Christine Schlonski [0:02]
Hi Gorgeous. This is episode number 211. We have the amazing Dan Kuschell back on the show.

Dan Kuschell [0:09]
Hi, this is Dan Kuschell. You’re listening to Heart Sells! Podcast with Christine Schlonski. Enjoy.

Christine Schlonski [0:15]
I’m so excited to have another conversation with Dan Kuschell. He is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor, a dad, and a husband. He wears all of these hats. He grew up in the inner city of Detroit. What he did was, he failed and he had success. He is now a requested expert of experts like Joe Polish, Dean Graziosi, Janet Attwood, Daniel Marcos and many, many more. Dan has bought and sold multiple companies. He has built over 11 companies to multiple seven and eight figures. He has helped over 200,000 clients, coached over 5000 business owners to connect the dots, sees the blind spots, gets unstuck. He helped them to implement unique sales and marketing systems so they could get more clients to grow faster, have better profits and to bigger impact reach and contribution. I’m so super pumped to have him back on the show because today we are going to talk about play the long term game for big breakthroughs. I’m sure you will love this. Hopefully, you’re ready with a pen and a piece of paper to take notes. Have fun and enjoy this episode. Well, I’m so excited to have you back on the show, Dan, welcome.

Dan Kuschell [0:18]
Thank you, Christine. It’s awesome to be with you.

Christine Schlonski [1:42]
Yeah, I loved our first interview and you delivered so much value and I just want to point out that you work with so many entrepreneurs globally, but also with some really, really big influencers like Joe Polish, Dean Graziosi, Janet Attwood, there’s so much knowledge that you took from creating companies yourself, over 11 and helping all these amazing people on the market. I feel like this success story is such a wonderfully inspirational story for people to tune in, to connect with you. All your links are in the show notes. You brought an amazing, amazing gift that is already got wonderful feedback on the http://activate.breakthrough3x.com where you have different checklists to choose from. We’re going to talk about that a little bit later. But right now, I would love to know, when you started, what was the very, very first thing that you have ever sold in your life?

Dan Kuschell [2:47]
Well, the very first thing I sold in my life, I think was, when I was 10 years old we had to do candy bar sales, to raise money for our sports teams. I would go, I grew up in the inner city of Detroit. I would go and go to a grocery store in the area called Farmer Jacks and we set up a stand. I would basically go out there and try to make sales to get candy bar sales so we could raise money, so we can afford uniforms, we can get equipment, all these different sorts of things. That’s one of the first things that I remembered. Then the second thing I remember was, I was brought in as a partner. I guess you’d say with a friend of mine named Mike on a paper route. So back then the paper routes were different. So you have to generate business and all these different things and then serve people in the community. Those were the two that stand out, first and the most, as far as the things that I had sold.

Christine Schlonski [3:46]
Yeah. Awesome. So how did you feel when you had your first selling experience? Because you mentioned that you were shy and asking for money wasn’t that easy. How did you feel when you actually had your first candy for money experience?

Dan Kuschell [4:03]
Well, truth be told, I felt like a duck out of water. I felt out of place. I felt uncomfortable. I felt self-conscious. Being an inner-city kid, I mean, my family, we grew up on welfare at times. So I was not comfortable in my skin. For me, to go to somebody and ask them for money, because we didn’t have a lot. There was a burden to that at the time. I had to unlearn that later in my career. But had I not experienced what it was like then to understand what a lot of people go through? I think it’s made me better serve our clients, serve teams and so on today because of starting at that place, being so uncomfortable and feeling so out of place and not fitting in. I looked at most people compared to me at that time as a kid is like everybody was more wealthy than our family. Again, it felt more of a burden, not like I was serving. Again, having to unlearn that false belief system is, I think, a critical skill that some people don’t ever figure out. I think a lot of people, Christine, don’t realize the chains or the handcuffs that we may have, which have nothing to do with our product, have nothing to do with our service. It has more to do with our mindset and our belief system. And yeah, that’s why in our programs, we spent a lot of time and interviews like this, I spent a lot of time talking about getting tuned in. What is your belief system? What are some of the traps that you may not even be aware of? They’re holding me, here’s a great question asked, real simple mentoring question or coaching question. Where are you now? Where do you want to go? Get clarity, write that out. Next, what do you need the most help with today? What’s the one thing that you need the most help with today? Your answer those two things, then answer this. What’s getting in the way of you being able to accomplish those things? And then I’d encourage you like Christine just did ask, think back to your childhood and start thinking like, “What are some of the things that possibly could be part of those handcuffs?” I have done a lot of work over the years, Christine, on helping get rid of those handcuffs, gets rid of these false beliefs to get better at it every day. I wouldn’t even say I’ve perfected it, but it’s certainly gotten better over time. Having served so many people.

