your body.  

 

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:41:22    That’s fantastic. So thank you for sharing that. I also wanted to ask you one thing that really holds sales people back and we mentioned, think and grow rich there. One of the eat, actually the number one book that I recommend to people, to entrepreneurs.  

 

Ron Karr    00:41:37    Well, while you’re back make that the velocity mindset is number one.  

 

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:41:42    So I wanted to ask you, how do you go about overcoming limiting beliefs that you have and how do you help other people overcome their own?  

 

Ron Karr    00:41:55    That’s a huge question that I don’t know if I can do justice in a couple of minutes. So my best answer is we the blast, your mindset. And I’m not saying that being glib. I, the velocity mindset came to me. I was an abused kid. I’m a child of a Holocaust survivor. Usually kids are Holocaust. Survivors tend to be abused, not because they don’t love you, but because they’re damaged by what happened, they don’t know what to do. And they didn’t want to create a safe environment for you and they’ll do whatever. So they create a prison for you basically. And if you don’t follow what they say, then they get uptight and whatever. So, I mean, I was living in a very tough childhood. I saw things I wish I never saw. It really obviously impacted my confidence and between that and having a speech impediment that created a lot of bullying for me, trust me.  

 

Ron Karr    00:42:42    If anybody had a lot of limiting thoughts, it was me. And, uh, and I shared it in my, uh, acceptance speech when I became president of NSA national speakers, because I said this idea of me being here, the president of the number one thought leader association in the world, the top speakers, authors, thought leaders. This wasn’t even a concept in my mind when I was young, I shared a story and it blows them away. So the point is, is, um, we all have lived in new thoughts. Even today. I have limiting to us. We all do with a limiting thought. The one thing you have to do is not let it go too far. We’d go down a rabbit hole. You can’t get out of it. So the first thing you have to do is try and remove the emotionality of it. You have to realize it’s just a story. It’s not the reality. It’s a story that you have created and whoever wrote it can change it. So when you just think of it in that term, then the next thing is let’s rewrite the story. And when you start rewriting the story, that’s when you get free from most change. And that’s when you become what you’re looking to become. Like I said, in this short interview that we have here today, it’s really tough to give any more than that, but it’s definitely spelled out in the velocity mindset.  

 

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:43:51    Thank you, Ron. I have two more questions for you. Number one, in my opinion, the most important ingredient let’s say to personal success is self-esteem. How do you think that somebody who struggles with low self-esteem can actually go about increasing their self-esteem?  

 

Ron Karr    00:44:08    Well, I got to do the hard work. I mean, you can go and have someone pat you on the back, which I did for my mother that didn’t really help. All it did was give you like crack a couple of seconds. He felt good, but then you was still back in your same situation. If you really want to get self-esteem, you got to examine inside of you deep, where the lack of self-esteem is coming from and you gotta get comfortable and you gotta address it. Realize it’s not the truth of who you are and then find ways for you to do certain things that will keep you growing your confidence level. I don’t know if that’s professional help, having better friends than the guy to tell you something. A lot of us as human beings care don’t want to see someone hurting. So if we see someone with low self-esteem and they call us up, we enabled them sometimes by listening and saying, oh, poor you poor, you, poor you.  

 

Ron Karr    00:44:56    And all we’re doing is giving them the crack, but we’re not really helping them. Sometimes you really want to help somebody like that as is ask him some questions like, well, where’s this coming from? And why do you feel like that? And having them do the hard work of asking themselves the question so they can come up with the answers and move forward and that you telling them what to do doesn’t mean anything. So if someone’s really in a bad state, ask them some questions that will allow them. Maybe they’ve seen things that they’re not saying, and hopefully come up with ideas. What they could do differently.  

 

Ron Karr    00:45:24    I have fired friends. I mean, when I started my business, I was in an executive office and I became friends with this guy who represented a computer industry company. And so I go to his office every morning for that coffee in the morning, coffee doesn’t have someone to be elsewhere, but he was the most negative person I ran into. And every time I talked to him, I walked away the press and I said, I got to change this. And you don’t have a way to change. It was to fire him as a friend.  

 

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:45:49    Sometimes you do have to make those tough calls.  

