Resources in this Episode:

Christine Schlonski [0:02]
Hi Gorgeous. This is episode numbers 013 the lucky number and the amazing guest who’s back today is red. Randy Gage.

Randy Gage [0:14]
Hey, it’s Randy Gage and you’re listening to the worldwide, award-winning, famous, lovely and talented Heart Sells! podcast with Christine Schlonski.

Christine Schlonski [0:26]
Before we dive in right into this episode and some amazing facts about Randy, make sure you check out the 7 Day Free Challenge to Ask for the Sale with Confidence, to sell from your heart with Ease and Grace and on Your Terms. You find the sign up for the challenge at christineschlonski.com/challenge. I see you there, we start January 7th.

Christine Schlonski [0:53]
If you have not yet met Randy or heard about Randy, here are some amazing and amazing facts. So Randy is a thought-provoking critical thinker who will make you approach your business — and your life — in a whole new way. He is not only the author of 10 books, which have been translated into 25 languages, including the New York Times bestsellers Risky Is the New Safe and Mad Genius, he has also spoken to more than 2 million people across more than 50 countries. No wonder that he is a member of the Speaker’s Hall of Fame. And if you’ve listened to the last episode, you know exactly why. So when he himself is not really prowling the podium or locked in his lonely writer’s garret, you’ll find him playing 3rd base for a softball team somewhere and today he is spending more time with us. I am so super excited to have him back. Please enjoy this interview with Randy Gage.

Christine Schlonski [2:08]
Hey, Randy welcome back to Heart Sells! I’m so happy you’re here. You shared so much wisdom in your first or with us in the first episode and again people can go to randygage.com check out your podcast and your Prosperity TV to get more of everything that you are sharing all the value you are adding to the marketplace. Today I would be interested in finding out what was the first thing you ever sold or offered in your life?

Randy Gage [2:44]
It would have been Kathryn Beich Candy. I was in the cub scouts, and they had a summer camp called Camp Wakanda and of course, my family didn’t have money for me to go to camp. But if you sold enough candy, then you would you could get the camp the summer camp trip. So our scouting troupe we were selling, they came in 10s of you know, I don’t know what you call it kind of, anyway, it’s called Kathryn Beich was the name. I don’t know if it’s still in business. But that’s what I my first thing I ever sold was Kathryn Beich Candy.

Christine Schlonski [3:26]
Wow. I hope you did go to camp.

Randy Gage [3:29]
I did go to camp. But I cheated. Because my grandmother worked at Oscar Mayer, which was the biggest factory or plant in Wisconsin. And she worked on the assembly line and with thousands of other workers. So she took my cases of candy to work. And she sold them to all those people she worked with. And so I was like, the top-selling salesperson and I probably really only sold about three cans.

Christine Schlonski [4:02]
Yeah, but you know, you found the solution. So actually, you had your first team member at a really early age.

Randy Gage [4:09]
Yeah, I’m gonna just accept that belief. I like the way you phrase that.

Christine Schlonski [4:15]
I think that’s pretty cool, it’s a smart way to do it.

Randy Gage [4:17]
Yeah,

Christine Schlonski [4:18]
For the packs you sold yourself, do you remember how it felt when you actually made the sale the transaction?

Randy Gage [4:27]
I was just so petrified, I I couldn’t go to neighbors. That was they were saying, you know, go knock on door as the neighbor. I just couldn’t do it. So the three I sold were like to relatives, I was because I was really a very insecure neurotic kid. And really low self-esteem. And so the idea of being rejected was just terrifying to me. And for people who listen to the last show that we did together know I think that still in impacts my strategy today, I always try to put myself in a position where I don’t have to sell where I can be a marketer or I can educate my audience, and where I can create a steady stream of prospects who’s seen me or my product or service as a resource that can help them solve problems or add value. And even people who truly are a salesperson who sell real estate who sell insurance or timeshare, whatever I think they would do, really, they’d have a lot of success that they followed my model, which is Hey, how do I position myself as a definitive expert in my space and offer value and educate my market so that when they’re looking to buy a house, they say: Wow, Nancy is the smartest person I know in real estate, let’s call her! Right? Or they finally recognize they need to get insurance and they say: God, that guy Jim, who does that, that streaming thing on Instagram every week about how to choose insurance or has that blog that I read or gets gives to the sends me that newsletter, he’s the guy I’m going to call. You create that you create that scenario where people qualified candidates are coming to you.