Christine Schlonski [6:37]
Yeah, totally. And I think it’s such an inspirational story. Because when we realize it’s not just our challenge, other entrepreneurs have that challenge too, well, life becomes a little bit easier. And then also if others have already solved that challenge, you can solve it for yourself as well, which is incredible.

Dan Kuschell [7:00]
The gift of empowerment or self-empowerment. Socratic style of learning is which is asking the right questions. Questions are the key. The right question can help you solve any problem that you would have. I have to say, Christine, first of all, I don’t think I’ve ever shared this with anybody, ever, outside of this podcast. I’m making a note here because like, I’m like, “Wow, this is, I think, really valuable for people to hear and understand at this level.” So thank you.

Christine Schlonski [7:38]
Yeah, you’re welcome. I love these stories because I want to show people that no matter where you are on your journey, you can learn how to sell and you can learn how to sell from your heart. You can be authentic, you can be true to your values, and you can just invite people to get your amazing products. Even if you’re starting out and you might feel a little bit like an opposer, as we discussed in our first episode, it’s something you can get over by delivering results. Helping people to get what they want then they help you to get what you want. I just think it’s beautiful. When people start out, and maybe you remember that, or you might remember a couple of situations in your life. How do you deal with this rejection?

Dan Kuschell [8:30]
Well, I think for me, one of the benefits I had as a kid was playing sports. I think sports really taught me how to deal with rejection. My favorite sport as a kid was baseball and I did play football and basketball and did that stuff as well. But baseball, in baseball, typically, if you’re really great, you fail 7 out of 10 times, approximately. If you look at that from a sales perspective, getting a no 7 out of 10 times, and you get used to that when we first start off, if we don’t have this background, we see this, I’ve seen this a lot with people, they expect, especially a perfectionist attitude. For me, I think the gift I had in my upbringing as well as sports, and understanding that you fail more than you succeed. But that also goes against some belief systems, because the education system says you have to succeed 9 out of 10 times to be considered successful in school, to be an A student. But in reality, in business, number one, it’s not the percentage that matters all the time. It’s just being willing to get a lot of it back. If your enrollment percentage, let’s say or your sales percentage is 1 out of 10. Let’s say you’re really bad in the beginning like I was,. If you’re real, like maybe you’re the worst person in history, maybe like I was in the beginning, 1 out of 10, that’s 10% that’s really bad at selling, like really bad. I was that bad. Like I was pathetic in the beginning. But because of sports when it taught me, “Well, guess what, you get better every day if you just practice.” A.) be willing to get on the field and practice, and B.) what I figured out from a math perspective. Well, okay, well, if the normal person takes 20 at-bats in a week, and their enrollment rate or sales percentage is 30%. So that means if they present 20 times in a week, they’re going to get six sales. “Okay, well, what can I do to be as good as them in the numbers at the end result?” Well, I just need 60 at-bats in a week. If my percentage is 10%, I get six sales and I could be as good as them. For whatever reason, I was able to play games in my head, Christine, and I encourage people that I work with to kind of think of it this way. Especially if they’re new and brand new and don’t have a lot of background in selling or business or marketing is, don’t focus on the percentage, because that’ll get you into the belief system, “Oh, I’m not good enough. I’m a poser. I’m no good”, these sorts of false beliefs. No, just be willing to take more