Young & Rich: A Journey to Abundance| Ep 111 |

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:00

Good morning and welcome to another episode of Better Business Better Life. Today I am joined by the delightful John Mendez, whom I met several months ago. And he is the host of the walk to wealth podcast, as well as the founder of stop and stare media. Welcome to the show. John, lovely to have you here.

John Mendez  00:14

 I’m super excited to be here. And I’m super excited to see where our conversations taking us today, because I got tons of nuggets that I want to share.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:22

Yeah, we’re just having a quick chat. Before we came on to the podcast, I know you’ve got so much information you want to share, which I’m really looking forward to hearing as well. And we never know where these things are going to go. Right. It’s very much a genuine chat. We’re not editing this, it’s just let’s just see where we get to. So I’m gonna start by asking you to tell us a little bit about your story and how you’ve got to where you are now. And a couple of things that you’re really proud of, as well. So professionally and personally, what are you really proud of?

John Mendez  00:47

Yeah, so my story to take you guys back into time machine a little bit. I grew up in a project, it was nine of us in a two bedroom, money was always tight, we had section eight, which is like government subsidized housing, food stamps, which again, like government, government subsidized stuff, because money was super tight. My mother, she suffered from mental health issues. And as a kid, those things are kind of hard to grasp. It’s like you want a mother in terms of the traditional mother figure, but it’s like, she’s suffering from things that you can’t even comprehend because your brain is too young to even comprehend those things. So me and her had a really shaky relationship. My father, he was absent. So my grandparents on my Dominican side of the family raised me and they don’t speak a lick of English, like they don’t know anything besides maybe Thank you. That’s probably about it. And so growing up, this entrepreneurial spirit, I wasn’t selling in the lemonade stands, I didn’t have the paper route, I didn’t have all the typical stories that your traditional entrepreneur had. For me money and business was something that was completely absent in my life. I fast forward a little bit. I’m in college. Now this is during the pandemic, it’s 2020. And it was fall 2020. I still remember like it was yesterday, I ended up walking into Barnes and Nobles. And I picked up three books. One of them was index funds for Dummies, one of them was a book called I Will Teach You To Be Rich. And the third one, which was actually the first book that I read, it was Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And I’ve read that book. And from there, my paradigm shifted. And I’ve realized that there’s another way of viewing agreed in this, like, I never realized there’s another way of viewing the world that wasn’t being taught in school wasn’t being taught in my environment. But more importantly, wasn’t being taught at all at my home. And so from there, I let my curiosity pretty much just take the reins and that fall, winter break between fall and spring semester, I just jumped down the rabbit hole, mind you just a pandemic, I didn’t have anything better to do. So I just started watching YouTube videos, podcast, episodes, reading books, and all this free time. And so when I came back spring semester, I was still taking classes from home. And now I was like, I spent this whole winter break learning more about stuff that actually matters than I did in my entire year of schooling combined. I was like, Man, I can’t unsee the light. So with that entire road being uncertain, the only thing I was certain of was myself. So I decided to bet on me, I signed up for my real estate classes dropped out of college, and I have not looked back. And that’s how I got into entrepreneurship.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  03:06

And certainly funny, I was actually just done signing off on a social media post. And I was talking about the fact that you know, degrees, I wouldn’t say that they’re a complete waste of time, because they certainly teach you something about learning, but they really they’re not the way to get on in life. It’s really your attitude and and that learning you can get from amazing people around you. So hold on. So tell me so what so where are you at now? Tell me what you’re up to now.

