From Limitations to Leadership: Don Shade on Mindset, Sales & Systems

0:00You are listening to I Am Refocused Radio with your host, Shemaya Reed. This show is designed to inspire you to live your purpose and regain your focus. And now, here's your host, Shemaya Reed. Welcome back to our Refocused Radio once again. We are here today and today we have another amazing show lineup for you all today. Today you have a special guest, Don Shea. He's an entrepreneur, a business coach and a co-leader of partnership of power. He has been building businesses since 2005. His journey with cerebral palsy has forced him to approach entrepreneurship in different ways. But he has amazing strategy, amazing delegation and sales experience and also leadership. You are in for a treat. I'm a cut to the chase and just welcome Don for taking some time out of his busy schedule, talking to us today. And first, how you doing today, man? I am Don Well. Thank you for having me. So let's start off with your story.

1:00And tell us a little bit about you before we get into the questions. Basically, what happened? This is a story of life moving on me. Labor Day weekend of 2005, I had a close friend say to me, I want to go out and check out this real estate training. I'd like you to go along if you could. And back then, I worked for a temp service. I was making between maybe $9, $11 an hour back then. I'm kind of dating myself some. But if you called in after a holiday, you lost your holiday pay and of course that the day that you were off as well. So that pays pay out of one week when you're the only income. That's a big deal. With that being said, he said, I tell you what Don, if you go along, he said after the whole things over, we'll stop somewhere, get a stake dinner, and a couple beers and I'll pay the bill. Well, me being the fine antirigingist that I was, I went.

2:00And when the guy was talking to me, talking to everybody in that room, it was like he was talking directly to me. And I thought, I could make this work. And at the time, I had no credit, no real money of any kind. I had no business being in the room. But what that did, that opened me up to an idea of, yeah, I could get this to work. And as you said in the introduction, I have several calls to you to fix the way I walk, my balance, that sort of thing. I walk on aided, but it looks like I've been drinking all day. So with that being said, I couldn't do my own work. My own physical work on houses or anything like that. I didn't think about that. What I thought of is, who can I get to help me? In other words, I focused on the who, not the how. I build all my businesses with the mindset of a quadriplegic.

3:00Because I know that there's going to come a day that my legs are going to leave out on me. And I'm, am I still going to be able to run my business and the answer is yes, because it's set up where other people do what I can't do or don't want to do. It took me longer to go on in the beginning. But once I got my system up and running, I buy a lot of people. There were people that I took real estate training with that they had three and four houses and I didn't have one yet. And I thought, man, I'm never going to get there. I'm never going to get there. And then basically I got the system in place. I was able to raise private funding and all that kind of stuff. I learned how to put capital together to do real estate. And the long story short, I did 71 deals in three years using none of my money and none of my skills. Fast forward to 2016. I'm to the point where I'm ready to walk out of a job.

4:01I'm going to put my real estate training online. One of the best piece of advice a coach ever gave me. He said, Don, I want you to keep a journal of everything that happens in your business on a daily basis. He said, because what's going to happen if your business flows up the way he wanted to, you're going to have a sellable product. Well, when I was looking at putting my real estate training online, I went back through that journal. And he was right. You don't remember a lot of that stuff until you read it there on the page and you're like, oh, yeah, I remember that. And it was a big deal at the time. And now you figured out how to get through it and that kind of thing. What happened? I worked with this guy. We were factory workers. I was a $40,000 year factory worker at that time until I got into Don real estate on my own. The business that I was telling you about where my buddy had asked me about going. We got another gentleman involved who had money. He who has the money makes the rules.

5:03You couldn't tell him anything. Basically, we lost that business. So I had to start over on my own. I used what little credit I had to take training. That kind of thing. The key here that I want to point out to people is quitting never crossed my mind. I decided that this is what I wanted to do with my life. This is my one and only shot. I could really do something here. And that's what I did. It took some time and there was a lot of headaches. But with that being said, when I was going through this and I was going to put my training online, 2016, the click funnels and things like that had just started. There was nobody to help me. Well, I partnered with a guy that worked in the same factory as I did. I knew he was a computer guy. I worked side by side with this guy every day. And I told him what I wanted to do. And he said, give me a week to figure it out. He come back to me three days later with a list of stuff that I needed to buy.