at-bats than anybody else and play the long game. I firmly believe in my heart or hearts. I mean, I think part of what Malcolm Gladwell teaches, the 10,000 hours like, I had somebody years ago, he asked me as a mentor to coach and he said, “Who do you think is the greatest baseball player to ever live?” If you’re not a baseball fan, don’t worry about it. You’ll get the point of this example in just a second. But let’s say, and there are all kinds of great baseball players. There’s people like Willie Mays and Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron and Ty Cobb and a lot of old old-time players and if you don’t know anything, no, no big deal. He said, “No, it’s none of them.” He said the greatest baseball player to ever live, never even played beyond childhood. Why? Because for whatever reason, some influence whether it was their own false beliefs, their own mindset, their family, their friends, their influences, their social surroundings, said they weren’t good enough. Malcolm Gladwell speaks of the 10,000 hours. If you just look at it and go, “You know what, I just got to get in the game, I got to go through 10,000 hours”, you just commit to the 10,000 hours in most things, not all. Like, “I’m never going to be a super basketball player. I’m limited in size and agility and speed and athletics. Plus, now I’m in my 50s. Like, it’s just not going to happen.” But at the end of the day and something like business or selling, a mindset game, if you’re just willing to play your 10,000 hours or less even in the thousands of hours, if you just play that game likely in a few years, you’ll be immensely successful and be really, really good at it. And probably most people look at you and go, “Wow. It’s amazing how far you’ve come.” You’ll have friends that will go, “Man, that’s amazing what you do.” I’ve seen it, we’ve seen it. I’m sure you’ve seen this too Christine, time and time again. But I think it starts with be willing to fail and failure also is relative. What is failure really? See if you believe that failure is having and being attached to an outcome. In other words, you go out and make 10 presentations or whatever the number is, and you go, “Well, that’s a failure.” Well, what if you change that conversation, you change that conversation in your heart, your mind and your soul and you said, “No, failure is something quitting.” See, that’d be a whole different thing. It has nothing to do with the outcome, then you become detached to the outcome. It becomes about serving, as you mentioned, inviting people whether they say yes or no. In the book, one of the greatest books I was ever introduced to as a kid was called Thinking Grow Rich. In the book it talked about the most successful people, Thomas Edison failed 4000 times and apparently, roughly, it could be more, could be a little less but thousands of times, finding the wrong way to invent the light bulb. Colonel Sanders, who you know created, now it’s KFC, it was Kentucky Fried Chicken, but KFC apparently went to eight or 9000 different people to get investment opportunity and they all said no and finally, somebody said yes. What’s the difference between them and you or me? Their mindset or belief system was, “That’s not failing. I’m only going to fail if I quit, if I stop, if I don’t pursue.” If you have something you believe in, just go out to serve. Go out to play your long game ideally, and it’s not what the percentage is, but if you take more bats than anybody else, you’ll eventually win in the long game, in my opinion. Unless you meet some amazing people along the way because they’ll respect it and play the long game.

Christine Schlonski [15:08]
Yeah, yeah. And that’s so true. And I want to encourage people that when you say it’s not working, really have a look at what’s not working. If you only did 10 calls or 50 calls and you say it’s not working, that’s the wrong point to determine that’s not working. Because they are far away from your 10,000 hours.

Dan Kuschell [15:30]
That’s right.

Christine Schlonski [15:32]
You’re playing the game of mastery.