Christine Schlonski [6:38]
So do you believe that there is such a thing as a natural salesperson?

Randy Gage [6:46]
I think so. I’m certainly not one. And I certainly never would be one. But I think there are people who are not that many. And I do think it’s a skill set that people can learn. And I do think that’s a something that they can become. Because again, it’s just about learning skills. When you learn skills, and you develop empathy, and you able to place yourself in a position to think, you know, again, go back to my example is always I’m looking for the three things that keep them lying awake at night. And if I know what those three things are, then I know how I can help them.

Christine Schlonski [7:33]
Yeah, yeah, brilliant. So you said that you have like a fear of rejection? Is that still the case today? Or is it something you got more used to it? Or like, how do you deal with it?

Randy Gage [7:51]
Well, I would say I have a I would understand on a much more intellectual level, I’m not being rejected personally, that they’re just saying that whatever I’m offering is not right for them at this moment in their time or life, I would know that intellectually, but I still would have that emotional trigger of Oh, my God, they just said, No. So I still I still want to isolate myself from that. I want to put myself in a position where I don’t have to do that, cause why would I want to? I mean, I get the whole Hey, you got to hear no, no, no, if you hear enough noes, then the next one is going to be a yes. And I love to hear noes. Okay, I’d rather stick a fork in my eye. Why don’t we put ourselves in a situation where we don’t have to hear 75 noes before we do the Yes. Why don’t we create a YouTube channel, a blog, a newsletter, speeches, some kind of thing that screens out the noes and attracts the people who are likely to say, yes, that to me, is just a much better approach than trying to emotionally fortify ourselves for why we like getting rejected? Or why we like here and no.

Christine Schlonski [9:16]
Yeah, well, I think most people don’t like it and I had an interesting interview with Bob Burg from the Go-Giver and he also said that he doesn’t like rejection. And I haven’t met any person that loves rejection. But some people are forced to deal with it in their day to day life. Because they do make offers. So you are saying the way around it would be showing up on YouTube, like having a YouTube channel or doing Facebook Lives or using Instagram. So where people actually can experience your way to offer solutions and your way to put value in the world. So when they have a need, they come to you as a go-to person.

Randy Gage [10:04]
Yeah, you position yourself as the definitive expert in your space. And everybody wants to do business with the definitive expert.

Christine Schlonski [10:14]
Yeah, definitely.

Randy Gage [10:16]
I never call myself a professional speaker or a public speaker. If you look on my website, or whatever, I’m an author, right? I an author and an entrepreneur. And I put out this content and I am one of the highest paid non-celebrity speakers you’ll ever find. Now, I get if you know, somebody who used to be president or somebody who’s a movie star or whatever, they’re going to get 100 grand a speech, but they’re a celebrity, they’re not getting that based on their expertise. But in terms of people who are paid on their expertise, people who are not celebrities, I’m as high paid as about anybody you’re going to find. Why? Because I have positioned myself as an expert with my body of work, with my experience, with my results. So they’re bringing me in to get my expertise and it’s never a sales situation. For me. It’s like, literally, before I got on the zoom meeting with you, there was an email from a speaker’s bureau: Hey, do you have these dates in March open? Right, because, and they’re not having to sell me to their client, their client has called them up and said, Hey, do you represent Randy Gage? Yes. Okay. Is he available and these dates, we’re having a big convention, and we’d like to bring him in as the keynote speaker, right? So that’s, I position myself that way. And I think that’s important. You if you know, people show me their business card, and it says, author, speaker, coach, international seminar leader, and I always say, you know, does Bono need a business card that says, rock star? Stephen King need a business card that says, writer or author? No, he’s Stephen King. So people ask me for a business card. I’m like, sorry, I haven’t used one of those for 10 years. But you can find me anywhere on the internet, right? That’s, I’m never going to use a business card again. I haven’t for at least a decade might be 15 years, I haven’t had a business card. Because again, I’m going to put out work, I’m going to put out a body of work that’s going to establish me for what I do.