6:03And it was a couple of hundred dollars worth of stuff, apps and whatnot and all that. And the system that we put together is what allowed me to do those 71 deals in three years. Once word got out that we were putting our course online. At that point, people wanted help building websites and putting their business online, all that. And that's the space we got into. And that's where we are today. Still to this day, I don't have real estate training online. And I probably never will. I've been in the online space since 2016. But that knowledge and wisdom and experience. A lot of entrepreneurs that yells they face burnout. And that continues to be a major conversation among entrepreneurs and on shows like this. When you think about the structure that you built over the years, how were you able to recover from burnout? Because I think we all face it. And what were some of the systems that you were able to develop to help you get through it?

7:07Everybody does experience burnout. That's true. But using the system that I did where I put people around me to handle everything rather. I didn't want to do it or rather I couldn't physically do it. It allowed me to step back. And if I took a couple days away from it, I could put things in place where nobody really knew it. The system was running without me. And it takes some time to get there. But I can definitely walk. I can walk any business down that path of how to make it that you still remain the superstar. But they're not counting on you for everything. And go ahead, I'm sorry. I mean, can I go with that being said, it puts you and your business in a different mindset. Because you know at any given time, if something comes up in your personal life, you can step away for a day or so or a few days even if you need to.

8:07Now, in the beginning, you can't step away for a week or two or anything like that. But as it goes and things get smoother, you can step away for longer periods of time. And it allows you to decompress and think about what you're going to do next, how you're going to move forward. A business owner can run a business very different if they're not stressed out. That's true. I'll be quick as reading a Washington's online talking to I guess today, Donald Shade. My next question for you is when it comes to upscaling. The fun part is, okay, you have something that seems to be going very well, but to increase the pressure and well, maybe it's not a pressure outlet you answer that. Upscaling, what's some warning signs that a founder has become more of a bottleneck inside the business versus free flow and all should rise into where needs arise to. Well, I'll tell you what happens with there'll be everything will be rolling forward fine.

9:10And things will be going smooth this at the other thing and you think, oh, nobody can do this as good as me. And I fell into this trap. There's certain things that I like to do and that's the stuff I make sure that I always do. What happened is my business grew. I started to be the bottleneck and people were starting to bug me. Don, where's this? Where's that? I haven't got to it yet. I was doing this or that or the other thing. And what I call that is the My Baby Syndrome. You feel that this is My Baby. I created it. Nobody can do this as good as me. And what you have to learn to do is to train other people and step back and let them do it. They can do as good a job as you or maybe even better and you don't realize it. They can carry out your ideas the same as you. All you got to do is teach them what you want to do. This is how I want this done. This is how we're going to move forward. And there have been times that people that I put into place come up with ideas that I didn't even think of.

10:13And you get that slap and pain in your forehead. Why didn't I think of that? And it's all because you can't see the picture when you're in the frame. When a new set of eyes comes in and they look at it, they're like, oh, don't y'all do this like this? Yeah, you're absolutely right. That's a great idea. And that happens to everybody. So with that being said, I make sure that people in my business that are involved in, let's say day to day operations, are always looking at different parts of it to make sure that we're not missing anything. We could be we're doing everything as smooth as we can do it. You want to move forward as fast as you can without any hangups. We look at technology is rapidly just changing every single month. It's always a new headline. It's always so new app. And you know, AI is never going away in conversations. What have you seen help your business personally?

11:13Reincodes the technology and different apps and AI? And what parts do you see should stay deeply human? Well, at the end of the day, your business is still going to be people helping people. It doesn't matter whether you are a big business, it sells business to business, or if you're a little business, or a big business, it sells directly to the customer. At the end of the day, you're still helping people. You can't lose the human touch. Now, with that being said, this is my claim to fame. I always tell people that you want to see a moron into making. Let me open my laptop. I'm not a tech guy at all. Working with Chris, some of it has rubbed off on me. But for the most part, I'm still a technology idiot. And I'm okay with that because I'm a business owner, I'm a business builder. That's the lane I need to stay in. However, being partnered with Chris, he is a tech wizard and he can do basically anything.

12:15You give him time to figure it out and he gets systems and automations up and running that are just amazing. So it gives us the perfect partnership. Because when we work with somebody or move things forward in our own business, he handles the tech end and I handle the business generation and that kind of thing. You also teach, oh, sorry. Yeah, I also coach people how to do other people how to do the same thing in their business. When you start getting people to think with the mindset of a quadriplegic, okay, I'm not going to be the guy that does everything. Basically, all I'm going to do is sign the checks. This is going to run smooth. And that's another thing that most people can't get by. They don't realize. I need to hire somebody. I need to get some new blood in here because when they come through the front door, they're excited. Compared to what you are who has been building this business for however long.