Dan Kuschell [15:35]
Fancy set of words I learned from Jay Abraham years ago. He said, I think it was Jay. He said, “You’ve got to have statistical significance.” Now that’s a lot of words. A little outside of my normal scope of vocabulary at the sixth-grade level or whatever. But statistical significance says that minimally you’ve got to have at least 100 responses to something If you’re going to make any kind of, have any kind of attachment to anything, it’s not three like you brought up or even 10, or even 20, or even 50, to know whether something is working or it’s not working, I’d encourage you to look at having 100 responses before you make any kind of judgment on whether it’s working or not. When we do split testing, which we’ve done, and I know you do as well, online advertising or advertising campaigns, and we’ve done this in TV and radio, we have to have 100 clients, for example, to decide. There’s a lot of things that lead up to like, you might have opt-ins, you might have people go through a sequence of emails to get to 100 clients who say, “Yeah, you might have 5000 opt-ins to get to 100 clients.” Now, you can decide where you put the hundred, but I would encourage you for statistical significance. I don’t make any judgment of whether something works or it doesn’t until you got a minimum of 100 attempts. Have what it is that you’re doing and that will save you a lot of heartache to a degree. And you’ll also, you can eliminate like the other thing people have asked me Christine tied to this idea which is a mindset. I think I’ve just, I see a lot of the most successful people in the world are just willing to make more mistakes than others.

Christine Schlonski [17:24]
Yeah, that’s so true. And you brought us some amazing checklists and support so that the business becomes easier. Where can people find those?

Dan Kuschell [17:35]
Real simple, go to http://activate.breakthrough3x.com we’ve got a series of tools for you. How to sell more by selling fewer checklists.

Christine Schlonski [17:46]
I just love that.

Dan Kuschell [17:49]
The hiring checklist. How to hire an A player the right time, every time, the void, the mistakes. We’ve learned through 20,000 plus interviews. We’ve got our CEO founders checklist, which is really geared to help you if you’re like more of a quick start creative type, like playing and building things, but maybe not running the business per se or don’t see yourself like I’m great at running. Well, you might enjoy this, we’ve actually reviewed over 4000 companies to find out what works and doesn’t, put it into a nice checklist. Then we’ve also put together a checklist for marketing. Like, what are some of the ways to think about like, don’t even think about hiring an agency or another agency in marketing or bringing a marketing person in until you go through this blueprint, which will help you get clarity, certainty, confidence around your message, your market and how to deliver it to the world.

Christine Schlonski [18:41]
Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so, so much, Dan. I really, really appreciate you sharing your wisdom with us. I found it so inspirational, especially that you shared your story so openly, that people can say it’s a learnable skill. You can learn to be successful once you keep at it, you keep trying, you don’t give up. Because giving up is the ultimate failure. But you know, making mistakes is just part of the process. So thank you so, so much. And I want to encourage you, my dear listener, to really check out, Dan. All the links are in the show notes. So it’s just one click away and make sure you get your checklists because they are amazing. And they will help you to make your life easier and to have more of what you really want. And not just hustling 24/7, but also have some time for self-care and not doing anything, maybe just having a look into the sky. So thank you so much for being here. And I just loved it. And I really appreciate you and the work you do in this world. Thank you very much.

Dan Kuschell [19:52]
Thanks, Christine.

Christine Schlonski [19:53]
I really enjoyed this episode because Dan was so open with his own journey, with all the struggles he has, this feeling uncomfortable when selling to where he is now and all the success he has created. So I hope that this was really, really inspirational for you because it was inspirational for me, I just love that conversation. And that is also the goal of Heart Sells! Podcast or the aim is really to get you to the point where you see that you can learn sales, at any point in your life, you can learn how to enjoy it, how to make it with ease, grace, and confidence while being true to your own values. Dan’s success story has shown a lot of how he could shift his mindset to then being out of his own way and serve so many more people. Hop on over to https://christineschlonski.com/podcast and tune into the show notes. Check out the transcript and the resources we have available for you. Everything is right at your fingertips. Dan’s episodes are Episode Number 210 and 211. In the Resources tab, you will also find his many business growth toolkits with the amazing checklists with support to help you to grow your business with his systems. Also, all the links to Dan, just one click away once you’re over there, check out how to connect to Dan Kuschell. And thank you so, so much for being here, for joining Heart Sells! Podcast. If you have not yet, please take the time to leave a rating and review that really helps us to grow the podcast to inspire more people globally. So far, we are reaching people in 32 countries from all over the world, basically. And yeah, we want to spread that message that sales is love. Everyone can learn how to sell and once you really find sales, you can build a life beyond your wildest dreams. Have a wonderful day wherever you are in this beautiful world and I’m saying bye for now.