John Mendez  03:27

Yeah, so now that this spent a year probably going through shiny object syndrome, I 2022 I jokingly say is the year of the squirrel. Because man, I was a little squirrel and every shiny opportunity I seen my head, they just just kept on turning, I was trying to bite on every opportunity I could put my hands on. So I was a licensed real estate agent. I was working part time in the restaurant, almost 30 hours, I was teaching social media classes to hundreds of Realtors across the US and Canada for free. And I had a podcast, which I was doing weekly episodes. And I was doing all these things. And it looked great for my bio because I hired someone on Fiverr. And they make everything look good. So if you need a bio definitely go to fiverr because they make you sound like you’re a genius. But in all actuality, everything was failing. My podcast numbers are going down my social media classes, I wasn’t making any money from that stuff. I was working part time at the restaurant. And I wanted to leave back in February of 2022. I still happen to be there now from the time of recording this and then the real estate stuff. I only sold three rentals, which was like virtually no money, right? So all these things that I want to do, was just entirely failing. And what I realized was, I was procrastinating from the things I needed to do not because I was scared, not because I wasn’t taking action, not because I didn’t have the skills or traits or personality necessary. I was procrastinating because I wasn’t aligned with what I was truly called to do. So I spent a lot of time looking within a lot of time reflecting and once around December I came across this concept called iki guy And it’s pretty much long story short, it’s your reason for being it’s a Japanese concept. And then I realized that this podcast and the speaking thing, and that’s what I’m what I’m really feel called to do. And since then, I’ve been able to start speaking at conferences, my podcast just said top 5% globally, the social media side of things, I, you know, I’m still doing classes, I was gonna do content creation services, I scrapped that idea up. But then I came back around, and I sold a course. So now I got eight students in there. And that’s growing strong. And so now I’ve been able to do so much more, but it took a lot of realigning, and it took a lot of dying off, like, I’m no longer focused in real estate, my license is still active. But I had to let that go, I had to let all this stuff go go in order to make room for what I was truly called to do. And now ever since I started to focus up and get more intentional this year, I’ve been able to find my stride and get a lot more traction in my business and my overall life.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  05:54

And I think that’s actually tricky, guys a great concept. And it’s something similar to what we do in EOS, we actually maybe will be really clear about the reason why they exist because it gives you something to tap back into when times are tough, but it also makes sure that all of your arrows are moving in the same direction. We’re all rowing in the same direction. So it’s really important actually get a strong sense of you know why you exist. So well done on recognizing that. So now you’re you know, you’re helping people with their marketing. And I know that a lot of people are struggling with finding new clients. They’re worried about the potential recession around the world. Tell us a little bit about how, you know, what do you say to that? And how do you help people in terms of finding clients?

John Mendez  06:32

Yeah, so this is concept I came up with, through real estate, because as I said, I was doing all these things. And once I started to focus on my podcast, I was like, How do I take all of this knowledge and lessons and skills that I learned in one industry and transfer it to what I’m doing now, despite this being an entirely different industry, and one of the amazing things I picked up was the concept of circle prospecting. And so when I was in real estate, I had an open house, it was like $100,000, colonial, and one of my friends was listing the house and she was busy. She was out of town, she was like, Hey, John, do you want to do to open house for now I was like, okay, so leading up to it, I was like, and it’s a pretty nice house, it’s a very, very desirable neighborhood of where I’m from, I’m gonna go door, knock on all the neighbors, and tell them about it and hand them flyers. So that open house ended up getting close to 30 families within two hours, which was like a super busy open house, and I was by myself. So I was like, from like, five minutes before they even open house started to like the very end up to like 20 minutes after I was packed with people coming into doors, looking at the house, now learned that they can’t have a circle prospect that did it in person. So now I’m in the podcasting niche now in the entrepreneurship niche with my course that I’m selling. Now it’s like, Alright, how do I take this and apply it into what I’m doing. And so I realized is if you can connect with one person, you can then connect with the people they’re connected to. And a lot of this game of like online marketing is perceived value. And nothing boosts your perceived value more than being seen with other people that people already looked up to. So the first step in that though, because you could connect with a lot of people, if they don’t have the ideal audience that you have, you’re connecting with people, and you’re pretty much not going to get anything from it. So step number one is defining your ideal avatar. And you’re probably very familiar with this, but not in the demographic sense where everyone talks about normally with the education and employment and age and gender, etc, etc. The psychographics got to get into their mind. So this is something I learned from Jim Edwards. He’s a big, big time copywriter, and he talks about the P Q R R. Right. So it’s problems, questions and roadblocks. That’s what your ideal have avatar has right now. Right? These problems, questions and roadblocks are holding them back to where they want to get to, which is the last are the ideal result. Right. So now, they have these problems, questions and roadblocks. Let’s say they’re on one side of a cliff, and there’s a big chasm in the middle. And on the other side, there’s another cliff. That’s where the result is. And right now, you don’t have any way to get to the other side. Because all these problems, questions and roadblocks are holding them back. Once you understand those things, then you become the bridge, you understand all your content is addressing the problems, the questions and the roadblocks that they have, so that you can get them from where they’re currently at, to the result that they want to be. So that’s the P Q R R, and it’s really understanding where they’re currently at. And really magnetizing your marketing message that you put out there, not just looking for age and the traditional stuff, it’s like really understanding them at a deeper psychological level, and understand what they’re going through so that you could attract more people, instead of going out there fishing, where there’s nowhere to be found.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  09:39