Randy Gage [12:36]
And same way like for these events… What do you think happens when the budget is tight for an event, they say: Hey, we need to cut some of these speakers. Or we need to see if these speakers will work for free. And we’ll tell them they’re going to get great exposure if they do the speech for free. Meanwhile, they’re paying me $45,000 to do a keynote. If it’s a, you know, domestic one, and they’re haggling with some speaker who gets $2,500 a speech. What, but they never cut me. Why do they never cut me because they built the program around me. I have a lot of like, annual events and meeting planners that that’s the first thing they do is check the date with me. There’s no, okay, we’re planning the one for 2121. We need to know are you available February 21, because that’s the date we’re thinking about setting. And if I’m not available, they’re going to move the date and find one that’s available, because they’re going to build that program around me as the opening keynote speaker or the closing keynote speaker. And those same events, sometimes they’re haggling with people who get two grand a speech or three grand a speech, we’re doing the breakout sessions because they’re trying to, you know, come, you know, reduce their budget. Well, I just did an event in Austria, I guarantee you, their budget for that event was $5 million for just over 1000 people, they spent more than $5 million on that event. So what you know, and I made $125,000, because I did it, it’s an overseas one, I charge more, and I did a keynote and then I did a leadership training for their top people. So it was 125,000 for me, he said, that’s a lot of money. Now, their budget was 5 million. So what’s my crappy little 125k means nothing for that, right?

Christine Schlonski [14:40]
Yeah,

Randy Gage [14:42]
But there’s people who are saying, well, should I tell him I’m 2500? Or should I say, I’m 3000? What if they turned down the 3000. Now, I mean, that what you do when you position yourself at those levels of your this, because there’s a lot of speakers who do that I actually do an event just for professional speakers and authors, coaches and authors and things and somebody listening is interested, they should go to http://tribalevent.com and check that out. It’s an event I do once a year, like three, four days, 15 hours, 18 hours a day intensive, right? And this is this stuff I’m trying to show them is how do you position yourself as that definitive expert, because if not, what it comes down to is they’re looking at the budget for their event, they’re going to bring in their 10,000 top salespeople from around the world. And I got to bring them all to Hawaii, they’re going to spend millions of dollars on this event. And then you have speakers who are negotiating between $3,000 and $5,000, right? And when really what it is, is you’re competing with the tote bags, you’re competing with the cash bar because that’s what they’re saying. They’re saying, Well, you know what, we could put tote bags for everybody when they register, but we have to eliminate those two cheap speakers. And you know what, if it comes down to that the tote bags are always going to win.

Christine Schlonski [16:16]
Yeah,

Randy Gage [16:17]
The sponsored cash bar is always going to win. The free swag sweatshirt that’s going to be on the pillow when they check in, is always going to win if you’re just a commodity. But if you’re a definitive expert, they’re going to build the event around you. And someone else is going to have to pay for those tote bags and not you

Christine Schlonski [16:42]
definitely, that’s definitely the right approach. So when people listen to this right now, they think Well, yeah, but Randy, he is so far ahead in that game. I mean, he did years and years of positioning, of showing up, of sharing his work, of writing all the books, of speaking over speaking to over 2 million people. And I’m listening and, you know, I have some tiny business I started maybe a year ago, or maybe it’s a little bit bigger than business five years ago, and I still don’t feel like I’m getting anywhere. What’s the best advice or what was? Yeah, that’s one question at a time.

Randy Gage [17:27]
Okay. So the best advice is, stop trying to sell yourself. Start creating value. Start giving away your knowledge and your expertise as frequently and generously as you can. And some of you that’s going to mean writing articles on LinkedIn because you’ve got a corporate audience and that’s where they live. Some of you it’s going to be streaming on Facebook or streaming on Instagram, it’s going to be creating a YouTube channel for me I’m my big thing is my blog because I’m a writer, I and I have a YouTube channel, I do the other stuff. But that’s not my essence. And my essence, I want to be locked in my lonely writers garrett, hunched over my laptop writing my next book, you know. There’s a different you could be a speaker who writes or you could be a writer who speaks. I’m a writer who speaks and others I don’t set out to be a speaker, I set out to be a writer. And then because they like my books, they say, Hey, we want to bring in the guy who wrote the book, the book, right? So that you got to think what are you are you were more of a speaker, you more of a writer? Are you more of a coach, or you’re more of a consultant? Or you’re more of a salesperson?