 

Ron Karr    00:45:52    Yeah. So make sure you put yourself in an environment that gets the best of you. Not that brings it down.  

 

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:45:57    I mean, I think that that’s key to self-esteem because in the end, it’s about learning to love yourself. You know, if you don’t love yourself and if you’re not comfortable in your own skin, it’s very difficult to be able to relate from a level where you can be authentic with other people where you’re not needy, where you’re not seeking their approval and so on. So really appreciate your answer there. Final question. You mentioned the challenger sale. I’ve also read the book and I’m, I was always really fascinated by how close the lone wolfs were in term or in terms of performance to the challengers. And sometimes the lone wolves actually outperform the challenges. It’s just that it was very difficult to create a structure for what they were doing. So my question to you is why do you think that happens? And what exactly do you think, would you be able to put your finger on what makes the lone Wolf special so that they sometimes even outperform the challengers?  

 

Ron Karr    00:46:59    I don’t think that there’s a difference between long walls and challengers. I’ve seen many long wars for success because they are challenges. So I don’t see that distinction. When we do assessments for clients, we look at behaviors and motivators. We know what we’re looking for for a top producer. And it depends on a sales job, maybe a hunter, and you’re going after new opportunities and closing the deals. Then you need someone who is a driver, who’s an influencer. And they usually low on process details on the motivators. They’re resourceful. They don’t want to waste their time and energy. They want to return on investment and they usually command them because they want to control their destiny. Now, have you moved towards a technical sale or key accounts sale? That’s more technical like in medical devices and it’s a national account sale. Then maybe you need more process and details.  

 

Ron Karr    00:47:48    Cause you’re creating a process for an organization you’re getting involved in their politics and so forth. So it really depends on the type of sales situation you’re creating. But the lone Wolf is usually successful because they control their destiny and they don’t let anybody get in the way. Their biggest problem is that they’re usually promoted to managers because they were successful. And the reason why they fail is because then they don’t see what their new purpose is and they don’t gravitate towards it. An example that I have as it was a natural account manager, he was that lone Wolf who was very successful. He went out and did his thing and he challenged people in a way to think differently. And now he’s the manager and he still live for that crack, that the fire long ago, and then he’ll run and save the day.  

 

Ron Karr    00:48:32    So he would train his people to call him if they had a hot deal and he’ll fly out. And it was flying all over the country and his job was not to do that. Cause he’d go out there and he’d take over the call, save the day. But the problem was now they were trained whenever they had hard costs, call him instead of them doing 24 7 and his absence, the real job of a manager at that time is not the glory. Like they weren’t on the lone Wolf. The real job is to assess, see how the president doesn’t recall then coached him in between calls and build them up so that they can do it over and over a top performer when they’re selling, obviously their success is dependent on their efforts. When that manager, this success is dependent on the efforts of others. Yeah. Your role now is not to become the best sales president as a manager. Your role is to make people more successful than they ever thought was possible. And when that happens, you become very successful in that position.  

 

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:49:28    Thank you for your answers. Run in. It’s been fascinating having you any last thoughts for our audience?  

 

Ron Karr    00:49:34    Yeah, well COVID total. All of us is the one time short. We don’t know how much longer we have or what we have. So make each and everyday count. See what purpose you have for that day, who you want to talk to, who, what relationships you value and make it count and make sure your actions, your tasks support that purpose. If you do that, you will be living the velocity mindset. Yeah. So, um, one thing that your viewers can do is go to blast city mindset.com, that’s velocity mindset.com. Number one, we’re going to ask you for your email and first name. We’re not going to sell to you. We send videos every week on how you can stay in the velocity mindset conversation, but there’s also a leadership assessment free of charge. Take it. It’s five questions you rate yourself, but then you also get the tips and best practices and how you can move forward in those areas. So those are two valuable things. When you go to velocity mindset.com, plus you also get a link to buy the book, which is located on Amazon, and Amazon’s the best place to get the best price for. I mean, for the velocity mindset book. 

 

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:50:32    Thank you for coming on Ron and to our listeners, stay tuned for the next episode. And until next time, keep growing your businesses and providing massive value to the world. Remember you are the reason why we’re all growing richer. Our freedoms are expanding and we’re all living in greater prosperity. Thank you.