Christine Schlonski [0:02]
Hi Gorgeous, this is episode number 033 with our amazing guest, Jorge Meléndez.

Jorge Meléndez [0:10]
Hi, I’m Jorge Meléndez and you’re listening to Heart Sells! with Christine Schlonski, enjoy!

Christine Schlonski [0:17]
Hola Gorgeous, today we have Jorge Meléndez. He was born in Puerto Rico, raised in the US and lives now in Mexico City. Wow, what a traveler! He is a life and business coach and consultant and has worked with over 300,000 people in countries such as the Far East, Europe, South America, the Caribbean, and the United States. And he has done that for over 22 years. His business is focused on ontology, that is a study of language to identify limiting belief that staunches growth. With his work, he helps to define objective strategies and behaviors in order to achieve tangible measurable and sustainable results. He worked with executives from all over the globe and also led business consulting services focused on impacting the culture of organizations through strategic interventions and corporate objectives. Some of his clients are Banco Popular, IBM, Sun Microsystems. So I’m super, super excited he is here. We will talk about a lot of amazing things. His story is phenomenal and the stories he tells are so relatable. So tune on in and figure out how Jorge has actually closed his very first sale, how he felt about it, and what amazing advice he had gotten from a millionaire that just showed up magically in his life to guide him to become an awesome salesperson. Have fun.

Jorge Meléndez [2:09]
Thank you. I’m glad it’s me, it’s a pleasure to be here with you.

Christine Schlonski [2:12]
It’s wonderful. And you know, you’re tuning in from Mexico. And that’s really really great that we are getting some international flair or more of it here on to the show. And I’m very excited to share your knowledge and wisdom with our listeners today.

Jorge Meléndez [2:30]
To me, it’s a pleasure just getting us to be connected by a mutual friend that was on the show like Randy is and in right now it’s dawn, it’s started in the morning. So what a better way sharing with you, someone who is speaking from the heart, who wants to connect with people and I to be a part of it. So I’m, I’m honored to be on your show.

Christine Schlonski [2:51]
How wonderful. Thank you so much. So, you as a life and business coach and as a consultant who has been working with over 300 000 people and in all kinds of different countries from the Far East, Europe, South America, the Caribbean, in the United States, and that consistent over the last 22 years. Is there anything else you can share about your expertise that we probably might not know,

Jorge Meléndez [3:26]
I would say right now something that people, that I could share from my expertise, well, maybe it could sound like a cliche, but I would say that right now, one of the biggest lessons for me is not what I’ve known, it’s what I’ve learned by traveling, being connected and being exposed to so many people, even though like they say, you don’t have to travel far to know the people around you and learn from them. But learning from different cultures and learning from people how they’re thinking and how so many things affect them and being around them to just listening to them and ask them and be around them. I think it’s priceless. And I think maybe that’s one of the things that’s been able to serve me and use it in a way that I could serve others.

Christine Schlonski [4:10]
Wow. Yeah, I love traveling myself. I mean, looking at your CV I haven’t come that far yet. But still, each time I go to a place I learned something new. Even though you know, I’ve been quite a few times to the US. But still, each time I pick up new things. And I just love it. So you know, this podcast is about helping people to sell from the heart. Because a lot of people have a misperception of sales. And they hold themselves back with their beautiful gifts and talents. Because to get that out into the world, you have to make some kind of offer. So let me ask you, what was the first thing that you’ve ever sold in your life?

Jorge Meléndez [4:58]
Oh, my God, this is a this is a great question. I remember when I was 18 years old, I wanted to be a doctor. I was admitted into the top university in my country, which is University of Puerto Rico. But that first year there was a strike. So you know, the university shut down that year, I lost my financial aid. So I decided I didn’t want to depend on my parents. To for my income that year, I said: What am I going to do? So I found a job selling timeshare hotels vacation packages, at a beach Isla Verde in Puerto Rico. So I was 18 years old. I was eager. But I had no clue how to approach people, what to do – cold turkey. So I remember they gave us these beautiful striped polo shirts. I looked like a parrot walking in the middle of the beach. So every day, I would go, the first three weeks every morning, you would get and you’d have like the small training of how to approach people. How to go. So I was really enthusiastic and I was very optimistic, which is part of I would say, maybe I was born with that. But I go, but the first three weeks I was totally shut down. No, no, no, I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to talk to you. Thank you no not. So by the third week, I was getting discouraged. So on my fourth week, I remember I go to work that morning. I got out of the meeting, I said, okay, here, I got to go to the beach and talk to these people. And all of a sudden, the man who I had spoken to two weeks before, he says Jorge, because he remember my name, can you come over here, says let me invite you to breakfast. And I said, okay. He says, well, I want to talk to you a little bit about me. But what I’m going to tell you right now, it’s not to brag. I just want to give you some information. He says: Do you know what I do? And I said, No. Well, I run businesses, I own over 26 stores in wholesales run multi-million dollar businesses. And you know why I’m here in Puerto Rico? I said no. I’m here to at least spend $300,000, so I won’t have to pay them in taxes. I said, Wow, that’s a nice concept, going to Puerto Rico two weeks, spend $300,000 on a beach. So you won’t have to pay taxes? He says, yeah. Now, can I give you some feedback?