Yeah, that’s a really good point. And suddenly, we’re actually teaching us as well, we kind of talked to people about, you know, what is your ideal target market and it isn’t just how old they are and how much money they make, but it really does come down to you know, what are the challenges that are actually facing talk about the pain points they’ve got and how are they think you know, how do they think because we’re not for everybody. I find a lot of people that you know, you ask them who their ideal client isn’t. So everyone. That’s like, because if you try to be everything to everybody, you’re actually nothing to nobody. So being very, very clear about you know who that person is you’re going after how they think, how they feel, what their issues are, and really developing the message. I think it’s spot on. But how do you how do you do that? I mean, yeah, you’re an expert in marketing. That’s a bit about how you actually really do that. Because it’s very, it’s a great at the P Q R R is a great way to look at them. But where do you even start?

John Mendez  10:27

Yeah, so this is probably the best way. And I’m telling you this, because this is exactly what I screwed over. So what my course right? Let’s think of a chocolate bar, right? Yes, I say you have the best chocolate on the market, right. But if you have the wrong wrapper, you’re never gonna sell. So a lot of people, they don’t spend any time, pretty much doing market research to figure out what wrapper they should put on there. And so what I’m literally currently doing so I have eight students, and that was with me, completely skipping out on market research. So imagine how many I would have if I had done my market research. And so what I’m doing right now is literally every contact and my phone that I know from real estate as a real estate agent. I’m calling up everyone. And I have a spreadsheet in front of me that I’ve created on the Google Sheets, super simple spreadsheet. And it’s literally question number one it was box number one is, what are the biggest challenges and frustrations you’re currently going through right now when it comes to insert whatever your niches so mine is building an online presence. So I’m asking them, What are your biggest challenges and frustrations when it comes to building on an online presence? Then my second question is what are your biggest fears? Around? Insert whatever your niches, for me creating content? What are your biggest fears around creating content? Then the third question is, what are you currently doing to fill in the blank? Again, for me, as I said, building online presence, what are you currently doing to build your online presence? Where are they currently at? Right? They’re on this cat on this cliff. But I’m literally telling them to explain to me in their words, where they’re at. So that when when you start creating landing pages, when you start doing, you know, creating copy, all this stuff that I have in a spreadsheet, that’s gonna be the exact verbiage that I use, literally use their exact verbiage so that I can connect with them more. Right? So that’s question number three. Question number four is, in an ideal world, assuming you had all the time, money, energy, etc, necessary? What would it look like? You know, if you had all that fresh said for me is building an online presence. So how much? You know, what would you be posting? In the ideal world if you had all the time, energy and knowledge necessary? Right? And then question number five, is, if you could wave a magic wand, what would you need to get from where you’re at currently? To where you want to be? So it’s like, that’s my five questions that I’m asking literally going on the phone, old school, and just dialing up realtors. And it’s like, Hey, I’m doing a quick survey. It’s pretty much it’s just figure out where all my real estate friends are struggling with currently, right now, you have a couple minutes initially to take no longer than five to seven minutes per call. I keep it nice and quick and concise. You may come across a couple people that’ll talk your head, your head off.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  13:15

To do that, yeah.

John Mendez  13:17

But so for me, it’s like I said, Now I’m listening, literally calling all these people. I’m also on like Facebook groups. And I’m asking questions like, you know, pretty much one of the five questions like, What are your biggest struggles with insert concerns, also have an email list? I literally asked him, hey, my subject line was, hey, quick favor, and then announcement. And in the body of the text is pretty much Hey, I’m doing a quick survey, pretty much asking you guys like, what are you currently struggling with something like that. And then I pretty much just a very short, very, very short email, very casual email. And then I send them to a landing page that he has one question. And the question isn’t something along the lines of, you know, what are the two biggest questions you want answered when it comes to this, and mine is building an online presence? And so these questions that they’re not filling out in the survey, it’s pretty much the exact thing. So when I started posting my videos on YouTube, that’s going to be literally my YouTube titles. It’s exactly what they’re looking up. So I’m doing market research from three different levels. I’m calling on the phone. I’m posting in Facebook making like social media posts, I have polls and stuff for them to answer. And then I’m also sending out surveys via email. You don’t have to go I mean, just go on on the phone and probably work perfectly fine. But I want to make sure I understand them from all angles.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  14:36