13:17You get kind of burnt out. You don't have the excitement level you had in the beginning. These people come in and they're excited to help. They want to show off what they can do. And a lot of times it makes a difference in your business where you are compared to where you want to be. When it comes to sales, you also teach sales mastery in today's marketplace where consumers are more skeptical and have more choices than ever. Based on your own personal experience, what separates great selling from simply just pressering a potential client? Here's the difference between pressing someone and making it an easy, smooth transaction. It doesn't even feel like a sale. Take interest in that person. What can I do for them? It's not, don't make it about money. Make it about how can I help you to get this thing running? Show me your system or whatever. I have people that tell me all the time, I'm good at this. This is my program.

14:20I know how to sell it and this other thing. And what I do a lot of times, I'll use Facebook Messenger and I'll call them up out of the blue. I'll say, all right, tell me your product. And most of them can't. Tell me what you do. And they'll start talking and they'll say, well, Don, I wouldn't say that to a real client. Well, how do you know I don't have a thousand people behind me that I've showed your product to already? And what I tell them is the camera is always on. You need to be ready to perform at any given time. And I teach them how to say what to say, how to make it sound good. How to make that person feel like a friend instead of somebody that's calling to sell a product. So, go ahead. I was going to say once again, this time we folks are ready and watching us online talking to our guests today, Don, Shane. And then, is that the, I don't want to cut you off? It took me a long time to get away from the point where it was actually like, buy my stuff.

15:22I went through a phase like that. And what it comes down to, I've over the years, I have spent $400,000 on training. I've worked with some of the best coaches around the world to get where I'm at and do what I do to be able to help people the way I help people. And with that being said, I went through all those phases, the normal mistakes that you see, the deal of posting stuff on Facebook that basically behind the scenes, what you don't realize, all its screams is buy my stuff. And people aren't interested in that. You've got to build a relationship, you've got to come from a direction that you're there to help them and it isn't about the money. And they'll come a day that you're not going to have to worry about the money once you do that so long. When you look at how the economy can feel uncertain at times, business sometimes feel the need to immediately start cutting expenses. Is that always the right response or should CEOs, entrepreneurs, pause a little bit longer and start maybe investing more aggressively during uncertain periods?

16:34Well, I'll tell you, I've been through that myself and it's tough not to immediately want to cut expenses. That's your first thought. What I've learned is I like to take, say a weekend, it doesn't matter if it's a Saturday or Sunday, let's take 48 hours and look at this situation. And the number one thing you need to ask yourself is, what can I do to bring money in the front door? It doesn't matter what's going on in the world. People still need my service or coaching or whatever the situation is. And a lot of times, usually what happens is it's personal panic. You have to be able to kind of hit the pause button, step back, collect your thoughts behind the scenes and say, okay, let's roll forward. As a business center, there's a lot of stress on you. And when things go bad financially, it's, everybody wants to be in business and they think it's all great when you're making money and everything looks good on the outside.

17:39They don't see the wars or fighting behind the scenes. And when you get into financial jam, the first thing you want to do is stop everything and not spend any more money. What I learned to do is look at what we're doing. If you have to cut back, maybe cut back some things to taking a full time person to a part time position, that kind of thing until you get some money rolling in the front door. But most of the time, the answer is this to push forward and make more sales. Most of the time when you're into high ticket stuff, which is the programs that we sell, we sell high ticket coaching programs and all that kind of stuff. And usually the people that we deal with, they also sell high ticket products. So one or two sales can straighten the ship and keep things rolling forward. If you sell low ticket and you're selling a lot of products, the only thing you need to do is keep the exposure out there. Start getting creative about what you do.

18:45Don't look at spending money on ads this side of the other thing. Don't underestimate the power of word of mouth. What I've learned is the best money maker you have is what you use every day, your mouth. Talk to people about what you do and ask for referrals. One of the things that I had to number one train myself as well as train my people is when you're talking to somebody and they're like, oh, this really isn't for me right now. Who do you know that this would work for? Do you know anybody else that may be interested in this product, whatever it is? Now that's a little tougher with coaching versus selling another kind of product because coaching, they've contacted you because they need help in that area of building their business. So when you say to somebody, who do you know that this may work for, they got to be in the same field. So it cuts down your numbers, be prepared for that. But what happens most of the time is people just let the, let that opportunity go by and they don't even ask, which is you're losing a lot of money.