Jorge Meléndez [7:08]
And that was a concept that I had never heard before. We’re talking, right. I’m 55. So this is over 30, almost 40 years ago. He tells me, I’ve been watching you over the last two weeks. I see that you’ve come out with energy, you’re very respectful. You come to people and you’re approaching me. You have a great energy, but I noticed a couple of things that, you know, connecting with people more than selling them a product which you want to sell them, maybe getting to know the people what they do and even if you don’t get to sell, you get to know them, you get to connect with them. You get to listen to them, you get to share with them. Because right now we’re sharing here because I see you, I’ve been watching you for the last two weeks. And I see you walking the beaches, I can see what you’re doing. But I think that this could support you. And in that moment, something inside of me like lit up. It’s something to me was like, wait a minute, it’s true. Let me connect with people. Let me feel okay with what I’m doing. And not try to feel that I need to pressure people. Let me be honest with people, and let me approach them and just have a conversation with them. And for some reason, when I walked out of that breakfast, which I did have to pay, this of a millionaire invited me to breakfast. I walked out with a different sense of how to approach people, how to listen to people, not be fixated on the sell, but more on connecting with people. And that following week, I sold three vacation programs. I sold two more the following week. So it changed my whole perspective. And that led me to how to approach people in a whole new different way. So that was priceless. How being a teenager eager wanting to do the best, but not having the tools to do it. And not being aware of a lot of things and how this man so generously just took me under his wing as a mentor, and just gave me his knowledge and certainly, not only for what I was doing but for who I was being

Christine Schlonski [9:05]
Mhhh, that’s so beautiful. I love this story. I just love it. And it reminded me like way back when, when I used to work in corporate. I started in sales, not knowing anything about sales, not really wanting to be there. And my former boss like convinced me to take on that job. And he used to do timeshare before he joined that company. And he always used to tell like his stories and gave us great teachings around connecting with people, approaching people. So that is a really great lesson to learn. Because you get that direct feedback. And you know, timeshare is high-ticket as well. It’s not like you’re selling sunglasses.

Jorge Meléndez [9:57]
Absolutely.

Christine Schlonski [9:58]
That’s like a different ball game. I just, I just love it. So how did you feel when the first person said yes to your offer? And you made a deal?

Jorge Meléndez [10:07]
Oh, first of all, I was elated. Because it’s like, I felt like I had lifted a weight off my shoulders. But in that moment, this the first thing that happened was this person came to mind. I can’t remember his name. But that person came to my mind because I said, Wow, I wouldn’t be standing here today with this person if that wouldn’t have happened. And in someone cared enough about me, even if they didn’t know me to guide me. So that that I don’t know if that was a like a little seed that was sown into me at that moment that by giving to others, you will continue to receive. So I felt elated. But at the same time, it was grateful. And it was about gratitude in that moment.

Christine Schlonski [10:54]
Oh, wonderful. Yeah. And, you know, I would guess that this gesture this you know, taking you under his wings might even have planted the seed of you becoming a coach. Could that be?

Jorge Meléndez [11:08]
Absolutely, absolutely I have not thought whatsoever that you know what, that was one of the scenes, you know, and it’s like the bamboo seed story. Have you heard about it?

Christine Schlonski [11:18]
No.

Jorge Meléndez [11:19]
The bamboo seed, it says, like, you take the seed of the, of the bamboo and you seed it and the first year you water it, you fertilize it, nothing happens. The second year you fertilize it, you put water, nothing happens. The third year, nothing happens. The fourth year, nothing happens. But the fifth year, it grows 90 feet in six months.

Christine Schlonski [11:42]
Wow.

Jorge Meléndez [11:43]
Okay. Because during the first five years is growing a system of roots under the earth vertically and horizontally. That stems that growth so extraordinarily, that it becomes one of the most flexible plants because it’s a tree, but also a plant, in the world. It could bend, but it won’t break.

Christine Schlonski [12:06]
I love that. So what advice around this would you give our listeners who might be struggling in their business right now?