Yeah, and I think that’s actually really important. I think a lot people are afraid to pick up the phone these days, it’s so much easier to send out an email or a Survey Monkey or whatever. But in actual fact, you get much more cut through when you’re actually talking to people live in old school as you call it on the phone. And I think the important thing is not to sell on that call right? You’re not there to sell to them at all. They’re actually let’s gather information and I think that’s what a lot of people do wrong. They do it they do it on social media. They you on the phone call, they get on a phone call, they immediately start telling you about their widget or their service and and how wonderful it is. It’s like there’s no, there’s no report, there’s no there’s no nothing before that it’s it’s very much cold selling, you’re actually just using it to then create content that creates a relationship over time is that right?

John Mendez  15:17

100% 100%, you have to, you can’t withdraw from an empty ATM, you have to deposit first deposit deposit deposit deposit, keep on depositing in one of my favorite quotes by Alex from Mozi is the longer the runway, the larger the plane that could take off. So if you just keep on giving, giving, giving, giving, giving, giving, giving, giving, giving, you could launch a pretty big plane, but you have to delay it long enough for that plane to take off, you could have a short runway and then do a little quick give and then ask and give and get to ask. But if you just give, eventually the people will be like drooling at the mouth to give back to you because the law of reciprocity. People don’t feel comfortable, just take the kind of time. So eventually, if you don’t ever ask for anything, get to a certain point in time where the tides are kind of tip over. And it’s like, John stopped giving me free stuff, or I’m gonna start throwing money at you essentially. So just keep on depositing. And it will come back in goodwill, because goodwill compounds faster than anything else.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  16:15

Yeah, actually, it’s really interesting. You talked about you read a lot of books off the soda, why? And there’s the Go Giver series. Have you ever read that the Bob Berg series, which is you have to look it up. There’s five books in this series. And it’s all it’s exactly that it’s the law of reciprocity, it’s you know, give without any expectation, anything in return. And the more you give, the more you will receive. And it’s a really great book, just just people who maybe haven’t got their heads around that concept, because for a lot of people that’s foreign, it’s like but you know, why would I do that if I’m not going to get the return. But as you said, the longer the runway, you build the boat, the bigger the plane that can take off. So cool. Now I know that you do a little bit of a talk around how you can ethically steal other people’s audiences. Do you want to give us a little bit of insight into that, because I love that as a title. That’s fantastic,