Randy Gage [18:46]
Okay, what is it that you really do that is your essence? And then how can you take this expertise that you have and share it with the world in a way that they’re going to want to come in you. And people say, well, but if you give away all that stuff for free, and you tell everybody what you’re doing, nobody’s going to hire you. And it’s just the opposite. It’s just the opposite, right? If you just follow rock and roll, you know, how did that model go? What you did is you went on a tour to sell albums, and you went out and you did these concerts and then it changed because people didn’t want to buy albums anymore. They just want to download the music on the internet. And then they want to download the music for free. And then all of a sudden banish realize, we know what we need to do is we need to have a video and we needed to be on MTV. And if you look at Madonna and all of the people of that era Prinz and all them, they really understood MTV and they made sure their videos hit power rotation on MTV, and then a change and it became the internet. And now it’s, you know, Spotify and these kinds of things. So now you got somebody like, Drake had like, 8 billion downloads in 2018 so far. I mean, he’s understood, hey, and then you go on tour and you make your money on the T-shirts and the swag and the lanyards and you know, all of that stuff and you’re given away the music for free half the time because we know I mean, yes, there are people who are paying to download on Spotify or, you know, one of the Apple Music or whatever, but a lot of them are just watching the videos for free. I mean, one of the things I do is I listened to the YouTube top 15 on Sirius XM every weekend. Sirius XM is just here in the US. It’s a satellite radio, national satellite radio and you pay a subscription and then it’s no commercials. So that’s what I love about America I got something satellite radio, so I don’t have to pay for commercials. So there’s a lady named Jenna Marbles, who’s an amazing YouTube personality built a huge channel. And so she hosts this show every week and the YouTube Top 15. And so I like to go to Key West to work on my book. So I’m driving to Key West one Saturday, and I’m listening to her Top 15 and she’s saying and the trending you know, trending video this week is from Justin Bieber. And I forget whatever song it was, it had 500 million views since it had been released on that Saturday. So I’m driving down and Justin Bieber is trending with 500 million views.

Randy Gage [21:45]
Seven days later, I’m going the other way, coming back from Key West on Saturday, and I’m listening to the YouTube Top 15 with Jenna Marbles. And she saying still trending Justin Bieber, he now had 1 billion views. So he got 500 million views in seven days on one bit, and you can bet there were probably 5000 knockoff versions of that video. They’re probably got hundreds of millions of other views, but just the official one a billion views. And, you know, last time I looked at was like, 8 billion views or something like that. So I mean, that’s the world today, right? So he doesn’t, you know, he knows just getting that in his case it’s not expertise, it’s entertainment, right? But it’s the same for our salespeople or marketers or entrepreneurs who are listening to this. It’s getting your expertise out there, or people so when they’re in the market for that you are the company or the person that they think of that can solve their problems and add value.

Christine Schlonski [23:05]
Yeah, beautiful. Beautiful. So give your stuff away for free and the right people will come to you when they have the need. And just lots and lots and lots of it. Don’t do it just once a week, be consistent.

Randy Gage [23:19]
Yes, yes. Yes. Absolutely.

Christine Schlonski [23:22]
Well, thank you so, so very much for this interview. I really enjoyed our time together. And yeah, all the best.

Randy Gage [23:31]
All right. Thanks for having me on the show. Thanks, everybody. for listening. Peace.

Christine Schlonski [23:36]
Yeah. And tune into randygage.com. As I said, everything will be in the show notes, so it’s easy for you to find him and to follow his amazing stuff. Well, Gorgeous. I have to admit that after listening to Randy, after asking him all these questions and getting this amazing advice. I do have some homework to do. And I’m really looking forward to do so and to shift even more into a prosperity mindset into more abundance and just enjoying life more. There’s always a next level. So I hope you really enjoyed this interview. If you haven’t checked out the episode before. It’s Episode Number 12, where we talked about killing beliefs. And yeah, hop on over to christineschlonski.com for the full show notes for the transcript as well for the resources. You find all of Randy’s links to his homepage, to the amazing books he has written, to his Prosperity TV so you have it easy with just one click to follow him and to check out more of his amazing stuff. So that’s christineschlonski.com Schlonski is S-C-H-L-O-N-S-K-I and hop on over for the show notes and transcript and basically the podcast page. Please share the podcast with your friends, your family, your business partners, make sure you subscribe yourself and tune in for the next episode. Have an amazing day and bye for now.