Jorge Meléndez [12:15]
Well, I would say three things. Number one, don’t quit, because sometimes you’re closer to getting it right, than to getting it wrong. Number two, I would say that it’s important to build your relationship skills more than focusing on what am I selling and how am I selling it. The better you get at relating with people, the more you will start going through the maze and getting to connecting to people. And third, I would say, when you’re coming from the heart, at some point, you have to get detached, you cannot be attached to the outcome. You got to give it your all. It’s like, what Seth Godin says it’s emotional labor. You got to put your heart into it, it’s going to hurt sometimes, it’s going to be rough sometimes but when you put your heart into it, more often than not, first of all, you’re going to learn from it. You’re going to grow from it, and you’re going to earn from it.

Christine Schlonski [13:11]
Yeah, I definitely like that as well. Which leads me to a question that might be kind of interesting, too, because, you know, sometimes in sales, somebody says, Yes, and, you know, we prepare a contract, and we get ready for the signature, and then they bail out. So what was like, you know, the biggest contract you ever lost?

Jorge Meléndez [13:42]
Another great story. This was like 15 years ago. I remember one day I was I was living in Puerto Rico at the time, I was not living in Mexico. Out of the blue, my cell phone, I got a call. And this man says, Jorge, I’ve been looking for you for years. And I well yeah, well, tell me about it. He says, I want you to come be a speaker at our main event every year that we have, I want you to come. I said, well, great. So can you send me your email? Yeah, here’s my email. Can you let me know if you have this date open? I said, okay, give me a couple of hours, let me get home and come back. So and I’ll get back to you. So I get home. I see that on my calendar I have a training that weekend. This is for the next year, it was somewhere around September, and this was going to be around May of the following year. So I call him I said, Sean is his name. I said, Sean, how important is this for you? Very important. I says well, I have a training this weekend. If I move this training, this is going to cost you a lot because to move a training, which is a paid event, which at the time would pay well. He says no problem, whatever it costs me, whatever you do, if you could open the date I appreciate. So I call people over the training, they move into the date. So I said, okay.

Jorge Meléndez [14:59]
Well, my lessons I said, let me tell them a price so high that he’s going to say no. So I gave him a great price very high. He says, without flinching, no problem. What’s your mailing address? Okay, got it. Five days later, I get a check paid in full. But the problem is not that I lost the game. When I get to them he says, Jorge, you know who’s spoken in this event years before? I say, no. Norman Schwarzkopf, Colin Powell, Pat Riley… This man at the young presidents organization, this organization in the United States that groups business owners that have corporations that generate between $3 to $5 million. So I could have earned 10 times more than what I earned. So when you don’t know your market, sometimes it’s not the contracts you lose. It’s the money you don’t earn. Because you don’t know how to price yourself. And that was a HUGE lessons for me. Sometimes we miss contracts, because we don’t know how to price ourselves. So I missed on that contract. Not because I didn’t do the gig, it’s because I didn’t know how to price myself looking at the type of business that I needed to price. So I could have earned $200,000 instead of $20,000. I lost $200,000.

Christine Schlonski [16:24]
Wow,

Jorge Meléndez [16:25]
with not knowing.

Christine Schlonski [16:26]
That’s an amazing story. Thank you so much for sharing. Because that’s such a great lesson, pricing yourself, packaging yourself. I just love it. And it’s wonderful input for the audience as well, because that’s something people do. They don’t know the market, they just assume that you know what sounds a lot for them, it’s a lot for the other person as well.

Jorge Meléndez [16:57]
Now, let me tell you the second part of the story. Usually, those people would go to this event to do a 45-minute keynote. I was there for two days working with them. And so I lost well over $300,000 in that. So you know, it’s, you know what, ignorance is bliss at times, they say. So let me just say that ignorance was bliss. And I learned from it, it was a powerful lesson to me of how to value myself, value my work, and really do the legwork of knowing who you’re getting offers from to know how to price yourself. Because if not, you’re missing out on great opportunities.

Christine Schlonski [17:37]
Yeah, yeah. Wow, that’s such a powerful lesson. Thank you so much for sharing that. That’s really cool. So how do you how do you how do you deal with rejection? Let’s say you you make an offer, and yeah, somebody is just saying, no,

Jorge Meléndez [17:57]
I’m going to show you two stories of this year. I’m going to tell you something very recent. A dear friend of mine, well, he was a participant in a training I led around eight years ago. He contacted me to, to one social media, he says, Jorge, I want you to be my coach. I said, okay, let’s get ahead of ourselves. But I’m okay. So let’s have a personal meeting. He sat down, I listened to him. Great. So the man says, you are in this, I want you to my coach. I said, Okay. I’m going to send your proposal. So he gets a proposal, okay, this date is going to happen, all that he said Jorge I can’t handle the money situation. I said, okay, what do you need? How can I support you? Okay, give me 50 more days. Okay, I said, now, can I give you a suggestion? He says, yeah. I said, don’t focus on the money. Focus on what you want to achieve and why this is important to you. Because I’ve learned that when you have money problems, money is not the solution. It’s being creative about it. When you’re creative with situations, your mind stimulate yourself to to do and be different about it. So don’t focus on the money. Focus on how you’re enjoying what you’re doing with your clients. So that happens. So two weeks later, he says, I’m stuck. I said, okay. Now, do you want to stay stuck? Or do you want to get unstuck? You want to get stuck?