John Mendez  17:00

Actually, so I put that quick little sidebar, I put that in a headline analyzer, and I got 100%. So that’s a pretty good headline. So make sure that no one steals it. For the most part, that’s that was step one is creating an ideal avatar, and we just went super deep on it. And step number two then is find out where they congregate. For example, if you wanted to work with fitness people, you can most likely find them at a CrossFit gym. If you want to work with let’s say, Christian, for whatever reason, you could find them at the church on Sunday. If you wanted to work with your, let’s say, stock traders, you could probably find them on Wall Street. It’s like the people that you want to work with are hanging out somewhere, you got to find out where they’re hanging out at, you got to figure out where it is that they’re already gathering up, someone already took the time, energy and effort necessary to build up the spot. You just have to spine find where the spot is. That is it. Don’t create your own spot, it’s it’s extremely hard to build up an audience from scratch, it is insanely difficult, no matter how much everyone else tells you, it is insanely difficult. So what you want to do is you want to figure out where they’re already at. And once you do that, then step number three is join the community. And I’ll share with you a story. So when you most people when they join a community, it’s Hey guys, I had this course or hey guys to my podcasts or Hey, guys, do whatever I have this lead magnet and just like they’re just asking, asking, asking. So here’s how I pretty much got my spark in the community. I’m in with all my realtor friends. So essentially, I’m a brand new real estate agent just got licensed, I’m 20 years young. And it’s like, I don’t know anything about this space. And I was on this mastermind call, or like this big group call every morning, Monday through Friday. And it was like a scripts call where they would just practice their sales scripts. And I was on this call. And every Friday was question Friday. And so we would have one main objection, and everyone will give their best objection handler. And so what I started doing is I would just write all the objection handlers in the chat for everyone. And now here’s where I took it a step further. Most people would save the chat and upload it into the Facebook group. What I started doing is I took the chat, saved it, uploaded it into a Google doc took all the little banter in between and just left only the objection handlers. Then I formatted it I changed the font made it look a little nice, then uploaded it to Facebook group. And so now every Friday was like Where’s John? Where’s John, your John, Dr. John biocomputer. John, John, John would need to describe every Friday because they knew I was coming from contribution, and then providing value, but then it gets a step further, because coming from contribution is essential, especially when you don’t have an audience, you don’t really have a reputation. But if you do already have a reputation, it’s just going to make you paint you that much of a better picture in the eyes of your ideal avatars in the eyes of your fellow colleagues and peers. Right. So what I did is every morning there’s another call as well that I was on Monday through Friday. One of the As they were talking about social media, and what I did is I just created a quick tip. It was like five tips on the Facebook post, normally at the gym, I was at the gym at the time, so I couldn’t share on clubhouse vocally. So I was just like, I just take what I wanted to share, put it in the Facebook group. And that’s what I did, then one of the hosts of the group, she was like, Hey, John, would you mind teaching a class on this subject? And I was like, I never taught a class before, instead of saying yes. And she was like, John, let us know when you want it scheduled. And I was like, what I can’t go tell the big time listing agent notify. So I’m not gonna fumble the opportunity twice. So I ended up this time, it was like, I screw it, I’ll figure it out. I ended up getting 440 people to sign up for my very first class ever on social media marketing. Right out the gate, I spent more time manually sending out invites, because I didn’t know how to use Eventbrite or MailChimp than I did actually preparing for the class. But nevertheless, I ended up figuring it out. And from there, I instantly went from nobody in the group, turn instant thought leader in seconds, just because I came from contribution and the opportunity present itself to give value. And the only reason I started charging for the social media stuff was because literally after my second class, which I also had over 400 people sign up. At the end, I had a q&a portion that was open, I left the last 10 minutes for q&a. One of one of my Millionaire Real Estate Agent friends down in Maryland, she’s a big time agent. And she was like, John, do not ever teach another one of these classes for free again, without charging next time charge. And they were asking me like, John, what’s your Venmo? What’s your cell budget, and I was just like, honestly, full transparency, I didn’t charge because I didn’t feel worthy of charging. That was a limiting belief that I didn’t even know I had that I had to overcome. But even if I did, I know. I never did that with the intention of let me start teaching social media classes so I can get some money off of these people. It was like they asked me, and they poured value into me. So this is my way of giving back to the community. And as I said, I gave so much value back to what I said about the law of reciprocity. They wanted to give money back to me without me even having to ask because they felt bad for all the value I gave them. And they didn’t give me anything in return. But I wasn’t looking for anything in return. That’s what made the difference.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  22:12

Yeah, no, I complete them. We’re on the same page, we have one of our core values that EOS has helped first. And when you define help, first, it’s about giving without any expectation or anything in return. And it’s what I loved about Eos, it’s part of the reason why I joined them with because I I truly believe that I know that if you help people. It is the law by spotting. I think what’s really interesting a lot of people struggle they think, Well, if I give away all my secret sauce, you know, then they why would they come to me, but it’s actually quite the opposite. There’s very, there’s very little you can’t google and find out about right? If you want to learn how to give a talk on social media, probably Google and you probably could do a social media talk on it. So it’s, it’s not about information. It’s actually about relationships and how you work together to help each other