19:59And it took me, it took me a long time to look at, look at everything as a money wheel. And what I would do is make sure that every step of the way we're not leaving money lay on the table. And in the beginning we were, we were all the time and we got better at it. Okay, at this point we need to ask this and we need to talk about this. Do you have an affiliate program in place? What happens if somebody refers business to you? I went through a, here a while back, I was starting a business and I went through a commercial service that was to help business owners build credit with business and all that kind of stuff. And I said, listen, do you have a referral program? I have a lot of people that would affiliate program. I mean, I have a lot of people that would be interested in your product. I can, I can move this for you. No, we don't have anything in like that in place. Well, obviously I left a go. I didn't, I didn't say a word. I'm going to find somebody that does the same thing that hasn't affiliate program and I'm going to plug that into my system.

21:08And we're going to get something out of it as well. That's good stuff. Once again, listen, I'll be focused ready and watching this online talking to our guest today, Don Shay. You also help entrepreneurs focus on activities that actually move the needle. Where some business, where some of the things that business owners are spending too much time on that can actually not help them grow. What happens is if this business owners like to be busy, but it comes down to a couple of key things that's going to make your business grow. What are you doing to bring new leads in the front door? What are you doing to the next step to generate income, rather it's people you already sold one service to? Are you offering them something else? Or are you just, well, I maxed them out. I can't sell them anything more. If you talk to that person, they'll tell you exactly what they need, really to custom offer and sell them another service. Don't sell them something they don't need. That isn't what we're talking about.

22:11But a lot of times when I talk to another business owner and I'm like, how's it going with this system? This is going great. I need help over here with this. If I can just get this worked out. That's where my team and myself come in. We're going to help you work this out. Since we have a history together, I already know you're not a pain to neck to work with. Here's what we're going to do. I'm going to sell this to you for a discount price. It's going to be a win-win for everybody. And you move their business forward. The reason I know that when I say about building my business with the mindset of a quadriplegic, what it comes down to is the handi-cap, the so called handicap that I have, turned into my biggest gift because I think totally different because of necessity. I can't physically do this stuff that other people can do. So what do I have to do? I've built it in my head and I put people in place. If I've been through a lot of people, yeah, does it hurt? Yeah, when you get somebody trained and they feel like a friend and it's a close net situation and all of a sudden they're like,

23:20don't I'm going to go get another job or whatever the situation is. You're kind of heartbroken. You feel like you let them down. And you feel like where did I fail here? They were making good money, but it wasn't enough for them to stay. They didn't feel comfortable with the situation. And once you have to realize, this isn't going to be perfect for everybody. Nobody can see the world through your glasses. God gave you that vision. Nobody else. Closing last thought says, when you look at the future five years from now, where's some personal goals that you have for your own team in business? And what do you look forward towards the most? At this point, what we're doing, Chris and I put a system together. Chris' design software that works on every social media platform to generate leads for businesses. And we put together a couple of newsletters that our goal is to help a million business owners with these newsletters.

24:30We have a newsletter that's business to businessconnection.com. You can join for free. You can't spend any money. We'll do a feature article on you. And we give those newsletters to everybody. We have another one that's people to people.com. And what that's designed to do, it's actually people to peopleconnection.com. What that's designed to do, it's for the business that goes directly to the customer. In other words, if you sell a training that is, let's say teaching somebody how to fly model planes, you don't sell that to another business. You sell that directly to the customer. Us with lead generation software, that is a business to business product. And we're going to spread these newsletters across the country for free and around the world. And we bring people in and we help them improve their business and move things forward. And basically show them how simple it is to generate a new lead, create new excitement, create new income.

25:37Where I want, is it going to take five years? I'm not exactly sure. We've never done it before. We're in new territory when it comes to creating a newsletter and that kind of thing. But what I wanted to do is I wanted to have something that I was giving away for free that was a great value. And there's no greater value than somebody sharing your story. What you do, how you help people. And that's, that's the greatest gift that anybody can give you is word of mouth. Well, again, this time we focus on reading and watching this online talking to our guests today, Don, Shane. If someone is listening watching, they want to stay connected with you. It was the best way they can connect with you. You can reach me at Don at partnership of power.com. And you can mention this podcast radio show, whatever the deal is. And we can move forward from there or you can go directly to business to business connection.com. It's business, the number two to business connection.com.

26:50People to people is also people, the number two people connection.com. And that will allow you to get your business, advertise the cross the country and around the world for totally free. That's amazing. What what we're doing, we are testing the limits of our software. I'm looking to break it. That's amazing. That's, that's good stuff. It runs on all the platforms and helps people generate leads. What we do is we connect with people on all the social media platforms. And we basically give the newsletter out for free. Wow. Well, you got to have on this. If you listen to this and you're watching this online, like always Don, thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you.