Jorge Meléndez [19:25]
Do you want to get unstuck, because this is this is perfect. This is coaching, this is what you want to hire me for. But this is a moment because there’s two types of coaching, you could give a person a proactive coaching or reactive coaching, before the situation occurs, or after it happens. After it happens there’s not much I could do, I could coach you and I could support you so the next time it could be different, but you’re already going to be in a different place.

Jorge Meléndez [19:50]
So how do we deal with rejection? Because I want to go back to the question you asked me, number one, don’t take it personal. There’s people that are going to approach you because they see your talents. But at that moment, we could feel trapped to do one or two things, lower our price and want to get attached to the outcome. Or we could keep our price and we let go of the person. And I’ve been sometimes in dire straits situations. I said, Oh, let me bring it lower, let me give them a little less sessions and do that. And I said, no, because if I say yes to that, then the universe is going to tell me that this is my price. This is what I do. And this is where the universe is going to say, this is how your pricing and value and holding yourself. Don’t do that. So when people say no, they stop taking your calls, and they don’t respond to your WhatsApp, to your calls, let them go, bless them and say, hey, there’s more people out there that I could serve. Let me go out there and continue to serve people. And your perfect client is going to show your way. And it’s going to show up to you.

Christine Schlonski [21:00]
Yeah, yeah, that’s so true.

Jorge Meléndez [21:02]
Outside of coaching, where I sell products to different people. And some of them are my friends. So, you know, what am I doing the minute people come to my home, and we love to have people in here, either for dinner, have a cup of coffee and share. So the minute they walk in, they see different things and say, What is it? I say try it, tasted it, so they have a tea, they have different beverages…and says oh, I love it. I’ll say okay. What does it do? It’s just for your wellness. So I just share with them. And I said, if you’re interested, let me know. I just leave them there. I don’t even talk about it. No, I want to know more about it. So then I set them and I share it with them. But in a very friendly, approachable, accessible way. So I will treat my friends as a client, but I will treat a client as a friend.

Christine Schlonski [21:50]
Yeah, yeah, I love that. It’s, I also believe that especially like, if you do one on one coaching and you work really closely was a person my philosophy is that if you wouldn’t want them for dinner at your home, don’t take him on as a client, because then you know that it doesn’t, it’s not a good match. And if you take on a client that you know, it’s going to get on your nerves, and you can serve the way you want to serve, then it you know, it’s not good for them. It’s not good for you either.

Jorge Meléndez [22:24]
Oh, that is so true. Um, many years ago, a man called Michael Port, he’s a he’s an ex-actor, and he coaches people in to do public speaking and all that. He says, you want to make sure that the clients, you want to attract are that people, not only because they want to pay for your services, that people you want to be excited to serve, because here in a moment, where they’re not looking for your coaching, they’re looking that they just want to have someone next to them, following their path. And you’re learning from them as much as they are learning from you. And that is critical that, you know, yes, we would like to coach maybe hundreds of people, but not maybe everyone is going to be your ideal client. And visualizing and writing down who’s your ideal client is the one that’s going to bring the ideal client to you as you get closer to them.

Christine Schlonski [23:11]
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. It needs and you you can, you know, write it out and you can make sure that you attract those people and that you say no, to the people you don’t feel ahhm you don’t feel you want to serve because it’s not a good match. So wonderful.

Christine Schlonski [23:31]
Gorgeous. I hope you really enjoyed this interview with Jorge Melendéz. For me, it felt like having a coffee chat. Amazing and obviously he is a awesome storyteller. I loved all the stories and all these golden nuggets included. If you want to find out more about Jorge go to jorgemelendez.com.mx and mx for Mexico. Okay, tune in to the show notes on christineschlonski.com, you find full show notes, you’ll find the resources mentioned as well as a transcript and obviously the episode itself. So I’m super excited that you are here. Thank you so much for tuning in. And to help you shift your mindset I have created these amazing journaling prompts that you can get as a download. So you can start shifting your mindset into a sales success mindset. Check them out as well at christineschlonski.com, hop on over there. Have fun on the page. See all the different episodes we already provide for you to help you to create the life of your dreams through serving more amazing people with your wonderful gifts. Thank you so much for being here and bye for now.