John Mendez  22:53

100%. And that’s the next part, right? Step number four is after you find your ideal avatar, you figure out where they hang out, you joined a community. It’s step number four, is connect with the ringleader. Every community has its own ringleader, everyone community has someone that hosts it, that runs it, that is in charge, that’s the popular guy or popular guy, and the group, every community. And for me, the social media stuff is how I got in cahoots with the with the leader of those real estate groups. That’s how I started getting massive notoriety within the little mastermind, which is actually a pretty big mastermind, is because I was able to connect with that person. And now when you do that, that opens up tons of doors. So when I taught my, you know, I taught my first workshop in January. So I’d normally do like free classes. And that’ll be it. But just like John, like we want to go deeper. When I taught my first master class like workshop, I absorbed it from a master class and I didn’t have like a big old, you know, typical sales closed at the end of a presentation of the webinar. I was like, Hey, guys, you know, I’m teaching this workshop on Friday, I taught the class on Wednesday, I believe, like Friday I’m teaching this workshop is gonna be from like one to three. If you guys can make the kind of type of thing very awkward. I wasn’t used to pitching anything. At the end of the webinar, I just said I’m used to teaching all that stuff for free. And then the next morning, I hopped on the call. And I filled in 10 slots, it was like, I think 200 bucks, 200 bucks a pop, per seat. And I hopped on a call that next morning that she runs, and those seats filled up instantly. So I got 10 originally, or 10 or 12, originally from the webinar. And then I got the last eight or 10 The next morning because she allowed me to go in the group and literally just like she, she pitched me, I didn’t even have to pitch myself. She was like guys go you sign up for his workshop. And so it’s like, once you connect with these people, that’s going to open up doors and opportunity for you to promote yourself for you to present yourself in ways that you wouldn’t have had the opportunity. And as I said, You didn’t spend any time, money, energy or effort building up that audience. They already did. But then the last step to put it all together is bring them home. Yep. Step number five is bring them home or essentially call to action. You have to have something So for example, I was doing all these social media classes and everything, but I had had no list. So if all these Facebook stuff went away all these groups in a way, if I didn’t owe some of them, I had them in my phone. So that was essentially almost the same thing as a list. But you have to own you, the audience. You can’t build your dream home on rented land. That’s essentially what you’re doing. When you’re relying on social media and all these different platforms. You’re building your dream home, on rented land, you’re building your dream home on the sand, almost, yeah, it looks good, because you’re on the beach, but you only one high tide away one algorithm change one crash, one hack, away from everything coming down. So you have to find a way to get them into your ecosystem into your sphere. And that’s what a valuable call to action will do. And so now, when you create in your call to action, because you spent so much time and effort looking up this, you know, their problems, their questions, the roadblocks figuring out what they’re struggling with figuring out what their fears are. Now you have this giant list of data that you could fall back to on any time. So it’s like, what am I going to create for a lead magnet? Well, I let’s say for content grading, a lot of people don’t know what to say, all right, a lot of people are like scared. A lot of people are scared to hop on camera don’t have any confidence. A lot of people are trying to figure out what’s the best platform for them. Just bundle that up, answer it, maybe do like a three part mini video series, you specifically answering their specific questions. And now your lead magnet is exactly what they’re looking for. And there’s no question about it, that’s going to be valuable, because they literally told you that’s what they’re struggling for. And you have the answers to what they need help for. So now your call to action is so compelling, not because you’re the savviest marketer on the planet. But but because you took the time and effort to unleash understand these people at a deeper levels. So that’s pretty much the five steps how to bring it all together. When to find your ideal avatar. Yep, you want to

Debra Chantry-Taylor  24:42

Not just demographics, but psychographics as well.

John Mendez  26:59

Yep, yep, want to figure out where they congregate. You want to join their community, you want to connect with the ringleader. And then we want to bring them home. And that is how you ethically steal other people’s audiences.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  27:11

I love it. And I guess it’d be some people who are sitting here thinking, oh, yeah, that’s fine for you. You’re a consultant selling online stuff. I want to give an example that I actually used exactly this methodology when I was actually heading up a large insurance company. So heading up the marketing team at large insurance company, we were selling car insurance, general insurance. And I had exactly the same thought it’s like, why are we going out there trying to find these people, when there’s actually a company that has access to people who are buying new cars, and there was a company called moto web. And they were the place you went to to find out if the car you were buying was stolen, if it had the money owing on it, whether it had been in a car crash, all that kind of stuff. So we went to them and talked to him said, hey, look, you know, you guys have actually got these people that we’re with that we want to look after to how can we work together, and we sat down, and we kind of negotiated something that actually worked for both of us. And we added some value by ensuring we gave their clients that extra special stuff. And they help promote us. So it actually works, no matter what it is that you are doing or selling, it’s like find somebody else who’s got that audience and add value to them.

John Mendez  28:10

Yeah. And to add on to that I have a friend who literally use his strategy. He was, I think, ranked number nine, in his insurance company. And his company had over I think 12,000 employees are pretty big company. He was number nine in the nation at 24. He was making over close to half a million a year. And he was doing that for a little while. And I think a couple years after that. He ended up quitting recently, like this year or a little, I think, late last year to start his own insurance company things like 27 now. And what he did is he ended up starting a podcast, so that he could pretty much find these big time players and connect with them. And those were also ended up becoming his client. And now he went from creating, you know, getting half a million dollars a year working for a big time company and miserable to having his own insurance brokerage is doing way more numbers, making a way bigger impact and has a way larger presence online. Because he started up a podcast to start connecting with all these people in circle prospecting his way back up.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  29:10

Yeah, that’s fantastic. Look, I think I mean, going back to what you said in the beginning, I think life is too short to not be doing what you love with people you love. And so if you’re finding yourself stuck in a role that you’re not enjoying, it’s a really good chance to go, what do I really want to do? And I definitely recommend looking at the iki guy model that says there’s a very good tool to kind of get you very crystal clear on that. What about in the tough times there, John? You know, because like weed businesses don’t always go smoothly we do we do get distracted by bright shiny objects, we maybe lose focus, how did you keep yourself motivated and kind of inspired because even if you know your why, sometimes things don’t work out the way you expected them to. So what did you do to keep yourself on track?

John Mendez  29:51

So for me, I never had role models looking up I had a very inverse way of viewing the world because I didn’t have a set person to look up to and model my life. After, what I did was I always took the good parts of people that I liked and implemented in my life and left out the bad parts. And what I really fell back on is quotes and music. That’s where’s my chunk, because I never had someone to look up to. So I’ll give you two of the most powerful quotes and most impactful quotes that I use to help get me through tough times. So the first is, if life was easy, it wouldn’t be worth living. God gives his best soldiers the worst missions. I love this one personally, and even if you’re not a person of faith, because it, that quote tells me that no matter what it is that life throws my way, as being thrown my way, because only I can handle it as being thrown my way. Because despite whatever the circumstances may be, I am adequately equipped and prepared to face whatever I’m going through head on, and not only to survive, but to thrive and flourish. So that’s my first quote that I love that how near and dear to my heart. The second quote, this is more like a hard work motivation type of quote, it’s when you’re born, you look like your parents. When you die, you look like your choices. So you have to ask yourself every day, what choices Am I making? And are these choices in alignment with the person that I want to become the person that is impacting all the lives I want to impact the person that is making the amount of success that I want in that I deem success to be the person that has the healthy family unit, the person that is given back in his community? Is that are the choices that I’m making today, in alignment with that person that I want to become in the future? And if they are, you’re on the right track. And if they’re not, you have to ask yourself, and it may look hard, because the other way, you know, turning your cheek may look like the easier option. But it’s like when you just said Ask yourself these tough questions and remind yourself like, hey, like, whatever I end up looking like at the end of this when it’s all said and done. Is that someone I feel like I would be okay looking at? And if the answer is yes. Keep pushing through, you’re on the right track? And if the answer is no, it’s time to make some hard decisions

Debra Chantry-Taylor  32:13

and make better choices. Sounds great. Hey, John, you’ve done an amazing job. I want to congratulate you on what you’ve done so far. And I say your your walk to wealth podcast is fantastic. So I highly recommend people have a listen to that. If people want to get in contact with you, how do they do that?

John Mendez  32:26

Yeah, definitely, if anyone wants to get in contact with me, you can get in contact with me definitely by going to www dot walk number two wealth.com. From there, you can reach out to me, if you’re interested in any of the marketing stuff I got going on websites down right now. So give me some time. I gotta I gotta hire somebody to make it look nice. So Rome wasn’t built in a day. So my website isn’t currently up right now. But eventually it will be. So for the time being, check out the walkthrough up, which is my podcast website. But for the time being, that is where you can also connect with me. And then it will figure it out from there as my website gets built up.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  33:03

Yeah. And I have to say, I know from firsthand experience that you know, you’re very responsive, and you’re happy to actually chat to anybody, because that’s how we kind of first got to meet each other. So do do that together. Get onto that walk to wealth.com and, and have a chat to John. Hey, look, thank you so much for your time, John. pleasure as always, I’ve got we’ve got those five steps that we can now take into our business and I really appreciate you actually sharing that.

John Mendez  33:24

Thank you so much for the opportunity. It was fun.